Gris goes numb at the sight of all the stuff in the room: improvised furniture made from starship armor plates or fighter seats, memorabilia and knickknacks from dozens of worlds, banners on the walls and luxurious rugs on the floor, all "harmonized together with beautiful taste."
Where was this appreciation for interior decorating in Battlefield Earth? What happened to Hubbard in the intervening years to make him so keen on clean uniforms and tastefully-arranged furniture? If I remember right, one of the last things he did before dying was spend boatloads of money to design and build a sprawling mansion (that never got used), so maybe he just caught the bug.
Now I've read a few awful fanfics, and I've noticed that a lot of authors waste words describing how awesome their oh-so-special characters' clothing and living quarters are, so that their story becomes a form of escapism for themselves rather than their readers. Credit where it's due, Hubbard isn't quite stooping to that level. Describing Heller's awesome pad has the side effects of showing Gris' thought processes, and also to reinforce just how awesome and amazing and dreamy Jettero Heller is.
Gris' first response to such a display of wealth and taste is that obviously Heller has some extralegal sources of income to afford all of this. But then one of his escorts tells him that the three-hundred-man crew of a battleship got together and set this suite up for Heller after he singlehandedly penetrated enemy lines to save their ship after it crashed in hostile territory. The Fleet guys announce that they'll do the packing, giving Gris time to inspect Heller's dress uniform.
The Voltar military has a weird way of displaying citations - officers' uniforms are affixed with metallic braid (Heller's is gold, of course), and if I'm reading this right you can flip said braid back to reveal a list of awards and achievements. Heller has so much on his that his chest is mostly gold, and Gris reads about his various feats of heroism - building a bridge under enemy fire, mining a fortress, rescuing a derelict ship, and so on. When the Apparatus agent sees a star medallion awarded to those who've undertaken numerous volunteer missions, he assumes Heller is a glory hound, but one of the Fleet boys tell him that Heller has a bunch of other medals he's too modest to display.
There's also a wall of 3-D photographs of Heller's family, including his gorgeous sci-fi-TV-equivalent starlet sister. Gris is about to consider Heller a publicity freak until he notes that all of the photos that include him are focused on Heller's friends and family, or in one case his prize spaceship, the Chun-chu, which he broke an interplanetary speed record in. Gris is forced to conclude that he won't have an easy time finding Jettero Heller's vices.
By this point the Fleet boys are finished packing on "Jet's" behalf, and Gris heads to the lobby. Just as he's about to leave he's stopped by one of the biggest officers, who promises that if anything happens to their beloved Jettero Heller, they'll take Gris into orbit and shove him out an airlock. "And in seconds you will be a pale, pink, mist!" And then the two hundred or so onlooking Fleet officers shout "Right!" in unison, while I reach for a glass of wine to wash down all this cheesiness.
Gris panics and flees to his car, and notices that his driver is still soaking from behind tossed in a fountain. As they drive off, the other Apparatus guy asks how their cover was so easily blown.
I didn't answer. Because we're shabby, I thought. Because we're dishonest. Because we're just crooked thugs and never should be permitted to go near decent people. Because we stink. It had been a very trying day.
Such withering satire. But I can't help but wonder - if people can so easily deduce that these weasely, smelly, unfashionable scum are part of the Apparatus, how the hell can they accomplish any of their covert missions? Shouldn't spies be able to blend in or appear honest and trustworthy?
This is the paradox of Hubbard villains. They're supposed to pose a serious threat to his (superhuman) hero, but he hates them so much that he can't help but present them as sloppy, stupid, and dysfunctional. It's like trying to be thrilled when Hercules is tossed into a pit with a cross-eyed, toothless, narcoleptic tiger.
The chapter ends as Gris glumly reminds himself that it's impossible to leave the Apparatus while alive, so his fate is tied to that of Mission Earth. Meanwhile I'm running the numbers, and assuming my atrophied math skills are still functioning, I estimate that I'm doing five roughly six-page chapters per week, which means it'll take me 20.5 weeks to finish The Invaders Plan, and if the rest of the "dekalogy" is a similar length I'll have spent 205 weeks, or 1,435 days, or 3.93 years blogging about Mission Earth.
(edit from the future: started on 6/29/11, wrapped up on 7/9/14, so I overestimated a bit)
So I almost feel sorry for Gris. Then I remember what he does later, and I just feel sorry for myself instead.
Back to Chapter Six
Funny you did a calculation this time, because I did one a couple days ago- just very quick mental guesstimations....
ReplyDeleteBased on your (should be) award-winning Battlefield Spork, appropriately abbreviated B.S. or B.F.S., either one works, which was (guesstimation/foggy memory, too lazy to check actual numbers) around 1050 pages which took almost exactly 14 months... M.S. is 10x600 = 6000 pages which worked out to close to 7 years...and I honestly wondered if you would come even CLOSE to getting through it all.
Then again, that also means B.S. was done at about....16 pages a week, so looks like if you can keep up the alcohol or whatever brain-numbing agent you use as a prophylactic to prevent developing Hubbaretardation, your suffer-, I mean, your project should be as you calculated.
Remember, any lost time due to less important matters like "family", "holidays", "bathing", etc. has to be made up! How else do you think ol' Hubbububba banged this thing out in less than a decade?
Crossed eye of the tiger! You can do it!