Why would you put Mission Earth on Kindle? Sure, it's better than chopping down trees to do another printing of it, but is there seriously enough of a demand to justify scanning this trash into digital form? Or is someone, or some group, hoping to take advantage of this hip new technology to attract a new audience of potential customers?
Anyway, Krak and Gris get to the hospital and meet Dr. Prahd, who stands gobsmacked at the unearthly vision of loveliness that is the Countess Krak, forcing Gris to privately explain that she's a criminal who has killed at least four people. He gives Prahd orders to bug Krak the same way he did Heller, which means I'll have to think of a Krak-related analogue for HellerVision, and explains the whole hypnohelmet plan.
While Prahd goes to fetch the disabled helmets, Gris rummages through Krak's luggage, but can't find anything but the "language machine" and some toiletries. Likewise, he can't find those forged proclamations he gave her on the clothes Krak was wearing. Then he remembers that when he first gave them to her, she carried them directly on her person, "And that's exactly where they should be now."
Gris, when your instructors said you had "smart brains," were they coughing a lot, shaking their heads sadly, or rolling their eyes?
So Gris plans on strip-searching Krak once she's out, and Prahd comes in with the hypnohelmets, which Krak coos over. Prahd gets to put his on first and fakes his brainwashing agreement to "not monkey with [Krak's] limbs or glands," and to use a knife on anyone who tries to touch her inappropriately while she's out. The punishment for failing to do this is to feel like atom bombs are exploding in the doctor's head. I'm disappointed that the Voltarians can think of any heavier ordinance than what humans came up with in the age of vacuum tubes. Fusion bombs, quantum bombs, antimatter bombs, anything.
Then it's Gris' turn for some fake hypo-indoctrinating, where Krak attempts to expand the "feel urpy at the thought of harming Heller" programming to cover her as well. When it's over, Gris again reflects on his "smart brains" and how cunning he was to spend those chapters implanting himself with something that disabled those hypnohelmets only to learn that he accidentally disabled all hypnohelmts in a several-mile radius.
Hmm. I wonder why Krak trusts a hypnohelmet produced from an Apparatus facility, regardless of how "secure" its packaging looks. Why didn't she bring her own helmet from home? Why isn't she suspicious enough to pop open the devices and examine them herself?
Back to Chapter Eight
No comments:
Post a Comment