The Collection (61 page)
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!
He looked quickly at his wrist
watch and saw that it was half past nine which was one half hour before the
demonstration in the square. And the wheel and its owner would be there,
surely.
His aching muscles forgotten,
Lieutenant Rod Caquer started to run back toward the center of town. The
streets were deserted. Everyone had gone to the square, of course. They had
been told to come.
He was winded after a few
blocks, and had to slow down to a rapid walk, but there would be time for him
to get there before it was over, even if he missed the start.
Yes, he could get there all
right. And then, if his idea worked. . .
It was almost ten when he passed
the building where his own office was situated, and kept on going. He turned in
a few doors beyond. The elevator operator was gone, but Caquer ran the elevator
up and a minute later he had used his picklock on a door and was in Perry
Peters' laboratory.
Peters was gone, of course, hut
the goggles were there, the special goggles with the trick windshield-wiper
effect that made them usable in radite mining.
Rod Caquer slipped them over his
eyes, put the motive-power battery into his pocket, and touched the button on
the side. They worked. He could see dimly as the wipers flashed back and forth.
But a minute later they stopped.
Of course. Peters had said that
the shafts heated and expanded after a minute's operation. Well, that might not
matter. A minute might be long enough, and the metal would have cooled by the
time he reached the square.
But he would have to be able to
vary the speed. Among the litter of stuff on the workbench, he found a small
rheostat and spliced it in one of the wires that ran from the battery to the
goggles.
That was the best he could do.
No time to try it out. He slid the goggles up onto his forehead and ran out
into the hall, took the elevator down to street level. And a moment later he
was running toward the public square, two blocks away.
He reached the fringe of the
crowd gathered in the square looking up at the two balconies of the Regency
building. On the lower one were several people he recognized; Dr. Skidder,
Walther Johnson. Even Lieutenant Borgesen was there.
On the higher balcony, Regent
Maxon Barr was alone, and was speaking to the crowd below. His sonorous voice
rolled out phrases extolling the might of empire. Only a little distance away,
in the crowd, Caquer caught sight of the gray hair of Professor Gordon, and
Jane Gordon
'
s golden head beside it. He wondered if they were under
the spell, too. Of course they were deluded also or they would not be there. He
realized it would be useless to speak to them, then, and tell them what he was
trying to do.
Lieutenant Caquer slid the
goggles down over his eyes, blinded momentarily because the wiper arms were in
the
wrong
position. But his fingers found the rheostat, set at zero, and
began to move it slowly around the dial toward maximum.
And then, as the wipers began
their frantic dance and accelerated, he could see dimly. Through the arc-shaped
lenses, he looked around him. On the lower balcony he saw nothing unusual, but
on the upper balcony the figure of Regent Barr suddenly blurred.
There was a man standing there
on the upper balcony wearing a strange-looking helmet with wires and atop the
helmet was a three-inch wheel of mirrors and prisms.
A wheel that stood still,
because of the stroboscopic effect of the mechanized goggles. For an instant,
the speed of those wiper arms was synchronized with the spinning of the wheel,
so that each successive glimpse of the wheel showed it in the same position,
and to Caquer's eyes the wheel stood still, and he could see it.
Then the goggles jammed.
But he did not need them any
more now.
He knew that Barr Maxon, or
whoever stood up there on the balcony, was the wearer of the wheel.
Silently, and attracting as
little attention as possible, Caquer sprinted around the fringe of the crowd
and reached the side door of the Regency building.
There was a guard on duty there.
"
Sorry, sir, but
no one
'
s allowed-
"
Then he tried to duck, too late.
The flat of Police Lieutenant Rod Caquer's shortsword thudded against his head.
The inside of the building
seemed deserted. Caquer ran up the three flights of stairs that would take him
to the level of the higher balcony, and down the hall toward the balcony door.
He burst through it, and Regent
Maxon turned. Maxon now, no longer wore the helmet on his head. Caquer had lost
the goggles, but whether he could see it or not, Caquer knew the helmet and the
wheel were still in place and working, and that this was his one chance.
Maxon turned and saw Lieutenant
Caquer's face, and his drawn sword.
Then, abruptly, Maxon's figure
vanished. It seemed to Caquer-although he knew that it was not-that the figure
before him was that of Jane Gordon. Jane, looking at him pleadingly, and spoke
in melting tones.
"Rod, don't-" she
began to say.
But it was not Jane, he knew. A
thought, in self-preservation, had been directed at him by the manipulator of
the Vargas Wheel.
Caquer raised his sword, and he
brought it down hard.
Glass shattered and there was
the ring of metal on metal, as his sword cut through and split the helmet.
Of course it was not Jane
now-just a dead man lying there with blood oozing out of the split in a strange
and complicated, but utterly shattered, helmet. A helmet that could now be seen
by everyone there, and by Lieutenant Caquer himself.
Just as everyone, including
Caquer, himself, could recognize the man who had worn it.
He was a small, wiry man, and
there was an unsightly wart on the side of his nose.