"

A violent waving of hands from the rear of the hall was accompanied by a protesting blast of shouts from there. Heller peered, then he sighed. "Yes, Noble Stuffy," he called. "What now?" Noble Arthrite Stuffy, a white bandage across his forehead now, surged once again up to a blank space at the conference table. "Crown, Your Lordship, sir," he said, "just half an hour ago, during the treatment of casualties, we received wonderful news. It greatly influences the sentence of Lombar Hisst." Oh, no, thought Heller. But he said, "Tell me so we can get on with this." "By use of our reporters and our newssheet-building security guards, we have had the great good luck to run down and apprehend the so-called Doctor Crobe! We have him right outside. With your permission we will bring him in." "What," said Heller, "does this have to do with Hisst?" Noble Stuffy took that for assent and, at his signal, six watchmen brought in Crobe. He was no less a funny-looking creature than he had always been: his too-long arms, his too-long legs, his too-long nose as always made him look like a weird bird. But there was something even stranger now: instead of a crumpled captive, he was striding around like he owned the place. Before he could be stopped, he seized a chair at the table, sat down, crossed his arms and announced, "I am in charge! Take off your clothes!" The audience gasped. Heller looked more closely. Those weird eyes! Crobe was either high on some drug or insane-probably both! "We have traced this man," said Noble Stuffy. "He was once employed by the government as a cellologist and was arrested for criminal misuse of cellology. He was condemned to death. He is a nonperson. Hisst used him to manufacture abominable freaks as was earlier revealed. But this was not the end of his career. He was shipped to the planet Blito-P3 and there studied psy-chology and psychiatry. He became an expert practitioner of these subjects and then was used by Madison for his unspeakable projects in the field of PR. It is our understanding that on the planet Earth, psychology, psychiatry and PR are inseparable." "That is all very interesting," said Heller. "But please, Noble Stuffy, I wish to complete this second proclamation." "And so do I," said Stuffy. "With the indulgence of this conference, as an influential member of the publishing world, I wish to propose that Crobe also be assigned to the Confederacy Asylum. And as he is a psychiatrist, supposedly expert in the treatment of the insane, I propose that Lombar Hisst be given to Crobe as a patient." The audience gasped. Then it began to please them. Heller unexpectedly blew up. Always an opponent of inhuman measures, he stood up and pointed a finger straight at Stuffy. "You have no idea of what you are proposing! Psychiatrists use tortures you have never even heard of! They drug their patients and send huge jolts of electricity through their brains to destroy nerve responses! And that isn't all! At a whim, they take a steel probe, push it under the eyelids and scramble the prefron-tal lobes! They have no intention of curing anyone: they are simply making it impossible for the victim to get well. Ever! AND THEY KNOW IT! "Psychiatrists say they do not believe in the soul but they work to destroy any soul a man may have. AND THEY KNOW THEY ARE DOING IT! "I will not tolerate such an inhuman practice on anyone! Not even Hisst!" Then he realized suddenly that he was worsening the cause of Earth. Abruptly he stopped speaking. At the lower level of the table near him, he heard a Domestic Police general whisper to his aide, "See, Earth is so horrible even a seasoned officer cannot abide it!" Heller stared at the backfeed monitors. He had also horrified the crowds. Silently, he cursed. He had, without intending to, injured his chances of creating a better atmosphere for Earth. But he was stubborn and he had his own principles. He sat down. "I will only tolerate this proposal if you modify it. Lombar Hisst will be sent to the asylum and so will Crobe. But they are to be placed in adjacent cells. They are to be held incommunicado: no one may speak to either of them, ever. I will NOT let psychiatry loose in the Confederacy Asylum!" "But Crobe can talk to Hisst?" Stuffy persisted. "Yes, but not touch him," said Heller. "I get Your Lordship's point about not loosing psychiatry in the Confederacy Asylum," said Stuffy. "It would be a disaster. But so long as Crobe is permitted to 'treat' Hisst verbally, I am satisfied. I cannot possibly imagine a worse fate. Thank you." Heller asked the table for assent and received it. He turned to the clerk and helped him complete the second proclamation. Then he sent it on its voyage for the additional signatures above the Emperor's. At his signal, a group of Domestic Police took charge of Crobe. The man stood. He shouted, "You are all suffering from penis envy!" He was still shouting it as he was led away. Another group of "bluebottles" approached the balcony. Lombar Hisst was on his knees there. He was vomiting. The bluebottles gave the marine major a receipt. They slid Hisst into a black sack, put him on a stretcher and bore him away. The proclamation, this time, since who should sign had been sorted out, made the round of the table quite quickly. Heller got it back. He looked at it. Two down, four to go.

Heller said, "The conference has already passed a measure to abolish the Apparatus and the intelligence practices of Earth. However, the matter was not placed in proclamation form and finalized. "His Majesty has stated that he does not wish to hear of the planet Earth again, ever. Therefore I propose, in concurrence with his wishes and requirements, that we word the proclamation as follows: 'The Coordinated Information Apparatus is abolished. Never in the future may there be a state organization, independent, devoted to the subject of intelligence.' But at this point, gentlemen, we could very easily get involved in the endless details of what Earth intelligence organizations are comprised of so that we could forbid them. And we would find ourselves mentioning the planet Earth in connection with them. "As you know, the Army and the Fleet both have intelligence services, vital to the prosecution of a war. We do not know and have no time to untangle the various technologies of intelligence. I, for one, want to get these proclamations completed." He got nods from the table. "The abuses of the Apparatus were twofold. The first was recruiting criminals from the prisons to act as their personnel, and the second was to turn those vicious people loose on the population." The instant he got it out, he knew he had made a mistake. He had been trying to smooth out the wrath of the conference and the crowds. This analysis, while quite correct and succinct, pleasing enough to an engineer, was like throwing burning brands. It brought to vivid view all the horrors the population had been made to suffer. Snarls in the hall and screams of rage in the streets seemed to indicate that the favored course of action right this minute would be to go find and kill any remaining Apparatus personnel. It looked like the riots were going to surge up all over apin! Vantagio, he mourned, I wish you were here instead of a target. He felt he was too green to cope with this sort of thing. In mathematics, if you got an unexpected result, you sometimes had to use it. Maybe math would work. He would use the wrath. He pulled out his gun and pantomimed shooting. He shouted, "WE WANT THE APPARATUS DEAD AND THIS IS HOW WE ARE GOING TO DO IT!" It got attention. They were listening eagerly. "We word the proclamation that it is forbidden to use FOREIGN intelligence techniques upon the citizens of the Voltar Confederacy! And that the penalty for doing so shall be DEATH!" It caught their fancy. "And so that there won't be any question as to what is meant,,! propose that in the proclamation we form a committee with a member from Army Intelligence, a member from Fleet Intelligence and a member from the Domestic Police, that we call it the Anti-Foreign Intelligence Committee with the duty of preventing such techniques from being used against the citizens of Voltar, that the committee have the duty of defining these, that it be placed at Grand Council level and that it be chaired by one who knows this scene and investigated it, namely Royal Officer Bis, suitably promoted. He HATES the Apparatus!" There was a storm of applause in the hall and on the streets. Heller bowed and sat down. He got his assent and he got the proclamation written and sent on its rounds. He mopped at his forehead with his redstar engineer's rag. There was a lot to this statecraft stuff. Intelligence^ services, no matter where, had a lot of things in common. If he had let the original proposal stand, forbidding anything known on Earth to be used by Voltar, it could have crippled Army and Fleet intelligence services, for they did many things similar to those of Earth. An intelligence service was an intelligence service. The thing wrong with the Apparatus-and the way they used the subject on Earth-was that it employed intelligence to repress their own domestic scene instead of enemies in war. And the result was that the government began to wage war on the citizens! Three down and three to go. The next one would be tougher and the last one the worst of all!