Gris wakes up still feeling wonderful about how miserable Heller must be. He gets dressed (orange shirt, black pants, cobra-skin shoes and belt), eats breakfast (melon, cacik and coffee), and continues to abuse the serving staff. With all that out of the way, Gris settles down and... draws some floor plans for a building. Huh.
I was designing a hospital. It would be one story, with a basement. It would have numerous wards and operating rooms. It would also have a parking lot. It would be surrounded by a wire fence made to look like a hedge. And in the basement it would have numerous private rooms nobody would suspect were there. It would have an Earth-type security system. Every room would be bugged.
Hubbard wrote this paragraph at the end of a writing career that spanned roughly six decades. I have got to dig up some of his early works to see if his writing declined along with his health, or if this really represents the apex of his talent. If it does, damn.
As for Gris' hospital idea, it's kinda random. So is this yet another of Hubbard's digs at the medical profession, or foreshadowing? Guess we'll see. The "World United Charities Mercy and Benevolent Hospital" is Gris' ticket to riches, and he's already planning to hit the World Health Organization and the Rockecenter Foundation for generous grants. And this confuses me, as I distinctly remember Gris planning to smuggle a lot of transmuted gold from Voltar to Earth for his personal use. So was that not enough, did Gris forget, or am I still having Battlefield Earth flashbacks?
Gris sends off construction orders for his pet project, exulting how his dual status as Section Chief and Inspector General Overlord means that he must be obeyed without question. That hard work completed, Gris is ready for some "entertainment." He calls up Melahat the housekeeper and very politely compliments her ("add 'hanim' to [their] name--it flatters them; they have no souls, you know") before asking if the "beautiful lady" he ordered has arrived yet. When it's reported that she hasn't, Gris calls the woman camel dung and kicks her out.
According to Wikipedia, camels aren't really represented in Turkey. Yet that's where the U.S. imported some of the animals from for its American Camel Corps project. I am now more interested in this little mystery than I am in finishing this book.
His plans of whorin' away the morning dashed, Gris amuses himself by turning on the Hellervision. He skips over Heller's sad march home the night previous, then watches an encounter between Heller and Faht Bey, as Heller complains that the clothes and shoes he was given are too small. Meanwhile Bey warns that the townspeople are looking for someone who matches Heller's description after an attack left two respected citizens hospitalized, and invokes security measures to keep Heller confined to the base.
For his part, Heller is suspicious how a person that he just met knows that he meets the description of the attacker, forcing Bey to explain that Gris described Heller for him. Gris' mental commentary to Heller displaying some intelligence is to complain that "My Gods, he was nosy."
So Heller spends the rest of the morning stomping around the base in his clickity-clack magnetized space boots, repeating the surveying trick he pulled in Spiteos several eons ago. He inspects the numerous holding cells, and finds the storerooms where Lombar Hisst ordered sacks and sacks of opium stockpiled. Heller scoops up some dust and puts it in his pocket; Gris assumes that he was wiping his hand clean and thinks no more of it. Then Heller makes some notes and does some math; "Just some figures," thinks Gris. "Pointless." Finally, the not-so-secret agent draws a detailed map of the Apparatus base, which Gris just laughs at since Heller could've gotten the same schematics from the base construction office, plus he didn't even find the exit for Gris' secret tunnel!
So which of these two is the idiot with no idea how to maintain secrecy or investigate things? Why isn't Gris worried that his enemy is taking such an interest in the secrets of the Apparatus, and is making documents and records of their illegal activities? Why is it not enough for Hubbard's heroes to be so spectacular at their jobs, but he also requires that their enemies be so shockingly incompetent at theirs?
Also note that there's no rueful statements like "if I'd only known what he was up to then, and stopped him," or "I can't believe I just watched him do that." Even though this series is supposedly the jail cell confession of Soltan Gris, written after all his plans went down in flames, presumably at Heller's hands. It really underscores the fact that the whole "confession" angle is a poorly-integrated framing device created by editors in an attempt to salvage this heap of dead tree.
Anyway, the chapter ends with a not-miserable Gris laughing at how terrible a spy Heller is, before setting off to make his fortune. Or another fortune; it's unclear if he's talking about his hospital scam, the gold that should still be en route, or some third plan. And didn't he requisition a heap of local currency as soon as he got here? Is this his fourth fortune?
He's gonna have a whole wardrobe filled with snakeskin outfits by the book's end, isn't he?
Back to Part Twelve, Chapter Eleven
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