Part Forty, Chapter Two - Interior Decorating, Psychology Style

And another thing, "money is the root of all evil" is first, from the New Testament, and second, only part of 1 Timothy 6:10, "for the love of money is the root of all evil."  So Izzy should have found Heller's rationalization for supposedly trying to make him swear loyalty to the forces of darkness even more dubious than... well, the obvious reason.  And wouldn't it have been an easier leap in logic to assume that Heller works for the British monarchy or something?  Why is Izzy so fixed on another faith's idea of the devil?

Oh, right, new chapter.

Well, Gris is frantic and realizes he must act, and "Only Crobe could be counted on to do Heller in!"  He rushes out and gets Ters (no evil laugh, that's how serious the situation is) to drive him to the hospital so he can get Prahd's help.  Doctor Prahd, of course, asks if his pay has started yet.  As opposed to "where the hell have you been for the past month(s)?"

They rush back to the base and Crobe's cell, and wouldn't you know it but the good doctor is at that moment asleep on his bed, allowing Gris to hit the button that makes robotic arms pin him down with metal clamps.  They rush in and gas Crobe into unconsciousness so Prahd can implant the bugging devices... and at this point I just take it for granted that everybody sent to New York gets bugged so Gris can watch them from Turkey without getting off the couch.  It's routine now, a fact of life, like flu season.

Prahd starts spraying disinfectant in preparation for the surgery, because Crobe has as expected failed to use the commode and just spread his waste everywhere.  Which means that the Apparatus looked at a man who wasn't toilet trained and said "yes, we need him!"  But then Prahd discovers something unusual about the devices Gris brought to be implanted into the doctor.

Now remember, back in Book One, Gris just grabbed a bunch of espionage equipment at random that evening he murdered a man and burned down a store.  As it turns out, the haul includes some specialty units, among them one that "alters the vision response of one eye so that its sees through solids like metal or clothes or bone, depending on where the person focuses his vision."  So you don't need an X-ray projector and special film to see people's bones, you just need a microchip in your brain that will somehow allow you to read normal light in a way to see through objects.  Another unit "registers the emotional response of the spy to what he sees," which I'm sure is very useful if you need to know James Bond's favorite flavor of ice cream.

And Gris decides to put these in Crobe, along with a perfectly normal transmitter, because... let's see...

"Details, details," I snapped. "Do they all operate as respondo-mitters? Do they have a two-hundred-mile activator-receiver? Is there an 832 Relayer for them?"

"Yes," [Prahd] said.

"Well, put them in! What are we waiting for?"

So, none.  No particular reason for giving Crobe the extra implants.  Just why the hell not?

While Prahd does the surgery, Gris sees Faht Bey to get the rest of the base's cooperation in shipping Crobe out.

"You mean he'll be out of this base?"

"Yes."

"Never to return?"

"Yes."

"I'll give you all the help you need."

This will involve a pair of plainclothes guards to escort Crobe to the airport and a "Zanco restraint coat--something like a straitjackets they use on Earth, except it is held magnetically and has no ties."  So a magnetic straitjacket.

Gris checks on the doctor working on the other doctor, pokes around Crobe's library, and notices that while Crobe has been using the language strips, he's really been hitting all the psychology texts Gris left for him - "No wonder he didn't use the toilet!"

Let's examine this observation.  Earlier Gris expressed his skepticism that Crobe would successfully put his waste inside a toilet, but this was before he'd really gotten into psychiatry.  This "psychology undoes toilet training" also falls apart because we haven't seen it happen anywhere else - none of the fully-trained psychologists in the story have happily crapped their pants because Freud told them to or whatever, and more importantly at no point has Gris taken a chapter to sing the praises of soiling oneself.  And if anyone could read a psychology textbook and come to the conclusion that pants are made for crapping, it's Soltan Gris.

The only thing left to do is make a fake passport for "Dr. Phetus P. Crobe, M.D."  Gris decides to give Crobe psychological credentials from Vienna, Poland, and Great Britain in an admittedly kinda clever way of addressing questions about what the hell kind of accent the guy has.

We worked hard, for I was going to get him on the morrow's morning plane, come whatever.  Heller was out of hand!  Crobe would finish him!

I recalled vividly that day when Crobe had positively slavered at the thought of shortening Heller's bones.

Heller could not help but be stopped completely in his tracks!

I'm trying to remember all the times Gris has declared Heller stopped completely in his tracks.  I think we're at four or five now. 


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