PART SEVENTY-FIVE
Chapter 1
Dawn had not yet arrived, for all Flick’s fears. A moon had set and it was very black night in the countryside below. But ahead it was a different matter: the whole sky was aglow. Very shortly, at this speed, they would be entering Joy City.
Madison wiped a hand across his face. “My nose is bothering me,” he told Flick.
“Try a chank-pop, sir,” was the prompt response. “Them convicts didn’t touch them. They’re in the bar compartment. Try a yellow one: that’s ‘summer blossom sighs.’”
Madison got one out: it seemed to be just a small round ball. He twisted and turned it, trying to make it do something. In the dimness of the airbus he didn’t see the indented line that you press. He, in some annoyance, tried squeezing the whole ball between his palms with force, the way he was sometimes able to crack walnuts, a small fruit of Earth.
POW!
Instead of just opening, it exploded and hit him in the eye. The scent-fog, misdirected, struck his forehead and the roof of the airbus.
“Summer blossom sighs” might be just great—he could catch an errant whiff of it—but Madison grated to himself that he’d be blasted if he was going to lose one eye and the top of his head every time he tried to remedy the miasma of Apparatus stink!
When he could see again, the airbus seemed to be full of light. He looked down and saw that they were entering the vast and brilliant expanse which was Joy City.
They had not yet passed over the main clubs and lakes and amusement parks but, as they were coming from Commercial City, they were still over the market service areas of the pleasure metropolis. Sitting in the center of an interlace of rails and roads he saw what would be on Earth a shopping mall. There were other malls scattered about to left and right. This one below was vast but only seemed to be two stores: “Restaurant Supplies,” one said; the other one said “Beauty.” “What’s that?” he yelled at Flick.
“‘Beauty’?” said Flick. “Oh, there ain’t no dames down there if you feel horny, Chief. That’s where revelers buy things to repair the ravages of all-night revelry.”
“Go back, go back,” said Madison, “and land. We need food and I think that shop might sell just what I need!”
Flick braked around into a dive, the air-coaches followed after and they all landed—thud, thud, thud, thud—adjacent to the two shops.
Madison jumped out and yelled, “All cooks front and center.”
“Yes sir! Yes sir!” came the cries, and five cooks streaked to him from the air-coaches.
Madison led them into the sparse mob of predawn restaurant shoppers who were picking up their supplies for the coming day. The place was vast; on every hand stood small mountains of comestibles.
Madison waved his hand across the acres. “Get anything you want,” he told the cooks.
The five looked at him, round-eyed, stunned.
“ANYTHING?” gawped the oldest one. “Why, this is the choicest market on Voltar! WHAT A CHIEF!”
They rushed off like a battle charge.
Madison sped the other way, for even in their new working clothes those convicts smelled like the Apparatus.
He rushed into the Beauty Supply vendors. He sped though the aisle toward a place where stood three idle clerks. “SOAP!” yelled Madison. “And LOTS of it!”
A clerk turned and picked up a small bottle and handed it to him.
“No, no,” said Madison. “LOTS of it!”
“Well, just one drop of this will give you a whole bath,” said the clerk.
“No, no,” said Madison, “I’m trying to get rid of Apparatus stink.”
“That,” said another clerk, “would be VERY beneficial. In fact, I wish we could sell you a solvent that would get rid of the whole Apparatus.”
He had their interest now. “I’ve got fourteen women and thirty-four men. They haven’t shaved, they haven’t bathed, they haven’t cut or coiffed their hair for years. They STINK!” He looked around. The stacks of goods bore no placards or advertising signs. “I need stuff to cut beards and hair, shave them and polish their teeth, make them look like high-class people and also to cut toenails and make them tan—and no chank-pops!”
“High-class people?” said another clerk. “From Apparatus thugs? Sir, we heartily agree. You DO have a problem. Come on, boys, let’s help him out. Start getting what he needs.”
“In QUANTITY!” said Madison.
They laughed and began to rush around with carts, grabbing big boxes and cases and grosses of this and dozens of that.
Madison had never heard of most of these things. Nothing seemed to have any labels, just numbers. It began to be borne in upon him that, while he had seen a little bit of advertising in the Confederacy, real marketing was an unknown commodity.
These people had so much technology, such a stable economy, such cheap fuel, that they weren’t fixated on having to market some new invention every day, and lives were not lived around logistics as they were on Earth. PR was a creature which had grown out of advertising, and these people, despite their high culture, had never developed it. That meant that they would really have no inkling of PR. It made him feel powerful. He could, he realized suddenly, get away with anything, no matter how old and stale, and never even be suspected.
Madison was trying to think of some of the oldest and hoariest PR tricks that had long since become pure corn on Earth. He realized they would all work, even selling the Brooklyn Bridge, and he began to laugh in delight.
A clerk had paused with a piled-up cart. “I’m glad you’re so pleased, sir. I wanted to ask you if you’d also want some paint masks and party things.”
“Oh, there’ll be a party,” said Madison. “In fact, it will be a ball!”
“Right, sir, we’ll add it to the order,” and the clerk rushed on.
At last they took it all through the lighted night and the clerks crammed it in the airbus until there was hardly any place for Madison to sit.
The five cooks and roustabouts were handling the comestibles. The air-coaches, already crammed to overflowing with clothes, had to have their new loads strapped in crates on top.
Madison stamped mounds of cards handed in to him by clustered clerks, and then, with a flutter of vegetable leaves and papers streaming out behind, the convoy took off.
PART SEVENTY-FIVE
Chapter 2
The glittering lights and parks of Joy City spread out in a symphony of shapes and sparkles. Signs and decorations, even at this hour, shone like jewels and suns, illuminating more than a hundred square miles dedicated to companionship and gaiety. Here clustered as well, in enormously tall buildings, large domes and shining fields, the amusement industry of the Confederacy, dominated by a silver hemisphere which, with its surrounding skyscrapers and parks, comprised Homeview. Madison, flying near it in a sky-traffic lane, was impressed: NBC, CBS and ABC together would have fit in just one of those buildings. He slavered when he thought of what he could do with those facilities that reached one hundred and ten planets. Like a concert pianist who beholds a marvelous instrument, he ached to get his fingers on it. Oh, what tunes then he would play! And he even had the order from Lord Snor in his pocket that would let him do it!
His attention was distracted by Flick’s slowing down. They were approaching the townhouse which had belonged to General Loop.
The building stood like a steel slab, floodlit with a greenish light. The top four floors had no windows but all the rest of the seventy-six levels below did. A strange-looking building of harsh architecture: itself an enormous rectangle, everything else about it was rectangular. Madison had thought he must have had an exaggerated idea of its size, but now, looking at it as they eased down to it, he saw indeed that it was two New York City blocks wide and three long. Huge!
As they dropped lower, he glanced about. He was surprised to see that it was very far from the tallest, biggest building in this sector: although separated from it by broad parks, many other structures were far higher and, in their much more elegant architecture, covered, most of them, far more ground. This steel rectangular shape was definitely an oddity in the landscape of joyous Joy City: a sort of a grim, hard-nosed slab. What would General Loop want with all that space? And why would his heirs be so anxious to get rid of it they would accept almost any price?
Flick dropped the airbus down opposite to the windowed seventy-sixth floor, holding it about a hundred feet out from the side of the building. He was talking the air-coaches into line beside him to their left. Flick had a box in his hand.
“Find a red dot,” Flick was saying, “and hold while pointed at it. You there, Number Two, get into line: you dump that air-coach and I’ll have your head!”
Madison looked over Flick’s shoulder through the forward shield toward the building, across the empty space. He looked down. Yikes! but the ground seemed awfully far away. He glanced at a digital dial on Flick’s panel: it read that they were 912 feet above the park below! He looked up. The top of the building rose another two hundred feet!
An errant gust of wind rocked them. A wisp of cloud passed like a ghostly hand between the airbus and the building side. Yikes! He suddenly realized that he was almost as high as the Empire State Building! He glanced around: several structures in this area were much higher. It reassured him in a dazed way. Well, their townhouse was NOT as high as the Empire State Building; it just covered about six times the ground! More stable, then. He felt better. Then a wisp of cloud passed by their lights that looked even more like a ghostly hand, even curled fingers to clutch at him. He felt worse.
“What’s the holdup?” he said to Flick.
“Them dumb drivers can’t find their red dots on the building side. This blank space all along here is hangars. I got our blue dot right ahead. See it?”
Madison saw the glowing blue dot. But there was no door!
“I can’t go in until those bird droppings we got driving the other coaches find their truck dots. The dumb primates would sit out here all night. And if I let them go into a passenger slot with that load they’re carrying on top, they’d crash.”
The babble of voices from Flick’s speakers was getting more frantic.
“Oh, blast,” said Flick. “This red button here must be their dot activator. I forgot to push it.” He did so.
Coaches one, two and three promptly answered up. They had their red dots.
“Well, blast it,” then said Flick. “Drive on in!”
“At that steel wall?” came the combined babble. The consensus was they’d crash.
“You tell ’em,” said Flick and pushed a microphone at Madison.
Wondering if he was sending forty-eight people plunging to their death, Madison said, “This is the chief. Drive!”
Resigned mutters.
Three air-coaches moved ahead at the red dots and steel wall.
Gasps of surprise.
Invisible tractor beams had grabbed them, each of the three. The steel opened. The building swallowed them!
Flick drove straight ahead. Beams grabbed the Model 99. Just as he was sure they would hit solid steel, there wasn’t anything in front of them.
There was a gentle thud as they sat down. Lights came out with a flare. They were in the seventy-sixth floor hangars.
Flick was out. He was yelling at the electronics man. “You get these coaches set up with their own beams! I’m no blasted nursemaid, sitting around all night. You fix this airbus, too, so it can go in and out!”
Madison looked around. The place was just a hangar with doors opening to passageways. Twenty or thirty vehicles could line up in here.
“Everybody out!” Flick was yelling. “Find some galleys and get that food stored. Find a hallway near bathing rooms and unload this airbus into it. Then find some living quarters for yourselves and store those clothes.”
The gang had gathered around Flick and now started to move off.
“Wait,” said Madison. “There’s enough soap and beauty supplies here to wash the whole Apparatus. I want every one of you to bathe, bathe, bathe before you go to bed. Got it?”
They started off again. “Wait!” shouted Flick. “One more thing: Don’t nobody, and I mean nobody, go into ANY upper floor. You birds stay on this level, the seventy-sixth. If you go up above, it would be cheating! We got to plan how to rob the upper floors, so don’t go jumping the gun! Got it?”
They all did, or so they said, and got busy.
Madison wandered off.
He seemed to be walking through doors that didn’t open or close and he found it a bit disconcerting, but he supposed he could get used to it. Walking down a passageway he found that every hundred or so feet there was a tube which evidently went down to street level: they were just polished, rectangular shafts and he wondered if he would get nerve enough ever to simply step into empty space and hope he didn’t fall 912 feet. He had put a bottle of soap in his pocket at the Beauty store: he took it out now and tossed it in a shaft, wondering what would happen.
It went down at an alarming rate. He listened for a far-off crash.
Suddenly the bottle reappeared, coming up to his level. It simply stopped there in midshaft. It must have gone to the bottom, hadn’t gotten out onto the street as expected and had been brought back up to the floor again.
Madison reached into the shaft and retrieved the much-traveled bottle. He put it in his pocket, wondering if he would ever have the nerve to use these elevators. He decided he would specialize in airbuses.
He began to look into rooms. They seemed to be the sort of salons and sleeping quarters one might expect the very conservative rich to have in such a culture as this: posh, but a bit on the military side, even stark. It was sort of as if someone had put together a monastery out of the most expensive materials. Nothing warm or homey about it. However, he felt he could make good use of all this: there was lots of it. He found quantities of potential office space. He found an imposing apartment for himself with huge windows which gave a fantastic view of Joy City and the Homeview complex.
Down a hall where the beautifying supplies had been stacked, he could now hear running water and yells.
He became aware, suddenly, there was someone in the room behind him. He turned.
It was one of the circus girls, the one named Trotter. She was tall and statuesque, a brunette, quite handsome. She was wearing a sleeping robe and it was open widely all the way down the front from bare breasts to bare toes and she had on nothing else.
Madison flinched. “Get on some clothes!” he said.
“You ordered us to pick up working clothes!” said Trotter. “These ARE my working clothes. What’s wrong?”
“Please leave,” said Madison.
“Captain,” said Trotter, “I just came to warn you about these other hussies. You have a tendency to be careless and you shouldn’t trust them. Do you know that some of them are criminals?”
Madison backed up. They were ALL criminals and that included Trotter. And she was an imposing chunk of woman, an awful threat!
“Now me,” said Trotter, moving sensuously closer to him, “I’m different. And I’ll prove it.”
Madison could not back up any further unless the window opened up. Yet she came on. She had already bathed and perfume engulfed him. She was reaching out her hand.
Then he felt something in his palm! It was not her fingers!
He looked down hurriedly.
HIS WALLET!
He gawped at her. Then he hastily looked into it.
“You see?” said Trotter. “You can trust me. I didn’t want anyone to rob you when we grabbed you on the beach so I just slid your wallet in between my legs. That isn’t all you can slide there, hmmm?”
Madison checked the cards; they were all present. He counted forty-eight thousand credits: it was all there!
“Th-thank you,” he said.
She was sliding up to him closer and she was too close already. “You just shouldn’t leave valuables lying around with a gang like this. The only lying around that should be done is on beds, hmmmm? I spotted right away how cute you were and knew I’d better defend you. So why don’t I make up that bed over there for you and why don’t we just climb into it. I think a favor like I just did you is worth a little piece, don’t you? Hmmm?”
Oh, this was an emergency with Madison. Her bare breasts were touching his jacket as her robe swung even wider. He thought fast.
“Trotter,” he said with his best sincere-and-earnest look, “you are so devastatingly beautiful, that I had my eye on you from the very first moment. You are so tall, you are so handsome, you walk with such a wonderful grace, that you cause the heart to stir in even the coldest and most indifferent of men.”
Her eyes began to glow. Her bare breasts heaved with a shuddering sigh of delight.
“So therefore,” said Madison, praying that his pitch would work, “I am saving you as the star of the very first porno movie that we make.”
“A bare-(bleep) movie?” said Trotter.
“Yes, indeed,” said Madison, “with men climbing all over you and with the very best angles. A whole mob of them, fighting amongst themselves to be the first to get you, while you stand proud and stately, pushing them off with your feet until at last, you drop a golden robe, baring yourself totally to the camera and then, disdainfully with scornful finger, point to the one you will take and you do it then on a silken bed while the others grovel weeping on the floor.”
“Hot Saints!” said Trotter. “And I’m the star?”
“Yes, indeed!” said Madison.
“Oh, blazing batfish! I can’t wait to tell the girls!”
She rushed out, robe flying. Madison quickly figured out how to lock the door.
This life was not without its perils. But he felt a surge of confidence. She had bought the image he had built and swallowed it, hook, line and sinker. PR had triumphed once again. But he felt no surprise. After all, it was his trade and he was a master of it!
The movies he was going to make had nothing to do with Trotter. They would have everything to do with creating a brand-new image for Heller, one that would be stamped forever on men’s minds: an outlaw! Hunted and chased by everyone! Famous beyond belief!
He turned back to the window. I wonder, he thought sadly, where Heller-Wister is right now. Already wanted on a general warrant, he was probably alone and shivering in some dark cave, unknown and depriving posterity of his potential notoriety. Well, he thought, with a confident smile, I can remedy that. With this crew I can do anything!
Oh my, won’t Mr. Bury be proud! What a triumph for good, plain, old-time Earth PR! What an opportunity to show what he could really do!
PART SEVENTY-FIVE
Chapter 3
The crew were all bedded down, they had been bathed and fed. Being convicts, they did not care what the time of day was: it was always night in the Domestic Confederacy Prison.
Thus, quiet reigned throughout the nearby halls of floor seventy-six. A weary Flick was just reporting all was well. Madison lay back on his own austere but ample bed.
“They’re all asleep, sir,” said Flick. “You certainly got them under control, and we’ve got quite a gang. When I’ve had some rest myself, I can get busy and begin the plan how we’re going to rob the upper floors. Oh, sir, you have no idea,” concluded Flick in an emotion-choked voice, “how wonderful it is to have a dream like that come true.”
Madison nodded. He had his own dream. He could be tolerant.
Flick gave Madison a single, cross-arm salute and turned to go to his own rest.
A wail was coming from somewhere.
It got louder.
Someone was shouting a single word. And shouting it with panic that held the raw screech of terror!
It wasn’t a word Madison knew. It was being repeated over and over.
Pounding feet raced toward them. A single man flashed by Madison’s open door, screaming that word loud enough to hurt the ears!
“The scaler!” cried Flick. “Come back here!”
But the man raced screaming straight on, tearing through the berthing apartments of the crew, still screaming!
PANDEMONIUM!
The crew began to yell. They were chasing the scaler, trying to get him to stop, shouting to head him off as he rounded turns.
Flick had vanished. Madison hastily climbed into his pants and raced toward the bedlam.
They had managed to cut the scaler off and herd him back and Madison was just in time to see two roustabouts jump on him.
The crew clustered wide-eyed.
The scaler continued to scream the word. He was writhing around, frothing with terror.
Madison yelled, “What’s he saying?”
The horror-story writer, from the other side of the crowd, shouted at Madison through the tumult, “He’s from the back country of Flisten, from his eye shape and long fingernails. They’re like monkeys, those people.”
“What’s the word he’s using?” shouted Madison.
“I don’t speak Guaop,” the horror-story writer yelled back, “but I know that word. It means ‘ghosts’!”
Madison imitated the syllables. They sounded like “slith-therg.” He bent over and yelled it back at the scaler.
The small man repeated the word louder and pointed with a frantic hand toward the ceiling.
“Well, (bleep) him!” raged Flick. “He’s gotten into the upper floors!”
“What does he mean, ‘ghosts’?” shouted the director. He yelled down at the man on the floor, penetrating the din, “Where’d you see these ghosts?”
The Flisten man simply screamed louder and pointed harder upward.
The director promptly ran off down the hallway toward the first place the scaler had appeared.
The whole crowd went chasing after the director. Madison and Flick were left, trying to get the scaler to calm down and tell them more. He shortly began simply to sob and Madison and Flick looked up to see that the whole crew had run off. They could hear them clamoring down the hall and they sped in that direction.
They were just in time to see a woman on the tail end of the mob vanish up a ramp which led to the seventy-seventh floor.
“Come back!” screamed Flick. “You’re cheating!”
He and Madison rushed up the ramp.
There was a clank right in front of their faces. They collided violently with what must be a sheet of bulletproof glass which had dropped as a barrier before them.
They could not get through.
From where they were hammering on the glass, they could see three corridors branching out. The crew was in there, split up into three mobs, racing along into the distance, looking into rooms and everywhere for ghosts!
Suddenly, the group in the right-hand corridor halted.
CHAOS!
They began to scream and retreat.
BLUEBOTTLES!
With raised stingers, a squad of police was charging straight at them!
“Oh, Gods, they were wise to us!” howled Flick. “Come back here. QUICK!”
The group in the middle hall suddenly blew apart and began to run.
SOLDIERS!
They were kneeling and firing at the criminals with deadly expressions! Flame slashed and roared in the hall.
The group in the left-hand hall heard the commotion. They turned around.
Too late!
ASSASSINS WITH ELECTRIC KNIVES WERE BEHIND THEM!
The group fled onward in total panic!
Madison and Flick looked anxiously back into the right-hand corridor.
IT WAS EMPTY!
They looked into the middle corridor.
NO SIGN OF THAT GROUP!
They looked into the left-hand corridor.
NOBODY THERE!
THE WHOLE CREW HAD VANISHED!
A wispy, filmy shape, a ghost indeed, drifted down toward the glass barricade and LAUGHED!
Oh, it was a horrible sound!
Madison and Flick fled.
PART SEVENTY-FIVE
Chapter 4
In Flick’s room, he and Madison looked at each other.
It was all quiet now.
They were scared stiff but that was not what dominated their thoughts.
THEY HAD LOST THEIR CREW!
Flick had managed to get his gasping under control. “Let me think. Where could they have gone? Ah, I have it! That watchman warned me there were traps. They’ve fallen into floor traps. I think the lights must have gone out or something because we didn’t see anyone drop, but that is the only thing that it can be. The crew must be up there someplace in floor traps. We’ve got to go back up there.”
“I haven’t got a gun,” said Madison.
“You got your bare hands,” said Flick. “And they’re deadly enough.”
Madison knew he would have to think fast. He did. “What about that box the watchman had?” said Madison. “What did you do with it?”
“It’s in the airbus.”
“And where were all those directions they gave us, that big stack?”
“Yes,” said Flick, coming out of it. “It should tell us where the traps are. Maybe the crew is locked in somewhere.”
In short order they had the four-foot stack of directions and manuals and began to look through feverishly. They couldn’t make too much out of them. But now, armed with the box, they went back up to the top of the ramp.
Flick found the right button. The glass was one of the barriers the watchman had mentioned. It rose.
Flick found another button on the box that said General Disarm. He pushed it and they walked into the first hall of the seventy-seventh floor.
They didn’t find anything. The place was terribly quiet except for their own footfalls. Flick flashed a torch about.
No sign of the police.
They walked into the middle hall where that segment of the crew had vanished.
No soldiers. Nothing.
They walked into the left-hand hall and even though it seemed to stretch endlessly before them in the dark, they found no assassins.
Madison mourned. It was not only a haunted townhouse, it was a hungry townhouse. It had eaten up all their crew. No wonder nobody had wanted to buy it!
“Maybe there are some other panels somewhere,” said Flick. He led the way down a side corridor.
They seemed to be in a big room but it was terribly dark. Flick played his light through the place. It seemed to be a tavern. There were tables and chairs around on the floor and a natural wood bar, all polished.
Flick walked over to the counter and looked under it. “A panel!” He stabbed an eager finger in.
Abruptly the room was full of light.
It was also full of babbling sound.
AND AT EVERY TABLE SAT ARMY OFFICERS DRINKING TUP!
They were deep in conversations and laughing, very friendly to each other. One group at the far end was singing an army song. They all wore uniforms of long ago that were covered with mold!
A captain at a nearby table turned and seemed to look at them. “Come in, drink up!” he said.
Flick fled as though pursued by demons!
Then Flick found out those were Madison’s running footfalls behind him.
Flick stopped and caught his breath. “Comets, but this is an awful place. The ghosts of all his brother officers, long since dead, carousing in that tavern. It makes your blood run like winter ice.”
“Maybe the crew got into one of these side rooms,” said Madison.
“Oh, I don’t like this,” said Flick. “There’s nothing like this on Calabar. That’s an orderly place. When people get killed, they have the decency to stay dead. It’s more gravity than here, you know. It holds corpses in their graves better. (Bleeped) Voltar! You mind what I say, Chief. You murder any people on this planet, bury ’em with WEIGHTS!”
Madison went into a room and Flick followed him. The torch, flashing around, showed what seemed to be a bed and a chair and a table. There was a huge black window with an easy chair over to the side, placed as though inviting one to sit in it and look through the window.
Madison saw a square box just inside the door and went back to it. Flick was examining the bed: it didn’t seem to be a bed but just a block of stone.
“Chief,” said Flick. “I seen something like this once. It was a sacrificial altar on Mistin. This place makes me nervous.”
Madison opened the wall box. There were several buttons. He pushed the biggest one.
A ROAR OF SOUND!
The whole window lighted up!
Through it one could see the red and glaring flames of a hell!
Devils were stoking a fire!
There was a long, drawn-out scream when two more devils threw a maiden into the scarlet blaze!
Flick had stopped, stunned, staring at the scene.
Madison turned around to look at the room.
THREE RED DEVILS SAT IN THE CHAIRS!
A dismembered man appeared, bleeding gouts of blood on the sacrificial altar! Another devil above him brought down a knife! The victim let out a scream.
The devil in the easy chair turned to Flick and said, “Stay around. You’re next!”
Flick tried to rush from the room. He hit Madison in the door and they both went down.
On hands and knees and then on foot they fled down the hall.
Finally they ran out of run and stopped with shuddering breath.
“I don’t like this place,” said Flick.
Madison bolstered his own nerve. “Look, Flick, we’ve got to find the crew. Let’s try in here.”
Flick nervously pushed his torch around this new room. It was obviously a rather posh salon. Various lounges sat in the expanse. The floor was bare and the walls were bare. It looked like somebody had half moved out.
There was a long buffet table and Flick opened a door of it, probably expecting vases or valuables. It was a panel instead.
“Don’t touch the big one,” cautioned Madison. “I don’t know what will happen.”
Flick sorted down a rank of buttons and pushed one.
The salon lights came on.
Now that they could see it better, it was a very nice room, even though the walls and floor were bare.
There was a big set of glass doors at the end. Flick pushed another switch and it was as if floodlights had turned on in a lovely garden. A fountain was playing out there and birds could be heard to sing.
Emboldened, Flick touched another button.
Suddenly, the room was beautifully decorated!
There was a rug on the floor.
Vases with flowers appeared on small wall tables.
PAINTINGS APPEARED ON THE WALLS!
Hastily, Flick turned the switch off. Vases, flowers, rug and paintings vanished!
“OH, MY GODS!” cried Flick. “The objects of art we meant to rob are JUST ELECTRONIC ILLUSIONS!”
Madison suddenly understood. He had seen Lombar Hisst in his red uniform step in front of a thing the Master of Palace City had had placed before the building, and an apparently solid Lombar Hisst, two hundred feet tall, had appeared over the building blessing it.
General Loop was crazy as a coot on scenery with his officers and devils and all. But he was smart as a whip on theft and security.
THERE WAS NOTHING TO STEAL!
Tears were running down Flick’s face. With leaden steps he dragged himself away. With a sad, sad voice he muttered, “There goes my dream,” and fumbled off to the seventy-sixth floor, leaving it all to Madison to find the vanished crew.
It was a moment of agony and gloom.
PART SEVENTY-FIVE
Chapter 5
Madison had worked for hours rescuing the crew. Belts underneath the upper-hall floors had shunted them to a “prison” on the seventy-sixth floor and they had been waiting there in fear of being returned to the Domestic Confederacy Prison when Madison let them out.
An embarrassed electronics security man had explained that he also had been taken in, for he said the devices were not of a type in general circulation outside the security forces. He recovered a spare from an electronic parts storeroom and, after he had figured it out, showed them all it was just a chip about the size of a pen point which, put in the path of a microscopic projector, gave images in the air which could move and emit sound. The spare, fortunately, was not of any ghost but of a small boy taking a pee and the crew morale had been restored, even if the laughs were weak.
The scaler had gotten over his fright after a few convulsions, aware now that people were laughing at him and anxious to make amends.
General Loop, they all agreed, had been purloining government property and devices, and this made him a fellow criminal and so, somehow, made it all right. Whether he had done all this just to exercise a hobby or scare his fellow officers half to death was entirely beyond their interest. Madison had another theory that manufacturers, knowing Loop was somewhat crazy, had installed the devices in the hope of getting a contract after showing what they could do. Madison had noticed different makers’ names on the activating boxes; he didn’t think any of this was in use or known to the government at all. He had not found a single Security Forces stamp on anything. If it were government property or even known to the government, it would have long since been taken out. But he didn’t disagree with the crew; they needed all the solace they could get.
The crisis was over. The crew had slept. And Madison now had other things to do.
In a seventy-sixth floor briefing room which General Loop had probably used to address his own staff, Madison had assembled his gang here today for purposes of his own.
They looked much better now: the men had shaved and cut their hair, the women were coiffed and made up. They were gaunt but good food would handle that. The prison pallor still showed through but a few days under sunlamps would turn them a more natural color. The stink was gone!
The cooks were lounging in the doors, the rest sat on chairs and benches. And all eyes were on Madison as he stood upon the raised platform at the front of the large room.
“I have gathered you together this afternoon,” said Madison, “in order to clarify for you why you are really here. I am certain some of you have probably wondered, and the very essence of a team is a common purpose.
“Now, I know some of you were curious as to what PR man really meant. It does not mean ‘parole officer’: I just told them that so I could spring you.”
The crew sat up more alertly. It made them feel better to know that they were not in the hands of just another Apparatus officer but with one who now seemed to be saying that he had other goals and might well be a master criminal in his own right, only using the Apparatus for some crooked purpose of his own. His popularity rose.
“The actual meaning of PR,” continued Madison, “is PUBLIC RELATIONS. That is the activity in which you will now be engaged.”
They nodded but now they looked puzzled. They had never heard of this. The only relations they had ever had with the public consisted of victimizing it.
“As this will be your work,” said Madison, “I had better explain in detail.”
Madison stood up very straight. His face began to glow. His own love of his subject took over. In a voice more suited to a cathedral, he said, “PR is one of the noblest pursuits of man!”
His audience was jolted. They stared at him wide-eyed.
Madison was off. His voice contained the caress of eulogy. “Public Relations is an art that FAR transcends mere painting and crass poetry.”
The audience gawped.
“It is,” crooned Madison, “the magic of telling people what to think and bludgeons them to change their minds.”
A roustabout called out, “Now that’s more like it. Do we hit soft to stun or hard to kill?”
Madison smiled a beautiful smile. “You always hit to kill.”
The gang buzzed and nodded. “Got it,” came from many voices. Then someone in an aside to his neighbor confided loudly, “That’s what his Lieutenant Flick said last night. He’s a killer! One of the greatest murderers of all time!”
Everyone began to applaud, even the cooks at the door. Then they stood and chanted, “The chief! The chief! The chief!” Madison, an expert at timing and stage presence, knew when speeches should end. He bowed.
The tumult had died down as the people were now departing.
Madison became aware of something. No Flick. He called out, “Where is Lieutenant Flick?”
The driver footwoman said, “He’s in bed. He didn’t even touch me. I can’t do my job. I think he’s down in the mouth. Even suicidal.”
Madison, in alarm, immediately passed through the halls to the apartment which had been appropriated by Flick.
The man was lying with his face to the wall. He appeared to be completely caved in. Madison had to shake him by the shoulder to get any response.
“What’s the matter?” said Madison.
“Life is over,” muttered Flick.
“Why?” said Madison.
Flick moaned, “Don’t ever rob a man of his dreams. It’s death.”
Madison looked down at him. The lethargy was pronounced. He knew he couldn’t live with him in this condition. He thought fast.
“Don’t you have any other dreams?” he said.
Flick groaned and then at length turned over on his back. “Just one, but it’s impossible. I shouldn’t even think of it.”
“Tell me,” said Madison.
“It’s a dream I get and then always have to abandon. It’s to meet Hightee Heller in person.” Then he groaned, “But she has billions of fans. I couldn’t even force my way through such a crowd. I haven’t even ever been able to afford a ticket to her personal appearances. So forget I even mentioned it. No, life is over for poor Flick.” And he turned back to the wall with an awful, shuddering sigh.
Madison went over to the window. The mammoth dome of Homeview was gleaming in the late day sun. Something clicked inside his head.
Lombar was trying to find Heller. Madison also had to know.
The orderly outline of a plan began to form on the glass before his eyes in Old Century 10-point type.
Then suddenly, the whole sheet jacked up and a banner, 22-point, all caps, seemed to flow across the glass:
BUILD THE IMAGE
BEFORE YOU FIT
HELLER TO IT!
“YOWEEE!” shouted Madison. He sprang into the air, he danced around the room. He knew EXACTLY how to go about it now!
“What the hells is happening?” said Flick, afraid that Madison had gone crazy.
Madison came to the side of the bed. He put on his most sincere and earnest look. “Flick,” he said, “if I introduce you to Hightee Heller in person, will you give up trying to pull off robberies?”
Flick stared at him. Then he saw from the sincere and earnest look that Madison wasn’t joking. “I’d have to,” said Flick. “If I met Hightee Heller in person, I couldn’t pull off no more robberies. I’d be a changed man!”
“Good,” said Madison. “It’s a bargain, then. If I see that you meet her in person, the crimes we do from here on out are only the ones that I order. Agreed?”
Flick nodded numbly, not daring to hope.
“All right,” said Madison. “Get up and get dressed. We’ve got work to do!”
Madison rushed out, ecstatic with his plan.
Oh, he was really on his way now! The smell of eventual victory was in the very air! He could REALLY get on with his job with Heller!
PART SEVENTY-FIVE
Chapter 6
The first thing Madison did was get from Flick the name of a certain type of crooked jeweler.
Flick and his footwoman got into the Model 99. Madison sprang into the back.
They flashed out of the hangar and sped across the sky, Slum City a vast smudge and sprawl in the distance, growing larger.
“I know this fellow personally,” said Flick as he drove. “He’s from Calabar like me. But we ain’t never been in the same line really. He’s rich, I’m poor. I robbed houses. He received the goods from thieves who looted tombs. The world thinks he’s respectable and I know what they think of me: I got caught and wound up in the Apparatus. He married a jeweler’s daughter and wound up owning a ‘legitimate business.’”
Shortly Flick pointed out a square which looked to Madison like an island in the middle of a ghetto sea.
They landed and the Model 99 in all its glitter instantly attracted a swarm of tough-looking, hooting kids. Suddenly Madison was aware that this footwoman had other uses than being felt up. She was out of the car like a tiger. She had somehow gotten hold of a stinger. Her target was the biggest boy and he got the weapon in the teeth with a shower of sparks. He didn’t get a chance to recoil more than a foot when the footwoman had him by the arm. In a sort of a whirling motion, she swung him—his feet left the ground—and like a scythe, used him to take out the whole front rank of hooters.
There was the departing rush of hasty feet. Into the dying echo of the screams, the footwoman thrust the stinger in the belt of her violet uniform and stepped to the door. She opened it with a bow. “Watch your step, sir. There’s garbage.”
If he hadn’t seen the killer look when she sprang out of the airbus or heard the wild animal snarl of satisfaction when she used the stinger, he would have been completely taken in by the sweet and demure smile she now exhibited. She appeared to be the mildest and kindest person you would ever want to meet. Ah, he thought with pleasure, he had quite a crew! Totally deceptive!
Madison, immaculately attired, stepped around the garbage—which happened to be the unconscious body of the one she had used as a weapon—and, with Flick, made his way to the jewelry store.
And that is exactly what it seemed to be: a store that sold the cheap gewgaws displayed behind bulletproof, steel-barred windows.
An old man in a black cloth cap that had a light and an examination magnifier on it directed them through the back of the store and shortly they were in an opulent office quite at variance with the rest of the establishment.
A very greasy, overfed man came forward from an ivory table to greet them. His head was a squashed oval like Flick’s: maybe the heavy gravity of Calabar did this to them!
“Flick, my cousin, I am so glad to see you are still out of jail. My, look at the violet uniform! Are you in the Palace Guards?”
“Cousin Baub,” said Flick, “you got to meet my new chief, Madison. We’re still in the Apparatus, but there’s a difference.”
“Well, Cousin Flick, I did hear the Apparatus had taken over the guarding of Palace City. But is your friend here safe?”
“He’s a full-fledged criminal in disguise,” said Flick. “I vouch for him.”
“Well, all right. Sit down, my friends. But I must warn you that we’re very too full stocked up, so if you’ve stolen something from the palaces, I can’t give you much price.”
“That’s very good news,” said Madison, and he took a seat. “You see, Baub, we are buyers, not sellers.”
“Ho, ho, Cousin Flick. We HAVE moved up in the world!” said Baub.
“Mister Baub,” said Madison, “I am sure that when you receive stolen gems, you recut them and remount them so they will not be quickly recognized.”
“Yes, that’s true. But good stones are of such size that their refraction indexes are known and we have to be very careful.”
“Mister Baub,” said Madison, “I know you are a man of discretion. I want an absolutely stunning stone in an absolutely stunning setting the like of which has never been seen before and WON’T be recognized.”
“Aha!” said Baub. “You’re talking about the ‘Eye of the Goddess’!”
“If it has a name,” said Madison, “it must have been known.”
“Nope,” said Baub. “It can’t be known. Because I just this minute invented it.”
Madison laughed with delight. Here was somebody he could do business with, almost in his own line.
“A few years ago,” said Baub, “over on Calabar, where everything is very big, some thieves got into a very ancient, pre-Voltarian tomb. Up to that time the tomb had been unknown, but the thieves were not. Police were on their trail and caught them and the tomb contents were inventoried and added to the National Treasury. They had rounded up the thieves and had sent them en route to an interrogation center, but the air-coach crashed in an updraft that slammed it into a hundred-thousand-foot mountain range—things are big on Calabar—and that was that. One thief, however, right at the tomb, got away. The police never knew he existed.” He looked at Flick. “That thief was me.”
Baub sat back, nostalgia taking over. “Oh, them were the days. I had a whole bag of stones. They had never been recorded nor listed. One by one I spent them and had myself a marvelous misspent youth.” He sighed. “But that was seventy years ago and youth has fled.”
He got up and went into another room which seemed to have a complex array of vaults and returned carrying a small bag of silk which he laid on his desk, and resumed his seat.
“In that haul, there was one stone I never could get rid of. I never even dared show it. I couldn’t say I had found it in a stream bed because it was already cut. And I warn you that the moment it appears on the market, questions will be asked, because it is too remarkable. If it fits your purposes, here it is.”
He opened the bag by laying out its sides and there, blazing on the silk, was a jewel the size of an egg. Madison moved closer. He could not credit what he saw. He blinked.
“I don’t know how the ancients did it,” said Baub. “And I don’t know if it is natural or artificial. But you are looking at an emerald totally enclosed in a diamond. The emerald is top color and has only one flaw. The diamond is a perfect blue-white. And I can’t sell you this unless you can absolutely guarantee that where it came from can be totally explained by you.”
“I can guarantee that,” said Madison. “How would you mount it?”
“It’s too big to be anything but a crown jewel or a pendant. Following my suddenly invented name, I’d say one might put it in an oval setting, the stone held in gold like open eyelids with strings of little diamond chips to look like eyelashes above and below, and we hang it on a broad chain of gold net. It’s heavy, you know. Feel it.”
Madison said, “Can you put it on the front of a net gold cap so it looks like it’s in the middle of a forehead?”
“Wow,” said Flick. “What a blazer that would be!”
“How long to make it up?” said Madison. “I want it fast.”
“Oh, I could put the old man on it. Gold net is easy to weave. Two days.”
“All right,” said Madison. “Now what’s the price?”
“Oh,” said Baub, looking shifty, “it’s a momento of my lost youth. Say a hundred thousand credits.”
Madison translated it to dollars. There never had been a stone worth two million that he knew of. An actor named Richard Burton had given an actress named Liz Taylor one of the fanciest stones on Earth, and though he had only read about it, he thought it had only been about a million and a half. And he wasn’t going to use any identoplate for this transaction. Too risky.
Flick, however, saved him. “Oh, Cousin Baub, I thought you were a friend. You know very well you’ve never been able to get rid of this, and here I bring you a customer and you drive him out of the shop with a club. You don’t even have to give me the ten percent I always get on purchases I make for him. We’ll give you five thousand credits and that’s the lot.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” said Baub.
“Listen, Baub,” said Flick. “I’m family. Remember?”
Baub sighed. “Not a credit less than thirty-five thousand! Plus the setting and cap.”
“Thirty thousand with the setting and cap,” said Flick.
“NO!” said Baub.
“Twenty thousand,” said Flick.
“NO! NO!” cried Baub. “You just offered thirty thousand!”
“Bought,” said Flick. “Give him the money, Chief.”
Shortly afterwards, walking back to the airbus, still ably defended by the footwoman, Madison said, “I didn’t know you got ten percent of everything I spent!”
Flick said, “Runs me ragged going back to collect it. And I just saved you seventy thousand credits, so you see I’m worth it. But on this present deal, I’m not taking any commission. I won’t do anything crooked on anything connected to Hightee Heller. She’s sacred! ‘Eye of the Goddess’—that suits her perfectly! Now I’m actually beginning to believe that I WILL get to meet her personally!”
Madison grinned as he got in. “The Eye of the Goddess” wasn’t all he had planned for Hightee Heller.
PART SEVENTY-FIVE
Chapter 7
Two days later, Madison was on his way to see Hightee Heller. Flick had barbered and bathed himself almost down to the bone. He had polished the Model 99 until, another criminal had said, the angels on its four corners screamed. He had sternly left the footwoman home. One would have thought he was engaged in the greatest adventure of his life: he kept bubbling.
Madison hoped that he himself looked all right. He missed being in a neat Earth lounge suit, his fighting uniform. He had chosen a steel-gray business tunic and pants, devoid of any ornament, but the very shimmer of it said it cost a fortune. The sleeves, being a pointed cuff, had worried him: they might brush things off tables unexpectedly. Accordingly, he had practiced for half an hour reaching for things. He had fluffed his hair, had put just a touch of glitter in it and then brushed it until it shone. He had practiced his most engaging and ingenuous smile before a mirror for over an hour.
But that was not all the preparation he had done. He had had the horror-story writer sweating for a whole day and a night. One of the reporters had been expelled from the Royal Academy of Art and could write a little poetry.
Madison’s own musical background should have been extensive but was not. His mother had planned, when he was eight, that he should have a career as a concert pianist. He had been labored over by numerous teachers until he was twelve, at which time the last one, like his predecessors all had, found Madison playing ragtime when he should have been memorizing a concerto of an austere classic nature. The man had whipped him soundly. His mother wouldn’t stand for that, the man had been fired out of hand and Madison had finished his musical career with a sore bottom. He only hoped he could remember enough not to make some awful, gauche slip. He would be talking to a very accomplished musician. Details, in such an extensive caper as this, were everything.
He had gotten his appointment very smoothly. A house clerk had answered her viewer-phone at her home in Pausch Hills. Madison had told him that he had a message from Hightee’s brother, Jettero Heller.
The clerk had relayed the fact and a background voice—Hightee’s—had said, “Does he know where Jettero is? I’d surely love to find out.”
Madison knew at once that Hightee did not know. He went at once, smoothly, into the second phase of his plan to locate Heller-Wister for Lombar, after which he would get into his image-building.
“Tell your mistress I can’t give her the message over the phone: her brother ordered me to give it personally. I am an Apparatus officer on detached duty to Homeview. My name is J. Walter Madison.”
He promptly got his appointment for one o’clock, and here he was, flying in through a warm sun to land on the rooftop estate of Hightee Heller.
He was impressed! The estate looked like it comprised several acres that rested high in the air, crowning an elegant building. One could see for miles and miles from such an aerie; the view was not even blocked by neighboring buildings and looked down on other lovely estates. A place for the angels, even unto a wisp of wandering cloud! At least that was what Flick was crooning as he put the Model 99 down on the roof target. He was very disappointed to see a house clerk in black awaiting them instead of Hightee.
“The lady is expecting you,” the clerk said. “She is in the summerhouse. I will escort you.”
Madison sternly told Flick to stay by the car and followed the black-suited man down a curving path. The first thing that struck Madison was that the trees were full of songbirds trilling their hearts out in melodies and harmonies.
“However do you keep the birds in?” he asked the clerk.
At that moment two birds of gorgeous plumage swept down and inspected the briefcase Madison was carrying and then fluttered accusingly in front of his face.
“It’s not a matter of keeping them IN,” said the clerk. “It’s a matter of never being able to drive them away. They sometimes hear the music from the oratory and they come for miles around to sing with Hightee. And they always fly with her when she takes her walks.”
What struck Madison was the total absence of guards. This clerk didn’t even have a telltale bulge in his close-fitting black coat. They hadn’t even asked for an identoplate on landing, or now. He could be anybody, even an assassin. Nobody had even asked to look in his briefcase. Very, very lax. And it might be very useful.
He had to make sure. “Don’t you have guards and security and things?” he asked. “It makes me nervous for her.”
The clerk snorted. “Lady Hightee has fifteen billion fans who would tear anyone to pieces if she was hurt. And who would touch the sister of the hero of the Fleet, Jettero Heller? Only a madman would so much as frown at Lady Hightee, and it is very plain you are not one of those.”
So there was no security, Madison filed away.
They came to the summerhouse, a grill of golden lattices through which the summer sun splashed in gentle patterns.
She had been working at a table with a sheet of music, probably memorizing a lyric. She came forward to the door, hand outstretched in welcome.
Madison flinched. He had never in his life seen such a beautiful woman. She was wearing a casual artist’s smock of shimmering green. Her hair was the color of Heller’s but it was fluffed into a glowing halo. Her eyes were an electric blue that made you feel very warm. The presence of her was an aura that seemed to make the day go brighter.
Madison came out of his shock, took the hand, bent over it to kiss it but the touch of her on his palm almost paralyzed him. Oh, yes, indeed, this was Hightee Heller. Even the three dimensions of Homeview screens couldn’t begin to do her justice. For an instant he thought he was going to kneel despite himself.
Still bent over the golden fingernails, he summoned up his most engaging and ingenuous smile. He was very glad he had practiced it. The presence of this woman had almost knocked him flat and gawping. In fact, for the barest, fleeting instant, out of pure admiration for her, he had qualms at going forward with his plans. But he recovered quickly.
She was graciously waving him to a seat as she resumed her own swinging chair. As soon as she had sat down, Madison perched himself on the edge of the indicated armchair. He wished those patches of sunlight didn’t make her glow. It made it difficult to proceed.
But Madison held on to his smile. “Forgive me for seeming so much at home, but Jettero has spoken of you to me so often, I feel that I know you.”
She smiled. “Oh, Jettero and I have always been close. He is such a wonderful person.”
“One of the finest fellows that ever lived,” said Madison.
“Probably the finest and most honorable man alive,” said Hightee.
“A prince among princes,” said Madison. “I bless the day when he honored me with his friendship.”
“You know him well, then?” said Hightee.
“Oh, intimately,” said Madison. “It often makes me feel humble when he tells me how much he trusts me. How heartening it is, when all else is black, to know that one has such a dear friend as Jettero. I don’t know what I would do without him.”
“I have always felt,” said Hightee, “how fortunate I was to have a brother like that.”
“And such a future!” said Madison.
“There isn’t a young officer in the Fleet that doesn’t try to emulate him,” said Hightee.
“Oh, he will rise to the top,” said Madison. “Inevitable success.”
“His superiors swear by him,” said Hightee.
“I am sure he will achieve universal renown,” said Madison. “In fact, he deserves everything that can be done for him.”
“Indeed he does,” said Hightee. “Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve felt more confident in life knowing he was there. I’ve always felt I was one of the luckiest girls alive to be his sister.”
“And I have felt I was one of the luckiest fellows alive to be his friend,” said Madison.
“You really have a message from him?” said Hightee, eagerly.
“It’s more interesting than just that,” said Madison. “In fact, he made me swear on my honor that I would not fail to see you personally and give you this present from him.”
He opened up his briefcase and removed a large jewelry box and said, “From your brother with his love.” And he handed it to her with a bow.
She opened it. The sunlight hit it and it hit back, breaking the light into a thousand colored pieces. Sitting in its new setting, nestled into the gold net cap, the jewel quite took her breath away. She had never seen anything like it: an emerald inside a perfect diamond.
She put it on and the jewel in the center of her forehead drove the sunlight frantic in the summerhouse. She took up a small mirror and looked. Then she took it off and gazed at it. When the pulse in her lovely throat slowed down, she gazed at Madison. “Where could he have possibly acquired it? It must have cost ten years’ pay!”
“Oh, he didn’t buy it,” said Madison. “It is quite a story. It’s called the ‘Eye of the Goddess’. Jettero is so brave and so commanding that it was presented to him by the Aga Khan when Jettero saved the life of his son.”
“Oh!” said Hightee. “Tell me!”
“Well, Jettero made so little of it that he did not give me many details. He never brags.”
“How like him,” said Hightee.
“But it was headlines in all the newssheets. The son of the Aga Khan was on a tiger hunt—that is a very dangerous beast—and Jettero happened to be flying by and pulled the Aga Khan’s son right out of the jaws of the tiger, barehanded.”
“Oh! How dangerous!”
“Well, Jettero is nothing if not the most courageous fellow alive. But you know, he is so modest, I’ll wager when you see him he won’t even mention the exploit. Probably just laugh and say it never happened.”
“That’s my brother. Go on.”
“He’s so unwilling to take well-earned praise,” continued Madison. “And when the Aga Khan presented him in gratitude with this family heirloom, do you know that Jettero actually blushed? I know. I was right there and saw him myself. He slid it into his pocket and he whispered to me, ‘The only reason I’m not giving this back is because I think Hightee would like it.’”
“Oh, how sweet.”
“But that’s Jettero,” said Madison. “He also said, when he made me promise to give it to you directly when I arrived on Voltar, ‘Tell her I won it shooting dice and say it’s a bauble she needn’t even thank me for.’ But I could never bring myself to lie to you. So I have told you the truth. Don’t mention it to him that I did. He’d half kill me!”
“But good heavens, I have to thank him.”
“Oh, I thought of that. Wear it on your next Homeview appearance and, without saying how he got it, since that would embarrass him and reveal I had told you the truth, casually mention that the jewel is a gift from your brother Jettero and dedicate your next song to him and all his brother officers of the Fleet. And then sing some song about far places and loved ones at home and then say you don’t know where your brother is and long to hear from him to thank him for the gift. And his brother officers, hearing it, wanting to help you thank him, would tell you where he is now. I’m sure the resulting fan mail would come in in a flood. Any of your fans, let alone his brother officers, would be eager to relieve your anxiety about where your brother is.”
“Oh, it’s a lovely idea. But you just saw him. Don’t you know where he is?”
“Alas,” said Madison, shaking his head sadly, “the two of us had a little farewell party for each other. We were going different ways. And it was only after his ship took off that I suddenly realized he had not told me where he was going. But it’s not important that I know. It is only important that any anxiety you have be relieved. So I have written this little card for you that you can use for your lines and you can locate him and send your thanks to him that way.”
She read the card and the lines. “Why, this is sort of sweet.”
“And you could let me know as well,” said Madison. “I worry about him. He is too brave. And also, of course, I miss him.”
“Well, I certainly do thank you,” said Hightee, rising, “for bringing his gift.”
Madison rose, too, but he said, “Oh, that isn’t all that I have brought.”