Complete Fiction

by Hal Annas

  Zitts drew a deep breath and went on: “If a solitary genius of the latter half of the twentieth century had had the godlike stature to create a work with only one murder in it, instead of dozens, he would be immortal and today worshipped by the protagonists of moderation and hated by the antagonists who maintain, and not without reason, that all of the characters in such stories, and especially the detective, should come to a violent and horrible end on page three.”

  The blonde woman wiped her eyes, glanced into a small mirror and tried to compose herself. “Very well,” she murmured half to herself. “I shall prepare myself to endure whatever I must and view as many murders as necessary.”

  “It won’t be bad at all,” Zitts assured her with feeling. “May even be boring, with so few murders. Personally, I rarely take a case which doesn’t offer the prospect of at least a hundred. They generally murder my suspects one after another, and for that reason I try to suspect as many as possible to keep the case interesting.

  “Now, if you are prepared—”

  The woman, fearful but dry-eyed, nodded in response.

  “Pupsie! On your mark! Zoo! Switch on the machine.”

  In fear and wonderment the woman watched Pupsie don the longsnozzle which appeared to be a mechanical nose two-feet in length with its other measurements in proportion. This extra nose did not appear heavy or to handicap Pupsie in any way. Its nostrils flared and the Venusian girl produced some six square yards of white linen, held it significantly at the proper place, and the beast blew its extra nose, making a honking sound which made the windows rattle.

  “That clears the way for smelling action,” Zoo said in explanation.

  JUST then the view lit up and the bristles along Pupsie’s back suddenly stood on end. The scene in the viewplate was familiar. Six ratcatchers were lined up, one behind another, with the foremost pointing the Colt at his own midriff. Through the adjoining wall, which was transparent on the viewplate, a man in the uniform of the chief rat of the ratcatchers, was visible holding his fingers in his ears and with a terrified and painful expression on his face.

  The blonde woman jumped when the bang sounded and the six ratcatchers reeled and then collapsed. The chief beyond the wall looked a trifle relieved to find himself still alive, but Zitts snorted with audible disgust.

  “Bunglers!” Zitts growled, then looked at Pupsie. “That weapon, Pupsie,” he said. “Get a good whiff of it.”

  The huge nostrils flared and sniffed in a way that stirred a strong breeze in the room and sent prickles along the blonde woman’s spine. Then Pupsie looked up and winked.

  “Now trace it to the murderer,” Zitts ordered.

  Pupsie gathered himself for a leap at the chief rat, but Zoo sprang between him and the viewplate and shut off the machine.

  “No, no,” Zitts cautioned. “His smell is on the weapon, of course. But he merely examined it. Use your head now and tune in the machine yourself and find the murderer.”

  Nodding, Pupsie moved close to the machine, switched it on and began tuning radarlike by sniffing and twisting the dials. Almost at once his eyes lighted and his tongue lolled out and his muscles stiffened for action. The blonde woman held her breath, expecting to view the murderer.

  The view lit up faintly, became brighter, became a dark alley with a cat inspecting a garbage pail.

  “No, no!” Zitts cautioned. “This is no time for sport. Get down to business.”

  Pupsie continued tuning and suddenly began panting and gasping and twitching in every muscle.

  Recognizing the emergency, Zitts thundered “The treadmill, Zoo!”

  ZOO stamped on the floor and started an endless carpet moving under Pupsie’s feet. It was just in time, for Pupsie was running like the very devil in order to remain in the same place. He was in pursuit of a female dog which appeared on the viewplate.

  Features darkening and eyes blazing, Zitts waited for Zoo to turn off the machine. Then in a thunderously quiet voice he called Pupsie to book.

  “I warned you this is no time for sport!” Zitts glanced at Zoo who produced a dogcatcher’s net and held it threateningly above Pupsie. The poor dog shuddered. “For the last time,” Zitts said ominously, “I’m warning you.”

  The blonde woman felt so sorry for the creature she turned tearful eyes to Zitts in mute appeal. Zitts appeared to relent.

  “When you find that murderer,” he said, temporizing, “I shall order you a special nine-foot bone from one of those Martian tyrannasauraplexus creatures. Now, keep your mind on your work!”

  At the mention of a tyrannasauraplexus bone Pupsie’s jaws slavered and a look of rapture came over his ungainly features. Clearly he had been reformed.

  Setting to work immediately, Pupsie sniffed and tuned by twisting the dials, and suddenly the blonde woman gasped and almost fainted.

  “That’s my lover’s apartment,” she said in horror. “I recognize the bed. Surely he can’t be the murderer.”

  “Your ex-lover,” Zitts pointed out. “That’s a corpse in the bed.”

  The blonde woman fainted, for it was true. The man was dead, or should have been, for he neither breathed nor gave any sign of heartbeat.

  “Examine that room,” Zitts ordered Pupsie, “until you get a whiff of the second murderer.”

  Soon Pupsie was off again, sniffing and tuning, and just as another scene came in the blonde woman opened her eyes, gasped, “Another of my lovers,” and fainted again.

  “Ex-lover,” Zitts corrected and directed Pupsie to pursue this murderer also.

  They ran through three more murders before the woman recovered, and Zitts deducted, which subsequently proved correct, that these were also ex-lovers. Then, as the woman recovered and was composing herself and straightening her mouth and re-making her face, they came upon a scene with a live person in it.

  “No, no! No!” the blonde cried. “He’s my next to the best lover. He wouldn’t murder anybody.”

  THE man, about ninety years old, gray and stooped, sat placidly on what appeared to be the railing of a balcony and contemplated the rolling countryside a hundred stories below. At a signal from Zitts, Zoo switched the machine to two-directional view.

  “All right, murderer,” Zitts snarled. “Confess!”

  The man looked up, started, then almost fell over the rail as he caught sight of Mrs. Brown and Smith.

  “No, no! I don’t want him brought to justice,” the blonde woman cried. “If he loved me enough to commit all those murders I want to marry him.”

  Zitts pondered this briefly, then said, “That ought to be punishment enough. What have you got to say, murderer?”

  The man cowered back, trembled. “I’ll confess,” he said quaveringly. “But I ask for a reasonably humane punishment like being boiled in oil. Marrying that woman would be more than I can bear.”

  Zitts nodded understandingly. After all, he was humane even with criminals. And although he was not a man to compromise with crime he could not bear the light of horror in the man’s eyes. “I’ll take the matter under consideration,” he said. “But I promise nothing. If you confess promptly and clear up the mystery, your chance of being boiled in oil will be somewhat improved. I’m waiting.”

  “It’s like this,” the man began, wiping perspiration from his brow. “On my ninetieth birth anniversary I decided to have one more fling and retire until I had reached my second youth-hood at the age of a hundred. I visited seventeen of my best sweethearts that day and night, and twelve of my wives. It was rather exhausting.”

  “I can imagine,” Zitts said encouragingly. “Go on.”

  “Mrs. Brown and Smith was among those I visited,” the man went on tiredly. “She was the most exhausting of all, actually insisting that I kiss her hand before I left. It took a lot out of me.”

  “Go on,” Zitts urged impatiently. “I swore off then and there,” said the nonagenarian with a sigh, “and that left Mrs. Brown and Smith with only five lovers and two husbands. That increased the load on t
hese remaining seven and they began to urge me to come back and do my duty. I refused.

  “That,” the man went on, “brought things to a crisis. In desperation Smith made another appeal to me. Again I refused, but I gave him some sound advice, to wit: that he should make the other lovers carry a little more of the burden. This he tried without success, and again I advised him, this time arming him with an ancient weapon. In turn he went to each of the other lovers and offered them their choice, and each chose suicide in preference to fulfilling more than their normal obligations. When he realized what he had done, and what a tremendous burden would now fall on him, he turned the weapon on himself.”

  THE man paused, wiped away the tears and added, “I am guilty of six murders,” he said dolefully. “And Brown, who is being held by the ratcatchers, will naturally make a false confession and ask to be put to death at once—when he realizes that his wife has neither lovers nor another husband. It is sad, and if you’ll just boil me in oil as quickly as possible—”

  “No, no!” the blonde woman screamed. “I want to marry you.” Startled, the man whipped out a strange, unearthly weapon, on which was inscribed, it was learned on later investigation, this legend: S&IV. He placed the weapon against his temple and a bang resulted. Then he toppled over the rail and disappeared.

  “Which end of that weapon did he place nearest him?” Zitts demanded as Zoo switched off the machine and the view faded.

  “The tube end,” Zoo replied.

  “I knew I was right,” Zitt exulted. “Get in touch with the chief rat and tell him the case is solved, wrapped up. He can release Brown and forget it. Also, tell him I have learned the secret of that weapon.

  I was right all along. Tell him personally to place the muzzle of it against his temple and finger that little lever underneath. I am sure that is the way it is done. Tell him to try it at once and let me know the results.”

  Zitts sighed in satisfaction, glanced once more at the lovely curves of the blonde woman, and pressed the button which set in motion the machinery to ease the lounging chair beneath the desk and shape it into a couch.

  “Ssh—h!” The Venusian girl signaled silence. “After he’s been in action for a few seconds,” she whispered, “he always rests for a week or so.”

  The blonde woman rose quietly and marched wavily to the door, opened it. Then, with tears of thankfulness in her limpid blue eyes, and a last worshipping glance at the place where Zitts had disappeared, she stepped into the corridor and went in search of replacements for her used up husbands and lovers.

  Pupsie waddled over to a corner and curled up to dream of a tyrannasauraplexus bone.

  THE END

  No Sons Left to Die!

  Could mankind hope to survive a galactic war that left boys aged cripples in a few short years? Who would replace them when there were—

  SUSAN Wildress knew that what she was about to do might mean death.

  She stopped eating and stared at the ration of ground cedar bark, rabbit, and a hydroponic which tasted like eggplant. She pushed back her plate and glanced around at the tense girl faces in the huge dining hall. She lifted a small strong hand and ran it inside her sweater. She brought out a locket, snapped it open.

  The flesh grew tight around her dark brown eyes and in her olive cheeks. The memory was still as clear as the day it happened. Three years. She was just fourteen, sitting in the groundcar and watching the preparations which were always dramatic.

  Darth Brady had lied about his age. He was supposed to be nineteen but was just past seventeen.

  She had known and so had everyone else, but the Centers needed boys, needed them desperately.

  She remembered how her face got wet as she watched him go out to the ship. He looked very tall and broad and strong, a man. His jaw was firm and his features grim. He looked toward her but didn’t wave, for, since she could first remember, there had been a stringent rule against making close ties with boys at the Centers.

  Replacing the locket, she rose and walked casually to the exit. She glanced right and left, hurried to the entrance to the factory, reached down her time card and punched in. Then she hurried back across the space to the dining hall, around behind it and on out to the rows of cedar trees.

  The penalty, she knew, might be endless restriction, even death, but she didn’t hesitate. With trees concealing her movements, she hurried along to the dormitory groundcar ramps. She went more cautiously now.

  A moment later she heard masculine voices and a shiver ran down her spine. It was not the voices themselves, but the words they used. Zeehites. She had heard the term many times, never without a shudder. Men could be put to death for discussing the Zeehites around women or children.

  Moving quickly, she slipped between two cars, slid into the control seat of one. With infinite care she backed it out, rolled it as quietly as possible a hundred yards before setting in motion the vanes that would lift it. She brought it down again in a clearing in the wood at the edge of the heat-blackened plain.

  For a time she remained undecided. A score of ships were out on the plain. She had seen from the air scores of others on other plains. Nowhere had she seen one bristling with full armament and scars of battle to indicate it to “be the Ida Bella, Nucleus, Trilogy or Firelance.

  SHE thought of binding her dark wavy hair tight against her head. The thought, she knew, was idle. Nowhere on the planet could she pass as a man, dressed as she was in denims and sweater. Young men wore purple uniforms; those in logistics wore brown.

  Dismissing caution, she walked rapidly toward the buildings of the Center. And now she became very careful of her thoughts. She knew that youths developed remarkably at the Centers. They had to if they were to survive out among the stars in that long chain of ships stretched across the course of the Zeehites. The boys were said to be telepathic. She didn’t know for sure. She knew only that girls had to be careful of their thoughts around boys.

  Pausing between two buildings, she glanced apprehensively at the open compound. Nothing stirred there but she had the eerie feeling that eyes were on her. It was too late to turn back. She started across to the main building.

  Young men in purple uniforms materialized from every direction. They neither laughed nor talked; moved with hardly a sound. They completely surrounded her, pressed close. They were tall and broad and she could not see beyond them.

  Susan trembled. She started to run, to break out of the circle, but powerful and yet gentle hands restrained her.

  “It’s a girl from the factory,” one said. “Make it casual. Don’t crowd. We’ll have to get her out of there.”

  A brief order was snapped. The men moved as one. At the center of the group she was carried along. She knew when they entered a building, but uttered no sound. The men fell back. She waited, trembling.

  “Girl,” said one, “do you know you could be put to death for coming here?”

  Susan stopped trembling, held herself rigid. Long ago she had learned no.t to cry. There was no excuse for breaking a rule. Her mother had once told her that things had not always been this way; that if everyone worked hard enough things would soon be again as they were in that bright and free past. To break a single rule was to commit a crime against everyone on the planet and delay that bright future. She waited.

  “You’re working dayshift in the factory?”

  She nodded.

  “How many hours?”

  “Twelve.”

  “If you want to make a complaint you have to take it to the Council.”

  A man who looked older than the others advanced. On his shoulder was the emblem of the crossed pens, indicating he was an instructor. He glared around at the others. “You know better,” he said, “than to sneak a girl in here.” Somebody chuckled. “She was on the compound. Did you want her to be discovered and maybe get permanent restriction? We’ll get her out safe somehow.”

  The instructor turned back to Susan. “You’ll have to keep mum at the factory,” he warned. “A
single word and you’ll have the Council on our necks.”

  “But I have to find someone,” she said. “From Firelance.”

  “Oh!” Glum looks spread.

  “His name is Darth Brady,” she went on quickly. “He trained here. He went out three years ago”

  “Darth Brady!” somebody said. “That gibbering cripple—”

  “Quiet!” ordered the instructor. “The next man that mentions a forbidden subject will go before the Council.” He turned back to Susan. “We must get you back to your place.”

  “But I have to find Darth Brady.”

  The men turned away, shook their heads. Susan felt a cold numbness growing in her body and limbs.

  “You, Carson,” the instructor ordered, “get passes for yourself, Merritt and Saxon. I’ll issue the order via wrist communicator. Get two groundcars. Wait in them outside the compound. You others form a ring about this girl. What’s your name, girl?”

  “Susan Wildress. My identification number is on the back of my sweater.”

  “I’m Alfred Wilson. The boys will walk out to the groundcars. You walk in the midst of them and try to look like a boy. Get in the first car and stay out of sight.”

  ON the way Sue had an opportunity to study the boys. Most of them were younger than her seventeen years. For their age they were unusually tall and broad. Few were under six feet. Their purple uniforms were emblazoned with a single splash of white in the center of the back, in the shape of a burning sun.

  She slid into the car, remained quiet. Alfred Wilson got in beside her. A moment later the car rose gently, accompanied by another off to port.