Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Part Sixteen, Chapter Three - Collars and Cabbies

Let's learn about New York City.

[...] New York is a peculiar place: practically nobody ever looks at anybody no matter what they are doing--including rape and murder.  Even dead bodies can lie on the street until the sanitation department gets a complaint--and answers it if they happen to have any appropriations that month.  So Heller was attracting no attention.

I guess Mayor Giuliani really did clean things up. 

Gris notices someone skulking behind Heller, someone who isn't Raht and/or Terb.  Meanwhile our hero steps into a Tall and Big Men store to swap out his old digs.  The main tailor is out of town, so Heller's new clothes are once again too small, and I wonder why, Hubbard, why do you keep dressing this guy in too-short pants, why do you think this is important and vital to the plot?  The suit also features an Eton collar, like those worn by English undergrads, so Heller looks even more boyish and young than usual, because otherwise the story would just fall apart.

He keeps the metal-cleated baseball shoes, though.  Again, why, Hubbard?

Gris bitterly notes that his useless underlings, who he cannot contact due to some jaw-dropping stupidity, will probably stake out that clothing store because of all the bugs they put in Heller's initial outfit.  Meanwhile Heller does something inexplicable - he kneels next to a cab's dented fender and bends it with his fingers, "an easy thing for anybody to do."

This is either a commentary on the shoddy state of modern automobiles, or else we're subtly being told that Voltarians are super-strong compared to us puny Earthlings.  Though the latter would explain some of Heller's stunts, I'm hoping it's the former. I really don't want him to turn into some combination of Superman and Captain Planet.

And no, as far as I can tell Heller isn't marking a car so he can track it.  I've scanned ahead and can't find any references to this event.  Like I said, inexplicable.

After that, Heller suddenly hails a cab, saying that he needs to be on the other side of town lickety-split.  Gris takes an interest, thinking that Heller has at last noticed and is trying to shake his tail.  But upon being delivered to his destination, Heller just looks around, spots a banged-up cab, and tells the driver that he has another urgent appointment.  He does this three times, but upon getting to his final destination doesn't disembark.  Gris freaks out.  "AND THEN HELLER JUST SAT THERE IN THE CAB!"  Guess he was really looking forward to Heller touring Broadway.

See, what Heller was really doing was finding a wild cabbie whose vehicle bore the marks of brutal driving, and who displayed the skills needed to careen through the streets of New York City.  Heller wants driving lessons so he can take his Cadillac with him.  His cabbie, a tank driver in the last war who was sent home for being "too brutal to the enemy!", is Mortie Massacurovitch, who after being promised two hundred dollars agrees to show Heller the ropes once his shift ends.  So that's next chapter set up for us, driving lessons from a war criminal.

Gris is of course horrified at the thought of Heller getting back behind the wheel of that Cadillac, since Mr. Bury would surely have stuck a car bomb in it.  If only he'd done so a few chapters ago, he would have made things so much simpler...


Back to Chapter Two

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