Wait!
I did not dare leave Utanc here!
I would take her with me!
Another hour of shivering.
I dozed off again.
I woke up with a flash of inspiration!
I knew exactly how I could make Utanc go with me.
Dire emergencies can spawn some hefty ideas!
With daylight and the staff about, there was less risk of an attack upon her. I lay down on the floor of my bedroom, keeping the door slightly cracked open so I could watch the patio and the further door into the yard.
I had a long time to wait and I must have dozed. The sound of a car starting woke me.
Utanc! As I supposed she would, her fear had worn off and she was going into town. By the sun, it must be around ten o'clock. Usually she was gone for about two hours.
Now was the time!
Those two (bleeping) little boys would be alone! And I was going to handle them once and for all.
I knew they were dangerous. One of them might have a gun. This time, I wasn't underestimating them. I must not fail.
In my earlier visit to Earth, I had bought a Colt .44 Magnum Single Action Peacemaker in a hock shop. It was a huge handgun, enough to break your wrist. I loaded it.
I had also acquired a Mannlicher "Safari," over-and-under double-barrelled .458 caliber elephant rifle. Its barrels were so big that when you looked down them, you got the feeling you could fall through them without touching the sides. I loaded it.
Melahat was in the yard cutting flowers. I walked up behind her and shoved the elephant-rifle muzzle under her chin. When I had brought her to, I hissed, "You're going to get that door open and get me into Utanc's room."
She was white as paper. She wasn't moving, her eyes fixated on the muzzle. Crossed.
"If you don't do it," I grated, "I will shoot the whole staff!"
She rose to the occasion, if a little shakily. With me right beside her and the elephant gun close under her chin, after a couple tries she found her voice. She called out, "Boys! Utanc said when she left you were to have your present now to amuse you while she was gone." Silence.
Then a tiny, piping voice. "What is it?" A jab of the elephant rifle. "Open the doors and see."
Curiosity won the day. The sound of the inside bar sliding up. The lock being turned. The creak of hinges as the door opened a crack.
CRASH! I was into that room like the New York Tactical Police Force!
The boy at the door went tumbling like a ball across the room. The other was in bed, sitting up, his face cased in bandages. He began to scream!
I kept the elephant rifle on the one on the floor. I pulled out the Colt .44 Magnum and trained it on the one in bed.
"Stand up against that wall!" I ordered. "Put your feet well away from it. Put your palms flat against the wall!"
They looked for help from Melahat. She was sprawled across the door in a dead faint.
The two boys did as they were told, even though they were shaking and crying and one of them had developed hiccups.
I frisked them, keeping a foot ready to pull their feet from under them if they tried anything rough. They were clean. This wasn't odd as they were wearing only pants.
I breathed a sigh of relief. So far so good.
I looked around the room. Utanc had laid rugs on top of rugs decoratively. Musical instruments were on racks. She had a bunch of framed pictures.
Keeping one eye on the little boys, I walked over to the pictures. They weren't real photographs. They were magazine cutouts she had framed in golden frames. Movie stars! Male movie stars! Actors from all down the years.
Some books. I had often seen her bringing in books. Watchful that the boys didn't pull anything, I pawed over the volumes. Odds and ends. But a whole series of hard-cover volumes called The Illustrated Lives of Famous Stars.
Suddenly my plans got even better.
I turned on the boys. They were shivering and shaking. Both of them had hiccups now. Good. They'd cooperate. I brandished the Colt .44 Magnum. Then I cocked it.
"Which one of these movie stars does she like best?"
The one who wasn't vomiting stopped his hiccups long enough to say, in a thin scream, "Those two on the end!" He pointed, lost his balance and hit his head on the wall.
I went over and looked. Sure enough, the two on the end were smeared with the lipstick of kisses!
Rudolph Valentine and James Cagney!
I went over and grabbed their well-thumbed copies of Illustrated Lives.
Out of my pocket, I took a roll of two-inch-wide adhesive tape. I grabbed the wrists of the first boy and taped them together. I kicked his ankles together and taped them. I slapped adhesive tape across his mouth.
I grabbed the second boy and did the same.
I kicked Melahat to her feet. "Get me two blankets!"
She tottered off and came back with them. I spread them on the floor. I dumped one boy per blanket. I picked up the corners and threw them over my shoulder, two bundles, not even squirming.
"Melahat, you camel's dung," I said in a deadly voice. "You will clean up this room. When Utanc returns you will tell her the two boys' grandmothers are ill and calling for them and that they'll be gone for many days."
She kept opening and closing her mouth, possibly trying to speak.
"If you don't and if Utanc suspects or hears one word that I took the boys, I'll slaughter the whole staff!"
She collapsed to the floor and started bumping her head against it. Aha, I didn't need hypnohelmets. All I needed was an elephant rifle!
I stuck the Colt in my belt. I went out to the station wagon and dumped my bundles in the back.
It had to work!
I drove to the hospital. I threw the bundles over my shoulder. I went in by the secret entrance that led into the basement.
On the intercom, I summoned Prahd.
He came running down in some alarm. There was nobody housed in the basement yet.
I had dumped the bundles on a table. "I've brought the first two criminals," I said.
"Oh, wait!" said Prahd. "I'm not set up! Not down here. I've been working on a microorganism that uses the trachoma organism to spawn in. It then eats up the trachoma and becomes benign and furnishes the victim with vitamins. It's also contagious. When I've finished that, I am going to get to work on TB."
"This is more important!" I said sternly.
"Oh. Well, there's my whole project on infant mortality. I think I can reduce it to zero!"
Gods, this Prahd had no sense. Faht Bey would die if you dried up his source of birth certificates of dead babies. "Get your head screwed on," I told him.
"Oh. Well, there's another project I have in outline. I think I can make all women have triplets. Isn't that important?"
Gods, the government would go mad! They already had an oversupply of people who had to emigrate to get work! "You'll overstrain their food supply," I said brutally.
"No, no, I thought of that! I sketched a design for a new intestinal organism that lets the body utilize 94 percent of its food intake. It will stretch the food supply way out. And also there's a way to fix their grain so its yield will quintuple!"
"Prahd!" I said in a loud voice to jar him. "Grow up! This is Earth! The food suppliers would kill us if we did that! And the U.S. couldn't export its surplus grain! Their bigwigs make a fortune out of it! Be practical! Criminals are your best product!"
He didn't look convinced. One blanket had begun to wiggle and he looked at it with alarm. He opened it up. Then he opened up the second. The two small boys looked at him above the tape gags, eyes terror-wide.
"Be careful of them," I said. "They're vicious. Put them apart, in two cells. Keep them locked up and don't take your eyes off them. Their presence here is absolutely secret!"
"But I don't have any jailers!"
"You're good at hiring. Employ half a dozen deaf-mutes to man this place. Get it set up! Get a full cello-logical operating room going right where we're standing."