So we're off to the always-bustling Communications Complex Towers, where Voltarians come by in throngs to pay their space phone bills or order Homeview channels, because sci-fi pioneer L. Ron Hubbard couldn't conceive of such transactions being done over the phone or interwebs. Gris hits the Central Directory, finds a ditzy female clerk that everyone else is pointedly avoiding, and goes to work.
This place's computers have very detailed personal information in them, to help figure out which Soltan Gris among the multiple worlds of the Voltarian Confederacy you're looking for. The brainless clerk watches as Gris all but takes over her console, printing out information on the top tier of "cellologists" (as denoted by their credit rating), followed up by a list of newly practicing "cellologists" (as denoted by their recent purchase of office equipment).
You might be wondering why the Apparatus, being the Coordinated Information Apparatus, doesn't have a copy of this vast stockpile of personal information, or at least some way to access the data without leaving the squalor of their own offices. It is a very good question.
After leaving the Directory, Gris has Ske hover for a bit while he looks through the data he's mined. Gris picks Professor Gyrant Slahb as his "cellology" expert, and chooses a poor young graduate named Prahd Bittlestiffender as an expendable pawn. Then it's back to the Provocation Section for another disguise - clothes befitting an old professor, with only small dagger holes and just a bit of blood.
You might be wondering why the Apparatus, being an agency whose operatives regularly adopt disguises, doesn't have a stockpile of clean, carefully selected outfits to dress up in, rather than the bloodstained odds and ends they've pulled off of corpses. That's also a very good question.
Raza Torr is on edge and dismayed that Gris is once again rifling through his equipment and demanding counterfeit identoplates, which are particularly illegal. But Gris just smiles and makes comments about mistresses, and the blackmailed murder-rapist is forced to comply... though not before he almost pulls his gun on Gris.
But hey, Gris has leverage over him, so surely nothing will come of it. Gris leaves in a good mood, ready to ensure Jettero Heller will be completely at his mercy.
Back to Chapter Seven
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