What he sees is confusing, and Gris wonders if he's gotten "the wrong station or something," because on the television is a hallway. With people in it scurrying around. A sign reading "Wonderful Oil for Maysabongo Front Office" confirms that this impossible vision is taking place in Heller's offices in the Empire State Building. Heller is giving orders to someone running telephone lines to the Chryster Building in a fully-staffed telecommunications room, and the place is so crowded that Heller has difficulty making it to his main office due to the sheer number of people in the way.
How can this be? When last we saw Heller he'd just been scammed out of a fortune twice over, and more importantly, he was very sad! Could something have happened in the months Gris has spent not paying attention to the main plot, something that allowed Heller to overcome his sadness and succeed?
Gris gets bored of watching Heller wait in line and watches Krak's viewscreen for a while. The Countess is at Tiffany's taking advantage of a post-winter sale to try and buy clothes "suitable for a space voyage." From this statement we learn that not only does Krak not appreciate that space travel is a rare and notable thing on this planet, but that Heller hasn't given her any instruction on how to not look like an alien. The sales clerk suggests a mink jumpsuit for the nice lady from NASA. From that statement we learn that this clerk assumes that NASA shops at overpriced civilian retailers for uniforms. The clerk's assistant is a Canadian gentleman named Beevertail. From this we learn that Hubbard's grasp of satire starts and ends with silly names.
This is also boring, so Gris looks back to Heller in an attempt to learn how he could afford mink spacesuits. The combat engineer hands Izzy his "daily broker-order list," detailing how gold will peak at 3:30 the next day, cotton should be sold now because it's about to dive in price, corn will drop thirty cents before the closing bell, etc. And even though this has apparently been going on for some time now, Izzy conveniently chooses to ask how Heller knows what stock prices will do thirty-six hours in advance right when Gris, and by extension the reader, is watching.
Heller's big secret is in a side room with a "huge, long sheet of slate" - so a chalkboard? - listing corn, cattle, and other commodities, along with a bunch of prices and times. There's also a ticker-tape machine, a bunch of newspapers, and most importantly, a locked steel contraption with an eyepiece. Why it's our old friend the navigational time-sight!
So yes, the character with the magical telescope that lets him see into the future heard about stock markets and drew the obvious conclusion. Wonder how many days after the Atlantic City fiasco it took him to determine that this might be a better plan than robbing a rival mafia group?
"It reads the future," said Heller. "Right now, if that board is kept up daily, this device reads the future of that board. You can see what it will be reading this afternoon or tomorrow at specific times. It reads whatever is put on the board in the future."
"Magic!" said Izzy in tones of horror. "Divination! Oy!"
"No, no," said Heller. "It's just a machine, an invention. Look into the eyepiece."
"Never!" said Izzy. "Black magic! Necromancy! My mother would never forgive me. My rabbi would go into shock! He'd revoke my bar mitzvah! One must never touch magic! Moses would roll in his grave fast enough to turn the Red Sea into buttermilk!"
Izzy is Jewish, by the way.
Heller continues to explain that "time is the dominant factor in this universe and forms the positions of matter in space," as opposed to something to measure changes in position by (wait, I thought Life was the dominant force in the cosmos?). He also wants Izzy to work the machine to increase productivity and let Heller work on other things without losing money. They've already made half a billion dollars cheating on the stock market, but with Izzy at the helm they might earn a billion a month.
The only catch is making Izzy swear to keep such not-magic secret... so Heller makes him repeat the Fleet's Oath of Secrecy: "I do hereby solemnly acknowledge that I have been entrusted with a secret of state and swear never hereafter to impart its portent or content in any way whatsoever to any unauthorized person, even under the threat of torture or execution. And should I violate this oath, I hereby surrender all my rights and privileges as a citizen, my rank as an officer and my name as an individual. Long live His Majesty!"
Gris reasons that Heller is so used to reciting that oath that he blurted out the part about the alien emperor, and gets ready to report an oh-so-deadly Code Break.
"His Majesty?" said Izzy. "Then it is black magic after all. You made me take an oath to Satan, the King of the Nether Regions!"
What?
I hurriedly grabbed a pen. Heller was skidding right on into an outright Code break. He'd have to tell Izzy now that he was an extraterrestrial, a Royal officer of the Voltar Fleet and a subject of the Emperor, Cling the Lofty.
But instead, Heller replied, "Of course. Isn't it said that money is the root of all evil?"
What?!
Izzy thought that over. He nodded. How do you run the sight?" he said.
WHAT?!
So a page after panicking about necromancy, Izzy just sorta accepts that his friend tricked him into pledging his soul to the Christian conception of the devil (as opposed to the Adversary of Jewish tradition who works for God and tempts mortal into sin). And then he spots that pork bellies are going to get super cheap in March, and if he sells them now he'll make three hundred thou nice and easy. And that's that.
I mourned. Now, with Izzy's expertise on commodity futures, the money would roll in!
Gris checks on Krak again and watches her buy an eighty-five thousand dollar "disposable" Porsche on Gris' Squeeza card. The only notable thing from the exchange is that Krak references Heller having "a sort of birthday a month ago" that didn't go very well. Which means... I have no idea when any of this is going on. I don't know when "now" in the story is, I don't know how much time Gris has wasted in his limo, and I don't know when the events at Atlantic City took place. I feel totally disconnected from the events unfolding before me.
You know, even more than I normally do because I don't care about any of the characters.
Back to Part Thirty-Nine, Chapter Eight
If somebody says "on this planet" or "in Earth units" or refers to humans as "your species", I'd assume they were either joking, sarcastic, or perhaps delusional. I think if you were a space alien, that's not what would trip you up.
ReplyDeletePossessing a telescope that can see into the future? If you showed me something like that, I'd first suspect I was dreaming, and then suspect you of playing an elaborate prank on me. Space alien would be my third guess, especially if it wasn't a prototype that the person claimed to have invented. Or time traveler.
This guy has already "invented" enough stuff to be suspicious of where his ideas are coming from. But a literal Satan as the explanation for a supernatural seeming gadget doesn't seem like something most Americans, Jewish or otherwise, would come up with. Maybe the woman from Jesus Camp.