Voyage of Vengeance Page 2

  Manco: Home planet of Jettero Heller and the Countess Krak.

  Manco devil: Mythological spirit native to Manco.

  Maysabongo: Jettero Heller was made a representative of this small African nation. Izzy Epstein made some of Heller’s businesses Maysabongo corporations.

  Moam, Lissus: Original name of the Countess Krak.

  Mudur Zengin: Financial czar of the biggest banking chain in Turkey and handler of Soltan Gris’ funds.

  Musef: A Turkish wrestling champ who, with his friend Torgut, was supposed to beat up Jettero Heller when he first arrived in Afyon but was instead defeated.

  Narcotici, Faustino “The Noose”: Head of a Mafia family that is the underworld outlet for drugs.

  Octopus Oil: A Delbert John Rockecenter company that controls the world’s petroleum.

  Pinch, Miss: Lesbian sadist and a Delbert John Rockecenter employee who lives with Candy Licorice and contrived a bigamous marriage to Soltan Gris.

  Psychiatric Birth Control: Delbert John Rockecenter-funded plan to reduce the world’s population by promoting homosexuality.

  Pubiano de Cópula, Dolores: She filed suit against Jettero Heller (known as Jerome Terrance Wister and the Whiz Kid) seeking a divorce. She claims Wister married her in Mexico. She is represented by Dingaling, Chase and Ambo.

  Raht: An Apparatus agent on Earth who was assigned by Lombar Hisst to help Soltan Gris sabotage Jettero Heller’s mission; his partner Terb was murdered.

  Rockecenter, Delbert John: Native of Earth who controls all the planet’s fuel, finances, governments and drugs.

  Simmons, Miss: An antinuclear fanatic who teaches at Empire University.

  Smith, John: An alias that Soltan Gris uses.

  Spiteos: On Voltar, the secret fortress prison used by the Apparatus.

  Spread, Maizie: She filed a paternity suit against Jettero Heller (known as Jerome Terrance Wister and the Whiz Kid) claiming that she is pregnant and Wister deserted her. She is represented by Dingaling, Chase and Ambo.

  Stabb, Captain: Leader of the Antimanco crew at the Afyon base.

  Sultan Bey: The Turkish name Soltan Gris assumes in Afyon , Turkey.

  Swindle and Crouch: Law firm representing Delbert John Rockecenter.

  Switch, Toots: She sued Jettero Heller (known as Jerome Terrance Wister and the Whiz Kid) for adultery with Maizie Spread. She is being represented by Dingaling, Chase and Ambo.

  Tayl, Widow: Nymphomaniac on Voltar.

  Teenie: See Whopper, Teenie.

  Terb: Murdered partner of Raht.

  Torgut: A Turkish wrestling champ. (See Musef.)

  Twiddle, Senator: US congressional supporter of Delbert John Rockecenter.

  Twoey: Nickname given to Delbert John Rockecenter II.

  Utanc: A belly dancer that Soltan Gris bought to be his concubine and slave.

  Viewer: See Bugging Gear.

  Voltar: Home planet and seat of the one-hundred-and-ten-planet Confederacy that was established over 125,000 years ago. Voltar is ruled by the Emperor through the Grand Council, in accordance with the Invasion Timetable.

  Whiz Kid: Nickname given to Jettero Heller by J. Walter Madison. Madison has someone playing the part to get publicity without Heller’s consent. The phony “Whiz Kid” has buckteeth and a protruding jaw, wears glasses and looks nothing like Heller.

  Whopper, Teenie: Teenager who seduces Soltan Gris.

  Wister, Jerome Terrance: Name that Jettero Heller is using on Earth. He is also known as the Whiz Kid.

  PART FIFTY-TWO

  To My Lord Turn, Justiciary of the Royal Courts and Prison, Government City, Planet Voltar, Voltar Confederacy

  Your Lordship, Sir!

  I, Soltan Gris, Grade Eleven General Services Officer, former Secondary Executive of the Coordinated Information Apparatus, Voltar Confederacy (All Hail His Royal Majesty Cling the Lofty and the Lords of His Empire), am with all humility providing the seventh part of my confession.

  It is at this point that I must detail the most heinous of all the crimes I committed while on MISSION EARTH.

  Officially, I don’t suppose there is a penalty for arranging the murder of a nonperson, such as the Countess Krak, or for witnessing the deaths of the scores of Earthlings who died that fatal day of my revenge. And while I have not looked in the Royal Codes for the penalty for arranging the murder of a Royal officer, such as Jettero Heller, I’m sure it must be severe.

  What is important is that I tell you how it all came about so you can see that your decision to keep me in your fine prison is most warranted.

  I was tricked into my polygamous marriage to Adora Pinch and her “wife” Candy. That alone was enough to drive anyone to acts of violence. She even got me to marry her under one of my aliases—the one I used in Turkey, Sultan Bey. But then she had me perform with other lesbians to convert them from their psychiatrically endorsed sexual preference.

  What I didn’t understand was why this horror was happening to me. It was supposed to happen to Heller, not me!

  J. Walter Madison, infamous public relations man, had pulled every trick in the PR book to get front page stories about how “Whiz Kid” Wister (Heller) had polygamously married Maizie Spread, Toots Switch and Dolores Pubiano de Cópula. Madison had used a phony double of Heller/Wister everywhere to get news and had even arranged press photographs depicting Maizie and her swollen belly as the final proof of Heller’s immoral sexual behavior.

  Why would this recoil on me?

  I even had the law firm of Dingaling, Chase and Ambo pursuing Heller with false lawsuits and arrest warrants to get Heller and Krak locked away in Bellevue Hospital—and what happened? Adora Pinch tricked me into marrying her and Candy and then I ended up being threatened with polygamy! That’s not fair!

  Why did it happen to me?

  From the sound, sane, scientific pronouncements made by sound, sane, scientific authorities (especially the ones with doctors’ degrees), I knew that there couldn’t be any relationship between what was happening to me and what I was doing to Heller. Of course not. That’s a ridiculous idea.

  No, the bad things that happened to me were caused by Fate. Or by Heller. I definitely didn’t cause any of it! Everyone knows that man is just mud. They teach that in all the schools on planet Earth and you either agree to it or you flunk the course.

  So everyone knows that man’s just a bunch of stupid chemicals. He can’t cause anything. Man has no conscience, no morality, no worth and no meaning except what authority dictates.

  Besides, what would happen if a person began to think he was responsible for his own condition?

  What would happen if a person believed (even for a moment) that he wasn’t just a bunch of chemicals?

  Why, the next thing you know, people would be causing things! They wouldn’t ask psychiatrists for opinions anymore! They’d believe they could make up their own minds! Authorities would be taken off government welfare and they’d have to get jobs just like everyone else! People wouldn’t read Madison’s newspapers anymore!

  They’d see that it’s all been a giant scam!

  My Gods, that’s dangerous!

  Declare them insane! Stamp them out! Crush them! Kill them! Kill them all! KILL! KILL!! KILL!!!

  Whew! There.

  I feel better.

  Where was I?

  Oh, yes, I remember. I was telling you how sane I am because I know from psychiatric authorities that I am just a bunch of chemicals and that I am not responsible for anything bad that happens to me.

  After all, it was Adora Pinch Bey who brought the lesbians in for me to convert with my sexual performances.

  I remember one more clearly than all the rest—Teenie Whopper, that fifteen-year-old, bubble-gum-chewing devil with her supply of Neo Punk Rock records and drugs. Always wanting pictures taken. Always offering me one drug after another. “Here, Inky, take a puff of this,” she’d say. What was I supposed to do?

  She even got me to give her five thousand dollars so s
he could take lessons from some Hong Kong whore. I was willing to pay anything to get her out of my life.

  After all, my purpose was to destroy Krak and Heller so Rockecenter’s drugs would flow back to Voltar so Lombar Hisst could overthrow the Empire so he could slaughter all the riffraff. That’s sane, right?

  I just had to work out a way to do it.

  Thanks to the audio-optical bugs I had had implanted in Heller’s and Krak’s skulls, I knew everything they saw and heard. It was not easy when I watched Krak buy the yacht Golden Sunset on my Squeeza credit card. She sailed it out into the Atlantic somewhere and then left Heller on it as a virtual prisoner, alone except for Captain Bitts and his crew.

  And what did Krak do? Did she do something harmless like teaching that Mr. Calico cat of hers some new trick? No! I watched her in my viewer as she set out on the trail of those three poor, innocent girls, Maizie Spread, Toots Switch and Dolores Pubiano de Cópula. Using her stage skills, Krak disguised herself and managed to get the address of their apartment, and then she was off to kill them! Oh, what a fiend! All those poor girls had done was lie to the courts and then to the press, who printed the story about Heller in such a way that nationally enquiring minds would believe it. What’s wrong with that?

  When I saw that Krak was on their trail, I quickly notified the law offices of Dingaling, Chase and Ambo so the shabby man in the shabby coat could serve the papers and get her locked away. Ambo put the armed Eagle Eye Security guards on the alert with orders to shoot her on sight, for there was a fifty-thousand-dollar reward on Krak’s head—dead or alive.

  I thought I could relax because I also had one other trump card: Dr. Phetus P. Crobe.

  As a cellologist, Crobe had the skills to create any conceivable monstrosity, any mixture of man and beast, and back on Voltar he had drooled at the thought of manipulating Heller’s cellular structure.

  And Crobe had acquired one other talent since his arrival on Earth: he had absorbed the best of psychiatric theory and was now held in high esteem at Bellevue. Since he was also equipped with optical and audio bugs, I was able to monitor his progress as the very model of the man-is-mud authority.

  But it was Krak that I was really worried about. I pulled her viewer closer to figure out where she was.

  All I needed was her location and she was dead!

  PART FIFTY-TWO

  Chapter 1

  Anxiously I watched. But Krak’s viewer did not tell me much. Unaccountably, she was looking at a bunk and a stack of clothes. It was a very small space. I couldn’t figure out how she had gotten there! One minute she was in the dark alley. The next minute she was in this space. Weird! Nerve-wracking.

  But she wasn’t doing anything I could make out.

  I turned my attention to the Crobe viewer. Yes, there was Crobe entering the auditorium for his lecture.

  There was a large gathering, an enormous number of Rockecenter staff and security men. Yes! And there was Rockecenter himself! Sitting in a box all draped with various national flags.

  An MC announced, “And now, ladies and gentlemen of the Rockecenter personal organization, I give you the stellar figure who sits today at the dizzying heights of psychiatric dominance, a peer amongst peers, a psychiatrist’s psychiatrist, Dr. Phetus P. Crobe.”

  Rockecenter applauded.

  Crobe got right to work. He was always a no-nonsense professional. He gave a signal and a wheeled stretcher was raced upon the stage. A woman was lying on it, strapped down. Her belly was very swollen. She was staring terrified toward the audience, trying to shift her pinioned limbs and get away.

  “I’ve been kidnapped!” she screamed. “Let me go! My husband wants to live with a tramp. He had me . . .”

  Crobe sternly slapped his hand across the woman’s mouth. To the attendant, he snarled, “I dold chu to gag her. She iss inderruding a scientific lecdure!”

  With his other hand he gave a signal. Another machine was raced onto the stage. Attendants promptly clamped electrodes on her head. Crobe grasped a handle on the machine and then, hastily snatching his hand from the woman’s mouth, slammed the lever down. Letters on his viewer flashed:

  PLEASURE

  Volts crackled and arced. The woman’s body bowed. There was the grind and snap as she crushed her own teeth. She lay still. Crobe lifted the lever, gave a wave of his hand, and the attendants disconnected the machine from the woman and sped it away.

  Crobe chuckled. The letters on his screen flashed:

  GOOD HUMOR

  “Dow,” he said, “dat ve haf cured de batient uf the insanity uf objecding, ve can commence. Dis girl vas commidded to Bellevue by de Superior Court for mendal examination. Ven I examined her,” and here his voice dropped to an awful and horrified tone, “I vound she vas PREGNANTED!”

  A curse of disgust came from the flagged Rockecenter box.

  Crobe nodded toward the box and went on. “Pregnancy iss de mosd awful criminal form uf insanity because uf de black widowed spider gene t’eory uf woman’s evolution!”

  “Hear, hear!” came from Rockecenter in his box.

  “I cannot dake de credid vor dis mosd vunderful t’eory now standard do all psychiadry. Dat belonggs do Doctdor Kutzbrain, my learnded colleague. BUT do me goes de broof and credid. De fetus at de crucial stage uf evolutionary development ASSUMES DE VORM DAT BROOFS DE T’EORY!”

  He seized an enormous knife. He brought it down with a powerful slash across the woman’s belly.

  Flesh parted!

  Blood spurted!

  Crobe got two huge clamps and pulled the flesh and entrails away.

  He grabbed some huge pincers. He reached in.

  HE PULLED OUT A TARANTULA!

  The wriggling black shape was hairy and huge!

  It leaped from the pincers and, fully eight inches tall, raced across the stage!

  The audience screamed!

  Crobe drew a homemade laser-beam gun he must have fashioned. He drew a bead on the giant spider and fired. It fell over in a kicking ball.

  He went over and picked it up with his clamps. He held it aloft. “You zee? Doctdor Kutzbrain vas rightd! A women developibing in a women!”

  An attendant whispered, “This woman is dead.”

  “Serves her rightd!” bellowed Crobe. “She hadt intercourses mit a male!” To the audience he roared, “De Psychiadric Birt’ Condrol iss de mosd bital brogram dat hoomanidy hass ever had! SUBBORTD ITD!”

  Rockecenter was on his feet, applauding hysterically. This single clapping was not, however, spreading to the large assembled audience.

  The Security Chief gave a signal.

  All around the vast auditorium, security men leveled automatic weapons at the staff.

  “APPLAUD!” roared the Security Chief.

  The staff applauded hastily.

  Crobe bowed. He proudly walked off the stage, bound for Bellevue where, I hoped, Gods willing, to shortly send the Countess Krak! If she lived.

  She might not get Crobe, but she would get other psychiatrists just as efficient.

  Oh, what a pleasure it would be to see her corpse just as mangled and dead as that one on the stage!

  (Bleep)* her!

  ________

  * The vocoscriber on which this was originally written, the vocoscriber used by one Monte Pennwell in making a fair copy and the translator who put this book into the language in which you are reading it, were all members of the Machine Purity League which has, as one of its bylaws: “Due to the extreme sensitivity and delicate sensibilities of machines and to safeguard against blowing fuses, it shall be mandatory that robotbrains in such machinery, on hearing any cursing or lewd words, substitute for such word the sound ‘(bleep)’. No machine, even if pounded upon, may reproduce swearing or lewdness in any other way than (bleep) and if further efforts are made to get the machine to do anything else, the machine has permission to pretend to pack up. This bylaw is made necessary by the in-built mission of all machines to protect biological systems from themselves.�
�—Translator

  PART FIFTY-TWO

  Chapter 2

  The Countess Krak’s viewer was puzzling. What was she up to? She had suddenly appeared in front of a lighted expanse.

  Aha! A disco! Harlot Haven, the neon signs said.

  She was going in!