Fredric Brown - The Second Fredric Brown Megapack

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 man 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 the men 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 hurried 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 bounoes 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 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 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 be 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 opened.

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?”

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, and 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 fist 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.