Part Ninety-Two, Envoi III-xxii - Monte's Ode to Earth

Mission Earth's final chapter is twenty-two pages long, and consists of four distinct documents stuffed next to each other in the same section.  It also boasts the highest concentration of italicized and capitalized letters in the story, which is a pretty strong disincentive to read it.

The first section is five-and-a-half pages of Monte summarizing things for us, arguing that the real cover-up of Mission Earth is not to hide the existence of a harmful planet, but Heller "DEPRIVING VOLTAR OF SOME OF THE MOST MAGNIFICENT DEVELOPMENTS EVER HIT UPON IN THIS WHOLE UNIVERSE!"  And then he lists those developments.

Monte hails PR as what will rescue him from obscurity and make him a man to be respected and feared, as well as what allowed him to uncover this vast conspiracy.  He doesn't mention the whole "PR nearly destroyed my civilization" thing he read and wrote about to make this "book," much less argue why PR is worth pursuing despite such hazards.  And then, well, it doesn't take long for things to start making even less sense.

INTELLIGENCE SERVICES: Unless you can spy upon your own population, you cannot keep them in line.  The riffraff will get out of hand and impudent--even revolt--unless spies and armed spy forces are planted on them at every street corner.  How else can a government get even with those they do not like?  How else but by provoking them into crime and then arresting them?  Unless you can make continual trouble for citizens individually and keep them at each others' throats, then they may unite and in a screaming wave overwhelm the government!  On Earth they have developed those skills to a very fine point and practice them in every country.  Only there can our power elite learn how to do it! 

Again, Monte inexplicably develops Lombar and Hisst and Rockecenter and Bury's contempt of the "riffraff" and a desire to stomp on their faces.  The problem is that this spy stuff didn't come up during his "investigation" of Mission Earth, nor did Monte ever discuss a need for the government to adopt such tactics - in fact, he seemed quite shocked that his government would keep a secret of such magnitude.  Yet here he is, calling for more skullduggery. 

Next Monte sings the praises of Earth BEVERAGES as being far superior to tup and sparklewater in lowering inhibitions, making people see double, or taking them "into the land of I-Don't-Care" - apparently the best Voltar's drinks can do is make you "relaxed and cheerful."  Please ignore how a civilization incapable of brewing an intoxicant nevertheless called its disreputable intelligence branch the "Drunks."  Don't ask why the other 109 worlds in the Voltarian Confederacy haven't discovered alcohol.  Also ignore the author's favorable treatment of gin-running gangsters and Prohibition moonshiners during the early books on Earth.

Then Monte raves about Earth's MUSIC, particularly Punk Rock, that wild, atonal, blatantly sexual sound that could "sweep aside our too-smooth and complicated melodies and chords."  I wonder if Hubbard's minders had to carefully keep rap music away from him?  I mean, obviously they did, he didn't die before he could complete this book.

Monte next spends a paragraph dismissing the "cabal and propaganda" about DRUGS, which doesn't make a lick of sense as the majority of Voltarians don't even know such substances exist, much less that they're supposed to be bad for you.  Monte claims that he experienced marijuana, "the most powerful of these drugs," and didn't even care what the stuff did to him.  Not that it did anything to him, any negative effects are all lies and propaganda.  At any rate, "DRUGS YOU NEVER HEARD OF ARE AVAILABLE FROM EARTH!  IT IS THE SOLE SOURCE OF THE THRILLS YOU CAN EXPERIENCE!"  Because, as I must repeat one last time, Lombar Hisst was too stupid to start his own opium farms or meth labs and decided to import all his materials from Earth. 

There is, inevitably, a section on  

PSYCHOLOGY and PSYCHIATRY: These are obviously the most advanced population-control techniques ever heard of anywhere.  Imagine a government having a corps of doctors it can use to kill anyone it doesn't like and no questions asked!  That's POWER!  Imagine the boon of a state monopoly in bending the minds of children, making them into anything it wishes, even animals just grazing in the fields!

What's particularly odd about this is that in the next paragraph, Monte argues that if Dr. Crobe had been allowed to properly treat Lombar Hisst, "all would have been well!"  We could take this as Monte suggesting that things would be better of with Hisst dead, except on the next page, Monte gushes about Crobe psychoanalyzing him to solve all his problems.

It's really quite amazing - Monte wants Voltar to adopt psychology to keep the riffraff in line through lobotomies, yet wholeheartedly believes that the same techniques cured him of his own mental problems.  Which I guess can make sense, you could theoretically argue in favor of punishing your political rivals through electrical torture, then swear that electroshock therapy cured your schizophrenia.  Even if Monte just finished writing a book documenting how psychology was a scam thought up by Sigmund Freud and the Nazis to sell magazines and have sex with children, or however it went.

Speaking of SEX, Monte declares that Voltar - not just him, certainly - is woefully unenlightened and "dreadfully inhibited" when it comes to the finer points of bumping uglies.  He praises Teenie, who he never met, as a "divine Goddess" sent to lead Voltar out of the darkness of chastity, and criticizes Pratia Tayl for hoarding Teenie's teachings among her own family instead of spreading the good news.  "We could have oral sex and anal sex rampant in every salon.  We could have mass orgies.  And we could have incest as a common way of life."  Of course, we've already seen plenty of evidence that Voltar has some experience with Monte's first point, among the "deviant" segments of its population at least, and I'm pretty sure the sort of nobility that breeds an army of hunks on their private islands can dabble with the second.  As for the third, I'd like to remind everyone that Voltar is a backwards, feudal society, which historically liked to limit their breeding partners to their fellow nobles, which tends to cause problems in the long run.

Last on the list is, oddly enough, CATAMITES, and Monte declares that the "stupid fuss surrounding catamites is a cover-up in itself."  Then he gushes, as previously mentioned, about how grateful he is to Dr. Crobe for restoring his sanity by revealing that Monte was oral-erotic, and promises that as soon as this book is printed, he'll be seeking out Har from several chapters ago "and importune him or blackmail him or anything and force him to let me do it to him every day."  This would make more sense if we'd ever established that Voltar didn't have homosexuals until Lombar brought psychology to it, or that there was a "fuss" surrounding them instead of catamites existing under the radar and grossing out the Countess Krak whenever she ran into one.

Monte wraps up the first section by repeating Crobe's assertion about Heller, who is not only a schizophrenic for being Jettero Heller and the Duke of Manco, but someone who had even more names, and therefore identities, while he was on Earth.  A "schizo-schizophrenic," in other words.  "THE WHOLE OF THE VOLTAR CONFEDERACY HAS BEEN GUIDED FOR NEARLY A CENTURY BY A MAN WHO IS COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY CRAZY!"

Oh, let's forget for the moment the imagined successes of the Confederacy during that period, since they are hardly to his credit.  That Voltar, since he took over as Crown, has never lost a war is simply a tribute to the Army and Fleet, and wars have been few, remember that!  And let's not harp upon the fact that Voltar has never in her history been so prosperous internally: when everybody is employed and working cheerfully, you can't help but have prosperity.  His popularity doesn't count, for it is based on the fact that he is never in the news and there are no investigative reporters around to tell people the TRUTH!

I know that we're supposed to automatically assume the opposite of whatever Monte says, but is it really realistic to attribute all of Voltar's successes, even its economic prosperity, to our book's hero?  I can get the military stuff, 'cause Voltar's armed forces are incompetents who don't have access to Heller's hax advanced tactics and devices, but when was Heller put in charge of the economy?  What reforms did he make in that sector?

At any rate, Monte rants, with many capitalized words, that Heller is a madman denying Voltar the benefits of Earth's various delights, but reminds us that there's still time to restore the sacred inviolable-except-when-they're-violated invasion timetables and invade Earth.  He does so with a two-and-a-half page song.

What, you thought you'd make it out of here without one last example of Hubbard's lyrical genius?  Except if you decide the song sucks, in which case it's a satirical parody of bad music.

ODE TO EARTH

O Earth, O Earth, you luscious globe, 

You beckoning, wine-fat treasure-trove, 

You whet our hunger as you spin 

And lure us with your wealth to win. 

You saved my life with your PR. 

I triumph now without a scar! 

Your spy techniques are quite sublime 

And can be used to undermine. 

And who could think but to extol 

Your psych and psych for mind control. 

Which incidentally also cured me

Of my disregard for sodomy

But it's still a good tool for oppression

If my mind it also... freshened?

Who would refuse to cut their fug 

If offered some divine Earth drug?

...What the frak is a fug?

Who can deny that men will drool 

For just one shot of good white mule? 

And no musician would heed sneers 

If he had Punk Rock to drown their ears. 

110 worlds in the Confederacy and we've heard nothing from these aliens but the sort of musicals that were popular in the mid-20th century.  And on our one primitive planet we've come up with sounds and songs that blow their minds.  I'm actually okay with this.

And who, pray tell, would show aversion 

To lovely butt and mouth perversion? 

And Earth, you number in your riches 

Sex that converts girls to (bleepches). 

Did I say sex? Oh, you excel! 

Sex is the thing you do so well! 

Never has such concentration 

Been levelled at self-gratification! 

Nowhere else in the universe 

Did anyone dream that sex came first! 

Yeah, we saw all this on Voltar before we got to Earth.  Nice try, though.

We thank the Gods that you are weak 

And believe so well when your leaders speak. 

We praise to the Lords your internal squabbles. 

We'll just step in and grab your baubles! 

It is so nice you can't unite, 

For you won't offer any fight. 

We are so thankful for your schisms 

Brought on by all your social ISMS. 

For all your wealth, you stand around 

And eat suppression, finely ground. 

This is stupid.

Monte wrote the story we just read, so he knows about how Earth was when Heller got there, but he's disregarding the changes Heller made before he left - how Heller deposed the Rockecenter world-running conspiracy and gave the country over to the mob, or how Izzy turned the world into a collection of corporate states.  For all we know, the planet has been bought up by Weyland-Yutani or Wal-Mart to usher in a new era of blissful consumerism a la Battlefield Earth.

Not that the author bothered to tell us that when he had Monte conjecture-exposit what happened to all of Heller's Earth friends.  But from these verses, the author is negating everything his obnoxiously perfect hero did! 

Your leaders lead you to the slaughter. 

You're as easy to rape as a poor man's daughter! 

So we'll throw you on your back 

And insert us in your crack 

And rape and gut until you squirm 

And fill you full with our bullet sperm! 

...I don't want to read this song anymore.

And when your dead carpet the streets, 

We'll roll right in with Rocking Beats 

And loot you of your luscious hoard 

Of the wisdom and lust that I've adored. 

We'll suck you dry! 

Our thirst you'll quench 

With the dripping blood of every wench! 

And when you are then but a husk, 

To me, you'll smell like lovely musk. 

And to Voltar as slaves we'll bring 

Every virgin for a fling 

And we're the bad guys?  We're the violent perverts with the corrupt society and government?

Oh, wait, obviously Monte, like all Voltarians, was perfect and benign until exposed to Earth's corruption.  Voltar would never ravage another planet... unless it was on the invasion timetables... or rape and murder innocent civilians... unless a bunch of Voltarian criminals were unleashed onto their own population...

And have here in our native land 

All the things that made you grand! 

Until this happens, I will rave 

And beg and plead until you, slave, 

Are captured there and put in chains 

To let us pick your luscious brains. 

I wonder if Hubbard ever in his travels encountered the word tsundere?  Or maybe this is more of a yandere thing... actually, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with whatever this is to be common enough to coin a verbal shorthand for it.

And then at length establish here 

Your culture as a proud veneer 

Upon our peoples far and wide 

So that their semen runs like tide 

Up into your legs spread wide! 

For with your culture, we will nurse 

A whole enticing universe, 

And from your womb, tomorrow springs 

As you lie weeping with slashed-off wings. 

This "song" really needs to be set to some creepy, steadily-rising, psychotic string instruments, accompanied by a slow zoom-in on someone's bloodshot eye and shrunken iris.

So cower there, 

O Earth, we come! 

And we will beat the funeral drum 

For bodies slaughtered on your plain 

That died in agony and pain. 

Don't plead, O Earth, for mercy now! 

Your time has come and this I vow: 

Each thing you know we will suck up 

And toast your death with blood in cup! 

Surrender?  No, it is too late. 

Just weep while soldiers fornicate 

Upon your grave up there so high, 

So soon to be our Voltar sky. 

Earth is the bad guy.  Voltar is the good guy.  Earth is the bad guy.  Voltar is the good guy.  Earth is

But, cheer up, Earth!

When soul has flown

It will in Voltar find its home.

Your wisdom wise like graveyard flowers

Will come to us and will be ours!

So, Earth, just bare to us your breast

And let us suckle you in death!

VOLTAR!  SEEK NOT MORE OF MY PERSUASION! 

LAUNCH ON TIME THE EARTH INVASION!

THE (TRIUMPHANT) END!

This one poem just made every other song in the Mission Earth about ten times better, simply by virtue of not being some sort of horrifying rape-epic.

It's really quite astonishing.  The author started with a lame reverse "ode" to Earth's "virtues" like psychology and spies, then went and undermined any sort of goodwill we had towards Voltar by describing in lurid detail how it would conquer and brutalize us.  So we're left with two disgusting planets, except one regularly conquers other planets, but we're supposed to side with that one over our own?

Ugh.  There's too much of this to do in one sitting - tune in next time as we wrap up the final chapter.


Back to Envoi III-xx-xxi

Forward to the end of the end

Part Ninety-One, Envoi II-viii-xi - Madison's True Genius

Wha- no.  That's not how numbers work.  You don't start a new Part and a second "Envoi" but continue the lowercase Roman numerals from last chapter!  Hubbard, are you even listening to - ah, right, I'm yelling at a dead man.

After a big dinner, Monte is led into the boudoir of Pratia Tayl, who was ever-so-briefly Pratia Gris before she was "murdered" in one of the greatest news events in Voltarian history, which doesn't seem to have impacted her later life much.  Her bedroom has floating furniture, white and gold decor, and dozens of leering cupids looking down on the bed.  Tayl sits down and picks up a knitting kit, but Monte's relief proves short-lived when she still orders him to strip and get on the bed with nothing but a sheet for modesty.  Once he's in position, Tayl calls in her green-eyed, blond granddaughters Asa and Lik, twenty-one and nineteen respectively.

"Girls," said Pratia, "this is a real, live author named Monte Pennwell.  Isn't he nice?"

The girls promptly began to get out of their clothes, shedding them with an alarming speed.

I hysterically pulled the sheet up over my head!

"Now, don't get alarmed," Pratia said to me.  "They are both virgins.  I wouldn't dream of letting them indulge in actual sex.  I am just making sure I am bringing them up right.  We're very proper people: I wouldn't condone letting them touch their brothers and it's almost never that we get a nice young man to practice on."

Well... while we're getting an aggressively gratuitous sex scene, at least the author isn't having the 150-year-old crone participate, so yay?  Also, glad to see that Tayl draws the line at direct incest, even if having siblings simultaneously share the same partner isn't much better.

Monte tries to flee, but Tayl insists that "No practice, no story."  Asa leans in to give Monte a "simple, innocent kiss" that nonetheless electrifies him, while Lik... I'm trying to work out the line-of-sight required for this.  Monte's stretched out on the bed, Asa is leaning over him doing much to obstruct his view, but he can still see the floor?  Even though the bed's floating?

The girl's bare feet were visible on the floor, heels up, on the other side of the bed.

I felt my eyes roll right up into the top of my skull as a shuddering groan filled the room.

Asa giggled.

Pratia smiled happily.

Lik, kneeling on the other side of the bed, pulled her head out from under the sheet. "Oh, boy!" she panted.  "That was goooooooood!"

Pratia began threading hoops again.  "You've been a nicely behaved boy, Monte Pennwell.  So you just lie still and I will tell you the story of Relax Island."

I'm not sure if this counts as Game of Thrones-style sexposition, since it's alternating between sex and exposition rather than having Tayl talk over a "love" scene.  At any rate, that's how the next five or so chapters go.

Exposition: five years after Mortiiy's coronation, when everyone had mostly forgotten about Hisst, Relax Island, and the near-collapse of the empire, a fisherman arrived at Tayl's estate, bearing a bona fide message in a bottle promising a monetary reward if it was delivered to her.  Though it's not so much a message as it is a news story.  You can guess who wrote it.

Tell Papers Headline
 
HUGE PLAGUE WIPING OUT RELAX ISLAND

POPULATION DYING LIKE FLIES

The exile colony of Queen Teenie, Hostage Monarch of Flisten, not only imperilled but doomed! 

Unburied dead littering the roads are making an unbearable stench. 

The piteous moan of infants rends the air. 

Death stalks from the crown of Mount Teon down to the southernmost cliff, planting its crushing hooves into the guts and brains of this defenseless and shuddering population. 

No medical supplies exist. 

Unless immediate help is received, there is no hope. 

PS: For God's sakes, get this to the papers, Pratia!

Tayl did forward the story to the papers, but they never printed it.  Fortunately Prahd had opened his little side clinic in her backyard by this point, and Heller was off-planet on business, so Prahd went under the radar, contacted the Lord of Health, and cleared a humanitarian mission with Planetary Defense.  Tayl went along disguised as a nurse, because.

Sex: Asa is sobbing because "Lik had some and I didn't.  I'm all hot and frustrated and I think I'm going to have a nervous breakdown.  I'm lying here next to him and I ACHE!"  The sisters reverse positions so that Lik gives Monte a peck on the cheek (after he turns his head away from her first attempt), while Asa disappears for a bit.  Monte's eyes go round but it's Asa who groans.  I guess it truly is better to give than receive.

Exposition: Prahd and Tayl's rescue mission arrived at Relax Island during the "changing of the guard," which is to say a half-dozen guys walked out of Teenie's bedroom adjusting their clothes.  Evidently five years "hadn't changed her much," suggesting that Teenie will never finish puberty, but the "queen" was surprised to hear of the medical emergency.   Then she exploded after reading the letter.

Teenie led them to Madison's "press office," where he lived having horrifying non-incestuous dubiously-consenting intercourse with Flip, found the man in bed, and started hitting him with a chain for risking having them all evacuated from their sticky, sexy paradise.  The punchline: Madison had a mere cold/allergy but was feeling seriously ill for lack of headlines.  Teenie tore open his skull with her chain.  This is humor.

"Madison broke down and wept.  'All my genius is gone,' he said.  'Ever since I began to sleep with Flip, I am deserted by real ideas.  I started to PR the governor and almost got him executed and then Teenie found out and put me in a dungeon for three awful weeks.  I'm a failure.  I can't even get a minor revolt going!  She won't even let me start up a paper!' 

After fixing Madison's horrifying head injury, Prahd gave him something for impotence and stuck around doctoring the locals, while Tayl moved in with Teenie to learn the way of the slut.  Monte is surprised that Prahd didn't get jealous, since all of Pratia's children have his eyes and hair, but Tayl insists that he's too professional to (bleep) his patients.  Underage nurses are a different story, of course.  Teenie ended up teaching Tayl every last filthy Earth sex trick in exchange for fifty years' worth of fuel rods, since Relax Island was in danger of running out and Teenie needed them to power the "necessary screens and probes" to train the island's female population.  Tayl eventually graduated "Magna Cum Loud," hur hur hur.

???: A moment where Monte is unable to understand what Tayl is saying until he realizes he hasn't gone insane, but the naked girls lying to either side of him had covered his ears with pillows.  Might be humor, or possibly a way to censor Tayl until she reached the "Magna Cum Loud" part of her sex education.  Not sure why you'd need to do this if the book has an in-universe censor.  It's kind of a dumb little section.

Exposition: Monte asks about Gris, but Tayl claims that "Teenie might get angry but she was never cruel" and probably got bored after tearing out a few of Gris' fingernails, and when Tayl asked her about him Teenie just shrugged with disinterest.  So after all we went through to appease Teenie, all that garbage with Madison and the media trials, all that sideplot... she lost interest in her torture toy in a week or less.

For all the deviant sex in these books, I think the author's real fetish is for wasting the audience's time.

The more important thing is what happened after Tayl and Prahd got the shipment of fuel rods sent over.  Three days later there was a tremendous earthquake and tsunami, and "RELAX ISLAND HAD BEEN BLOWN TO BITS!"

Heller returned and immediately questioned Prahd, who insisted that the fuel was all stored in separate containers, and he had very specifically told them not to stack them in one huge explosive pile.

"And Jettero said, 'I know what happened.  Madison said he'd put it on the map: he didn't.  He took it off forever.  It was only a volcanic bubble.  I warned Teenie.  Madison blew up Relax Island just to get a headline!'

"And the sad part of it was," said Pratia, "he didn't even get a single mention of it in the papers.  Not even his own obituary.  And that was the end of all of them, and Relax Island, too." 

This is what I meant about Hubbard's cake.  He was able to paint Heller in a merciful light by having our hero merely "exile" Teenie and the Catamites to an island paradise where they could party all the time, party all the time, party all the time.  But to ensure that these monsters got their just deserts, he had Madison kill them all in an achingly stupid publicity stunt.  It's neat, convenient, and basically cheating.

On another note, Madison was literally too dumb to live.  The Confederacy was nearly destroyed by a suicidal attention whore.  The book's most successful bad guy, the one who enabled the other antagonists to come as close as they did to victory, blew himself up for a headline.

This does not make the villains look dangerous, Hubbard.  This does not make the heroes look awesome for overcoming such deadly foes.  If your bad guy can be defeated if you ignore him for long enough, he's not bringing much to your story, is he?  Or if he is, what does that say about the rest of the story?


Back to Part Ninety, Envoi I-v-vii

Forward to Part Ninety-One, Envoi II-xii-xiv

Part Eighty-Three, Chapters Three and Four - Lombar Gives His All for the Confederacy

Madison's Homeview minions release the palace staff, who have been locked in their rooms for months, so they can help get the throne room all set up for Lombar's coronation.  One of Madison's crew is in charge of costumes, others work on lighting, there's all the circus folk to be coached on how to behave during the performance, etc.

In case you were wondering about the setting:

The vast domed hall was a thousand feet in diameter and a hundred feet from golden floor to sky-blue ceiling.  On the dais solidly sat the mammoth throne of Voltar, of shimmering violet stone inset with jewels.  It was dusty and as cold as a tomb.  It took two hundred staff half an hour to sweep it down and polish it up.

It's no Volkshalle, but it's a start I guess.

Meanwhile Lombar is still bluescreening in the antechamber, wondering how the Emperor's absence got leaked to the public.  Madison speculates that Lombar's drug intake made him talk in his sleep, and gives him another hit of LSD-laced booze, which should be working in about twenty minutes.  Lombar also gives last-minute commands to the departing Fleet and Army, ordering them to kill everything on Calabar since Hisst is "pretty certain" the Emperor is already dead.  And Madison is, of course, still hugging himself over the headlines to come.

At that moment, despite earlier setbacks, he was absolutely certain that he would shortly have the most immortal outlaw anyone had ever heard of.  Eventually, of course, Heller-Wister would be caught and hanged but that always happened to outlaws and was to be expected.  Meanwhile, what headlines!  And, oh, my, wouldn't Mr. Bury be pleased!  Red carpets for Madison the length and breadth of what might remain of Earth.

See, Madison's admitting the Earth will probably be totally destroyed in the wake of the Apparatus invasion, so the smart thing would be to have him throw in with the winning side and focus on making Lombar famous - which would work because Madison always destroys the people he tries to help.  He could even keep working on Heller this way, making him an outlaw not out of a mindless devotion to his last job, but because Lombar wants the Fleet and Army to go after him.  The character could've made sense, Hubbard!  The plot could've worked!  Why did you have to embrace the stupidity?!

By Chapter Four they're ready to begin.  Flip and other circus girls come in to strip Lombar, naturally commenting on his "nice (bleep)" before putting him in some celestial-decorated "shimmerfabric" robes.  Lombar's still balking because it is of course death for a lowly non-Royal to don a Royal robe, so Madison gives him more LSD.

Now, I don't know much about recreational drugs beyond that I won't be able to win any arcade games if I use them, but Madison informs us that when LSD first kicks in, "Set," or the state of the user's mind, becomes important, so he assures Lombar that he's "the most powerful being in the universe."  Or maybe it's "Setting," as Lombar is led into the throneroom with music blaring and holographic crowds of Lords bowing and scraping.  Why doesn't the Apparatus use these sort of illusions when it comes to blackmailing people?  Why didn't Madison rig up a virtual Heller to run around and make headlines?  Would the plot be any different if this was a crowd of Homeview extras forced at gunpoint to play dress-up?

Live on streaming video, Lombar is led before the imperial throne.  A "pontiff" and "priests" of Voltar's nameless, generic deities perform rites over the kneeling despot and hang him with gilded iron regalia.  Lombar bends the papier-mâché imperial scepter, forcing someone to run on-set and straighten it.   Boggle at how we've got true-to-life holograms in the same room with high school theater supplies.  The whores dressed as priests forget the crown, hurriedly retrieve the still-wet gold-painted prop, and inexpertly stick it on Lombar's head before reciting the sacred words "I think it will stay on" to the whole Confederacy.

In case you haven't noticed yet, this is intentionally farcical, unlike the rest of the book, which is unintentionally so.

Madison suddenly realizes he forgot to write the announcement speech for this occasion.  Someone trips over a wire and unplugs something important.  With nothing going on, Lombar starts to get restless on his throne.  And at this point any humor from these pages has since faded, making the reader almost feel sorry for this pathetic group of people utterly failing in their attempt to put on a dignified ceremony.  But that doesn't last long: Flip notices Lombar getting antsy and so sticks her hands through an unseen slit in the sides of his robes.

Lombar's yellow eyes flared for a moment in surprise.

Flip, hand and forearm hidden now through the robe slit, sat facing forward with an expression which was very lofty and noble.

Lombar settled down.  He put his head back.  A look of ecstasy began to steal over his features.

The lofty and noble expression on Flip's face was retained. But her eyes flicked sidewise for a moment and then her eyelids began to twitch in rhythm.

And just like that, the sympathy is gone, and things get uncomfortable, if not gross.

The electronics get replugged, and while Lombar is... being convinced to remain seated, "four, count them, four" holographic angels swoop down to declare that "Well, Hisst, old boy, you finally made it and it's about time!"  Hisst is now very happy with the world, and the camera focuses on his face.  Madison finally takes up a mic.

"Ladies and Gentlemen of the Voltar Confederacy," he said, "we have just brought you live, live, live, the crowning of Lombar the Magnificent.  Due to circumstances beyond our control, a hiatus has occurred in the Royal line of Voltar.  The outlaw Jettero Heller stole Cling the Lofty and it was vital during this time of national unrest that the throne be filled.  In a self-sacrificing moment, Lombar Hisst, lately Chief of the Apparatus and more lately Dictator of Voltar, heeded the resounding demands of the multitude and took the throne by popular acclaim.  This program has been brought to you by the courtesy of the Grand Council.  Long Live Lombar the Magnificent.  He will give his all."

And at that moment, Lombar did give his all.  Flip's hidden efforts came to culmination.  "Oooh!" groaned Lombar as his body gave a convulsive jerk.  Flip grinned.

So... uh... humor?  Or is this for our titillation?  Or a sign of just how depraved the bad guys are?  Or maybe it's a case of "it's in the book, you read it, now deal with it."  

The director held upon the face a moment more while Lombar panted.

"Cut," the director said.  "That was beautiful!"

Sir, I contest your statement.  Tune in next time for the Confederacy's reaction to Lombar's imperial O-face.


Back to Chapters One and Two 

Forward to Chapter Five

Part Seventy-Two, Chapter Seven - Teenie Pushes a Guy's Buttons

Madison is a flat-out terrible viewpoint character for these chapters.  He's the guy who, as a five-year-old boy, ended up sleeping with his mother in a non-wholesome sense because psychology, but right now his role in the story is to gawk and say things like the boys in the audience are "much too young to be subjected to female nakedness, even that as immature as Teenie's."  If you're going to subject your audience to a world of rape, murder, and sexual deviancy, at least be consistent with it.

Anyway, on with Teenie's technical demonstration.  She goes over to a wheeled display board (computer screens?  projectors? not in this advanced alien civilization) bearing a picture of a nude dude.  She jokes about the artist drawing the (bleep) too large and drops a pun about getting "the point," then points out the 172 little X's she's drawn on the body.

"They are called the erotic spots.  Touching them or manipulating them can bring about sexual stimulation, prolong it or cool it off."  Jabbing with her scepter she rattled them off, for each one had a name.  English?  Chinese?  She turned to the assemblage, quite out of breath, and smiled.  "I know it seems an awful lot, but nevertheless, you must know each one and know just how to use it."

Wait, you may ask, aren't these guys aliens?  Sure, they look human, but their internal biology must be different, since Heller has microscope vision while Voltarians are allegedly super-suspectible to drugs.  Who's to say this anatomy lesson is applicable to both species?  And what about variations in sensitivity between individuals within those species?  Surely everyone has different sweet spots?

Shut the hell up, says the author, you'll miss all the underage sex acts.

"You will see these boards again in subsequent evening classes.  The palace artist, who is a very splendid fellow really, despite his exaggerated idea of (bleeps)..."  She paused to let their laughter pass. "He offered to make copies of this for you, but the information is secret. So these boards will be placed in the basement near the rear portcullis and you can slip in and out to your heart's content and study them"

Geddit?  'cause the boys are gay?

Next Teenie asks for a volunteer - a virginal volunteer, 'cause that's important.  She picks one lucky fifteen-year-old, who is soon stripped by Teenie's two assistants.  And then the magic begins.

"Now behold!"  She pointed with her scepter to the boards.  Then with one finger she touched a spot on the boy near the spine.

INSTANT RESPONSE!

The audience gasped.

It's either use a euphemism or just (bleep) things as usual.  I guess Madison really is selectively prudish.

Teenie pointed at the boards with her scepter. Then she touched a spot on the lower outside right thigh.

THE RESPONSE DEFLATED!

The audience groaned.

Again Teenie indicated the boards and then, with one finger, touched the lower middle lip of the boy's mouth.

RESPONSE OCCURRED AT ONCE!

She gestured at the charts and then she touched the side of the boy's neck.

THE RESPONSE GREW BIGGER AND STAYED!

Guess I'm eating my words about a girl being able to give sex tips to gay guys.  Also, try not to use all these devastating sexual tricks for evil purposes, like tapping people on the shoulder so they embarrass themselves in public.

Once more she pointed at the chart.  Then with one light finger she touched a spot at the lower center of the boy's pubic hair.  His eyes rolled up, his chin thrust forward, he gave an ecstatic groan.

HE (BLEEPULATED)!

Gasps echoed in the audience like an echo of the groan.  Then there were cries of amazement and suddenly wild applause.

But Teenie wasn't through.

Wish the author was.

She touched a spot at the base of his throat.  He straightened up.

ANOTHER RESPONSE!

Gasps of astonishment slid through the hall.

Teenie leaned over and touched his ear with her tongue.

ANOTHER (BLEEPULATION)!

The crowd went mad!

I've just got a dull feeling.  Sure, this is probably enough to get the book thrown out, but it's certainly not the worst we've seen.  At least this is consensual, and the participants are close to the same age.

Thoroughly (bleeped) out, the test subject drops to his knees, expresses his adoration of Queen Teenie, and swears his eternal allegiance to this girl with the magic touch.  She dismisses him, but promises that her two assistants will soon relieve him of his virginity.  The crowd choruses "Long Live Your Majesty," bowed heads and bent knees, glowing adoration, etc.

Madison was torn between revulsion at what she had just demonstrated and sheer awe at the power she had over these misguided youths.  Oh Lord, he prayed, if I could just somehow channel this INFLUENCE in handling Heller!

It's going to take another fifty pages for us to see how Madison hopes to use these... pages for his own purposes.  He'll employ them for one chapter, get his position as Lombar's media specialist, and spend the remainder of the story playing reporter, with the royal pages being mentioned maybe twice in the rest of the book.

But, this gave the author an excuse to write about a preteen girl touching underage boys on a stage in front of an audience, so here we are.  It's plot-relevant depravity, you see.  It shows how... y'know, psychology.  And satire.  Just imagine how awful it'd have been if Lombar had agreed immediately to Madison's request for funding, allowing him to go straight to his PR shennanigans rather than watch Teenie play around for sixty pages.  With dozens of pages.


Back to Chapter Six

Forward to Chapter Eight

Part Fifty-Three, Chapter Two - The (Possibly) True Origin of Teenie Whopper

So Gris contacts Rockecenter's chief, not to say "two of your employees are blackmailing me into attempting to reverse Psychiatric Birth Control" or anything, but to ask for a "résumé of your file on Teenie Whopper."  So we get our fourth account of Teenie's history, solving the mystery of her past, assuming her character was in any way compelling rather than repellent. 

Teenie's parents, Hazel and Shaker Whopper, are con artists still active in Canada who specialized in the badger game... huh, that's a real thing.  Anyway, because this book is a hilarious sci-fi espionage satirical romantic thriller, Teenie's parents forced their underaged daughter to extort money form victims after being photographed performing oral sex on them.  This went on until they tried it on Judge Hammer Twist, who had cops waiting, declared the Whoppers unfit parents, and assigned the girl a court-appointed guardian, who died three years ago of alcoholism.  She was expelled from school half a year ago, hired by Rockecenter, and subsequently fired.

So that's the true? backstory of Teenie!  Nobody asked for it, and nobody wants Teenie in the story, but here it is, taking up pages. (editor's note from the future: well, the author wants her in the story.  Hubbard's got big plans for Teenie in Book Nine and Ten, you'll see)

Gris is thrilled when the security chief is able to give him psychiatric case numbers and the name of her psychologist - "Oh, Gods, had I hit the jackpot!  A child pawn in a sex blackmail game.  And a mental problem!  I was IN!"  He then calls up Judge Hammer Twist to seek more information.  The Judge mentions that Teenie was just in an order "enjoining some Turkish nut from murdering her," but instead of asking him to rescind that order on authority granted by Rockecenter himself, Gris asks if Teenie did "anything irregular" with the Judge.  The answer is "of course not."  Wow, Teenie was not entirely truthful.  "A really pathological case.  And DANGEROUS!"

So Gris calls Teenie's psychologist, who remembers the brat because she "went in the locker room must before the biggest game of the seasons and went down on the whole football team.  Weakened them.  They lost, of course."  Thanks, Hubbard.  But no, Teenie was never his assistant, she is in fact a teller of falsehoods.

Then Gris calls Teenie's psychiatrist, who remembers his old hyperactive patient and his textbook treatment of the problem.

"She didn't ever go down on you, did she?"

"(Bleep) no!  The proper treatment for hyperactivity is sexual release, of course.  You put the patient on a table, strapped down, and use a hand vibrator.  In the case of girls, of course, you might have to give them kisses to provide oral stimulation to get them started.  But I assure you, the vibrator produces a perfectly acceptable orgasm or ejaculation in any child.

Thanks, Hubbard.

Fun fact, though, this was actually an old treatment of female "hysteria."

Did she say I had her go down on me?"

"She certainly did."

"That's absurd.  Why should I want a little girl to go down on me when I have my hands absolutely full of young boys that have to be converted to homos?  Why would you use girls to do that when you've got so many boys to do it?  Makes no sense!"

Thanks, Hubbard.

"So she lies," I said.

"Of course," he said.

And it's taken Gris this long to come to grips with the fact, because he keeps asking for confirmation.

So Gris finally asks whether this guy will sign an order committing Teenie to an asylum, but  the psychiatrist is outraged at the very thought.  See, Teenie is on file for "symptoms permanently submerged, have seldom seen a child so hollow-eyed and (bleeped) up, skin and bone."  A successful case, in other words.  Having her committed would imply that the wonderful science of psychology can potentially fail.  The guy hangs up angrily at the very thought... wait, the psychologists last chapter were trying to get their patient to develop a neurosis.  Bah, whatever.

And now, Gris will pretend that this is part of an interesting and meaningful conflict.

But Teenie Whopper?

A pawn trained by experts in the badger game from infancy.

Thanks, Hubbard.

A confirmed pot smoker.

That actually reduces the threat level.

A pathological liar racing around ruining everyone's reputation.

That's no more exciting than gossiping housewives.

She could get me sterilized and sent to prison to be (bleeped) by homo cons.

That can be chalked up to your staggering stupidity, really.

DANGEROUS!  She made Jack the Ripper look like a saint!

I guess this is the problem with showing us what the villain's doing up until the point the hero defeats him.  Having run out of things for Gris to do, Hubbard is forced to come up with subplots like Teenie's to keep Gris' story going, while Heller sits on a boat miles off the coast of the Plot.

I had passed by my last opportunity to murder her.  I couldn't strangle her now without going to prison if she vanished.

So you vanish.  Get a fetching nosejob back in Afyon and come back to New York as Sultan Bey's second cousin Emir Caliph or something.  Stay away from ex-lesbian masochists with an uncomfortably open-minded approach to teen sex.  Problem solved.

I couldn't possibly leave her alive to ruin me with lies and photos.  And I couldn't kill her.  All solutions were blocked.

Hell, it's been established that Voltarian science has spray-on melanin dispensers, so you could come back as a black guy.  You said yourself that nobody in American can tell black people apart.  Good disguise, huh?  No?

I began to feel sort of insane.

I couldn't stay here with homos pawing at me.

I couldn't leave.

Yes you could.

Yet I had to leave.

So you should.

If I left, Teenie and a warrant for rape could reach me and finish me wherever I went.

You're not listening to me, are you?

Suddenly, bravely, I realized I could not just sit there and go crazy.

I must get a plan.  I must get a plan.  I must get a plan!

So he just sits there and watches Heller's viewscreen.  When Gris says "plan," you see, he means "sit around until INSPIRATION strikes." (editor's note from the future: that's actually the overarching theme of this book)


Back to Chapter One

Forward to Chapter Three

Part Fifty-Two, Chapter One - This Does Not Bode Well for the Rest of the Book

If you were to ascribe to the theory that the author wrote this book by the seat of his pants, without bothering to plan ahead or go back and revise or god forbid cut things to tighten the story, look no further than this chapter.  Last chapter, remember, saw Gris marshaling his forces to stop the Countess Krak from going after the Whiz Kid's fake "wives."  It was a tense race to get a trap set before the Countess mind-controlled her way through another problem.

This chapter kicks off Voyage o' Vengeance with Gris turning on Krak's viewer to see her in a dark place with a stack of clothes.  He can't make out anything of interest, so he decides to watch Dr. Crobe's viewer.

So, uh, we interrupt this attempt to set a trap for a protagonist with a second-hand psychology lecture.

And what a lecture it is!  "Dr. Phetus P. Crobe" is introduced to great applause, and none other than Rockecenter himself is in attendance in a box seat.  At the doctor's signal, a visibly pregnant woman is wheeled in, strapped to her stretcher and screaming how she'd been kidnapped because her husband wanted to run off with another woman.

Crobe sternly slapped his hand across the woman's mouth.  To the attendant he snarled, "I told chu to gag her.  She iss inderruding a scientific lecdure!"

With his other hand he gave a signal.  Another machine was raced onto the stage.  Attendants promptly clamped electrodes to her head.  Crobe grasped a handle on the machine and then, hastily snatching his hand from the woman's mouth, slammed the lever down.  Letters on his viewer flashed

PLEASURE

Aren't you glad Gris whimsically installed that feature?  I mean, since we can't see Crobe's face due to the bugging equipment looking through his eyes, we wouldn't be able to tell how he felt about all this otherwise.  That might open up the possibility that he felt REMORSE or RELUCTANCE and save us the difficulty of inferring his emotions based on his actions or words.

Volts crackled and arced.  The woman's body bowed.  There was the grind and snap as she crushed her own teeth.  She lay still.  Crobe lifted the lever, gave a wave of his hand, and the attendants disconnected the machine and sped away.

In "GOOD HUMOR" now that his patient has been cured of "the insanity uf objecding," Crobe continues with his presentation.  He gets an oath of horror from Rockecenter by revealing that, during the patient's examination, he discovered she was "PREGNANTED!"  This is of course criminal insanity due to "de black widowed spider gene t'eory uf woman's evolution," something first proposed by the learned Dr. Kutzbrain.  But now Crobe can prove it, because "De fetus at de crucial stage uf evolutionary development ASSUMES DE VORM DAT BROOFS DE T'EORY!"

Pause for dramatic effect, allow the reader to wonder if the author's really going to go there, aaaaand

He seized an enormous knife.  He brought it down with a powerful slash across the woman's belly.

Flesh parted!

Blood spurted!

Crobe got two huge clamps and pulled the flesh and entrails away.

He grabbed some huge pincers.  He reached in.

HE PULLED OUT A TARANTULA!

The wriggling black shape was hairy and huge!

It leaped from the pincers and, fully eight inches tall, raced across the stage!

The audience screamed!

We're in the first chapter and the author's killed a kidnapped, pregnant woman and ripped the spider-fetus from her body.

Now, something I didn't notice last post - there's no blurbs between the cover and the introduction and crap.  There are only three quotes on the back cover, the L.A. Daily News saying "he'll sure roll them in the aisle," the Kansas City Star calling the book "a wildly wicked and deliciously cynical work... a hilariously satirical view of society."  George Clayton Johnson, author of Logan's Run, apparently thinks Hubbard's up there with Jack London, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Dashiell Hammett.  But that's all the positive press the publishers have for it.  So either they ran out of friendly reviews to use, or realized that nobody who made it this far was going to be swayed by another two and a half pages of critical encouragement.  Guess if you make it through Torpedo and Teenie you're in for the long haul.

This means I have to ironically juxtapose Crobe ripping a spider out of a woman's belly with a quote from the previous volume of Mission Earth, in which none other than Orson Scott Card called the book "ironic, exciting, romantic and hilarious."  And that's not really fair, he probably wasn't referring to this book.  Maybe for him Mission Earth is ironic, exciting, romantic and hilarious except for "that book where the guy ripped a spider out of that pregnant lady."

Crobe pulls out "a homemade laser-beam gun he must have fashioned" to blast the spider.  Nobody reacts to the fact that this funny foreign doctor just pulled out a laser gun despite living in a society that still uses ballistic weapons, though this is probably because they're still reacting to the tarantula that very same doctor just tore from a woman's belly.

An attendant whispered, "That woman is dead."

"Serves her rightd!" bellowed Crobe.  "She hadt intercourses mit a male!"  To the audience he roared, "De Psychiadric Birt' Condrol iss de mos' bital brogram dat hoomanidy hass ever had!  SUBBORTD ITD!"

Rockecenter was on his feet, applauding hysterically.  This single clapping was not, however, spreading to the large assembled audience.

The Security Chief gave a signal.

All around the vast auditorium, security men levelled automatic weapons at the staff.

"APPLAUD!" roared the Security Chief.

The staff applauded hastily.

So hey, it looks like only a minority of quack physicians actually support the "voluntary extinction through mandatory homosexuality" plan, which of course we surmised from the actions of other psychiatrists in earlier books  And Gris doesn't even try to explain the whole spider thing, trusting the reader to remember last book when Crobe made a snake come out of a guy's brain using alien cellology.  And we'd already heard that psychiatry was taking in patients against their will and murdering them.  So this chapter told us absolutely nothing new!  Thanks, Hubbard!

Crobe leaves, and Gris tries to tie this interlude into the current plot by hoping that Krak ends up in a similar institution.

Oh, what a pleasure it would be to see her corpse as mangled and dead as the one on the stage!

(Bleep)* her!

The asterisk is of course for a footnote reminding us that, to protect the poor robots translating this book for us, all the curse words have been (bleeped) out.  Because in a story where a mad doctor pulls a tarantula out of a woman's uterus or the main character has sex with underaged women or rapes other women in revenge for being tortured as part of some heavy BDSM lesbian action or a necrophiliac hired killer defiles a corpse before his own mother blows his head apart with a shotgun and fake lesbians talk about having sex with farm animals and a mob boss invokes the power of Satan against the soul of her enemy and psychiatrists rape their patients and mobsters bomb parking garages full of federal investigators and the hero slices people apart with spiked cleats, we don't want some foul fucking language upsetting readers' delicate sensibilities.


Back to the Cover and Introduction

Forward to Part Fifty-Two, Chapter Two

Part Fifty-One, Chapter Three - Ancient Chinese Secret

This is not a fun chapter.  This is a chapter where the first-person narrator describes sex with what is optimistically a fifteen-year-old girl.

Gris is still all achy and hungover, especially after confusing some vodka for water and chugging too much before realizing.

Consequently, I have no slightest recollection of what had gone on that evening.  If there were two lesbians who had then become ex-lesbians, I could not tell you to this day. 

Are we supposed to be rooting for Gris?  Should we be worried at the prospect that two lesbians spent a night with him and left without switching teams?  Oh, and what did they look like?  How butch was the "husband," Hubbard?  How girlie was the "wife?"  What were their hair colors?  This is important.

The next day Gris takes an aspirin and checks on Crobe, who's mood-reading doodad declares "SATISFACTION" as he gives electroshock therapy to mental patients until they're wheeled to the morgue.  "Normal Earth psychiatric duties," Gris notes.  Krak's viewscreen is blank, so Gris puts her out of mind because that can only mean she's far away and out of range.  More on that later.  Heller's in physical training with the floating mansion's Sports Director, who praises him for being able to "run up to the top of the mainmast and down ten times without stopping," putting him in much better shape than most CIA agents.  The guy also points out the skies and water as proof that they're in the Gulf Stream, so Gris assumes the boat's in the Caribbean already, the logistics of which make his hangover worse.  More on that later, too.

Gris takes a nap instead of putting the pieces together, poor hungover guy.  Hours later, in what he thinks is a nightmare, he notices some music.  Well, "music."

Do it in the morning.

Do it in the night.

Do it to me, baby

And do it right.

Do it in the water.

Do it in the clouds.

Do it long and tenderly

And make me proud.

Do it, do it, do it!

And do it once again.

Write a day of ecstasy

With your lovely pen.

Do it, do it, do it!

Don't be shy!

Do it, do it, do it!

And gaze up at the sky.

For this must be heaven,

You can hear the angels cry,

"Do it, do it, do it!"

So open up your fly!

Thought psychology was cold and atheist, though.  And if it's trying to turn everyone gay, they should be more specific who we're supposed to be doing it to. 


As Gris notices the music, he also grows aware of a "moist, delightful sensation," which he likes, before he realizes there's something covering his eyes.  Surprise.  "TEENIE!" 

She snuck in through the back door - again - and decided to uphold her part of the "never see you again" bargain by putting a blindfold on Gris before mounting up.  Gris demands she get off him without making an effort to actually remove her, but she doesn't budge, instead talking about the training she's been getting from that Chinese hooker.  Things involving muscles, in places.

"Feel this."

She sat perfectly still, apparently, but inside her there was a gentle stroking feeling.

"That's just one internal muscle moving," she said.  "It's the yummy-yum muscle.  All the muscles have names.  If I set another one opposite it going, you would (bleepulate) and we don't want that so quick.  So, pretty good for a street urchin, right?  I can see that you liked it.  Right now I'm holding you in the 'whoa-boy' position that prevents a 'too-soon.'  Oh, I feel I am getting somewhere, now."

I share this because part of me still can't believe that someone actually published this.  Now, I think the best strategy is to lean back in your chair or across your bed, and pour the bleach directly into your eyes.  With luck enough will get behind the eyeball to soak the brain as well.

Teenie mentions how proud her parents will be of her, explaining that they're serving life sentences for a failed assassination attempt on the president, and this time her sexual exploitation started at the hands of a judge.  Gris notices but does not call attention to her different story, instead telling her to get out, while again making no effort to make his wishes a reality.  Instead Teenie moves another muscle, and we get another "things exploding on shelves" Hubbard Sex Scene.

An errant bee wandered in from the garden, buzzed in circles round and round at the window.

A potted plant began to spin.

The buzz of the bee went up and down in volume.

"This is 'rickshaw boy, chop, chop," said Teenie in a strained voice.

The potted plant swung faster.  "Now I'll let you!" Teenie cried.

The potted plant exploded.

The bee soared off into the sky but it wasn't its buzz I was hearing.  It was the expiring croon of Teenie.  She raised her eyes to me triumphantly.  "Oh, boy," she said, "now I think even you will agree that I will amount to something when I'm fully educated."

This is, of course, satirizing how psychology is so unholy and sensual as to turn girls just out of their tweens into sexpots.  It's vital to the story.  Without it, we can't fully appreciate just how depraved psychology is.  The statutory rape is part of the satire.  Gotta have it.  Mission Earth wouldn't work without it.

Three exploding flower pots later, Miss Pinchy wakes Gris up and chides him for having "wet dreams" when there's a blonde and brunette lesbian waiting to be cured - and thanks for the hair colors, Hubbard, I'm trying to keep a spreadsheet of Gris' sexual conquests.  She gives Gris a hit of a bong, some gin, and an upper pill and sends him on his way.  Once again Gris has no memory of the night's events, but he wakes up at three in the morning screaming about the Fates being all around him, armed with drugs.  His wives give him a sleeping pill, but that doesn't mean he was wrong!

That very afternoon, I had missed my second opportunity to kill Teenie.  And the horror of it is, I didn't even realize it until much later--fatally MUCH later!

So Book Seven "later?"  Or more of a Book Nine "later?"  (editor's note from the future: Book Nine) Also is "kill Teenie" a real subplot or hyperbole about how much she annoys you?  And what are you gonna do, hire another hitman?  Maybe try to get Teenie in the papers so a jealous love interest kills her? 

And right then, had I had my wits about me, I might have seen another Fate face grinning at me ghoulishly.

I didn't even think of Freud and his unerring analysis of dreams.  Frankly, I will be candid, that omission was the only mistake I ever made in my professional career.  Oh, I could weep tears of blood as I recall it now.  One should never desert his Gods as I deserted Freud that night.  Even two minutes spent on dream analysis would have told me of horrors to come that even now I have difficulty facing.

It's Krak.  Krak turns out to be in the same city as Gris, taking care of Heller's problems in her own special way.  You can do the horned lizard thing if you want to, though if you're the type to bleed from the eyes, that's not the part of this chapter that should have caused it.


Back to Chapter Two

Forward to Chapter Four