Part Forty-One, Chapter Eight - I Hate This Book

Unabridged version here.  It's easily the worst thing we've read so far, so ask yourself if you really want to read the full thing after reading the sanitized summary.

Happy Thanksgiving!  Have an extended rape scene!

No psychiatrist ever gazed at the lacerated brain of a patient with more pleasure than I enjoyed when I saw the look in Miss Pinch's eyes after she struggled awake.  

After taking in her surroundings, seeing her lover bound squirming and naked to the couch, and trying futility to move her chained arms and legs, Miss Pinch surprisingly says nothing, and only glares at her captor.  Gris gives her a "deadly smile" and assures himself that he's a "master psychologist about to outdo the Marquis de Sade," but can't help but feel ill at ease.  Even though he has the advantage, he's dealing with "one of the most tricky and dangerous creatures alive: Not only was she a woman, she was also Miss Pinch!"

Gris gets down to business.  Chapter One of the Apparatus torture manual tells operatives to act friendly towards victims to increase the shock of what follows.  So Gris smiles, compliments Miss Pinch for her good health, and promises to walk out of the apartment without a word if she gives him the combination to the safe containing "his" money.  Pinch says nothing.  Gris puts away the groceries she was bringing in before he assaulted her, then gets out a beer from the iron maiden/fridge.

I looked at Candy.  She was throwing her head from left to right, eyes wild, trying to spit out the gag.  I trailed a finger down her throat and then made a mysterious circle with it before her face.  Incomprehensible.

You might be wondering what, exactly, Gris just did, or why.  Keep wondering.  Gris doesn't do it again, and the author never explains it.  When he said "incomprehensible" he damn well meant it.

Gris removes Candy's gag.  Candy screams while he slowly walks around the room to "Drag it out.  Don't let them know what you're really going to do."  He offers her a beer, compliments her on her voice, and repeats his statement that she has nothing to fear if Miss Pinch simply gives him the combination.  Candy begs her lover to do what Gris says, but Pinch remains silent.

I'd yell at her for hanging Candy out to dry and being willing to risk defilement and death for the sake of a couple thousand stolen dollars, but knowing Gris the girls are doomed anyway, so Pinch might as well get back at him by not cracking.

Gris paws Candy for a bit, breaks off to search the room's record cabinet, and picks some dusty specimens from the bottom that he concludes "must be the records they hated and never played."  I, too, often keep things I hate in my closet, taking up space and serving no use whatsoever, rather than throwing them out.  Gris is surprised to discover the records are "LOVE SONGS!"

Now, if you've had a decades-long career as a pulp sci-fi writer, convinced yourself that you and your stories helped inspire things like the A-bomb and space program, and started a self-help program and religion so successful that it earned the ire of the Nazi-banker-psychiatrist alliance, you might feel free to try your hand at songwriting since you're obviously such a talented and creative person.  I'd assure you that Hubbard is just as good a lyricist as he is an author, but you don't have to take my word for it:

When I gaze into your eyes,

I see love, love, love.

When I try you on for size,

I feel love, love, love.

When I press your gushing breasts,

And I feel your thighs' caress,

I fell love, love, love

Go into me!

Can you see it?  Mission Earth: The Musical blazing in lights on Broadway...


Candy screams that Gris is about to rape her and begs Miss Pinch to give him the combination, but Pinch stays silent even when Candy's screams intensify after Gris undoes his "Ninja robe."  So Gris rapes her.  It's not quite explicit, and the focus is more on the sound of Candy's screaming and Pinch refusing to talk, though there's little confusion over what is going on.  Gris gives Pinch one last chance to spill when he discovers that Candy's a virgin, but she remains silent, so he tells her "It's you who's doing this."

But you know what's strange?  The book jacket recapped the main plot of the series and made a big deal out of the arrival of the Countess Krak, who has barely been in this book so far but has at least played an active role in the scenes she appears in.  It also hyped Gris' $250 million despite the money ending up getting wasted on what turned out to be kidnapping victims, "the lure of high fashion" discussed on a plane ride before fading into irrelevance, and the "army" of three "mounted outlaw highwaymen" who appeared for a page and a half.

It didn't mention Gris raping anybody, even though he's spent more time doing that than the book has spent on fashion and highwaymen combined.  Wonder why they didn't put that on the book jacket?  "At the same time, Gris' nonconsensual liaisons in the back of a limousine, and his ruthless rape of two women may well derail everyone's plans in this fifth exciting volume of L. Ron Hubbard's acclaimed, best-selling adventure-epic -- MISSION EARTH."

Really, the only purpose Gris' fortune served was to allow him to rape women in his limo.  When the money ran out, and his crimes caught up with him, Gris fled to New York where he is now raping more women to get them to hand over more money.  Back in the same room he fled to Turkey from in the first place.  I guess it's the journey, not the destination, that's important.  And the "journey" in this case involves a lot of rape.

Gris cracks another beer and taunts Miss Pinch about how her stubbornness caused her to "break the most sacred Psychiatric Birth Control laws" and left Candy in disgrace.  "Alas, you forced her to be violated.  She is a fallen woman!"  But Pinch remains silent, even after Gris again asks for the safe combination, making him wonder if the woman is "made of solid brass!"  So Gris opens his robe again and advances on the helpless woman, timing his attack with the music.

Sweet little woman,
Please marry me.
Man and wife together,
How happy we will be.
And then we'll have some kiddies,
Maybe two or three.
So here's the ring and there's the church,
Oh, come, my honey be.

Think the records are old contraband?  Rockecenter is supposedly trying to turn the world gay to kill everyone, so shouldn't there be a backlash against traditional marriage?  Or does his organization's tentacles not extend into the record industry?  Also, why do we only hear about Psychiatric Birth Control from Miss Pinch or Rockecenter himself?  Why doesn't it have an effect on the rest of the story?

Turns out Miss Pinch is a virgin too, and Gris has so much fun he says to Hells with trying to get the information out of her.  But when he's finished and both of his victims are passed out, Gris is annoyed because he hasn't managed to get the lock combination out of his victim.

"(Bleep) you, Pinch," I snarled.  "Have you defeated me AGAIN?"

So what has Gris actually accomplished, besides the obvious?  Well, you'd be surprised.  And probably a little disgusted.  But that's next chapter.  I think the more important question is: what has the author accomplished this chapter?

We already hated Gris, right?  From his first appearance the author has taken pains to portray the man in as unsympathetic a manner as possible.  He's an unrepentant, loathsome murderer who has technically raped dozens of women already.  So was this the scene that was supposed to tip him over the Moral Event Horizon, even though Hubbard has spent the entire series beating us over the head with Gris' evilness?  Did he think anyone might still be rooting for Gris at this point and came up with this chapter to make sure they turned on him?

Other explanations are more problematic.  If this is supposed to be smut for our enjoyment, well, it's a bit circumspect, certainly moreso than Gris' encounter with Nurse Bildirjin in the hospital that left all that "white paint."  The only splashing fluids here are spilled beer.

Another option is that this might be for the author's enjoyment.  Maybe Hubbard got some catharsis out of his murderous villain protagonist raping a frigid, sadistic lesbian.  Maybe they're stand-ins for some women he knew.  But I'd hesitate to make that accusation - Hubbard may have the writing skills of an angsty teenager, but I'm not sure he'd write a story just to burn an effigy of someone he hated in real life.

Though the main bad guy is clearly a stand-in for Rockefeller...

A fourth possibility is that this whole episode was meant to show the horrible influence of psychology, which led a woman to force a man to rape her lover when she refused to give him what he wanted.  If only Miss Pinch had been a normal heterosexual, she would have caved in and saved her and Candy's honor, assuming Gris had enough of the same to not rape them anyway.  But this angle is pretty badly undermined by the next chapter.

In conclusion... well, look at the post title.


Back to Chapter Seven

Forward to Chapter Nine

Part Forty-One, Chapter Seven - Sadism

I've never picked a lock, nor had one picked (to my knowledge), so I don't know if there's any way to tell if a given lock's been compromised.  Candy certainly doesn't suspect anything - she unlocks the door, steps inside, and is immediately grabbed by Gris, one hand over her mouth to muffle her screams, while his other pops "the capsule of five-minute knockout gas."  The Apparatus officer removes his first hand so she can suck in a breath to scream, only to get a lungfull of gas instead and drop to the floor, unconscious.

Wonder how big the gas capsule was?  Fist-sized?  Pill-sized, a batch of super-concentrated gas?  And how can anyone be sure how long the stuff will conk someone out?  Wouldn't it depend on body mass and how much they inhaled?  Did they test it to make sure the gas was compatible with Earth bio-chemistry?  

Eh, Battlefield Earth had a single alien aircraft carrying enough poison gas to depopulate the entire planet, so I think Hubbard has a lot of faith in gas' ability to do what he wants.

With Candy unconscious, Gris quickly sets about removing her clothing:

I stood and looked down at the unconscious body with a triumphant grin.

She was really not a bad-looking woman.

But I had no time for any more scenic wonders today.

After gagging Candy with her own bra and binding her wrists and ankles with "undies" from a clothesline in the apartment's bathroom (?), Gris dumps her in her room and gets back into position behind the front door.  He evidently has a watch or something, because he knows it takes sixteen minutes for someone to ring the front doorbell.  Miss Pinch unlocks the door (that Gris didn't re-lock after subduing Candy, something he made sure to do last chapter when he first broke in), steps inside, and meets the same fate as her lover - Gris grapples her and blasts her with five-minute gas.  This time Gris locks and bars the door.

I was in a soundproof apartment with Candy and Miss Pinch.  Now I would show the Marquis de Sade a thing or two!

Yet Gris makes no use of the various torture implements lying around the dungeon.  He's not even going to give the girls a spanking, but he thinks he's going to impress sadism's namesake.

More stripping of unconscious women.  Off goes Miss Pinch's "mannish" hat.  Off goes her "mannish" shirt.  Then Gris gets a shock.

She was wearing men's shorts!  But that wasn't the most astonishing thing.  She had on a flesh-colored bra!  I had never noticed it before.  I thought she had been almost without breasts.  It had no straps.  It was sort of molded to her.  I put my fingers under it and ripped.  Off it came.  It revealed perfectly normal female breasts!  She had been wearing a breast compressor to make them appear flat!  Well, well!  The trouble some lesbian "husbands" will go to, to appear like men!

Gris wants to teach the Marquis de Sade a thing or two but has just had his mind blown by a woman's chest bindings.

Miss Pinch ends up naked and shackled to her bed in what I guess is supposed to be karma.  Candy is awake by now, and tries to wriggle away and scream when Gris comes at her - "Wonderful!", says our narrator.  He ties her to the room's couch and, as expected, gloats.  Gris is now in a dungeon with two women bound naked and spread-eagled to the room's furniture.

With considerable satisfaction, I stood back.  I admired my handiwork.  No Earth Boy Scout could have done better.

That's because the Scouts don't teach knots for tying women up for raping.

I had earned my merit badge.

They don't give merit badges for rape either.

Very shortly now, Miss Pinch would be babbling the combination to that safe. I would have money.  And I would be on my way to avenge myself on Heller.

Why didn't you grab some truth serum or something?  Why just the five-minute knockout gas?  Your civilization can build hypno-helmets, why not refine the technology into some sort of hypno-ray used to zap people and make them tell you or do what you want?  Or use the five-minute knockout gas on Heller and Krak? 

The Apparatus had never had a better pupil than myself!

And where the hell is the Apparatus assassin during all this?  Why hasn't he killed Gris for spending a month in the back of a limo instead of monitoring Heller?

Today I was gong to triumph!  Marquis de Sade, pay attention!

I'm sure he's very impressed with your foray into bondage, Gris.


Back to Chapter Six

Forward to Chapter Eight

Part Forty-One, Chapter Six - Shinobi

So what's the polite way to deal with an unconscious, bleeding cab driver?

Gris drives to an alley not far from Miss Pinch's house and is faced with this puzzle.  The driver is still unconscious, not bleeding too heavily but breathing shallowly.  Gris is out of bombs, so he can't oh-so-discretely "cover the trail again" with a huge explosion sure to attract the attention of every police officer, fire fighter, and FBI agent in New York State, not to mention the Nazi-Interpol agents from last chapter once they put the pieces together and realize the man who blew up Istanbul is now loose in the US. 

Instead, Gris tries to wipe off any of his fingerprints, then tries the cab's "broken" radio and manages to get the dispatcher.  "Officer O'Grunty" tells the woman that one of her drivers is "part of a gang that is about to steal the Holy Sepulcher from Christ.  He's even pretending he's been shot, complete with fake blood.  Would you please call the Bellevue Psychiatric Section for us and have them send the wagon?"  And of course it works, because psychology owns this country, man.  Also, the average IQ in the Hubbardverse is roughly half of our own.  And nobody in any profession follows any sort of sensible procedure.  And the narrative demands the flippant disposal of this unimportant character introduced for a ridiculous scene with modern "highwaymen," preferably in a way that reinforces our frothing hatred of psychology at the same time.

Anyway, Gris continues towards Pinch's apartment and admits that "It would be untrue to say that as I approached that fatal place my skin did not crawl or that I could not taste mustard."  But the importance of destroying Heller gives him the purpose he lacked three hundred pages ago when he had the same mission of destroying Heller.  He picks the locks without any difficulty and enters that apartment of bad memories, "stale marijuana smoke and perfume."  Even though Miss Pinch and Candy will be at work for a few more hours, Gris stays away from the safe, because he knows there's a camera monitoring it, and evidently nothing in his Apparatus background has prepared him for evading a security camera.  If only Gris had received some FBI training on how to rob banks and defeat those very security systems, like Heller did in book two, while Gris was watching through his eyes on HellerVision...

So Gris takes a shower.  Hey, even Soltan Gris has a limit to how many parasites he's willing to support.  He rinses all the fleas off and changes out of the dead man's clothes into... something he gets out of a woman's closet.  Something that against all odds fits him.  Something profoundly stupid.

It was a black silk kimono, very long and very big.  It had an embroidered design upon the chest.  I recognized it at once!  It was a figure with two heads: At one end it was a horned dragon, at the other it was a fanged snake.  The Ninja!  They were a cult of outcast assassins, the most deadly secret executioners of Japan.  How apt!

So now we can add ninja to the list of Things Mission Earth Has Ruined, which includes, off the top of my head, gangsters, mobsters, the FBI, Bugs Bunny, car races, the United Nations, New York City, music, sex, and the entirety of Turkey.

Now in his official ninja uniform, Gris gets two mysterious objects out of his suitcase and settles down on a pillow beside the apartment's front door to wait, occasionally grinning evilly to himself.

I wondered idly if there might not be something to the philosophy of one of Earth's truly great wise men, the Marquis de Sade, renowned propounder of sadism.  When in Rome, do as the Romans do, they say.  When in the apartment of Miss Pinch, the behavioral pattern she set was almost impossible to attain.  But I fully intended to go one better than even Miss Pinch's wildest nightmares.

I chuckled now and then, sitting there in the dark behind the door, savoring my plan.  A master of Earth psychology was about to improve even upon the Marquis de Sade.

You might be worrying what kind of sick tortures Gris plans to visit upon his victims.  Allow me to assure you that nothing like that's going to happen; he's just going to rape them in two chapters.


Back to Chapter Five 

Forward to Chapter Seven

Part Forty-One, Chapter Five - Army of Three

While driving home from the grocery store this weekend, I realized that I'd overlooked a sentence four chapters ago explaining that Gris' boat ride out of Istanbul took close to a day.  All that vomiting and ranting distracted me from that vital detail.  So there it is - the answer to a question I needn't have asked had I paid more attention.

Anyway, want a pointless action sequence?

Gris gets into a cab to leave the airport, one driven by "a squat and crumpled-looking driver" who gets out and opens the door for Gris.  The porter stows Gris' luggage, then stands in his way with a hand out, putting the Apparatus officer in a conundrum.

I saw I was not going to make it.  Not unless I bought him off.  He could still call the airport police.  They stay in constant communication through the Nazi Gestapo headquarters in Strasbourg, which operates under the name of Interpol.  They have a huge radio station down in South America and use the lines of CIA to radio on ahead of planes and grab people they don't like or who aren't criminal enough to join their ranks.  So I was not out of danger so long as I was on airport ground.  I decided to tip him.

This paragraph is a bit of a puzzler, innit?  On the one hand, Gris has been going a bit crazy as of late, convinced that everyone he meets is trying to delay him so the Turkish authorities can deport him to face execution by Mohammad.  On the other hand, Mission Earth's setting already has plenty of stuff crazier than the Interpol-Gestapo thing Gris is suggesting here.  So just how serious is Gris at this point?  Is this a delusion, or a rare moment of lucidity?

This is the sort of problem that pops up when the guy writing "satire" about vast international conspiracies earnestly believed that Nazis, drug companies, bankers and psychologists were teaming up to go after him.

Well, Gris tries to tip the porter in drachma, then in lira, but the man "pretends" not to know what the currencies are.  Gris attempts to bluff that he has nothing else, but the porter spots the thousand-dollar bills at the bottom of his luggage.  He says nothing about it, though, and tells the taxi driver that Gris hasn't got anything else.  But when Gris gets in the taxi, the driver pulls over and spends five minutes "phon[ing] in to the dispatcher" because his radio is broken.

If warning bells are going off in your head, congratulations!  You're more alert and careful than the cream of the Voltarian Coordinated Information Apparatus.

Instead of taking Gris to Times Square, the cab driver insists on giving Gris the "scenic route," free of charge, which leads to a nearly-deserted stretch of town lined with trees.  Gris grumbles about the scenery not being all that scenic, but doesn't get worried or tense up or ready his gun or anything.  Much less demand that the driver go where ordered or jump out when he doesn't.  Especially since the last time a cabbie took Gris on an unwanted ride he ended up buying a limousine he hadn't asked for.  Nope, no pattern recognition or anything.

Then it gets silly.

Suddenly a log came crashing down across the road, dead in front of the cab!

The driver braked frantically.

There was a roar!

Three motorcycles leaped into view and stopped, two in front and one behind the cab.

The riders wore bandannas tied across their faces!

They had guns pointed at the cab!

"Throw down your guns!" the nearest rider said.  "All passengers out!  And don't try nothin' funny!  We got the drop on you!"  A stagecoach holdup!  I knew!  I had seen them in the films.  The next order would be to throw down the Wells Fargo box!  And I had no gun handy!

The problem with Mission Earth is that we've already had sadistic lesbian BDSM sessions and an elderly Nazi general suggesting that a banker and an alien spy use an aircraft carrier launch line as a rubber band to trap a fleeing publicist, so I can't really say Hubbard's jumping the shark here.  We're long past the shark.  I miss the shark.  We're jumping coelacanths and other prehistoric sea monsters now. 

Gris and the driver get out with their hands up, and one of the "highwaymen" takes his wallet and bag of money.  They try to take his passport too, but Gris offers to get it out for him - and then stabs the robber with a plastic fork he stole from the airplane last chapter to see if his Apparatus skills were still up to snuff.  Chekhov's Plastic Airline Fork!  I should've mentioned it last chapter but dismissed it as unimportant!  I'm a terrible amateur literary critic!

He's armed!" he screamed.

I dived under the cab.

A gun exploded!

Something hit the cab.

Three bike motors were roaring.

They were gone!

Yeah.  A plastic fork just scared off some muggers.  And their first instinct was to scream in fear instead of using the guns they had trained upon the man armed with, and again I must emphasize this, a plastic fork.

The fired shot was at the taxi driver, who has taken the classic Shoulder Injury and can't drive.  So Gris draws his gun, takes the wheel, and tries to go after the robbers.  He asks the taxi driver where they went, but the guy confesses that he doesn't know before passing out in the passenger seat.

And that's it for the highwaymen, as far as I can tell.  I've searched the rest of the book but can't find any sign of them.  But, because three highwaymen appeared for less than two pages out of a single chapter, the book jacket felt confident to promise us "an army of mounted outlaw highwaymen."  

This all leaves Gris in a bit of a lurch.  He has no money, no credit cards, nothing.  He's terrified of going back to Turkey, and he's worried that someone will try to turn him in if he goes to the local Apparatus office (why?).  But he realizes he knows where he could get some money.

No, it's not Mr. Bury.

No, it's not Madison.

No, he's not going to rob a bank.

No, it's not Heller.

My teeth gritting, but determined, I was headed stealthily for the apartment of Miss Pinch.

Yep.  Gris' flight to Turkey, chapter after chapter spent loafing around, the fortune quickly gained and just as quickly squandered, the flight from Turkey over adultery charges, the random acts of murder, all of it ends with Gris returning to the place that caused him to flee to Turkey in the first place.  94 pages of An Alien Affair and 272 pages of Fortune of Fear and we've gone in a big, dumb circle.


Back to Chapter Four

Forward Chapter Six

Part Forty-One, Chapter Four - Karma Fleas at 35,000 Feet

We've spent who knows how many chapters in Turkey, but our stay in Greece ends a chapter after it really begins.

After a day and a night on another boat Gris arrives at Piraievs, the main port of Athens.  Though seasick the entire trip over, Gris is relieved to be out of Muslim territory.

At least I was out from under the Prophet in the clouds. The Greek Gods live at Mount Olympus and that was far to the north. So there was some hope they wouldn't notice me passing through.

Not to mention the fact that Zeus would probably be fine with the whole adultery/rape thing.  Old bastard was like the patron deity of sex offenders.  

Gris is also nervous, though - he's out of bombs, so he can't cover his trail anymore.  He tenses up, ready to run when someone comes up to him with a sack, but it's just a bag of drachma, his change from the ferry fare.  He uses some of it to buy a suit and changes out of his stolen, parasite-infested outfit in an airport bathroom.  Then he uses his "United Arab League" passport to book a flight to New York via Air Israel.  "Nobody would expect anyone from the United Arab League to be traveling Air Israel.  'Confuse the trail' is an Apparatus motto."

"Don't call undue attention to yourself" apparently isn't.  Also, despite that whole Pan-Arab movement gaining more ground in Hubbard's setting, the state of Israel has managed to survive.  Maybe whatever war that taxi driver drove tanks in was in the Middle East?

Yes, I'm more interested in the implications of Hubbard's sloppy world-building than the actual story.

There's really not much else to say about this chapter.  Gris gets on his flight, happy to be back in the warm embrace of Rockecenter, who owns most of the world's airlines, but he remains quite nervous.

But all told, it was a nerve-racking trip.  People on the plane around kept darting their hands this way and that, and for a bit I was sure they were reaching for guns.  Even the stewardess began to make these sudden moves.

I studied them carefully.  They were scratching themselves.

THE FLEAS!

When they do land at JFK Airport, Gris gets through customs just fine - someone gives him a double take for getting off an Israeli flight with an Arab passport, but his flight bag stuffed with three types of cash and his suitcase full of guns are ignored.

I had made it to U.S. soil!

Also, the God over the U.S. is Rockecenter. So I was safe.

Gris, despite psychology teaching him that humans are soulless animals randomly generated by a godless universe, still believes that Mohammad is trying to kill him.  He also continues to hold Rockecenter in high esteem despite knowing, through psychology, that the man is insane.  So psychology is wrong when it comes to humans and gods, but correct when it comes to humans with god complexes.

Now to begin my retribution trail with a vengeance!

You can be forgiven for expecting Soltan Gris' Retribution Trail (hope he dies of dysentery) to begin with Heller.  The truth is much worse.


Back to Chapter Three

Forward to Chapter Five

Part Forty-One, Chapter Three - Karma Fleas

As per last chapter's cliffhanger, Gris' landing has been observed by an old gentleman and his two dogs.  The man reveals that Gris is on the island of Limnos - Greek territory, but the old man is speaking Turkish for Gris' benefit, what with the get-up and word Sanci on the wreckage of the rowboat.  He offers to let his surprise visitor dry off in his humble hut, but Gris isn't fooled - he knows that the man's wife is in league with the women of Turkey.  He also knows the dogs have spotted who he is because they keep sniffing at him.

Hey, that'd be neat, if terrestrial animals could pick up the alien-ness of the otherwise human Voltarians based on scent.  Heller would have to come up with an excuse for why he shies away from New York's strays or the Corleone guard dogs.  Gris would have a better excuse for hating animals besides his innate evilness. 

The old man offers Gris a drink as they sit down around the fire, and explains how his dear Turkish wife died years ago, and the nearest town is that way, and why no, there isn't anyone else around, thanks for asking.  The man gets up to make a phone call, which Gris knows is going to the authorities.

I had everything I needed to know.  And he was not going to detain me, drunk, while he brought the police.  As he stepped out the door, I shot him with the stungun.  It was on full power, narrow beam.  It blew his head half off.

Yet the same weapon won't rip the pillowcase it's fired out of.  And it can partially decapitate people, but they called it a stungun.

The dogs objected.

I shot them.

Guess the author's still tuckered out from last chapter, he missed a great opportunity to spend half a page giving a sentence-by-sentence description of the dogs running at Gris, Gris realizing his gun's on the wrong setting, flipping a lever, missing his shots, and then hitting the dogs at the last second.

I dragged all three bodies down to the beach.  I pushed the remains of the rowboat down into the water.  I put the bodies in it.  I buried the fragment that had the ship's name on it.

People, if anyone ever came this way, would think they had been blown up by the exploding ship.  And then cast ashore by the tidal wave.

So there's a patch of disturbed sand on the beach where Gris buried something, the tracks of Gris making at least two trips to drag the three bodies down to the shoreline since there's no way he could handle the old man and both dogs at once, and the yucky trail of whatever's dripping out of the old man's head.  But Gris is sure that any investigators will decide upon the story he's dreamt up.  And then he goes back into the hut and declares that "There wasn't much blood and what specks there were I obliterated."  What about the brains?  You blew the top of a man's head off! 

Blargh.  Forensics.  Let's not even get started on the questions raised by the chemical composition of Gris' alien-made bombs.

Gris changes into some of the dead man's clothes, wraps a rag around his chin and puts a wad of cotton (where did he get a wad of cotton?) in his mouth to simulate a toothache to excuse why he isn't speaking Greek, and sets off for the nearby town of Moudhros.  He reaches it at dawn, flinches at the prospect of taking a ferry to the mainland, but has no alternative because "Unlike some they say once existed on this planet, I could not walk on water."  So is Gris being dismissive of one primitive religion while convinced another is trying to kill him, or jealous that he isn't the Jesus and able to walk all the way to Athens?

Gris freaks out again when he actually boards the ferry, because not only are women on deck with him, but he realizes that he has no Greek money and can't pay in Turkish lira because that would "open up the trail!"  The solution, of course, is to flash around an American thousand dollar bill.  There's a, uh, "tense" moment when the man running the ferry runs off and Gris gets to stew over what's happening, but when the man returns, pointing at a box, Gris is able to somehow discern that he intends to give Gris change once they get to port in Athens.  More boating.

I got into a corner seat where I could keep the whole room under surveillance.  One part of me dreaded the moment the ship would sail, the other part of me couldn't wait to get it away from the dock.  Was I turning into a schizophrenic, torn asunder by a split personality?

Couple things to note: first, schizophrenia does not necessarily entail dissociative identity disorder.  Second, Gris should know this because he was able to diagnose his boss as having schizophrenic tendencies all the way back in book one.  Third, Gris is and has been displaying some symptoms of schizophrenia, namely persecutory delusions, sloppiness of dress and poor hygiene, paranoia, loss of motivation, poor judgment, and so on.

It is of course an open question as to how much of this is a result of Gris being an idiotic Hubbard Villain.  But there's something sadly ironic about Hubbard's main bad guy turning out to be someone who could benefit from therapy and medication, or in other words the very field of medicine Hubbard spends so much time demonizing.

Well, back to the stupid.

I began to itch.  The itching got worse.  I began to itch in several places at once.  Nervous hives.  According to psychology, when one is under an enormous strain, he tends to itch.  If psychology said so, it must be totally true.  

Real truths, like those regarding ancient alien emperors dumping corpses in volcanoes, take years of expensive training to prepare for.

It doesn't take long for Gris to get to the bottom of things - he's got fleas from his stolen clothes.  Or else from hauling around two canine corpses.  "Oh, Gods, the old man was getting his ghostly revenge!"  And then he starts throwing up from seasickness.

And each time I threw up again, I repeated by sacred vow.

Heller was going to pay for this.  He was going to pay for it all!

It was the only reason now that I cared to bear all this and live.

VENGEANCE!

HELLER WOULD PAY!

I repeated it in every lull between the times that I threw up.

At least I knew who was responsible for my woe.  And I was on the way to do something about it!

It was all that got me through that dreadful voyage.

Wait, Gris shot the dogs with his "stungun" and describes dragging their "bodies" to the beach.  He didn't take any effort to finish them off, so presumably they were killed by the "stungun."  So has anybody Gris shot with that thing survived?  And what kind of mess did the weapon make out of the dogs that Gris miraculously didn't have to clean up?

The author's putting so little thought into this that I'm wondering why he even bothered telling us about it.  We could've skipped Limnos and had the Sanci take him all the way to Athens.  We could've skipped the Sanci and had Gris get on a plane in Istanbul.  We could've skipped Turkey altogether and had Gris never leave New York last book!


Back to Chapter Two 

Forward to Chapter Four

Part Forty-One, Chapter Two - Metaphorical Midnight

Two chapters aboard a boat's enough, yeah? (editor's note from the future: oh goodness no, just look at Book 7) Let's get off this rustbucket and back to the murderin'.

By "the luminescent dark of midnight"... wait a minute, Gris got to Istanbul around ten, right?  And he spent at an absolute minimum of twenty minutes running around town, because of the two ten-minute bombs he set.  And then it took him half an hour to round Seraglio Point, still in the town proper, because that's how long his fourth bomb took to go off.  But he somehow made it the hundred plus miles through the Sea of Marmara to the Aegean and the Greek shoreline in an hour at most?

I'm thinking too hard about this.  It's just one ill-placed adjective in a meaningless sentence about the luminescence of darkness.

Anyway.  The Captain wants payment before he puts Gris on the shoreline, and Gris decides to, say it with me now, cover his trail.  After assuring the captain that he'll pay immediately if the crew gets the skiff ready now, he stuffs a pillowcase with lira... and a little bonus.

"There is something extra in it," I said.  I reached in as though to take it out and show him.

He smiled broadly.

My hand closed around the stungun butt.

I shot him through the pillowcase.

The dull thud of the stungun was followed by the slap of the charge and then by the clatter as he fell into the bunk, knocked out.

So a stungun can be fired through a cloth bag without shredding it or setting it on fire.  But what was the "slap of the charge" bit?  Some sort of "shell" ejection?  But the gun was still in the bag, right?

Whatever, Gris paws the huge Turkish man and recovers the money he paid earlier, then sets a half-hour time bomb.  He steps outside, throws some money at the crowd of crewmen, and shoots them, "broad beam," with his stunamajig while they're distracted.  Then he shoots the two guys in the inflatable raft he'll take to shore.  The time bomb's still ticking, but Gris lingers to pick up all the lira he's thrown about the deck before getting in the raft.

But oh, the irony!  "The outboard motor was some kind of Balkan comedy of levers and corroded bars," and won't start.  If only Gris had waited a few moments for the skiff to start up properly!  Or been satisfied with setting a time bomb instead of stunning everyone.  Before he can do anything about his engine trouble, he hears a noise from the ship and realizes that the engineers - private fishing ships keep engineers aboard, right? - have come up from belowdeck and discovered the bodies of their mates.

Would you like a Hubbard Action Sequence?

Silhouetted in the moonlight, I saw a man with a rifle at the rail!

A bullet knifed a phosphorescent path in the water to my right. The explosion of the fired gun buffeted me.

You felt the blast from the rifle fired from the deck of the ship in your boat how many yards away?

I drew the stungun. I shot. It was on broad beam. It would not reach that range!

Another shot from the ship!

No phosphorescent path!

A sigh of escaping air!

The inflatable had been hit!

Sailor with rifle, Gris is a stationary target on an engineless boat on a moonlit sea.  Come on.

I threw the stungun lever to narrow beam. I aimed.

The rifle went off again!

I fired.

The man on the deck dropped.

Another one was trying to grab the rifle.

I aimed and fired again!

The other one dropped.

The inflatable was sinking!

So Gris dog-paddles over to the boat and starts to pull himself up by a line, forgets his suitcase, gets it out of the sinking raft, loses the line, jumps on it, and climbs the line onto the deck.  He manages to get a rowboat over the rail but can't find a paddle, so he uses the rifle.  Half a page of heart-stopping paddling action as Gris tries to outrun the "BOOM!," only to get caught in the "tidal wave" from the exploding ship and propelled "Fast as a racing car" towards the shore.  Crash, splintering wood, but Gris has made it out of Turkey.

And best of all, no witnesses.  Nobody to tell those Turkish women where Gris fled to.

I looked at the inky sea.  I was through with it.  No more sea for me!  One more black mark against Heller.

A voice said, "Are you from that exploded boat out there?"

Wah-wah-waaaaah.

Gotta say, these next few chapters?  Pretty dull.  And then the ones after them will make us long for this dullness, so try and cherish it.


Back to Chapter One

Forward to Chapter Three