"You leave that to me," said Madison.
Lombar nodded and forgot about it.
Madison was handling the "psychotherapy."
He was in the observation slot back of the wall behind the eightieth-floor townhouse auditorium. He was grinning. This had to work, and when it did he would have his trial. And with the Gris trial, he would have Heller.
The editorials in the papers had been a very mixed lot on the subject of Lombar's speech, none of them less stunned than Madison's own staff. On his return his reporters and crew had said, "We made a dictator, bango, just like that! But what's a 'dictator,' Chief?" Some of the papers were of the opinion that a "dictator" was one who spoke into a dictating machine. Others, since the word had been translated directly over into literal Voltarian, said that it was a more forceful kind of spokesman and was a natural outgrowth from that earlier title. But the majority seemed to gather that Lombar had assumed much more embracive powers and, if the Grand Council order had not been showing up on their consoles, they would have had to assume that Lombar had authored some kind of a coup; they were not at all sure what. But none of the papers missed the point that the Apparatus was suddenly the senior force of the state.
The Apparatus didn't miss it. Their officers, with few exceptions jailbirds, joked to one another about their "unimpeachable reputations" and their "honor." They began to put on airs. Apparatus officers had never dared go into the better hotels and restaurants and clubs, and suddenly it pleased their fancy to show up and bully waiters and managers around. Apparatus troops began at once a game of holding arms and walking up streets shoving everyone else off the walks. Underpaid and unpaid, they began to find ways of being paid.
But Madison ignored all that. He was on to bigger game: Heller. His ways of arriving there were entirely PR. Deadly!
This "psychotherapy" action had begun with his discovery of a postcard in the Gris dossier. It said:
SOLTAN GRIS!
YOO-HOO, WHEREVER YOU ARE.
The baby came on schedule and he's beautiful.It's a he.
Now, I don't want to have to go to your superior officer and make a fuss. It would be much nicer just to climb in bed with you. So when are you going to turn up and do the right thing and marry me?
Pratia
PS: Any commanding officer: You can come out and see me about this any time you like. I hope you're handsome. I am very pretty again now that my belly is flat and we can talk it all over. What do you like for
breakfast? I can be found at Minx Estates, Pausch Hills.
PPS: It has the softest beds and the loveliest swimming pool and a summerhouse with a bed in it. Smack. Smack.
Now, Madison had known better than to put his handsome face in that trap. So he had sent the director and one of the circus girls dressed as people of fashion and an actor as Gris's "commanding officer."
Now, here in the auditorium, a hundred ladies of the "club" were gathered in breathtaking suspense, and Madison's grin widened as he peered through the slot from which he could view them. Although many were middle-aged, they looked in full bloom. They had recaptured some of their lost youth and life, viewed through a marijuana haze and sex, and seemed remarkably attractive.
Crobe took the stand. This time they'd kept the LSD away from him, and expecting more if he delivered, he was on his good behavior. The little speaker was in his ear and all he had to do was repeat the script being read over it.
"Ladies of quality, ladies of fashion, ladies of sparkling eyes and resurged youth," Crobe began-and it was pretty good even though he was saying it in a very flat voice – "I know how concerned you have been about the state's reluctance to try the insane lunatic Gris. As you doubtless read or saw on Homeview, Lombar Hisst, Dictator of Voltar, promised that psychotherapy would be attempted in the Gris case.
"Now the grave danger, ladies, is that Gris will be released upon the public totally insane, that he will continue to slaughter and burn and rampage throughout a helpless population.
"Hisst, poorly advised, directly ordered me to attempt a solution through psychotherapy. It was reasoned that if the foul fiend could be made sane, it would then be safe to turn him loose.
"I demurred. I tried to point out that this criminal lunatic Gris was entirely off the Freudian scale. Most of you heard the lecture where I took that up took that up took go on go on.
"I said to Hisst, 'The chances of success are so remote they are not worth... calculating.' He ordered me to do it anyway. Then I told him that anyone chosen to do this thing might very well be facing certain death. But he said, 'What is one woman more or less? Find a volunteer and make her do it!"'
"The brute!" ran the whisper around the room.
"Now, as you know you know you know quit repeating, according to Freud, sex is the basis of everything. If the true sexual basis of a criminal could be awakened, he would reform and become sane. That is proven scientific fact like all psychiatry.
"So what will be attempted is to bring light into the life of Gris in the hope that it will reform him, bring him back to sanity and remove him as a threat from our society."
The women nodded.
"But," cried Crobe, "as I told Hisst, the experiment, while noble, has two drawbacks: one, the chances of this working on somebody totally off the classification scale are almost nonexistent; and two, it is almost certain death for the volunteer. Shout yet we have actually found a volunteer."
Crobe stood there, since no words were coming into his earphone now. An usher led forward the volunteer.
It was the Widow Tayl!
She was dressed in purest white. She looked virginal. Her head was bent forward, her smoothly straight hair fell across her face. She clasped her hands in front of her. She had been directed to perfection, to look like a maiden being brought before the altar in a primitive sacrifice. She stood before them, eyes cast down.
"This woman," said Crobe, "in a spirit of purest patriotism, is willing to risk her life in this undertaking. I regard with awe her devotion and fearlessness in servicing... serving the state and people. I give you Pratia Tayl wait for applause."
The assembled women stared. They felt a surge of awe. Then some began to cry.
"I am therefore," said Crobe, "appointing a committee under the chairwomanship of Lady Arthrite Stuffy to call upon Lord Turn and insist that he permit the marriage and nuptial night of Gris and this woman in the Royal prison."
The audience gasped.
Madison grinned.
A very disturbed Lord Turn faced the committee of ladies in his chambers the next morning. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. But he had never been pounded by press in all his life and he was getting cowed. Even his own family was not speaking to him lately, and this mass of determined women he saw before him were, many of them, on remarkably good terms with his family.
"But Lady Arthrite," he sputtered, "nothing like this has ever happened before. A marriage to take place in my prison? It's unheard of."
Lady Arthrite fixed him with a gimlet eye. "Lord Turn, we have consulted legal experts. Our family attorneys tell us that there is no regulation against it! You are NOT covered by the law this time. Any objection by you would be purely personal!"
Lord Turn digested that. He was a letter-of-the-law man and he knew she spoke the truth. It had suddenly become too personal. Then he grasped at an out. "Marriage is a thing to which the man must agree. I doubt very much that Soltan Gris would want to get married!"