"Hey, that's too like the Rockecenter family," said Heller. "It might be dangerous to leave him in charge of the planet."
"Well, there's one saving grace, darling. He thinks the sun rises and sets on his brother, Jet. He'll do anything you say."
"Wait," Heller said. "I know he seems to like me but I didn't think it went that far."
"Oh, yes. You're very charming, you know. And also, strangely enough, ever since he met Izzy, Twoey is absolutely terrified of doing something that Izzy does not like."
"Whoa," said Heller. "Much as I admire him, this is the first time I ever heard of anything being terrified of Izzy Epstein."
Very primly, the Countess said, "Well, it's a fact!"
Heller looked at her suspiciously. "Dear, are you sure you aren't tampering with Twoey's basic personality?"
"Me, Jettero?" she said.
Oh, she might fool Heller. She might blind the rest of the world with her innocent face and extreme beauty. But she didn't fool me. I saw through her plot at once!
She was preparing a puppet emperor for Earth just so she could go home and get married! Women will stoop to anything to gain their foul and despicable ends. She was even putting up with pig aroma just to eventually get her own way!
The newspaper lay neglected when they left the table. I knew Madison. It was really just as well that they did not suspect the trap he must be baiting.
The very next day, I could not buy all the papers. My money was running out. And it was a shame not to have every single front page, New York and across the world. For that sterling, priceless Madison, doing anything to retain his front page, as I knew he eventually would, sprung his trap.
The story was absolutely gorgeous!
Headlines! Big ones! Glaring!
WHIZ KID NAMED IN PATERNITY SUIT
FARMER'S DAUGHTER SUES FOR $2 BILLION!
Attorneys Dingaling, Chase and Ambo today filed a two-billion-dollar suit against Wister, the Whiz Kid, on behalf of Maizie Spread of Corn-hole, Kansas, stating paternity out of wedlock had been malfeased.
Alleging that the notorious outlaw continuously rolled her in the hay while hiding out on her father's farm, to which he came a year ago, the innocent girl said, sobbing, in a press conference
attended by all media, "I could not resist his wiles. In my innocence I did not understand that he was not really trying to protect my milk-white complexion from the sun by lying on me. I didn't get knocked up for five months but now, much to my embarrassment, I'm all swole up with child."
The Whiz Kid could not be reached for comment. His attorneys, Boggle, Gouge and Hound, said that they were not available for comment.
Rumor is rife that the Whiz Kid has fled to Canada, a fact regarded by legal experts as tacit acknowledgment of guilt.
Oh, what a story! And the other papers, particularly the sexier ones, went into wild orgies of description of what had happened. One even pictured the Whiz Kid as dancing in the moonlight with rabbits all around and shouting to them, "Come, come! Let me protect you from the sun! With fifty strokes!"
SCANDAL!
The trap was sprung!
Eagerly I hung on to my viewers to witness the inevitable blowup. The Countess Krak was prone to jealousy. One glimpse of that paternity story would blow the lid off. She might simply leave him!
I watched while they breakfasted. I watched while the butler laid the paper on the table. I watched while they got up and were helped into their coats. I saw them leave their penthouse condo without ever a backward glance toward that paper.
Oh, well. Sometimes the radio was played in the Rolls Royce Silver Spirit. And this morning, news bulletins about the suit were coming on every fifteen minutes: Madison was doing a masterly job of coverage.
But this morning, the Countess Krak told Bang-Bang, who was riding in the front seat while she and Heller rode in back, to put "a good tape cassette on" and he, of course, left to his own choice, put on the Italian opera Rigoletto, where everybody kills everybody and even drowns them in a sack still singing. It wasn't the kind of blood I wanted.
At the office, Heller sat down at his big white desk and put in a call to Florida. Right in front of him, folded, lay the morning papers.
The Countess Krak sat down on the arm of an interview chair, watching him patiently. Right in her line of view were those fatal newspapers, folded up but available.
Heller apparently had a lease line to Ochokeechokee and he went into a lot of chatter about some regulation they'd come up against down there about the allowable heights of stacks in swamps. It seemed that a "propulsion stack" had to be at least five hundred feet high to get "impulsion."
"They've got to blow rings," he said. "Big green rings of spores. If they are not propelled high enough, they won't reach the stratospheric winds. One goes every minute and if the stacks are any shorter, the perfection of the ring will foul and the resultant tumble will
impede successive firings. They have to be five hundred feet tall."
The contractor at the other end was very unhappy with Florida regulations but said that was what they said.
"They sell sunshine down there," said Heller. "With all the soot and gases in the atmosphere, it's getting pretty dim. Put some pressure on them. Make them see that it's good sense to clean up the world's air."
"Good sense has nothing to do with it," said the contractor. "It's just what's written in the little books the Florida State Inspectors carry. But I'll tell you what I will do: I'll send a lawyer to Tallahassee to talk to the governor. Maybe we can get a waiver on the regulation."
Heller had to be satisfied with that. He clicked off and looked up. He saw the Countess was still sitting there. He said, "Isn't your class ready?"
"Yes, dear," she said. "All fifty of them, some of them the country's best electronic engineers. You didn't give me the notes you made last night."
"Oh, I'm sorry," said Heller. He reached right across the newspapers to an attache case, opened it and brought out a sheaf of notes. He handed them to her.
She glanced at them and then gave him a kiss and walked out the door.
She went down the hall and halted at a sign which said:
Power, Power, Power, Inc.
She straightened her jacket, opened the door and walked in.
The large office had been converted to a temporary classroom. It was filled with men of various ages, ranged
in school chairs. They all rose respectfully. The Countess Krak walked to the platform and blackboard.
An elderly man had been addressing them. But now he surrendered the platform, saying to the group, "I will now turn the class over to Miss Krackle."
The men all applauded politely.
The Countess put down the sheaf of notes on a table. "Gentlemen," she said, "you have been employed as engineers for Power, Power, Power, Incorporated. I am privileged to be able to address some of the top electronic and power engineers of the planet. Some of you have been selected for your abilities in foreign languages as well.
"Far be it from me to tell you, who are experts in the field, how to do your jobs. I am solely here to relay to you certain technology, that with which you will work."
She looked at her notes. "The beaming of power from central collection stations to distribution units and then to consumption absorbers by microwave accumulators and reflectors may be, in some respects, new to you."
She turned to the board, chalk in hand. "If we regard power as a stream of water which yet can be beamed and focused, we can see that a central collection station in a country may receive the power from a source and then deflect and focus it to subreceivers which, in turn, can focus it upon consumption units." She began to draw a pattern upon the blackboard, giving flow lines.