There was always a certain terror connected with a summons from Lombar Hisst. Unchallenged tyrant of the Coordinated Information Apparatus, answerable only to the Lord of the Exterior and the Grand Council itself - and answering to them hardly at all - Lombar Hisst ruled an empire of his own. A flick of his finger, an almost imperceptible nod of his head and people vanished or died.
Now you may remember that this is a book of "satire," and perhaps you've noticed that the initials of this alien Coordinated Information Apparatus are the same as those of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Call it a hunch, but I don't think that's a coincidence. As for Hisst, though, I'm not sure who he's supposed to be, whether he's an allusion to a specific Director of the CIA that earned Hubbard's enmity by investigating Scientology, or some sort of composite character. That's the danger of satire, of course - it easily becomes dated, so unless you know exactly who or what is being lampooned it just comes across as confusing.
Anyway, while he's on his way to see his boss, Gris struggles to think of a reason for the summons, and takes a moment to reflect on his past. He explains how he graduated at the bottom of his class in the Royal Military College and was deemed unfit for a Fleet position, tried Spy School but didn't do well there either, and finally was recruited by the Apparatus.
This satire of the CIA, "the lowest service of the Empire," collects duplicate copies of billions of documents from the empire's military and civilian police. These it uses to blackmail government officials into funding and authorizing its activities, as well as to recruit from the worst criminals, murderers, and other scum. This would imply that Gris had quite a record before he joined the Apparatus, but this is not directly confirmed - though given his later actions, if he wasn't a cold-blooded murderer before he joined he picked up the knack quickly.
The exposition continues as Gris explains that he was eventually promoted to Section Chief of Unit 451, concerned with a region of space containing the star dubbed Blito and its inhabitable world Blito-P3, and picked up the local languages of English, Turkish and Italian. He also mentions that the "Ancestors" who bequeathed the "Timetable" marked Blito-P3 as a future invasion target for the empire, and here you may expect him to say "As you know" and explain to readers the ridiculous notion of a galactic empire that operates on a static invasion plan drawn up by long-dead strategists independent of the changing internal and external conditions over the intervening centuries.
He does not. The Timetable is mentioned a few other times this book, but never flat-out explained. This won't be the first time this happens, either. There's a fair number of dangling plot threads introduced in The Invaders Plan that never come to fruition within it, and the author hopes you'll keep track of them when they're finally followed up on several books later.
Eventually Gris arrives in Hisst's office, which shows obvious signs of a temper tantrum even though at best of times it resembles a "wild animal's den." Hisst himself is a physically huge man who likes to greet people with a "stinger," a foot-and-a-half of whip with an electrified tip. When he sees Gris he throws a wad of paper at him, roars "Now you've done it!" and demands to know why he didn't stop something from happening as he retrieves the paper to grind into Gris' face. Then he grabs his underling, summons the Apparatus Guard Regiment, hops into his personal tank, and leads the 2nd Death Battalion off into the night, Gris in tow.
Which I guess is a good place to end a chapter. Personally I would have filled this one with exposition and important background information, and moved the meeting with Hisst to kick off the next chapter, but then again I'm not a "master storyteller."
Back to Chapter One
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