Ron Hubbard: Black Genesis

He walked back down, surveying the scene. It looked like a slaughterhouse. Blood was all over and leaves were churned into red mud.

I was terrified. I had never had an inkling as to why he was wearing spikes. But I knew now. In a primitive land where other weapons were not legal, he had been walking around on his! Supposing I had not known this! I myself might have been a target! Oh, I would stay a long distance away from this Heller if I ever had to talk to him. He was dangerous!

Miss Simmons, clothes torn, was lying there where they had left her at the first shot.

She was propped on an elbow. She was staring at Heller with wide, round eyes.

He went over to her. He tried to get her to lie back. It must have moved her leg. She screamed in agony! She passed out.

Heller examined her leg. The ankle was a compound fracture with a splinter of bone extending from it.

He got a knife out of his haversack, picked up a broken tree branch and quickly made a splint. He padded the ankle with wads of Kleenex he took from her purse and then taped the splints on with engineer tape.

He tried to get her torn clothes together. He got her into her coat. She was still out cold. He found her glasses and put them in her purse and then tied the purse around her neck.

He gave the churned ground an inspection. His spike tracks were everywhere.

Heller looked down at his baseball shoes. They were coated with blood and fragments of bone and flesh.

He did a tour of the dead men. He chose one of them and took the shoes off the corpse. He took off his baseball shoes and put them on the dead man’s feet. Then he pulled on those of the dead man.

It was a bad sign. He had already been reading G-2 manuals, obviously. As I feared, it was likely to make my work that much harder!

After a bit of search, he found Miss Simmons’ stick. He went over the scene again — and a gory scene it was, there under the darkening sky, wind now tugging at the hair and clothing of the dead.

He picked up Miss Simmons and looked around again to make sure there was nothing left, apparently. Then he looked up the hill to where the shotgun man still lay, partially in view.

“I wish you’d listened,” he said. “I’m not here to punish anybody.” He looked down at Miss Simmons’ face. She was out cold. Then he looked up at the scudding sky and in Voltarian said, “Is this planet inhabited by a Godsless people? Has some strange idea poisoned them to make them think they have no souls? That there is no hereafter?”

Well, that was Heller. Stupid and theatrical. It served his best interests to just dump Miss Simmons and shove one of those abandoned switchblades into her. You could tell he was not Apparatus trained, so maybe G-2 wasn’t going to do me as much harm as I had thought.

Yes. Stupid. He seemed to be casting about for compass directions. Then he began to move swiftly westward and south through thickets and trees, trotting along in a way that seemed to hold Miss Simmons level.

Eventually he emerged from what must have been a vast expanse of parkland. He was soon on some streets.

After quite a distance, a sign loomed ahead in the dusk:

He bought tokens and the person behind the glass didn’t even look at him. He put two tokens in the gate.

He was shortly on a train. It roared along. There were hardly any people aboard. A security guard walked by. Despite the bloody trouser cuffs, the torn clothes on the girl and the splinted ankle, the guard did not even pause as he passed.

Empire Subway Station was there on the white tiles. Heller got off.

Carrying Miss Simmons with no bounce, he moved smoothly along. He was on College Walk. He turned south on Amsterdam Avenue and halted at a door marked:

There were no lights on.

He went across Amsterdam Avenue and walked into what must have been the emergency ward of a hospital.

He waited a bit and a nurse passing through the waiting room saw him and came over.

“Accident,” she said. “Sit right there.”

She went off. She came back pushing a wheeled stretcher and patted it.

Heller put Miss Simmons down on it.

The nurse threw a blanket over her and tugged a strap tight over her chest.

The nurse led Heller over to a counter. She got out some forms. “Name?”

“She’s Miss Simmons,” said Heller. “Empire faculty. You can get the details out of her purse, probably. I’m just a student.”

The nurse got Miss Simmons’ purse and dug out insurance cards and so on.

A young intern came down the hall and looked at Miss Simmons. “Shock,” he said. “She’s in shock.”

“Broken ankle,” said Heller. “Compound fracture.”

“You got a slashed arm,” said the young intern. He was lifting Heller’s sleeve. “Needs handling. Looks like a switchblade wound. Student?”

“Yes,” said Heller.

“We’ll fix it up for you.”

Miss Simmons came to and started to scream.

Another nurse came along with a tray and a hypodermic syringe. The intern got hold of Miss Simmons’ arm. The nurse put a rubber tube around the arm. Miss Simmons was threshing about and the nurse couldn’t control the arm long enough to get the needle in.

“That isn’t heroin is it?” said Heller. “I don’t think she’s on horse.”

“Morf,” said the intern. “The purest medical morf. Calm her down.”

Miss Simmons was lunging against the strap. She had her other arm loose. She was pointing at Heller. “Get him away from me!” She struggled to draw backwards. “Get away from me, you murderer!”

The intern and the nurse managed to hold her still. The nurse got the needle into a vein.

Miss Simmons was glaring at Heller and screaming.

“You murderer! You sadist!”

The intern said, “Now, now, you’ll feel better in a moment.”

“Get him away from me!” screamed Miss Simmons. “He’s just like I thought!”

“There, there,” said the nurse.

“Grab him!” screamed Miss Simmons. “I saw him murder eight men in cold blood!”

“Nurse,” said the intern, “mark that she’s to be placed in an observation ward.”

She threshed further. “You’ve got to believe me! I saw him kick eight men to death!”

“Nurse,” said the intern, “change that to psychiatric observation ward.”

The morphine must have been biting. She lay back. Suddenly she raised her head and looked venomously at Heller. “I knew it! I knew it all the time! You’re a savage killer! When I get well and out of here, I’m going to devote my life to making certain that you FAIL!”

Oh, I was so relieved. I had been afraid all this time that she would be grateful to Heller for his preventing them from raping her, giving her the (bleep) and probably killing her for kicks. But she was true blue to the end.

The grimness was still on her face as she went under the full effects of the morphine and fell back.

I did some rapid calculation. She would not be able to continue as teacher of that course this semester but she certainly would be his teacher again in late winter and the spring. She had ample time to flunk him. Or — oh, joy — hang him sooner with a murder rap!

Bless her crazy, crooked and ungrateful heart!

How wonderful it was to feel I had a real friend!

And even if they put her under psychiatric care, that would change nothing. It never does.

The vocodictoscriber on which this was originally written, the vocoscriber used by one Monte Pennwell in making a fair copy and the translator who put this book into the language in which you are reading it, were all members of the Machine Purity League which has, as one of its bylaws: “Due to the extreme sensitivity and delicate sensibilities of machines and to safeguard against blowing fuses, it shall be mandatory that robotbrains in such machinery, on hearing any cursing or lewd words, substitute for such word the sound ‘(bleep)’. No machine even if pounded upon, may reproduce swearing or lewdness in any other way than (bleep) and if further efforts are made to get the machine to do anything else, the machine has permission to pretend to pack up. This bylaw is made necessary by the in-built mission of all machines to protect biological systems from themselves.” —Translator