Soma Blues

by Robert Sheckley

  Hob heard more footsteps, receding. And then there was nothing but him riding a conveyor belt into the mouth of hell. To put it one way.

  10

  When he was alone, Hob’s first thought was a curiously optimistic one. There was little doubt in his mind that Arranque was some sort of a loser.

  Proof of this was the fact that Hob’s demise hadn’t been planned out with meticulous care. Apparently there had been no time to hold a rehearsal. By wiggling around and wedging his body sideways in the chute, and pressing with his head and feet, Hob was able to stop himself from being carried down to the crushing cylinders. He held himself in this position and tried to think of what to do next. It was difficult to concentrate in all that noise. He couldn’t hear anything above the grinding of gears and the roar of the motor impelling the contraption, but he let enough time pass for Arranque and the others to have gotten into their car and driven away. Then it was time to get himself out of this.

  Harry Houdini, with his incredible contortionist talents, would have had little difficulty getting off of the conveyor belt. But Hob was no Houdini. He tried to get his bound feet above the side of the belt but couldn’t find enough leverage to do that, and the conveyor belt carried him another five feet toward the grinding cylinders before he gave it up and wedged himself again. His motion toward the cylinders stopped. But he couldn’t do anything about getting himself off the conveyor belt while he was wedging himself that way.

  At least he was safe for the moment. It took some effort to keep himself from sliding down toward the slowly revolving cylinders. It gave him the most precious boon of all: time to think, to plan, to come up with the brilliancy that would get him out of this mess.

  Unfortunately, no useful thoughts came. He breathed the sooty air of the factory, listened to the clanking of the gears as the conveyor belt rotated slowly beneath him. It was curiously difficult to concentrate. Images flitted across his mind, vague and indistinct, black-and-white snapshots of Ibiza, grayed-out prints of a Paris he might never see again. He was in a curious state: tense and pumped up, but with a great fatigue working in him. His back and leg muscles were trembling from the effort of keeping himself pressed against the sides of the conveyor belt.

  Minutes passed. No loss, no gain, but he was getting tired.

  A sense of hopelessness started to seep into his mind. Yes, he had found a momentary way of arresting his death. But it required a constant effort, and he was starting to wear out. He didn’t begrudge making the effort, but how long could he keep it up? How long would he need to keep it up? As far as he knew, nobody knew where he was. Could he expect somebody to come by? A watchman, an area guard? A tourist, or a kid exploring the place? No, there was no reason he could think of for anyone to come by and interrupt his slow slide toward death.

  Even as he was thinking this, he felt himself carried a few feet along the conveyor belt. His burdened leg muscles had relaxed of their own accord. He checked his motion at once, pushing hard, feeling the rollers turn under his back. He had about twenty-five feet to go before he was pulled into what he had come to think of as the jaws of death.

  Time to take stock, figure something out. There had to be something he could do. He strained against his bonds. There was no give. He couldn’t see the knots, but he knew they had been melted into roughly spherical blobs. There were no loose ends to work with, and the knots he could reach were sealed tight.

  Lying there on the bed of the conveyor belt, Hob couldn’t see much, only his tied feet and the shiny metal sides of the conveyor. He levered himself up to a partial sitting position, giving ground on the conveyor belt so he could look into his possibilities. He lay back again, bracing and arresting his progress. He had noticed only one thing that might be of use: The top side of the chute, the left side as he looked down it, was not smooth metal. Something must have fallen against it. The metal rim ten feet ahead of him was bent and torn. If he could get his bound hands over the side and then let himself be carried forward, there was a possibility the jagged metal would sever the plastic with which he was bound.

  The only difficulty was, if it didn’t work, if the plastic cord didn’t sever, he’d be carried right on into the rollers.

  How tough was that plastic cord?

  Could he just lie there, wedged in, and think it over for a while?

  Not for long. His tensed muscles kept releasing on him, easing up, losing him a few inches here, a foot or so there. Waiting was a losing game.

  All right. There was nothing to do but go for it.

  Hob released his muscles, felt himself carried along the moving belt toward the rotating cylinders, tried to get his bound hands over the edge of the belt, failed by several inches, fell back, felt himself carried along, brought up his bound feet with a wrenching motion, arched his back and thrust again, this time getting his ankles onto the upper rim of the belt. Now he tried to bring pressure to his ankles by arching his back, feeling the rough metal tear at the plastic cord; hearing the growl of the rotating cylinders; feeling the plastic slip and tear, slip and tear; realizing the plastic wasn’t going to part in time; bending at the waist and seeing the cylinders approaching his feet; pulling his legs in and wedging against the sides again. He was about three feet from the rotating cylinders. His body was quivering with muscle fatigue.

  And at that terrible moment, he heard the most welcome sound of all: George Wheaton’s voice coming from somewhere above him and to his left, calling out, “I say, Hob! Hang on, old boy!”

  And then a most unwelcome sound after that: George’s voice saying, “Have you any idea how to turn this damned thing off?”

  George, panting, out of breath, one trouser ripped from slipping on a pile of rubble outside, was looking at a crudely constructed switchboard set onto the wall of the observation booth above the factory floor. There were some twenty small switches on that board, a dozen buttons, and two big knife switches. Nothing was written under or above any of the instruments. George hesitated for a moment, then pulled one of the big knife switches. Nothing discernable happened. He tried the other one. Another dud.

  “Confound it!” George muttered, and pressed the leftmost button. The motor of an overhead crane whirred into life. George pursed his lips and pushed another switch. The lights in the factory went off, though the machinery continued to run unabated. George punched wildly at the buttons and managed to get the lights on again. “Hang on!” George cried.

  “Aieeeee!” Hob cried as he felt his treacherous muscles let go again and found himself carried to the revolving rollers.

  And there he made a discovery.

  His feet, though not unusually large, were too big to fit into the two-inch aperture between the rollers. He pushed and kicked against the revolving cylinders with his bound feet. The rollers turned and bumped under him. But there was no way he could be pulled between the cylinders.

  Unless it caught his pants leg. Or picked up a shoelace.

  No problem with his pants legs. His efforts had hiked them halfway to his knees. But looking down his body, he saw that his left shoelace was untied, the ends flapping free, dancing up and down the cylinders, just missing being caught and pulled in.

  “George!” Hob screamed. “Forget about turning it off! Just pull me out of here!”

  “I’m coming!” George shouted back, and raced down the stairs to the factory floor.

  Hob kept on kicking at the cylinders, his neck craned to watch the flying shoelace of his left sneaker dancing in the air, kicking, kicking, trying to keep it free.

  And then the shoelace floated through the air with an almost palpable malevolence, and dropped in between the cylinders.

  At that same moment, George had his arms around him and was trying to lift him out of the conveyer-belt bed.

  The cylinder took up the shoelace’s slack and began tugging at Hob’s foot.

  For a few moments it was a tug of war between George and the cylinders, with Hob’s shoelace as the rope.

  Hob
remembered at that moment that his shoelace was woven rather than a single strand. He had thought it looked nice.

  The damned thing wouldn’t part.

  The cylinders were pulling him in foot first.

  And then Hob’s sneaker came off and was pulled between the cylinders, and with one final wrench George had him off the conveyer belt, and both men were sprawled on the factory’s grimy floor.

  11

  Back at George’s house, George found a change of clothing for Hob.

  “Just old gardening togs,” George said. “But they’ll have to do until we can find something better. And I think my Clark’s will fit you.”

  “May I use your phone?” Hob said.

  He tried to call Jean-Claude again in Paris. By some miracle, he got him on the first try.

  Hob asked, “What’s happening? Where have you been?”

  “I thought Nigel has explained it all to you by now.”

  “That’s what I’m calling about. Where is Nigel? What’s been happening?”

  “Ah,” Jean-Claude said, “then you don’t know about the letter.”

  “I know about the letter but not what was in it. Damn it, Jean-Claude, talk!”

  Jean-Claude told Hob that soon after Hob had left for Ibiza, a telegram arrived for him. Telegrams always have an air of urgency about them, so Nigel had opened it. As far as Jean-Claude could remember, it was from Santos and had been sent from his island nation of San Isidro. It had complimented Hob on his fine work in the recent case involving Aurora and Max. Santos had been on the other side then, but he had not been personally affected when Hob solved the case. He had been paid for his participation up front, and so was able to watch the events with a certain philosophical attitude that was entirely native to his personality. In any event, the telegram wasn’t about that case. Santos appreciated the fine work Hob and his agency had done. He had a little matter of his own that had recently come up. He didn’t want to discuss it in a telegram or letter, or even on the telephone. But he said that if Hob or one of his men would care to come to San Isidro, he could show him the hospitality of the island and discuss the job with them. If Hob didn’t want it, at least he could enjoy a few days in the sunny Caribbean. He had instructed Cooks Travel in Paris to have an open return ticket to San Isidro prepared and looked forward to Hob’s arrival.

  “That’s great,” Hob said. “Why didn’t anyone tell me about this?”

  “We tried,” Jean-Claude said. “But you were off in Ibiza trying to find the killer of Stanley Bower. We tried to telephone you at Sandy’s bar, but evidently you never got our message. So Nigel and I discussed it and finally decided that he would go on behalf of the agency and check it out.”

  “So Nigel went to San Isidro,” Hob said. “What happened when he arrived?”

  “I wish I could tell you,” Jean-Claude said.

  But Hob thought he knew; it must have been Santos who set up the deal with Arranque.

  George made him a nice cup of tea. The way George explained it, his division, the Future Developments group, had had its eye on the development of soma almost from the start. It was one of the big ones, one of the things that could change the future. But George’s brief was observational only. He was specifically forbidden by law to interfere in any way. After the many disasters of British intelligence, this was the only way a long-range prediction group was allowed to operate.

  “I took the liberty of doing something when I saw how things were going,” George said. “I did it for Nigel even more than for you. I had you followed. When I learned where you were, I came after you myself.”

  “Many thanks,” Hob said.

  “Officially, nothing happened at all. We’re not supposed to interfere. Only observe.”

  “What am I supposed to do now?” Hob asked.

  “The best thing will be for you to get back to Ibiza,” George said. “I’m counting on you to get Nigel out of this.”

  “Nigel’s on Ibiza now?”

  “Correct. He’s doing the final supervision of the hanging of the pictures for the big hotel opening tomorrow. I want him out of it, Hob. I’ve telephoned and can’t get through to him. I can’t go through official channels. The Spanish police don’t want to hear about this. But you can tell him. You can do it.”

  Hob nodded, though he wasn’t really in the mood for getting into this thing again.

  “I’ll run you to the airport myself,” George said.

  “Good for you,” Hob said. George’s manner was contagious.

  FOUR

  Ibiza

  1

  Hob washed up in the small toilet on his Iberia flight from London to Ibiza. A stewardess even found him a razor, but no shaving cream. He made do with a tiny bar of soap. There was nothing he could do about George’s old gardening togs, however. They would look out of place anywhere but in George’s garden. He resolved to change them at the first opportunity.

  The plane landed at Ibiza at just past 1 p.m. Standard Hippie Time: a little too late for what he had planned. He wanted to get to the party for the hotel opening, but he had no invitation. Something told him this was one gate he wouldn’t be able to crash. His only hope was Big Bertha, who he knew had an invitation—and a habit of being late for everything.

  A taxi took him from the airport into Ibiza City, snarled its way through the dense summer traffic, negotiated the turns up into the Dalt Villa, and finally left him off a block below Bertha’s flat. Hob hurried to her door and slammed the big iron knocker. No answer. He slammed the knocker a few times more, and, still getting no response, walked out into the street and shouted up to her open windows.

  “Bertha! Are you there? It’s Hob.”

  After the fifth repetition of this, a tousle-haired adolescent poked his head out of the small restaurant next door and said, “It doesn’t matter if you’re Hob or not. She’s not there.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I saw her drive away. You just missed her.”

  “Carrai!” Hob said. It was the customary Ibicenco response for anything that goes wrong through no fault of one’s own.

  “You musta seen her car as you came up,” the youth said. “It’s that mustard-yellow Simca. Couldn’t miss it.”

  Now that he mentioned it, Hob did remember such a car. He had been so fixated on mentally urging the taxi around the hairpins to Bertha’s that he hadn’t noticed Bertha passing.

  “Hell and damnation!” Hob said. He looked at the kid and after a moment recognized him. It was Ralphie, Sandra Olson’s second son. He looked about fourteen. There was supposed to be something peculiar about him: Either he was actually twelve and looked old for his age or he was actually seventeen and looked young for his age. Hob couldn’t remember which.

  “What are you doing here, Ralphie?” Hob asked.

  “I work in the kitchen. It’s a summer job, until school starts again.”

  “I really need to get hold of Bertha,” Hob said.

  “You got a car? She doesn’t drive very fast. You might catch up to her if you know where she’s going.”

  Hob shook his head. “No car. I’ll have to go back down to the Pena and find a taxi.”

  “Where’s she going?”

  “The new hotel opening in San Mateo.”

  “If you had a dirt bike,” Ralphie said, “you could catch her before she got there.”

  “A what?”

  “You know, a scrambler. An off-road motorcycle. Once you’re out of the city, you could take a shortcut over the hills.”

  “I don’t have a dirt bike.”

  “I do. And I’m for hire.”

  “What about your job here?”

  “Pablo will cover for me. A thousand pesetas. Is it a deal?”

  “You’re on,” Hob said.

  Ralphie went back inside the restaurant. There was a gabble of high-speed Ibicenco. Then Ralphie came out again wheeling a fire-red Bultaco Matador 250cc motorcycle with knobby wheels and high fenders. He kicked it into
life. The machine’s roar, there in the narrow street, echoing off the close-packed buildings, was deafening.

  “Climb aboard,” Ralphie said.

  Hob had a moment to doubt the wisdom of riding with a high-school kid or perhaps younger who knew he was in a hurry. Still, what else was there to do? He got on—and grabbed Ralphie in time to prevent falling over backward as the boy gunned the machine.

  They sped down the slick, steeply tilted, cobblestoned streets of the upper city, cutting through a back lane on their way, taking corners heeled over like a sailboat in a gale. The motorcycle had no horn, but pedestrians scattered at the high-pitched bellow of its motor. Twice Hob’s feet were jarred off the back pegs, and he had to struggle to stay aboard. The square-vented exhaust housing was close to his thigh, and he had to stay on without frying. They finally got through town without killing themselves or anyone else, even managing to avoid an Ibicenco hound sunning itself on the sidewalk they had to cut across to avoid oncoming cars as they plunged peremptorily onto the main road.

  It was a little better after that. At least it was level. Ralphie twisted the throttle to its stop and held it there, and the motorcycle howled up the two-lane road. But the Bultaco wasn’t a road bike and couldn’t do much better than 80 miles an hour or so, so it wasn’t quite as dangerous as it sounded.

  “Neat, huh?” Ralphie screamed over his shoulder.

  “Keep your eyes on the road!” Hob screamed back.

  They drove at full bore for about fifteen minutes, until they came to where the road divided, the right fork going to Santa Eulalia, the left to Santa Gertrudis, San Mateo, and San Juan. Ralphie took the left fork. Just a few minutes up the road he slowed and turned onto a dirt road that led across the hills instead of winding around as the main road did. It was a pretty good road, and if you ignored the possible danger of meeting horse-driven carts around blind curves, as Ralphie did, you could make pretty good time. The road leveled out on top of the hill, and they turned off again, speeding through a sparse pine forest and dodging the odd boulder that nature had set down for the purpose of providing a slalom course for aspiring motocross drivers. Then Ralphie braked hard, bringing the bike to a stop on a hilltop. He pointed to his left and down. A few hundred feet below, Hob could the see hotel’s private road, with Bertha’s mustard-yellow Simca—or one just like it—stopped at a little one room cement-block house that stood just beside an entrance cut through a high masonry wall. Hob could see the uniformed guard at the gate checking something, Bertha’s invitation no doubt, and then waving her through.