Throughout, he had thought that the warehouse stank a bit and then, smelling some cloth to make sure it didn't make him sneeze-for he had some minor allergies-he realized that the bath in the sea had not been total for these convicts: they still stank of the prison; the odor clung to their matted hair and beards and seemed to ooze out of their skin.
The Apparatus! He had smelled this smell at the training center. He had smelled it in their old car. The Apparatus smell was the smell of convicts! So THAT was why it stank!
He shuddered at the thought of their contaminating these new clothes. He persuaded them, before they left, to dress in their working clothes and not their finery.
"It's coming on to dawn," said Flick nervously. "We better be getting out of here. If we don't, we all could wind up back at the Domestic Prison."
With several trips they got their loot into the coaches and then came back one final time, at Madison's order, to wipe the place clean of fingerprints.
Madison waited at the door. The crew finished on the various floors and came down.
Madison was standing at the entrance. He was humming a little song. The director tried to get by him and peer into the watchman's office. Madison blocked him.
"But it must be a great shot!" the director said. "Dead bodies bleeding all around."
"Your stomach wouldn't stand it," said Madison. "I don't want those new clothes all stunk up with vomit."
"Gods, ain't he a cool one," a convict whispered. "Wipes a whole watch force out and hums a little song."
Another convict tried to peer in and Madison shooed him off. "What'd you use?" the convict said. "You didn't have any weapon."
"My bare hands," said Madison. "I love the feel of the running gore when I rip out throat arteries. So smooth, so slick. And it has a lovely smell. You should taste it!"
The convicts let out a gasp. One retched. They stared at Madison.
He shooed them off to the air-coaches and sauntered after them, humming his little song.
Even Flick looked at him a bit white-eyed as he climbed in.
Madison was still humming as they all took off.
And he had something to hum about.
When he walked into the watchman's office, he had disregarded three levelled guns from three tough watchmen. He had pointed to the viewer-phone on the desk and said, "Connect me to your owner, please. The president of the company." He had held up his identoplate and they had.
When the startled president of Classy Togs was blinking into the viewer-phone from his bed, Madison had told him, "I am an Apparatus officer. I'm outfitting an Apparatus crew who must not be recognized. We are therefore getting clothes out of the warehouse without the help of clerks. Take an inventory in the morning, see what's gone and put the amount on the bill."
"Wait a minute," the president had said. "The Apparatus is poor pay!"
"Oh, this is on my personal account," Madison had said. And he had pushed his identoplate into the viewer-phone slot.
"UNLIMITED pay status," the owner had gasped. "Hot Saints! Go ahead! Take the whole blasted warehouse! WATCHMEN, STAY OUT OF SIGHT! DON'T YOU DARE LAY A FINGER ON THAT MAN!"
In retrospect Madison liked the touch of taking the bottle of red ink off the watchman's desk and sloshing it on his hands.
He ended his song with a laugh. He had certainly repaired his image with this crew.
And yes, he had. The sound of that laugh turned the blood of Flick to ice.
BARE-HANDED! And he liked it. Oh, Flick told himself, by Gods, they'd have to think twice before they crossed the chief. A REAL murderer for sure! A PROFESSIONAL! And he LOVED HIS WORK!
"We're heading for Joy City right now, sir," said Flick.
Madison heard the tremor, the fear and the respect in that voice.
It made everything complete.
He had total charge of this crew!
It didn't hurt at all to use the techniques of PR to improve one's own image.
Now he could REALLY PR Heller-Wister!
Dawn had not yet arrived, for all Flick's fears. A moon had set and it was very black night in the countryside below. But ahead it was a different matter: the whole sky was aglow. Very shortly, at this speed, they would be entering Joy City.
Madison wiped a hand across his face. "My nose is bothering me," he told Flick.
"Try a chank-pop, sir," was the prompt response. "Them convicts didn't touch them. They're in the bar compartment. Try a yellow one: that's 'summer blossom sighs.'"
Madison got one out: it seemed to be just a small round ball. He twisted and turned it, trying to make it do something. In the dimness of the airbus he didn't see the indented line that you press. He, in some annoyance, tried squeezing the whole ball between his palms with force, the way he was sometimes able to crack walnuts, a small fruit of Earth.
POW!
Instead of just opening, it exploded and hit him in the eye. The scent-fog, misdirected, struck his forehead and the roof of the airbus.
"Summer blossom sighs" might be just great-he could catch an errant whiff of it-but Madison grated to himself that he'd be blasted if he was going to lose one eye and the top of his head every time he tried to remedy the miasma of Apparatus stink!
When he could see again, the airbus seemed to be full of light. He looked down and saw that they were entering the vast and brilliant expanse which was Joy City.
They had not yet passed over the main clubs and lakes and amusement parks but, as they were coming from Commercial City, they were still over the market service areas of the pleasure metropolis. Sitting in the center of an interlace of rails and roads he saw what would be on Earth a shopping mall. There were other malls scattered about to left and right. This one below was vast but only seemed to be two stores: Restaurant Supplies, one said; the other one said Beauty. "What's that?" he yelled at Flick.
" 'Beauty'?" said Flick. "Oh, there ain't no dames down there if you feel horny, Chief. That's where revellers buy things to repair the ravages of all-night revelry."
"Go back, go back," said Madison, "and land. We need food and I think that shop might sell just what I need!"
Flick braked around into a dive, the air-coaches followed after and they all landed-thud, thud, thud, thud-adjacent to the two shops.
Madison jumped out and yelled, "All cooks front and center."
"Yes sir! Yes sir!" came the cries, and five cooks streaked to him from the air-coaches.
Madison led them into the sparse mob of predawn restaurant shoppers who were picking up their supplies for the coming day. The place was vast; on every hand stood small mountains of comestibles.
Madison waved his hand across the acres. "Get anything you want," he told the cooks.
The five looked at him, round-eyed, stunned.
"ANYTHING?" gawped the oldest one. "Why, this is the choicest market on Voltar! WHAT A CHIEF!"
They rushed off like a battle charge.
Madison sped the other way, for even in their new working clothes those convicts smelled like the Apparatus.
He rushed into the Beauty Supply vendors. He sped though the aisle toward a place where stood three idle clerks. "SOAP!" yelled Madison. "And LOTS of it!"
A clerk turned and picked up a small bottle and handed it to him.
"No, no," said Madison. "LOTS of it!"
"Well, just one drop of this will give you a whole bath," said the clerk.
"No, no," said Madison, "I'm trying to get rid of Apparatus stink."
"That," said another clerk, "would be VERY beneficial. In fact, I wish we could sell you a solvent that would get rid of the whole Apparatus."
He had their interest now. "I've got fourteen women and thirty-four men. They haven't shaved, they haven't bathed, they haven't cut or coiffed their hair for years. They STINK!" He looked around. The stacks of goods bore no placards or advertising signs. "I need stuff to cut beards and hair, shave them and polish their teeth, make them look like high-class people and also to cut toenails and make them tan-and no chank-pops!"