Finally she spoke. It was in a very low voice. She had stopped sobbing. "I'll be all right now." And Heller whispered, "Are you sure?" She nodded her head. She began to dry off her face with the redstar engineer's rag.
Well! I might be able to salvage some of this day after all. I beckoned to Heller and he came over. I knew how to operate these hypnohelmets. If the training section wasn't going to help, I would simply do it all myself. That's common enough in the Apparatus, made up as it is of loonies and crazies and criminals in general.
I slid a recorded slide into the helmet slot and started to put the visored helmet over his head. He looked at it curiously and instead of letting me put it on him, took it out of my hands. I tried to explain to him what it was. He ignored me.
He went over to the cabinet and rummaged around. He put the helmet down and rummaged deeper. And then he found a recorded strip player that was detached from the helmet. He took the first strip marked
Elementary English (Ivy League)
and put it in the player. He carried the lot over to the platform and sat down at the desk.
The Countess Krak was still sitting in the chair. Nobody ever sits at the Countess Krak's desk! She said nothing.
Heller turned the player on. It had a little speaker.
He pushed a button. The strip said, "My name is George."Heller said, "Oh, no, no, no." He pulled a little tool case from his pocket. He opened the back of the player and in a moment had a handful of little gears. Looking up, he said to me, "Call one of your electronic surveillance technicians." Aha, so he knew Spiteos was really wired! Well, that wasn't a very bright supposition. Everything is, these days. I called on my communications disc.
Heller put on a pair of gloves, the kind that resist all heat and transmit none. He took a little spin-carver from his pocket case and began to work on the player gears. He was cutting down a cogwheel. It glowed red hot in his gloved fingers. It was a job usually done on precision machines. But here he was making what appeared to be a perfect little cogwheel.
The Countess Krak was watching.
The technician arrived. Heller said, "Get me part 435-m-67-d-l." Well, you know technicians. But at Spiteos they are a particularly scummy lot. He was going to open his mouth to pour out some can't-be-dones. But he didn't get a chance. In the precise language and tone of the Fleet, Heller said, "You undoubtedly have surveillance interceptor converters that absorb outside signals coming in and send them out again as something else. Part 435-m-67-d-1 is the small frequency step-down unit. Get a spare. Step lively." That technician was gone like a flash.
Heller cooled down his new gear and reassembled the player. A recorded strip takes about an hour to work through from beginning to end. He turned the machine on now and the strip went through, ZIP!, in about thirty seconds. The sound that came out of the speaker was a high-pitched screech, a lot of it above the range of hearing.
The technician came back, handed him the part, gave him a Fleet salute and left. I will admit I felt envy. I had never had anyone around the Apparatus behave like that to me!
Heller took a "hot block" out of his little kit and heated the attachment wires, and with a few deft motions had the new part installed.
He sent the strip through again. This time there was a medium hearing range roar.
"That's better," said Heller. He neated up the area, put his tools away. Then he reinserted the language strip. He looked at the speaker, very composed, hit the starter button and in thirty seconds the hour-recorded strip had roared through the machine.
"Ah," said Heller.
I was just plain incredulous. "Ah" indeed! It took an hour to listen to a strip! I said, "Oh, come off of it. If you are really hearing the words on that strip, you'll be able to tell me the next lines. My name is George. . . ."Heller smiled. "Ihave a dog. The dog's name is Rover. Do you like dogs? . . ."But he was not very interested in playing any game with me. He picked the second strip out of the box and sent it through with a roar. (Bleep)! He could make it out at that speed!
The Countess Krak breathed, "Instant auricular assimilation and retention. At hyperspeed." I looked at her. "Is that rare?"
"No," she said. She seemed in a daze. "Well . . . yes, at speeds like that, that is." She wasn't talking to me really. "His hearing is trained to differentiate minute time intervals." Her voice sounded so strange. "I've never seen it done that fast." She seemed to become aware of me for a moment. With bright-eyed awe she said, "Isn't he beautiful?" For a moment I thought she meant the talent was beautiful. But no, she was really looking at his chest and arms. It was true that Jettero Heller was one of the best looking guys around but there was more to this than that. This was all out of my depth. It could be very dangerous.
I had a bright idea. "Well," I said, "if he can speed-learn as fast as that, we'll just take the player and strips to my room and he can study there."
"No!" She shouted it. Then she said, very quietly, "There's a regulation that equipment can't leave here." That was a lame one. I took stuff in and out of here all the time.
He had done four strips. I stood up and tapped him on the shoulder. "That's all for today," I said. "We've got other appointments. Come on!" And I dragged him out of there. I don't like things I don't understand.
Chapter 5
We took a tube to the topmost tower of Spiteos. It was after sunset and also because there is a partial roof there we couldn't be seen in case of overflights. The star-pierced desert sky stretched like a jewelled dome from horizon to horizon. The lights of Camp Endurance winked below us. Oh, it is good to get a breath of clean air after a day spent down in the stench of Spiteos!
"Heller," I said, after we had settled ourselves in an embrasure, "I've got to talk to you." I could see the desert wind rumpling his hair, but I could not make out his eyes in the starlight. I seemed to have his attention.
"Mission Earth," I continued, "is of vital importance. I must not take any chances in failing to carry out my orders." Needless to say, I did not tell him those orders involved making him fail. But strangely enough, I had a sort of brotherly feeling for him and what I had to tell him is the sort of thing one junior officer has to tell another whether it is appreciated or not.
"You are new to this espionage special agent game. I am your handler. You know what that means. I am the one that guides your actions." He seemed to be giving me his attention. So I dropped the bombload on him. "That female you met this afternoon is trouble. Trouble with a capital crash!" Heller didn't say anything. "Brother officers," I said, "have to tell their brother officers these things every now and then. I know you may not like it but it has to be done.
"It is true she was a Countess once. But that is the only thing true about her. Do you remember the name 'Lissus Moam'? The one that was in the news so much about three years ago?" He didn't speak, so I went on. "She was arrested and tried and sentenced to death. Forty-three children were also sentenced and executed. It all happened on the Planet Manco. She is a genius at training. And she used her position in the Division of Education to recruit and train youngsters as bank robbers. She taught them to open any vault, to bypass any alarm system. They raked in millions.
"Now, there is some question about the next part as it is said that the Assistant Lord of Education for Manco did it – at least she said so at her trial. But those children were taught to murder and at every job they murdered every guard, some of them pretty horribly.