We'll start this chapter with Soltan Gris being miserable, for a change. After the startling revelation that his hyperviolent and paranoid boss might just be, wow, crazy, he spends a good half hour sitting at his desk in his office, staring at nothing, wondering what to do. The answer, of course, is to look up his boss' symptoms in his psychology textbook. Schizophrenia, psychosis, megalomania, aural hallucinations - yep, they're all there.
Aaaaand I'm confused, Hubbard. Psychology's a scam, right? Or at best redundant? So why is it so precisely diagnosing Lombar Hisst's insanity? Is the point you're trying to make that Psychology just gives us a vocabulary to describe mental illness? Certainly most Voltarians should be able to tell there's something wrong with Hisst, but Gris is unique in that he has fancy words to do so with. So if that's all Psychology offers, why is it so dangerous and contemptible?
We get the book's Hitler reference when Gris adds up all these symptoms to find they equal "Hitler syndrome." I'm not sure what the point of this is, other than to Godwin the book's villain. This should also make things interesting later when the psychologists take over - come on, you know it's gonna happen - so Hubbard will get to effectively say "yeah, these psychologist quacks? Worse than Hitler!"
With the threat of a painful death made clear, Gris resolves to do his job and see Mission Earth to a successful conclusion. Or rather, ensure that it fails. So he goes home and finishes packing for blastoff tomorrow, and has Ske help him, since the bandages on his hands from the "metal slivers" incident have come off. But Ske's in a bad mood, and then the landlady Meely shows up, and it looks like Gris is in danger of going without some sleep! But then he pulls out a counterfeit Space Benjamin Franklin to pay his landlady, so she leaves without harassing him too much. "May you really enjoy your immediate future."
Ah, good old False Reassurance. At least Gris is smart enough to use it sparingly, unlike Terl from that other Hubbard book.
Since he's in such a giving mood, Gris turns to his steadfast driver Ske, who has endured trials and beatings and attempted murder at his side, who helped nurse Gris back to health after the agent nearly died from thirst and starvation. Gris recognizes that Ske has been hoping for a great windfall from all of these covert shenanigans, a windfall that has yet to come. So Gris rewards the closest thing he has to a frien... well, ally at least, with, you guessed it, more counterfeit money. Ske is just smart enough to be a little dubious, but not smart enough to refuse the phony money and punch Gris in the jaw.
The chapter ends with Gris saying farewell to his bumbling sidekick. "Good-bye, Ske. Whatever happens to you, I hope it is what you truly deserve."
Two for two, Gris, well done. But I dunno, while Hubbard's a bad enough author to kill off a major character entirely off-screen, I've just got a gut feeling this isn't the last we'll see of Ske. And no, this isn't the type of gut feeling that comes from reading ahead. See, these books exist to make Gris miserable, and having Ske cheat death and return to annoy him just feels inevitable.
Back to Chapter Five
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