The Creatures of Man Read online

  "Anything I could play after the great 'Hammer-Klavier' would be a terrible anticlimax," he proclaimed in a ringing voice. "Thank you, and good evening."

  He strode from the stage to a final approving roar.

  * * *

  At the jubilant post-concert reception, attended by numerous civic and university bigwigs plus a selection of music students and faculty, Kent quickly spotted a girl he wanted.

  His head gave a barely perceptible shake: Lay off, Pard warned him.

  Kent frowned in dull anger, but obeyed. He had been through all this several times before, and knew that when Pard told him to stay away from a girl, he had better stay away. Even if Kent was the dominant consciousness, he could not keep up a continuous guard against Pard's sneaking enough control to make him do something absurdly embarrassing, and usually with the girl watching contemptuously.

  There was the time in Washington, for instance, when Pard had him flitting around like a gay homosexual for five minutes before Kent even realized what was going on. An incident like that could be damaging, and very hard for a well-known musician to live down.

  Kent griped to himself. On this night, of all nights, why can't I have a choice girl? Why's Pard so nonsensical about women, anyway?

  But the giggly, blond student violinist Pard finally let him accept for the evening wasn't at all bad, even though she was a type that Kent couldn't get enthused about. He wasn't sorry to see her go when his unobtrusive business manager, Dave Siskind, routed her politely from Kent's hotel suite around two a.m.

  Kent yawned and settled down with the intention of sleeping at least until noon . . .

  . . . And woke before dawn, fully clothed, crouched behind a dumpster in a dark alley, with a wavering ringing in his ears that he took a moment recognizing as police sirens.

  * * *

  He stared around wildly. The police, he could tell by the sound, were stopping at the mouth of the alley, while more sirens wailed a couple of blocks away. He turned to retreat deeper into the alley, but Pard stopped him.

  That won't work.

  "Blind alley?" Kent asked.

  Yes.

  Kent squatted back down and thought furiously. He had found indications before that Pard was an occasional night stroller: mud on shoes that had been clean when he went to bed, a few unaccounted-for scratches and bruises—and those photos of the "mystery girl" had to come from somewhere.

  But Pard had never before wakened him during one of his after-hours jaunts. Why this time? Because Pard couldn't talk?

  "You're in a mess I'm supposed to talk us out of," Kent guessed.

  Yes.

  Kent sighed unhappily, stood up, and walked out of the alley, into the glare of the police lights. Several officers rushed forward, and he was quickly frisked.

  "Got any identification?" one demanded.

  Kent felt in his empty pockets. "No. I left my wallet at the hotel. What's all this about?"

  "Which hotel?"

  "Sheraton Sunset. I'm Kent Lindstrom. Now, officers . . ."

  "Lindstrom?" a policeman interrupted, staring at him closely. "Yeah, I guess you are at that. Hey, Mike! Call in that we've found Lindstrom. He looks O.K., except for some skinned knuckles."

  Kent hadn't noticed the twinges of pain in his hands until then. He lifted them and glared at the bruised and bleeding knuckles. That goofy Pard! His hands were his tools! And tools were not to be abused in silly, back-alley brawls!

  "Who'd you have a fight with?" the officer asked.

  "I didn't ask their names," Kent replied, slightly pleased with his inspiration to make his opponents plural. "All I know is I couldn't sleep and went out for a stroll. After a while these guys jumped me. Let's see"—he peered around with a show of puzzlement. "I'm sort of turned around, but I think it happened over that way," he pointed, "maybe where those sirens are sounding."

  It was a good guess. The policeman nodded. "That's about the luckiest stroll you ever took, Lindstrom," he said. "You'll have to come down to headquarters and make a statement. I'll fill you in on the way."

  "Lucky?" groaned Kent. "I'm a piano player, officer. And look at the mess I've got my hands in!"

  "They'll heal," the policeman replied, "but if you'd been in your bed at three o'clock you wouldn't have. A bomb went off under it."

  * * *

  There were complications at police headquarters, and Kent wound up in a cell. Whoever he had bloodied his knuckles on did not show up to complain, but there was also a question of attempted arson near the scene of the fight. The police were inclined to keep a tight grip on anyone found near the scene of a set fire without a good excuse for being there.

  Kent phoned his manager Siskind to get him an attorney. Then he was ushered to his private niche in the cell block, where he flopped on the bunk and quickly went to sleep.

  3

  When he woke he was relieved to find himself still on the bunk with his eyes closed. He sat up and peered through the bar-and-steel barriers until he spotted the keeper.

  "Hey!" he called out. "When do I get breakfast?"

  A man in a nearby cell chortled, "The curly-head pianner player wants his breakfast, fellers!" Kent ignored the remark and the resulting chuckles from the other prisoners.

  "You get lunch in forty minutes," the keeper replied.

  Kent stood up and began his morning workout as best he could within the confined space. This was his routine—a vigorous twenty minutes every morning to keep the rest of his body up to par with his hardworking hands, arms and shoulders. With an audience this time, he show-boated a bit with extended push-ups, one-leg knee-bends, double flutter-whoops and other acrobatic exercises. The prisoners and keeper watched with gratifying awe. His knuckles, which the police surgeon had treated, gave him no pain under their bandages, so they were probably all right.

  He saw that Siskind had brought his hand satchel and toilet kit to the jail for him. They were on the floor just inside his cell door. When he finished exercising he tossed the satchel on the bunk and took the kit to the tiny sink. His blade razor was missing, but the battery-powered shaver, which he used when he was in a hurry, was there. He shaved with it, washed up, and brushed his teeth.

  Returning to the bunk he put his kit aside, sat down, and opened the satchel. A bright green oval gleamed out at him. He stared back at this chilling reminder that not one but two attempts on his life had been made within twenty-four hours.

  "Better give this to the cops," he lipped soundlessly.

  No, his head twitched firmly. Give me control.

  He did, and Pard sat farther back on the bunk and hooked his heels over the metal edge, elevating his knees to conceal what he was doing. He took out the Debussy volume to which the green disk had adhered, propped the book on his thighs, and picked the disk loose from it.

  He examined the disk closely. It was about the thickness of two sheets of typewriter paper, with about the same flexibility, Kent noted. There was no visible material on its back, but that side had a strange dry stickiness to the touch. It was made of stout stuff that did not tear when Pard tugged hard at it. A definite line texture could be felt when he ran a finger across the green surface. Pard explored this texture until Kent was thoroughly bored. Finally he turned it over and began abrading one small area vigorously with a fingernail.

  "Pard," urged Kent silently, "quit playing with that thing and give it to the cops. It could be just the evidence they need."

  No.

  "Do you know what you're doing?"

  Yes.

  Suddenly the disk felt different, though it looked the same. The stickiness was gone from its back. Pard had . . . had broken it in some way.

  "Hey!" breathed Kent, with dawning comprehension. "It's electronic inside. Right?"

  Yes.

  "And as soon as something hits it hard enough to tear up its circuit . . ." He left the words unmouthed, his mind filled with a picture of a little projectile zipping up from the New Mexican waste to home in on the gree
n disk and plow through it—and incidentally, through Kent Lindstrom—and of the no longer adhesive disk fluttering free to fall in the desert, where it would never be found to incriminate anybody.

  There had to be something like the disk. Otherwise the projectile could never have come so close to a bull's-eye over such a distance. Pard had deflected the clopter with split-second timing, too late for the projectile to adjust its course.

  Kent gazed at the disk in awe. "I've never heard of such a thing. Is it military or something?"

  Yes.

  "Secret stuff?"

  Yes.

  "How did you know about it?" Pard shrugged. An unanswerable question.

  Worse and worse! thought Kent in sudden fear. Whoever's after me has access to secret weapons! No wonder Pard figures the cops can't help! But why am I in such a mess?

  There was only one possible answer to that: his silent, night-walking skull companion, Pard.

  "You've done something that's got us in this jam!" he accused.

  Yes.

  Pard was keeping his hands busy. He had curled the disk into a tight slender roll, and now was taking the plastic shell off his battery-powered shaver.

  Only by an extended guessing game, Kent knew, could he ever get the full story out of Pard. That could take more weeks than somebody meant him to live. But he knew of one guess he could make as a starter.

  "Is that 'mystery girl' in the photos mixed up in this?"

  Yes. Pard wedged the rolled-up disk into the shaver so that it was pressed against, and perpendicular to, the windings of the tiny motor coil.

  "You in love with her or something?"

  Yes. Pard flicked the shaver's switch and the motor buzzed. Nothing else happened for about a second.

  Then at least a dozen things happened at once.

  Lights throughout the cell block flickered, and two of them exploded with dazzling flashes. Sirens whooped deafeningly. Bells clanged. Electronically-activated cell doors clicked loudly as their locks opened. The loud-speaker system blared out the first two bars of "The Star-Spangled Banner" and then went dead.

  The prisoners, offered a golden opportunity, swarmed from their cells, flattened the startled keeper, and made for the nearest exits, shouting in gleeful excitement. Pard, his gadget in his hand, leaped to his feet and started to join them.

  "No!" shouted Kent. "Don't be a fool, Pard!"

  Pard hesitated.

  "Running from the law and from secret killers at the same time is for TV heroes and other fictitious characters!" Kent mouthed urgently. "Now sit down and do something about that stupid gadget. Go on! You can't go far hopping on one leg, anyhow, and my leg isn't moving a muscle until you start showing some sense."

  Pard shrugged and hopped back to the bunk. "That's more like it," said Kent, relaxing control of the right leg.

  The gadget was still buzzing. Kent knew very little about electronics. When Pard read an electronics magazine after going to bed, Kent usually went to sleep immediately. But he had picked up enough general ideas to guess how the gadget worked.

  The circuit in the green disk was a highly sensitive responser, meant to pick up signals from an oncoming missile, amplify and perhaps vary them in a certain manner, and send them back as instructions to the missile.

  That's what the circuit did when it was spread out flat, when there was no interference between the tiny electromagnetic fields produced by its thousands of microscopic components. When rolled into a tight tube . . . well; it still did something similar, but not as a precise response to one particular signal. It was confused and undiscriminating. It responded to every blip of electromagnetic energy it picked up—from the sixty-cycle alternation in the building's electric wiring, from the fluorescent light switches, from the alarm network. And with what was, for it, an overpowering input of energy from the shaver coil to work with, it responded with roars.

  "Turn it off!" mouthed Kent.

  The left hand started, slowly and unwillingly, to obey, but just then the gadget quit by itself, having exhausted the battery in no more than a minute. Pard yanked out the rolled-up disk, wadded it and tossed it in the toilet bowl by the sink. He was putting the re-assembled shaver away when the lights came back on.

  Seconds later a contingent of armed policemen rushed in to stare at the empty cells in angry frustration.

  "Most of your guests have checked out," Kent offered.

  A sergeant glowered at him and tried his cell door. It was still unlocked. "Why're you still here?" he demanded.

  "Because I've done nothing to run from."

  The keeper came up rubbing his bruised head. "That's Lindstrom," he told the sergeant. "The piano player."

  "Oh, yeah." The sergeant watched as Kent strolled over to the toilet bowl, flushed it.

  "What happened to the lights and things, Sergeant?" Kent asked.

  "That's no concern of yours—or mine either," the sergeant grunted, walking away.

  The escapees were brought in one and two at a time during the early afternoon, and returned disgruntled to their cells. Lunch was over an hour late.

  4

  Around three o'clock Kent was taken to an interview room, where his manager Siskind introduced him to the attorney he had hired, and to a couple of police technicians.

  "Mr. Lindstrom," the lawyer said briskly, "I believe we can wrap this business up in a hurry, thanks in no small part to your display of good faith during that jailbreak today. There is no real evidence against you in this arson business, but the police could hold you a couple of days on suspicion alone. I've explained to the proper authorities that you have an important schedule to maintain, and they're willing to be reasonable.

  "Thus, Mr. Lindstrom, if you will submit to questioning under the polygraph, sometimes known as the lie detector, to demonstrate your innocence to these gentlemen—"

  "I don't trust those polygraph gadgets," Kent broke in. "I read something somewhere about them being inaccurate."

  "The device has shortcomings," the attorney admitted, "but these experts are aware of them, and take them into account. Also, I'm here to see that the questioning stays relevant, that no 'fishing expeditions' are attempted. This is a quick way to clear yourself, Mr. Lindstrom."

  Kent hesitated. A polygraph could be dangerous for him, in more ways than one. Maybe he was last night's arsonist. Or, more precisely, maybe Pard was. Then there was the fact of Pard's existence. Only Kent knew that his brain had an extra occupant, and he wanted to keep that information to himself. A lie-detector test could betray Pard's presence in some manner.

  He was about to reject the examination when Pard twitched a signal.

  Yes.

  Kent rubbed his nose to hide his mouth while he asked, "You mean take the test?"

  Yes. I'm going to sleep.

  That ought to solve the problem, Kent decided. With Pard asleep, he certainly could not react to the polygraph.

  "O.K.," Kent said. "Let's get it over with."

  The police technicians took several minutes to rig him for the examination, during which Kent assured himself that Pard had dozed off. The questioning had hardly started when the door opened and a distinguished, graying man was ushered in.

  "This is Mr. Byers," said the officer with him. "He represents the owners of that warehouse."

  "Yes," said Byers, "and if, as I've just learned upon arriving in the building, the charges against this young man are to depend on a single polygraph examination, I must insist on being present during the examination. I don't like these attempts to shortcut justice, gentlemen," he went on with a stern frown. "Nor do I like to see the law be made a respecter of persons, especially a respecter of a person who, while laying claim to a certain artistic notoriety, is not known for the stability of his deportment. But I'm a realist, gentlemen: I'm aware of the pressures under which the police must attempt to carry out their duties. Thus, since I have little choice in the matter, I'll go along with this procedure, provided I am present."

  Kent ha
d a feeling that Byers wasn't nearly so put out by the lie-detector test as he claimed to be.

  "Any objections?" asked one of the officers.

  "Nah," grunted Kent. "Let the old square stay."

  "Providing Mr. Byers refrains from interfering with the proper conduct of the test," amended Kent's attorney.

  "O.K. Let's proceed," said the officer.

  * * *

  First there were the usual trial questions to establish Kent's true-and-false reactions. Then the technician in charge got down to business.