Mission: Earth "Doomed Planet" (15 page)

The Grand Council hall had changed somewhat in the last two hours. The Master of Palace City had been busy. Some of the diamond-studded banners had been recovered from the baggage of dead Apparatus troops. The portrait of Cling and his two elder sons had come down and in its place was one of Mortiiy as a young man in the full-dress uniform of a Fleet officer. Some Palace City guards had returned to duty and stood about like statues in blue and violet. Servants of ex-Lords were scurrying about, clearing up the remains of the repast. Heller had gotten a drink of sparklewater, eaten a sweetbun, washed his face and changed to a golden Lord's tunic that the master had dug up, but he had girded it with his officer's belt and sidearms. He took his place now on the dais. The Countess Krak sat down on a small stool to the side and slightly behind his chair. She sat there as though in mourning, suffering and silent. The crowded place was in a hubbub. Even more people seemed to have been added. Heller was about to hit the table with the butt of his gun when, suddenly, four trumpets blared and a cymbal crashed. It startled him. He looked over at a small balcony where the master was standing. The fellow winked! He had been watching Heller's hand. Heller suppressed his desire to laugh. He muttered to himself, "Well, like Mortiiy, I've got to realize those days are over." And he put the gun in its holster. "Gentlemen," he said into the suddenly silent room, "this Officers' Conference is reopened. We have several subjects to take up. I shall reserve until the last the disposal of the planet Blito-P3. Right now I wish to finalize the matter of the Earth girl and the catamites." There was an instant rushing snarl, a wave of hate and ferocity from the more than two thousand people assembled. The Homeview crew was on the job and the backfeed viewers on the far wall showed the reactions of the mobs in the streets. In the night-lighted thoroughfares on this side of the planet and the sunlit ones elsewhere, the reaction was instant hate. "Oh, dear," muttered Heller to himself. "I've got to play this very, very cool." An Army general at the table roared out in a parade-ground voice, "We have discovered that this Earth girl is posing as the Hostage Queen of Flisten, right here in Palace City!" "We demand immediate action!" shouted the most senior official of the Domestic Police. "Kill the Earth girl!" shouted the people in the room. "Execute the catamites!" screamed the jammed crowds in the streets. "Madison, Madison," muttered Heller, "what have you done! Earth is about as popular here as a carload of skunks." He made a signal toward the place the master had been standing: another man was there now but the cymbals crashed. Heller put on a very stern face. He would have to play this expertly. Into the silence, he said, "I was afraid for a while that you would not approve my extreme severity, but I see now that you will probably go along with it." "He's ordered them all executed," went the whisper around the table. Heller heard it. "Worse," he said. "Far worse. I have just concluded a treaty with the Hostage Queen of Flisten. I am, because of its severity, making it contingent upon approval by this Officers' Conference." They waited, hungry for vengeance. "Mere execution is too quick," said Heller. "They need time to suffer and repent for their sins." Heads nodded. "I therefore have proposed the sentence of extreme exile to a barren rock far out in the ocean." Satisfaction began to register. "I have forced her to give up her Palace City palace and, because they were contaminated, have ordered that the whole domestic staff there be sent into exile as well. This makes them suffer with her." "Wise," heads nodded, "wise." "And these young miscreants who followed her in corruption are being severely exiled as well! This extends even to the sons of some ex-Lords to give you the idea of the thorough violence intended." There was some applause. "And to this barren, desolate place, I also exile J. Walter Madison and his hellish crew." More applause. "No communication of any kind will be permitted from the world. We will let them sink, alone, in the infamy of their own Hells!" Wild applause. People at the table were standing up and cheering. When it had died down, Heller took a sheet of proclamation paper from his tunic. "This is the treaty amendment with the Hostage Queen of Flisten. If you gentlemen will affix your signatures and plates above that of His Majesty, we can then give it a number and the matter will be finalized. The Hostage Queen of Flisten, as you will see, has already signed it." He handed it to an usher who began to pass it from officer to officer at the table. He was pushing secretly to Krak, below at his side, a child's toy camera which he had picked up off the floor in Teenie's palace. "There was no Homeview around," he whispered, "so I had to do it myself." She took it. Such devices have ten minutes of picture time in them. On the back is a little screen that shows what has been shot. The things are just junk and the quality is awful. Two-dimensional. Below the level of the table, Krak turned it on, feeling very sad. Heller had apparently put it on a table and started it running when he and Teenie had first entered the room. The place was evidently a seneschal's office. Krak saw Teenie sit down at the desk. Heller remained standing. He was selling her on the idea of a treaty. That was what he wanted her to do for him. Amend the existing treaty of the Hostage Queen of Flisten. After a bit, Heller said, "It would be best if you gave up your palace in Palace City. The staff seems to want to go with you and you could take your things." "Well, that's no hardship," said Teenie. "The wives of Lords around here snoot the hell out of me-just a bunch of cats. Could I dig my marijuana up in the palace gardens? A lot of it is ready to harvest and some of it is very valuable: Panama Red." "I'll put Snelz in charge of the move. So that will be okay, but we won't mention it in writing. You have my word." "And I really, truly get Madison?" "Absolutely. You'll have to take his whole crew. If he signs over the General Loop townhouse to the government, he can take his baggage and so can they. Actually the whole lot should be returned to prison and Madison should be shot, so you be very, very careful, Teenie. He's dangerous as blazes. You've got dungeons over there: did you know I surveyed Relax Island once to update the charts? There'd been an earthquake. The whole place is just a hollow volcanic bubble. One of the cliffs had slipped. It's quite a lovely place. But don't get soft in the head with Madison: put him in one of those dungeons." "Oh, I will, I will," said Teenie, smiling brightly. "And now we come to Gris," said Heller. "Oh, yes, we do, don't we?" Teenie said, smiling very broadly. "I got him his trial but the coward fainted before he heard the whole sentence. Here it is." She took it. She read aloud, "Said Soltan Gris is found guilty of high treason. His final execution will be done by hanging and exposure from a gibbet in the Royal prison until his body rots away; but before he is executed, he is to complete a life sentence in a prison designated by the Hostage Queen of Flisten." Teenie began to smile with a peculiar, ferocious intensity. She read it again, savoring it. Then she said, "You hinted you would give me Gris but, brother, this is the real goods! You're a screaming genius, Whiz Kid. Oh, boy!" "Now, there's one caution," said Heller. "His records at the Royal prison will remain on file until that sentence is completed. So you've got to return or order returned his body when he dies. Then they can string it up." "Oh, I will, I will!" said Teenie. "Now, I'm only doing this because you intimated you simply wanted to keep him in a dungeon. I wouldn't have suggested he be turned over to you if I thought you were going to torture him. I don't hold with torture." "Oh, I won't," said Teenie. "I just want the comfort of knowing he's nice and safe in a quiet dungeon. I give you my word I won't even touch him." "Good," said Heller. "Now, we're leaving a lot of.this treaty, such as Gris, verbal. But there's one thing that will have to go in it. Communication will have to remain cut off with Relax Island. Planetary Defense will enforce it." "Oh, to hell with that," said Teenie. "Who wants to talk to the outside world when you got Gris to inspect and five hundred noblemen to (bleep). Whiz Kid, you really are the most. I love you!" And she signed the treaty and hit it with her Royal seal. As they started to leave the room, Heller grabbed the treaty, put it in his tunic and snatched up the child's camera. Krak looked at her watch. Ten minutes! All they'd done was talk! She whispered to Heller crossly, "You shouldn't have made me think you were doing something else! You and your jokes!" "It wasn't a joke," said Heller. "Maybe those catamites will get the idea they should be men. I couldn't arrange any treaty in a room with all that yowling, but maybe, too, it helped her pride to make them think it was her feminine charm that had worked." Krak snorted. "You and other people's feelings!" "Keep that camera and strip with my files," said Heller. "I might need it to safeguard my own reputation or defend myself from your accusations in some fight." "Oh, Jettero, I was just fooling. I've learned my lesson. I'm not jealous anymore." "Oh, yeah?" he said in English. That made her laugh. "Jettero, it's not my jealousy that's liable to come between us: it's your awful sense of humor!" "You just laughed," he called to her attention. That broke her up. The world looked much better. But that was that world, the world of Voltar. The fate of another world, Earth, would be settled forever this very night!

In the Grand Council hall, the treaty was taking its time getting back to Heller: this was due mainly to arguments occurring at every seat around the hundred-foot-diameter table, arguments which were not concerned with the treaty but with the seniority of members of each division now that there was no Lord for it. Two or three were represented only by a chief clerk and, unlike the military and police, had never had a precise chain of command below the level of nobility. But Heller, sitting on the dais, was not impatient as he watched the paper slowly coming back. It only had two signatures left to be signed. "Well, this will be one down and five to go," he said to the Countess Krak in a low voice without turning to look down at her. "I still can't understand why Mortiiy picked me for Viceregal Chairman. He's got lots of friends and far more experienced men for the job." "He was smart," whispered the Countess Krak. "The military didn't jump in until the last moment and so their loyalty to him is not proven. All his friends are rebels and that wouldn't go down well with the whole population. You were never other than loyal to Cling. Furthermore, you're very popular with the population. Mortiiy thinks of you as a brother officer he can trust and, if you look at it head on, he really owes his throne to you. He's a very clever man, really. And, of course, my Jettero is brilliant, handsome, charming…" "And has a bad sense of humor," laughed Heller. "Well, anyway, I didn't start his reign with the slaughter of a bunch of little boys. Reigns that begin by ordering blood baths are pretty unlucky. Maybe," he added, looking suddenly bright, "maybe there is some hope for government. Maybe it can be run right!" "Then you'd better start thinking pretty fast," said the Countess Krak. "You just said one down and five to go and, according to the notes you've got scribbled there, disposing of Earth is the last item on your agenda. Are you really going to be able to face up to ordering and arranging the deaths of five billion people?" Heller frowned and looked down at the table before him. "I know you, Jettero. You're thinking of Izzy and Bang-Bang and all your friends there. You've got a heart as soft as mush, for all of your tough exterior. You're probably even feeling sorry for Miss Simmons! Some of those five billion were your personal friends." "Maybe, in spite of all those flattering reasons you just gave," said Heller, "Mortiiy was dead wrong to put me in this job." He brightened. "I know. I was just handy. He only intended it as a temporary appointment. It's very simple. All I have to do is stall this meeting on the subject of Earth and as soon as he gets a real Crown appointed, I'll simply hand it over to him as unfinished business and happily go back to the Fleet." He sighed. "That's a relief." "I've got news for you," said the Countess Krak, and pushed into his hand a sheet of Royal proclamation paper. "When he left this conference tonight, he was so pleased with the way you had gotten things going, he wrote this. He asked me if I'd bring it back for the clerk to record." Heller was staring at a signed and sealed sheet that appointed him first Lord of the land and Viceregal Chairman of the Grand Council. It was permanent. He groaned. "This puts me in a bad dilemma, really. I spend a year putting a planet back together and now I have orders to blow it up." "And you can't weasel out of it," said the Countess Krak. "The reason I am handing you this is so you don't do something silly and defy orders and get yourself in trouble." "You had something to do with this," said Heller. "No. Factually now, I didn't. He thought of it all on his own. But I will admit that it gives me great satisfaction. You are a factor of three beyond the expected life of a combat engineer. You now have a nice, safe post." "In which all I have to do is say 'Blow up this planet,' 'Slaughter that one.' I'm going to put this conference on delay and go see Mortiiy and resign!" "No, you won't," said the Countess Krak. "Because if you do, I'll tear up this." And she showed him another signed, sealed Royal order. It gave her back her title and citizenship and restored to her the vast Krak estates on Manco. He hastily put his hand on hers to stop the tearing gesture. "But this is wonderful!" he said. "I am so happy for you!" "I meant to tell you after this conference," she said, "to celebrate, I have even commandeered a palace for us." Tears were in her eyes. "Don't ruin it, Jettero." He couldn't stand to see her cry. He was conscious of the Homeview cameras that were suddenly on them. The treaty was now being handed up by a violet-uniformed usher who laid it before him on the raised split-level of the vast table. Heller thought fast. He had to hide her tears from the camera. He bent down and kissed her. The backfeed monitors across the room brought him the sudden cheer from crowds watching him. But he whispered, "Go get Hightee and the Master of Palace City and tell them I want to see them right away. And get out of here. You win. I will do my job." A trifle uncertain, feeling a little bit like Nepogat the Damnable who had betrayed Prince Caucalsia in the legend, the Countess Krak hastily vanished down the back steps of the dais. She was telling herself that nobody could prevent the destruction of Earth anyway and there was no reason to let it commit another crime and shatter her coming marriage. Besides, even though Jettero liked the place, she had always been horrified at the primitive decadence of that culture, never able to understand how a planet so potentially beautiful could be "so rottenly mauled by an uncaring power elite. As she walked away on her errand, she said to herself, "It is totally beyond salvation: all Voltar is thirsting for its blood, no thanks to Madison. To blazes with Earth. I have saved Jettero."