The Hades Connectionby Gabriel S. Timar |
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| Chapter 9 |
The last things George Pike remembered about his life on Earth were the suntanned, streamlined, naked body of Lynn, the report of a gun, the bullet hole in the wood paneling, and his blood on the white carpet next to the black towel.
The next thing he knows, he’s being welcomed to the Third Dimension, where he has a choice not only of afterlifes but of accommodations and a new body, as well. George signs up with Hades, Ltd., a corporation that seems to be the best of a dubious lot.
George very much enjoys being welcomed by Arabella, who is not only highly efficient but something of a race car driver. And yet she has asked one question he cannot answer: how he died. Neither he nor anyone else seems to know. Now George must meet the head of Hades, Ltd., a certain Mr. Lucifer... and prepare himself for a career as a double agent in interstellar intrigue.
Before opening the door, I slipped in a note for Esther with the name of the cognac and instructions to lie down and not move or make any noise, no matter what. When Melchior and I entered, we saw she was doing everything I asked for.
Leaving Melchior in the kitchen, I waited in the room with Esther. As a pulse rate of less than seventy is low enough to pass as a light slumber, I stood in silence until her pulse registered sixty-eight. Then I extracted the microphone from her navel.
I thought we had a couple of hours before the monitoring agent would become suspicious of Esther’s extended siesta. We had more than enough time to discuss my proposition.
Esther watched the procedure with interest and behaved perfectly. She struck me as a disciplined individual. When the extraction was completed, I gave her my black silk kimono to wear before I let Melchior into the room. I wanted him there just in case I needed a witness to the proceedings.
Melchior put his index finger to his lip and produced a bug scanner from his pocket. He swept the room for any secondary listening devices, but there were none.
“It’s okay to talk,” he announced.
I introduced them to each other, and then I sat on the edge of the bed right next to Esther and began my well-rehearsed lecture.
“Esther, my dear,” I started, “this is the first time I can talk freely and honestly to you. Let me assure you that you can talk to me just as freely. Mr. Melchior’s sole purpose in life is to make sure nothing happens to us. Some evil forces want to take your newfound life and mine. The same people are also trying to destroy our planet, mother Earth. Although it does not matter to us any more because we are dead, you and I are the only people in the universe who might be able to stop them. I think we owe that much to our native planet. Are you with me?”
“I’m listening,” she said tersely, “keep talking.”
“You have been conned, Esther,” I continued. “Somehow you died on Earth.”
“I was shot by skyjackers over the North Atlantic,” she interrupted. “I cannot remember exactly what happened. I was a flight attendant for Transcontinental Airlines.”
“Immediately after you died, pleasant colors started swirling around you. You felt completely relaxed and happy,” I continued. “You were stimulated and everything was all right until one color blotted out all the others.”
“The blue,” she interjected.
”Then came a voice...”
“He claimed he was Saint Peter...”
“He asked you where you wanted to go and you chose Heaven,” I said.
“Of course, I did, didn’t you?” she interrupted again.
“He announced that you had been tried and found sinful, but not sinful enough to be sent straight to hell,” I continued, using the tone of a judge when passing sentence.
“Correct,” she said. “My sins were too much drinking, too much sex, smuggling, and bribing customs officials in addition to many other minor offenses.”
Nick was right. She was a seductress and an expert in bribing people.
“Peter offered you a choice,” I continued. “You either spend many years in purgatory or come back to Earth and seduce and bribe me into aborting my mission.”
“Correct again,” Esther admitted. “He was talking about twenty-five thousand years. That’s a hell of a long time. I’m sure you understand why I opted for the bribery and seduction venture. Besides, the seduction part is always fun.”
I nodded: “You took the easy way out, honey, just as I would have done. After that, Peter told you how much you could spend.”
“The limit was set at forty thousand,” she interrupted.
“After the briefing a letter X blotted out everything in your field of perception,” I continued with the same breath, “and presto, you were here in my apartment.”
“Precisely,” she agreed. “How did you know? He told me it was top secret.”
I relaxed, put on my million-dollar smile, the one I reserved for the jury when at least a mistrial was assured, and I gave Esther a long look: “My dear, you got into the hands of some unscrupulous operators. Every word was a lie. To start with, you are not on the planet Earth; this is the Third Dimension; you are on the planet Mammon, and we are in Mammon City.”
“Can you prove it?” Esther snapped.
I shot a quizzical look at Melchior. He shrugged and in a rather uncertain voice he replied: “I guess so.”
“What kind of proof do you want?” I asked.
“It’s your call,” she said.
“The phone book is right there; we could call the spaceport,” Melchior started.
“Not good enough,” Esther interrupted. “It could be forged.”
“We could visit the spaceport,” I suggested.
“Why not?” Melchior replied. “I can call for a copter, or we could use my car.”
“No,” she interrupted. “I don’t have any clothes. I cannot go around visiting spaceports barefooted, almost naked, wearing only a black beach towel.”
“I can get you some clothes,” suggested Melchior. “They may not be your style, but they should fit. You see, my girlfriend lives in this building on the third floor. You’re about the same size; I can ask her to lend you some of her clothes.”
“It will be just fine,” Esther smiled apparently relaxed. “By the way, can you guys give me a drink?”
While Melchior went to the telephone to call his girlfriend, I opened my liquor cabinet and gave Esther another one of my long questioning looks: “What will it be?”
“Rum and Coke,” she replied absently.
I made up a potent mix trying to remember the general characteristics of women who drank rum and Coke. Either my memory was not working very well in my new body, or I had never gotten involved with rum and Coke drinkers. The only data stored in my lazy memory banks on this topic was a reminder suggesting that ladies drinking gin and tonic preferred to take off their clothes without help before they climbed into bed with you.
Apparently, Melchior got through to his girlfriend and treated us to one side of a very amusing conversation. It was not difficult to figure out what the other party said.
“Hi, honey, this is Melch. How are you?... I love you too. I would like to borrow some of your clothes... No, no... This is business. Believe me it is.” Melchior was sweating. “A pants suit and a pair of shoes will do fine... I assure you it is not Delilah... Believe me, darling, it is not Arabella... No, you don’t know her; she is the friend of my new boss... You can believe me this time, honey, I’m not lying, I swear... Thank you, baby. Could you bring the clothes up to suite 2808?... You are an angel, I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
He hung up and wiped his forehead.
“Did you ever try to convince a jealous girlfriend that you want to borrow some of her clothes for a client?”
We both laughed.
“If I were the girlfriend,” Esther remarked, “I’d want to take a look at the client.”
“She’s no dummy,” Melchior replied. “She wants to see you all right, but we are not going to let her. Christine should be here with the stuff in a few minutes.”
“I don’t like jealous people,” I said. “Jealousy is futile and stupid.”
“I assume you’re not jealous,” Esther stated.
“No, I’m not,” I replied. “It is perhaps the most repulsive personality trait. It is actually an attack on the other’s freedom of choice. If two people really love each other, there is no need to be jealous. If they do not, then what’s the point? I believe jealousy is nothing more than an oversized ego.”
I saw on Esther’s face that she was spoiling for a fight. I am sure she had a different opinion, but fortunately the arrival of Christine stopped our fight before it started. She brought a safari suit and a pair of soft suede shoes, something like terrestrial hushpuppies.
For reasons of security, we did not want to betray Esther’s features; we ushered her into the bathroom. Melchior introduced me as the new chief of Security, his supervisor.
Christine was very curious wanting to know all the whos, whys and wherefores. Although we lied like troopers, our improvised stories were not selling very well. Finally, Melchior rudely told Christine to shut up and get out. She did, but I knew we had offended her. I realized that as far as Christine was concerned, Melch was in for some heavy weather.
Esther came out of the bathroom and examined the clothes with the eye of an expert. “Can I have a knife or a pair of scissors?” she asked.
“Why?” Melchior grunted suspiciously.
“C’mon,” I remarked, “I’m sure she doesn’t want to get on the green line.”
It was not easy to convince Melchior, but eventually he gave in handing her his pocketknife.
Esther swiftly ripped the label out of the safari suit and examined the back of it.
“I believe you, George,” she said. “The label says the suit was made in Mammon City; it’s obviously mass-produced. This is the easiest way to verify if someone is smuggling a garment or not. Canada Customs officers taught me this trick after they caught me trying to smuggle an expensive fur coat. Although I’d made a perfect label for the coat, they immediately spotted the contraband. Later they showed me the difference between a mass-produced label and an individually manufactured label.”
“Were you fined?” I asked.
“Nay,” she smiled, “I was allowed to keep the coat, but had to lead a group sex session with five Customs officers to get out of the charge of smuggling. It wasn’t too bad, even though it was very tiring.”
“Wasn’t it humiliating?” I asked.
“No, not really,” she replied. “It was fun. The real humiliation was that they caught me. I’m not very proud of that.”
“I assume you believe me that we are in Mammon City,” I asked.
“Of course, George, I believe you. There is no need to go to the spaceport. We may go later, but for the time being I’m satisfied.”
“Excellent,” I remarked. “Consider yourself my assistant for the duration of the ‘Save Earth’ mission. I’ll get a contract drawn up for you as soon as possible.”
“There’s no need for a contract.” She smiled. “Shake, pardner.” She offered her hand and I took it. Her grip was firm, almost masculine. I like that. A firm handshake usually betrays a strong personality. I would discover later that Esther’s strength of character was phenomenal.
“What do we do next?” she asked.
“We’ll put you back into circulation. You must lie down and get your pulse rate down to about sixty-eight. Then I reinsert the microphone, and you must fake waking up.”
“No sweat,” she replied.
“Then I’ll accept your offer of about thirty thousand souls for aborting the mission. By the way, how are they going to pay me?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “Peter told me that four or five days after you accepted his offer their representative would contact you. Are you going to take the money?”
“No,” I shook my head. “I may be an opportunist and a crook without true allegiances, but I have my own code of ethics. If my employer lied to me, as yours did to you, I would consider my contract void. No, Esther my dear, we will not collect.”
“What a shame,” she mused.
“Anyway,” I continued, disregarding her, “following our agreement we’ll go out to celebrate. After dinner we’ll fake a car accident and an ambulance will take us to a hospital.”
“It won’t hurt, I hope,” she interrupted again. “My pain threshold is very low.”
“Don’t worry, honey,” I reassured her, “I’m just as much of a coward as you are. Have no fear; it will not hurt. We’ll just smear ourselves with red paint to convince someone watching from a distance that the accident was real.”
“As long as it won’t hurt, I don’t mind,” she concluded.
“Okay,” I continued, “immediately after the doors of the ambulance close, you must start concentrating on the letter O. This will help the transfer.”
“What transfer?”
Esther’s habit of interrupting was quite annoying, but I could put up with her interruptions. However, I was sure Nick would have murdered her by now.
“We’ll be transferred into other bodies on board a spaceship bound for Earth.”
“How will I recognize you?” she asked.
“First, I’ll give you a password,” I declared. “I will masquerade as Captain Rudolf von Vardy, the skipper of the spaceship Nimrod, and you will borrow the body of Miss Ann Forrest, lawyer and negotiator. Allegedly they are very much in love and spend every spare minute on the captain’s couch.”
“I hope Captain von Vardy is made of chrome-vanadium steel,” she interrupted with a big smile. “Remember, I’m supposed to be a sex maniac.”
“I hope he is,” I continued. “Anyway, your password should be ‘fortune’, and my reply to that will be ‘thirteen’. If I say ‘thirteen’, you answer fortune. Is it clear?”
“Fortune and thirteen,” Esther repeated slowly, “I’ll remember.”
“Anyway,” I continued, “after we’ve persuaded the Earth leaders to help us save them and their planet, we’ll be reinstated into our respective bodies right here in Mammon City.”
“And make love non-stop for a week,” she said.
“Two weeks, guaranteed,” I corrected her.
After I’d given Melchior the proper codeword to put the wheels into motion, he departed. Meanwhile Esther lay down and managed to get her pulse to sixty-eight. Then I reinserted the mike, and we were on the air!
The negotiations were quite realistic. Esther drove a hard bargain; finally, we settled on twenty-seven thousand. I promised her to stall Hades, Ltd. for a few days, allowing her employer to come through with the money. I also demanded that during this period she stay with me all the time.
The bedroom acrobatics that followed had to give goose bumps to the monitoring agent. By this time, Esther’s glands warmed up, and my body worked as well as it did during my terrestrial life. In the end, neither of us had any reason to complain.
We had dinner at a quaint French restaurant; we created the impression of a young couple very much in love. Even an untrained, casual observer could predict the logical continuation of our dinner. Then we got into our taxi and I instructed the driver to take us to Elizabeth Towers.
The crash was spectacular, very well arranged; we were not hurt at all. The stunt driver had braced the interior of the cab, rigidly padding all surfaces to protect us. We were “bleeding profusely” when the ambulance arrived; the EMS hauled us on board and headed for the hospital.
The soul transfer into the carrier containers was swift; the crew and the equipment were right there in the ambulance. What happened after that, I don’t really know. I existed in an opaque world, similar to the dense Newfoundland fog. The problem was that in the fog you have an idea what is hiding in the background. However, in the container you just perceive the fog and nothing else.
The next sensation was the piercing white light with intense pain for a microsecond. When I recovered my senses, I was occupying the compact, muscular body of Captain Rudolf von Vardy sitting in the commander’s chair on the bridge of the good ship Nimrod.
It was a strange feeling. For the first few seconds my thoughts were chaotic. I had a minor identity crisis. However, soon the personality of George Pike started coming through the haze and asserted itself.
I was in the strange, yet familiar control room checking the daily log of the ship. The lights were low. In the pilot’s chair, Lieutenant Fedorov was sitting comfortably monitoring the planetographs and the other flight instruments. The only other person on the bridge was a young woman, Petty Officer Teri Garfield, the communications officer on duty.
Apparently, all was well aboard the Nimrod.
Copyright © 2004 by Gabriel S. Timar
