Last chapter ended on page 258 of 477, meaning we're past Black Genesis' halfway point. And I'm not quite sure what's going on or where we're going or why anything is happening.
We've got the overreaching plot, the Voltarian government deciding whether or not to invade Earth prematurely vs. the Apparatus' efforts to stall for time until they can use their Earth assets to take over the Confederacy. We've got Gris' attempts to get Heller in jail or killed vs. Gris' search for the "platen" so he can fake the coded messages Heller set up for just such an eventuality. And then there's Heller, who's doing what exactly?
His mission is to introduce environmentally-friendly technology so that Earth doesn't get to messy before the Voltarians invade, but how is he going to do that? What's his strategy, his plan? He got dumped in a Virginian backwater and was told to pick up his birth certificate, but what was step two? Did he come up with a strategy at any point? Or was his preparation for this mission restricted to learning languages, reading up on Prince Caucalsia, and boinking the Countess Krak?
Since his arrival on Earth, Heller's spent his time reacting to other forces. He gets dragged into the late Mary's problems with the law, decides to flee with her to Washington, then gets scooped up by the FBI and follows Mr. Bury's orders. Now he has an identity as a college student and presumably is going to school, but why? Heller's not showing any initiative, any indication that there is a purpose to his actions, that he has an end result in mind. He's just bouncing off other people so Hubbard can make fun of them. That said, Heller hasn't been derailed from any plan because there's no sign of him having one in the first place.
If I were the author, and I wanted to have Heller as a reactionary, seat-of-his-pants kind of operative, I'd make a big deal about how Combat Engineers were given broad mission objectives and considerable freedom in how to pursue them. I'd mention Heller having a history of creative and unorthodox solutions to problems and a talent at improvisation. As opposed to going on about how famous his sister is and what color racing cap he was wearing at the moment and how well-decorated his room is.
Then there's that "platen." So Heller is hiding coded messages in his reports, the absence of which will tip his friend the Royal Astrologer off that something bad has happened to Heller, to say nothing of what the hidden reports themselves could say about the Apparatus. But when are these messages supposed to be delivered? Heller handed Gris the letter, but what was he expecting him to do with it?
We've been told that there are regular Apparatus flights to and from Earth, but does the Voltarian government proper know about them? If they're on a strict schedule, doesn't that give Gris some time to find the platen? And if the messages have to be brought home by Space Pony Express, doesn't that give him some opportunities to have unfortunate accidents happen to the mail bags? A surprise pirate attack, an insurrection by Prince Whossname, that sort of thing? Get creative, man!
Also, Heller presumably wrote his letter to the Astrologer after getting the invasive surgical bugging. So is there not recorded footage somewhere of him writing that letter and using the platen? Or does the HellerVision only record what Gris personally witnessed Heller witnessing? Or does it simply not record a damn thing?
One-way space radios... how the hell are you supposed to manage covert operatives if you have no way to give them instructions? How are Raht and Terb given missions? Do they have to go all the way back to Turkey every time they complete an objective? What happens if the situation changes or they're urgently needed elsewhere?
I'm also still trying to figure out just what Mr. Bury and the other Rockecenter lackeys were planning. Presumably they were going to whack Heller, yeah? So did they really need to haul in all that cash and the potentially incriminating documents? Did they really need to kill Heller then and there, two days after learning of his existence? If they knew where he was the night before, and had those Slinkerton guys shadowing him, wouldn't it make more sense to whack him earlier than later, before he could potentially make copies of his ID or tell people his assumed name? Why go through the trouble of coming up with a new identity if they were just going to kill him? How would the police finding the inexplicably sniped body of "Jerome Wister" be better than the police finding the inexplicably sniped body of a John Doe?
Any why is Rockecenter "Jr." such a huge threat, anyway? Even if the forged documents are just too good for Sr.'s denials to hold up against, how is having an embarrassment of a son going to destroy Rockecenter's plans of world domination? Given what various royal families or Hollywood celebrities get up to, wouldn't this merely provide an amusing distraction while he continued to rule the planet? Also, why doesn't the guy who controls the government and the mob and the pharmaceutical industry and the energy industry also control the media? Wouldn't that make secretly ruling the planet much easier? And then he wouldn't have to worry about word getting out of "Jr."'s police record, too. (edit from the future: these questions are rather reliant on the assumption that Rockecenter is a rational individual, and as we'll see later...)
Finally - what was the point of the highly suspicious and very suspenseful mystery donut and coffee delivery at the start of last chapter? Who put the guy up to it? Who paid for it? Was there anything in the food? Wouldn't that have been a great opportunity for the bad guys to poison the coffee and negotiate from a position of strength, "give into my demands to get the antidote," that sort of thing? Is this just another meaningless incident that Hubbard called undue attention to, or is this seriously going to come up in a later chapter?
Okay, I'm done now. I'm no less confused, but I'm done now.
Back to Part Fifteen, Chapter Nine
"I'd make a big deal about how Combat Engineers were given broad mission objectives and considerable freedom in how to pursue them. I'd mention Heller having a history of creative and unorthodox solutions to problems and a talent at improvisation."
ReplyDeleteSounds like you're describing something like Special Circumstances agents from the Culture series by Iain Banks. Amazing sci-fi that I bet you would rather have read than these books.