Part Fifty-Seven, Chapter Two - The Good Guys Pump Ravenous Bacteria Into the Atmosphere

More failure, as Gris continues to watch the plot progress and can think of no action to stop the heroes.

He wakes up from a snooze in the owner's salon to find something weird on the viewscreens, green smoke rings rising into the sky, followed by Krak and Heller in "sun helmets."  They look happy.

I shut my eyes tightly.

Krak's voice.  "Finished!"  She sounded jubilant.  I knew she meant me.  Nothing else would give her such joy.

"Absolutely finished!" said Heller.  He sounded so happy he could only be referring to my eyesight.

Gris' persecution complex aside, Krak, Heller, Bang-Bang, Izzy and J.P. Flagrant are all down in Florida celebrating the success of Beautiful Clear Blue Skies for Everyone, Inc.'s "spore" plant.  All the contractors and workers who helped build the place are in attendance, along with fifty alligator farm buyers for some reason, members of the press, and two hundred Seminoles to perform native dances.  Which is why Flagrant is in a feathered headdress and talking like a stereotype.  "Red brothers smoke plenty wampum.  Do peace dance.  Ugh."

The plant is pumping out fifty million "spores" every minute, propelled up a fifty-foot smokestack miles into the stratosphere.  Because I guess anyone who wants to can build a factory to spew biological agents into the sky.  So did Heller have to get a permit for this?  Did any inspectors come by and ask where he came up with these "spores" or how they're supposed to work?  Anyone ask to see the facilities that created these ravenous globs of organic matter?  Nobody's expressed concern over the long-term effects they'll have on the planet?

I can't help but think that this is something that'd be really easy to shut down.  You don't even need a "PR genius" like Madison, all Rockecenter would need to do is get the papers to publish some alarmist editorials or hire some scientist-like spokespeople to stir up public opinion against this lunatic spraying biological agents into the air from the swamps of Florida, which would end in a court order for the plant's closure.  Easy-peasy.  Alas, the family "spi" is bad about passing on information to his bosses.  And coworkers.  And henchmen.

Krak congratulates Heller, saying that they're one step closer to home.  "Now if we can just push along with these fuel things, we'll be through in no time."

I groaned.  If they wound up a success, they would certainly ruin Rockecenter.  And Lombar would comb the planet to find and kill me.

From this, I'm guessing the author is aware of how badly the story is dragging, and how long's it been since he last dealt with the main plot, so he felt the need to remind the reader what's going on and what's at stake.  And yet he doesn't feel the need to just cut out the crap slowing the story down and focusing on the thrice-damned premise of this misbeggoten series.

I looked at the two-way-response radio.  I could think of nothing to tell Raht.

"Stop them?"  Get him to act on his own initiative?  Manco Devil knows he's better at getting things done than you, let the boy win his spurs.

I turned the faces of the viewers to the wall.  I could not stand to witness a celebration.  It was too much like an Irish wake: the corpse being me.

But he doesn't turn them off for whatever reason.  Guess he secretly wants to hear the native dancers.


Back to Chapter One

Forward to Chapter Three

Part Fifty-Seven, Chapter One - Mission Spain

So the good ship Golden Sunset passes through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean, inching closer to Turkey even though Gris doesn't know that's where he'll end up yet.  Not that he actually has a plan at this point.  Just cruisin' around on his boat while the plot continues without him.

For the first time in too bloody long he turns on the viewers... okay, how are these not security risks?  The Apparatus doesn't like its agents using two-way freakin' radios because someone could intercept the messages, right?  But these portable televisions tuned to ocular/aural implants are safe?  Can't they use similar safeguards on the radios?

Anyway, for the first time in too bloody long he turns on the viewers... why has it taken Gris this long to do something so simple?  What has he been doing all day for the past two weeks?  He has hash and underage sex at night, and exercises some during the day.  But it takes him weeks to work up the energy or remember to press a button and spend a few minutes checking on the people he's supposed to be thwarting?

Anyway, for the first time in too bloody long he turns on the viewers.  Krak's with the Whiz Kid double, referred to in this chapter solely as "the double."  I have to look back literally a hundred pages to remember that his name is Gerry Wister because the book hates using it.  Krak's using a hypno-helmet on him again, but for "its designed purpose: speed training."  She's helping Gerry cram for his finals, so the double can graduate and start an exciting life designing new pig troughs and other pig-related engineering work alongside Twoey the Real Rockecenter Heir.  Yes, Gerry vows that he's done working with the media.

"But if Jettero ever needs me for public appearances or anything, all he has to do is say the word. I'm not forgetting how he rescued me from that crazy psychiatrist! One minute I was about to be turned into a vegetable and the next there I was in a van looking at Jettero.

Surely you mean Jerome Terrace Wister, right?  Jerome's a promising student at Empire University with deep ties in organized crime, while Jettero Heller is a space alien infiltrator working to help his masters capture Earth.

And Jesus, was I ashamed of myself for ever daring to think I could pose as him.  And I know darned well you didn't tell me to think that when I had the helmet on."

Whaaaat?  So he's aware that Krak's implanting thoughts and commands in his head?  He's okay with it?  He keeps coming back for more?

Krak leaves to get lunch with her class of microwave engineers, while Gerry swears his eternal gratitude to Krak and Heller for helping him turn his life around, and promises that if they need his help for anything, all they have to do is ask. 

Just as a reminder, Krak kidnapped Gerry, mind-controlled him and held him prisoner for a few days, forced him to confess in court to clear Heller's name, let him get carted off to the loony bin for a lobotomy, rushed in to rescue him from the sentence she had helped doom him with, and is now programming him to help muck out pigs with another one of her pawns.

And he's ever so grateful for it.

Even Gris is nauseous at the Heller buttkissing.  And that's about it.  Nausea but not that vital Inspiration!

I gritted my teeth.  The two-way-response radio was lying there.  Wasn't there some kind of an order I could give Raht?  Something that would make these people suffer for all the horrible things they had done to me?

I couldn't think of anything.

We're watching someone suffer from Villain's Block for dozens and dozens of pages.

That's enough of the plot, now for a trip to Spain!  Although it's hard to tell.  Gris mentions Valencia's "busy streets" before spending half a page talking about clothes shopping and the flamenco troupe that visited the yacht for the evening's entertainment.  A page later he's touring in the mountains with Madison, trying to find which old "magnificent castle-fortress" El Cid used as his "hideaway."  We're told that the view is "impressive!" and that's about it.  One paragraph summary of hiking and picnics, then back on the boat with the flamenco dancers and Teenie and hashish.

Why is the author bothering to visit these countries if he's not doing anything with them?  This chapter spends more time talking about Teenie's outfits than Spain.  Why are we here, Hubbard? 

Madison eventually gushes over breakfast about how El Cid was an "absolute PR masterpiece!"

"Oh, you'll really love this," he said.  "You're so amateur when it comes to PR that you just plain won't believe it.  But El Cid was the total creation of PR men.  In the eleventh century, too!  You see, when he went outlaw against the king of Castile, he was really trying to set up a kingdom for himself in Valencia, totally separate from Spain.  But his PR figured, hey, that's not so good for his immortality so they rewrote the whole script.  They tailored it up so he looked like a Spanish national hero and he's been one ever since!  Man, I wish I knew the name of his PR.  What an expert he must have been!"

Madison being stupid, thus implying that all "PR" are stupid as well?  Or does the author hope to blow the lid off the whole El Cid legend?  If we're supposed to take this seriously, why would he have a dope like Madison be the one to tell us?  Why is this here?  Why are we in Spain?  

Besides the opening look at what Krak's up to, there's one other significant event in this chapter.  While getting ice cream, Teenie is once again met by the Black-Jowled Man, who drives off with her in a taxi.

Unease stirred me.  But then I shrugged.

Of course.

I shouldn't have.  In my stupidity,

This phrase should preface just about all of Gris' self-narration, really.  "In my stupidity, I couldn't think of anything." 

I assumed that there was simply no understanding teen-agers.  Or middle-aged men who would fly all over the place just to get another crack at unripe tail.

Little did I know what Fate was building up for me.  Had I even guessed, I would have run until there was no more wind left in me.

Half a block?

Looking back on it, I am utterly amazed that I never even came close to fathoming what was really gong on!

C'mon, you just admitted how stupid you are, once you realize that it should come as no surprise that you keep missing things.

I was at RISK!

No, nothing happens next chapter.  Or the one after that.  Or the next.  Or the following.  Something important and appallingly stupid happens in Chapter Six, though.


Back to Part Fifty-Six, Chapter Seven

Forward to Part Fifty-Seven, Chapter Two

Part Fifty-Six, Chapter Seven - Fate Wears Jogging Shorts

Gris wakes up to find the Golden Sunset at sea again, and wastes no time in getting to the bottom of things.  Once he's shaved.  And had breakfast. 

Captain Bitts explains that at four o'clock in the morning, Gris came running in to order a new destination.  He doesn't outright say what that destination is, and Gris is to embarrassed to ask, so this gripping mystery continues for another three pages.  I can only assume that the author is giving readers a chance to feel clever by guessing the destination before Gris is told.  The captain does hint that "half the shipping lanes of the world converge straight ahead," and Gris can see some mountains off the starboard side of the yacht.

Gris finds Teenie and asks where they're going, but she's intent on riding her bicycle on the ship's bloody racetrack and refuses to talk with him.  So Gris tracks down the publicist on the yacht's bloody squash court.  Gris tells Madison that there are two places on the planet the yacht absolutely must not go to, the United States and Turkey.  Madison responds by talking about someone who was banished by his king, then "took on the whole country single-handed," and when he died his body was strapped onto his horse and the sight of it was enough to rout the foe.  Then Gris outright asks Madison where they're going.

If you're like me and played Age of Empires II, you should know the answer by now.

Madison is startled at Gris' memory lapse, and reminds the Apparatus agent that he barged into Madison's room at three in the morning, demanded to know who he was researching next, and based their destination on that.  Madison wanted to learn more about Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, or El Cid, because... advertising?  Gris' strikingly idiosyncratic knowledge of planet Earth requires Madison to explain that this means they're going to Spain.

"Spain is a big country," I said.  "WHAT PORT?"

"Oh, you want to know what PORT we're going to.  Well, why didn't you say so?  Although, for the life of me, I can't see how you forgot ordering it.

Did nobody on the boat notice that Gris was high?  Did nobody find it odd that the thoroughly unpleasant individual was giggling, taking an interest in other people, and running about at four in the morning?  Did the highly-professional world-wise captain not think to check for confirmation of their new heading the next morning rather than follow a drug-addled directive?

Teenie was all over the ship at an ungodly hour telling everyone you were absolutely disgusted with Casablanca and wouldn't spend another hour in the place.  Frightful row, leaving so quickly.  So we're sailing to investigate Charlton Heston---I mean El Cid."

Heston starred in a 1961 film based on El Cid.  So it's not a complete non-sequitur, it's an achingly dated movie reference.

Anyway, the destination is Valencia.  And Gris has no reaction.  After screaming the question of which port in Spain they're going to, it turns out it doesn't matter.  I mean, anywhere but Turkey and the US, right?  So he lets the sports director take him jogging.

The author is still struggling to make this exciting.

Had I only looked, I would have seen Fate jogging along beside me, and had I then really inspected the apparition, I would have seen that it had begun to bare its fangs.

This is an attempt to fool the reader into expecting that something interesting is about to happen. 


Back to Part Fifty-Six, Chapter Six

Forward to Part Fifty-Seven, Chapter One

Part Fifty-Six, Chapter Six - Mission Morocco

Twelve days out of Bermuda to cross the Atlantic, twelve days in which Gris checked on Krak and Heller exactly once and made absolutely no progress towards coming up with a plan for thwarting Krak's investigation of his activities.  Twelve days spent traveling to Morocco, so Madison can do... research?

Madison was up and at it promptly.  "I've got to study this king," he said.  "He sounds like a real first-grade outlaw.  His name is Hussan-Hussan.  When his father got independence from the French, they say Hussan-Hussan murdered him.

Presumably this is a lawyer-friendly version of Hassan II.  Interestingly enough, there is some speculation that his father, the previous sultan, died of something other than complications during surgery.  So Hubbard's not using the guy's real name, but still suggesting he murdered his dad.

He also murdered the man who had effected the real revolution and took the credit.

It doesn't sound like Morocco had a revolution per se - there were violent clashes against French and Europeans, but the country gained its independence following negotiation with the colonial governments.  Wikipedia also doesn't offer a potential "real father of the revolution" figure for Hussan x 2 to kill.

He is held in power by the United States and he banks all the mineral receipts of the country in Switzerland in his own name.

I don't know about Swiss banking, but the CIA did pretty much prop the guy up back in the day.  It was the Cold War, we did a lot of embarrassing stuff, but the Soviets were worse, really!

He keeps the majority of the population, who are Berbers, in total repression and perpetuates the minority rule by the Arabs with violence and force.

Wikipedia's not helpful here - on one page it mentions that the bulk of the Moroccan population are Berbers, but another page lumps the group together with Arabs to form 99% of the population.  Then you have to distinguish between Berbers and Arabized Berbers and mixed Arab-Berbers.  Though it sounds like Hussan x 2 didn't have a good human rights record, so some repression obviously was taking place.

He's worse many times over than South Africa in racial subjugation and yet he gets away with it all.

In 1972, while looking for a Scientology-friendly place to hole up in, Hubbard and the Sea Org made port in Morocco.  He ended up making friends in the Moroccan secret police for some cross-training, but was eventually forced to flee the country after getting too involved in Moroccan politics.  I can only assume if they'd been better hosts, he wouldn't be bashing the country here.

I've read all I can find in our library.  Now I've got to find if he is a true outlaw and, if he is, study his approaches.  So I'm going to be quite busy."

What's with this guy's obsession with "outlaws?"  For that matter, what's with the author's obsession with outlaws?

Teenie hits the shore and promptly disappears, while Gris is less than impressed with the country.

I wandered up and down the pier.  The town certainly didn't look very inviting.  Dust and Arabs with dust on them whining and begging through the dust.  They were trying to sell me anything from donkeys to their sisters.

And the worst part is that Gris can't find Charles Boyer or Humphrey Bogart anywhere.  I didn't make that up, he wonders why they'd visit a place like this in the book.  We can only hope he's being sarcastic.

Teenie eventually returns in a taxi to announce that she's flying down to Marrakech for the rest of the day.  Gris spots the Black-Jowled Man in he cab with her, wonders how he followed them, and eats some coos-coos.  No speculation beyond "How did he get here?", no worries that the man he thought was staking him out in Bermuda is still on his tail.  Just coos-coos.

Madison turns up and complains that Hussan MkII isn't a "real outlaw" in that he robs from the poor and keeps it all for himself rather than going all Robin Hood on his fellow wealthy elites.  Even though the king's PR is so bad that people spit on the floor after saying his name, Madison decides he isn't worth helping and goes to bed.  Gris sleeps a night free of all that awful sex stuff he couldn't get enough of two books ago.

Teenie returns the next afternoon with a new outfit that doesn't matter and boxes of crap from her friend the Black-Jowled Man.  Teenie explains that he owns the Moroccan airlines and is really fond of oral sex from underage American girls.  That evening she shows him more of the goodies she got, what Gris mistakes for candy and only learns, two helpings later, is actually hashish, concentrated marijuana.

"You (bleeptch)!" I started to climb out of bed.

The walls suddenly shot fifty feet away from me.  The ceiling went through the floor.  I was in 1492 discovering Columbus.

I started to giggle.

"Ah, that's better," said Teenie.  "Now just watch and I'll show you a waterfall.  Look at the muscles of my belly moving.  When I showed them this in a nightclub last night in Marrakech, it got them all so hot I had to go down on the whole orchestra."

Aaaand any amusement from the drug trip sequence is suddenly gone.

Gris hallucinates, giggles a lot, and ends up doing something stupid we'll learn about next chapter, which isn't much of an anti-drug message because Gris does stupid things all the time.  This is also yet another chapter that ends with Gris ranting about some coming tragedy and cruel Fate and all that garbage, in a desperate attempt to keep the reader interested and invoke some sort of tension as the story continues to wander away from the plot.


Back to Chapter Five

Forward to Chapter Seven

Part Fifty-Six, Chapter Five - Whale Wangs

Yes, whale wangs.

Days pass as the Golden Sunset sails from Bermuda into a quiet part of the Atlantic, a place where "even the whales had a chance," according to the captain.  Gris and Teenie catch sight of one such "monster," which gets Teenie to bugging Gris about how big a cetacean penis is in proportion to the rest of its body and the mechanics of whale reproduction.

It's going to be one of those chapters.

Gris tries to convince the girl that whales lay eggs, but that night she shows up in his bedroom with a ruler.  See, if she can measure his "relative proportions," she might be able to estimate those of a whale.  This ends in more marijuana and more "Oh, Inky, aaaaaahhh!" and Teenie never gets around to making those measurements, the silly girl.

The next morning Gris tracks down Madison to yell at him for not bedding Teenie, but the publicist replies that he's trying to "make a lady out of her" by striking up a platonic, healthy relationship involving bicycle races and dance instruction.  Gris remembers something Teenie said and accuses Madison of being a "mother lover," and the man calmly answers in the affirmative.

See, Sigmund Freud was only taken seriously after he married into an advertising firm, which means that all of advertising and public relations are intimately tied to Freud's teachings... wait, so shouldn't advertising reign supreme instead of psychology, since it's what allowed Freud to flourish?  Anyway, if Madison "went against his teachings, I could be thrown completely out of the field---excommunicated!"  On top of that, as the child of a rich family Madison was psychoanalyzed - "a caste mark, so to speak" - at age five after having nightmares.  The psychiatrist ordered him to start sleeping with his mother.  "All little boys love their mothers.  I am simply carrying out the accepted prescription."

Even after hearing this, Gris keeps screaming at Madison to start sleeping with Teenie so she won't want to sleep with Gris.

He looked at me.  The paddle fell out of his fingers.  His jaw dropped.  "Girls?  Sex with girls?  Oh, good heavens, Smith, that's obscene!"  He went pale green.  He staggered to the rail.

Man, if I vomited at every obscene thing this book threw at me, the barfing would never stop.

The sports director, when he came up to torture me, gave Madison a Dramamine and sent him below to his bunk.  "I can't understand it," he said.  "Flat calm sea, the ship stabilized like a billiard table and I have a seasick passenger throwing up his boots.  Shows you what a mental problem can do.  That fellow needs to be psychoanalyzed."

"He has been," I said bitterly, "that's the trouble."  And I settled down to hours on exercise machines to get rid of the pot.

Could this be another crack in Gris' devotion to psychology?  Might he start questioning the wisdom of those medical professionals if the results of their treatments are people like Madison?

Naaaaaah.

And that's the chapter.  Whale penises and ephebophilia and incest and vomit.  Mission Earth, ladies and gentlemen.


Back to Chapter Four

Forward to Chapter Six

Part Fifty-Six, Chapter Four - Meanwhile, Back at the Plot

Wait a minute.  These books feature a high school student pursuing an older, nonhuman love interest.  The girl's willing to throw her old life away to be with him, is the one pushing for sex in their relationship, and considers suicide if he shuns her advances.  It's not a perfect comparison to Twilight, of course - Teenie has too much personality (i.e. a personality) to be a stand-in for Miss Swan, and the only thing physically impressive about Gris is his augmented dongle.  But the parallels are eerie.

Anyway, back to the Voyage of Vengeance!  Gris is all sad now, because he's getting laid again and has to exercise twice as long to burn off the marijuana he needed to get through the aforementioned heterosexual intercourse (he's not gay).  He's so tired and depressed that he decides to turn on the viewscreens and see what his mortal enemies are doing to thwart his plans.

Heller's talking with Izzie in his office, discussing the designs for the Florida spore plant.  Izzy's worried that alligators are going to get into the spore tanks.

"These posts," said Heller.  "They're a laser screen.  They put an invisible curtain around the tanks.  Nothing can get into them.

Lasers emit light, not a solid barrier.  You might be able to keep critters out with high-powered lasers that fry them if they get too close, but that opens up a host of other problems, like where that energy comes from and where the heat goes and who disposes of the charred alligator corpses.  Plus if Earth had any lasers like that I'm sure we'd have used them on humans by now.

The belts here take the spores up this ramp where they are dried and then they go into this hamper.  At timed intervals they are blown up the stacks, reach the stratosphere

Approximately ten miles up.  So if these spores are light enough to be launched from ground level via a smokestack to the frickin' stratosphere, a ceiling fan ought to send them scattering off the ramp and all over the factory.

and get carried by the upper winds.  They clean up pollution, convert it to oxygen, and when they run out of food they perish."

Choking the ground below with their corpses, right?  Polluted corpses, I should say.  Unless these "spores" are alchemical wonders able to convert carbon dioxide and cow farts into nice clean air at the atomic level, what Heller means to say is that the "spores" will "eat" the bad stuff and fart out oxygen.  But then what happens to the pollution?  It doesn't just disappear, it stays in the "spore."  Does the "spore" keep eating pollution, growing bigger and bigger, swollen with industrial byproducts until it becomes heavier than air and splats to the ground?  How is this one miracle "spore" able to fart out oxygen after eating any of the array of nasty gases we pump into our atmosphere, anyway?

Izzy asks about the fort the workers will need to protect themselves from Indians.  Heller reassures Izzy that the alligator cavalry will take care of any unruly natives.  And we don't know if he's joking, because J. P. Flagrant is promoting "thoroughbred riding alligators."  King Charles of England bought one "because it was such a short distance to fall off."

Gris gets fed up - "There was no point in getting all confused trying to figure out when Heller was serious and when he was joking."  More importantly, the spores aren't a huge deal.  Yes, they go against Gris' creed of making life miserable, but they don't directly harm Rockecenter, and will even allow him to sell dirtier fuels and pollute more freely.  So he checks on the Countess.

Krak has just returned from an ominous pause discussion with Madison's mom, who Krak considers "too naive to live" for insisting that her son is some sort of sensitive child, one who just met a tragic death.  What a moron, grieving for her lost son like that.  Note that Krak is calling someone naive, but just last book believed everything she read in a newspaper and violently resisted attempts to be told otherwise.

Madison's mom did mention how her late son had received a call from a Mr. Smith on the day of his disappearance, but when Krak calls Swindle and Crouch about the guy, they say no such employee works there.  Then she and Bang-Bang drive to Madison's headquarters, which is deserted - so empty, in fact, that they obviously knew about Madison's disappearance before anyone else!  Yeah!  So Krak resolves to find this "Smith" guy.

Gris, once again, freaks out.

Oh Gods, was I glad I was at sea!

But wait.  I couldn't stay at sea forever.  Even though I had no place to go, I knew that sooner or later I would have to make a stand.

Why?  Why can't you keep cruising around indefinitely, hopping from port to port, phoning in your orders to your flunkies?  It's not too different from sitting around Candy and Pinch's apartment, and despite the money problems that ate up an insulting percentage of previous books, Gris doesn't seem concerned about the balance on his credit card right now.  So you may as well make the Golden Sunset your new headquarters, fella.  Maybe even redesign the local Apparatus branch into some sort of seaborne organization.  A Sea Org, if you will.

I glared at the two-way-response radio.  With it I could issue an order to Raht.

If I gave him a wrong order and he missed, she would kill him and then I really would be helpless.

Gris is a man who, if he was given some canned meals, a microwave, and a can-opener, would starve to death unless he found someone to cook for him.

So I had to be very careful if I told Raht to do anything.

So the question remained: What could I tell Raht to do that would GUARANTEE her end?  I must think of something.

Plant a bomb in their apartment, watch the screen until you can confirm that she's asleep at home, press the button.  An early morning fire that tragically takes out an entire building.  Rent a room across the street and have a sniper camp the building's main exit.  Infiltrate the cooking staff and poison her meal.  Plant a lead concerning Mr. Smith and lay a trap.  Pull a Bang-Bang and plant a car bomb.   Go for irony and manufacture a gas leak.  Unfortunate accident as Heller inspects the latest generation of riding alligators.

If nothing else, maybe you should call Mr. Bury and let him know that this woman's getting to be a problem?  Perhaps he'll do something that doesn't involve stupid publicists this time.


Back to Chapter Three

Forward to Chapter Five

Part Fifty-Six, Chapter Three - Mission Bermuda

Wait a minute, why didn't they take the chopper to an airport and simply book a flight to Turkey?  What about Gris' escape plan required them to be on a boat?  Doesn't that give his enemies more opportunities to catch up with him?

Bermuda is a pretty place.  It sits in a startlingly clear, azure sea, its bays so blue they hurt the eyes.  It beaches are pink.  The strangely architectured houses, of different pastel shades, are constructed to catch rainwater on their roofs and help make up for scarcity.

And that's our one paragraph describing  Bermuda.  The rest of the chapter is either spent back on the boat or focused on Teenie.

The Golden Sunset docks at St. George, and Gris disembarks to see about buying yachting clothes, because who would want to yacht around in ordinary vacation clothes?  Alas, Bermuda is an expensive place, and Gris buys no yachting clothes.  His attempt to expand his wardrobe thwarted, Gris ambles around and notices a gray-suited man with a blue-black, stubbly jaw who he thinks is taking an unhealthy interest in him.  Gris plays it cool and sits on a shady park bench, pretending not to notice the guy watching him.

And then Teenie shows up, aborting any burgeoning cloak and dagger intrigue.  The high school nympho doesn't notice Gris, fails to buy a bicycle from a native, then pops into the same bar as the suspicious guy.  They walk out together, talking about bicycles, then spend an hour in a hotel.  When they eventually emerge, they hit a dress shop, a record store and a bike shop for swag.  Why Teenie needs three bicycles is just one of those pointless questions.  Gris chalks the whole thing down to Mr. Black-Jowled Fellow liking "very young meat."  I assume that would make Candy and Pinchy middle-aged, abusive meat and the Countess Krak buxom, mind-raping meat.  

That's it for Bermuda, cut to dinner on the yacht.   Teenie blathers on about Bermuda's criminal background, then mentions an Italian fellow she met that day who talked about assassinos and was asking about a young, brown-haired man.  After hearing this Madison is eager to leave port, so they decide to set a course to Morocco, because there's a lot of marijuana there and the king is a crook.  I can't wait for someone to tell them about Afghanistan!

Gris goes to bed, exulting in how relaxing his cruise has been, sparing not a second thought for the guy he thought was tracking him, who Teenie's anecdotes suggest may be a mob assassin.  Yes, life is good, he's recovering his health, and best of all, no pesky women have been bugging him with sex and stuff!  "What a glorious world it would be if I never again touched a woman!"

He's not gay, though.

Hugging that splendid thought to me, I went below to my sleeping cabin.  I disrobed and climbed into bed.  I stretched out, luxuriously alone and undisturbed.

A door opened!

I had never noticed it before. 

Gris is a trained spy, by the way.

It must be the door to the adjacent suite!

TEENIE WALKED IN!

Gris panics as Teenie starts stripping, explaining that she's determined to stay faithful to him - or more specifically, "this equipment of yours is too great to be neglected."  She's limiting herself to oral sex when interacting with the other men on the ship, which is all she did with Mr. Black-Jowled Fellow that afternoon, hence why she's still fired up.  Gris brings up Madison, but Teenie explains he's totally disinterested in her and views her as a kid sister rather than love interest.

"[...] But you get me for a snack in the morning, a piece in the afternoon and a full-scale banquet all night.  How's that?"

"NO!" I cried.

But she threatens to kill herself if he turns down her advances, which of course would lead to a murder charge against Gris, who as a repeated murderer up to his eyebrows in criminal activity certainly doesn't want to get on the wrong side of the law!  Teenie's nice enough to bring out the marijuana before raping Gris via blackmail, with the usual Hubbard wobbling furniture sexy discretion shot.

Just thinking out loud here - if Teenie were tragically lost at sea, would the crew be "professional' enough to pretend she never boarded?  The steward's supposedly familiar with royal intrigue.  Maybe it wouldn't be the first time the ship left port with fewer passengers than it docks with.


Back to Chapter Two

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