Disturbed and battered from his crash, he had not completed his cargo check that night. The Blixo's freight had arrived at Spiteos all right. But just three hours ago Lombar had received a bad jolt. The boxes labelled Amphetamines, I. G. Barben Pharmaceutical were on the manifests BUT WERE NOT IN THE CARGO!
Factually, such things had happened before, since Captain Bolz smuggled cargos of his own, a thing Lombar ignored since it just meant further degradation of the hated riffraff by means of poisonous counterfeit Scotch. Such errors were the reason Lombar Hisst always checked the cargos himself. But at this particular time, occurring as it did concurrent with other disasters, Hisst chose to regard it as meaning they were after him from another quarter.
He was short of amphetamines. Heroin and opium he had by the ton. But his whole program included speed. On hand, he only had a month or two of amphetamine supply: he could not even send a freighter for a special cargo as it would take three months for it to make the round trip.
Things had been going so well: he had every Lord of any consequence addicted. His Majesty had been within a few weeks of dying. All Lombar had left to do was spread drugs wider, through physicians, amongst just a few more areas of the government, and he could obey the angels and become Lombar the Mighty, Emperor of all Voltar.
He had had it all planned so well! He had fantasized on how he would, on the final day, handle Cling the Lofty. He would let withdrawal symptoms get painfully acute and then, in return for a fix, he would have His Majesty sign and seal a proclamation declaring Lombar Hisst his heir. Many times before he had worked the trick on Cling and had obtained various orders such as those removing the Palace Guard and supplanting it with the Apparatus. So it would have worked. But there would have been one difference with that final fix: instead of heroin in his veins, His Majesty would have received a syringe full of air. The monarch would have died, the cause of death, "old age." Lombar would have displayed the body and that would have been that.
But this Jettero Heller had appeared and now all was very wrong indeed.
He had fouled up Lombar's plans with the Emperor. So, with this discovery of no amphetamines, it followed logically that Heller must have targeted Rockecenter, too.
(Bleep)* that Gris! Lombar's planning had been so exact. Modern surveys of the planet Blito-P3 had disclosed that Delbert John Rockecenter was rabid on the subject of having no heirs: he even had a foundation formed that promised him immortality and he saw no reason to tempt fate by leaving anything to a son. German intelligence, through one of its agents-a psychiatrist named Agnes Morelay-had ferreted out that once there had been a son. The surest way to get Jettero Heller picked up and killed by Rockecenter was to give him that son's name. The plan had been flawless! Yet Gris had mucked it up!
Lombar twisted at the baton, wishing it was Heller's neck. Had Heller somehow interfered with the amphetamine shipments? Had he gotten through to Rockecenter and done something to him?
* The vocodictoscriber on which this was originally written, the vocoscriber used by one Monte Pennwell in making a fair copy and the translator who put this book into the language in which you are reading it were all members of the Machine Purity League which has, as one of its bylaws: "Due to the extreme sensitivity and delicate sensibilities of machines and to safeguard against blowing fuses, it shall be mandatory that robotbrains in such machinery, on hearing any cursing or lewd words, substitute for such word the sound '(bleep)'. No machine, even if pounded upon, may reproduce swearing or lewdness in any other way than (bleep) and if further efforts are made to get the machine to do anything else, the machine has permission to pretend to pack up. This bylaw is made necessary by the in-built mission of all machines to protect biological systems from themselves." – Translator
There seemed to be no possibility of getting any information from Soltan Gris. He was in the Royal prison. He was beyond Lombar's reach without a Royal order to let him be questioned by an outsider, much less released. Lombar could not obtain any such Royal order because he had no Royal seal. If he had the place raided and Gris seized, the Justiciary would be outraged and it would say, "Why are you doing this? As spokesman for the Emperor, why didn't you just get a Royal order?"
Lombar had tried to talk some sense into Lord Turn, the Justiciary. Hisst had said that Gris was an Apparatus officer and belonged in an Apparatus prison and Lord Turn had shaken his aged head and said, "No. He is the prisoner of a Royal officer and it will take an order from His Majesty or an order from the Royal officer to release him. My suggestion is that you route your request to Jettero Heller."
Lombar had said, "But there's a general warrant out for Jettero Heller!"
And Lord Turn had replied, "Well, that may be and that may not be, for we have seen no Royal warrant signed and sealed by His Majesty and we do not run the Justiciary on what we hear on Homeview. And it wouldn't matter anyway: general warrants are questionable in matters relating to Royal officers, and a Royal warrant for Jettero Heller or even his arrest would not cancel the fact that Gris is his prisoner. Only Royal warrants would resolve this matter." Lord Turn had ended off the exchange by looking suspiciously at Lombar, unable to comprehend why he couldn't follow normal procedures. That alone had been enough to drive Lombar Hisst out of the audience chambers of the Royal Courts and Prison-nobody must suspect there was no monarch in Palace City.
Lombar Hisst would have given a great deal, right that minute, to have had Soltan Gris under the electric torture knives.
SOMETHING had happened on Earth, that was certain. That something probably included Rockecenter. Although he had sent an Apparatus Death Battalion to the Earth base, he would have no word from them for three months, the time of a round trip.
Other freighters from Earth might arrive with amphetamines, but Lombar was not optimistic.
WHAT had happened?
The Blixo had gone back. Its captain or crew couldn't be questioned. Yet he HAD to have information: without it he could not act.
It suddenly occurred to him that somebody from the Earth base crew might have been sent home under arrest, somebody that could be questioned.
Lombar had a branch Apparatus office now in one of the round palaces of the Imperial city. He threw Jettero Heller's baton from him and activated a screen.
The face of his chief clerk appeared.
"When the Blixo came in," said Lombar, "did it leave anyone here? Some crew member? Some base personnel?"
The chief clerk activated his own screens. "The passenger list shows a courier returned. That catamite, Two-lah. He's right here in Palace City, once more with his lover, Lord Endow."
"Oh, him!" said Lombar in disgust. "He wouldn't know any more than what we fed him to tell Gris. You're no help."
"Doctor Crobe came back on an earlier freighter. I remember he got mixed up with technical and scientific circles in New York, some subjects they have on Blito-P3 called psychiatry and psychology. They couldn't figure out whether he was straight up or in suspension-was on some dope called 'LSD.' He was simply sent back to Spiteos and he's there now. If you're looking for information, Crobe might have some."
"Oh, Crobe! To Hells with that idiot. I need a recent return. I wanted somebody who was on the Blixo, you fool. That was the last arrival. So thank you for wasting my time."
"Wait," said the chief clerk before Hisst could turn him off. "There were two other Blixo passengers. But they were Earth people. One was an immature Earth woman named Teenie Whopper. She's right here in Palace City."