The Collection

by Fredric Brown

  "Could do almost anything. Including killing a man and making the manner of his death appear five different ways to five different observers."

  Caquer whistled softly. "And including playing nine-man Morris with soap-box radicals-or they wouldn't even have to be radicals. They could be ordinary orthodox citizens."

  "Nine men?" Jane Gordon demanded. "What's this about nine men, Rod? I hadn't heard about it."

  But Rod was already standing up.

  "Haven't time to explain, Icicle," he said. "Tell you tomorrow, but I must get down to-Wait a minute. Professor, is that all you know about the Vargas Wheel business?"

  "Absolutely all, my boy. It just occurred to me as a possibility. There were only five or six of them ever made, and finally the government got hold of them and destroyed them, one by one. It cost millions of lives to do it.

  "When they finally got everything cleaned up, colonization of the planets was starting, and an international council had been started with control over all governments. They decided that the whole field of hypnotism was too dangerous, and they made it a forbidden subject. It took quite a few centuries to wipe out all knowledge of it, but they succeeded. The proof is that you'd never heard of it."

  "But how about the beneficial aspects of it," Jane Gordon asked. "Were they lost?"

  "Of course," said her father. "But the science of medicine had progressed so far by that time that it wasn't too much of a loss. Today the medicos can cure, by physical treatment, anything that hypnotism could handle."

  Caquer who had halted at the door, now turned back.

  "Professor, do you think it possible that someone could have rented a Blackdex book from Deem, and learned all those secrets?" he inquired.

  Professor Gordon shrugged. "It's possible," he said. "Deem might have handled occasional Blackdex books, but he knew better than try to sell or rent any to me. So I wouldn't have heard of it."

  At the station, Lieutenant Caquer found Lieutenant Borgesen on the verge of apoplexy.

  He looked at Caquer.

  "You!" he said. And then, plaintively, "The world's gone nuts. Listen, Brager discovered Willem Deem, didn't he? At ten o'clock yesterday morning? And stayed there on guard while Skidder and you and the clearance men were there?"

  "Yes, why?" asked Caquer.

  Borgesen's expression showed how much he was upset by developments.

  "Nothing, not a thing, except that Brager was in the emergency hospital yesterday morning, from nine until after eleven, getting a sprained ankle treated. He couldn't have been at Deem's. Seven doctors and attendants and nurses swear up and down he was in the hospital at that time."

  Caquer frowned.

  "He was limping today, when he helped me search Deem's shop," he said. "What does Brager say?"

  "He says he was there, I mean at Deem's, and discovered Deem's body. We just happened to find out otherwise accidentally-if it is otherwise. Rod, I'm going nuts. To think I had a chance to be fireman on a spacer and took this celestial job. Have you learned anything new?"

  "Maybe. But first I want to ask you, Borg. About these nine nitwits you picked up. Has anybody tried to identify-"

  "Them," interrupted Borgesen. "Ilet them go." Caquer stared at the beefy face of the night lieutenant in utter amazement.

  "Let them go?" he repeated. "You couldn't, legally. Man, they'd been charged. Without a trial, you couldn't turn them loose."

  "Nuts. I did, and I'll take the responsibility for it. Look, Rod, they were right, weren't they?"

  "What?"

  "Sure. People ought to be waked up about what's going on over in Sector Two. Those phonies over there need taking down a peg, and we're the only ones to do it. This ought to be headquarters for Callisto, right here. Why listen, Rod, a united Callisto could take over Ganymede."

  "Borg, was there anything over the televis tonight? Anybody make a speech you listened to?"

  "Sure, didn't you hear it? Our friend Skidder. Must have been while you were walking here, because all the televis turned on automatically-it was a general."

  "And-was anything specific suggested, Borg? About Sector Two, and Ganymede, and that sort of thing?"

  "Sure, general meeting tomorrow morning at ten. In the square. We're all supposed to go; I'll see you there, won't I?"

  "Yeah," said Lieutenant Caquer. "I'm afraid you will. I-I got to go, Borg."

  * * *

  Ron CAQUER knew what was wrong now. Also the last thing he wanted to do was stay around the station listening to Borgesen talking under the influence of-what seemed to be-a Vargas 'Wheel. Nothing else, nothing less, could have made police Lieutenant Borgesen talk as he had just talked. Professor Gordon's guess was getting righter every minute. Nothing else could have brought about such results.

  Caquer walked on blindly through the Jupiter lighted night, past the building in which his own apartment was. He did not want to go there either.

  The streets of Sector Three City seemed crowded for so late an hour of the evening. Late? He glanced at his watch and whistled softly. It was not evening any more. It was two o'clock in the morning, and normally the streets would have been utterly deserted.

  But they were not, tonight. People wandered about, alone or in small groups that walked together in uncanny silence. Shuffle of feet, but not even the whisper of a voice. Not even

  Whispers! Something about those streets and the people on them made Rod Caquer remember now, his dream of the night before. Only now he knew that it had not been a ream. Nor had it been sleepwalking, in the ordinary sense of the word.

  He had dressed. He had stolen out of the building. And the street lights had been out too, and that meant that employees of the service department had neglected their posts. They, like others, had been wandering with the crowds.

  "Kill-kill-kill-You hate them . . ."

  A shiver ran down Rod Caquer's spine as he realized the significance of the fact that last night's dream had been a reality. This was something that dwarfed into insignificance the murder of a petty book-and-reel shop owner.

  This was something which was gripping a city, something that could upset a world, something that could lead to unbelievable terror and carnage on a scale that hadn't been known since the Twenty-fourth Century. This-which had started as a simple murder case!

  Up ahead somewhere, Rod Caquer heard the voice of a nun addressing a crowd. A frenzied voice, shrill with fanaticism. He hurried his steps to the corner, and walked around it to find himself in the fringe of a crowd of people pressing around a man speaking from the top of a flight of steps.

  "-and I tell you that tomorrow is the day. Now we have the Regent himself with us, and it will be unnecessary to depose him. Men are working all night tonight, preparing. After the meeting in the square tomorrow morning, we shall-"

  "Hey!" Rod Caquer yelled. The man stopped talking and turned to look at Rod, and the crowd turned slowly, almost as one man, to stare at him.

  "You're under-"

  Then Caquer saw that this was but a futile gesture.

  It was not because of the man surging toward him that convinced him of this. He was not afraid of violence. He would have welcomed it as relief from uncanny terror, welcomed a chance to lay about him with the flat of his sword.

  But standing behind the speaker was a man in uniform-Brager. And Caquer remembered, then, that Borgesen, now in charge at the station, was on the other side. How could he arrest the speaker, when Borgesen, now in charge, would refuse to book him. And what good would it do to start a riot and cause injury to innocent people-people acting not under their own volition, but under the insidious influence Professor Gordon had described to him?

  Hand on his sword, he backed away. No one followed. Like automatons, they turned back to the speaker, who resumed his harangue, as though never interrupted. Policeman Brager had not moved, had not even looked in the direction of his superior officer. He alone of all those there had not turned at Caquer's challenge.

  Lieutenant Caquer hurri
ed on in the direction he had been going when he had heard the speaker. That way would take him back downtown. He would find a place open where he could use a visiphone, and call the Sector Coordinator. This was an emergency.

  And surely the scope of whoever had the Vargas Wheel had not yet extended beyond the boundaries of Sector Three.

  He found an all-night restaurant, open but deserted, the lights on but no waiters on duty, no cashier behind the counter. He stepped into the visiphone booth and pushed the button for a long-distance operator. She flashed into sight on the screen almost at once.

  "Sector Coordinator, Callisto City," Caquer said. "And rush it."

  "Sorry, sir. Out of town service suspended by order of the controller of Utilities, for the duration." "Duration of what?"

  "We are not permitted to give out information."

  Caquer gritted his teeth. Well, there was one someone who might be able to help him. He forced his voice to remain calm.

  "Give me Professor Gordon, University Apartments," he told the operator.

  "Yes, sir."

  But the screen stayed dark, although the little red button that indicated the buzzer was operating flashed on and off, for minutes.

  "There is no answer, sir."

  Probably Gordon and his daughter were asleep, too soundly asleep to hear the buzzer. For a moment, Caquer considered rushing over there. But it was on the other side of town, and of what help could they be? None, and Professor Gordon was a frail old man, and ill.

  No, he would have to-Again he pushed a button of the visiphone and a moment later was talking to the man in charge of the ship hangar.

  "Get out that little speed job of the Police Department," snapped Caquer. "Have it ready and I'll be there in a few minutes."

  "Sorry, Lieutenant," came the curt reply. "All outgoing power beams shut off, by special order. Everything's grounded for the emergency."

  He might have known it, Caquer thought. But what about the special investigator coming in from the Coordinator's office? "Are incoming ships still permitted to land?" he inquired.

  "Permitted to land, but not to leave again without special order," answered the voice.

  "Thanks," Caquer said. He clicked off the screen and went out into the dawn, outside. There was a chance, then. The special investigator might be able to help.

  But he, Rod Caquer would have to intercept him, tell him the story and its implications before he could fall, with the others, under the influence of the Vargas Wheel. Caquer strode rapidly toward the terminal. Maybe it was too late. Maybe his ship had already landed and the damage had been done.

  Again he passed a knot of people gathered about a frenzied speaker. Almost everyone must be under the influence by this time. But why had he been spared? Why was not he, too, under the evil influence?

  True, he must have been on the street on the way to the police station at the time Skidder had been on the air, but that didn't explain everything. All of these people could not have seen and heard that visicast. Some of them must have been asleep already at that hour.

  Also he, Rod Caquer, had been affected, the night before, the night of the whispers. He must have been under the influence of the wheel at the time he investigated the murder-the murders.

  Why, then, was he free now? Was he the only one, or were there others who had escaped, who were sane and their normal selves?

  If not, if he was the only one, why was he free? Or was he free?

  Could it be that what he was doing right now was under direction, was part of some plan?

  But no use to think that way, and go mad. He would have to carry on the best he could, and hope that things, with him, were what they seemed to be.

  Then he broke into a run, for ahead was the open area of the terminal, and a small space-ship, silver in the dawn, was settling down to land. A small official speedster-it must he the special investigator. He ran around the check-in building, through the gate in the wire fence and toward the ship, which was already down. The door opening.

  A small, wiry man stepped out and closed the door behind him. He saw Caquer and smiled.

  "You're Caquer?" he asked, pleasantly. "Coordinator’s office sent me to investigate a case you fellows are troubled with. My name-"

  Lieutenant Rod Caquer was staring with horrified fascination at the little man's well-known features, the all too familiar wart on the side of the little man's nose, listening for the announcement he knew this man was going to make "-is Willem Deem. Shall we go to your office?"

  * * *

  Such a thing as too much can happen to any man!

  Lieutenant Rod Caquer, Lieutenant of Police of Sector Three, Callisto, had experienced more than his share. How can you investigate the murder of a man who has been killed twice? How should a policeman act when the victim shows up, alive and happy, to help you solve the case?

  Not even when you know he is not there really-or if he is, he is not what your eyes tell you he is and is not saying what your ears hear.

  There is a point beyond which the human mind can no longer function sanely with proper sense as when they reach and pass that point, different people react in different ways.

  Rod Caquer's reaction was a sudden blind, red anger. Directed, for lack of a better object, at the special investigator-if he was the special investigator and not a hypnotic phantasm which wasn't there at all.

  Rod Caquer's list lashed out, and it met a chin. Which proved nothing except that if the little man who'd just stepped out of the speedster was an illusion, he was an illusion of touch as well as of sight. Rod's fist exploded on his chin like a rocket-blast, and the little man swayed and fell forward. Still smiling, because he had not had time to change the expression on his face.

  He fell face down, and then rolled over, his eyes closed but smiling gently up at the brightening sky.

  Shakily, Caquer bent down and put his hand against the front of the man's tunic. There was the thump of a heating heart, all right. For a moment, Caquer had feared he might have killed with that blow.

  And Caquer closed his eyes, deliberately, and felt the man's face with his hand-and it still felt like the face of Willem Deem looked, and the wart was there to the touch as well as to the sense of sight.

  Two men had run out of the check-in building and were coming across the field toward him. Rod caught the expression on their faces and then thought of the little speedster only a few paces from him. He had to get out of Sector Three City, to tell somebody what was happening before it was too late.

  If only they'd been lying about the outgoing power beam being shut off. He leaped across the body of the man he had struck and into the door of the speedster, jerked at the controls. But the ship did not respond, and no, they hadn't been lying about the power beam.

  No use staying here for a fight that could not possibly decide anything. He went out the door of the speedster, on the other side, away from the men coming toward him, and ran for the fence.

  It was electrically charged, that fence. Not enough to kill a man, but plenty to hold him stuck to it until men with rubber gloves cut the wire and took him off. But if the power beam was off, probably the current in the fence was off, too.

  It was too high to jump, so he took the chance. And the current was off. He scrambled over it safely and his pursuers stopped and went back to take care of the fallen man beside the speedster.

  Caquer slowed down to a walk, but he kept on going. He didn't know where, but he had somehow to keep moving. After a while he found that his steps were taking him toward the edge of town, on the northern side, toward Callisto City.

  But that was silly. He couldn't possibly walk to Callisto City and get there in less than three days. Even if he could walk across the intervening roadless desert at all. Besides, three days would be too late.

  He was in a small park near the north border when the significance, and the futility, of his direction carne to him. And he found, at the same time, that his muscles were sore and tired, that he had a raging
headache, that he could not keep on going unless he had a worthwhile and possible goal.

  He sank down on a park bench, and for a while his head was sunk in his hands. No answer came.

  After a while he looked up and saw something that fascinated him. A child's pinwheel on a stick, stuck in the grass of the park, spinning in the wind. Now fast, now slow, as the freeze varied.

  It was going in circles, like his mind was. How could a man's mind go other than in circles when he could not tell what was reality and what was illusion? Going in circles, like a Vargas Wheel.

  Circles.

  But there ought to be some way. A man with a Vargas Wheel was not completely invincible, else how had the council finally succeeded in destroying the few that had been made? True, possessors of the wheels would have cancelled each other out to some extent, but there must have been a last wheel, in someone's hands. Owned by someone who wanted to control the destiny of the solar system.

  But they had stopped the wheel.

  It could be stopped, then. But how? How, when one could not sec it? Rather, when the sight of it put a man so completely under its control that he no longer, after the first glimpse, knew that it was there because, on sight, it had captured his mind.

  He must stop the wheel. That was the only answer. But how?

  That pinwheel there could he the Vargas Wheel, for all he could tell, set to create the illusion that it was a child's toy. Or its possessor, wearing the helmet, might be standing on the path in front of him at this moment, watching him. The possessor of the wheel might be invisible because Caquer's mind was told not to see.

  But if the man was there, he'd be really there, and should Rod slash out with his sword, the menace would be ended, wouldn't it? Of course.

  But how to find a wheel that one could not see? That one could not see because--

  And then, still staring at the pinwheel, Caquer saw a chance, something that might work, a slender chance!