Hellflower (1957)

by George O. Smith

  Norma’s needling and goading had been hard enough to bear. Her in-between offers of affection had been less difficult because she had not made an attractive picture in the first place and she had not let him forget her attitude in the second. But he realized that she was a smart enough woman; if anything, having her emotional balance dulled had put her in a rather interesting class of intellects. She was able to analyze a situation without being involved emotionally herself in the analysis. She was smart enough and unencumbered enough to realize that playing soft-pedal on the hate theme might eventually get her what she needed.

  He was willing to bet his spare money that the boxes she was now receiving contained whatever could be purchased of the most seductive clothing she could find. And included in that basic idea was, most likely, a sharp appreciation of what Farradyne would consider exciting. Acres of exposed skin or rank nudity would pall on him. He knew it and he bet she knew it, too. So she would come out with some little items that might cover her from toe to chin in such a way as to make him wonder about what was underneath: probably simple stuff with a lot of line and fine fit and a semi-transparent quality that compelled the eye. If she coupled this program with a soft voice as she was most likely to do now that she had shucked the sleazy costume, Norma Hannon would be well nigh irresistible. And if she even once got the idea that Farradyne felt protective about her or angry at the man who doped her, she would see to it that she stopped raving at him. It would demolish the barrier completely. Before this happened, he had to park her somewhere that would be binding. Had she parents? Friends?

  He hit the control panel with his fist. He hated to think of it, but he might be able to drop her in one of the sanatoriums that had been set up for love lotus addicts. They did little good for the victims, but did serve to keep them out of other people’s hair—and he had to get rid of her.

  It should be parents first Farradyne’s forefinger hit the radio button viciously. “Tower? Connect me to the city telephone.”

  “Aye-firm, Lancaster. Wait five.”

  A few seconds later he was asking for the Bennington Detective Agency, an outfit that was system-wide and which advertised enough to make him remember the name. He got a receptionist first and then a quiet-voiced man named Lawson.

  Farradyne came to the point. “I want any information you can collect about the family of a man named Frank Hannon who was killed in the wreck of the Semiramide in The Bog, on Venus, four years ago.”

  “You’re Charles Farradyne. The same Farradyne?”

  “Maybe, but is that important?”

  “It might be but it will be held confidential. I’m asking because we prefer to know the motives of clients. I’d like reassurance that our investigation will be made for a legal reason.”

  “I’ll put it this way. I know Frank Hannon was killed in the wreck. I have reason to believe that he had a sister that disappeared afterwards. If this is true, I want to know, but I haven’t time to find out through the usual channels. Fact of the matter is, I want no more information than I could get myself if I had time to go pawing through issues of newspapers of four years ago. No more. Is this reasonable enough?”

  “It sounds that way. I’ll look through our list of missing persons. I suggest that you either call back in a couple of hours or better that you call in person here at my office. There will be no charge for the initial search, but if this evolves into something more concrete—well, we can discuss the matter when you call. All right?”

  “It’s okay and I’ll be in your office at four o’clock.”

  Farradyne hung up and considered. If Norma Hannon had a couple of grieving parents, he could hand her over to them and that would be the end of that. He lit a cigarette and smoked for a moment and then got up from the control console, snapped all the switches off and started for the space-lock.

  He met Norma in the salon. She had changed from her white, silky, wide-skirted thing into a heavy satin housecoat that molded her arms to the wrists, clung to her waist and breasts and throat, and outlined her hips and thighs. Bare feet and painted toenails were provocatively visible below the hem as she sat there with her legs crossed, tossing her foot up and down.

  “Thought we were about to take off again?” she asked. Her voice was soft and personal and friendly. She had obviously dropped the vindictive tones and was plying the affectionate line as smoothly as she could.

  Farradyne shook his head. Having a plan of action made him feel better. “Got a call from the Tower,” he said. “More business. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

  Norma held up her hand for his cigarette and he gave it to her. She puffed deeply and offered it back. Farradyne refused it. The memory of her needling and her desire for violence had not had time to fade. Another twenty hours of this calmness and he would begin to look upon the sharing of a cigarette as a pleasant gesture of companionship.

  Norma shrugged at his wave of the hand in refusal. “I’ll be here when you get back,” she said comfortably, wriggling down against the cushions, and giving him the benefit of an inviting smile. She looked for all the world like a woman who would be waiting patiently for her man to return to her.

  Farradyne left the salon swearing under his breath. If this parking of her did not work, Farradyne was licked and he knew it.

  Farradyne walked. He didn’t like walking but he preferred it to remaining in the Lancaster with Norma for the next couple of hours. He tried to think, but he could not come to any conclusion because he had all his hope tied on the Bennington outfit and what they might turn up.

  He was shown into the office of Peter Lawson, who was a bright-eyed, elderly man with a body surprisingly lithe for his years.

  “Now, before we go any further,” said Lawson, pleasantly, “I’d like to hear your reasons for becoming interested in this case.”

  Farradyne nodded. “As I told you, Frank Hannon was killed in an accident on a spacecraft I owned. That was four years ago. Recently I met Norma Hannon in a gin mill on Ganymede and she fastened onto me like a leech as a person to hate. You know the results of love lotus addiction?”

  “Yes. Unfortunately, I do.”

  “Well, it occurred to me that one way of getting rid of Miss Hannon would be to turn her over to some relative or friend who would be deeply interested in her welfare. Does this add up?”

  “Quite logical. Miss Hannon is where you can find her?”

  Farradyne nodded, with a sour look on his face. “She’s sitting in my salon waiting for me to come back so she can bait me some more.”

  “Why not just turn her over to the police?” asked Law-son, with a careful look at Farradyne.

  “Look,” said Farradyne testily, “I don’t enjoy Miss Hannon’s company, but I can’t see jailing her. She isn’t really vicious, she’s just another unfortunate victim of the love lotus trap. Maybe I feel a bit concerned over her brother. Anyway, take it from there.”

  “Very well. I shall. The facts are these: Frank Hannon was a lawyer with a limited but apparently lucrative practice. Norma acted as a sort of junior partner whose ability with briefs and research made her valuable to her brother. The case history says that Frank Hannon had been on his way to Venus to place some case before one of the higher courts, the nature of which is not a matter for public discussion even at this late date. I don’t know what it was myself.

  “Then Frank was killed, and afterwards Norma dropped her study of law. Her brother’s death seemed quite a blow to her. Before, she dated at random, nothing very serious. Afterwards she seemed to develop a strong determination to marry and have children, perhaps as a substitute for the gap left by the death of her brother. A man named Anthony Walton became number one boy friend after a few months and they were together constantly and seemed devoted to one another. She disappeared after a dinner date with Walton, and Walton is now serving a term on Titan Colony for possession of love lotus blossoms.”

  Farradyne shook his head. “The louse,” he said. “Everybody agrees.”
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br />   “I don’t know as much as I might about lotus addiction.” continued Farradyne. “It all seems so quick. One moment we have a well-bred young woman with ideals and ambition and feeling and the next—?”

  “It’s a rather quick thing,” said Lawson. “The love lotus or hellflower is vicious and swift. I’ve studied early cases. They all seem to have the same pattern. And oddly enough, love lotus is not an addictive drug in every case. It is not only an aphrodisiac; it also heightens the physical senses so that a good drink tastes better and a good play becomes superb. The touch of her man’s hand becomes a magnificent thrill. And here is the point where addiction begins, Mr. Farradyne. If the woman’s senses and emotions are treated only to the mild appreciation of food and drink and music and a gentle caress, the addiction may take years and years to arrive at the point where she cannot feel these stimuli without a sniff of hellflower. But if she should be so unlucky as to have her emotions raised to real passion during the period of dosage, it is like overloading the engine. You burn her out.”

  “I see. And there is no cure?”

  “Some doctors believe that a long period of peace and quiet under conditions where the mildest of stimuli are available may bring the addict back. I am of the opinion that such a place does not exist. They fasten onto hate as an emotion that cuts through their burned out emotions and if you should place them among completely bland surroundings they would find it possible to hate those that incarcerated them. It becomes almost paranoiac—anything you do is wrong.”

  “So I have discovered. But what do I do with Miss Hannon?”

  “At the time of Miss Harmon’s disappearance, her family offered five thousand dollars for her return.”

  “I’d be happy to deliver her FOB her own front porch,” said Farradyne. “Can I hand her over to you and let you take it from there?”

  “She would put up quite a ruckus,” said Lawson. “I doubt that Miss Hannon will go home willingly. It is my opinion that her response to Walton’s lovemaking was extremely high, so that the result was a quick blunting of her normal capabilities. After this, anger and shame would cause her—a proud woman of education and breeding—to hide where she could not be known, where she could possibly get the hellflower she needed. This would not be in the home of her parents. So she will not go home willingly, and the alternative is an appeal to the authorities. I doubt that such a course would be acceptable to either of us.”

  “You’re right but—”

  Lawson smiled. “I heard your offer to deliver her free to her home.”

  “So?”

  “We’ll help you. We’ll have an operative collect Miss Hannon at the Denver Spaceport. All you have to do is live with this trouble for about fifty more hours. For delivering this information, and for taking Miss Hannon to Denver, we will be happy to divide the reward.”

  “I’ll deliver Miss Hannon to Denver,” he said, thinking that for twenty-five hundred he could stick cotton in his ears and sweat it out at about fifty dollars an hour.

  “Good, Mr. Farradyne. I’ll make arrangements to have our Mr. Kingman meet you at Denver.”

  Lawson handed Farradyne a few pages of dossier on the case and showed him out of the office. Farradyne took a deep breath and decided that what he wanted was a drink to his good fortune. He could look forward to getting rid of Norma Hannon, at last. He made the street and glanced around. Finding a small bar not far from the office door of the Bennington Agency, he went in to relax and think.

  At a small table with a tiny lamp, he opened the papers that Lawson had given him, to read them more thoroughly. The waitress was high breasted in a manner that invited him to look, but he merely barked, “White Star Trail,” and went back to his reading.

  “Spaceman?” she asked.

  Farradyne nodded in an irritated manner. She flounced off after a moment of futile attempt to beguile a spaceman.

  So when a moment later someone slid into the bench beside him, Farradyne turned to tell her to please go because he wasn’t having any, thanks. Instead of looking into a vapidly willing face Farradyne’s eyes were met by an equally cold blue stare from the face of a hard-jawed man dressed in a jacket tailored to half-conceal the shoulder holster he wore. Farradyne blinked.

  “Farradyne?”

  “So?” said Farradyne. He tried to think but all he could cover was the idea that someone was now playing games with guns.

  “Hear tell you’re running blossoms.”

  “Who says?”

  “People.”

  “People say a lot of things. Which people?”

  “Well, are you?”

  “Who, me?”

  “Can it!” snapped the newcomer.

  Farradyne shrugged angrily. “What do you want me to do?” he asked in a mild tone. “You have the jump on me. You slide into my seat and bar my exit and then without introducing yourself you start asking questions that could get me twenty years in poor surroundings with bad company and no pay.”

  “Call me Mike. Michael Cahill is the name.”

  “Any identification that doesn’t bark for itself?”

  “It’s usually good enough.”

  “Probably. But the numbers on its calling cards are always someone else’s.”

  Mike laughed. “That’s not bad, Farradyne. But so far as I know your number isn’t among those present.”

  “I’ll bet you could change a number fast enough.”

  “Could be,” nodded Cahill. He turned over his shoulder and called to the waitress. “Hey, Snookey, make it two instead of one.”

  “Mine’s White Star.”

  “That’s all right with me. It’s easier to drive this rod with a clear head.”

  “No doubt,” said Farradyne. “So now that we are about to drink together let’s face it. You had more in mind than to pass the time of day with a nervous spaceman who wanted to be alone.”

  “Correct. Or as you birds say, ‘Aye-firm.’ How’s the hell-blossom business?”

  “That’s easy to answer. I haven’t any and I am not in the business. See?”

  “People say you are.”

  Farradyne grunted. “Not too long ago someone accused me openly. The story started when someone suggested that the only way a guy could come from down on his bottom to the top of the heap in one large step was to be among the big-time operators. The heavy-sugar know-how. To the limited imagination this meant running love lotus.”

  Mike Cahill was silent while the waitress brought their drinks. When she left Cahill lifted his glass to Farradyne. “Is you is or is you ain’t?” he chuckled.

  “I ain’t,” said Farradyne, drinking with Cahill.

  “Or is it maybe?”

  “Maybe it’s maybe.”

  “Stop sounding like a parrot. As I heard it that tomato in the bar on Ganymede must have known something. You spent four years as flat on your duff as a musclebound wrestler and then you come bouncing along in a last-year model Lancaster. Since we know damned well that you’re no hellblossom runner, where did you get the stack?”

  “Thrift and good management.”

  “Yeah. How’d you do it?”

  “I told you.”

  “Maybe it’s a rich uncle?”

  “I haven’t one. I’m just a capable operator.”

  “The label is sour, Farradyne.”

  “Then what do you make of this?” asked Farradyne, handing Cahill his license folder.

  “It looks nice and legal but it is as phony as a ten-cent diamond and both of us know it. So how did you get it—and the Lancaster to go along with it?”

  Farradyne sipped his drink. “Look, Cahill, it just happens that it’s none of your damned business! I am not talking.”

  “It might make a difference if you did.”

  “Let’s stop fencing. I may be of use to you. Now it might be that you are a SAND agent and it might be otherwise, I still may be of use to you either way. But the first time I start shooting off my trap, you’ll begin to get the idea that I�
�m not close-mouthed enough for whatever job you have in mind for me. So let’s leave it this way. I have a ticket that gets me in and out and a spacer that takes me there and back.”

  “And that’s your story?”

  “That’s my story. Finis.” Farradyne sipped his drink and then offered Cahill a smoke which Cahill took.

  “We’ve had a rather moist spring,” observed Cahill.

  “It was moister on Venus,” commented Farradyne.

  “It’s on Terra that the weather is fine,” said Cahill. “The crops are coming up excellently, I’m told. Nothing like fresh vegetables.”

  Farradyne nodded. “No matter how well we convert the planets to Terra condition, nothing grows like on earth.”

  “Ever enjoy lying on your back in the sun in a field of flowers with nothing to do but get sunburned?”

  “Not for a long time.”

  “Funny how a guy gets out of his kid-habits,” mused Cahill. “And even funnier how he wants to go and do it all over again but never quite makes it the same.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Farradyne, you’re not sold up on this next jaunt to Terra, are you?”

  “I’ve plenty of room. Just one passenger going to Denver.”

  “Mind if I buy a stateroom?”

  “Not at all.”

  “I want to go pick flowers on Terra,” yawned Cahill. “If you like, maybe we can pick some together.”

  “Maybe we can,” said Farradyne, draining his glass and starting to get up. Cahill got up, too, and led the way out of the joint. Farradyne flagged down a taxicab. “Spaceport,” he told the driver. “Corning?” he asked Cahill.

  “Yeah. Might as well. Nothing else to do this week. I’ll go along—for kicks.”

  5

  Farradyne took the Lancaster up and set the ship on its course to Terra. As soon as he could spare the time to think of anything but handling the ship, he began to wonder about Norma and Mike Cahill. She had not been visible when they arrived, but no doubt by now she had made her presence known. It bothered him a bit because he was as certain as a man can be that Cahill was a hellflower operator, and he did not want the man to get cold feet because Farradyne was connected with an addict, if even for a short hop.