Part Thirty-Nine, Chapter Four - Prep to Launch the Deadly Crobe

After four days in a room with a glaring Dr. Crobe, Gris is told that his super-unbreachable-maximum-fun-holding cell is finished and gets four guards to stand... guard while he makes some final preparations.  The first order of business is to dump a load of rations in it for Crobe, because "who knew how long he would be in there mucking about," and then it's time to find an incentive for the good doctor to learn the local languages.

The solution is pretty predictable.

I unearthed whatever I could spare on the subjects of psychology and psychiatry.  It was pretty juicy stuff: It included Governmental Psychology, all about man being a lousy stinking animal that was so depraved and writhing with unconscious passions he was totally incapable of rational thought and had to be policed with clubs at every turn; Irrational Psychology, all about how to cure people by killing them; Psychology of Women, or How to Trick Your Wife and Mistress into Getting into the Bed of Your Best Friend;

So... men are such depraved and passionate animals that they want to use psychology to make women crawl into other men's beds?  That's different.

Child Psychology, all about the techniques of turning children into perverts; The Psychiatrist on the Couch, giving seventy-seven unusual ways to engage in sex with animals;

Wait, what?  Where does the couch come in, exactly?  Actually, don't answer that.

Dr. Kutzbrain's famous text, Psychiatric Neurosurgery, all about how to end every possible brain function;

Why would you need to learn how to do brain surgery if the objective is killing people?  Just get a good-sized rock.

and Psychiatric Stew, which authoritatively told one what to do with people when they have been turned into vegetables by the latest techniques approved by the Food and Drug Administration.  I included lots of other even more vital texts, all standard and accepted material of the professions.  They could not fail to entice Crobe into reading English like mad.

So... he doesn't know the language, but these books will entice him to "read" the language?  But he already knows English well enough to pick up an interest in the first place.  And medical texts will help him learn the language, but not the magical language machine?  Didn't see Gris throwing one of those in the cell with Crobe.

Gris goes back to the doctor, and hey, the reason Crobe was so silent was because Gris decided to keep him gagged for half a week.  The doctor's first words are "I'll have the law on you for this!", and Gris suddenly realizes that Crobe doesn't fully understand the legal situation he's in!  So the solution is to look for more books!

This stupid little chapter is three pages long, with half of it spent on book titles and descriptions.

It was all one series of volumes!  More than forty of them, very thick.  The title of the set was Voltar Confederacy Compendium Complete, including Space Codes, Penal Codes, Domestic Codes, Royal Proclamations, Royal Orders, Royal Procedures, Royal Precedence, Royal Successions Complete with Tables and Biographies, Court Customs, Court History, Royal Land Grants, Rights of Aristocracy, Planetary Districts of 110 Planets, Local Laws, Local Customs, Aristocratic Privileges and Various Other Matters.  Impressive!

This is satire, obviously.  Satire of books with long titles.  And a long-overdue satire at that!  I'm sick and tired of books with paragraph-long titles, aren't you?

So Gris carts the entire forty-book legal series into Crobe's cell, and vows that the doctor will only be let out once he learns proper English and proper obedience.  And then it goes Looney Tunes.

I picked up the loose end of the safety line and gave it a hefty yank.

He spun like a top!

Right across the floor.

His body even hummed, it was turning so fast.

Remember this light-hearted, silly moment when we reach chapter seven.

Gris runs out, locks the door with a combination only he knows, and breathes a sigh of relief that his "secret weapon" against Heller is secure.  "At the least sign of resurgence or success in the U.S., I would launch the deadly Crobe."  He checks through the observation window and finds that the doctor's interest has already "quickened" at the sight of those psychiatric books.  Clearly, Gris is once again ascendant.

In conclusion, in this chapter we learned more about what Hubbard thinks psychologists think.  We learned that he takes particular umbrage at the notion that Man is some lowly animal only interested in bestiality and other perversions, rather than an enlightened creature focused on tax evasion, blackmail, and fraud.


Back to Chapter Three

Forward to Chapter Five