Space On My Hands

by Fredric Brown

  “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 the 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 Co-ordinator’s office? “Are incoming ships still permitted to land?” he inquired.

  “Permitted to land, but not to leave again without special orders,” 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. “Co-ordinator’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 landed 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.

  He fell face down, and then rolled over, his eyes closed but smiling gently up at the brightening sky.

  Shakily, Caquer bent down and put his hand against the front of the man’s tunic. There was the thump of a beating heart, all right. For a moment, Caquer had feared he might have killed with that blow.

  And Caquer closed his eyes, deliberately, and felt the man’s face with his hand — and it still felt like the face of Willem Deem looked, and the wart was there to the touch as well as to the sense of sight.

  Two men had run out of the check-in building and were coming across the field toward him. Rod caught the expression on their faces and then thought of the little speedster only a few paces from him. He had to get out of Sector Three City, to tell somebody what was happening before it was too late.

  If only they’d been lying about the outgoing power beam being shut off. He leaped across the body of the man he had struck and into the door of the speedster, jerked at the controls. But the ship did not respond, and — no, they hadn’t been lying about the power beam.

  No use staying here for a fight that could not possibly decide anything. He went out the door of the speedster, on the other side, away from the men coming toward him, and ran for the fence.

  It was electrically charged, that fence. Not enough to kill a man, but plenty to hold him stuck to it until men with rubber gloves cut the wire and took him off. But if the power beam was off, probably the current in the fence was off, too.

  It was too high to jump, so he took the chance. And the current was off. He scrambled over it safely and his pursuers stopped and went back to take care of the fallen man beside the speedster.

  Caquer slowed down to a walk, but he kept on going. He didn’t know where, but he had somehow to keep moving. After a while he found that his steps were taking him toward the edge of town, on the northern side, toward Callisto City.

  He was in a small park near the north border when the significance, and the futility, of his direction came to him. And he found, at the same time, that his muscles were sore and tired, that he had a raging headache, that he could not keep on going unless he had a worthwhile and possible goal.

  He sank down on a park bench and for a while held his head in his hands. No answer came.

  After a while he looked up and saw something that fascinated him. A child’s pinwheel on a stick, stuck in the grass of the park, spinning in the wind. Now fast, now slow, as the breeze varied.

  It was going in circles, like his mind was. How could a man’s mind go other than in circles when he could not tell what was reality and what was illusion? Going in circles, like a Vargas Wheel.

  Circles.

  But there ought to be some way. A man with a Vargas Wheel was not completely invincible, else how had the council finally succeeded in destroying the few that had been made? True, possessors of the wheels would have cancelled each other out to some extent, but there must have been a last w
heel, in someone’s hands. Owned by someone who wanted to control the destiny of the solar system.

  But they had stopped the wheel.

  It could be stopped, then. But how? How, when one could not see it? Rather, when the sight of it put a man so completely under its control that he no longer, after the first glimpse, knew that it was there. Because, on sight, it had captured his mind.

  He must stop the wheel. That was the only answer. But how?

  That pinwheel there could be the Vargas Wheel, for all he could tell, set to create the illusion that it was a child’s toy. Or its possessor, wearing the helmet, might be standing on the path in front of him at this moment, watching him. The possessor of the wheel might be invisible because Caquer’s mind was told not to see.

  But if the man was there, he’d be really there, and should Rod slash out with his sword, the menace would be ended, wouldn’t it? Of course.

  But how to find a wheel that one could not see? That one could not see because —

  And then, still staring at the pinwheel, Caquer saw a chance, something that might work, a slender chance!

  He looked quickly at his wrist watch and saw that it was half past nine, which was one half-hour before the demonstration in the square. And the wheel and its owner would be there, surely.

  His aching muscles forgotten, Lieutenant Rod Caquer started to run back toward the center of town. The streets were deserted. Everyone had gone to the square, of course. They had been told to come.

  He was winded after a few blocks, and had to slow down to a rapid walk, but there would be time for him to get there before it was over, even if he missed the start.

  Yes, he could get there all right. And then, if his idea worked …

  It was almost ten when he passed the building where his own office was situated, and kept on going. He turned in a few doors beyond. The elevator operator was gone, but Caquer ran the elevator up and a minute later he had used his picklock on a door and was in Perry Peters’ laboratory.

  Peters was gone, of course, but the goggles were there, the special goggles with the trick windshield-wiper effect that made them usable in radite mining.

  Rod Caquer slipped them over his eyes, put the motive-power battery into his pocket, and touched the button on the side. They worked. He could see dimly as the wipers flashed back and forth. But a minute later they stopped.

  Of course. Peters had said that the shafts heated and expanded after a minute’s operation. Well, that might not matter. A minute might be long enough, and the metal would have cooled by the time he reached the square.

  But he would have to be able to vary the speed. Among the litter of stuff on the workbench, he found a small rheostat and spliced it in one of the wires that ran from the battery to the goggles.

  That was the best he could do. No time to try it out. He slid the goggles up onto his forehead and ran out into the hall, took the elevator down to the street level. And a moment later he was running toward the public square, two blocks away.

  He reached the fringe of the crowd gathered in the square looking up at the two balconies of the Regency building. On the lower one were several people he recognized: Dr. Skidder, Walther Johnson. Even Lieutenant Borgesen was there.

  On the higher balcony, Regent Barr Maxon was alone, and was speaking to the crowd below. His sonorous voice rolled out phrases extolling the might of empire. Only a little distance away, in the crowd, Caquer caught sight of the gray hair of Professor Gordon, and Jane Gordon’s golden head beside it. He wondered if they were under the spell, too. Of course they were deluded also or they would not be there. He realized it would be useless to speak to them, to tell them what he was trying to do.

  Lieutenant Caquer slid the goggles down over his eyes, blinded momentarily because the wiper arms were in the wrong position. But his fingers found the rheostat, set at zero, and began to move it slowly around the dial toward maximum.

  And then, as the wipers began their frantic dance and accelerated, he could see dimly. Through the arc-shaped lenses, he looked around him. On the lower balcony he saw nothing unusual, but on the upper balcony the figure of Regent Maxon suddenly blurred.

  There was a man standing there on the upper balcony wearing a strange-looking helmet with wires and atop the helmet was a three-inch wheel of mirrors and prisms.

  A wheel that stood still, because of the stroboscopic effect of the mechanized goggles. For an instant, the speed of those wiper arms was synchronized with the spinning of the wheel, so that each successive glimpse of the wheel showed it in the same position, and to Caquer’s eyes the wheel stood still, and he could see it.

  Then the goggles jammed.

  But he did not need them any more now.

  He knew that Barr Maxon, or whoever stood up there on the balcony, was the wearer of the wheel.

  Silently, and attracting as little attention as possible, Caquer sprinted around the fringe of the crowd and reached the side door of the Regency building.

  There was a guard on duty there.

  “Sorry, sir, but no one’s allowed —”

  Then he tried to duck, too late. The flat of Police Lieutenant Rod Caquer’s shortsword thudded against his head.

  The inside of the building seemed deserted. Caquer ran up the three flights of stairs that would take him to the level of the higher balcony and down the hall toward the balcony door.

  He burst through it, and Regent Maxon turned. Maxon now no longer wore the helmet on his head. Caquer had lost the goggles, but whether he could see it or not, Caquer knew the helmet and the wheel were still in place and working, and that this was his one chance.

  Maxon turned and saw Lieutenant Caquer’s face, and his drawn sword.

  Then, abruptly, Maxon’s figure vanished. It seemed to Caquer — although he knew that it was not — that the figure before him was that of Jane Gordon. Jane, looking at him pleadingly, and speaking in melting tones.

  “Rod, don’t —” she began to say.

  But it was not Jane, he knew. A thought, in self-preservation, had been directed at him by the manipulator of the Vargas Wheel.

  Caquer raised his sword, and he brought it down hard.

  Glass shattered and there was the ring of metal on metal as his sword cut through and split the helmet.

  Of course it was not Jane now — just a dead man lying there with blood oozing out of the split in a strange and complicated but utterly shattered helmet. A helmet that could now be seen by everyone there, and by Lieutenant Caquer himself.

  Just as everyone, including Caquer himself, could recognize the man who had worn it.

  He was a small, wiry man, and there was an unsightly wart on the side of his nose.

  Yes, it was Willem Deem. And this time, Rod Caquer knew it was Willem Deem …

  “I thought,” Jane Gordon said, “that you were going to leave for Callisto City without saying goodbye to us.”

  Rod Caquer threw his hat in the general direction of a hook.

  “Oh, that,” he said. “I’m not even sure I’m going to take the promotion to a job as police co-ordinator there. I have a week to decide, and I’ll be around town at least that long. How you been doing, Icicle?”

  “Fine, Rod. Sit down. Father will be home soon, and I know he has a lot of things to ask you. Why we haven’t seen you since the big mass meeting.”

  Funny how dumb a smart man can be, at times.

  But then again, he had proposed so often and been refused, that it was not all his fault.

  He just looked at her.

  “Rod, all the story never came out in the newscasts,” she said. “I know you’ll have to tell it all over again for my father, but while we’re waiting for him, won’t you give me some information?”

  Rod grinned.

  “Nothing to it, really, Icicle,” he said. “Willem Deem got hold of a Blackdex book, and found out how to make a Vargas Wheel. So he made one, and it gave him ideas.

  “His first idea was to kill Barr Maxon and take over as R
egent, setting the helmet so he would appear to be Maxon. He put Maxon’s body in his own shop, and then had a lot of fun with his own murder. He had a warped sense of humor, and got a kick out of chasing us in circles.”

  “But just how did he do all the rest?” asked the girl.

  “He was there as Brager, and pretended to discover his own body. He gave one description of the method of death, and caused Skidder and me and the clearance men to see the body of Maxon each a different way. No wonder we nearly went nuts.”

  “But Brager remembered being there too,” she objected.

  “Brager was in the hospital at the time, but Deem saw him afterward and impressed on his mind the memory pattern of having discovered Deem’s body,” explained Caquer. “So naturally, Brager thought he had been there.

  “Then he killed Maxon’s confidential secretary, because being so close to the Regent, the secretary must have suspected something was wrong even though he couldn’t guess what. That was the second corpse of Willem Deem, who was beginning to enjoy himself in earnest when he pulled that on us.

  “And of course he never sent to Callisto City for a special investigator at all. He just had fun with me, by making me seem to meet one and having the guy turn out to be Willem Deem again. I nearly did go nuts then, I guess.”

  “But why, Rod, weren’t you as deep in as the others? I mean on the business of conquering Callisto and all of that?” she inquired. “You were free of that part of the hypnosis.”

  Caquer shrugged.

  “Maybe it was because I missed Skidder’s talk on the televis,” he suggested.

  “Of course it wasn’t Skidder at all, it was Deem in another guise and wearing the helmet. And maybe he deliberately left me out, because he was having a psychopathic kind of fun out of my trying to investigate the murders of two Willem Deems. It’s hard to figure. Perhaps I was slightly cracked from the strain, and it might have been that for that reason I was partially resistant to the group hypnosis.”

  “You think he really intended to try to rule all of Callisto, Rod?” asked the girl.

  “We’ll never know, for sure, just how far he wanted, or expected to go later. At first he was just experimenting with the powers of hypnosis, through the wheel. That first night, he sent people out of their houses into the streets, and then sent them back and made them forget it. Just a test, undoubtedly.”