Hail Hibbler Page 9

  The long corridor was floored with polished realwood. Halfway down it a tall man in a three-piece gray bizsuit was standing in an open doorway.

  “Things are a bit topsy turvy, I’m afraid, Mrs. Courtbenson.” He bowed slightly toward the approaching Hildy. “This damn revolution has thrown us all off.”

  “Understandable.” She accepted his nodded invitation to enter his large office. As she passed the man her nose wrinkled very slightly.

  “I’m Guthrie Willis, of course.” He crossed to his desk. From behind him, through the open window, came the sounds of the fighting in the streets and the angry shouts of the rebel gas station attendants.

  “NATIONALIZE ALL GAS!”

  “OIL FOR ALL!”

  “BETTER-FITTING WORKCLOTHES!”

  Willis said, “All of us in the U.S. Government, Mrs. Courtbenson, are aware of the support you’ve given to the present administration. So your sudden wish to interview the shiek gave us an unexpected opportunity to return, in part at least, all the favors you’ve done for us.”

  Hildy frowned for several seconds, tongue poking into one cheek.

  Then she sprinted across the thick carpet, leaped over the desk and threw her shoulder into the Ambassador.

  That sent him, as she’d calculated, flying right out the open window to smash on the courtyard stones three long stories below.

  CHAPTER 21

  JAKE SAT UP, BLINKING. “Ukeleles?” he muttered.

  There was hot sand underneath him. Stretching across the oddly curved horizon was what appeared to be blue water. Even though there was no sun showing in the sky, the illusion of sunlight was strong. A gentle breeze, laden with lush tropical fragrances, drifted through the palm trees, flowering bushes and tangled vines that ringed the beach he’d awakened on.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah, except I keep hearing ukeleles and Hawaiian guitars.”

  The blonde girl in the one-piece sarong said, “That’s piped in around the clock. My first twenty-four hour cycle here it really bothered me, like a toothache. Now I’ve learned to tune it out. I’m Amanda Tenn.”

  “At last.” He held out his hand. “I’m Jake Pace.”

  She shook it. “I know, I’ve seen you on TV and such.”

  “You look better without the funny nose.”

  “Managed to fool a few people.”

  Jake glanced around. “This is Space Colony Number 33?”

  “Yes, one of my father’s private ones. South Pacific themes.” She pointed a tanned hand to the right and then the left. “We can move around as far as the fake outrigger canoe over there. The grass shack is the boundary on our left. Up back we can get as far as a little dinky river. You can swim in the imitation ocean … it’s quite warm, by the way. Don’t, though, try to climb out on the other side.”

  “What are they using, force barriers?”

  “With a big shock built in,” replied Amanda. “Strong enough to make escape impossible. Won’t kill you, but it’ll knock you on your keester for a good long spell.”

  “How’d they get hold of you?”

  She gave a bare-shouldered shrug. “I’ve been hiding out with various people I thought I could trust,” she said. “Turns out I was right about all except the last one. Fellow I knew in the Frisco Enclave. He couldn’t turn down the $100,000 my father was offering.”

  Jake rubbed at his knee, eyes on the imitation sea. “What did you tell Kazee?”

  “Exactly what my father is up to,” Amanda said. “I really, you know, didn’t expect they’d kill him. They got wind of my telling and sent that awful decorated assassin to kill Statz. I just barely got myself out of there.”

  “Lot of other nasty people involved in this besides your father.”

  “Don’t try to soften it, he’s the worst of the SIS bunch,” she said evenly. “Once I got on to what he and his buddies were planning I took off, went underground. Through a friend at Funn! I made contact with Statz. I really did think we’d be able to stop them. If we could have broken the damn story, that would’ve done it. Instead Statz is dead, we’re stuck here.”

  “Okay, what exactly are they up to? It involves this Hibbler guy, doesn’t it? The chap who’s supposed to be dead and gone.”

  “He’s alive. Awhile back Shiek Sahl al-Haml … do you know about him?”

  “My wife filled me in some. She’s enroute to chat with him.”

  “That’s a bad idea. He’s a rotten person.”

  “Hildy’s good at handling that sort. Go on.”

  “The shiek located Dr. Adolph Hibbler down in Brazil three years ago,” Amanda continued. “Hibbler and some of his Nazi pals smuggled themselves out of Berlin back in 1944 or whenever that war ended. He wanted to lie low for maybe a half century or so. His goofy associates froze him, using techniques Hibbler himself had developed. The deal was supposed to be that Dr. Hibbler would remain in suspended animation in a very secure bunker in the Matto Grosso jungles. After a certain specified number of years had passed, the place would automatically reanimate him. Things, however, didn’t work out like that at all. About twenty years ago, after that part of Brazil became a real attraction to settlers, the whole area around his bunker was cleared to make room for middle-income condos. Some construction workers found the body and the equipment keeping it alive and frozen. They gathered it all up, hauled it to Brasilia and sold it to a traveling carnival. For almost two decades Dr. Hibbler, asleep and oblivious, toured South America as the Amazing Frozen Man. Then the shiek heard about him. He’s a real Nazi buff and suspected who the frozen party really was. He bought the body and reanimated it. He knew the freezing business was only a sideline with Dr. Hibbler. The field he’d really excelled in, the area he’d have done amazing things in had the war gone differently was—”

  “Death rays,” remembered Jake.

  “Eggsactly, mine boy,” said someone up in the foliage.

  CHAPTER 22

  HE BOUNCED TWICE, THEN once again. The rattling and clattering rose up from the hot courtyard. The top of his skull snapped open, his gray hair went fluttering into a dry fountain. Cogs, twists of fine wire, thin glaz tubes came cascading out of the opening in the head to spill across the stones and gleam in the sunlight. Oil the color of the eyes in peacock feathers leaked, in slow pumps, out of his joints, soaking through his gray suit and slicking the mosaic stones he’d fallen on.

  “Damn, another andy they sic on me,” said Hildy, leaning out the Ambassador’s window. “Where’s the real Willis?”

  A scraping sound caused her to spin, hand going to a thigh holster.

  There was no one in the room.

  “Murple,” said a faint voice in a closet across the office.

  Staying planted where she was, Hildy fetched a low-key blaster out of her other thigh holster. She aimed it at the door, squeezed off a blast.

  The closet door shimmered into dust, the real brass knob clunked to the rug.

  She noticed highly polished shoes and knobby ankles inside the closet. “Could be Willis.” Moving carefully, she approached the doorless cubicle.

  There was a man in there, gagged and trussed up, who closely resembled the android she’d just nudged into oblivion.

  Hildy cut away his bonds and the gag, which was a crisp white table napkin, with the small knife she always wore concealed on her person.

  “Why, Mrs. Courtbenson, you’re the last person I’d expect to see going around armed,” said the gray Ambassador. “Indeed I … why are you eyeing me that way and sniffing. I pride myself on the thoroughness of my grooming, which—”

  “Androids, no matter how cleverly made, give off a distinctive smell,” she explained, while tugging him up out of the closet. “You don’t have it.”

  “Why should I? Is this some further nasty charge against me trumped up by the yellow press? I can give you, provided you agree to sign the proper receipts, copies of my latest head-to-toe physical, clearly establishing that I am flesh and—”

  �
�Someone replaced you with an andy,” she cut in. “Do you know who?”

  “An android? That’s most peculiar.” Ambassador Willis, tottering some, made his way over to his desk. “Someone’s been fooling with my things. Moved my moon-rock paperweight, handled my tri-op picture of my son’s home in Space Colony Number 56, touched my—”

  “How’d you come to be in the closet, Mr. Ambassador?”

  Willis blinked. “Oh, yes, I suppose I do owe you an explanation, since we had an appointment for this very afternoon,” he said. “I’m afraid I don’t have too very many details. I was seated at my desk, partaking of a seafood luncheon. As I recall I’d just finished my kelp soup when I began to feel a bit woozy. Quite obviously it was drugged. I next fell face-first over into my plate of sea anemone shish kebab. Yes, I can recall that distinctive plop sudden contact with sea anemones produces.” He spread his hands wide. “The next thing I remember is being in a closet wrapped up like a Nondenominational Gift Day package.”

  “Someone on your staff isn’t to be trusted.”

  “I don’t trust any of them,” said Willis. “Usually I employ a food taster, but he donned a uniform and joined the fighting. Looked quite natty in his gas station attendant’s togs. Probably because I suggested he have my tailor make them up for—”

  “I’d like to have my interview with the shiek now.” Hildy glanced out the window. Five Marines, including Corporal Winderspan, were circling the defunct android and gazing up at the Ambassador’s window. “I’m on something of a tight schedule.”

  Willis shook his head. “Whatever are you going to think of me, Mrs. Courtbenson. You and your marvelous newspaper,” he said. “You call on me and I’m in the closet, and now I have to tell you Shiek al-Haml isn’t here.”

  “When I pixed you from the U.S. you assured me he was.”

  “This has been quite a day for odd happenings I’m afraid.” The Ambassador realigned some of the objects atop his desk. “What I thought was the shiek sleeping peacefully in his bed was in reality a pile of pillows, rather a large pile since the shiek is a substantial man. I suppose someone should have become suspicious when he requested eight extra pillows from the housekeeper. Knowing, however, his reputation for eccent—”

  “Okay, he’s not here. Where is he?”

  “Exactly the question the President will be asking me,” said Willis sadly. “The one good thing about being stuffed in the closet was it postponed my having to call Washington to—”

  “You’ve got no idea where the shiek went?”

  Ambassador Willis stroked his chin. “I’m nearly certain he snuck out on his own,” he said. “I believe he did mention, in happier days when we used to dine together at such spots as the Big Mac Mosque, having a little hideaway somewhere. A place he might go to if things ever became turbulent here in Zayt. Of course, sitting there over weedburgers and diet beer, we never for a moment expected there’d really be a—”

  “Where’s the hideaway?”

  “You certainly are anxious to interview the man. Nothing like a fall from grace to increase a—”

  “Where?”

  Willis winced at the pressure of her fingers gripping his upper arm. “It wasn’t here in this country,” he said.

  After a few blank seconds, Hildy asked, “So where the hell was it then?”

  The Ambassador thought. “Elsewhere,” he answered finally. “I have the impression his retreat was tied in with some colossal boondoggle of a few years past. There’ve been so many of those, though, I can’t seem to pinpoint it.”

  “Try,” she urged.

  “Underwater,” Willis came up with. “Yes, I’m nearly certain his aerie was underwater.”

  “Which water? The Persian Gulf? The Caspian Sea? The Mediterranean?”

  The office door burst open. Next came Corporal Winderspan and two other Marines, armed with laserifles.

  “Beg pardon, sir, but we just now double-checked on this lady,” said Winderspan, panting. “See, we thought at first it was you she’d dumped out the window, so we—”

  “She didn’t corporal. You may go.”

  “But, sir,” Winderspan persisted. “She is not, despite her stunning good looks and eye-pleasing figure, Mrs. Courtbenson at all. The real and authentic Mrs. Courtbenson, along with Mr. Courtbenson, Junior Courtbenson, Bitsy Courtbenson and Auntie Jane Courtbenson, are taking a well-deserved vacation out on S.C. Number 71, the Cal desert colony SIS maintains as—”

  “An imposter?” gasped the Ambassador.

  Hildy waited to hear no more. Letting go of Ambassador Willis, she vaulted his desk.

  “Halt, ma’am, please!”

  She was diving clean through the open window before the first laser beam came slicing across the office.

  CHAPTER 23

  “VUN TING YOU GOT to say for dis dodgasted freezing, it keeps you young,” said Dr. Adolph Hibbler. He was a smallish man, thin. He wore his dark hair in semi-bang style, sported a small patch of moustache. “Who vould tink I’ll never see vun hundred again.”

  Jake watched the scientist pad down across the sand toward them. “I imagine people have told you how much you resemble your late boss,” he remarked.

  “Yes, Hitler and I vas lookalikes. Just like two peas in der pod was him und me.” Hibbler halted a few feet from Jake, head cocked to one side. “Der vay you could tell us apart vas he vas goofy und I vasn’t.”

  “I noticed that right off,” said Jake.

  Amanda moved close to Jake and he put an arm around her. “Don’t let him con you,” she warned. “He’s as nutty as a soyloaf. They all are.”

  “Ach, I can’t keep up mit dese twenny-first century slang eggspressions, Mizz Tenn,” complained Dr. Hibbler with a throaty chuckling. “But dot’s not here nor is it dere. Vot I come over for vas to … oompah oompah oompahpah … talk to Jake Pace und … oompah oompah … eggscuse me.”

  Jake inquired, “Why the sound effects?”

  “Purhaps you have heard of der dodgosted theory of sleep learning?”

  “Discredited long ago.”

  “Ha, dot’s vot you tink, Charlie,” said Hibbler. “Vile I vas in dot dingblasted carnival, sleeping blissfully away und tanking I vas still in mine bunker, I vas actually hearing all der time music. Dose South American swine played a dodgasted caliope night unt day. Der result is, I learned it zo good I can’t always keep from … oomph oompah oompahpah … veil, you get der picture.”

  Nodding, Jake asked, “Why’d you folks kidnap me?”

  “Veil, I got a sentimental streak,” answered Dr. Hibbler, knuckling his little moustache.

  “Don’t believe him,” said Amanda. “He wanted to kill us both, but he was outvoted. The murder of Statz Kazee caused such a rumpus down on Earth, the rest of them want to take it easy for awhile.”

  “For awhile,” said Jake slowly. “Until when?”

  “Until ve make our initial move,” Hibbler told him.

  “This is what I’ve been trying to warn people about,” the girl said. “They’ve brought us here so we’ll keep quiet until afterward.”

  “Also we’ll bring up your charming vife, Herr Pace.”

  “Hildy’s smarter than I am. You won’t catch her.”

  Giggling. Dr. Hibbler checked his old-fashioned wristwatch. “By now, mine boy, ve probably already got der lady,” he said confidently. “I eggspect der confirmation to come in any second.”

  Jake said, “Well, while we’re awaiting that moment, suppose you tell me what you folks are up to?”

  “Better dan dot,” said Hibbler. “Come along mit me und I show you. You, too, Miss Tenn.”

  Amanda pulled away from Jake, backed across the sand until her heels touched the warm waters of the false sea. “No, I don’t want to see that again.”

  With a massive shrug, Dr. Hibbler came trotting across the sand to grab hold of Jake’s arm. “Come on den, Herr Pace, you und me vill give it a look,” he invited. “Let her miss all der fun.”

  Spee
ding away from war-torn Zayt in her skycar, which she’d reached with the aid of her skybelt, Hildy availed herself of the dash pixphone.

  When she punched out the number of Jake’s rented landcar, it wasn’t Jake but a blue enameled robot whose image showed up on the screen. “You were attempting to contact TSC-19419, a pixphone located in a landcar rented from the Peaceful Coexistence Rental Company?”

  “I was, I am.”

  “Can you state, and prove if need be, your connection with the renter of this vehicle?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  The robot’s blue head ticked from side to side. “Are you the next of kin perhaps?”

  “Whoa now, next of kin implies a death in the family. What’s happened to Jake?”

  “You refer to Jacob Pace, who rented the vehicle in question?”

  “My husband. Now tell me, am I a widow?”

  “You had better talk to our Mr. Eastlynne.”

  The screen was filled with bursts of color. A new picture formed, revealing an anxious black man in a somewhat crouching position behind a silver-plated desk. His wide office window gave a view of desert country. “You’re Mr. Pace’s sister?”

  “Wife. Where the devil is he?”

  “The insurance Mr. Pace prudently took out when he rented our landcar will cover the cost of having it hauled out of the ravine, so you have no financial—”

  “What ravine, damn it? Where’s Jake?”

  Mr. Eastlynne let his breath out slowly, causing the potted ferns on his desk to flutter. “That, Mrs. Pace, we do not exactly know,” he answered. “The landcar he rented from us is reposing at the moment in the bottom of a ravine in the Woodland Hills Sector of Greater Los Angeles.”

  “GLA? What was he doing back out there?”

  “We have no idea why your husband drove our landcar into the ravine in question, Mrs. Pace. Could you ask him when next you meet? As I say, the insurance will pay for all damages, yet we’re curious as to whether some fault in the car or in our services prompted him to take such a drastic—”

  “Thanks, I surely will.” She killed the call.