The Metallic Muse

by Lloyd Biggle Jr

  The hotel manager charged in a few minutes later, surveyed the damage, and stood fretfully wringing his hands.

  “I think,” Sandler said calmly, “that someone doesn’t like me. It might be better for both the hotel and myself if I were to check out.”

  The manager agreed enthusiastically.

  Traveling a tortuously meandering route, Sandler checked in at a shabby spacers’ hotel near the port. He registered under an assumed name, paid for one night in advance, and settled into his cramped room to make plans.

  He had no intention of placing himself in the hands of the police a second time, and when he failed to appear in court he would be a bona fide fugitive from justice. The government would begin searching for him openly. His photo would be circulated, transportation agencies would be notified, and port officials alerted. His situation would grow more perilous by the minute. Whatever he did had to be done quickly.

  At dawn he carried his belongings to the port. He 1eft them in a rented locker, descended to a lower level, and at a dispenser brought a handful of tokens for the only anonymous means of transportation in Galaxia—the overburdened pneumatic underground railroad. The masses facetiously referred to it as the air train.

  Sandler changed trains five times and rode to the end of the line in a distant part of Galaxia. In a public visiphone booth, he hung his coat over the visual transmitter and made four calls.

  A distinguished Galaxia attorney: “My dear sir, we might be able to establish your right to information about your parents and the planet of your origin, but what good would that do if government officials were to swear under oath that no record of this information exists? You’d win your point without gaining a thing.”

  The editor of a leading opposition newspaper: “We’re always happy to embarrass the administration, but we don’t want to embarrass it that much. The Department of Censorship would close us. I advise you to get away from Earth while you’re still healthy.”

  A prominent visiscope commentator: “The less I know about this, the better I’ll like it.”

  An opposition congressman: “You case isn’t the first I’ve heard about. Sure, we could stir things up a bit. But it wouldn’t help you, and the Expansionist Party would spend a billion to defeat me next election. My advice: Forget it!”

  Sandler checked both visiscope and the newspapers and found no mention of the disturbances over the “Homing Song.” He wondered if the government would be satisfied if he quietly faded away. At a minimum there would be a galaxy-wide Confidential on him. Never again would he be able to use his own name or land openly on a planet without undergoing continuous and humiliating harassment.

  “And since I’m into it that far,” he told himself, “I might as well go all the way. I think I’ll have a quiet talk with this Minister of Public Welfare.”

  But he could visualize that august individual shaking his head mockingly and saying, “Sorry. We have no records. No records at all. Be very happy to help you if I could. I knew your foster father. But without records—”

  There were drugs, talk pills and anti-hib sprays and truth serums in a multitude of types, each with complicated medical and investigative uses. None of them were available to casual purchasers, no questions asked.

  Sandler prowled the streets until he found a doctor’s office. He intentionally avoided looking at the name, concentrating on the faded word “Psychiatrist,” as he climbed th worn stairway. He emerged in a hallway that reeked of a strange mixture of odors, most indefinable and probably unmentionable. On the street level there had been a pawn-broker’s establishment. On the floors above were dwelling units. He could hear squalling children and snarling mothers. This was the reverse side of the polished, gem-like capital of the galaxy. The night side. The foul, indescribable slum side.

  The consultation room was jammed with the slovenly dregs of humanity: The aged, the infirm, the addicts, the alcoholics, all shabbily dressed, all waiting with dumbly inexpressive faces for the forces of healing to probe their crumbling minds.

  Sandler turned aside and edged his way along the filthy hallway. Again avoiding the doctor’s name, he pressed his ear to a door.

  “.. .Mrs. Schultz,” a shrill male voice said. “Then I’ll see you Tuesday at eleven.”

  Shuffling footsteps. A door opening. The shrill voice asking, “Who’s next?” And then, as the visiphone gong chimed musically, “Just a moment, please.”

  The door closed. The visiphone mumbled inaudibly. The shrill voice piped, “What’s that you say? Oh, pills! Yes, soon as I can get there.”

  Footsteps moved urgently about the room and suddenly approached the door. Sandler stepped back as the lock clicked and raised his flame pistol. The doctor halted with the door half-opened, his wrinkled face transfixed with amazement. Sandler pushed through and closed the door after him as the doctor backed away.

  The doctor cackled mockingly. “I don’t suppose, young man, that you’ve called for professional assistance.” “I want to buy something,” Sandler said. “You’ve come to the wrong place. I’m a psychiatrist, I don’t keep addictive drugs in my office. If I did, in this neighborhood, it’d be broken into ten times a night.” “I don’t want addictive drugs,” Sandler said. “I have an emergency. A man has been injured in a street brawl. They callede a psychiatrist to treat a bump on the head—but then, there aren’t any other doctors in the neighborhood. Please state your business quickly.”

  He was a mere wisp of a man, gaunt, the pink of his head radiant beneath his sparse white hair. Sandler remembered the riff-raff in the waiting room and regarded him with admiration. He was a real doctor, a doctor who lived only to serve.

  He said firmly, “I want a hypodermic syringe and a maximum dose of truth serum.”

  The doctor scrutinized him with professional interest. “You don’t look like a bad man.”

  “I’m a wronged man,” Sandler said wearily. “I’ve harmed no one, I’ve violated no law, but the police are looking for me and an agency of the government has tried to murder me. I ask you in the name of justice to sell me what I want and forget about it.”

  “The police have truth serum,” the doctor said. “I might forget, but could you?”

  ‘I’ve done everything I could to protect you. I don’t know your name. I’m a stranger in Galaxia, and once I leave your office I’ll never be able to find my way back here.”

  “Even so, it would be safer for me to report it. Tomorrow—supposing I report it tomorrow?” Sandler nodded.

  “Well, then—I can’t sell the things to you. Look.” He got out a hypodermic syringe and filled it. “I’m ready for my next patient. And I get an emergency call, and in my hurry I forget to lock the door. I’m an old man, and I won’t miss the thing until tomorrow. So?”

  Sandler stepped aside, and the doctor hurried away. He grabbed the syringe and slipped a hundred-credit note into the doctor’s desk. From the general character of his practice, Sandler thought he might need the money.

  Sandler hurried down the stairs, saw the doctor tottering along the street, and turned in the opposite direction.

  The official residence of Jan Vildson, the Minister of Public Welfare, occupied a choice location at the intersection of Centaurian and Solar Avenues. Its grounds were enclosed on three sides by a towering, vine-covered wall. On the fourth was a tall commercial building, its wall windowless to the eighth story.

  Sandler had circled the place a dozen times during the afternoon, gaping like an awed tourist while he made plans. He’d expended a small fortune in air cab fares, riding back and forth to catch a passing glimpse of the mansion. He had prowled the neighborhood to set up alternate escape routes.

  But he felt more determined than confident as he stood on Centaurian Avenue and watched the ground cab speed away. It was shortly before midnight, but the artificial “moons” that dotted the sky over Galaxia bathed the spacious avenue in light. He shouldered his heavy bag and hurried toward the minister’s residence.

 
; He reached the wall and crouched there under a steady whir of air traffic, seeking a shadow where there was none. From his bag he took a heavy, triangular-shaped building stone and tossed it so that its looping trajectory just cleared the wall. Then he raced along the street, tossing stones as he ran and hoping that at least one of them would trigger the mansion’s alarm system. As he turn into Solar Avenue he could hear a gong booming faintly far away. He ran frantically, reached the far corner of the wall, and hauled himself up on the clinging vines.

  On the other side he slid to the ground and sprinted for the cover of weird-looking, spiral-leaved shrubs. Men were dashing about at the other end of the grounds, and the shouts reached him faintly. He heard the excited yelp of a dog. Crouching, he ran from shrub to shrub and finally hurled himself into the tall, sprawling density of a flower bed. The flowers were of some exotic species, and they were in full bloom. The heavy sweet scent overpowered and stifled him, and he lay gasping for breath.

  The alarm continued to sound. More men arrived, and a squadron of patrol cars swooped down and landed in open space near the mansion. Sandler kept his head down, sank his fingers into the rich, moist soil, and waited.

  His racing pulse counted off the minutes. Then the alarm stopped suddenly. Two of the searchers came trudging back and met a third man near the gate.

  “Some idiot threw stones over the wall,” one of them said.

  The patrol cars lifted gracefully, one at a time, circled, and moved off in formation. Other men came straggling back in twos and threes. There was more grumbling conversation as they disappeared around the corner of the mansion.

  A sentry resumed his plodding circuit of the grounds. With his head raised cautiously above the flowers, Sandler timed his movements and began planning a route of approach.

  His first sprint carried him across twenty feet of open lawn to the cover of a large tree. He moved in spurts separated by maddening intervals of crouched waiting. After forty minutes of cautious maneuvering he was huddled in the scant shadow of a flowering bush studying a balcony that extended out over an artistically landscaped terrace. At one side, flowering vines wove their way up a metal framework. Sandler watched the sentry and waited.

  The sentry moved out of sight behind the building. Sandler ran, leaped, and hauled himself up the vines. Thorns stabbed at him, ripping his hands and clothing. He stumbled across the balcony and tried the door. It opened easily. He stepped through, closed it silently, and squinted into the darkness.

  Suddenly a beam of light struck him full in the face, blinding him. “All right, Fritz. See if he’s armed,” a crisp voice said.

  Sandler closed his eyes and stood with fists clenched. Hands moved expertly over his body, spun him around roughly, and removed his pistol. The room lights came on, and Sandler saw three men watching him alertly. Two of them had flame pistols leveled unwaveringly at his stomach.

  The crisp voice spoke again. “You’re a patient man, friend. But then—so am I. I’ve been watching you for the last half-hour.” He turned to the others. “I can handle him. I’ll call you if I need you.”

  The door closed behind them, and he gestured with his pistol. “Now, then. You will sit down there and place your hands on the table. Right. Jan Vildson is my name. Minister of Public Welfare. And you are Thomas Jefferson Sandler. What can I do for you?”

  The minister was an elderly man, but swarthy, robust-looking, and without a touch of gray in his black hair. He looked a youthful sixty-five and could have been fifteen years older.

  “You surprise me,” Sandler said boldly. “You hardly look like a scoundrel.”

  “I was thinking the same about you, young man. I known you for longer than you think. I knew your adopted father well. He had high hopes for you. On your performance of the past two days I’d say you were quite capable of fulfilling his hopes. You show a commendable determination. It’s a pity you squander it on trivialities.”

  “If my objective is so trivial,” Sandler said, “why is the government going to such extremes to make me fail?”

  The minister seated himself on the opposite side of the wide table and laid his pistol in front of him. “Trivial or not, your objective is certainly futile. The information you want was destroyed years ago—long before I became Minister of Public Welfare.”

  “The planet of my origin is clearly indicated on my record card.”

  “The planet’s number is indicated. The number refers to a list of several hundred planets from which orphan children were taken for adoption. The number has no meaning without that list, and all copies of the list have been destroyed.”

  “Why was the list destroyed?”

  The minister shook his head slowly. “Perhaps for the most noble of reasons, perhaps for stupid bureaucratic expediency, perhaps for criminal reasons—though I don’t know what they could have been. It doesn’t matter. We can’t undo it now, we can’t undestroy something that’s been destroyed. I’m sincere, and everyone else has been sincere, in telling you to forget the whole business.”

  He paused, and Sandler waited silently.

  “Now here is what I suggest,” the minister went on. “You’re in trouble, but it isn’t serious trouble. I believe I can arrange to keep the whole affair quiet. I’ll see that you get to the port and onto an outgoing ship. There will be no police report on your performance of this evening. After all, you are the son of an old friend. What do you say?”

  “Will you answer a few questions?” “Gladly, if I have the answers.” “The Department of Public Censorship is under your control, isn’t it?” “It is.”

  “Why have you banned performances of the ‘Homing Song’?”

  The minister looked puzzled. “The ‘Homing Song’?

  Banned?”

  “Bad for public morale. Or so your censors say.”

  “I’ve heard the song. Who hasn’t? But I don’t recall anything—banned, you say? I’ll have to look into that.”

  “Banned without public notice. I was arrested for asking a professional performer to sing it.”

  The minister shook his head perplexedly.

  “What government official gave the order to have me murdered?” Sandler asked. “Was it you?”

  The minister slowly rose to his feet. “Murdered? Someone ordered you murdered?”

  “I was fired on from an air car. Fortunately I ducked in time, but it made a mess of my hotel room.”

  The minister dropped back into his chair. “That’s not true,” he protested. “It can’t be true.”

  Sandler dove across the table and seized the pistol. He regained his seat, breathing heavily, and held the weapon under the table. “If your men check, you’ll tell them everything is under control.”

  The minister had a hurt expression on his face. “You tricked me. I’ve tried to be nice to you, Sandler. I’ve given you every consideration—”

  “Shut up!” Sandler snapped. “I’m a nobody, and I dont expect special consideration. However important my foster father may have been, I’m a nobody. All I want to do is go home. Why is the Federation Government determined to do anything in its power, legal and illegal, up to and including murder, to keep me from doing that? Why would it prefer me dead rather than answer questions about my home planet?”

  “You shouldn’t make such reckless accusations. Why would the government want to kill you?”

  “No one outside the government cares what I do. I haven’t any other enemies, and it isn’t coincidence that my arrest and the attempted murder came immediately after I started these inquiries. Now—the planet’s number is One eighty-seven. What is it, and where is it?”

  “I told you the truth. To the best of my knowledge, there isn’t a copy of that list in existence.”

  Sandler loosened his shirt and gripped the hypodermic syringe he had taped to his arm. “I’ve had enough of your kind of truth. Now I want my kind. Bare your arm please.”

  The minister straightened up in alarm. “What’s that you have?”

>   ‘Truth serum. I mean you no harm, but I’m going have the truth if I have to kill you to get it.”

  “You don’t believe me?” the minister croaked, frightened eyes focused on the needle. “Think of it. Old T.J.‘s son calling me a liar. Do you know, Sandler, I held you on my lap when you weren’t more than six years old?”

  The screen on the far wall flickered to life. One of the minister’s guards glanced at them suspiciously. “Everything all right, sir?”

  Sandler’s hand tensed on the pistol.

  “Everything’s all right,” the minister said weakly, the screen darkened.

  Sandler rounded the table and stood waiting. “Bare your arm,” he ordered.

  “That’s dangerous,” the minister protested. He looked at Sandler’s face, shrugged, and slipped out of his coat. “If that’s all that will satisfy you—”

  He rolled up his sleeve, and Sandler inexpertly jabbed the needle into his arm. He walked back to his chair and tossed the syringe under the table.

  He watched the minister anxiously, wishing he’d got more information from the doctor. He hadn’t any idea how much time the serum might require to take effect. The minister leaned back in his chair, eyes closed, breathing deeply.

  Finally Sandler asked, “What is planet One eighty seven?”

  “Don’t know. List—destroyed.” “Who would have a copy of the list?” “Destroyed—long ago.” “Why was the list destroyed?”

  The minister doubled up suddenly, clutching both hands to his heart. His breath came in whistling gasps, his face was white and taut, and his teeth were clenched in searing agony. Sandler dashed around the table and bent over him in alarm.

  He remembered belatedly that he had casually asked the doctor for a maximum dose of truth serum—and that a maximum dose might be too much for a man of eighty. It was too much. The minister was dying.