Despite his success dealing "a blow that Heller would not soon forget and certainly could not possibly recover from" last chapter, Gris starts this chapter "frankly getting frantic" over his inability to raise Raht. So he makes one last try, slipping into a freshly-painted closet and inadvertently brushing up against one of the alien walkie-talkie's buttons. And the little red button lights up, and suddenly he can hear Raht.
Over four days in New York City, and Gris never pressed that button in his attempts to get the radio to work. Sure, Gris admits that he doesn't have a manual for the thing, but he never made a serious attempt to puzzle out its function, or wondered if maybe it had been turned off at some point. He also admits that these paired radios are designed to be "simple rigs" that even an Army general could use, and he still never figured out the bloody thing wasn't on. All so Gris can't rely on Raht when he arrives in New York, forcing him to have his horrifying encounter with Pinch and Candy.
And hang on a minute - this simplistic device can beam a signal from another continent, but not the super-advanced audio-visual bugs embedded in Krak and Heller's skulls? Those require a relayer?
L. Ron Hubbard's novels run on stupidity and contrivance. Those are the only things holding the plot together, the only way the author can get characters from one scene to the next.
Anyway, moving beyond the first page of this chapter: Gris raises Raht, who immediately proves how much smarter he is than Gris, and by extension how much better-suited he is to be the book's villain, by immediately realizing that Gris is lying when he claims to be calling from Africa because his signal's too strong and he wants that bloody stupid 831 Relayer turned off, so he must be within the two hundred mile signal range. Gris' cunning response is to turn the radio off and run away.
A half hour later the viewscreens are working again, so Gris starts checking on his asset and enemies. What does Hubbard think a psychologist does all day?
Crobe's came on first. He had some woman on a couch and was apparently psychoanalyzing her, for she was saying over and over how her three-year-old brother had raped her when she was sixteen. Crobe might or might not have been listening but his vision was exploring her genitalia in depth. He looked up once and, my, they had given him a beautiful office: whole shelves full of skulls and his psychiatric diploma framed in gold. But beyond noting that he was far from a lost resource and that Bellevue seemed to be providing him with its best facilities, I had no interest today in Crobe. I turned his viewer off so it wouldn't distract me.
Just imagine how much less satisfying this story would be if Crobe didn't have X-ray vision. All Gris would be able to tell us is that the mad doctor's gaze was fixed on his patent's clothed crotch, rather than "exploring her genitalia at length."
Krak and Heller, meanwhile, are hanging out in their apartment, Krak reading a book on foreign recipes while Heller watches the UN proceedings on the TV. Heller explains how the Security Council works, i.e. one of five chunkheads can veto anything the rest of the world has agreed upon.
"What is the measure, dear?"
"Women's rights," said Heller.
"Hmm," said the Countess. She got up and sat down again on a sofa near him. "I don't really understand why they have to have a law to give women rights. Women make their own rights."
What's the message here? Does the author view women's movements as unnecessary? Is he showing Krak's naivete or suggesting how much more enlightened Voltarian society is? Is he encouraging females to be more like the Countess Krak? Stop picketing and start murdering, ladies!
Heller laughs when the news camera settles on a poster held by some women threatening that the UN will be boycotted at the Gracious Palms if the measure doesn't pass, dedicated "In Memory of Pretty Boy." And Krak is of course suspicious, and Heller is of course evasive and doesn't explain. And I'm going to assume that this is supposed to be quirky RomCom humor rather than an indicator of how dysfunctional Krak and Heller's relationship is (edit from the future: can't it be both?).
Things go bad when the Russian president of the Security Council, with his "big, square face and Mongolian eyes," calls the "waste-of-time" meeting to order and votes on this "silly nonsense."
"We will now have the debate. I will be the first one to debate. So listen, Comrades: It is well known that the only workers who can be made to do any work are women. If the women did not do all the work, men would have no time to sit around and drink vodka. But," he fixed the other members with a ferocious glare, "you know and I know and everybody knows and Karl Marx who had an awful married life knew, too, that if you don't slap women they talk all the time, day and night. And if they talk, talk, talk, where goes the Five Year Plans then, right?
I'd like to point out that Communist governments were pretty egalitarian (if not at the highest levels) and set quotas for female and minority representation. In fact, one of the most jarring things to come out of the end of the Cold War was the huge drop in female representation in Eastern European countries. Kinda like how Iraqi women had it better under Saddam Hussein's pseudo-communist Ba'ath regime but now have to wear hijabs and are afraid to go out alone, even though the new government is technically a democracy.
And if they make the Five Year Plans fail they are counter-revolutionaries and ought to be thermonuclear bombed once and for all so we could have some peace. And that's all there is to it, Comrades. This resolution would undermine the already-undermined theory of Marxist Leninism. Russia votes against it--nyet, nyet, nyet--and spits on it, too. So there is no point in debating further or even voting, as a great power has vetoed it. Meeting adjourned!" And he got up and put on his fur coat and stamped out of the hall where a regiment of KGB guards got him into a helicopter and away.
So dies UN Resolution 678-546-452, "WOMEN HAVE THE RIGHT NOT TO BE THERMONUCLEAR BOMBED AND NOT BE FORCED TO SHUT UP BY SLAPPING OR TORTURE," slain by those damned commies.
"Oh, blast, blast those Russians!" said Heller. "The girls will be SO disappointed after all their hard work!"
"What girls?" said the Countess Krak, very alert.
"And there goes any chance I had with Miss Simmons!" said Heller. "Confound those Russians!"
The Countess Krak said, very loudly, "WHO is Miss Simmons?"
Heller came out of it. He looked at the Countess. "What?"
"I said, WHO is Miss Simmons?"
So Heller finally is forced to explain more about his mandatory Nature Appreciation class, and Krak accuses him of being infatuated with Simmons, and Heller declares "I HATE the hussy!", and Krak warns him to be careful about hate because "The poet says it is the closest neighbor of love," and I ask what poet?
Krak presses further, and Heller talks more - or Gris summarizes how Heller talks more - about how his teacher hates nuclear physicists in general and "Jerome Wister" the aspiring nuclear physicist in particular. Krak interprets the near-rape experience of last year as Simmons' attempt to lure Heller into a trap, and that the teacher "is the kind of woman who craves to be raped." Heller promises his girlfriend flowers and a trip to the theater and that he'll even get up first in the morning to turn up the thermostat if she would just shut up about Miss Simmons. And Krak says "Hmm" and goes into the next room.
I guess keeping relationship-damaging secrets is better than honestly talking about your issues, because the honesty thing just doesn't work. So guys, if your work brings you into repeated contact with a particular woman, even if you have no interest in her whatsoever, even if you outright hate her, do not let your girlfriend know about it because she'll just assume you're lying anyway and, in Krak's case, go do something drastic. Good to know, Hubbard, thanks!
Krak calls her friend Mamie Boomp and states that "it has happened" and she needs her advice now.
"[Heller] is so disturbed that I am absolutely certain he has become infatuated with another woman and it may hold him on this planet. We are not married yet. I MUST get him away. What should I do?"
"Scratch her eyes out," said Mamie, promptly.
"Hmm," said the Countess Krak. "Well, thank you. I was just checking to see how it was done on this planet. How is business?"
"I'm not an alien, by the way."
So Krak is out to get Miss Simmons because she's decided that her boyfriend is an unfaithful liar and won't let anything change her mind. But remember, she's a strong female character who women should emulate instead of loafing around expecting the UN to pass rights on their behalf.
Back to Chapter One
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