Shocked out of his sleep, he lay stunned and blinking for a moment,
then leaped out of bed and raced to the corridor. The light blinded him
at first, but not enough to stop him from seeing Cahill.
Cahill came along the tiny corridor listlessly, blood dribbling
from under his left arm, running down his fingers and splashing
to the floor. On Cahill's face was a stunned expression, full of
incomprehension, semi-blank. Blood ran down his leg, across his ankle,
and left red footprints on the floor.
Through whatever haze clouded Cahill's eyes, he saw Farradyne. He
stumbled forward and reached for Farradyne, but collapsed in midstep
like a limp towel, to stretch out at Farradyne's feet like a tired
baby. His voice sighed out in a dying croon that sounded like a rundown
phonograph.
Behind him came Norma Hannon. Her eyes were blazing with an unholy
satisfied light and her body was alive and sinuous. A tiny automatic
dangled from her right hand. Her lips curled as she came up to Cahill
and poked at the man's hand with her bare foot.
"He--" she started to cry in a strident tone. Then the semi-hysteria
faded and she looked down at Cahill again, relishing the situation.
Farradyne shuddered. What had happened was obvious. Cahill had tried
to force himself upon Norma; she had killed him. Apparently Cahill had
not been able to do more than clutch at the deep neckline of Norma's
nightgown, which was slightly torn.
He leaned back against the wall and saw things in a sort of horrid slow
motion. Under any normal circumstance, no jury in the solar system
would have listened to an attempt to prosecute her. Under any normal
circumstance, Farradyne could bury Cahill at space and report the
incident at the first landing. But Farradyne couldn't stand too much
investigation. And Norma Hannon was a love-lotus addict--a 'blank,' in
Cahill's words.
"Now what?" asked Farradyne bitterly.
"He--" Her eyes opened wide again as she relived the scene and relished
the violence.
"Have your fun," Farradyne growled. "What did you do? Let him get all
the way in before you plugged him? No warning at all?"
"I hoped it was you," she said. "I wouldn't have killed you." Her
voice was calm; she might have been saying 'kiss' instead of 'kill'.
"Him I did not like."
"And you like me?"
"You I save to hate tomorrow," she said matter-of-factly.
"Why didn't you save him?"
"What was he to you?"
"He was my source."
"Source?" Norma looked blank. Then understanding crossed her face.
"Hellblossoms," she said with a sneer that twisted her face. She
stepped past Cahill's body and handed the tiny automatic to Farradyne,
who took it dumbly just because it was proffered. She went on into the
salon and sat down.
Farradyne wanted to hurt her, to reach through that wall of emotional
scar and make her feel something besides anger. Remorse, perhaps.
"Source," he nodded, following her. "Love lotus. I'd have given you
one, Norma."
She made a sound like a bitter laugh. "No good, Farradyne. What good is
one love lotus?"
"I don't know," he said simply. "I've never had one."
Her laugh was shrill. Then she bawled at him like a fishwife, "What an
operator you are, Farradyne! You big fumbling boob with your stolen
spacer and your forged license, making like a big wind and blowing like
a breeze! Fah!"
She got up as suddenly as she had sat down. She paused on her way down
the corridor to kick Cahill's head with her bare foot. The man's head
moved aside limply.
* * * * *
Farradyne stayed where he was until he heard her door slam shut. Then
he got up and went toward his own room, pausing at the door to look at
Cahill. He should be moved, thought Farradyne.
He found himself looking down on the dead man with a strangely detached
feeling, as if he were watching a rather poorly plotted play. He
relived the scene although he tried to shut it out of his mind.
Shutting out would not work, and so he went through it detail by
detail, minutely, from the sound of the pistol shot to the last dying
groan from Cahill's tortured throat. The memory of that dying sound
jarred on Farradyne's nerves. There had been something strange about
it--
It had been a discordant cry.
Farradyne found himself making a completely useless analysis, itemizing
things that surely could not matter. The cry had been a discord.
His mind wandered a bit as he considered the word. A series of atonal
notes do not make a discord. A discord comes when atonal notes are
sounded at the same time. The former can be pleasant to the ear, the
latter not.
And then a chill hit him. He felt like a man who has just been told
that he had one more question to answer before winning the prize on a
quiz show.
Cahill's moan had been a full discord.
With a sudden leap of the mind, Farradyne was back in the Semiramide,
hearing three voices behind him. They had found one skeleton
afterwards. Then his mind leaped to Brenner, who had emitted an
approving grunt when he saw Norma come around the tail structure of the
Lancaster with the sun shining through her skirt. He had no proof, no
proof. Brenner's grunt had no discord but none the less a mingling of
tones. Three voices? Maybe more?
Maybe he was not sure of the first. Brenner's sound had been very
brief--maybe he was convincing himself. But Cahill's death-cry had been
most certainly polytonal. And they both were love-lotus operators.
It might mean something or it might not. Farradyne put his head back
and tried to make a series of sounds. He moaned. He gargled, and he
tried to hum and say something at the same time. Maybe the stunt could
be cultivated after much practise, and maybe it was used as a password.
More than anything Farradyne needed corroboration.
It was a weak hope, but he stepped over Cahill's body and rapped on
Norma's door.