PART EIGHTY-ONE
Chapter 1
The first toss by Madison came the moment Soltan Gris took the stand in the crowded courtroom.
Lord Turn had bowed to the pleas of his own guard captains, the newssheets and the Domestic Police, who all promised they could not prevent riots unless the people were kept informed, minute to minute, on the progress of the proceedings. They pointed out there were no laws or regulations which forbade it: it was simply a new idea. Lord Turn, against his better judgment, had agreed to a public trial.
Madison, who was behind it, could not have asked for more.
The biggest courtroom of the old castle was jammed from the dais to the entrance doors. Even the buttresses had stages clinging to them. The gray stone looked down upon six thousand people crammed in where only four thousand should have been. The high windows let in shafts of dusty sunlight.
The Homeview crews were in ecstasy. They had never been permitted in a courtroom before and they kept racing about jamming cameras into people’s faces, hitting mouths with microphones, telling people to look this way and that, colliding all the while with press photographers and stumbling over reporters.
Lord Turn, in vain, was banging his mace of office on the dais gong. He was nearly in despair: this whole thing was being seen all over Voltar and, on delay, throughout the entire Confederacy. He was certain people were bound to get the impression that he ran a very disorderly court. He wished to blazes those refreshment vendors would stop hawking their wares at the tops of their voices.
Only when his chief clerk brought him an electronic megaphone did hope revive in him that he would be heard. He pointed it at the gong and struck a tremendous blow with his mace. The result was ear-shattering.
“The court is in session!” Lord Turn roared. “If the prisoner Soltan Gris will take the stand, I can read him the charges!”
Instant hush.
Soltan Gris, manacled, was sitting on a bench surrounded by the three attorneys that the Widow Tayl (Mrs. Gris) had provided him. Gris had thought he would be dressed in a General Services officer’s gray.
Instead, he was appearing in the black uniform of an Apparatus Death Battalion colonel. He had protested but his attorneys had said he had no choice. He even had to put on the scarlet gloves.
Soltan Gris was scared: in addition to everything else, he had stage fright.
The three attorneys were trying to look reassuring. They were old men; two of them had been Domestic Police judges and the third a Lord’s executioner. Gris did not trust them. But it had been explained to him that this was the closest anyone could get to a criminal defense attorney on Voltar, and although he had to accept them, he still did not believe they were on his side: the explanation had been done by Madison.
His evident refusal to walk toward the railed stand began to elicit a storm of animal sounds from the assembled, and his attorneys gave him a forward shove and two sergeants grabbed him. With a clank and clatter of manacles, Gris was propelled to the raised rail chair: its door was opened and he was slammed into it, the instant center of all eyes. Yells of hate bombarded him like missiles; a shaft of dirty sunlight from a high, round window blinded him. Gris was confused.
Lord Turn, again using the loudspeaker held to the gong, banged for silence. He hitched his scarlet robe around him and leaned from his massive chair toward Gris.
“You are Soltan Gris,” said Lord Turn, “officer of the Coordinated Information Apparatus. Verify if correct.”
Gris swallowed hard and nodded.
Turn had every hope of getting this over fast. “You are accused,” said Turn, “of false and felonious bigamy committed in this prison. You may make any statement you care to before you are sentenced.”
Gris drew a long, shuddering breath. The crime carried the death penalty. He couldn’t possibly see how he could get out of it. He had not seen Teenie in the court but he suspected she would have papers showing earlier marriages and would have given them to the judge. It looked like he was a goner for sure.
When he didn’t answer at once, the animal sounds started up again. The spectators had had all their weapons removed by guards but that didn’t include spent chank-pops and sweetsticks. A few missiles came his way. He gathered the idea that he was not popular. His mind was confused.
Lord Turn hit the gong again to bring order. It was like a shock to Gris. Suddenly, INSPIRATION! He would say what Madison had told him to say.
Gris shouted, “I accuse Jettero Heller! He is the cause of any crimes!”
Whatever the vast audience had expected to hear, it had not been that. Abruptly, one could have heard a dust mote fall.
Lord Turn sat up straight and blinked. Then he said, “Just a minute. Jettero Heller is a Royal officer. You were HIS prisoner in this jail. But this is NOT the trial we’re trying. You are being charged with false and felonious marriage committed within these very walls.”
Gris took heart. He hadn’t been sentenced yet. His attorneys were all nodding at him. He shouted, “I still accuse Heller!”
A buzz of confusion went through the room.
Lord Turn said, in an incredulous voice, “You accuse him of causing you to commit bigamy?”
Gris glanced toward his attorneys. They were all nodding at him. Madison, on the bench behind them, was grinning. Gris said, “Absolutely. He refused to follow orders. He went absolutely wild. Jettero Heller put me in a position where all I could do to defend myself was to get married again.”
The buzz in the room rose in volume: it was becoming a roar of confusion.
Lord Turn hit the gong again. “Clerk,” he said to his scribe at a lower desk, “this prisoner is being willfully digressive. Strike those remarks from the record.”
But Madison’s grin widened. They might get struck on the record but they had been carried by Homeview all over Voltar and would be all over the Confederacy.
The eldest Gris attorney, one of the two ex-Domestic Police judges, rose and demanded attention. “Your Lordship,” he said to Turn, “we accept the charge of bigamy in your prison but will seek to prove it was totally justified.”
“WHAT?” cried Turn.
The old attorney said, “To clarify the point, we will have to produce a great many witnesses. They will attest to various crimes and situations that give the background nature of this charge and when we come to the end of this trial, I am sure you will agree that the extenuating circumstances are so great that you will be bound to find our client innocent.”
Lord Turn roared, “Don’t presume to tell me what my findings will be!” Then he saw the Homeview cameras on him. He must not appear unreasonable or prejudiced. “However,” he said with a groan, “produce your witnesses and we will get on with this.”
Madison’s spirits soared into heaven number seven. It was exactly what he had planned and hoped for. He had brought off a PR man’s dream. He almost chortled aloud with delight. Miles and miles of headlines stretched before him like a roaring river of the blackest ink.
And all for Heller!
PART EIGHTY-ONE
Chapter 2
A trial which, by Voltar standards, should have taken ten minutes was, artfully, due to Madison’s careful coaching, being dragged out Earth-style for days and weeks and, he hoped, months.
And it gave headlines every day and provided hours of Homeview.
The two old Domestic Police judges, in their century on the bench, had seen and judged over every stall and circumlocution that prisoners by tens of thousands had ever dreamed up—and those prisoners had lots of time before trial to think. The old Lord’s executioner had heard every plea and dodge that terrorized victims and anguished families had ever strained their brains to put forth. Many had worked and they used them all for Gris.
The basic pattern of defense, however, was always more or less the same.
Witnesses, called by Gris’ attorneys, would take the stand. Each would detail and produce incontrovertible, horrifying evidence of a Gris crime. Although many of these crimes had already appeared in newspapers before the trial, here they were exhibited and reenacted and dwelt on for hours and hours, each one, until not the most sordid, vicious detail was left to the imagination. Wrecks were found and hauled in. Bodies were even exhumed and filled the courtroom with their stench.
Gris was becoming more confident, even cockier, in the limelight. When, after a day or two or even three was spent upon a crime, he would again be put upon the stand, he would confess that the evidence was true, that he had done it and that as an Apparatus officer he pleaded guilty to it BUT he would qualify the statement by declaring each time, “JETTERO HELLER MADE ME DO IT. IT WAS ALL BECAUSE OF HIM.”
Headlines, headlines, headlines, hours and hours of Homeview. Day after day. Week after week. The public outrage against this Apparatus officer was growing to such a pitch that Lord Turn borrowed tanks and stationed them in front of every gate. Not only was the courtroom jammed each day but the whole hill on which the castle stood was a constant jam of spectators. Every Homeview set on Voltar was playing to crowds.
Several times Lord Turn addressed the Gris attorneys. “How in the name of anything holy is this continuous blackening of your client ever going to get him off?”
The attorneys calmly ignored Turn’s bafflement. They just continued to produce more crimes. Gris continued to plead guilty to them. Gris continued to assert that Heller had made him do them. And so the show went on.
The Fleet was becoming absolutely livid. These accusations by a “drunk,” sitting there and grinning now in his black Apparatus colonel’s uniform, continually accusing a Royal officer of the Fleet—and of all people, Jettero Heller—and never explaining for a moment how or why he had made Gris do it was getting to be a lot more than the Fleet could take.
The court was only running mornings, and one afternoon Madison received an urgent summons from Lombar Hisst to come at once to the Apparatus plaza in Government City.
He flew in but was diverted by an Apparatus patrol to an entrance through the cliff below. Even so, he had a glimpse of the plaza: it was packed with Fleet staff cars bearing admirals’ pennants.
Lombar Hisst was in a dungeon room under his office. He met Madison the instant the PR man stepped out of the airbus.
“You’ve got to help me,” said the agitated Hisst. “There’s a deputation up there. The most senior officers of the Fleet. The Fleet outnumbers the Apparatus ten to one, even more. They’re very angry about what Gris is saying! What if they mutiny?”
“Now listen,” said Madison, in a calm, reassuring voice, “this is just a problem in PR and we are being very successful. The basics are Coverage, Controversy and Confidence. We surely have Coverage: every paper is giving us front page every day and the Homeview exposure is terrific. This deputation is vital Controversy. We could not possibly do without it. Now all we have to add is maximum Confidence.”
“That’s what’s getting shaky,” said Lombar. “Mine.”
“Oh, no, no,” said Madison, “this is all part of the plan. This is a heaven-sent opportunity for image-building. You can raise public confidence to the stars with it! This is just another great chance to be a STRONG MAN! Somebody not to be trifled with! Now give me one of those presigned blanks we got from the Grand Council. I’ll send for my camera crew. You just let those admirals cool their heels while I set this up.”
Lombar, much reassured, did as he was told.
An hour later, in his cave of an office, before the cameras of Madison’s crew, he stood tall in his red uniform and glared at the deputation in powder blue.
In a roaring voice, into the incredulous faces of senior Fleet officers he had not even invited to sit, Lombar Hisst, using the Madison prepared speech, stormed, “You are here to complain about the statements of the prisoner Gris. I shall have you know that he is not representative of the Apparatus. Apparatus officers are honest and upright men, beyond reproach. That is more than I can say for officers of the Fleet. You have dared to question what I, the Dictator of Voltar, have ordered. Therefore, know all, by order of the Grand Council and signed by the Lord of the Fleet, its member, the following regulations are in effect at once:
“A) No officer or personnel of the Fleet may mention the name of Jettero Heller.
“B) No officer or personnel of the Fleet may speak ill of the Apparatus.
“C) No officer or personnel of the Fleet may complain about myself, Lombar Hisst, in any way, or question any order that I issue, no matter how or where.
“D) Fleet officers must salute any officer or personnel of the Apparatus.
“E) Any offender against these regulations shall be docked a year’s pay.
“The deputation before me is dismissed. Get out of here at once!”
A senior, gray-haired admiral, the whole front of his uniform gold with decorations, stepped forward. “Hisst, I can see from here that the order you hold in your hand bears no Royal seal. It cannot therefore be enforced, as it has no validity.”
Hisst drew himself up like a red thunderstorm. The cameras were rolling. “You, sir, have just violated Section C of this issue twice. You have questioned an order I gave and the deputation which came to me so impudently has not left! Therefore,” and he reached down to his desk for another order Madison had just typed in case, “the entire Fleet is restricted to its ships and bases and this order calls upon the Army to enforce it. Now salute and LEAVE!”
They did not salute. They left.
The camera crew went out to show them getting into the airbuses.
Lombar was ecstatic. “They obeyed!” he said to Madison. “Did you see their faces? Almost purple! But they are cowed! Why, I suddenly realize I can use them to relieve the Apparatus on Calabar and begin to organize the invasion of Blito-P3 in earnest!”
“Oh, yes, indeed,” said Madison. “Today you’ve taken a giant step forward to assuming total power and the Crown.”
“I certainly have,” said Lombar, expanding. “When we capture Rockecenter and put him back on his throne there, I’m going to have to tell him what a truly magnificent aide you are.”
Madison grinned.
This was cream on top of cream.
Yes, his homecoming would be glorious.
He just had to make sure that he had finished his job with Heller.
PART EIGHTY-ONE
Chapter 3
Madison felt now that it was time to advance his program a notch. According to his notebooks, with this trial, so far, he had been using a PR technique known as “invidious association.”
Day after day, as the gruesome testimony ran on, Lord Turn would challenge the Gris attorneys, demanding they inform him exactly what this or that crime could possibly have to do with Jettero Heller. In fact, each time Gris would take the stand again to admit guilt and state that he had done it because of Heller, Lord Turn would lose no chance to again demand an explanation—what did this have to do with the charge against Gris and what did it have to do with Jettero Heller? But the Gris attorneys were old, experienced hands and, with this legal dodge or that, would insist on their rights to present the case IN FULL before giving any explanation of relevance. In due course, they solemnly promised Lord Turn, it would be revealed just how the charge of bigamy was incurred by Gris because of Heller.
The image of Heller was becoming surrounded in mystery. Now it was time to begin to give it more substance. To a master of PR like Madison, it was just child’s play. The next move, while the trial continued, was to begin the image remold. It was time to release the musical.
He got Hightee Heller on the viewer-phone. “I understand,” he said, “that the play, The Outlaw, is all ready to hit the stage.”
“That’s true,” said Hightee. “Sets and costumes, music, all rehearsed and ready to go. But I don’t think this is a wise time to do it. It has political connotations and the political scene looks pretty rocky.”
“Oh, heavens,” said Madison, “is that all? Forget it. I can absolutely guarantee that no harm will come to you. Hisst will do whatever I say.”
“I’ve noticed that,” said Hightee.
“Well, come on, then, be a sport. The people hate him anyway and they love you. He wouldn’t dare touch you. By the way, you haven’t heard from dear Jettero, have you?”
“Oh, when I showed the jewel, a Fleet observer wrote in and said he was certain, from the way an Apparatus fuel dump was blown up, that Jet was on Calabar. But that’s impossible. He’d never side with rebels.”
Madison knew very well that Heller was on Calabar, but he said, “Of course not. Well, shall we put the musical on the planks tomorrow night?”
“If you can guarantee nothing will happen to members of the cast. We’re dealing with Apparatus thugs, you know, and I don’t want my friends knocked around.”
The shameless Madison said, “I absolutely guarantee on my honor as a gentleman, nothing at all will happen to the cast and no harm will come to you. Hisst just needs a bit of slowing down, that’s all.”
“All right,” said Hightee, “in front of the cameras she goes, tomorrow night, live. Good viewing.”
Madison called the manager of Homeview and dictated some announcement spots to go on the air at once and continuing. They were terrific come-ons. He wanted all Voltar in front of sets tomorrow night and the whole Confederacy right after.
At 6:30 the following evening, he ran down Lombar in his Government City office. Madison walked in looking very worried.
“Chief, in just a few minutes, there is something I have to get your opinion on. I tried to stop it but they are so bullheaded over at Homeview. They wouldn’t listen, and furthermore, they wouldn’t even tell me what it was all about. You’ve seen the spot ads?”
Lombar was reading some reports of fights and riots between the Army and the Fleet, occasioned by the Army halfheartedly trying to enforce Fleet quarantine to bases. It was giving him some satisfaction to see them quarreling with each other instead of him. His confidence was rising. The strong-man image seemed to be very effective. He hardly paid any attention at all when Madison turned on the Homeview.
The spot announcer said, “In just fifteen minutes now, the new HIGHTEE HELLER musical, The Outlaw, will come to you live, live, live. It has a new type of music called downbeat that has never been heard before. It has a cast of hundreds. After this one showing on Homeview it will move to the Joy City Amphitheater. So this is your last chance to view it free. Hightee Heller takes her life in her hands to bring it to you. So rush out and get your neighbors and friends and people on the street and get them to your set. It may be your last chance to see Hightee. BE HERE!”
Spot ads themselves weren’t usually done on Homeview, so the fact that they had been running now every hour for the last thirty-six was creating something of a sensation. There was hardly anyone who did not know that something was going to happen tonight. That “takes her life in her hands” was not understood at all. Was she going to do death-defying feats on the stage or what? The billions and billions of passionately devoted Hightee Heller fans reacted in a number of different ways. A few of them got physically ill at the idea of anything happening to “their dear Hightee.” Alarmed calls had been jamming the circuit boards of Homeview all day from every part of the planet and some from other planets which only had delays measurable in hours.
The news followed. As a lot of day programming was given over to the trial, the news itself could get on with other matters. Mention was made that the fighting on Calabar seemed to be diminishing as Apparatus troops pulled out. Several papers were speculating on the target of some punitive strike, guessing at which of several unconquered planets. One said that a race had developed a new and devastating weapon and needed preinvasion chastisement and a usually informed source mentioned that it might be Blito-P3. Lombar grinned like a toother at that: Madison had told him that such a leak “prepared the public mind.”
Then the musical came on with a roar from the studio audience. The performers were all introduced, as is usual. Then with a fanfare the curtain went up and to the downbeat music, playing in a dirge version of ragtime, the devils and the beaten people howled and moaned. The show had begun. Hightee stepped out and in a brilliant aria described the scene and the history of her brother and herself.
Madison glanced at Lombar. He seemed to find the antics of the red devils and the abuse of the people a source of gratification. He hadn’t really grasped the import of the play.
The brother went through his duplicity, the sister described it all in song, the choruses and scenery were superb.
Lombar seemed to be musing about something as he watched. He even once or twice tapped his boot toe in time to the music. Such was Lombar’s ego that he seemed to be missing the point. But Madison knew that no one else on Voltar was missing it. They all knew that Hightee’s brother was Jettero Heller. The lead male star in the piece, by Madison’s covert interference, was a handsome blond youth from Manco, six foot two.
Then in the latter part of the play, just before the final scenes, Hightee Heller as the outlaw’s sister is seen standing on the cowcatcher of an improbable locomotive of a train that is being robbed. Boxes and bags of loot are being taken off. Another robber comes to her, opens a box and says, “Look, we found some of the devils’ clothes, ha, ha, we found some of the devils’ clothes.” And he holds up a scarlet Apparatus general’s uniform.
Madison, at that moment, looked at Lombar. The Dictator of Voltar was sitting there stunned.
Hightee, at that point, throws back her head and laughs. Then she draws a six-gun and fires it in the air to attract the attention of peasants in the nearby fields. These all run up and Hightee sings them a song.
With the crazy downbeat rhythm and singing as only Hightee could sing, the ballad went:
The devil’s going to get you
If you don’t watch out.
The devil’s going to cheat you
Before you know he is about.
He’s going to hit you,
With a great big stick.
He is going to smash you
With a fist that’s quick.
But if you saw the devil
When he was skinned,
You would really find,
He was just a bag of wind.
For the devil was bred
In a lowly slum
And every unknown father
Was a gutter bum.
The point of this song
Should not be missed.
I am singing about
(mouthed
only) ———— ————!
There is no mistaking the words that Hightee’s lips form. They can only be “Lombar Hisst.” But in their very silence, they are ten times as loud as if they had been spoken.
Then the robber holding the uniform inflates it with gas and it does a crazy dance as it rises. The stage-play brother rushes up, draws his six-guns and shoots the uniform full of holes. The peasants and robbers all go into a wild carnival of dance, stamping on the uniform and finally burning it in effigy.
But that wasn’t the only thing that went into wild motion. Lombar was up out of his chair, waving his arms about wildly and leaping. “That’s me! That’s me she’s singing about! I’ll kill her! I’ll maim her! She is holding me up to ridicule! Oh, Gods, I get the point of this play now! She’s telling the people to revolt and tear me to bits!” He shook both fists at the screen and would have lunged into it but he tripped over a stool and began to roll around on the floor, frothing at the mouth.
The convulsions lasted until the burning of the effigy on the screen, and then Hisst lay there in a twisted pile, staring at the set as though in a catatonic stupor.
The rest of the play ran off, the brother and sister were both hanged and their bodies seized down into a grave and the vast cast all sadly sang the last song the sister had sung. Then they chorused The Outlaw theme song again, but with celestial overtones, and the face of Hightee and factually the face of Jettero Heller himself looked down from heaven. Madison’s last touch had not been known to anybody except the bribed technician.
The studio audience went into yells and applause that Madison thought better than to complete. He turned the set off.
Lombar somehow got himself straightened out and fell into a chair.
“Now you see why I was worried,” said Madison.
“It’s Heller,” said Lombar. “Heller put her up to this. All Voltar knows Jettero Heller is her brother. It didn’t take that last picture of his face to drive it home! It’s a plot against my life! I’ll order a Death Battalion to raid her house and shoot her down at once!”
Madison said, “Lombar, all famous figures have to be able to withstand ridicule. It’s one of the rules of the game: ridicule the mighty. But be calm, they have played right into your hands. I am glad that you have seen that. You can get even with her and can get Heller to show up. All you have to do is sign this note.”
Lombar looked at it. A savage look replaced the shock that had been dominating him. “That’s brilliant!” he said and signed it, stamped it.
Madison took it back to see that it was all in order. It said:
LOMBAR HISST
“Make sure you get that executed!” said Lombar with a ferocious snarl. “I’ve never been so affronted in my life!”
“I knew you’d see your way out of this,” said Madison. “You can now ignore the details. Leave the rest up to me.”
J. Warbler Madman was about to pull off the PR caper of the age.
PART EIGHTY-ONE
Chapter 4
The arrest of Hightee Heller took place in the street before the huge dome studio of Homeview.
She had been told that a group of notables and fans from Mistin wished to present her with that planet’s symbolic flower. There were some notables there all right, but they weren’t from Mistin. They were Death Battalion men in civilian clothes.
Madison had his own camera crew placed on a ledge that outcropped from the dome: it was thirty feet above and could look down on the whole scene. There was another crew there, on the scene itself, assigned by the manager of Homeview. There were several reporters and photographers from papers.
The street was just a typical Joy City street, lined with shops that sold knickknacks and pretty clothes. The main entrance to the dome, however, was imposing, for the pavement just in front of it appeared to be made of gold. It was there that the deputation stood.
Hightee Heller came out of the building: she was dressed in a white gown and gold gloves. Such presentations were quite ordinary: she would simply go down, accept whatever it was, smile, shake hands, thank them and withdraw. It was a little ceremony that took place several times a week. She was usually only accompanied by a couple Homeview ushers to carry away the present or award or whatever it was. No one would have dreamed of flanking Hightee with security men, for in all her career, no one had ever laid a finger on the Homeview star or even frowned at her in public.
She might have been checked by the fact that the deputation was so silent. Usually such groups were more numerous and gave a little cheer when she appeared. This one just stood there, the man in front holding a bouquet.
She was five feet from the apparent leader. He extended the bouquet toward her stiffly. Still moving forward, she put out a hand toward it.
He dropped the flowers to the pavement.
They had masked the blastgun in his hand!
A whistle screamed.
With a single movement, two hundred men stepped out of the different shops. They wore black uniforms and carried rifles. The street was suddenly totally lined with these troops.
From the back of the deputation, a man strode forward, throwing off a cloak to reveal himself as a colonel of the Death Battalion.
Hightee turned to re-enter the building.
Two Death Battalion soldiers blocked her way. She turned back to the “deputation.”
The colonel’s boot crushed the fallen flowers. “Hightee Heller, I arrest you in the name of Lombar Hisst!”
The two ushers made a sudden rush to protect Hightee.
Two actors, placed there by Madison for that purpose in Apparatus uniforms, smashed blood bags into the faces of her protectors! It looked exactly like they had been killed! They fell.
A member of the “deputation” raised and dropped a black sack over Hightee.
Four Death Battalion troopers grabbed her as though she were a bundle and rushed her into a personnel carrier.
Two hundred Death Battalion troops struck down the people who had stopped, stunned, in the street. They raced for their vehicles.
With a shattering roar of takeoffs, the street was empty except for pedestrians collapsed upon the walks.
Then people began to run out of the building and out of the shops. They looked around. They stared at the sky in horror. A woman began to scream.
Madison had the cameraman fade out on the crushed bouquet. It looked as though the battered flowers bled.
He was grinning. It had been carried live, as a special, over all Homeview.
It was on the streets in an hour:
HIGHTEE
ARRESTED
BY
HISST
Madison had it all scheduled. Later papers would carry that her whereabouts was unknown, later ones would headline the beginning of the riots, tomorrow it would be:
BILLIONS MOURN
Madison now had other things to do.
PART EIGHTY-ONE
Chapter 5
For three days, the Gris trial took second place. For all three of those days Madison had been beaming a message to Calabar. The message had been carried on all military wavelengths: these were known to be monitored by the rebels. The message, over and over, had said:
LOMBAR HISST, DICTATOR OF THE CONFEDERACY.
On Wednesday night, Madison leaked it to the papers. On Thursday morning it was being carried throughout the Confederacy.
Orders were crackling on every Apparatus, Domestic Police and Army line to control and suppress riots.
Hero Plaza is a circular expanse. It is two hundred yards in diameter. There is nothing there but clear pavement since it is often used for affairs of state. In the exact center is a completely plain circular pillar fifty feet tall and about twenty feet in circumference, led to by three circular steps. The only decoration or inscription is on the front edge of the top step: it says, “Dedicated to the Heroes of Voltar.” Madison had chosen it carefully.
Entering the plaza were eight boulevards, usually crammed with traffic. Today each boulevard, at the plaza’s edge, was blocked by an Apparatus tank.
At nine o’clock, Hightee Heller, gowned in white, was taken to the pillar by a Death Battalion squad. She was without her gloves now and the shoulder of the dress was torn. Her golden hair was in disarray but it still looked like a halo.
Her eyes were calm as she looked at the Apparatus general who, in his red uniform, was directing the squad.
A camera crew was close to hand, one of the several on duty at the plaza now. Hightee saw the microphone pointing in her direction.
“Jettero!” she suddenly shouted, “If you are listening, don’t come in here! They mean to kill you!”
The general had acted slightly late. He clamped his beefy hand over Hightee’s mouth. At a gesture, three of his squad chased the camera crew away. But Madison, hidden by a tank at the plaza edge, saw that other crews were covering. It was all going live to the whole Confederacy.
The Death Battalion took a chain. It was twenty feet long and had big links. They clamped one end of it on Hightee’s left wrist; they ran the length around the pillar; they fastened the other end to Hightee’s right wrist. They made sure the links were solid. She was chained now with her back to the pillar.
The squad drew back.
The heavy guns of the eight tanks at the boulevard ends trained around on Hightee.
Madison grinned. What a tableau! Beauty chained to a pillar. A vast clear area of pavement. Eight deadly muzzles, ringing the plaza, poised for destruction.
And then things started to go slightly wrong. Possibly the crowds—which, despite roadblocks, had gotten into the boulevards—had been in the grip of unreality. This couldn’t possibly be happening: it was too monstrous. But when the Apparatus general had dared to actually touch Hightee to silence her, a roar and mutter had begun to rise.
There must have been a hundred thousand people in those boulevards. There were only two or three thousand Apparatus troops forming barricades to block them.
The barricades buckled.
There was a roar of Apparatus stunguns.
Missiles flew from the crowd!
Apparatus troops charged them!
The Domestic Police were conspicuously absent. The Apparatus knew very little about crowd control.
For twenty minutes there was hand-to-hand fighting.
The crowd in three boulevards managed to break through the barricades. The tanks at the plaza end had to swivel their turrets about and fire.
Then the boulevards were full of stunned and bleeding bodies, civilians and Apparatus alike.
Two Apparatus relief regiments came in and boxed the mobs in the streets from the far end.
It was not until 10:20 that some kind of order was restored. But it was not very thorough, for people from the rest of the city were now surging up, and it took three more regiments to hold barricades as far away as a mile in each direction.
Madison had his eye on the big clock in a tower a thousand yards away. He supposed that Heller would wait until the last minute. At least he hoped so. He had no slightest notion that Heller would surrender. Besides, it would have wrecked his plans.
That clear space out there, a hundred yards in radius from the pillar where Hightee was chained, was ample for someone like Heller to land troops.
Madison did not think his own safety was at risk at all, for he didn’t think that Heller would use artillery—it would endanger Hightee. Madison’s greater worry was himself getting into the cameras: accordingly he was wearing a General Services gray uniform and he had altered his features with makeup and masked them with sand glasses. If any action started, he was going to step through the port of this tank.
The digitals of the distant clock were flashing second changes. He looked back at the tanks: their muzzles, freed now from crowd control, were pointed back at Hightee.
She was being pulled against the pillar too tightly by the chain. Her stretched-out arms must be half killing her. Her ripped gown had slid half off her shoulder. But she was looking at the sky.
Then Madison heard it.
A sort of booming sound.
IT WAS DIRECTLY OVERHEAD!
Madison looked up. For an instant, he could see nothing. Then he glimpsed a blur that was traveling high at some ferocious speed. What was it? Some strange kind of racer?
His view was suddenly blocked by a swinging gun. The tank was pointing at the sky.
A cry rose up from the held-back mobs.
It could only be Heller. But the high ship was going right on by!
Eight tanks opened up with a bucking, shattering roar. The odd spaceracer had already passed. They were firing after it.
Their shots were going straight through it!
It must be some sort of an illusion being pushed ahead of a speeding ship!
It was almost gone. Then suddenly a gun must have detected the actual vessel behind it.
THERE WAS A HUGE EXPLOSION IN THE SKY!
A direct hit from a tank!
Fragments of a ship were black against the blue!
A shrieking moan came from the crowd. Before their very eyes, the vessel had been shot down!
Madison glanced across the hundred-yard gap at Hightee. She was weeping.
Somewhere distant, the remains of the ship crashed, apparently into a warehouse, for flames shot skyward.
Madison looked at the tanks. He felt that his plans for great PR were gone. He supposed that Heller had been killed. It would make such brief headlines!
But then he saw a tank officer pointing. The arm was stretched upward.
A thousand small objects were drifting down out of the blue. They were above this whole area and made a mile-diameter circle of their own.
They came lower and lower. A tank suddenly opened up to try to shoot at least some of them out of the sky.
Madison saw a distant one wink.
Then he had a sudden impression that all the world had turned blue. Painfully, unbearably blue!
He went unconscious.
Only because cameras kept running would he find out what happened then.
It was blueflash. A thousand of them in antigravity holders set to let them drift down. They must have been dropped when the high plane went over and were set to explode a thousand to two hundred feet above the pavement.
Almost every person in a mile diameter was knocked unconscious.
Then behind them came a larger bomb. It went poof about a hundred feet above the pillar.
The whole area was swallowed in dense fog.
Nothing could be seen.
Then there was the pulsing sound of spaceship drives. That first ship must have been a drone. Heller’s had not been touched. There was the thump of a landing in the mist.
Then the click of air lock latches.
Heller’s voice! Very softly, “Oh, I am so sorry I had to knock you out.”
Shortly another click of latches. Then a throb of drives.
Half an hour later, Madison came awake.
The mist was gone.
There was nothing in the plaza but two broken chains.
HIGHTEE HAD VANISHED!
Madison looked at the bare pillar. No, there was something else there now. Something hanging from a pin.
Madison groggily stumbled forward. He got a camera crew on its feet. He made them go up and shoot the broken chains and then this strange object on the pin.
It was a cheap excursion ticket. It had been reworked so as to read:
A
ONEWAY TRIP TO HELL NINE
FOR
LOMBAR HISST
Madison was ecstatic. He had his headline:
OUTLAW
BROTHER
RESCUES
SISTER
————
HIGHTEE
SAVED
————
JETTERO
HELLER
CONSIGNS
DICTATOR
OF VOLTAR
TO
PERDITION!
Madison had done it. He had converted Heller into an outlaw that could now be chased by every active unit in the whole Confederacy!
And the incident of Hero Plaza had started his client on the road to immortality.
PART EIGHTY-ONE
Chapter 6
I can’t imagine how it happened,” said a stunned Lombar in the safety of his dungeon office at Government City. “Heller is still on the loose!”
“It’s simply that people don’t realize yet,” said Madison, “that you mean business. They didn’t do the job properly. They let you down.”
“That’s true,” said Hisst. “I have been too weak. I have tolerated the riffraff too long. Now they are rioting in the streets.”
“Things have gotten up to a point of national emergency,” said Madison. “You need people around you you can trust.”
“Trust somebody?” said Lombar, for this was a brand-new idea.
“I admit that someone like that is pretty rare. But we’ll have to do something about these riots before we can get on with our business. I’ll be right back.”
Madison went into another room. There were some Army officers there, looking very unhappy. They had come to report trouble in trying to confine the Fleet to their bases.
Madison said to an elderly colonel, “Who is the most popular general in the whole Army?”
“That’s easy,” said the colonel. “General Whip.”
The others nodded.
“Is he really, truly popular with the Army?” said Madison.
“Men, officers, everybody,” said the colonel. “He wins battles because his troops trust him not to waste their lives. And he’s a brilliant strategist. He’s over at Army General Staff Headquarters right now. You want to talk to him about this Fleet situation?”
“Have him come over here right away,” said Madison.
Twenty minutes later, General Whip arrived. He was a tough old campaigner but he had a nice smile. His high forehead showed lots of brains.
Madison’s camera crew took some pictures of him. The two logistics men looked him over very carefully.
Madison then went in and had a word with Lombar. He beckoned from the door to General Whip, who entered.
“General,” said Lombar, “there is a Fleet officer named Jettero Heller. He has been stirring the people up. He is now an outlaw. I want you to run him down.”
The general smiled, “If you mean Jettero Heller, I’d like to point out that he is a Royal officer. I heard there is a general warrant out for him but courts just won’t accept that. If you will give me a Royal order, I will see what I can do.”
Lombar glared at him. “I’ll have you know that I am Dictator of Voltar. Heller has forfeited any status he may ever have had. I am ordering you right now to get the entire Army busy and run down this outlaw!”
General Whip looked Lombar up and down. Then he shrugged and left.
“I didn’t like that,” said Lombar to Madison.
“Be patient. You’ll see how this works out. All we have to do is wait for a report from one of my crew.”
Two hours later, one of the actors of Madison’s crew, dressed as an Army officer, signaled to Madison from the door. Madison went over and they exchanged a few words.
Madison came back to Lombar. “It was just as I suspected. General Whip went back to his headquarters and began to laugh at you.”
“WHAT?” cried Lombar.
“I expected that he would,” said Madison. “What this requires is a show of force. They will only obey you if you are shown to be a man that cannot be trifled with. Only after that can you trust them. Please sign this order.”
Lombar looked at it. It said:
Hisst grinned like a toother. He grabbed his pen and signed it. He stamped it.
Madison took it. He left.
Madison’s camera crew came into Lombar’s office and set up. Lombar, agitatedly going over Earth invasion plans, hardly noticed them: camera setups were a common occurrence lately. He was much more concerned that, despite his adulterations, speed supplies were very low.
Suddenly the door opened. Five women dressed as noble ladies—they were the circus girls—came in and knelt before Lombar. They were crying.
One of them, collapsing, was supported by two on either side of her. One of these said, “Forgive her. She is the wife of General Whip. She came to plead for mercy. But she has fainted. I plead in her stead. Please, please, please spare the life of General Whip!”
The cameras were grinding. The angles were such that one could not see the faces of the women, only their backs. What predominated in the scene was the ferocious scowl of the red-uniformed Lombar Hisst.
Suddenly there was a commotion at the door. The two actor officers, dressed in Army uniforms, came in. Between them they bore a platter. And on that platter, sopped in gore, appeared to be the head of General Whip!
The women screamed and fainted dead away.
The two officers knelt. “Sir,” said one, “your orders have been followed. General Whip has been executed for failure to take your command to hunt down Heller. Here is the head of General Whip.”
Lombar glared with ferocity. “That will teach him! My word is supreme! Remove that carrion and these females at once!”
The whole scene had been shot. The room was cleared. Madison walked back in.
Madison had filled out another blank Grand Council order, ready for the signature, as well, of Hisst.
“I think,” said Madison, “that when they see that on Homeview, there isn’t a single officer out there who won’t obey you. Please sign this.”
Hisst read it. It said:
TO
ALL OFFICERS OF ARMY AND FLEET:
YOU
WILL AT ONCE BEGIN TO HUNT FOR AND YOU WILL FIND THE NOTORIOUS OUTLAW
JETTERO
HELLER.
He signed it with a flourish.
Madison grinned. The manhunt he had envisioned would now take place.
The heat and beat of the elation within his veins was close to ecstasy.
WHAT HEADLINES!