Gris leaves the troop ship that smells of vomit and echoes with macabre singing, and paces around his aircar, pondering the "meat-chopper"'s words. The doctor suggested a "neurotic predisposition" might be to blame, but Gris' knowledge of Psychology! tells him that isn't the case. But the doctor also complained that he wasn't a "Slum City head plumber," and from that Gris decides his next move.
He drops by the Provocation Section to say hi to the guy he has dirt on ("met any nice girls lately?") and get a disguise, a black "speedwheel suit" with matching helmet, and a weapon. Gris goes for a "tri-knife," a ten-inch blade that's needle-thin until it "hits bottom," then "the blade springs into a narrow fan, becoming three razor-edged blades." It has a ring built into the hilt because pulling it out of a body can be tricky, and usually results in a shower of guts.
So is Gris being stupid by picking such a messy, impractical weapon, when any decent black ops guy would go with something quiet and functional? Or is he being cunning since he's disguising himself as someone who isn't an Apparatus agent, who of course would know better?
Questionable armament in hand, Gris has Ske drive him to Slum City, a sprawling stretch of urban decay and desperate poverty, a place where it's rumored Lombar Hisst spent his youth setting fires (which Gris doubts, because Hisst is supposedly more "efficiently destructive" than that). Gris dons his disguise and steals someone's "speedwheel," which Hubbard doesn't bother to describe so I'll assume it's a motorcycle.
And so Gris races along the streets until he reaches his destination - a part of town known for its "fornication machines, electric thrillers and head plumbers." Among the signs advertising Electric Penis Stimulation he finds the office of one Doctor Cutswitz: "Mental Doctor; Brain Examination; Physiological Nerve Specialist; Hypnotist; Bowels Purged." Yes, in Hubbard's world of incisive satire, mental doctors are relegated to the same slums as purveyors of sex toys and have to supplement their income with proctologist work.
The office is dangerously close to a police post, but Gris is out of options. But instead of going through the front door he slips in through a window, because he is, of course, a sneaky secret agent. So why even bother with the disguise in the first place?
Back to Chapter Two
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