I'm sorry, I'm obsessing over a minor item from last chapter to delay looking at this one. This is a bad chapter.
Gris sneaks an audio-only bug under Utanc's rug while Melahat the housekeeper is cleaning, fiddles with his magical telescope that only works on objects farther than a hundred feet away from it, then goes to sleep and dreams about Heller being horribly killed and Utanc hopping in his bed. The next morning he collects two small, surprisingly docile mummies from Dr. Prahd, leaves a note to Utanc on them ("unwrap carefully"), and sets the boys down in front of Utanc's bungalow. Then he gives one a kick and flees when the kid screams.
Once Utanc collects her servants and seals herself in her room again, Gris returns to his and tries to get something out of the bug. He of course reads the directions after he's placed the thing, and learns that it was meant to be stuck on a picture frame instead of under something. But he cranks up the gain all the way to eavesdrop, and an hour later can make out some running water. And things get disturbing pretty fast.
Then, suddenly, a song! Utanc was singing! She sang:
Come wash my back, little Rudy.
Hand me the soap, little James.
Kiss me and make me less moody.
Hug me and call me sweet names.
Then we will go in the bedroom,
And I'll teach you some lovely games.
Keep in mind that "little Rudy" and "little James" were explicitly introduced as "little boys" when Utanc first took them as her helpers.
All that Gris takes from this exchange is that obviously the super plastic surgery worked and the rugrats have been transformed into child versions of Rudolph Valentino and James Cagney. He has another lunch of Hubbard Showing Off His Turkish Vocabulary and spends the rest of the afternoon alternately waiting for Utanc to properly express her gratitude and spying on her. He overhears her singing another song around two in the afternoon while doing something that makes loud noises like cymbals clashing. Gris checks in again after supper to hear more loud thumping and singing, and...
Little, little feet on my tum, tum, tum.
Dancing like fairies, run, run, run.
Up and down, up and down, leap, leap, leap.
Get it in, get it in, deep, deep, deep.
Up you go, up you go, bloom, bloom, bloom.
Now you come, now you come, boom, boom, BOOM!
What in blazes was going on in there? Were the boys dead? Was she dancing a funeral dance?
Gris' naivety fluctuates depending on what would make him look the most stupid. Also, the guy who wrote that song insisted that he started a legitimate religion. And even today people still follow it, shelling out huge amounts of cash in the process.
No. I could hear some little squeals. Laughter? Delight? They surely weren't squeals of pain! Too cheerful. More like ecstasy. Delight. It was delight.
I gave it up. It was nine. I had had a hard day.
Maybe he's just in denial. Goodness knows I was the first time I read this: "Is she... nah, she couldn't be, they aren't even teenagers yet... but then what are they doing?" And so you read on and your worst fears are realized.
Anyway. Gris goes to bed but is later awakened by, sarcastic fanfare, Utanc. Instead of secondhand pedo-sex we get a gratifyingly brief and understated love scene, transcribed here in case anyone gets the mistaken impression that I'm "holding out" and that these books might have some "good stuff" in them.
She was fully clothed but her lips were warm as they touched my cheek. Then they were blazing hot as they crushed against my mouth!
Her hands were all over me. She pushed the bedclothes back to get at me better.
"Utanc," I whispered.
"Sssh. This is all for you. The mouth is everything!"
Her hands!
I started to turn into fire with passion.
It went on and on!
After a long time, I was lying there, gasping, spent.
Her arm was across my naked chest.
Joy began to well up in me.
I had WON!
Yes, though Heller is in position to destroy the Apparatus operation on Earth and Gris has squandered any resource he could use to stop him, though he has in fact ordered Heller's closest ally to come to Earth, and though his lack of progress has resulted in death threats against him from his superiors, Gris just got laid. Victory.
...Did he get laid? Utanc's catchphrase is "the mouth is everything," so is Gris having sex or technically-not-quite-sex? And damn my curiosity for making me ask that question.
Utanc immediately ruins the moment by talking about those two boys of hers, explaining that when she saw their new faces she got "so aroused," but "they don't have much endurance and you're the only other man around, such as you are." She's also looking forward to when the boys grow and up more closely resemble those dead movie stars. You know, once they enter puberty and stuff.
Gris fails to notice the implications of her words and instead enjoys Round Two, unaware that he's sharing his woman with two pre-teens. Afterward he explains that he needs Utanc to come with him on a diplomatic mission because she's in danger here. She's a little skittish, but agrees to come along disguised as Gris' wife if she can have five trunks to pack and they stop for clothes in Rome, Paris and London (London is a fashion hub now?). Gris is happy until she makes him promise to send those boys along after them once they've relocated, and only then does he realize that he might have "miscalculated" and created some future romantic rivals, while continuing to not notice that they're current romantic rivals as well.
But he takes comfort from the fact that Utanc is in his bed again.
Not a single thing stood between me and the total wreckage and demise of Heller.
How sweet life was!
How sweet!
There's just over a hundred pages left in this book and Gris is finally, finally willing to move against Heller beyond writing memos and watching what he does on a TV screen. I no longer have any doubt as to how Hubbard plans on stretching this saga out over ten books. My question now is what excuses Gris will find in the next books to not do his job.
Back to Part Twenty-Five, Chapter Seven
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