Read Online Mission: Earth "Black Genesis" by Ron L. Hubbard - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Ron L. Hubbard
Tags: sf_humor
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and before him some Greek lord and before him who knows: Turkey is the most ruin-strewn place on Blito-P3. Crossroads between Asia and Europe, most of the civilized Earth races you hear about had, at one time or another, colonized Turkey or run an empire from it! It is an archaeologist's fondest dream: a land absolutely chock-a-block with ruins!
The Apparatus subofficer who founded the place had also rebuilt this villa and lived here a long time. Its maintenance was a standard piece of allocation budgets. Lombar Hisst had once even had the daffy idea of coming down here, a thing which he would never do—it's fatal for an Apparatus chief to turn his back on Voltar– and so had increased the allocation.
It was built straight in against the mountain. It had big gateposts and walls that hid six acres of grounds and its low, Roman style house.
It was all dark. I hadn't phoned ahead. I wanted to surprise them.
The "taxi driver" put my luggage down by the dark gate. He was a veteran Apparatus personnel, a child rapist, if I remembered.
The dim light, reflected from the dash of the old Citroen, showed me that he had his hand out.
Ordinarily, I would have been offended. But tonight, in the velvet dark, gleeful with the joy of arriving back, I reached into my pocket. The Turkish lira inflates at about a hundred percent per year. When last I handled any it was about 90 Turkish lira (ЈT) to the U.S. dollar. But the dollar inflates too, so I guessed it must be about one hundred and fifty to one by now. Besides, it's what we call "monkey-money": you're lucky if anyone will take it outside of Turkey. And my new order gave me an unlimited supply.
I pulled out two bills, thinking they were one's and handed them over.
He took them to his dashlight to inspect them. I flinched! I had given him two one-thousand Turkish lira notes! Maybe thirteen dollars American!
"Geez," said the driver in American slang—he talks English and Turkish just like everybody else around here—"Geez, Officer Gris, who do yer want bumped off?"
We both went into screams of laughter. The Mafia is around so much that American gangster slang is a great joke. It made me feel right at home.
In fact, I pulled out two more one-thousand lira sheets of monkey-money. I hitched up my trench coat collar. In American, I said out of the corner of my mouth, "Listen, pal, there's a broad, a dame, a skirt, see. She'll be getting off the morning plane from the big town. You keep your peepers peeled at the airport, put the snatch on her, take her to the local sawbones and get her checked for the itch in the privates department and if she gets by the doc, take her for a ride out here. If she don't, just take her for a ride!"
"Boss," he said, cocking his thumb like he had a .45, "you got yerself a deal!"
We screamed with laughter again. Then I gave him the two additional bills and he drove off happy as a clam.
Oh, it was good to be home. This was my kind of living.
I turned to the house to yell for somebody to come out and get my baggage.
Chapter 8
I had just opened my mouth when I closed it. A far better idea had occurred to me. In the country, they go to bed the moment they can't see: they were all asleep. There should be about thirteen staff, counting the three young boys; actually they were two Turkish families and they had been with the place since the subofficer had originally rebuilt it, maybe since the Hittites had built it for all I knew. They had far more loyalty to us than to their own government and they wouldn't have said anything even if they noticed something odd and they were too stupid to do that—just riffraff.
They lived in the old slave quarters to the right of the gate, a building hidden by trees and a hedge. The old gatekeeper, pushing ninety—which is quite old on Earth —had died and nobody had hired a new one as they couldn't decide whose relative should have the job.
The alleged ghazi or man-in-charge was a tough, old peasant we called
The Apparatus subofficer who founded the place had also rebuilt this villa and lived here a long time. Its maintenance was a standard piece of allocation budgets. Lombar Hisst had once even had the daffy idea of coming down here, a thing which he would never do—it's fatal for an Apparatus chief to turn his back on Voltar– and so had increased the allocation.
It was built straight in against the mountain. It had big gateposts and walls that hid six acres of grounds and its low, Roman style house.
It was all dark. I hadn't phoned ahead. I wanted to surprise them.
The "taxi driver" put my luggage down by the dark gate. He was a veteran Apparatus personnel, a child rapist, if I remembered.
The dim light, reflected from the dash of the old Citroen, showed me that he had his hand out.
Ordinarily, I would have been offended. But tonight, in the velvet dark, gleeful with the joy of arriving back, I reached into my pocket. The Turkish lira inflates at about a hundred percent per year. When last I handled any it was about 90 Turkish lira (ЈT) to the U.S. dollar. But the dollar inflates too, so I guessed it must be about one hundred and fifty to one by now. Besides, it's what we call "monkey-money": you're lucky if anyone will take it outside of Turkey. And my new order gave me an unlimited supply.
I pulled out two bills, thinking they were one's and handed them over.
He took them to his dashlight to inspect them. I flinched! I had given him two one-thousand Turkish lira notes! Maybe thirteen dollars American!
"Geez," said the driver in American slang—he talks English and Turkish just like everybody else around here—"Geez, Officer Gris, who do yer want bumped off?"
We both went into screams of laughter. The Mafia is around so much that American gangster slang is a great joke. It made me feel right at home.
In fact, I pulled out two more one-thousand lira sheets of monkey-money. I hitched up my trench coat collar. In American, I said out of the corner of my mouth, "Listen, pal, there's a broad, a dame, a skirt, see. She'll be getting off the morning plane from the big town. You keep your peepers peeled at the airport, put the snatch on her, take her to the local sawbones and get her checked for the itch in the privates department and if she gets by the doc, take her for a ride out here. If she don't, just take her for a ride!"
"Boss," he said, cocking his thumb like he had a .45, "you got yerself a deal!"
We screamed with laughter again. Then I gave him the two additional bills and he drove off happy as a clam.
Oh, it was good to be home. This was my kind of living.
I turned to the house to yell for somebody to come out and get my baggage.
Chapter 8
I had just opened my mouth when I closed it. A far better idea had occurred to me. In the country, they go to bed the moment they can't see: they were all asleep. There should be about thirteen staff, counting the three young boys; actually they were two Turkish families and they had been with the place since the subofficer had originally rebuilt it, maybe since the Hittites had built it for all I knew. They had far more loyalty to us than to their own government and they wouldn't have said anything even if they noticed something odd and they were too stupid to do that—just riffraff.
They lived in the old slave quarters to the right of the gate, a building hidden by trees and a hedge. The old gatekeeper, pushing ninety—which is quite old on Earth —had died and nobody had hired a new one as they couldn't decide whose relative should have the job.
The alleged ghazi or man-in-charge was a tough, old peasant we called
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