Hail Hibbler Read online

  “Souvenir from the Joyful Brothers. I want to analyze it later,” Hildy said. “One of those dolls I told you about, a baby doll that can be programmed to kill you.”

  “Doesn’t sound likely to catch on in the mass market.” He eased the bottle out. “You can shut now.”

  “As you will, exalted master.”

  “Who do I ask for glasses?”

  “Me. I put them on the sideboard over there.”

  Jake unfurled the sewdofoil from the bottle, twisted off the plaz wire.

  With a mild pop the neocork shot out, bopped into the nearest white wall and fell into the sink.

  The sink ate it.

  After pouring two glasses, he handed one to his wife. “Cheers,” he said. “Not bad for a CalNorth vintage.”

  “1999 was the last good year, then that blight got loose from the Ft. Ord CBW Test Ground, scooted up to the Napa Valley and ate all the grapes.”

  Jake watched his wife for a few silent seconds. “Do all the rooms in this house talk back?”

  “All except one guest bedroom. They have a very nervous great aunt who visits sometimes.”

  “Care to adjourn there before dinner?”

  Hildy turned to the stove. “Don’t do anything until I get back,” she told it.

  CHAPTER 14

  “IS THIS THE WAY to the shrine, your grace?”

  “I’m a pilgrim here myself, my son.”

  “The talkbox I rented up at the gate keeps telling me to turn left at Catacomb C and right at Catacomb E. Thus far that’s resulted in my going around in a sort of tipsy circle.”

  “The path to salvation can often seem that way.” Jake adjusted his crimson and gold robes, tapped his mitre to a more upright position. “Perhaps if we continue along this corridor we’ll reach our goals.” The lost visitor was a gray-haired man of fifty-one, wearing a rumpled three-piece pilgrimsuit. He squinted over at Jake as they walked along the simulated rock tunnel. “You look vaguely familiar to me, your holiness,” he said finally. “Have I perhaps seen you on Praying For Dollars or Meet The Pontiffs?”

  “The vows of my particular order forbid participation in show biz,” replied Jake.

  “You sure look familiar. Could be I remember you from the cover of Time-Life or Celeb or—”

  “Such vanities are also forbidden.”

  Shaking his head, the pilgrim said, “I’m here for a miracle cure. The Shrine of St. Bubbles is noted for that, you know.”

  “You don’t look to be suffering from anything too serious.”

  The man tapped the side of his head. “I’ve got inward problems,” he explained. “I’m a goat molester.”

  “Molest goats, do you?”

  “Every chance I get. Fortunately, in the Columbus Redoubt goats are few and far between. Otherwise I’d be in a lot deeper trouble than I am,” he said. “Compulsive is what I am when it comes to the goat department. Sheep, cows, donkeys mean nothing to me. Let me get a gander at a goat, though, and I’m off and running.”

  “A strange malady, my son. I wonder if it comes within St. Bubbles’ range.”

  “According to all the accounts I’ve read, your grace, a visit to the Shrine has been known to cure similar troubles,” he said. “For instance, there was a fellow with a good paying job at the pixphone company. He kept running away to try to make his way as a tap dancer. Well, he visited the Shrine and asked St. Bubbles to help him. Sure enough, as he was boarding the skyvan home, he fell and broke his leg in three places. He’ll never dance again, so he’s content to return to his phone job.”

  “Truly a miracle.”

  “I figure if St. Bubbles can break a leg, she can surely handle a simple goat lusting.”

  The corridor branched. “Good luck to you, my son. My course lies in a different direction from yours.” He hurried away along the tunnel labeled Catacomb F.

  A commotion was unfolding in the new rocky tunnel.

  Two husky black-robed priests were tugging a reluctant fat man toward Jake.

  “Nitwits, I don’t need the Shrine’s curative powers,” protested the fat man in a booming, rumbling voice.

  “St. Bubbles will do you wonders, sir,” promised one of the burly priests.

  “Your unsightly bulk will vanish in a matter of weeks. Greater miracles have happened.”

  “My bulk, you idiot, is my stock and trade. Don’t you realize who I—”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if St. Bubbles even cleared up that rasp in your voice. Don’t you think that’s likely, Brother Orlando?”

  “I certainly do, Brother Jerome.”

  “Dumbunnies, the rasp is part of my charm,” the fat man informed them. “I’m Lawson Wooly and I’m here to do the voice over for your half-witted Bubbles Water TV commercials. Now. …”

  Making a mystical sign, Jake edged around the priests and the struggling actor to continue on his way.

  A few moments later he reached a large simulated cavern. Stacked high all around were neowood cartons of Bubbles Water. Each carton had the familiar Bubbles Water logo on it, along with the slogan A Miraculous Mixer!

  Tucking up his holy skirts, Jake sprinted across the storeroom and into a long plazwalled green corridor. The central computer, according to the layouts he’d snuck a look at early this morning, was located up ahead.

  “Yep, here we are.” Heavy green doors loomed up at the corridor’s end. Sacred Files/Keep Out! was stenciled across them.

  Before he had a chance to try any of his lock-picking equipment, the doors swung slowly open inward.

  A young priest in a one-piece black holysuit was standing just on the other side of the threshold.

  “I’ve been expecting you, Mr. Pace,” he said.

  “Oops,” said Jake.

  CHAPTER 15

  AS EVERY SCHOOL CHILD knows Lee Harvey Oswald had nothing to do with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy back in the 20th century. Completely vindicated by the findings of the Senate Committee on Vast Conspiracies in 1997, revealed as a courageous secret agent of the Central Intelligence Agency who struggled valiantly to circumvent the murder plot cooked up by the then FBI Director, J. Edward Groover, and presidential hopeful Richard N. Dixon, Oswald swiftly became a hero throughout America. Especially in Texas, where he’d been wrongfully slain.

  One result of this adulation was the town of Oswald, Texas, a sizeable and affluent community near Houston. Its mammoth neomarble and glaz public square was dominated by a thirty-foot-high statue of the martyred Oswald, holding his famous rifle and squinting heroically toward the place where the sun rose each morning.

  At a few minutes after high noon, Hildy Pace came zooming over Oswald Square in a glittering gold-plated skycar. She sailed dazzlingly on to the outskirts of town, landing gracefully on the glitter-embedded parking turf next to Skytrader Smith’s twenty-acre Space Colony sales spread.

  “Hubba hubba!” exclaimed the lot ’bot as Hildy flashed out of the vehicle.

  And she was stunning. Her platinum hair flashed, her frontless realsilk dress glowed a brilliant crimson, her deeply tanned flesh gleamed. “Why, thanks for the compliment,” she said as she inserted what appeared to be a cokeball into one lovely nostril with a golden nosefork. Sniffing, smiling beatifically, she started to walk toward the space colony that served as the main office building for the enterprise.

  “Boing! Boing!” called the appreciative robot after her.

  The space-lot sales area stretched out before her in the midday glare. The flat sandy acres were dotted with full-scale and half-scale models of the various types of space colonies where lots were still available. There were huge spheres, numerous giant cylinders and domes. Colonies which resembled giant dumbbells, others like delicate windmills and wispy bridges. They all gleamed in the Texas sun while white-clad salesmen escorted prospective customers from colony to colony in small shuttle-shaped landcars.

  The main office looked like the biggest thermos bottle ever made. It rose up several stories a fe
w hundred feet from the spot where Hildy’d landed. To reach the entry portal she had too climb a curving ramp to a point halfway up the silver structure.

  “Oooweee! Hot damn! Son of a biscuit!” exclaimed the young man who was standing at the entryway of the mock colony. He was tall, wide and tan, wearing a one-piece silvery cowboy suit, a spotless yellow Stetson and a gold ring through his handsome nose. “Danged, if you ain’t the best lookin’ heifer I ever done seen in all my born days! Lordy, what a set of equipment you got, lady.”

  “I always appreciate a compliment.” Hildy smiled. “Now, would you please inform Mr. Smith I’m here?”

  “Oh, geeze, he’s gonna cream in his jeans when he lays eyes on you! Wowsie me!”

  “Tell him Princess Vicki Sanhammel-Graustark is here. I’m a few minutes late because some oafs in customs tried to paw me when I crossed the border from my palatial estate in Mexico,” she explained. “They’ll be shot this afternoon against the wall of the old Mission San Norberto in—”

  “Ulp,” said the young salesman. “I didn’t realize who you were, Princess. Forgive my Lone Star forthrightness. Obviously one shouldn’t comment at all openly on the quality and quantity of the knockers of a true princess. I do hope you’ll forgive me. My name is Lightnin’ Jim Grossman, in case you want to report my boorish behavior to—”

  “When one is one of the richest and most beautiful women in the world, one must get used to compliments, Lightnin’ Jim.”

  “Doggone, that’s a right democratic attitude.”

  “The Prince and I both believe … but I mustn’t keep Mr. Smith waiting any longer.”

  The young salesman gestured at the neolite door behind him and it hummed open. Escorting her through the doorway, he said, “Now, Princess, this here’s only a model you understand. Scaled down some from the real Space Industry Systems colonies that’re orbitin’ all over the place in space. As somebody as well informed as you are must know, we are the exclusive agents for SIS in this part of the country.”

  They proceeded across a suspended walkway over a very believable stretch of green countryside, except for a horizon that was not quite right. The gently rolling fields, the budding elms and oaks, the twittering birds were bathed in a pleasant glow very much like morning sunlight. Mingled with the scents of grass and flowers was a fairly strong new-car odor. Several people seemed to be having picnics on the bright grass.

  “All them folks down there is robots, you know,” said Lightnin’ Jim. “We got to mix ’em up as to race, creed, color, country of origin. When you get your lot out on a real SIS colony, however, you won’t have to worry about blacks, or Chinamen or Portuguese or Quakers or any other group you might loathe. Space law isn’t anywheres near as ballbustin’ as Earth law is.”

  After a brief, bored glance downward, Hildy said, “Perhaps Mr. Smith’s quite lovely secretary—”

  “She is cuter nor a pound of honey poured over a kitten, ain’t she? You don’t always find that in a Jewish Quaker who’s part Chinese and part Italian. But I interrupted you.”

  “I was going to reiterate that I don’t want to buy a space lot.”

  “You don’t. But we was expectin’ as how—”

  “The Prince and I have an interest in purchasing an entire colony.”

  “A whole colony?” Lightnin’ Jim swallowed. “That’ll cost you a whole pisspot of loot, Princess.”

  “The heiress to the entire Bascom Imitation Lard fortune never has to worry about price tags,” Hildy informed him.

  “Dang, that’s right. It ain’t only Prince Sanhammel-Graustark’s dough you got to blow. You got all that untold mazuma your late pappy left you.”

  “A tidy sum, yes.”

  “Doggone, ever’ time I meet up with a hot damn heifer who’s got handsome chabobbies and a pile of dough, she’s always hitched up to somebody else,” he complained. “Not that I’m old-style enough to balk at adultery. But as I recollect the Prince is one of them types who likes to shoot anybody who so much as fondles you at a party.”

  “In his native Ruritania women are considered property,” explained Hildy.

  “No kiddin’? Now that there’s the kind of real estate I should be dabbling in.” He reached out to tap on a silver door they had arrived at. “This here’s the boss’s office.”

  After several seconds the door swung open.

  Skytrader Smith was a large man in his late fifties. He was handsome, sun-brown, silver-haired. He wore an off-white realeather two-piece fringe-suit, white boots trimmed in silver. A large ruby swung from his left ear and set in his broad forehead were three large diamonds.

  “Hot darn! Son of a biscuit!” Skytrader Smith leaped up from behind his desk, smiling broadly. “Danged if lookin’ at a hot dang heifer like you don’t make me cream in my jeans!”

  Hildy returned the smile. “Yes, your associate mentioned that it might,” she said.

  CHAPTER 16

  “AH,” SAID FATHER HAMMERSMITH, “I do believe I’ve followed every single case Odd Jobs, Inc., ever dealt with, Mr. Pace. There was the Dr. Patchwork Matter and the Case of the Cockeyed Cyborg, the Puzzle of the Lycanthropic Veep, the Mysterious Affair of the Senatorial Simulacrum, the Odd Exploit of the Three Siamese Twins, the Adventure of the Basher Social, the—”

  “No, the Basher business was handled by the Wild Talent Bureau,” put in Jake. “Hildy and I had nothing to do with it.”

  He and the thin young priest were seated in a see-through parlor deep within the New Rome facility. Around them the activities of the Holy Streamlined Christian Church were being carried on. To the left miraculous cures were taking place at the Shrine of St. Bubbles, to the right monk-clothed robots were bottling Bubbles water.

  “I don’t suppose you have an autographed photo you could give me.”

  “We don’t hand out autographs or pictures, for security reasons.”

  “A shame, since our church has nothing against idolatry, being so streamlined.”

  Jake leaned forward in his lucite chair. “Since you are a fan, Father Hammersmith, you might get a big kick out of helping us on our latest mission.”

  “Yes, that would indeed be exciting. When I saw you on the security monitor some minutes ago, so imaginatively disguised, I had a moment of real elation. ‘Whatever can the illustrious Jake Pace be seeking in the bowels of our church complex?’ I asked of myself. ‘Can it be he is seeking some kind of spiritual assistance which—’ ”

  “I’m looking for Angel Tolliver.”

  Hammersmith’s facial lines all began slanting toward his nose. “Who?”

  “Girl named Angel Tolliver. She came here last week, seeking sanctuary.”

  “No one of that name appeared here.”

  From within the folds of his clerical robes Jake produced the sketch of the missing girl. “Here she is.”

  The priest took the sketch, studied it. “That’s, Lord forgive my lack of charity, a very silly nose.”

  “A fake, part of her disguise.”

  Holding the picture at various distances from his narrowed eyes, Hammersmith finally said, “With a more conventional nose this might well be … yes, I do believe it’s Amanda.”

  “Full name?”

  “Why, Amanda Tenn. A very nice young woman despite her great wealth and pos—”

  “Whoa now. Is she related to Ralph Emerson Tenn, the guy who controls Space Industries Systems?”

  “She’s Tenn’s only daughter,” answered the priest. “He is not, I regret to say, sympathetic to our work here in—”

  “I have to see her.”

  The priest’s hands touched before slowly drifting apart. “She is no longer with us.”

  “Where’d she go?”

  “That I don’t know, Mr. Pace. She left no word behind.”

  “When’d she take off?”

  “I can’t be sure of the exact time. I saw her at the bingo service last night,” said Father Hammersmith. “Some time between then and breakfast this morning s
he slipped away. When she arrived she was very upset, confiding in me someone meant to kill her. Is that true, do you think?”

  “Yeah, very true,” Jake assured him. “If Amanda was in trouble, why not go to her father? He could provide her damn good security.”

  “She had reasons, which she didn’t confide, for not seeking shelter at any of the family homes here or in space,” said the priest. “She and her father have never been close. That was, I believe, one of the reasons she became interested in our church while attending college in Phoenix two years ago. She’s a bright, though shy, girl and we became friends even though she never quite accepted all the—”

  “She’s cut herself off from her family, she’s on the run,” Jake said. “You’re one of the few people she thinks she can trust. Know of anyone else she might ask for help?”

  Hammersmith’s palms pressed together again, then parted. “I don’t. Amanda was not the confiding kind.”

  “Meaning you’ve no idea where she went?”

  “None.”

  “She was providing State Kazee with information,” said Jake. “About some grand-scale conspiracy. It must have something to do with her father’s conglom.”

  “Amanda didn’t discuss any of this with me.”

  “I’d like to look at the room she had while she was hiding out here.”

  “You’ll find nothing, it’s a typical anchorite’s cell, but you’re welcome to see it.” He left his chair, bringing his voxwatch to his ear. “We’ll have to stop by the shrine first, if you don’t mind. Nearly time for Pope Ed II, the founder of our church, to appear and bless the multitudes. Looks like we’ve got about three hundred plus in the multitude today, not a bad gate. You might find it beneficial.”

  “I might,” admitted Jake.

  Water was spurting and gurgling up out of the copper spout, spraying those who were kneeling, slumped and sprawled close by and splashing back into the rocky pool that was the Shrine of St. Bubbles.

  As Jake and Father Hammersmith arrived at the edge of the excited group of some three hundred pilgrims, a balding man hopped to his feet.