There he was, sleeping with a half-smile on his face as though he hadn't a care or worry in the world. He was very good-looking, even in sleep, which is unusual. He was a very handsome fellow but he was pretty, too. I wished I had more blackmail material on him. Anyone that was that handsome must have had plenty of wild adventures in the sex department.
Ah, if only there had been teenage girls writing slashfic back in 1985. 'course if anyone would sue fanfic authors over the "illegal" use of fictional characters, it'd be Scientology.
Gris' plans for the day are interrupted by a summons from his boss. He races to Hisst's office but finds it occupied - there's a lot of Apparatus higher-ups having a conference in there. So Gris gets to wile away the hours in the waiting room, his thoughts eventually returning to speculation over Heller's sexual escapades. And then he gets an idea: there's a computer console connected to the Apparatus' information network in the room with him, so he could be doing some research while he waits.
He logs into the Apparatus' databank. You can look up anything there, though whatever you find is suspect - just about anyone can make changes or add completely fraudulent documents, with only the user's ID number to hint at the truth. So it's a lot like Wikipedia, I guess, except full of blackmail material instead of six-page bios of Doctor Who characters.
Out of curiosity Gris checks his own profile, but the only recent change is his promotion. Dr. Crobe, according to the Apparatus, is dead. Checking on the Countess is a little more confusing - any search for "Countess Krak" brings up "Lissus Moam" and vice versa, until the computer informs Gris that he's holding down the "repeat" key.
Oh. My finger wasn't but my cap was. I put the cap elsewhere and punched in,
Lissus Moam
again. The screen promptly said,
See Graves Reference
So I punched in
Graves Reference
The screen said,
There is no connection to the Graves Reference.
I hit Query three times. The machine said
Please do not argue. The computer is always right.
The computer is by far my favorite Mission Earth character. That's right, out of the entire cast, I hold the most affection for an inanimate object. It's not a murderer or an idiot or a sycophant or a Marty Sue, its just a quietly sarcastic user interface. And maybe, at the end of the day, that's all we really need.
Going back to his original idea, Gris searches for any records of Jettero Heller's sex life, querying about "affairs with women," "affairs with fellow officers," "affairs with underage..." thanks, Hubbard... "affairs with prostitutes..." oh come on, you do that one after the speculation over pedophilia? But even a search for "incest" comes up with nothing.
So Gris looks up "mental interviews" and finally finds something - while being treated or some battlefield heroism, Heller got in a fight with a homosexual nurse and put him in the hospital... er, injured the guy enough for him to need treatment too. Strangely, the mental health exam afterward revealed nothing wrong with Heller, and more tellingly there's no mention of reprimands about beating a man over his sexual orientation.
Did I mention that this is a homophobic book?
Heller has a few childhood arrests and misdemeanors - a one-credit fine for riding his space-bike on the sidewalk at age seven, a dismissed case for illegally skydiving into a parade to show off a new technique at age fifteen, and another dismissed case at age sixteen for sneaking aboard a freighter, which the judge used to send Heller to the academy. Laws are for ordinary people, not the likes of Jettero Heller. There's a single court-martial from Heller's military career, when Heller objected to a training officer's use of electro whips and got in a fight, which was dropped because Heller was three days the other man's senior in ranking.
Even Gris boggles at why Heller would go cuckoo for Countess Krak if he hates electro-whips so much. But then a clerk informs him that Hisst's conference is breaking up and it's time to go.
Back to Chapter Six
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