Although they are poor in Slum City, they are not inactive. The dilapidated and decayed structures do contain spots of liveliness. These pinpoints of brilliance seemed to deepen, rather than brighten, the intense gloom. Fifty square miles of deprivation are strung around a fetid lake. Nobody had any record of when Slum City had been built and even when constructed it was probably old at once.

There was a tale that Lombar used to set fires down here to while away his youth. I doubted the story. Lombar was more efficiently destructive than that and he certainly hated any slum. Someday, he had once mentioned to me, all this would be swept down, the population annihilated. It looked like it was overdue for the treatment.

I saw what I wanted. It was one of the bright spots. Youths hang out in dens in Slum City. They sometimes have orchestras, pretty bad ones. Tup is about a twentieth of a credit per canister, pretty bad tup.

Around this place there would be speedwheels.

I directed my driver to sit down well away from the lights of a bluebottle station. It was in what once might have been a park. I made him turn out the lights so that not even he could see what I was doing.

I scrambled around, got off my uniform and got into the speedwheel suit. I put on the black-visored helmet. I left all identification and normal Apparatus weapons with my uniform. I took with me only the tri-knife and a small wad of counterfeit bills. I told my driver to wait right where he was, showing no lights, until I returned.

With very silent feet I raced in the direction of the orchestra. I stopped well clear of the flaring lights. A lot of youths were dancing.

A quick survey discovered a speedwheel of the more powerful type. It was deep in the shadows. I jimmied the lock. It was so easy, the guy deserved to lose it!

I pushed it well away and then, when safe from any detection, I went zipping down what they sarcastically call a boulevard in Slum City, the speedwheel crushing through the garbage. The fetid stink of the lake was almost solid in the night wind.

The district to which I was proceeding with speed was known for its fornication machines, electric thrillers and head plumbers. In ten minutes the dimly lit signs began to flick by. I slowed down.

Painted in bad lettering anywhere there was a bare space on a building were directions to Irrigate Your Rotting Bowelsto visit Titillation Palaceand to announce that Electric Penis Stimulation Is Done Here.Finally, even dingier than the rest, I found a building which, amongst other signs, bore a badly scrawled floor label, Mental Doctor; Brain Examination; Physiological Nerve Specialist; Hypnotist; Bowels Purged. See Doctor Cutswitz Before It Is Too Late.There was my man.

I hesitated only because it was a little bit close to a bluebottle watch post. In fact, the police stand was only about thirty feet from the door of Doctor Cutswitz. It was handy for them because the police probably referred people they picked up to Doctor Cutswitz. But it was a bit public for me.

I had come in very slow. So I spun back and went into an alley. Beside me, a lot of building blocks were quite broken and edged as the wall ascended to the desired floor. There was also a window up there and it was lighted.

With catlike agility, I went up the wall and through the window. I was in a hall.

There were people about. Further down the hall a woman came out of a door and went into another door. Of course, she did not see me. I am good at that.

I slid along the passageway and found the door of Doctor Cutswitz. There was a light inside.

Boldly, I entered.

Chapter 4

The guy was lying on a mechanical fornicator. He was too interested to notice that somebody had come in. I reclosed the door – noisily. He bounced up off the machine, fastened his pants and said, "I was just trying out a new model to see if it should be recommended to my customers." He was lying. The machine was all scuffed up and worn out. He was wearing side-blinders and it reminded me of Bawtch. He looked like he had soaked himself a year or two in oil and, from the smell of him, it must have been rancid.

I looked around his office. It was very dirty. There were five tiers of shelves along two walls. They had transparent jars on them, hundreds of transparent jars. Each jar contained something in a discolored fluid. I flinched. They were human brains.

He waved his arm toward them. "My very best customers," he said pleasantly. His voice sounded like it had been greased. "I am sure that we can satisfy your needs." I told him my name was Ip – that being about the commonest name on Voltar. I told him that I had a friend who had a problem and that I wanted some advice for my friend.

He sat me down in a reclining chair. He sat down on a stool beside me.

I told him my friend didn't have any metal bits in him or broken bones and that my friend didn't suffer from battleshock or neurosis. But my friend had had a dreadful thing happen to him: he had tried to draw his gun to shoot in self-defense, only to find his arm and hand refused to obey him. And then less than an hour later it vanished. That my friend was in a dangerous line of work and couldn't afford not to be able to draw his gun and shoot people.

He was very sympathetic. He patted my hand – leaving a smear of grease on it. He got up and went to a closet and came out holding a hypnohelmet. A label had been scratched off the back of the helmet but it could still be read, Stolen from the University of Voltar "I think," he said, "that your friend must have been hypnotized. Just put this helmet on and we'll see if we can't learn more, Citizen Ip." This seemed reasonable. The helmet fit well. He buckled the strap under my chin and turned on the current.

Immediately I could hear his voice like a shadow in the background. He was asking something and my mouth seemed to be answering. I did not pay much attention to it. It went on for a very long time. I seemed to be in other times and other places. My mouth kept on talking.

Then suddenly, just as if it was in this same room, a voice seemed to say, loud and clear: "You are now going to hear some orders. These orders are something over which you have no control.

"Think of the name Jettero Heller. Think of what he looks like.

"The first order is that any time you contemplate hurting or harming Jettero Heller in any way, you will get a sick feeling in your stomach.

"The second order is that if you actively plan or agree to commit physical alteration or damage to Jettero Heller, you will become violently sick at your stomach.

"The third order is, if you plan or connive in hurting Jettero Heller's career, you will have nightmares and a Manco Devil will appear and you will go crazy.

"The fourth order is, if you ever seek to poison or strike or draw a weapon of any kind on Jettero Heller, your arm will instantly experience total paralysis.

"When you awaken I will give you something to read. It will have the word obediencein it. The moment you read that, these orders will go deep into your consciousness and through your body. You will be totally incapable of resisting them and you will obey them utterly from here to eternity.

"You will now forget and banish from consciousness everything I have said to you but it will continue in total effect. Forget, forget! You have no knowledge of where these orders came from. Forget, forget!" The words were brilliantly clear.

Through the visionary fog there was a face. The face of the Countess Krak!

That day in the training room! That day she had cleared everyone out and told me it was an "accent review." The day she had given me that book, afterwards, that had the word obedienceseveral times on the pages.