“Couldn’t we try?”
Baque hesitated. She was frightened—she was sick with fright—but she knew far more about this sort of thing than he did, and she knew James Denton. Without her help he’d never have got out of the Visiscope International building.
“If you think that’s the thing to do, we’ll try it.”
“I’ll have to finish changing.”
“Go ahead. Let me know when you’re ready.”
She opened the door a crack and looked out cautiously. “No. You come with me.”
Minutes later, Baque and Miss Manning walked leisurely along the corridor at the back of the building, nodded to the two guards on duty there, and with a sudden movement were through the door. Running. A shout of surprise came from behind them, but no one followed. They dashed frantically down an alley, turned off, reached another intersection, and hesitated.
“The conveyer is that way,” she gasped. “If we can reach the conveyer—”
“Let’s go!”
They ran on, hand in hand. Far ahead of them the alley opened onto a street. Baque glanced anxiously upward for air cars and saw none. Exactly where they were he did not know.
“Are we—being followed?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” Baque panted. “There aren’t any air cars, and I didn’t see anyone behind us when we stopped.”
“Then we got away!”
A man stepped abruptly out of the dawn shadows thirty feet ahead. As they halted, stricken dumb with panic, he walked slowly toward them. A hat was pulled low over his face, but there was no mistaking the smile. James Denton.
“Good morning, Beautiful,” he said. “Visiscope International hasn’t been the same without your lovely presence. And a good morning to you, Mr. Baque.”
They stood silently, Miss Manning’s hand clutching Baque’s arm, her nails cutting through his shirt and into his flesh. He did not move.
“I thought you’d fall for that little gag, Beautiful. I thought you’d be just frightened enough, by now, to fall for it. I have every exit blocked, but I’m grateful to you for picking this one. Very grateful. I like to settle a double cross in person.”
Suddenly he whirled on Baque, his voice an angry snarl. “Get going, Baque. It isn’t your turn. I have other plans for you.”
Baque stood rooted to the damp pavement.
“Move, Baque, before I change my mind.”
Miss Manning released his arm. Her voice was a choking whisper. “Go!”
“Baque!” Denton snarled.
“Go, quickly!” she whispered again.
Baque took two hesitant steps.
“Run!” Denton shouted.
Baque ran. Behind him there was the evil crack of a gun, a scream, and silence. Baque faltered, saw Denton looking after him, and ran on.
“SO I’M A coward,” Baque said.
“No, Baque.” Lankey shook his head slowly. “You’re a brave man, or you wouldn’t have got into this. Trying something there would have been foolishness, not bravery. It’s my fault, for thinking he’d move first against the restaurant. I owe Denton something for this, and I’m a man who pays his debts.”
A troubled frown creased Lankey’s ugly face. He looked perplexedly at Baque. “She was a brave and beautiful woman, Baque,” he said, absently caressing his flat nose. “But I wonder why Denton let you go.”
The air of tragedy that hung heavily over Lankey’s that night did not affect its customers. They gave Baque a thunderous ovation as he moved toward the multichord. As he paused for a halfhearted acknowledgement, three policemen closed in on him.
“Erlin Baque?”
“That’s right.”
“You’re under arrest.”
Baque faced them grimly. “What’s the charge?” he asked.
“Murder.”
The murder of Marigold Manning.
LANKEY PRESSED HIS mournful face against the bars and talked unhurriedly. “They have some witnesses,” he said. “Honest witnesses, who saw you run out of that alley. They have several dishonest witnesses who claim they saw you fire the shot. One of them is your friend Hulsey, who just happened to be taking an early-morning stroll along that alley—or so he’ll testify. Denton would probably spend a million to convict you, but he won’t have to. He won’t even have to bribe the jury. The case against you is that good.”
“What about the gun?” Baque asked.
“They’ll have a witness who’ll claim he sold it to you.”
Baque nodded. Things were out of his hands, now. He’d worked for a cause that no one understood—perhaps he hadn’t understood himself what he was trying to do. And he’d lost.
“What happens next?” he asked.
Lankey shook his head sadly. “I’m not one to hold back bad news. It means life. They’re going to send you to the Ganymede rock pits for life.”
“I see,” Baque said. He added anxiously, “You’re going to carry on?”
“Just what were you trying to do, Baque? You weren’t only working for Lankey’s. I couldn’t figure it out, but I went along with you because I like you. And I like your music. What was it?”
“I don’t know. Music, I suppose. People listening to music. Getting rid of the Coms, or some of them. Perhaps if I’d known what I wanted to do—”
“Yes. Yes, I think I understand. Lankey’s will carry on, Baque, as long as I have any breath left, and I’m not just being noble. Business is tremendous. That new multichord player isn’t bad at all. He’s nothing like you were, but there’ll never be another one like you. We could be sold out for the next five years if we wanted to book reservations that far ahead. The other restaurants are doing away with visiscope and trying to imitate us, but we have a big head start. We’ll carry on the way you had things set up, and your one-third still stands. I’ll have it put in trust for you. You’ll be a wealthy man when you get back.”
“When I get back!”
“Well—a life sentence doesn’t necessarily mean life. See that you behave yourself.”
“Val?”
“She’ll be taken care of. I’ll give her a job of some kind to keep her occupied.”
“Maybe I can send you music for the restaurant,” Baque said. “I should have plenty of time.”
“I’m afraid not. It’s music they want to keep you away from. So—no writing of music. And they won’t let you near a multichord. They think you could hypnotize the guards and turn all the prisoners loose.”
“Would they—let me have my record collection?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“I see. Well, if that’s the way it is—”
“It is. Now I owe Denton two debts.”
The unemotional Lankey had tears in his eyes as he turned away.
THE JURY DELIBERATED for eight minutes and brought in a verdict of guilty. Baque was sentenced to life imprisonment. There was some editorial grumbling on visiscope, because life in the Ganymede rock pits was frequently a very short life.
And there was a swelling undertone of whispering among the little people that the verdict had been bought and paid for by the sponsors, by visiscope. Erlin Baque was framed, it was said, because he gave the people music.
And on the day Baque left for Ganymede, announcement was made of a public exhibition, by H. Vail, multichordist, and B. Johnson, violinist. Admission one dollar.
Lankey collected evidence with painstaking care, rebribed one of the bribed witnesses, and petitioned for a new trial. The petition was denied, and the long years limped past.
The New York Symphony Orchestra was organized, with twenty members. One of James Denton’s plush air cars crashed, and he was instantly killed. An unfortunate accident. A millionaire who once heard Erlin Baque play on visiscope endowed a dozen conservatories of music. They were to be called the Baque Conservatories, but a musical historian who had never heard of Baque got the name changed to Bach.
Lankey died, and a son-in-law carried on his efforts as a family trust. A subscript
ion was launched to build a new hall for the New York Symphony, which now numbered forty members. The project gathered force like an avalanche, and a site was finally chosen in Ohio, where the hall would be within easier commuting distance of all parts of the North American continent. Beethoven Hall was erected, seating forty thousand people. The first concert series was fully subscribed forty-eight hours after tickets went on sale.
Opera was given on visiscope for the first time in two hundred years. An opera house was built on the Ohio site, and then an art institute. The Center grew, first by private subscription and then under governmental sponsorship. Lankey’s son-in-law died, and a nephew took over the management of Lankey’s—and the campaign to free Erlin Baque. Thirty years passed, and then forty.
And forty-nine years, seven months and nineteen days after Baque received his life sentence, he was paroled. He still owned a third interest in Manhattan’s most prosperous restaurant, and the profits that had accrued over the years made him an extremely wealthy man. He was ninety-six years old.
ANOTHER CAPACITY CROWD at Beethoven Hall. Vacationists from all parts of the Solar System, music lovers who commuted for the concerts, old people who had retired to the Center, young people on educational excursions, forty thousand of them, stirred restlessly and searched the wings for the conductor. Applause thundered down from the twelve balconies as he strode forward.
Erlin Baque sat in his permanent seat at the rear of the main floor. He adjusted his binoculars and peered at the orchestra, wondering again what a contrabassoon sounded like. His bitterness he had left behind on Ganymede. His life at the Center was an unending revelation of miracles.
Of course no one remembered Erlin Baque, tunesmith and murderer. Whole generations of people could not even remember the Coms. And yet Baque felt that he had accomplished all of this just as assuredly as though he had built this building—built the Center—with his own hands. He spread his hands before him, hands deformed by the years in the rock pits, fingers and tips of fingers crushed off, his body maimed by cascading rocks. He had no regrets. He had done his work well.
Two ushers stood in the aisle behind him. One jerked a thumb in his direction and whispered, “Now there’s a character for you. Comes to every concert. Never misses one. And he just sits there in the back row watching people. They say he was one of the old tunesmiths, years and years ago.”
“Maybe he likes music,” the other said.
“Naw. Those old tunesmiths never knew anything about music. Besides—he’s deaf.”
THEODORE STURGEON
A Saucer of Loneliness
Theodore Sturgeon’s fiction abounds with ordinary characters undone by their all-too-human shortcomings or struggling in unsympathetic environments to find others who share their desires and feelings of loneliness. Sturgeon began publishing in 1939, and made his mark early in both fantasy and science fiction with stories that have since become classics. “Microcosmic God” concerns a scientist who plays God with unexpectedly amusing results when he repeatedly challenges a microscopic race he has created with threats to their survival. “It” focuses on the reactions of characters in a rural setting trying to contend with a rampaging inhuman monster. In “Yesterday Was Monday,” a man discovers that each day’s reality is a theatrical stage set built by diminutive laborers. “Killdozer” is a variation on the theme of Frankenstein in which a construction crew is trapped on an island where a bulldozer has become imbued with the electrical energy of an alien life form. Fiction Sturgeon wrote after World War II shows the gentle humor of his earlier work shading into pathos. “Memorial” and “Thunder and Roses” are cautionary tales about the abuses of use of nuclear weapons. “A Saucer of Loneliness” and “Maturity” both use traditional science fiction scenarios to explore feelings of alienation and inadequacy. Sturgeon’s work at novel length is memorable for its portrayals of characters who rise above the isolation their failure to fit into normal society imposes. More Than Human tells of a group of psychologically dysfunctional individuals who pool their individual strengths to create a superhuman gestalt consciousness. In The Dreaming Jewels, a young boy discovers that his behavioral abnormalities are actually the symptoms of superhuman powers. Sturgeon is also renowned for his explorations of taboo sexuality and restrictive moralities in such stories as Some of Your Blood, “The World Well Lost,” and “If All Men Were Brothers Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?”. His short fiction has been collected in Without Sorcery, E. Pluribus Unicorn, Caviar, and A Touch of Strange. The compilations The Ultimate Egoist, Thunder and Roses, A Saucer of Loneliness, The Perfect Host, Baby Is Three, The Microcosmic God, and Killdozer, edited by Paul Williams, are the first seven volumes in a series that will eventually reprint all of Sturgeon’s short fiction.
IF SHE’S DEAD, I thought, I’ll never find her in this white flood of moonlight on the white sea, with the surf seething in and over the pale, pale sand like a great shampoo. Almost always, suicides who stab themselves or shoot themselves in the heart carefully bare their chests; the same strange impulse generally makes the sea-suicide go naked.
A little earlier, I thought, or later, and there would be shadows for the dunes and the breathing toss of the foam. Now the only real shadow was mine, a tiny thing just under me, but black enough to feed the blackness of the shadow of a blimp.
A little earlier, I thought, and I might have seen her plodding up the silver shore, seeking a place lonely enough to die in. A little later and my legs would rebel against this shuffling trot through sand, the maddening sand that could not hold and would not help a hurrying man.
My legs did give way then and I knelt suddenly, sobbing—not for her; not yet—just for air. There was such a rush about me: wind, and tangled spray, and colors upon colors and shades of colors that were not colors at all but shifts of white and silver. If light like that were sound, it would sound like the sea on sand, and if my ears were eyes, they would see such a light.
I crouched there, gasping in the swirl of it, and a flood struck me, shallow and swift, turning up and outward like flower petals where it touched my knees, then soaking me to the waist in its bubble and crash. I pressed my knuckles to my eyes so they would open again. The sea was on my lips with the taste of tears and the whole white night shouted and wept aloud.
And there she was.
Her white shoulders were a taller curve in the sloping foam. She must have sensed me—perhaps I yelled—for she turned and saw me kneeling there. She put her fists to her temples and her face twisted, and she uttered a piercing wail of despair and fury, and then plunged seaward and sank.
I kicked off my shoes and ran into the breakers, shouting, hunting, grasping at flashes of white that turned to sea-salt and coldness in my fingers. I plunged right past her, and her body struck my side as a wave whipped my face and tumbled both of us. I gasped in solid water, opened my eyes beneath the surface and saw a greenish-white distorted moon hurtle as I spun. Then there was sucking sand under my feet again and my left hand was tangled in her hair.
The receding wave towed her away and for a moment she streamed out from my hand like steam from a whistle. In that moment I was sure she was dead, but as she settled to the sand, she fought and scrambled to her feet.
She hit my ear, wet, hard, and a huge, pointed pain lanced into my head. She pulled, she lunged away from me, and all the while my hand was caught in her hair. I couldn’t have freed her if I had wanted to. She spun to me with the next wave, battered and clawed at me, and we went into deeper water.
“Don’t . . . don’t . . . I can’t swim!” I shouted, so she clawed me again.
“Leave me alone,” she shrieked. “Oh, dear God, why can’t you leave” (said her fingernails) “me . . .” (said her snapping teeth) “alone!” (said her small, hard fist).
So by her hair I pulled her head down tight to her white shoulder; and with the edge of my free hand I hit her neck twice. She floated again, and I brought her ashore.
I carried her to where a dune
was between us and the sea’s broad, noisy tongue, and the wind was above us somewhere. But the light was as bright. I rubbed her wrists and stroked her face and said, “It’s all right,” and, “There!” and some names I used to have for a dream I had long, long before I ever heard of her.
She lay still on her back with the breath hissing between her teeth, with her lips in a smile which her twisted-tight, wrinkle-sealed eyes made not a smile but a torture. She was well and conscious for many moments and still her breath hissed and her closed eyes twisted.
“Why couldn’t you leave me alone?” she asked at last. She opened her eyes and looked at me. She had so much misery that there was no room for fear. She shut her eyes again and said, “You know who I am.”
“I know,” I said.
She began to cry.
I waited, and when she stopped crying, there were shadows among the dunes. A long time.
She said, “You don’t know who I am. Nobody knows who I am.”
I said, “It was in all the papers.”
“That!” She opened her eyes slowly and her gaze traveled over my face, my shoulders, stopped at my mouth, touched my eyes for the briefest second. She curled her lips and turned away her head. “Nobody knows who I am.”
I waited for her to move or speak, and finally I said, “Tell me.”
“Who are you?” she asked, with her head still turned away.
“Someone who . . .”
“Well?”
“Not now,” I said. “Later, maybe.”
She sat up suddenly and tried to hide herself. “Where are my clothes?”
“I didn’t see them.”
“Oh,” she said. “I remember. I put them down and kicked sand over them, just where a dune would come and smooth them over, hide them as if they never were . . . I hate sand. I wanted to drown in the sand, but it wouldn’t let me . . . You mustn’t look at me!” she shouted. “I hate to have you looking at me!” She threw her head from side to side, seeking. “I can’t stay here like this! What can I do? Where can I go?”
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