I greeted him quite affably. "Been meeting any nice girls lately?" It was a friendly thing to say. Anything to put him at his ease.
But, actually, he's not a very friendly fellow. His hand went deeper in the drawer. "What do you want?"
"Oh, just the run of the place for a bit." Sourly he buzzed for a clerk. "Give him what he wants," said Raza Torr.
I followed the clerk. Behind me I heard the drawer slam. Raza Torr said, "(Bleep)!" He must have hurt his finger.
I knew exactly what I wanted. One of the favorite ploys of the Provocation Section consists of planting counterfeit money on people. It is a pretty good counterfeit. The casual public would never detect it. But a trained store clerk and every cashier with a detection machine can spot it at once. They usually just say to wait a moment while they get some change, step on a floor button connected to the Finance Police and in a couple minutes the passer is picked up, taken to the Finance Prisons and after some torture and a brief trial, is executed. It is really a nice, smooth operation and the State is rid of some malcontent or critic or rival. There is real power in those counterfeit bills!
We walked through the endless rows of costumes of every type and size, past the boot department and past many another accumulation of riches. They mostly get them from morgues, accidents and battlefields. They seldom clean them up and the stench is a bit strong even in the Apparatus. We went by the Personal Effects Drawers, thousands of square yards of them containing every imaginable item from every imaginable place, mostly taken from the dead, all vital to make a Provocation Section agent seem authentic. I peeked in the wallet drawers as sometimes real money is left in them but some clerk had been there before me.
We walked two hundred yards through the weapons area where every criminal kind of crazy weapon conceivable can be found. They use them to equip "revolutionary forces" that will then attempt some crazy coup. Most of the weapons explode and that's that. Quite clever, really. Only the knives can be trusted and even then you better look in the handles to make sure there is no explosive charge that triggers when the knife touches flesh.
Finally and at last we came to their "Bait Office." It contains safes full of fakes: fake stones that will get somebody arrested, fake gold, fake identoplates that trigger a police alarm when used, even fake certificates that are sometimes handed out to real graduating students who might cause upset somewhere. All highly intelligent material.
And money! I stood right in front of the vast vault and gestured to the Bait Office clerk to open it. My escort said, "Give him what he wants." And they opened it.
Truly, the stuff looks beautiful. "Toilet paper" is the Apparatus slang term for it. And looking into that vast vault and at those piles and piles of lovely golden notes, one can get quite euphoric even if he knows it's all counterfeit.
Actually, I was so money-starved I sort of overdid it. I picked up quarter-notes and then threw them down as too petty. I picked up ones. Safe enough as who looks hard at a one. But not too thick a pack as I had just so much room in my pockets. I grabbed some packs of fives, then tens, then twenties, fifties and hundreds. I ran out of pocket room.
"You must be trying to get a whole platoon killed off," my escort said.
I thought that was a good idea, too.
Finally, I tried to seal my pockets. I couldn't. So I got rid of most of the ones.
The Bait Office clerk was presenting his board for my identoplate. I waved him off. "Very secret operation."
"It'll start an investigation done on that scale," said the Bait Office clerk.
"The chief said to give him what he wants. Must be somebody in disguise. Right?" The escort was backing up Raza Torr. Wise fellow.
I couldn't resist overwhelming them. "Emperor," I whispered.
"Well, he's got enough rivals," said the Bait Office clerk. "I hear Prince Mortiiy is making real headway over on Calabar. You using this to tag some of his lot?" I frowned. It was the best ploy. It made him think he had come too close. He nodded wisely. But he said, "Don't plant too many of those hundreds. They're the ones that even bluebottles can spot. Mortiiy's agents themselves could detect them and knock youoff."
"I'll be careful," I promised. "Not a word of this to anyone, no records."
"Right! We got to get rid of lice like that Mortiiy. Did you know he promised to abolish the Apparatus?" My escort said, "Silly (bleepard). How can anyone run a government without an Apparatus?"
"Maybe you've guessed too far," I said.
That put him in his place. But he was now anxious to please. "That uniform looks awfully chewed up. There were some General Services officers killed in a gas leak they were investigating last week. Didn't hurt their uniforms a bit. Maybe we've got your size." They did have! It only smelled a little bit like gas. I changed. And while I was changing, I noticed a luggage item on a shelf. Being well trained, I knew what it was. It's called a "magic bottom." When an inspector opens it the interior rotates in such a way that he never detects he is always searching the same side.
"Take it along," said my escort, quite friendly now.
I stuffed the counterfeit money in it and then, lacking something to make the rotation work – something to inspect – I took some cans of food off a shelf marked Poisoned Foodand put them in. The Apparatus thinks of everything.
"Don't offer me none of those counterfeits as a tip," said the escort. "I'm a lot too young to die!" I guffawed over it. A really good joke. It wasn't until afterwards that I realized he had been hinting for a tip in real money. That accounted for the sour way he let me out.
But then, I had other things on my mind. Ifthat patrol craft crew was in Spiteos, they would soon be unable to testify to anyone. They would have given me the data I needed about Heller and they would soon thereafter be dead, if not from poisoned food, then from trying to pass counterfeit money to the guards.
One has to be thorough. One has to be neat in the Apparatus.
Chapter 2
We set off on our mission of mercy; and indeed, anyone would be better off dead than held in the dungeons of Spiteos. So it was no criminal act, I fully realized. It was even a friendly thing to do.
Besides, Heller would kill me if he knew that a Fleet crew had been kidnapped the same night he had been. Dead crews don't blab, as my favorite Apparatus school instructor used to say.
Beyond all this, however, was the possibility that this crew knewsomething about Heller's habits that would make it possible for me to get back in control of things. The craftleader had said so in the dream and, as psychology teaches you, dreams never lie.
My driver said, "I smell gas!" He was looking around, sniffing. He rolled a window down despite the heavy slipstream and smelled outside. He decided the smell was inside. "Oh, it's you,"he said. "Smells like sewer gas and cadavers all mixed up. And I just cleaned up the car, too." I ignored him. We were just passing over the last edges of Government City and had not yet gone over the barrier mountains to the Great Desert. I wanted to get this magic bag fixed. I dumped it all out on the airbus floor.
Even though it was deadly counterfeit, the money sure was beautiful. Stacks of it! I piled it around in the airbus back, admiring that lovely gold paper.
"My Gods!" said my driver. "Did you hold up a Finance Office all by yourself?" There had been awe and sudden respect in his voice, usually so absent. I was sorry I had to crush it. But it was necessary in case he got ideas of larceny himself. "You better leave this money alone," I said. "Every credit of it is totally counterfeit." I passed him a bill.