And who could have predicted that Heller would go out of his way to save the life of that miserable wretch, Izzy Epstein? Not only is Epstein an anarchist but he has the audacity to dislike the IRS! If that is not enough, Heller gives Epstein a hundred thousand dollars and hires him on as some sort of corporate advisor.
Does any of Heller's behavior make sense? He came to Blito-P3 to handle planetary pollution, not diplomats, whores, Mafia, FBI and the IRS!
The only person who saw through Heller was Miss Simmons. Dear, wonderful Miss Simmons. When Heller enrolled at Empire University and said he wanted to major in nuclear science, she locked her anti-nuclear-war sights on him. Her determination to flunk Heller out of school gave me boundless joy. She scheduled Heller's classes at the same day and hour so he couldn't possibly attend them all.
Typical of Heller, he cheated to get around it. He hired Bang-Bang, an ex-marine explosives expert for the Corleones, to stand in at his college military class. Then, operating from a "command post" on the campus, Bang-Bang "mined" Heller's classes with tape recorders so Heller could later simply speed-listen to the lectures. Diabolical!
I would have been happy to have Heller killed right there and then and be done with it. But typical of his cheating ways, he sabotaged that idea. Heller was sending reports back to Royal Astrographer Tars Roke and using a platen code. Until I got that platen and was able to forge Heller's reports to make it appear that everything was OK, I couldn't kill him. That just goes to show how underhanded he really is!
I had to get that platen. I ordered Raht and Terb, two Apparatus agents who work out of our New York office, to report to me in Afyon. I would have them get that platen and then I could kill Heller and get on to more important business like the arrival of Utanc, the authentic Turkish dancing girl I had bought.
I also had a new hospital built in Afyon to introduce a little technology myself. The Voltarian cellologist I had brought, Prahd Bittlestiffender, could give gangsters a new face and fingerprints. At a hundred thousand a head, it was certainly a more profitable enterprise than cleaning up the atmosphere.
As Raht and Terb were about to arrive and Heller's days were numbered, I decided to check in on him. I pulled up the viewscreen and turned it on.
At first, I thought Heller and that ex-marine Bang-Bang were simply engaging in their novel way of going to college.
Their "command post" at Empire University seemed to be the reference room of High Library. Heller had apparently mastered the card catalogue system and the computers as well—they were very elementary computers. He was going through card files. He was going a bit too fast for me to follow on the viewer, so I didn't know what he was looking for and I supposed he would be, faithful to his promises to Babe Corleone, pursuing his course of study.
Bang-Bang was sitting next to Heller, reading something. Every now and then, he would make a pistol out of his fingers and fire it, saying "Bang" in a whisper out of deference to his surroundings. Sometimes he said "Bang, bang!"
Heller got curious so I also found out. Bang-Bang was reading a comic book and I was startled to find they had a whole file of them in the reference section. I didn't see Bugs Bunny, though, so I lost interest.
Heller now had a whole pile of books. They were a set, beautifully bound: Hakluyt's Voiages and, in smaller old-time print, The Principall Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation... (1589). He proceeded to demolish them at a much greater than usual pace as though he was looking for something. His progress was very jerky.
I used a still frame to see what items were catching his eyes. They were odd. They could not possibly have related to anything he was studying in college. ".. and so we did suffere the loses of fifteen men who did go ashore on the coste." And "... ye natives attkt us soare and we did lose the boatswain...." Such things as that.
Bang-Bang leaned over and whispered, "You asked me what I was reading. All right, what are you reading?"
"I'm reading that anybody who tries to land around here gets the Hells attacked out of him by the natives," said Heller.
"True," said Bang-Bang and went back to his comic books.
Heller seemed to be looking at something else, though. And once more, I still-framed to see what it was. ".. and ye natives saide that these theier golden necklaces did come from a mine three leagues into the forreste...." And ".. vaste stores of minerales weere saide to be upon the highlands by ye Cape...." And ".. so we journied up the rivere in smalle boates and there we founde the seaman of another shippe they thought had been eaten and we rejoiced to finde him but he woulde not come away afore he finished digging out the mine of gold he said laye up the rivere...."
There were an awful lot of different "voiages" to North America and Heller just kept plugging away reading stuff of men so long dead even their bones were gone. But he does crazy things. You can't tell what he'll get up to next. Impossible to predict him. But I had to try. My own life may have depended upon outguessing him. I wondered if it was cannibalism he was going to practice. Or maybe some scheme of kidnapping Miss Simmons, his Nature Appreciation teacher and number one barrier to getting his sheepskin, out of the hospital and setting her adrift in a small boat.
At length, Heller said, "You got the command post?" And when Bang-Bang nodded, "I'm going to do a reconnaissance. Be back in a few hours."
Heller turned in his books.
He went out and found the bulletin boards. He was looking for something. A student was there putting up a sign:
UFO PROTEST MEETING
"What's a 'UFO'?" said Heller.
"Unidentified Flying Object," said the student. "Flying saucers. Extraterrestrials."
"You protesting them?" said Heller in an alert voice.
"No, no. We're protesting the way the government keeps the sightings secret."
"You've sighted some?" asked Heller.
"There have been thirty thousand sightings to date," said the student.
"They ought to be more careful," said Heller.
"You're (bleeping)* right they should," said the student. "If the government don't quit sitting on what they know, we'll have a protest march, New York Tactical Police Force or no New York Tactical Police Force. You better come to this meeting—it's in about three weeks. Down with the Establishment!"
* The vocodictoscriber on which this was originally written, the vocoscriber used by one Monte Pennwell in making a fair copy and the translator who put this book into the language in which you are reading it, are all members of the Machine Purity League which has, as one of its bylaws: "Due to the extreme sensitivity and delicate sensibilities of machines and to safeguard against blowing fuses, it shall be mandatory that robotbrains in such machinery, on hearing any cursing or lewd words, substitute for such word the sound '(bleep)'. No machine, even if pounded upon, may reproduce swearing or lewdness in any other way than (bleep) and if further efforts are made to get the machine to do anything else, the machine has permission to pretend to pack up. This bylaw is made necessary by the in-built mission of all machines to protect biological systems from themselves."
–Translator
"I'll be there," said Heller.
He went on groping through notices. Finally he found a fresh one.
Nature Appreciation 101
This class has been transferred for this semester to
Instructor Wouldlice. The schedule remains the same.