“That shouldn’t have bothered you. You bribe authorities.”
“Local, not Federal. Did you ever try to bribe a U.N. delegate officer? The kind they have with the narcotic bureau? Can’t be done.”
“So you killed him.”
“So I did. Or, rather, a Hound killed him. You were pretty clever about that, by the way. Had us worried for a while. But calling the local constabulary—now that was a stroke of pure idiocy. It made finding you a great deal easier.”
He knew enough now. He knew why Taguster, the man with the gentle, lightning fingers that teased the strings of an ancient instrument, had died. It was “the last piece to the puzzle that had begun in the morning and ended, now, not even twenty-four hours later.
“Why didn’t the Hound get you?” Margle asked, anxious to satisfy his own curiosity now.
“I had more hands than it,” he answered. “I had an extra hand.”
“Huh?”
It was time. He moved toward the couch.
They saw him and fired.
He deflected all the pins.
Then he was behind the couch, almost on top of them. They leaped erect, both firing. He deflected all pins save two which he turned back on them. Margle took his in the right cheek. The other man was struck in the neck. Both gagged as the first Brethren had, clutched their chests as their hearts abruptly ceased action, and folded up in neat piles on the carpet.
He turned from them, not wanting to look at the corpses he had made. He floated through the dark room into the library. There he found a pencil and spent some time lifting it and carrying it to the com-screen with his psi power. He punched out the number of-Creol’s home.
A few minutes passed before the screen lighted and showed Creol’s sleep-drawn features. “Chief!”
“I have a story, George.”
Creol consulted his watch. “At three thirty in the morning?”
“Yeah. I want you to get a crew over here, photographer and three reporters who will work different slants on it.”
“Your placer
“My place.”
“Now.”
“Yes.”
“What’s the story, Chief?”
“You can headline it: ENTERSTAT CHIEF VICTIM OF WOULD-BE KILLER.”
“Don’t you think you ought to call the police first?”
“They can wait, George, boy. I guess I ought to get a story out of this, anyway.” He hung up and returned to the Mindlink set. He went to Taguster’s home and turned off the android. It was reading a book when he deactivated it. Leonard Taguster was dead.
A DARKNESS IN MY SOUL
Religion has always fascinated science fiction writers, whether for the physical structure of the church and its ceremonies, or for the more basic reason of beliefs and moral codes. My own religious development was from non-Catholic to Catholic, and swiftly to agnosticism in which I rejected most all established codes and beat out, through a torturous process in my own head, what seemed like common sense codes. Fortunately, Gerda has gone through the agonizing steps of this process at the same times as myself. And though many might consider us immoral, we have easily spent a hundred times more thought and hours in establishing our own codes as anyone who accepts one established for him. But through this long, aching time of working out our society-taught hang-ups, there were very black moments inside my head, moments when I almost went beyond agnosticism toward atheism (though now I think only an uneducated man could truly be an atheist). I have a clear picture now of my god (you may have yours), and he or it or them is a sort of easy-going power/ person/force that doesn’t care what we do down here— as long as we don’t hurt each other. But in those bad days, there were some odd thoughts in my head. This was one, and the title speaks for itself. . . .
I
I wonder if Dragonfly is still in the heavens and whether the Spheres of Plague still float in airlessness, blind eyes watching. There is no way to find out, for I live in Hell.
Men have asked questions about Time and Space, and some have found answers. But there are questions which should/remain unanswered, riddles without tag lines . . .