Hail Hibbler Read online

  Hildy next put herself in contact with the Answer Box at their Connecticut home. She did a fast scan of all the calls gathered on the memory tape, finding no message from Jake.

  A few of the calls she ran through again at normal speed. After viewing the one from Harlow Titts, she shut off the phone.

  “Vanity, vanity.” Hildy set a course for the Southern Cal section of the United States.

  CHAPTER 24

  “AIN’T DOT SOMETING?” CHORTLING with satisfaction, Dr. Hibbler nudged Jake in the ribs.

  They were sharing a small cube of a room, one with see-through glaz walls. Spread out beyond the front wall was a miniature city, a toy town filled with tiny doll people and model land vehicles.

  As a little train whooshed to a stop at a little rustic railroad station, Hibbler jabbed the red button on his all-white console again.

  A band of yellowish light came sizzling down from somewhere high above the model city. The train, the station and all the tiny commuters who’d been decorating the area shimmered for less than a second and then collapsed into piles of gritty dust.

  “Ain’t dot someting?” Hibbler tickled his own ribs, chuckling with appreciation.

  “So you said.” Jake leaned forward and looked upward through the glaz wall. “That’s a model of your death ray, dangling up there in the toy space colony?”

  “Dot’s him,” said the scientist. “Of course, der scale ain’t right. Der ray … ooompah oompah … I got much closer to der city.”

  “The real one, the one built into this colony, will work on the Earth from up here?”

  “Vould I kid you, Herr Pace? Up here, in our L-four orbit pattern, ve are in position to get in some good shots at der planet,” Hibbler explained. “Don’t vurry, I got all der math vorked out … oompah pah.”

  “And you’re ready to go?”

  The doctor rubbed his thumb knuckle across his brush of a moustache. “Not quite,” he admitted, eyes sliding away from contact. “Dot’s why ve got to keep you up here, unt also your leggy vife. Ve is almost ready for der first step.”

  Jake was watching the tiny piles of dust that had been train and station and people. “What is your first step?”

  “Ve give dem vot I choose to give you,” replied Hibbler. “A demonstration.”

  “You’re not planning to destroy the world?”

  “Nod too much of it, no.” Hibbler, giggling, pushed his red button again.

  This time a hospital and environs went, shivering away to dust in seconds.

  “Too bad you didn’t get a chance to look at der hospital before she vent flooey.” Hibbler rubbed his dry hands together. “A real nice piece of vork it vas. Specially in der children’s wing. I had nice little kids in der beds, mit sexy nurses. Und even toys. I mineselve carve a little Mickey Mouse, mit dose cute little ears.”

  “All dust now,” said Jake. “Lots of things end up that way.”

  “Surely you ain’t hinting I von’t succeed. I got you, as you Americaners say, by der short hairs,” Hibbler told him. “You von’t stop me or mine associates.”

  “Not quite ready to concede that.”

  “Ach, you tink maybe dot vife of yours vill pull your chestnuts out from der fire. Not bloody likely, as dey say in your country.”

  “As to the demonstration,” said Jake. “What are you planning to do?”

  “Ven der time comes, I use der real Hibbler Ray,” the doctor explained. “When the position of our colony und der Earth is just right, ve give dem a shot. I got it calculated so I eider wipe out Westport, Connecticut or Oslo, Norway. Depends on certain variables und also mine mood.”

  “We’ve got a place near Westport.”

  Hibbler laughed. “You’re taking me seriously now, mine boy,” he said. “Pretty soon der whole vorld vill … oompah oompah oompom pah … Den give der terms.”

  “Your terms’ll be what?”

  “Mine partners und I vant a percentage of everytink,” replied Hibbler. “In udder vords, we get, say, ten percent of all der income from every industry on der face of der Earth. Could be also we get ten percent from everybody, like der tax collector.”

  “Ransom,” said Jake.

  “Dot’s right. Ransom, tribute, protection … oompah,” said Hibbler, tugging at his bang. “Dey pay us or gives … Poof! Dere goes Manhattan. Or London. Or Wilmington, Delaware. Ve don’t play no favorites. Ve can destroy big or little cities. Ve can vipe out a block or a square mile or der whole place.”

  “Ten percent of everything is a tidy sum,” said Jake. “What will you lads do with the dough?”

  “Expand,” said Hibbler. “Ve build more space colonies, ve explore der outer reaches of der universe, ve go vere der timid governments of Earth ain’t gone so far. Ve do all sorts of challenging tings … und ve live quite veil.”

  “Greed,” said Jake.

  “Ain’t dot vot keeps you going, Herr Pace? Boy, I heard about some of der fees you charge.”

  “We’re free lancers, we get paid for services.”

  “I get paid for what I don’t do. Ten percent or I fry your old hometown. Ten percent or dere goes der orphanage or der old ladies home or der Eiffel Tower,” said Hibbler gleefully. “Ah, ve show no mercy.”

  “This ray is something you perfected back in your Nazi days, in the prefreeze phase of your career?”

  “Ven I was helping Hitler mit der conquest of der vorld I come up mit der notion,” answered Dr. Hibbler. “But just den der Turd Reich goes kapoot. Vot a blow to mine plans. I haff to run, I end up in der circus … oompah oompah oompah pah … Der vay I see it, Herr Pace, der darn vorld owes me sometink.”

  “Such as ten percent of everything.”

  “Could be maybe fifteen percent. To go all mine life mit oompahs inside der head, dot’s a pain in der fanny.”

  “The secret of the ray, how it works and such,” said Jake. “Do your partners share it?”

  “No, dey don’t.” Hibbler tapped the side of his forehead that was partially covered by bang. “I got der whole ting up in mine noggin.”

  “Then if something happened to you—”

  “Nodding ain’t going to happen to me.”

  “Look at this, Adolph. Just arrived from Earth and a real beaut … Oh, I didn’t know you had company.” A stout man in a one-piece blue recsuit had come pushing into the observation room, carrying a small potted palm tree.

  “Dis is Herr Pace, Ralph.”

  Ralph Emerson Tenn placed his palm tree gently on the glaz floor. “A distinct pity you’re on the wrong side, Pace,” he said. “If it weren’t for that moral quirk of yours, I’d offer—”

  “Speaking of moral quirks,” cut in Jake. “Are you going to let this guy kill your daughter?”

  Term’s face clouded with a pink flush. “There’s not going to be any more killing,” he said firmly. “We’ve all agreed on that.”

  “You think Hibbler has? He’s used to killing people who are in his way.”

  “Nonsense,” said Tenn, glancing down at his potted palm. “The shuttle from Earth just docked, Adolph, with a whole cargo of new plants for me. I’m going to redo the area around my lagoon so. … You really won’t go back on your word, will you? I’m, even though we don’t get along all that well, fond of Amanda. My only daughter, and she looks remarkably like her late mother.”

  “Don’t let Pace sew seeds of dissension, Ralph, mine friend,” advised the scientist. “Your little girl is safe.”

  “You will be killing off a few folks when you demonstrate the Hibbler Ray, though,” Jake said to the portly industrialist.

  Tenn cleared his throat. “No more than necessary.” Bending, puffing some, he picked up his palm tree and hugged it to his broad chest. “We’re talking about ten percent of everything here, Pace. To get that, we’ll probably have to shed a few lives.”

  “The population of Westport, Connecticut, last time I checked was over—”

  “We didn’t bring you here to debate.” Tenn moved for t
he exit door. “We brought you here to keep you quiet. Actually, you ought to be grateful you didn’t end up like that troublemaking Kazee. You’re alive, comfortable and dwelling in a tropical paradise which is eighty-four percent better than any tropical paradise known on Earth. Our air is better, our water is unpolluted and there are no harmful insects. If you were bunking in Tahiti, let’s say, you’d likely be bitten by—”

  “Herr Pace is vell aware of how nice dis all is, Ralph,” said Hibbler, guiding his partner through the doorway. “Go back to your lagoon.”

  “Yes, I’d better. Nice meeting you, Pace.” He carried his palm tree away along a corridor.

  “A nice man, but naïve,” said Hibbler. “Now, vatch. I show you how I adjust der Hibbler Ray so ve can wipe out der whole dodgosted town.”

  CHAPTER 25

  “YIPE!” SAID HARLOW TITTS.

  He was sitting bolt upright in the thermal hydrobed, his quivering causing the squat plaz bed to gulp and gurgle.

  Illuminated by the pale orange nitelite which floated in a corner of the perfectly square window-less room was Hildy. Red hair down and brushing her shoulders, she was standing wide-legged at the foot of the therapeutic bed.

  “I’ll tell all,” blurted the Columbia Walvision System publicity man. “Don’t give me any shots, don’t hook me up to any machines, don’t blow truth breath in my—”

  “Easy now,” soothed Hildy. “I only want to talk to you.”

  Titts pressed both hands to his stomach. His lycra nightgown was wrinkled and twisted around his body. “That’s what they all claim,” he muttered. “Lure me into what turns out to be merely a replica of an MCANBC field-recruiting office, then thrust a gigantic needle in my butt. I’ve still got a terrific black and blue spot. You know what else they used? A mesmerist. Yes, a real actual mesmerist. Some walleyed Hungarian with garlic breath, who kept commanding me to look deep into his eyes. When a guy’s walleyed, though, it’s tough to—”

  “Relax,” suggested Hildy. “Hollering’ll excite you.”

  “They took over my poor brain, too, made me into a zombie,” Titts went on. “The people here at the Hollywood Home For Enfeebled Show Folks still don’t know all I did while I was under the spell. I was found wandering in the wastes of the Laurel Canyon Sector with a bent applause sign tucked under my arm.”

  Hildy settled, carefully, on the edge of the bed. “One of the things you did was invite my husband to appear on Blab!”

  “No, I didn’t do … wait now, that rings a faint bell.” Titts jiggled for a few seconds. “You’re right, Mrs. Pace, they did make me do that. They apparently employ not only Hungarian mesmerists but technicians who turn out perfect android replicas of people we all know. It’s flooding back now.… Yes, they even had a simulacrum of Sleepy Joe Bryan. It was an amazing gadget, just as nasty and obnoxious as Joe himself. It was in a stupor when I met the thing, but I—”

  “Where did they take Jake?”

  Worry lines deepened on the PR man’s forehead. He pointed at the ceiling. “Up.”

  “Up where?”

  “Up into the sky,” said the excited Titts. “Yes, I remember being sprawled in a bed of plaz tulips beside some old fart of a guard they’d also brain-controlled. The whole damn fake studio took off with a mighty roar. Bound for Lord knows where.”

  “A space colony,” said Hildy, mostly to herself.

  “I appreciate the breakthrough you’re helping me make,” said Titts. “Actually, though, you ought not to be here. I’m not allowed civilian visitors and the monitoring system’s rigged to start hooting like Billyjesus if any—”

  “I jobbed that before I snuck in,” she assured him. “These people who took you over, used you to trap Jake. Can you recollect anything more about them?”

  “Well, the mesmerist had a thick Hungarian accent, walleyes, garlic on his breath, a wart over his—”

  “Besides him.”

  Titts’ face puckered as he struggled to remember. “Wait, wait … they drove me out to that phoney studio in a landcar. Yes, and there was a man in the back seat I never got a look at, mostly because I was blindfolded a good deal of the time. The driver was the walleyed Hungarian. Why you’d let a man with such an obvious visual handicap handle a—”

  “The man in the back seat,” prodded Hildy.

  “The driver kept saying we ought to stop for fuel. But this other man, the one I didn’t see, told him to wait until after they’d dropped him off. He couldn’t stand the sight of gas station attendants, he maintained. Is that a clue?”

  Hildy smiled slowly. “It just might be, Harlow,” she said. “Can you recall anything else?”

  Titts considered the question, then gradually slumped back into a near-sleep. “They pumped me full of more drugs when CWS got me into this place, Mrs. …”

  “They’ve got Jake, they’ve taken him out into space somewhere,” summed up Hildy while she eased toward the door. “And Shiek Sahl al-Haml is probably in on the snatch. I better find him.”

  “How they hanging, slim?”

  “I debated about doing business with you.”

  “So don’t, skinny. I’ve got folks lined up six deep to utilize the greatest private info retrieval service in the whole round world.”

  “Jake’s in trouble, Steranko,” Hildy said in the direction of the pixphone screen of her parked skycar.

  Steranko the Siphoner laughed. “All professional daredevils come to bad ends, Hildy.” He was a small young man, a few inches above five feet. His head and eyebrows had been shaved as clean as his cheeks. His wide-lapel funsuit was a glowing purple, as were his gloves and boots. He was reclining in a chair that looked like a giant marshmallow, surrounded by computer terminals, video recorders, television monitors, last-century radios and mounds and tumbles of mixed electronic hardware.

  Hildy asked him, “What sort of fees are you charging these days?”

  “For a rush job the price tag is higher.”

  “How much to get me the location of someone?”

  “Of Jake?”

  “No, of somebody who was in on grabbing him.”

  “My usual fee is $2000. For old and dear pals such as you and Jake, I’ll make it $1900,” said the purple-clad information siphoner. “You figure Jake’s life is in danger?”

  “More than likely.”

  “Didn’t I help you save him scant months ago? Right there is where he should’ve signed the pledge, Hildy, and quit the private-eye dodge. He’s not such a bad piano player, I’m fairly sure I could get him a good job at any one of a dozen or so bistros here in New Orleans or—”

  “I have to locate Shiek Sahl al-Haml.”

  “Okay.” Steranko reached a purple-gloved hand out to punch at a control panel on his left. “By the way, do I look better in purple or yellow, do you think?”

  Hildy said, “It’s a toss-up.”

  The little siphoner had a sky-blue earphone stuck in his left ear now. “Looks like old hairbreath Jake has really barged into a lulu this time,” he observed. “Are you going to need me to—”

  “What’ve you got?”

  “Allow me to lay this out so a layperson can grasp it,” Steranko said. “The shiek is rumored to be in cahoots with the Tech Mafia and also with a large industrial complex. Certain blocks have been placed in my path to enlightenment, but, for an additional $1000 I can circumvent them and—”

  “We already know who the other party is. It’s SIS.”

  “No kidding. Even bigger than I figured.” Steranko fed what he’d just learned into a storage bank on his right. “Either the TM or SIS alone is nasty enough to wipe out our Jacob, my dear. Together he’s got about as much chance as a—”

  “The shiek’s got a hideout, which he fled to when the revolution in Zayt got too hot,” said the impatient Hildy. “It’s supposed to be underwater somewhere.”

  With a purple-booted foot Steranko kicked a switch in a floor row, scaring a purple-dyed cat into yowling wakefulness. “I’ve got som
ething on that. Hold it a sec, Hildy.”

  After a few seconds something rattled under his chair and paper ribbon began to unfurl from a floor-level slot beneath it. Tearing off the first few feet, the siphoner scanned it. “Shiek al-Haml’s brother settled in CalSouth some years ago, went into the construction game. He’s a contender for the next Guiness book because he brought off the biggest construction boondoggle of all time. Thirteen billion bucks he managed to blow, a target for all future con men to shoot at. Anyhow, Hamel, which is the name the brother uses, started the building of the Frisco Bay Rapid Transit Tunnel to Hawaii. They built forty-six miles of it and quit.”

  “That’s where the shiek hides?”

  “Several miles of it were turned into luxury apartments, Hildy,” he said. “Though few know of it, since they don’t have my vast resources, Shiek al-Haml does have a place therein.”

  “Thanks, we‘llsend you a check.”

  “Do it right away, before Jake’s part of your funds are tied up in probate.”

  “Soon as I hang up, which is going to be right—”

  “Hey, one other thing, Hildy.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Some of the other sections of that defunct tunnel are not too safe to travel through. The folks in the luxury section go heavily armed,” he told her. “Also bear in mind that those who grabbed Jake no doubt also want you.”

  “They’ve already tried to get me. Don’t worry.”

  “Listen, one last thing,” said Steranko the Siphoner. “Since it’s Jake, make the fee $1750. That’s one hell of a bargain.”

  CHAPTER 26

  ANOTHER ORANGE-HAIRED OLD MAN threw himself at the armored landbus. For a few seconds he was pressed tight against the thick glaz windshield, his wrinkled polka-dot face distorted, the large rusty nail he wore through his nose awry, his hand axe tapping futilely against the thick shield. The heavy wiper swung down, bopped him into the thick darkness at the edge of the vast tunnel.

  “I’d better explain,” said the bus driver over his talkmike. “We’re entering a new zone of the Frisco Bay Rapid Transit Tunnel To Hawaii, ladies. We’re clear of the World Congress of Deadbeats now and for the next ten miles or so we’ll be rolling along through the Old Punks territory. The Old Punks are vicious senior citizens who refuse to live contentedly on their CalNorth Golden Years Pensions … oops, there’s another one. … They refuse to stay in the Young Old-timers Enclaves provided by CalNorth, preferring to hide in this incomplete tunnel. From here they venture out on raids of the homes of the area’s more rational citizens.”