Mission Earth Volume 10: The Doomed Planet Read online

  “Your Lordship,” said the old Domestic Police court judge, in the sonorous voice of oratory, “we have shown beyond any faintest doubt, that the average Apparatus officers, no matter how sterling and honorable their chief might have termed them in the press, are criminals. They commit crimes daily. These crimes, we have shown, include bigamy.

  “These deeds, no matter how nauseous and infamous, were every one of them done under orders. Therefore it is our conclusion that Apparatus Officer Soltan Gris has only been doing his expected duty as an Apparatus officer.

  “As you yourself stated in this very court last week, Your Lordship, and according to all law and regulations, a man cannot be punished for doing his duty. Jettero Heller was doing his duty. Soltan Gris was only doing his duty.

  “Therefore, we solemnly and courteously request that you find Apparatus Officer Soltan Gris personally innocent of his crimes by reason of extenuating circumstances. He was only doing his duty.”

  The place exploded. Animal calls, screams and threats made the very dust motes shriek. Chank-pop empties and paper wads made things look like a snow hurricane.

  Madison suddenly thought of Teenie. She was probably watching this on Homeview. He wanted to be sick. Then his eye fixed on Lord Turn. There was still a chance.

  Lord Turn let the storm die down. More than Madison’s eye was on him. A whole nation was watching.

  He hitched his scarlet robes together. He massaged his craggy face. A curse too low to be fully heard escaped his lips and got past his hand.

  For three full minutes he sat there. Then he said, “It is not given to me to set precedents. Unfortunately, there are a thousand court cases that hold a man cannot be punished for doing his ordered duty. If such were not the law and regulation, a man could find himself killed by his superiors if he did not do something for which he could be killed by the law. Unfortunately also, in a nation often at war, a superior cannot be punished for issuing an order which involves a capital offense if executed. Some day the Grand Council or an Emperor may resolve this, though I doubt it, for it is dangerous ground. The best guarantee of integrity is to ensure that only decent men, men like Royal Officer Jettero Heller, have authority.”

  Madison groaned. He was losing ground.

  “But,” said Lord Turn, with a sudden wicked smile at the Gris attorneys, “you skidded over a very important point.”

  Gris, whose hopes had begun to rise, now power-dived into despair.

  “You were undoubtedly very competent judges in the Domestic Police and you, sir, were undoubtedly a highly competent Lord’s executioner. You have bamboozled me into listening to you day after day. Fortunately, we at the Royal Courts and Prison are answerable only to the Emperor. That does not put us above the common law. To keep the Emperor from making any mistakes, we have to be versed in the nicest legal points anyone ever heard of.”

  The old men who were acting as the attorneys to Gris looked like they were in the business of grinding teeth. They did not take kindly at all to being lectured in public, even by a Royal judge.

  “There is a case,” said Turn, “that sets precedent. It is about three thousand years old. It is Manda versus Boont, quite famous in its time. It evolved from the property-settlement litigation of an heir. The finding occurring in the Domestic Courts was appealed by petition to the Emperor and was heard all over again right here in the Royal Court. The litigant challengers claimed over three million credits in property, stating that the heir was not the legitimate son of the father since no marriage ever occurred. I assure you the matter was very hotly contested with that much property in view.

  “The mother, through a cellologist, had registered the actual father. The heir asserted this proved his claim. The court . . .” And here Turn looked down his nose at the Gris attorneys while the whole world waited in suspense. “The court found explicitly that registry of conception was a legal substitute for marriage.”

  Turn let that sink in. The silence in the vast hall was acute. “The heir won the case. Manda versus Boont. You can look it up in our library upstairs if you wish. But take my word for it. I have seen and had deciphered these other marriage papers contracted on the planet Earth or whatever its name is. They all come after the date the Widow Tayl registered the conception of her child.” He smiled. “No bigamy was committed in my Royal prison: the ceremony was needless. Wherever Gris committed bigamy it was not here. Under law he had already married the Widow Tayl, months before he married any others.

  “I hereby declare the accused, Apparatus Officer Soltan Gris, innocent of the charge of bigamy in this prison.”

  The shock of it was such that there was hardly a breath drawn for half a minute.

  THEN THE STORM!

  Warders had to fight like lepertiges to hold the mob in check. The prison guards were blurs of motion with electric whips. They managed to hold the front of the room clear and keep Gris from being torn limb from limb, but only because somebody and then somebody else noticed that Lord Turn was banging his gong for all he was worth: they saw the motion, the sound was lost. He was also holding up his hand.

  Gradually, because Lord Turn was trying to say something, the din temporarily subsided.

  “HOWEVER!” shouted Turn into his amplifier, probably for the twentieth time, and when he could be heard, proceeded, “I shall have to hold Soltan Gris in custody, until I clarify the status of Jettero Heller. Soltan Gris may have done other crimes that only Heller is aware of. It is quite probable that Soltan Gris will not escape severe punishment or even execution yet. Warders! Return the prisoner to his cell. THIS TRIAL IS ENDED!”

  The crowd was slightly mollified. But groups of them, when driven from the court, went out screaming, “Death to the Apparatus!”

  Gris, on hearing the first finding, had soared to elation. Then, on hearing the second, had nose-dived into despair. He was dragged off, half-unconscious, to his cell, not even walking.

  Madison, watching Gris go, was in a turmoil of his own. He was scared stiff at what Teenie might be thinking or planning now. He had NOT gotten her the custody of Gris. But wait, was there a loophole open? He wondered and then shuddered.

  He was suddenly aware that he didn’t have much time. Public reaction might boil over. Lombar might be upset by all this. Teenie would be screaming.

  Then suddenly he began to smile. He still had power. He would bring this off to glory yet and bring it off with a BANG!

  PART EIGHTY-TWO

  Chapter 6

  Madison lived through the following day.

  It was awful for him.

  His best-laid plans had not worked!

  The trial developments had absolutely smothered the Heller issue. He felt that Heller had somehow sneaked up on him, giving those blackmail files to the Gris attorneys. Didn’t Heller realize that Madison was only trying to make him immortal? Who could possibly object to that, much less actively thwart it? Confound these amateur interferences with PR!

  And that was not all that was bothering Madison: Teenie would be in an absolute fury! Deprived of her prey despite Madison’s promises, there was no telling what she might do. Then there was the matter of Lombar Hisst: he would not be pleased at the way the Apparatus was being mauled.

  Madison wondered nervously if he was losing his grip. Maybe he was not neurotic enough lately and, as a consequence, maybe his genius was slipping.

  Standing at his bedroom window in the townhouse, gazing out over Joy City, he felt that his sphere of influence was collapsing.

  A pall of smoke was rising a quarter of a mile away. He heard some noise behind him and he said, “What’s happening over there?”

  It was the circus girl, Flip. She had taken to making his bed lately and laying out his clothes and talking with innuendos which alarmed him. She came to the window. “Oh, that’s the Dagger Club, an Apparatus officer hangout. Chi and I were over there when the mobs burned it. But it’s a shabby dive, not even anything to loot. The morgue services are overstrained and a lot o
f bodies are still lying in the streets, but we didn’t even get anything out of that: some rotten crook had already taken their wallets.” Her hand was cupping his behind. It made him very edgy. He moved away, reaching for a jacket.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t go out, if I were you,” said Flip. “It would be much nicer to stay here and just loll around in bed. There’s mobs all over the place looking for Apparatus officers. There comes one right now.”

  Madison went back to the window. About a thousand people were surging into the street seventy-six floors below. Even at this height, he could hear a chant:

  Death to the Apparatus!

  Death to the men of crime!

  Death to the shabby criminals!

  Death to the “drunks” in slime!

  Death to the shameless murderers!

  Death to their leader, too!

  Death to the Apparatus!

  Death to the whole (bleeped) crew!

  “Something seems to have upset them,” said Madison.

  “Oh, people are upset, all right,” said Flip. “It provides a lot of opportunities to pick pockets and such: a good, healthy crime environment. Every city is like that today. Me and a couple of the other girls were going out again but it would be much safer for you, Chief, if you just slid your pants off and got back into bed. I know a lot of nice things to do. I could start off with a (bleep) job. You wouldn’t even have to exert yourself, just lie back and enjoy it. Then you could—”

  “I’ve got to think,” said Madison.

  “Well, think while I’m working on you: you might get some great ideas. Here, put your hand—”

  “Flip, run out and tell my reporters I want to see them in my office.”

  “Oh, Chief, you don’t need those (bleepards) to stand around and watch. They might get hot and pile in! They can’t (bleep) worth a (bleep): we know; we tried them.”

  She was taking her robe off. Firmly, he put it back on her. “Flip, please.”

  “There’s something weird about you, Chief. I mean it. Go get your own (bleep) reporters!”

  After she flounced out, Madison located Flick and had him form a reporter conference in his office.

  The five reporters, the horror story writer and, as a consultant, the director, soon stood around Madison’s desk.

  “How do we stand?” said Madison.

  “We don’t,” said one of the reporters. “In every paper the Gris finding is all over the front page. To make it even worse, in addition to the shocker news of finding Gris not guilty, somebody gave the papers a photo taken last year at some farewell party for some tug and it shows him eating a human hand. It was probably cake but it’s driving the country insane. They’re screaming now that the Apparatus are cannibals. Page two is burning buildings. The rest of the paper is pretty well taken up with lists of mob casualties. We tried half the morning to plant your follow-ups on the Heller rescue. The news offices are jammed with other things. Even the wives are running around in circles. You know this old-shepherd-woman caper claiming she spotted Heller in a cave? Hells, we even lost her when she joined a mob. We got nothing planted.”

  “From my knowledge in directing riot scenes,” said the director, “I’d say this situation was going to escalate rather than calm down. I dressed up the two actors as Domestic Police generals and sent them around. The Domestic Police believe the situation is out of control: they want the Army to help and the Army is saying ‘Up your (bleep), we got trouble enough with trying to contain the Fleet.’ It ain’t good.”

  “Oh, it’s not all bad,” said Flick, uninvited, from the door. “A lot of the crew was getting nervous about being connected to the Apparatus, so me and Cun and Twa was out until dawn collecting identoplates off corpses. Citizens, bluebottles, officials, we must have about two thousand of them, anything you want. We even got thirty sets of different numbers from wrecked cars. The computers will be out of date or jammed for weeks so it’s safe as safe to use them. If I hadn’t sworn off robbing banks, we’d be in clover. But at least we’ve got mobility. So things look pretty good.”

  “I’m open for suggestions as to how we seize press initiative again,” said Madison.

  “Well,” said the director, “I’d say we just sit tight and let things simmer down.” The others nodded.

  Madison shook his head. “I’ve been trying to teach you some of the rudiments of PR. Well, one of them has to do with trends. You don’t buck a trend. That’s fatal: You just expend your energy being battered. The thing you have to do is go WITH the trend.”

  “Well, this trend,” said a reporter, “happens to be composed of riots and resistance to the Apparatus. The crowds are tearing them limb from limb wherever they can be found outside the defense perimeters of their bases and staging areas. It’s the trend that’s giving us trouble.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Madison, “the principle still holds. Trying to smooth things over with PR is a waste of a good tool. There is another principle you must understand: You must always make trends worse.”

  “Worse?” said a reporter. “That’s blasted near impossible. The mobs are burning buildings and tearing down monuments; traffic control is almost shattered; the hospitals are overflowing; the newssheet staffs can hardly get to work and distribution is getting grim. Every major city in the Confederacy is like that. If it gets any worse, we’ll be as dumb as gateposts: we won’t have any media but Homeview! And even the guys over there are running around so frantic it looks like the lunatic asylum up north. We’ve just got to let it calm down.”

  Madison heaved a deep sigh. Green PR men were awfully hard to train. But that wasn’t all that was making him sigh. He didn’t like to fire off his last two rounds.

  “No,” said Madison. “The progress and advancement of a culture is measured by how much worse things get. The greatest authorities that ever lived proved that constantly. Lord Keynes, Karl Marx—real geniuses like that—kept that principle continually in mind. That’s why they are almost worshiped. They were also some of the greatest PR men that ever lived. Now let’s take up the three Cs again: maximum Coverage, maximum Controversy, maximum Confidence. The only way we can obtain those is to make things worse.”

  “Comets!” said a reporter. “Things can’t possibly get much worse. They’ll be shutting off phone service and utilities next! Chief, there’s close to a hundred billion people on the streets in riot mobs. . . .”

  “Oh, dear,” said Madison. “I see I’m not getting across. We’ve got to escalate Controversy. And Controversy is really Conflict. Only then can we regain Coverage and restore our Confidence in ourselves as PR men.”

  “Escalate Controversy?” said one of the gawping reporters. “The whole population is against the Apparatus. The Fleet and Army are in a head-on collision. The Domestic Police . . . did you hear those shots in the street just then?”

  “The Domestic Police are against everybody,” finished another reporter. “There’s more Controversy/Conflict around than there’s been for the past ten thousand years. You CAN’T POSSIBLY escalate it!”

  “Oh, yes, we can,” said Madison. “And to do our jobs as PR men, we MUST!”

  “How?” they gaped at him.

  Madison leaned forward. He beckoned. They put their heads near his. He whispered.

  When they drew back, they were staring at him with awe.

  “OH, MY GODS!” the horror story writer said. “He CAN escalate it!”

  Madison smiled. Now he would get things back on the rails and going in the right direction: at Heller.

  PART EIGHTY-THREE

  Chapter 1

  Palace City was the safest place to be. Not only was it thirteen minutes in the future but, like Spiteos, it was protected from mobs by the simple fact that they could not cross the vast Great Desert on foot or with ground cars. Palace City also had heavy exterior defense bunkers that could shoot anything out of the sky.

  Under the yellow mist of warped space, in the great round antechamber of the Emperor, Lombar Hisst sat wi
th his back to the locked and bolted bedroom door and faced his general staff.

  A red-uniformed old criminal, whose battle-scarred face also bore traces of debauchery and no sleep, was speaking. “The Army finally took it into their heads to cooperate,” he said. “A thousand transports have landed a million men on Calabar. This freed up the remainder of our forces there and they should be arriving at Apparatus Staging Area Seven by this evening. So, factually, sir, we don’t have any more troops on Calabar, only a few observers. That puts me out of a job as Calabar staff overseer here. And I was wondering if I might not take a little run up into the Blike Mountains. I’ve an estate there. . . .”

  “You’ll stay on duty!” thundered Hisst, slapping his stinger down on his desk. “Set up a bureau for future population suppression. This would never have happened if we’d planned for it.” He pointed the stinger at another general. “If Tur there had had his wits about him, if he’d done some advance planning, he wouldn’t be in trouble now. Gas. Set up some gas extermination chambers for troublemakers: I’ll get you the plans from one of the Blito-P3 surveys.”