Trigger and Friends by James H. Schmitz

“Yes,” he said. “That occurred to me too, but it didn’t explain anything to me. Possibly it’s explained something to the Psychology Service.”

“Well,” Trigger said, “it’s certainly all very odd. Very disagreeable, too!” She laid the report down on the arm of her chair and looked at the Commissioner. “Guess I’d better run now,” she said. “But”See you around there was something you said before that made me wonder. There was really very little of Doctor Azol left after that plasmoid got through with him.”

He nodded. “True.”

“It wasn’t Azol, was it?”

“No.”

“Man, oh, man!” Trigger jumped up, bent over his chair and gave him a quick peck on an ear tip. “If I ask one more question, we’ll be sitting here the next two hours. I’ll run instead! See you around lunchtime, Commissioner!”lunchtime, Commissioner.”

“Right, Trigger,” he said, getting up.

He closed the door behind her and went back to the transmitter. He looked rather unhappy.

“Yes?” said a voice in the transmitter.

“She just left,” Commissioner Tate said. “Get on the beam and stay there!”

“Incidentally,” she said, “I did take the opportunity to apologize to Major Quillan for clipping him a couple this morning. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“He didn’t seem offended,” said Holati.

“No, not really,” she agreed.

“And I explained to him that you had very good reason to feel disturbed.”

“Thanks,” said Trigger. “By the way, was he really a smuggler at one time? And a hijacker?”

“Yes — very successful at it. It’s excellent cover for some phases of Intelligence work. As I heard it, though, Quillan happened to scramble up one of the Hub’s nastier dope rings in the process, and was broken two grades in rank.”

“Broken?” Trigger said. “Why?”

“Unwarranted interference with a political situation. The Scouts are rough about that. You’re supposed to see those things. Sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you do and go ahead anyway. They may pat you on the back privately, but they also give you the axe.”

“I see,” she said. She smiled.

“Just how far did we get in bringing you up to date yesterday?” the Commissioner asked.

“The remains that weren’t Doctor Azol,” Trigger said.

If it hadn’t been for the funny business with Trigger, Holati said, he mightn’t have been immediately skeptical about Doctor Azol’s supposed demise by plasmoid during a thrombosis-induced spell of unconsciousness. There had been no previous indications that the U-League’s screening of its scientists, in connection with the plasmoid find, might have been strategically loused up from the start.

But as things stood, he did look on the event with very considerable skepticism. Doctor Azol’s death, in that particular form, seemed too much of a coincidence. For, beside himself, only Azol knew that another person already had suddenly and mysteriously lost consciousness on Harvest Moon. Only Azol therefore might expect that the Commissioner would quietly inform the official investigators of the preceding incident, thus cinching the accidental death theory in Azol’s case much more neatly than the assumed heart attack had done.

The Commissioner went on from there to the reflection that if Azol had chosen to disappear, it might well have been with the intention of conveying important information secretly back to somebody waiting for it in the Hub. He saw to it that the remains were preserved, and that word of what could have happened was passed on to a high Federation official whom he knew to be trustworthy. That was all he was in a position to do, or interested in doing, himself. Security men presently came and took the supposed vestiges of Doctor Azol’s body back to the Hub.

“It wasn’t until some months later, when the works blew up and I was put on this job, that I heard any more about it,” Holati Tate said. “It wasn’t Azol. It was part of some unidentifiable cadaver which he’d presumably brought with him for just such a use. Anyway, they had Azol’s gene patterns on record, and they didn’t jibe.”

His desk transmitter buzzed and Trigger took it on an earphone extension.

“Argee,” she said. She listened a moment. “All right. Coming over.” She stood up, replacing the earphone. “Office tangle,” she explained. “Guess they feel I’m fluffing off, now I’m back. I’ll get back here as soon as it’s straightened out. Oh, by the way.”

“Yes?”

“The Psychology Service ship messaged in during the morning. It’ll arrive some time tomorrow and wants a station assigned to it outside the system, where it won’t be likely to attract attention. Are they really as huge as all that?”

“I’ve seen one or two that were bigger,” the Commissioner said. “But not much.”

“When they’re stationed, they’ll send someone over in a shuttle to pick me up.”

The Commissioner nodded. “I’ll check on the arrangements for that. The idea of the interview still bothering you?”

“Well, I’d sooner it wasn’t necessary,” Trigger admitted. “But I guess it is.” She grinned briefly. “Anyway, I’ll be able to tell my grandchildren some day that I once talked to one of the real eggheads!”

Okay. Are you utterly confused by now? Yeah, no kidding. All of that endless yabber-jabber about Dr. Azol and Geth Fayle and who-had-the-plasmoid-when and we’ll-explain-that-in-a-moment (even though they never do) would confuse an expert on the Kabbalah. It’s a tortuous, extremely slow-moving, constant bombarding of the reader with a mass of background material…

ALL OF WHICH IS UTTERLY IRRELEVANT TO WHAT THE STORY IS ABOUT.

This is not a novel about Dr. Azol and Geth Fayle. Neither of those characters appears even once on stage in the entire novel. (Geth Fayle, in fact, is already dead.) It’s a novel about Trigger Argee and (to a lesser extent) Heslet Quillan. And if you go back and look closely at the material which I cut — and then compare it to the rest of the novel — you will discover that their story doesn’t need any of it. NONE of it.

You don’t have to take my word for this. The easiest way to doublecheck my claim is just to read the edited version of Legacy which appears in Volume 3. Just as you would any other novel. Then, when you’re done, ask yourself a simple question: was I unable, at any point along the way, to follow the story because of missing information?

The answer is: no. Removing all of that unnecessary background material has no effect at all on either the plot or the development of the characters who actually figure in the novel.

No doubt it eliminates the reader’s understanding of the character development of Dr. Fayle. Who cares? This book is not about him, and besides, he’s dead.

At some point in the story, of course, the reader will want to have all the loose ends tied up. No problem. Schmitz did that more than adequately in the later scene in the novel where Lyad Ermetyne “confesses all.” There, in a nifty and economical few pages, Schmitz summarized ALL of the information which the reader might need to know — WHEN they need to know it. So what is the point of all that endless yabber-jabber in earlier chapters, which is the narrative equivalent of atherosclerosis?

Again, you don’t have to take my word for it. Here, in its entirety — including the editorial changes I made by reintroducing some material I’d cut earlier — is the entire sequence:

He and the Commissioner started flipping out questions. The Ermetyne flipped back the answers. So far as Trigger could tell, there wasn’t any stalling. Or any time for it.

***

Azol:Along with Mantelish, Doctors Gess Fayle and Azol had been the three big U-League boys in charge of the initial investigation on Harvest Moon. Doctor Azol had been her boy from the start. After faking his own Hedeath, he was now on Tranest. The main item in his report to her had been the significance of the 112-113 plasmoid unit. He’d also reported that Trigger Argee had become unconscious on Harvest Moon. They’d considered the possibility that somebody was controlling Trigger Argee, or attempting to control her, because of her connections with the plasmoid operations.

Gess Fayle: Lyad had been looking for Doctor Fayle as earnestly as everyone else after his disappearance. SheLyad had not been able to buy him.Gess Fayle. So far as she knew, nobody had been able to buy him. Doctor Fayle had appeared to intend to work for himself. Lyad was convinced he was the one who had actually stolen the 112-113 unit. He was at present well outside the Hub’s area of space. He still had 112-113 with him. Yes, she could become more specific about the location — with the help of star maps.

“Let’s get them out,” said Commissioner Tate.

They got them out. The Ermetyne presently circled a largish section of the Vishni Fleet’s area. The questions began again.

113-A: Professor Mantelish had told her of his experiments with this, plasmoid–

There was an interruption here while Mantelish huffed reflexively. But it was very brief. The professor wanted to learn more about the First Lady’s depravities himself.

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