The Invaders Plan (51 page)

"You might not like the contract," I quavered. I handed it over.

He snapped it out of my hand so fast it almost tore. I knew what it said. I had just typed it.

SECRET HUMANITARIAN SECTION GOVERNMENT OF VOLTAR KNOW ALL: As of this date, one PRAHD BITTLESTIFFENDER, Graduate Cellologist, is appointed CHIEF CELLOLOGIST to Sensitive Secret Station X.

His salary shall be FIVE THOUSAND CREDITS (C5,000) per year with all expenses paid.

After the successful completion of a test case, upon the outcome of which this contract is contingent, he shall thereafter proceed as ordered to the place ordered to perform the duties which will be ordered.

Signed: __________________ Authenticated: _____________ "Oh," he cried, scarcely daring to say more.

"Sign on the line there," I said. I gave him a pen and he raced over to his rickety desk and signed it. He found and stamped his identoplate on it.

I held out my hand and he reluctantly gave the contract back. I took the Professor Gyrant Slahb identoplate and put it on the "authenticated" line.

"Now there are some other things," I said. "I want you to make up two lists. The first is everything you will need to outfit a small, temporary hospital for one operation. The other is everything you will need for a small but complete hospital in a remote location that has no equipment, no supplies." Oh, there was nothing complex about that. He scribbled and scribbled. I will say this: he knew his business to a point where he didn't have to refer to a single text.

Finally, he was done and gave me the lists.

"Now," I said, "the person who will be in charge of you, the person whose orders you must follow, is named Officer Soltan Gris of the General Services. You must require that he show you his identoplate so you can be sure it is he as this is very secret work. He will approach you. You are not to contact him.

"Close up all of your affairs. Tell everyone that you are leaving for the back country of Flisten to work with a native tribe. Handle it so that you get no mail and need receive none.

"Then go to this address and wait. There is a charming lady there who will be happy to see you." Indeed she would be. She would also feed him up so he could last longer in bed!

"Some equipment is there," I continued. "But more will be sent. Officer Gris will show up with the test patient. Now I must warn you that Gris is a good enough fellow but in secret work he is an exacting taskmaster. He knows everything. In the service it is said he can even read minds. He is an absolute genius. If he finds that you have leaked anything at all about anything – even to the test patient – I fear he will be furious. He will be the one who gives you the copy of this contract. And he will do it only if you pass your test case. Understand now?" Oh, he understood.

"Well, you just remember," and I almost forgot to quaver, "that your whole employment continuance depends on you obeying Officer Gris and no one else." I softened my tone. "Actually he is a prince at heart. If you make him your friend, if you simply devote yourself utterly to satisfying his every slightest wish, you are fixed for life. He is a secret power in the government. One of their most brilliant assets." I realized I was getting carried away.

I got up. I tottered to the door. "Oh," I said, "one tiny favor more. Do you have an old coat, something you would not miss? It is terribly chilly this evening and I am nearly frozen." He tore the place apart. He found an ancient overcoat full of holes. It had his name inside the collar. He helped me put it over my shivering shoulders.

"I am so grateful," I said. "I shall see that it is returned."

"Oh, keep it, keep it!" he cried. He was rich beyond dreams. He could afford a whole wardrobe!

Actually, the Widow Tayl would probably give him some of her murdered husband's clothes. He was really set. For the moment.

He helped me totter down the exit steps and left me to wend my way through the garbage. Upstairs I could hear him whooping exultantly. And then I heard the shatter and bash of the breaking of already broken furniture. It was his celebrant idea of packing up and settling his affairs.

As I neared the airbus, I sensed somebody was observing me intently from around a pile of garbage but when I looked, the person ducked out of sight. It was nonsense, of course, that anybody would recognize me. I shrugged it off – just some thief being hopeful.

I flew back to the office where, using the handwriting on the lists, I could forge Prahd's suicide note and leave it and his false identoplate and old coat beside the River Wiel in a few days, to be found when he was safely gone to Blito-P3. Doctor Prahd Bittlestiffender was about to vanish forever from the Voltar Confederacy. The idiot. There is no "Secret Humanitarian Section." Nor any humanitarian actions either in this Empire. Wonderful what people will believe when they want to believe hard enough. Far be it from me to pay out five thousand credits a year for anything!

In the morning, I stopped by the hangar to estimate the situation.

I had no doubts whatever about my planning and sure enough, here was ample evidence of it. The place was an insect swarm of flying contractors! They were moving at breakneck speed!

The top plates on the tug's back had long since been replaced. Now the cranes had a long fin, like the kind you see on the backs of fish, that was being lowered.

Heller was up there directing the positioning and it was going very
fast!
In no time at all, they had it where he wanted it and workmen were swarming over it to fasten it while he came swinging down on the crane hook. He saw me and bounced off.

He had a sheaf of papers in his back pocket. He pushed them at me. "These are completed jobs," he said. He was talking in a hurried way, quite unlike him. "I've inspected them all. The costs are correct, the work has been tested. Please stamp them with your identoplate . . . right there under the project number on each." He had magically produced a board to lay them on.

I stamped away. "How about that tendency of these Will-be Was engines to blow up," I said. "You handled that?" He didn't seem to remember anything connected with it. He saw a Fleet passenger carrier arriving – a young officer got out. Behind him came an orderly carrying two small cases: they looked like cameras. Heller took the papers I'd stamped and ran over to the new arrival.

It was the Fleet Intelligence officer that had checked my documents after the club fight! There it was, right on his lapel, Fleet Intelligence They shook hands. Heller said, with a happy eagerness, "You got them!" The orderly held up the two cases, grinning. The Fleet Intelligence officer said, "The last two. They're obsolete you know. They stopped making variable time sights when they stopped production on all Will-be Was use in small vessels." Heller was gloating over the case he had opened. "Wonderful."

"I have to have your promise these don't fall into civilian hands," said his friend from Fleet Intelligence. He was extending a slip to sign. "They're amusing, you know. I hadn't ever heard of them until you called. I only knew of the big, clumsy, fixed time sights they use on battleships." Heller took each one out of its case to see if it was operational. He was grinning as he looked through them. They appeared to be just small cameras. All these guys from Fleet are crazy: kids with toys. He stamped the receipt with his own identoplate.

"I won't ask to see the ship," said Fleet Intelligence. "It looks like you're full throttle!"

"We are that!" said Heller. "Working on zero time margin! I really owe you, Bis." They shook hands again and Heller rushed off with the cases. He shouted an order to some contractor and then plunged into the ship. He came out in a moment without the cases and went hurtling off to speed up a contractor crew that was already boiling five times as fast as anyone could expect.

I grinned happily to myself. It was working! The Countess Krak had gotten to him last night the way females can and will. Heller was rushing like a rocket to his doom and in a frantic hurry to get there.

I didn't even return the Fleet Intelligence officer's sneer at me. Let them hiss. It was all going my way now!

My destinations for the day were all mapped out. Using the soon to be officially defunct Doctor Bittlestiffender's fake identoplate, I had culled from the master console in my office, all the company names I needed. I knew exactly what they sold. The one chosen for my first stop was the biggest: from the number of government contracts they got, I knew they were absolutely up to the crown of their corporate heads in graft.

After the short flight to Commercial City, I was introducing myself to reception in the very sanitary, haughty, towered anteroom of the chief of Zanco Cello-logical Equipment and Supplies. Through the huge windows, the vast roofs of Commercial City panorama'd widely in industrial haze.

The receptionist thought I must look a little seedy to be calling on the chief himself for he tried to get me to sit down and wait. I said, "Million-credit orders don't wait, clerky. Shove me in and right now." That produced the desired buzzes, bows and open doors.

The chief, a huge, sleek executive in the latest twinklecloth executive suit, extended his huge, sleek, sanitary, gloved hand, shook mine and indicated his very best interview chair. The flashing label light on his desk said, KOLTAR ZANCO To myself I said, Koltar, you are about to make some people rich. Aloud I said, "Professor Gyrant Slahb, an old and intimate family friend, recommended your firm, Chief Zanco. I do hope you are prepared to furnish what is needed." Oh, indeed he and they could! He extended a chank-pop to relieve my possible fatigue. He must have had an open communicator and heard that million credits.

"I am on a secret project," I said. And I gave him the project number. "You may only have the number, but I suggest that you check it on your commercial computer. And also my identoplate." And I reeled off its numbers.

The receptionist must have an open communicator also. Before I had time to light the oversized puffstick Zanco gave me, the receptionist's voice jumped up from his electronic desk. "Valid, chiefy. Both valid. The unexpended balance is twenty-five million credits." No surprise to me. I had checked it last night. It would take days and days for Endow and Lombar to dream up enough companies and fake bills and orders to use up such a huge sum. Some bills would have to be factual and I intended to help them out despite Lombar's forbidding me to grab any graft.

Zanco was even friendlier. I tossed the two lists on his desk. "Can you fill these?"

"Usually," he said hugely, "such matters are handled by our sales department but ..."

"The secret nature of the project and the size of the order . . ."

"Precisely." Then he frowned. "These orders only run to, at a guess, about a third of a million."

"That's why I want you to shut off that communication link," I said.

He smiled. He touched a master plate. All the lights on his desk went dead.

"The bill," I said, "must be exactly doubled. Half of the whole charge is to be untraceably sent to Lombar Hisst, Chief of the Apparatus."

"Ah," he said. But he looked a little worried. "That will only be two-thirds of a million." I had seen he had a huge catalogue on his desk. With his gracious permission I took it. I got out a pen. I started going through it, checking off everything of interest that I saw and writing quantities: electric surgical knives, instant heat flasks, seven varieties of anesthetic applicators, stainproof coats . . . on and on.

He was quite patient.

I ran out. I got the major list back and quadrupled the usable, expendable items on it like chemicals and power packs. It was enough to patch up an army or two.

I was very interested that he had been keeping a little wrist computer going. He must have very good eyes or he knew where the items were on the pages I had gone over.

"That's only four hundred and sixty thousand, before doubling," he complained.

"Well, I tell you what you do," I said. "You probably have several items that are exotic and not advertised.

Throw those in. Then get the actual price up to four hundred and ninety thousand credits."

"Why not half a million?" he said.

"Because," I said, "you are going to pad the price of some of the items to make it come out to half a million but you are going to hand me ten thousand in cash." Oh, he could do that. He got permission to turn his desk back on and in seconds we had an office absolutely jammed with junior executives, accountants, stock clerks, shipping clerks and people to hold things for them while they ran off bills and orders and instructions. A beautiful display of utter efficiency.

I sat with lordly mien, puffing on an oversized puff-stick the while. And soon they were all cleared out. They had left some paper on his desk. He was waiting expectantly for me to produce my identoplate and start stamping. I opened a fresh chank-pop instead.

"There's one more thing," I said. "Take a little scrap of paper – that blue blank there will do – and write on it, 'Officer Gris: I consider your request for personal commission outrageous and refuse it. We only do business on proper channels and with total legality.' And sign it." He did all that and gave me the paper.

"Now," I said, "the ten thousand!" Some clerk had already brought it in. It was in a fabric wraparound case. He handed it over. I did not bother to count it. We big tycoons of business have to trust one another.

I began to stamp. Every time my identoplate hit a piece of paper, his grin appeared broader by half an inch. His head was practically split in half when I had finished. He was too satisfied. He was going to put in inferior goods or chemicals.

"As Inspector General Overlord for the project," I said, "I must warn you that I will catch all shorts and any spoiled chemicals or any faults in packing." A little bit of his smile faded.

"And if Lombar Hisst ever hears about this ten thousand, I will say
all
the goods arrived damaged and the chemicals spoiled." He looked at me for a moment. Then he jumped up and pumped my hand. "I appreciate a careful client, Officer Gris." And he laughed. "We understand each other completely."