The Collection (54 page)

Bela Joad took another sip of his coffee and then leaned
forward. "Gyp Girard, according to your report, is now running a vitadrink
stand on the West Side; he hasn't committed a crime in almost a year—since he
beat your lie-detector." He touched another finger. "Joe Zatelli, who
used to be the roughest boy on the Near North Side, is now running his
restaurant straight. Carey Hutch. Wild Bill Wheeler— Why should I list them
all? You've got the list, and it's not complete because there are plenty of
names you haven't got on it, people who went to Ernie Chappel so he could show
them how to beat the detector, and then didn't get arrested after all. And nine
out of ten of them —and that's conservative, Dyer—
haven't committed a crime
since
!"

Dyer Rand said, "Go on. I'm listening."

"My original investigation of the Chappel case showed
me that he'd disappeared voluntarily. And I knew he was a good man, and a great
one. I knew he was mentally sound because he was a psychiatrist as well as a
criminologist. A psychiatrist's got to be sound. So I knew he'd disappeared for
some good reason.

"And when, about nine months ago, I heard your side of
what had been happening in Chicago, I began to suspect that Chappel had come
here to do his work. Are you beginning to get the picture?"

"Faintly."

"Well, don't faint yet. Not until you figure how an
expert psychiatrist can help crooks beat the detector. Or have you?"

"Well—"

"That's it. The most elementary form of hypnotic treatment,
something any qualified psychiatrist could do fifty years ago. Chappel's
clients—of course they don't know who or what he is; he's a mysterious
underworld figure who helps them beat the rap—pay him well and tell him what
crimes they may be questioned about by the police if they're picked up. He
tells them to include every crime they've ever committed and any racket they've
ever been in, so the police won't catch them up on any old counts. Then
he—"

"Wait a minute," Rand interrupted. "How does
he get them to trust him that far?"

Joad gestured impatiently. "Simple. They aren't confessing
a single crime, even to him. He just wants a list that includes everything
they've done. They can add some ringers and he doesn't know which is which. So
it doesn't matter.

"Then he puts them under light waking-hypnosis and
tells them they are not criminals and never have been and they have never done
any of the things on the list he reads back to them. That's all there is to it.

"So when you put them under the detector and ask them
if they've done this or that, they say they haven't and they believe it. That's
why your detector gauges don't register. That's why Joe Zatelli didn't jump
when he saw Martin Blue walk in. He didn't know Blue was dead—except that he'd
read it in the papers."

Rand leaned forward. "Where is Ernst Chappel?"

"You don't want him, Dyer."

"Don't want him? He's the most dangerous man alive
today!"

"To whom?"

"To whom? Are you crazy?"

"I'm not crazy. He's the most dangerous man alive today
—to the underworld. Look, Dyer, any time a criminal gets jittery about a
possible pinch, he sends for Ernie or goes to Ernie. And Ernie washes him
whiter than snow and in the process tells him he's not a criminal.

"And so, at least nine times out of ten, he quits being
a criminal. Within ten or twenty years Chicago isn't going to have an
underworld. There won't be any organized crimes by professional criminals.
You'll always have the amateur with you, but he's a comparatively minor detail.
How about some more
cafe royale
?"

Dyer Rand walked to the kitchenette and got it. He was wide
awake by now, but he walked like a man in a dream.

When he came back, Joad said, "And now that I'm in with
Ernie on it, Dyer, we'll stretch it to every city in the world big enough to
have an underworld worth mentioning. We can train picked recruits; I've got my
eye on two of your men and may take them away from you soon. But I'll have to
check them first. We're going to pick our apostles—about a dozen of them—very
carefully. They'll be the right men for the job."

"But, Joad, look at all the crimes that are going to go
unpunished!" Rand protested.

Bela Joad drank the rest of his coffee and stood up. He
said, "And which is more important—to punish criminals or to end crime?
And, if you want to look at it moralistically, should a man be punished for a
crime when he doesn't even remember committing it, when he is no longer a
criminal?"

Dyer Rand sighed. "You win, I guess. I'll keep my
promise. I suppose—I'll never see you again?"

"Probably not, Dyer. And I'll anticipate what you're
going to say next. Yes, I'll have a farewell drink with you. A straight one,
without the coffee."

Dyer Rand brought the glasses. He said, "Shall we drink
to Ernie Chappel?"

Bela Joad smiled. He said, "Let's include him in the
toast, Dyer. But let's drink to all men who work to put themselves out of work.
Doctors work toward the day when the race will be so healthy it won't need
doctors; lawyers work toward the day when litigation will no longer be necessary.
And policemen, detectives, and criminologists work toward the day when they
will no longer be needed because there will be no more crime."

Dyer Rand nodded very soberly and lifted his glass. They
drank.

The spaceship from
Andromeda II spun like a top in the grip of mighty forces. The five-limbed
Andromedan strapped into the pilot's seat turned the three protuberant eyes of
one of his heads toward the four other Andromedans strapped into bunks around
the ship. "Going to be a rough landing," he said. It was.

Elmo Scott hit the tab key of his typewriter and listened to
the carriage zing across and ring the bell. It sounded nice and he did it
again. But there still weren't any words on the sheet of paper in the machine.

He lit another cigarette and stared at it. At the paper,
that is, not the cigarette. There still weren't any words on the paper.

He tilted his chair back and turned to look at the sleek
black-and-tan Doberman pinscher lying in the mathematical middle of the rag
rug. He said, "You lucky dog." The Doberman wagged what little stump
of tail he had. He didn't answer otherwise.

Elmo Scott looked back at the paper. There still weren't any
words there. He put his fingers over the keyboard and wrote: "Now is the
time for all good men to come to the aid of the party." He stared at the
words, such as they were, and felt the faintest breath of an idea brush his
cheek.

He called out "Toots!" and a cute little brunette
in a blue gingham house dress came out of the kitchen and stood by him. His arm
went around her. He said, "I got an idea."

She read the words in the typewriter. "It's the best
thing you've written in three days," she said, "except for that
letter renewing your subscription to the Digest. I think that was better."

"Button your lip," Elmo told her. "I'm
talking about what I'm going to do with that sentence. I'm going to change it
to a science-fiction plot idea, one word at a time. It can't miss. Watch."

He took his arm from around her and wrote under the first
sentence: "Now is the time for all good Bems to come to the aid of the
party." He said, "Get the idea, Toots? Already it's beginning to look
like a science-fiction sendoff. Good old bug-eyed monsters. Bems to you. Watch
the next step."

Under the first sentence and the second he wrote. "Now
is the time for all good Bems to come to the aid of—" He stared at it.
"What shall I make it, Toots? 'The galaxy' or 'the universe'?"

"Better make it yourself. If you don't get a story finished
and the check for it in two weeks, we lose this cabin and walk back to the city
and—and you'll have to quit writing full time and go back to the newspaper
and—"

"Cut it out, Toots. I know all that. Too well."

"Just the same, Elmo, you'd better make it: 'Now is the
time for all good Bems to come to the aid of Elmo Scott.' "

The big Doberman stirred on the rag rug. He said, "You
needn't."

Both human heads turned toward him.

The little brunette stamped a dainty foot. "Elmo!"
she said. "Trying a trick like that. That's how you've been spending the time
you should have spent writing. Learning ventriloquism!"

"No, Toots," said the dog. "It isn't
that."

"Elmo! How do you get him to move his mouth like—"
Her eyes went from the dog's face to Elmo's and she stopped in mid-sentence. If
Elmo Scott wasn't scared stiff, then he was a better actor than Maurice Evans.
She said, "Elmo!" again, but this time her voice was a scared little
wail, and she didn't stamp her foot. Instead she practically fell into Elmo's
lap and, if he hadn't grabbed her, would probably have fallen from there to the
floor.

"Don't be frightened, Toots," said the dog.

Some degree of sanity returned to Elmo Scott. He said,
"Whatever you are, don't call my wife Toots. Her name is Dorothy."

"You call her Toots."

"That's—that's different."

"I see it is," said the dog. His mouth lolled open
as though he were laughing. "The concept that entered your mind when you
used that word 'wife' is an interesting one. This is a bisexual planet,
then."

Elmo said, "This is a —uh— What are you talking about?"

"On Andromeda II," said the dog, "we have
five sexes. But we are a highly developed race, of course. Yours is highly
primitive. Perhaps I should say lowly primitive. Your language has, I find,
confusing connotations; it is not mathematical. But, as I started to observe,
you are still in the bisexual stage. How long since you were mono-sexual? And
don't deny that you once were; I can read the word 'amoeba' in your mind."

"If you can read my mind," said Elmo, "why
should I talk?"

"Consider Toots—I mean Dorothy," said the dog.
"We cannot hold a three-way conversation since you two are not telepathic.
At any rate, there shall shortly be more of us in the conversation. I have
summoned my companions." He laughed again. "Do not let them frighten
you, no matter in what form they may appear. They are merely Bems."

"B-bems?" asked Dorothy. "You mean you are
b-bugeyed monsters? That's what Elmo means by Bems, but you aren't—"

"That is just what I am," said the dog. "You
are not, of course, seeing the real me. Nor will you see my companions as they
really are. They, like me, are temporarily animating bodies of creatures of
lesser intelligence. In our real bodies, I assure you, you would classify us as
Bems. We have five limbs each and two heads, each head with three eyes on
stalks."

"Where are your real bodies?" Elmo asked.

"They are dead— Wait, I see that word means more to you
than I thought at first. They are dormant, temporarily uninhabitable and in
need of repairs, inside the fused hull of a spaceship which was warped into
this space too near a planet. This planet. That's what wrecked us."

"Where? You mean there's really a spaceship near here?
Where?" Elmo's eyes were almost popping from his head as he questioned the
dog.

"That is none of your business, Earthman. If it were
found and examined by you creatures, you would possibly discover space travel
before you are ready for it. The cosmic scheme would be upset." He
growled. "There are enough cosmic wars now. We were fleeing a Betelgeuse
fleet when we warped into your space."

"Elmo," said Dorothy. "What's beetle juice
got to do with it? Wasn't this crazy enough before he started talking about a
beetle juice fleet?"

"No,” said Elmo resignedly. "It wasn't." For
a squirrel had just pushed its way through a hole in the bottom o1 the screen
door.

It said, "Hyah dar, yo-all. We uns got yo message,
One." "See what I mean?" said Elmo.

"Everything is all right, Four," said the
Doberman. "These people will serve our purpose admirably. Meet Elmo Scott
and Dorothy Scott; don't call her Toots."

"Yessir. Yessum. Ah's sho gladda meetcha."

The Doberman's mouth lolled open again in another laugh; it
was unmistakable this time.

"Perhaps I'd better explain Four's accent," he
said. "We scattered, each entering a creature of low mentality and from
that vantage point contacting the mind of some member of the ruling species,
learning from that mind the language and the level of intelligence and degree
of imagination. I take it from your reaction that Four has learned the
language from a mind which speaks a language differing slightly from
yours."

"Ah sho did," said the squirrel.

Elmo shuddered slightly. "Not that I'm suggesting it,
but I'm curious to know why you didn't take over the higher species
directly," he said.

The dog looked shocked. It was the first time Elmo had ever
seen a dog look shocked, but the Doberman managed it.

"It would be unthinkable," he declared. "The
cosmic ethic forbids the taking over of any creature of an intelligence over
the four level. We Andromedans are of the twenty-three level, and I find you
Earthlings—"

"Wait!" said Elmo. "Don't tell me. It might
give me an inferiority complex. Or would it?"

"Ah fears it might," said the squirrel.

The Doberman said, "So you can see that it is not
purely coincidence that we Bems should manifest ourselves to you who are a
writer of what I see you call science-fiction. We studied many minds and yours
was the first one we found capable of accepting the premise of visitors from
Andromeda. Had Four here, for example, tried to explain things to the woman
whose mind he studied, she would probably have gone insane."

"She sho would," said the squirrel.