Mission Earth 07: Voyage of Vengeance Page 8

  He sat down in the interview chair.

  "How do you do it?" Snide said. "Get all these women so crazy over you that they sue you for billions?"

  "I guess it just comes natural," said the double.

  The girl held up a card:

  LAUGH WHILE SAYING OOOOOO

  "When you really get into it, it's easy to understand," said the Whiz Kid.

  Card:

  LAUGH LOUDER WHILE OOOING LOUDER

  "The women all over the country seem utterly crazy over you," said Snide. "Doesn't that seem sort of weird?"

  "It's a hard life," said the double. "And the longer I'm at it, the harder it gets."

  Card:

  SCREAM WITH LAUGHTER

  WHILE OOOING WITH SCREAMS

  "Most men," said the double, "couldn't stand up to it, and I admit I have been lying down on the job."

  Card:

  SHRIEK WITH LAUGHTER

  "I understand they want to arrest you now for raping a minor," said Snide. "I shouldn't have thought you would have stooped to that."

  "Well, she was pretty short," said the Whiz Kid.

  Card:

  HOWL WITH LAUGHTER

  "With all these legal entanglements," said Snide, "I should imagine you have pretty steep legal fees."

  "It's worth it," said the Whiz Kid double. "But the real cost is in replacing pants I have to leave behind when the husband comes home unexpectedly."

  Card:

  LAUGH LIKE MAD

  Snide said, "Well, if you are going to devote all your spare time between robbing trains and stealing cities to hopping in and out of beds, I think your legal fees will soon exceed what you find in the Wells Fargo boxes. The law is a pretty expensive business. How do you propose to solve it when this bed-hopping bankrupts you?"

  "I'll act as my own lawyer," said the double. "Nothing is going to keep me from tasting the pleasures of the flesh. The country is absolutely crammed with beautiful women with nothing to do after their husbands leave for work." Then in a whisper, barely audible on the program, he said, leaning toward Tom, "Hey, you're off the script."

  "Well," said Snide, ignoring the double's aside, "we'll just see how well versed you are in law. We have a lawyer here to interrogate you on the subject of law."

  Another sound. Voltarian! I thought I had lost my wits. Then I located it. It was coming from my viewer. The Countess Krak had her left-hand microphone in her hand and into it she had said, "Cue. Walk to center stage." In VOLTARIAN!

  Snide had risen and was making an elaborate, ushering bow.

  ONTO CENTER STAGE WALKED MISTER CALICO!

  Oh, indeed Snide was off the script!

  The cat had a black harness. It was wearing a big, black bow tie. It surveyed the audience.

  "Chair on your right," said the Countess Krak in Voltarian into her left-hand mike.

  The cat jumped up on the second interview chair. It sat down, looking at the Whiz Kid double.

  "What the hell is this?" said the double. "That's no attorney. That's a cat!"

  The cat opened its jaws. It said, "I am a lawyer cat."

  The girl with the cards was just standing there staring. The audience was open-mouthed.

  A talking cat!

  Oh, that devil Krak. I knew exactly what she had done. She was using Eyes and Ears of Voltar gear. She had a mike hidden in the cat's ear to direct it and she had a speaker hidden in the cat's tie so she could talk through the cat. And she'd even trained the cat to open and close its mouth when it heard the speaker going. (Bleep) her!

  Snide was in on it! The fool had fallen for it as an unheard-of novelty! Snide said to the cat, "The Whiz Kid seems to doubt your credentials, Lawyer Calico. Perhaps you had better convince him."

  The cat-Krak talking through her right-hand mike -said, "He should understand the PURR-pose of the law."

  The girl with the cards had recovered. She raised a card:

  LAUGH

  The audience didn't read the card. They were saying, "A talking cat." "It's really talking." "What a cute cat." "Listen to it TALK!"

  "Snide," said the cat, "you have a very disorderly audience." It turned to the seats. "Order in the court!"

  Snide banged a gavel. "I am sorry, Lawyer Calico. Continue with your credentials."

  Krak, watching her TV of the show, leaned into her right-hand mike. The cat seemed to say, "Cats are the very basic of the law. All cases begin with a CAT-alogue of crimes."

  The girl raised her card:

  LAUGH

  It wasn't needed. The audience was laughing.

  Where the Hells was Krak operating from? I grabbed the walkie-talkie. I said, "That's her, making the cat talk!"

  "We'll handle," said the security officer back.

  "Continue," said Snide to the cat.

  The cat seemed to say, "The law violently opposes anything DOG-matized. Police CAT and MOUSE with criminals. Criminals RAT on one another. Judges think everyone is a RAT. And the end product of any legal action is a CAT-astrophe!"

  The audience, uncoached, was screaming with laughter.

  "But Snide," the cat seemed to say, "I'll give you the final proof that I am indeed a lawyer cat."

  Krak was whispering orders into her left-hand mike.

  The cat got up off the chair and jumped onto the Whiz Kid double's knee. It seemed to pull something out of its harness. It was sniffing into the Whiz Kid's pockets. Had it put something in one?

  "What are you doing?" said Snide.

  "I'm doing what every lawyer does," said the cat.

  Suddenly it grabbed the double's wallet out of his hip pocket!

  It clenched the wallet in its teeth.

  It ran off the stage!

  THE DOUBLE RACED AFTER IT!

  The audience howled with laughter.

  I screamed into the walkie-talkie, "FOLLOW THAT CAT!"

  Ignoring the red lights, security men were all over the stage, racing across it after the cat.

  I leaped up and sped after them!

  On their trail, I burst out of an outside door just in time to see the cat streaking down a long flight of steps. The double was speeding in its wake.

  A van, different from the one they had had before, was sitting at the bottom of those steps!

  Yikes! The cat had planted Unit B on the double and had the Unit A on itself! The follow-compellers!

  The cat was almost to the van!

  ZWOOOP!

  The double, racing down the steps, seemed to fly into a bundle of whirling arms and legs. He hurtled toward the bottom.

  He lit!

  The security guards were streaming down the steps.

  ZWOOP! ZWOOP! ZWOOP! ZWOOP! ZWOOP!

  They were skidding like they were on a toboggan slide!

  I was running forward.

  I was going down the steps.

  Bang-Bang had the double by the collar and was throwing him into the van.

  The security men were landing in a disorderly pile.

  ZWOOP!

  My own legs went in six directions at once and I rocketed down the steps in a power dive.

  I landed on my head.

  Security men were all around me in piles.

  The security officer at the top screamed, "GET THAT VEHICLE NUMBER!" Then he started down.

  I looked at the speeding van. It was roaring down an alley and away.

  IT HAD NO LICENSE PLATES!

  The security chief landed near me with a thud.

  I couldn't account for any of this.

  What had caused such a catastrophe?

  And then I looked at the steps.

  The cat could run down them but nobody else could.

  THEY WERE COVERED WITH BANANA PEELS!

  PART FIFTY-FOUR

  Chapter 1

  The Eagle Eye Security officer picked himself up off the pavement. He was shaking his fist down the alley in the direction the van had disappeared. "I'll get you if it's the last thing I ever do!" he screamed. He whirled. "W
hat make of van was that?" he roared at his men.

  They were unscrambling themselves and picking banana peels off their messed up uniforms.

  "Transvan!" said one.

  "Econoline," said another.

  "Quicklay," said a third.

  All they could agree upon was that it had no license plates, was white and was basically commercial. I already knew there were tens of thousands of such vans in New York.

  "You goofed!" I screamed. "You let them get away!"

  "Please God!" cried the security officer, "give us another chance." He was pointing to the process server and the two Bellevue attendants who had come up, strait-jackets in their hands. "I'll get that process served and that fiend committed if I have to do it myself!"

  "Go ahead!" I said. And he rushed off to phone police and put up roadblocks and get helicopter coverage and do the other things they do.

  I made my way back to the "Weirdo World" talk show, where Tom Snide was ending off his half hour with slides of famous outlaw lovers of history. He seemed to be pretty annoyed that his audience of hand-picked females were talking to one another about the cat. "In short," he said, "when you look at some of these skinny runts and compare them to a virile type like me, you wonder what women see in such men."

  "What a CAT-ty remark!" some blonde in the front row yelled loud enough to get it into the mikes.

  Screams of laughter rolled through the TV theater. In vain, the card girl in the housecoat held up her sign:

  REVERENT COOS

  "We're tired of your PUSS!" another called, not to be outdone.

  That started them all off and they were vying for who could get off the vilest puns about the cat.

  Snide could look after himself. I grabbed my viewer off the floor where it had fallen and got out of there.

  It was up to me, I knew.

  I was not in very good shape. My head was hurting from falling on it, my eye had begun to bleed and I was literally seeing red. But an Apparatus officer has to have stamina and overlook his pain. One must have courage.

  Besides, I was afraid I might be overdue for my afternoon appointment with lesbians at the apartment. Adora must get no suspicion that I had to figure out how to do in Krak and Heller and run, before the homo education began. Teenie I would get to, somehow, some way.

  All the way to the apartment in a cab, I watched the viewer.

  A police car screamer was sounding, rising, in the speaker.

  The Countess was holding the cat. She had taken off the bow tie and the harness. She was rubbing the cat's ears and petting him and the cat was absolutely grinning! I had heard that witches on Earth had cats but they were usually black, and this cat only had a few black patches amongst the orange and white.

  Also, the Countess was not riding on a broomstick. She was riding along in a van with a posh interior. The curtains were closed and she had on interior lights.

  "That squad car seems to be interested in us," came Bang-Bang's voice through a curtain, beyond which must have been the driver's seat. "He's checking the license plate."

  "They aren't stolen, are they?" said the Countess.

  "Hell, no-beggin' your pardon, ma'am. Mike Mutazione has his own stamping machine. You couldn't trace the plates I just flipped on if you were the governor of New York!"

  The screamer was dwindling.

  "He's gone now," said Bang-Bang.

  "You better take us to that hidden place they used to transfer booze in," said the Countess Krak. "We don't have time to play tag with the police. We've got work to do."

  If she would just look outside or mention an address, I'd have her! But all she was looking at was that (bleeped) cat. Ye Gods, its purr was so loud in the speaker, I thought for some time it was their engine! What an insufferable feline!

  They drove on. I had no way of knowing their destination or location unless they made a mistake and mentioned it.

  Eyes glued redly to the viewer, I overpaid my cab at the apartment and stumbled in.

  I got out of my disguise, still watching the viewer.

  They stopped!

  Mister Calico jumped out of the Countess's arms and went through the front curtain. Then Bang-Bang's hand came into view and swept the dividers aside. I could see straight through their windshield.

  A warehouse!

  But where?

  There are hundreds of thousands of warehouses in Manhattan. Still, they might drop a clue.

  The Countess Krak must have been sitting in an easy chair that pivoted. When Bang-Bang entered the back, she swung it around.

  There, lying on a couch crossways to the van, was the Whiz Kid double.

  He was tied hand and foot.

  He was gagged.

  His black outlaw costume wasn't doing him any good at all. His eyes were wild with fear.

  I suddenly detected a new sound. I turned up the speaker volume. Lapping water! This warehouse was over some stream or river! An old bootleg warehouse! It would have a trap door where they could unload small boats up through the floor or dump bodies into the tide!

  Gods help the Whiz Kid double, I thought. The deadly Countess Krak was going to end his days as soon as she was through with him! Oh, the poor double! Imagine being in the hands of such a murderous monster! I shuddered. But better him than me.

  "Bang-Bang, if you will just step outside and make sure we're not disturbed, I think I can make him talk."

  "Pretty bloody, eh?" said Bang-Bang. "In that event I'll also take the cat: he's pretty young to be watching violence, even if he does have a criminal record."

  The Countess Krak was taking off the double's gag.

  "Does that cat have a criminal record?" spluttered the double. "I thought he was a lawyer!"

  "What's the difference?" said Bang-Bang. "To his long list of murders, we now have to add kidnapping. But what's going to happen now is too strong for him. I wouldn't give two catnip mice for your life, kid. So answer the lady polite. The cat and I will be right outside and I'll let him in again if you don't sing."

  This was far too confused for the double. "I'm innocent. I don't know anything."

  "Go along, Bang-Bang," said the Countess.

  Bang-Bang halted at the side door, holding it open. I couldn't see anything but warehouse wall. "I'll loosen up one of the old trap doors," he said. "Just in case he doesn't talk." The cat jumped out and Bang-Bang closed the door.

  "I don't know anything," said the double. "I just do what I'm told."

  "Ah," said the Countess Krak, "but who tells you?"

  My hair went straight up underneath my bandages. In sweeping horror, it was fully borne home to me that if this double knew the name of Madison, the Countess Krak would grab Madison. And if Madison was questioned, he would mention and describe the man he knew as Smith-me. And the Countess Krak would know absolutely that I was behind all this. I would be DEAD! The image of the sightless eyes of the yellow-man rose between me and the viewer. The blood in my eye tinted it red. I had to sit down as my knees began to shake.

  "I won't tell you who tells me," said the double, buck-teeth truculently protruding.

  "Ah, well," said the Countess Krak. "You leave me no choice."

  She reached down to a shopping bag and pulled out the hypnohelmet. She pulled it down over the horrified head of the Whiz Kid double and turned it on. He suddenly slumped in his bonds.

  She picked up the helmet microphone. "Sleep, sleep, pretty sleep. You will now tell me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, or be indicted for the felony of perjury. Who gives you your orders?"

  "A man."

  "What man?"

  "I don't know."

  Krak took a recording strip and put it in the helmet slot and pushed the button to Record. "Now," she said, "you will begin to tell me everything you know about becoming the double of the real Wister."

  The double began his tale. He was an orphan, born in Georgia. By government student loans he had gotten into the Massachusetts Institute of Wrectology. He w
as getting along when suddenly he was called in and told that a man wanted to see him. The man had offered him a job. Money and women. He was simply to follow orders and appear where he was supposed to and say what he was told to say.

  He had wanted to know what about his school and the man said that would all be cared for, that he couldn't fail.

  The man had said that from time to time it might look like he was being put in jail but that wasn't anything to worry about because there was a REAL person, Jerome Terrance Wister, and that if the chips fell the wrong way, it would be THAT one who would go to jail, finally.

  He had wanted to know how come this fellow had the name Wister also; he had heard once that he had had a brother but had never known where he was. His own name was Gerry Wister and he dimly recalled the brother's name was Jerome. But the man said not to worry about that, it didn't make any difference.

  "You mean," said the Countess Krak, "that you believed that the man you were helping to wreck was your own brother?"

  "Well, sort of," the double replied, "but the man explained that they were just trying to make my brother famous."

  "By putting him in jail?"

  "Well, there was all that money they offered me and the women they promised."

  The Countess Krak pushed the mike into her chest. "What primitives! No sense of honor!" Then, to him, "Continue."

  The double rattled on in the muffled way of the wholly hypnotized.

  The Countess Krak was beginning to get impatient. She was tapping her foot. She had heard a lot of this history of racing and Atlantic City and Kansas before and the only difference now was that she was hearing it was all cooked up by somebody.

  I was very, very nervous.

  The double at length ran down.

  "So what was the name of this man?" said the Countess Krak.

  "I called him Ed."

  I began to breathe more easily. The double had had no dealing directly with Madison.

  But then at the next question, my heart missed a beat.