Let's pretend you're working for the United States' Central Intelligence Agency, and your boss wants to speak to you. How do you suppose he (or she) would do that? An e-mailed summons? An interoffice phone call? Or maybe your boss would simply drop by your cubicle to ask how your research on [CLASSIFIED] is going? You know, the same ways your boss in any other setting would do things - whether it's a federal bureaucracy or a multinational corporation, an office is an office. Unless you're working for Google, in which case I hear you take water slides to get around and have a pizza train come by at lunchtime.
Well, Lombar Hisst is lurking amongst some empty boxes, disguised as a worker. And once again we get to play the old favorite Is it Satire? Is the Apparatus' obsession with unnecessary deception and subterfuge Hubbard's way at poking fun at the CIA's clandestine activities, or did he seriously believe this is the way spies act all the time?
Hisst is here to chew out Gris for getting Heller's name in the papers (with a great many bleeps), though he's multitasking by also writing down the company names on all the contractors' jumpsuits. Which he should be able to look up on the bloody invoices... satire or stupidity, you make the call. He explains how he's made the most of the fallout from Heller's Night Out - Hisst convinced the council that underfunding was delaying Mission Earth, thereby boosting its allocations from three million credits to thirty.
So Gris won't be killed, since his incompetence turned out to be lucrative, but Hisst forbids Gris from making a single credit from all the money getting thrown around, and promises painful retribution if he doesn't Mission Earth off the ground before a deadline. Gris' first task towards that end is to keep Heller distracted two days from now so Hisst can send in a crew to inspect what Heller's been packing for the mission which he intends to succeed but Hisst needs to fail. Which raises the question of why, if these are secure Apparatus-controlled hangars, Heller has been able to bring in unauthorized supplies. Hubbard's usual brand of breathtakingly incompetent villains or cunning satire? Again, it's hard to say.
Hisst promises to select a crew that won't fall victim to Heller's ability to inspire loyalty, spends some time cursing and spitting at Heller from hiding, and rants at Gris a bit before taking off. Gris is left with lingering wounds from Hisst's stinger, and confusion: because despite all his references to Mission Earth's departure deadline, Hisst never said when that was.
More hilarious satire? Or another moment where the reader wearily rubs his forehead and wonders how such an incompetently-run organization could function for a single day, much less pose a serious threat?
Gris thinks about prodding Heller into motion and becomes physically ill. Again. Because Soltan Gris being miserable never gets old.
Hard to believe we're 410 pages into this lump of dead tree. Think we'll make it to Earth in the remaining 200 pages? Let your cynicism guide you to the answer.
Back to Part Eight, Chapter Six
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