So has Gris been saved from starvation only to face death a few weeks later from malnutrition? 'cause I can't imagine a diet of pastries and soda being good for anybody's health. I'm gonna keep track of his diet, see when and what he's eating, since Hubbard decided to spend chapters deeply confirmed with Gris' daily calorie intake.
Gris and his driver head over to the Provocation Section, with Gris noting that nobody was hanging about or tailing them, thus displaying vital secret agent skills that he will conveniently discard when the plot requires. While in transit, Gris relates a story proving his resourcefulness.
Half a year ago, while upset about missing a promotion, Gris was lurking around a run-down hotel in the boonies in the aftermath of a brawl and just so happened to come across some blackmail material. He tailed a furtive figure into the woods, saw him have a confrontation with a woman who was evidently waiting for someone else, and then took plenty of pictures of the subsequent rape and murder... you know, there isn't nearly enough rape and murder in the satire you get these days.
Anyway, Gris identified the victim as the mistress of the commander of the Apparatus' Death Battalions, while the rapist/murderer was Raza Torr, chief of the Provocation Section, the arm of the Apparatus that infiltrates criminal groups or frames people. So that's who Gris goes to meet, in offices hidden in the middle of some riverside warehouses. Torr isn't happy to see him, despite Gris' pleasant small talk ("meet any good girls lately?"), but lets him have the run of the place. So Gris heads for the counterfeit currency collection.
Thanks to the miracles of modern technology, Voltar's businesses can easily detect fake bills, and all they have to do is tell the customer to wait for change until the Finance Police swoop in to jail, torture, try, and execute the counterfeiter. It's such a streamlined and effective process that the Provocation Section has a habit of planting fake bills to make people disappear. Naturally, no one in the general public has learned the tricks that a trained clerk uses to spot bad currency, or has access to the scanning machinery.
After passing through rooms filled with confiscated loot and booby-trapped weapons, Gris reaches the rolls of "toilet paper." He grabs plenty of fake money, and a friendly escort also gives him a dead agent's uniform that's in better shape than his own (its previous owner died of poison gas, so there's no bloodstains or anything), as well as some poisoned food and a super-special trunk with a rotating bottom so that if someone inspects it they keep seeing the same... side... well, I'm not sure how that'd work or why anyone would be fooled by seeing the same pair of underpants not matter which lid they open, but whatever. Gris is now a bona fide secret agent. I'm sure this trunk will be a very important plot point later.
Thus equipped, Gris is on a course back to Spiteos to question the crew of Heller's patrol ship for vital information about Heller... wait, what vital information? What could the crew possibly know that wouldn't be in Heller's file, and what possible use would it be to Gris? Haven't they already been interrogated? But hey, Gris is only acting on his starvation-induced hallucination, so I guess we can't examine the logic too closely. Let's go watch him do stuff he should have already done or shouldn't need to do in the first place. And try to kill people.
The main character's going in circles while the plot sits in a distant hangar going absolutely nowhere. Mission Earth, ladies and gents.
Back to Part Six, Chapter Seven
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