The Metallic Muse (17 page)

guard saw them. A shout rang out, and a heavy flame rifle burned the air above their heads.

“It’s in a clearing in the woods,” Miriam gasped.

The flame rifle fired again and missed. They were running in darkness, but Sandler knew they had only seconds before the rolling meadow would be lighted. The shadows of trees loomed far ahead of them. They stumbled across the slight depression of a water course, and Sandler guided them along it.

“It gives us some cover,” he panted. “We’d better spread out. Running together we’re too good a target. Miriam first.”

They separated, running in single file along the water course. Trees loomed ahead of them.

The flame rifle snapped again, slicing between Sandler and Worrel. Sandler stopped, fired carefully, and heard a cry. He fired again, and shouts of alarm sounded behind him. “Slowed them down,” he thought, and ran on.

Lights glowed suddenly, bathing the meadow in naked brilliance. Beams from a dozen rifles crackled about them. Miriam’s piercing scream cut across the night, and Sandler flung himself to the ground and methodically cut down the silhouetted pursuers. He moved on a moment later and found Miriam bending over Worrel’s prostrate figure.

“Go on,” Worrel whispered urgently. “Don’t worry about me. Go on!”

Without a word Sandler picked up the little musician and led Miriam into the safety of the trees. He carried Worrel gently, ignoring the gushing blood and the gaping emptiness that had been his right side.

They reached the air car. Sandler carefully placed Worrel on a seat, and Miriam bent over him with tears in her eyes as Sandler took the controls.

“No good at this sort of thing,” Worrel whispered. “Gun in my hand scares me stiff. See what my filthy money brings me? Sordid end of a sordid beginning. One less glob of scum on the troubled face of time.”

“Don’t talk,” Miriam pleaded.

“You should have left me there,” Sandler said bitterly. “You two hadn’t done anything wrong. You could have kept on looking. Now you’ll be hunted along with me.”

Worrel’s words were pain-wracked sobs. “Needed you. Couldn’t pull it off ourselves. I don’t count, except for money. You two will make it.”

Sandler brushed his hand across his wet eyes and lied bravely. “Nonsense. You’ll make it.”

“Sordid end of a sordid beginning.” Worrel lurched forward. “If you make it—if you find One eighty-seven—take my ashes with you. Promise!”

“You’ll make it right along with us,” Sandler said.

“Promise!”

“Of course. But you’ll make it.”

Marty Worrel was dead when they reached the space port. They landed by their ship, and Sandler raced up the ramp with Worrel’s dead body, wrenched open the sealed air lock, and hurried to the controls. Police cars were swarming down on the port, and they lifted just as officers and guards were fanning out to approach the ship.

Sandler busied himself for hours with a complex, zigzag course that would evade detection. Finally he relaxed and turned to Miriam.

“Maybe they don’t know you were involved in that mess. I can drop you off somewhere, and you can find a new identity for yourself. The longer you’re with me, the less chance you’ll have.”

She shook her head. “Pronna. Marty would have wanted it that way.”

“Yes,” he said. “I suppose so.” He took her hand and stroked it gently. She attracted him as no woman had ever attracted him, and yet—

“You’re a brave woman,” he said, and added quickly, to be quite safe, “sister.”

She smiled wanly. “No. You’re a brave man. Maybe a little reckless, but brave.”

They slipped in on the night side of Pronna and landed in a forest clearing. For an exorbitant fee a village mortician cremated Marty Worrel’s body and asked no questions. Miriam found lodgings in the village, and Sandler turned most of Worrel’s money over to her.

“If I don’t come back,” he said, “forget about the ship. Forget about One eighty-seven. Forget about me. Go off to the other side of the galaxy and make a new life for yourself.”

“You’ll come back,” she said. “And I’ll be waiting.” It took Sandler three days to make his way halfway around the planet to the capital city. It took him only twenty minutes, under the cover of darkness, to make his way into the sector commissioner’s sprawling residence. His fiendish efficiency amused him. “Getting to be an expert at this sort of thing,” he told himself grimly.

He cornered a frightened servant, got detailed information about the house, and left the servant in a closet, bound and gagged. He found the commissioner’s bedroom, awoke the old man, and blinded him with a light.

“I mean no harm to you or anyone else,” he said softly. “I want information.”

“You pick an irregular way asking for it,” the commissioner said testily. “Can we sit down and talk peacefully or do you have to blind me?”

Sandler turned his light aside, locked the door, and flipped on the room lights. The commissioner stopped rubbing his eyes and studied Sandler curiously. He was a small man, with a grotesquely wrinkled face and a shining bald head, but there was lively alertness, almost humor, in his dark eyes.

“Thomas Jefferson Sandler,” he chuckled. “I’ve been averaging one bulletin a month on you for years. I suppose I should have expected this.” He got to his feet and ceremoniously indicated a chair. “Please be seated. And put the gun away. I know you mean well, but I can’t help thinking those things are known to go off accidentally.”

Sandler pocketed his pistol, seated himself, and watched alertly while the commissioner slipped into a robe. He took the chair opposite Sandler and smiled at him benevolently.

“You interest me, Thomas Jefferson Sandler. I’m pleased that you took the trouble to call on me.”

“Planet One eighty-seven,” Sandler said. “What is it and where is it?”

The commissioner shook his head. “I don’t know. I believe I can safely say that no one knows. Such records as were kept were all in the files of the Ministry of Public Welfare on Earth, and my confidential information is that they were destroyed years ago.”

‘Tve heard so many lies,” Sandler said wearily. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

Commissioner Novin held up his hand. “No truth serum, please. On my word as a sector commissioner, and a galactic citizen, and a fellow human being, that is the truth.”

“I’ve learned that violence doesn’t really solve anything, so I’ll believe you. I’ll offer you my thanks and apologies and leave.”

“Oh, don’t go,” the commissioner exclaimed. “I don’t know about planet One eighty-seven, but I may be able to help you. As I said, you interest me. By profession I’m a psychologist, and I’ve been following your career carefully. I’ve also studied the problem of what you probably call the space-orphans. I have my ways of finding out things, and I know somewhat more about the matter than the authorities on Earth. My position out here places me much closer to the problem. Sit down, please, and I’ll tell you what I know.”

Suspecting a trap, hand clutching the pistol in his pocket, Sandler sat down.

“I believe some background information is in order,” Commissioner Novin said. “Among us humans, fads are peculiar things. Sometimes they are mildly eccentric, and sometimes they reach the point of absolute mania. At the present time, for example, large families are something of a fad among the wealthy. One measure of a man’s success in life is the number of children he has. It is also a measure of a woman’s adequacy as a wife. The fad is a mild one, treated somewhat humorously but nevertheless sincerely. Perhaps you’ve encountered it yourself.”

“In recent years I’ve had very little social contact with wealthy families,” Sandler said dryly.

“I consider this fad to be a direct reaction to a fad of roughly twenty to forty years ago in which women considered it a very real stigma to bear even one child. That fad did reach the point of mania and resulted in a craze for adopted children. Fortunately for the human race it was a passing thing, and it never touched the lower classes at all. It was not even pursued by a majority of the upper classes, but only by a small, closely knit, socially select group that centered in the Earth sector. The unfortunate consequences resulted from the fact that the group had financial and political influence all out of proportion to its numbers.

“The craze for adopted children quickly exhausted the supply, and political pressures resulted. The Ministry of Public Welfare set up a special department and began to search the galaxy for children available for adoption. And it encountered a stubborn obstacle. The well-organized, civilized planets had their own laws concerning such children, and they flatly refused to permit meddling by the Ministry of Public Welfare. The situation grew more critical, and the political pressure became enormous. And finally a solution was found. Do you mind if I smoke?”

Sandler shook his head. The commissioner produced a bulging cigar from the pocket of his gown, lit it, and waved it at Sandler, who was listening intently.

“The solution,” the commissioner said, “was simple. The Federation is constantly expanding and constantly discovering new, inhabited planets. The people of many of those planets have at best a primitive civilization. A high percentage of them could be termed ‘savages.’ We don’t need to go into the conflicting migration and evolution theories which try to account for the presence of humans on these newly discovered planets. The point is, humans are constantly being discovered and many of them are living under rather primitive conditions. Where there were no obvious difficulties, such as distinctive racial characteristics or an apparent low level of intelligence, children from these planets were—taken.”

“Stolen?” Sandler gasped.

“If you like. ‘Appropriated’ is a more apt term, with the government proceeding as though it had a legal right to such action. The children were transported to Earth, educated to the normal level of a civilized child of their age, and distributed to the adoption crazed wealthy.”

“Inhuman!” Sandler muttered.

“Decidedly. I was, for a time, local administrator on one of those planets, and one day a converted battle cruiser dropped down on us with a skeleton detachment of pediatricians and nurses and orders from highest authority. They processed the native children carefully, picked out a shipload, and left.” He pointed his cigar at Sandler. “They did it kindly, I suppose, but never as long as I live will I forget the plight of those unfortunate parents. Ships dropped in periodically as long as I remained on that planet.”

“Inhuman,” Sandler muttered again.

“Governments frequently tend to become inhuman. So do laws. The Federation Government is a huge, complicated, impersonal thing. Supposing a need for a certain metal develops. The government locates a planet rich in that metal that has a primitive population and literally strips it. Later, when the planet develops a technology and its own need for the metal, the supply is exhausted. This stripping of a helpless planet of its natural resources was called ‘colonial exploitation’ by the ancients. It was done frequently, and it’s still being done.”

He blew a cloud of smoke in the general direction of the ceiling and said slowly, looking intently at Sandler and weighing every word, “In the eyes of the government, those children were just another natural resource, there for the taking.”

Sandler managed to control his anger and keep his voice steady. “Up until now I’ve regretted the murders I’ve had to commit. But no longer.”

“Ah! But those you murdered were in no way responsible for the crime. The craze for adopted children waned long ago, and eventually government officials began to foresee unfortunate long-range consequences. The exploitation was halted, but that did not eradicate its terrible impact on native populations. Some native parents, after being deprived of one child after another, stopped having children. And today, some of those planets are almost depopulated.”

A violent pounding shook the door, and Sandler leaped to his feet. The servant babbled hysterically, and the commissioner shouted, “All right. Go to bed. I’ll tell the police myself in the morning.”

Sandler took a deep breath and resumed his seat. “That still doesn’t explain all the secrecy over this.”

“Politics,” the commissioner said. “Sordid politics. The Expansionist Party has been in power for more than a hundred and seventy-five years. It intends to remain in Power indefinitely. Its margin has always been comfortable but never overwhelming, and now some of these exploited planets are approaching the point where they must be given full membership in the Federation. The Expansionist Party must admit them, because to refuse would be to abandon its own principles. It would certainly lead to defeat. On the other hand, if all the details of that miserable exploitation were made public, the opposition would certainly control those new planets, and a good many of the old would turn against the Expansionists. A party power for a hundred and seventy-five years becomes firmly entrenched. It develops ways of silencing criticism. It permits opposition—it has to—but only up to a point. So the adoption scandal has been suppressed, and the Expansionists will go to any extreme to keep it that way.”

“Even murder,” Sandler said. “You may not believe it, but my career in crime started back on Earth when the government tried to have me murdered.”

“Not the government. The Expansionist Party. What you were doing couldn’t have harmed the government.”

“I’m grateful for your information. Now I’m able to understand why I’m a space-orphan, but that doesn’t help me to find planet One eighty-seven.”

“This might,” the commissioner said. “The Expansionist Party has already been defeated. It doesn’t realize it, yet but the next election, or the one after that, will bring us a new government. A number of those planets are in my sector, and during the past few years—in fact, ever since that odd ‘Homing Song’ went around the galaxy—space orphans have been coming home by the thousand. They’ve dropped everything, wherever they were, and come home. Some even left wives or husbands and children.”

“How did they know where their homes were?” Sandler demanded.

“As a psychologist, I find that question intriguing. How did they know? I’ve talked with many of them, and they did not even go so far as to discover their planet number. They simply decided to come home. On the other hand, others, such as you, have searched widely about the galaxy without a glimmer of an idea as to where their home planet might be. Can you account for that?”