The Metallic Muse (15 page)

Sandler had circled the place a dozen times during the afternoon, gaping like an awed tourist while he made plans. He’d expended a small fortune in air cab fares, riding back and forth to catch a passing glimpse of the mansion. He had prowled the neighborhood to set up alternate escape routes.

But he felt more determined than confident as he stood on Centaurian Avenue and watched the ground cab speed away. It was shortly before midnight, but the artificial “moons” that dotted the sky over Galaxia bathed the spacious avenue in light. He shouldered his heavy bag and hurried toward the minister’s residence.

He reached the wall and crouched there under a steady whir of air traffic, seeking a shadow where there was none. From his bag he took a heavy, triangular-shaped building stone and tossed it so that its looping trajectory just cleared the wall. Then he raced along the street, tossing stones as he ran and hoping that at least one of them would trigger the mansion’s alarm system. As he turn into Solar Avenue he could hear a gong booming faintly far away. He ran frantically, reached the far corner of the wall, and hauled himself up on the clinging vines.

On the other side he slid to the ground and sprinted for the cover of weird-looking, spiral-leaved shrubs. Men were dashing about at the other end of the grounds, and the shouts reached him faintly. He heard the excited yelp of a dog. Crouching, he ran from shrub to shrub and finally hurled himself into the tall, sprawling density of a flower bed. The flowers were of some exotic species, and they were in full bloom. The heavy sweet scent overpowered and stifled him, and he lay gasping for breath.

The alarm continued to sound. More men arrived, and a squadron of patrol cars swooped down and landed in open space near the mansion. Sandler kept his head down, sank his fingers into the rich, moist soil, and waited.

His racing pulse counted off the minutes. Then the alarm stopped suddenly. Two of the searchers came trudging back and met a third man near the gate.

“Some idiot threw stones over the wall,” one of them said.

The patrol cars lifted gracefully, one at a time, circled, and moved off in formation. Other men came straggling back in twos and threes. There was more grumbling conversation as they disappeared around the corner of the mansion.

A sentry resumed his plodding circuit of the grounds. With his head raised cautiously above the flowers, Sandler timed his movements and began planning a route of approach.

His first sprint carried him across twenty feet of open lawn to the cover of a large tree. He moved in spurts separated by maddening intervals of crouched waiting. After forty minutes of cautious maneuvering he was huddled in the scant shadow of a flowering bush studying a balcony that extended out over an artistically landscaped terrace. At one side, flowering vines wove their way up a metal framework. Sandler watched the sentry and waited.

The sentry moved out of sight behind the building. Sandler ran, leaped, and hauled himself up the vines. Thorns stabbed at him, ripping his hands and clothing. He stumbled across the balcony and tried the door. It opened easily. He stepped through, closed it silently, and squinted into the darkness.

Suddenly a beam of light struck him full in the face, blinding him. “All right, Fritz. See if he’s armed,” a crisp voice said.

Sandler closed his eyes and stood with fists clenched. Hands moved expertly over his body, spun him around roughly, and removed his pistol. The room lights came on, and Sandler saw three men watching him alertly. Two of them had flame pistols leveled unwaveringly at his stomach.

The crisp voice spoke again. “You’re a patient man, friend. But then—so am I. I’ve been watching you for the last half-hour.” He turned to the others. “I can handle him. I’ll call you if I need you.”

The door closed behind them, and he gestured with his pistol. “Now, then. You will sit down there and place your hands on the table. Right. Jan Vildson is my name. Minister of Public Welfare. And you are Thomas Jefferson Sandler. What can I do for you?”

The minister was an elderly man, but swarthy, robust-looking, and without a touch of gray in his black hair. He looked a youthful sixty-five and could have been fifteen years older.

“You surprise me,” Sandler said boldly. “You hardly look like a scoundrel.”

“I was thinking the same about you, young man. I known you for longer than you think. I knew your adopted father well. He had high hopes for you. On your performance of the past two days I’d say you were quite capable of fulfilling his hopes. You show a commendable determination. It’s a pity you squander it on trivialities.”

“If my objective is so trivial,” Sandler said, “why is the government going to such extremes to make me fail?”

The minister seated himself on the opposite side of the wide table and laid his pistol in front of him. “Trivial or not, your objective is certainly futile. The information you want was destroyed years ago—long before I became Minister of Public Welfare.”

“The planet of my origin is clearly indicated on my record card.”

“The planet’s number is indicated. The number refers to a list of several hundred planets from which orphan children were taken for adoption. The number has no meaning without that list, and all copies of the list have been destroyed.”

“Why was the list destroyed?”

The minister shook his head slowly. “Perhaps for the most noble of reasons, perhaps for stupid bureaucratic expediency, perhaps for criminal reasons—though I don’t know what they could have been. It doesn’t matter. We can’t undo it now, we can’t undestroy something that’s been destroyed. I’m sincere, and everyone else has been sincere, in telling you to forget the whole business.”

He paused, and Sandler waited silently.

“Now here is what I suggest,” the minister went on. “You’re in trouble, but it isn’t serious trouble. I believe I can arrange to keep the whole affair quiet. I’ll see that you get to the port and onto an outgoing ship. There will be no police report on your performance of this evening. After all, you are the son of an old friend. What do you say?”

“Will you answer a few questions?” “Gladly, if I have the answers.” “The Department of Public Censorship is under your control, isn’t it?” “It is.”

“Why have you banned performances of the ‘Homing Song’?”

The minister looked puzzled. “The ‘Homing Song’?

Banned?”

“Bad for public morale. Or so your censors say.”

“I’ve heard the song. Who hasn’t? But I don’t recall anything—banned, you say? I’ll have to look into that.”

“Banned without public notice. I was arrested for asking a professional performer to sing it.”

The minister shook his head perplexedly.

“What government official gave the order to have me murdered?” Sandler asked. “Was it you?”

The minister slowly rose to his feet. “Murdered? Someone ordered you murdered?”

“I was fired on from an air car. Fortunately I ducked in time, but it made a mess of my hotel room.”

The minister dropped back into his chair. “That’s not true,” he protested. “It can’t be true.”

Sandler dove across the table and seized the pistol. He regained his seat, breathing heavily, and held the weapon under the table. “If your men check, you’ll tell them everything is under control.”

The minister had a hurt expression on his face. “You tricked me. I’ve tried to be nice to you, Sandler. I’ve given you every consideration—”

“Shut up!” Sandler snapped. “I’m a nobody, and I dont expect special consideration. However important my foster father may have been, I’m a nobody. All I want to do is go home. Why is the Federation Government determined to do anything in its power, legal and illegal, up to and including murder, to keep me from doing that? Why would it prefer me dead rather than answer questions about my home planet?”

“You shouldn’t make such reckless accusations. Why would the government want to kill you?”

“No one outside the government cares what I do. I haven’t any other enemies, and it isn’t coincidence that my arrest and the attempted murder came immediately after I started these inquiries. Now—the planet’s number is One eighty-seven. What is it, and where is it?”

“I told you the truth. To the best of my knowledge, there isn’t a copy of that list in existence.”

Sandler loosened his shirt and gripped the hypodermic syringe he had taped to his arm. “I’ve had enough of your kind of truth. Now I want my kind. Bare your arm please.”

The minister straightened up in alarm. “What’s that you have?”

‘Truth serum. I mean you no harm, but I’m going have the truth if I have to kill you to get it.”

“You don’t believe me?” the minister croaked, frightened eyes focused on the needle. “Think of it. Old T.J.‘s son calling me a liar. Do you know, Sandler, I held you on my lap when you weren’t more than six years old?”

The screen on the far wall flickered to life. One of the minister’s guards glanced at them suspiciously. “Everything all right, sir?”

Sandler’s hand tensed on the pistol.

“Everything’s all right,” the minister said weakly, the screen darkened.

Sandler rounded the table and stood waiting. “Bare your arm,” he ordered.

“That’s dangerous,” the minister protested. He looked at Sandler’s face, shrugged, and slipped out of his coat. “If that’s all that will satisfy you—”

He rolled up his sleeve, and Sandler inexpertly jabbed the needle into his arm. He walked back to his chair and tossed the syringe under the table.

He watched the minister anxiously, wishing he’d got more information from the doctor. He hadn’t any idea how much time the serum might require to take effect. The minister leaned back in his chair, eyes closed, breathing deeply.

Finally Sandler asked, “What is planet One eighty seven?”

“Don’t know. List—destroyed.” “Who would have a copy of the list?” “Destroyed—long ago.” “Why was the list destroyed?”

The minister doubled up suddenly, clutching both hands to his heart. His breath came in whistling gasps, his face was white and taut, and his teeth were clenched in searing agony. Sandler dashed around the table and bent over him in alarm.

He remembered belatedly that he had casually asked the doctor for a maximum dose of truth serum—and that a maximum dose might be too much for a man of eighty. It was too much. The minister was dying.

Sandler hurried to the balcony and looked out across the grounds. The sentry was not in sight. He slid quickly to the ground and ran. There was no time to worry about taking cover. He reached the wall and was going over the top when a light flashed in the balcony’s open door. At the same time the alarm gong boomed urgently.

Sandler drove himself in merciless, headlong flight for two long blocks to an air train station. He hurtled down the moving escalator stairs, thrust a token into the turnstile, and pushed through, glancing anxiously at the clock. He had spent an hour, that afternoon, memorizing train schedules. He was waiting on the right platform twenty-five seconds later when a train glided smoothly to a stop. He boarded it, transferred at the next station, and rode the trains until dawn, leaving a meandering, criss-crossing trail through subterranean Galaxia.

He spent the day in a squalid hotel, and that evening he wove another meandering trail out to the port. He collected his belongings, and with the wile of a veteran spacer stowed away on a lumbering ore freighter that lifted at midnight for Mars. The freighter’s crew smuggled him past Mars Customs, and he bought forged identity papers and shipped as a common spacer on a ship outward bound from the Solar System.

Thomas Jefferson Sandler III drifted slowly across the galaxy, a derelict caught in weirdly eccentric currents. He shipped as a spacer when he found a post. He stowed away. Once he joined a hopeful group of immigrants in their cramped quarters. He piloted a cargo of smuggled gold from Lamruth to Emmoy. On Kilfton he was recognized, and he killed two guards in escaping.

Or perhaps they recovered. He never heard what happened to them, or cared.

Twice he encountered Marty Worrel, but he cautiously kept his distance. The little musician had a pronounced talent for fomenting disturbances—as on Hillan, where he Sat up on a table in a crowded tavern and sang his “Homing Song.” Sandler made a hurried exit before the police appeared. He could not risk being associated with any kind of disturbance.

He drifted on, moving always outward from Earth, following the long axis of the galaxy. In Sector 187 he invaded the private residence of the Sector Commissioner, thinking that the number on his identification card might refer to sector rather than to planet. The commissioner persisted in his declarations of ignorance with Sandler’s fingers about his throat. Sandler left him unconscious, stowed away once more, and drifted onward. He waylaid a dozen sector Chiefs of Public Welfare. He attempted to bribe government officials, and he threatened them with violence and sudden death, and he learned nothing.

The months drifted by and became years. Sandler moved from planet to planet, searching for a color of sky, for anything that would match his few blurred recollections of home. Hot worlds and cold, wet worlds and dry, he studied them hopefully from an observation port, wandered their surfaces until disillusion seized him, and then left without a backward glance.

Three years after leaving Earth, he stood staring at a dingy, gray face of one more planet as his ship flashed downward, and he felt depressed. Usually a new planet offered some hope, but not this one. Twisting clouds of dust erupted and slowly spread their heavy film across its surface. It was Stanruth: barren, lifeless, waterless world, but a world rich in minerals, so there was a colony, and there were humans who sought wealth, and found it or failed to find it, and fled homeward. No one would call Stanruth “home.”

“But then—who can say?” Sandler muttered. Some day perhaps children born on that blighted planet might see it as a place of beauty.

The barren loam

Of any home

Is flower-crowned.

To Sandler, it was no more than a steppingstone that he must touch in passing. It was one strange world of many in the weary fabric of his existence, of his coming and going, of his hiding, of his seeking and not finding.