SOMA
BLUES
ROBERT SHECKLEY
A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK NEW YORK
Also By Robert Sheckley
from Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
The Alternative Detective
Draconian New York
Immortality, Inc.
Soma Blues
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
SOMA BLUES
Copyright © 1997 by Robert Scheckley
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
This book is printed on acid-free paper. Edited by David G. Harrwell
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sheckley, Robert.
Soma blues / Robert Sheckley. — 1st. ed.
p. cm.
"A Tom Doherty Associates book." ISBN 0-312-86579-1 (pb) I. Title.
PS3569.H392S65 1997
813'.54—dc20 96-32449
CIP
First hardcover edition: April 1997
First trade paperback edition: February 1998
Printed in the United States of America 0987654321
This book is for you, Gail, my
wife, my wondrous combination
of intellect, feeling, and beauty,
my first inspiration and most
important reader. How did I ever
get so lucky?
PARIS
1
IT WAS AN easy one-day drive from Paris to Grisons in Switzerland. Hob brought along his friend Hilda. Hilda was a Dutch girl who had become a French citizen, had a job at Rroukes Gallery in Paris, and had command of a number of European languages. Hob hadn't been sure his French would be sufficient in Switzerland, and he had no Schweizerdeutsch, indeed no Deutsch at all. Also, Hilda was a lively and pretty companion of the blond milkmaid variety and seemed a perfect choice to help Hob winkle out the dark and well-kept secrets of an expensive European sanitor-ium and spa.
He parked his rented Renault in the visitor's lot, and he and Hilda walked to the main reception area. It was an early summer day, cool and bright in the Swiss Alps, the sort of day in which you were glad to be alive even if you weren't in Ibiza.
Hob had a number of ideas about how to get around the no doubt strict sanitorium system. He had decided upon a direct approach first, just to test the defenses and see how formidable they were.
At the main desk Hilda asked to see Mr. Sertoris, as Hob had told her to do. She was told that Mr. Sertoris was not having any visitors. All this was in English, which he could have done himself.
"But this is ridiculous," Hilda said. "We have driven all the way here from Paris at the express request of Mr. Sertoris's daughter. And we are to be sent away without even speaking to him?"
"It's not my fault," the receptionist said. "It is Mr. Sertoris's orders himself."
"How am I to know that?" Hilda asked.
"We have a paper from Mr. Sertoris authorizing this. We can show it to you if you like."
Hilda glanced at Hob. Hob narrowed his eyes slightly. Interpreting, Hilda said, "It's easy enough to show a paper. But we want to see the man himself."
"Oh, as for that," the receptionist said, "there will be no difficulty."
"I beg your pardon?" Hilda said.
"Mr. Sertoris and others have come to this place as much to escape from relatives as for any other reason. It is for their own peace of mind that they refuse to visit with their kin, and we respect that wish. But as for seeing—" She glanced at her watch. "Yes. Come with me."
Hob and Hilda followed the receptionist down a hallway, up a flight of stairs, and down a very broad corridor to a glassed-in area.
"There he is," the receptionist said.
Looking through the glass, Hob could see a fair-sized indoor skating rink. There were several dozen older people skating on the ice. Prominent among them was a tall, skinny old man in warm-up pants and maroon sweatshirt. Hob didn't even have to look at his photographs to know that this was Mr. Sertoris.
"As long as our patients are ambulatory," the receptionist said, "the ice skating is part of their regular routine. And we make the viewing of them available to whoever asks. That way, there are no suspicions. You'd be surprised what some people think when they're told they can't see their parents."
"I can imagine," Hob said. "Mr. Sertoris looks well."
"Oh, yes," the attendant said. "He is in amazing health. We expect him to go on for years and years."
And so, when he returned to Paris, Hob had to file a negative report for Thomas Fleury, who had so been looking forward to inheriting Uncle Sertoris's money and thus finally able to move from his small luxury finca in San Juan, Ibiza, to a big luxury finca in Santa Gertrudis—he had one all picked out, a place that would be large enough for all his guests and his four Afghan hounds. The Alternative Detective Agency's report was the end of Fleury's dream. Also the end of Hob's stipend. And it came just before the beginning of a new case.
2
AFTER THE Seroris affair, Hob decided to hang around Paris for a while and see if anything turned up. He took advantage of a long-standing invitation to bunk for a few days with Marielle Lefleur, a senior editor at Editions Charlemagne. The few days stretched to a few weeks, money ran out as it always did, and everyone's patience began to wear thin.
Hob knew it was not going to be one of his better nights when Marielle came back from the office more tired than usual. She dropped her briefcase filled with manuscripts and page proofs onto one of the chairs, walked over to the window—without saying a word to Hob—and looked out.
The apartment was on the fifteenth floor of the Salles des Armes Apartotel, the new structure on the boulevard. General LeClerc just above boulevard Montparnasse. From the terrace you got a wonderful view of the switching yards of the Montparnasse station. The sky was a fish-belly white, lit up coldly by the glow of Paris's lights. The apartment itself was narrow, but it had a lot of rooms. On the walls were photographs of relatives, of Marielle's children, presently on holiday in Brittany. There was a picture of Marielle herself, standing with Simone de Beauvoir. That had been taken four years ago when Editions Charlemagne had published de Beauvoir's book about her journeys around America with the tow-headed young Italian fencer about whom she wrote so movingly in Aupres de ma Blonde.
"So what is it this time?" Hob asked.
"I've asked a few people over," Marielle said. She was smoking again, her harsh Gitanes. She chain-smoked them, all day and sometimes half the night. Hob, a smoker himself, had grown to hate their smell, the harsh black tobacco mingled with sour red wine that was Marielle's characteristic odor.
"Christ, who in hell is it this time?" Hob asked.
She rattled off a few names. All publishing people, all a bunch of sluts as far as Hob, with his old-fashioned sexist vocabulary, was concerned.
"I told them you'd make your famous chili," she said.
"Oh, no," Hob said. "I'm not making any chili. Never again. The butchers grind the meat too fine. It always comes out chili pate."
"You must explain to them," Marielle said. "You can speak French; tell them."
"My French is deserting me."
"That is because you never speak it. Why don't you speak to me in French?"
"I can't make my mouth do those contortions," Hob said.
She looked at him reproachfully. "What is the matter with you? You are never fun anymore."
It was true, Hob thought. But how was he supposed to have fun? What was he doing living in this apartment with this woman? He had his own place, the dreary little apartment on the boulevard Massena that he shared with Patrick, his Irish flute-player friend from Ibiza. Recently Patrick had returned from his trip to Pau with Anne-Laure, the Frenchwoman he was seeing, and had come to an arrangement with her. He would move into her small rent-controlled apartment near the avenue d'lvry as soon as her son returned to the Institute of Musical Studies in Rome. Meanwhile, with Hob's permission, he had agreed to put up her relatives in the Massena flat so they could take a holiday in Paris. And so Hob had moved in with Marielle.
Proximity had been a bad idea. He didn't like Marielle. Had he ever liked her? Yes, at one time. But that was before he'd lived with her. Why did she insist on leaving the cheeses out? She said that refrigeration spoiled their taste. Cheeses should remain at room temperature. To rot in peace, Hob said. The first of their big fights had been over cheese. Strange what people will find to argue about. There were so many other things to torture yourself over. Why don't you love me? was always a good one—and applicable in this case to both of them. But what they fought about was the cheese.
There were plenty of other things wrong, too, but the biggest of them was no fault of Marielle's. Hob was broke. He was, not to put too fine a point on it, doing exactly what Jean-Claude did for a living. He was living off a woman.
It was true that he received no actual cash money from her. But he got his board, and he got to eat whatever was around. They both lived with the pretense that Hob was waiting for a check from America. It wasn't entirely a lie, sometimes checks did come to Paris from America, and sometimes they were even sent to Hob. But not often and not frequently and of late not at all.
Still, the pretense was important. Marielle was short and squat. She wore the voluminous dark Parisian clothes of a middle-aged woman. They contrived to make her look even squatter than she was. Naked, she had a passable body. Not that Hob cared anymore.
And then the telephone rang. Marielle answered it. "It's for you," she said to Hob.
3
"HOB? it is Fauchon."
"Hi, Inspector. What can I do for you?"
"If you are not too busy at the moment," Fauchon said in his precise way, "I would appreciate your coming down here. Is now convenient?"
"Just as you'd like," Hob said.
"It is just past 2100 hours. Come to the square outside of Métro Sainte-Gabrielle at 2200 hours. Yes?"
"Sure. What's it about?"
"Somebody you might be able to identify for us." Fauchon cleared his throat and hung up.
The message from Inspector Fauchon had been precise, though on closer examination its vagueness showed through: meet me at Metro Sainte-Gabrielle at 2200 hours. Very good. But first of all, where was that particular stop on the Paris underground system? Hob had to consult his map, and then he found it, on the extreme eastern edge of Paris, just beyond the city limits, in Bagnolet. But why at 2200 hours? Policemen like to be precise. But 2200 hours, which translated to ten o'clock at night, was damned inconvenient.
His French had deteriorated as the relationship with Marielle fell apart. Forgetting his French was a sort of unconscious and ineffectual revenge on his part, he figured because he enjoyed nothing quite so much as a spot of self-analysis combined with a bit of self-pity.
But Marielle expected him to be there, and Hob was in no mood for one of her rages, which were of several varieties: cold rage, indifference, haughty politeness, and scathing irony, none of which he liked. On the other hand, though he didn't much care to admit it to himself, Fauchon had a hold over him. Hob's recent activities in Paris on behalf of his Alternative Detective Agency had involved one or two illegalities. If Fauchon wanted, he could revoke Hob's provisional license to practice as an investigator in Paris within certain carefully prescribed limits. It was a little bit like being licensed to be a painter, but only of Impressionist works and never under any circumstances to use the color orange.
Fauchon had called upon him before for the sort of help that a rundown American with a rapid, shambling gait and an acquaintanceship with half the goniffs of the Paris demimonde could be expected to have. What would happen if he didn't show up for this rendezvous? Probably nothing. Maybe, everything. Fauchon could revoke his carte d'identite. Fauchon, like any senior police official, had his contacts with Immigration and the other branches of government. But maybe it would be better to call his bluff, what the hell, and put an end to this bloody suspense.
As for Marielle, let her rage. Just because he slept with her didn't mean he had to cook the goddamned chili for her friends. And anyhow, it was expensive to cook chili, especially accompanied by tamales and enchiladas and tacos. It was expensive because unless you started from scratch with beans and tomatoes and garlic, the only way to have your own Mexican food at home in Paris was by buying it in cans at exorbitant markups in fancy food stores that seemed to think canned chili a delicacy and charged accordingly.
It took him almost an hour to get to Sainte-Gabrielle. He had decided that this was the end, once and for all, he'd better have it out with Fauchon. Besides, he was curious about why Fauchon had chosen this strange hour and out of the way place for their rendezvous. It wasn't like Fauchon to be whimsical while on duty.
The Metro stop at Sainte-Gabrielle was deserted. Hob left his second-class car and walked down the long tiled corridor with the wall ads for Gauloises and Printemps and vacations in "Sunny Martinique." A bum was sleeping on one of the long wooden benches that lined the corridor. He was ragged in a comic way, with a bristly red stubble over his wine-reddened face. He mumbled something as Hob passed, but Hob couldn't quite catch it and probably couldn't have translated it if he had. Does a mumble in an incomprehensible language count as an omen? Hob went through the pneumatic doors and up the long, grimy stairs to the street.
He had never been in this part of Paris before. The buildings were shabby and rundown. There was a low moon, partially veiled by a thin fog through which the streetlamps shown with diffused amber brilliance. The streets were wide, and the few men who passed looked North African—small men in shapeless gray and brown clothing. The streets were arranged in the familiar French étoile fashion: four or five roads spoking around a central hub. Across the street and a few doors up was a police van. Two police motorcycles, their red and blue lights still flashing, were parked beside it. Fauchon would be over there, no doubt. Hob started across, then stopped to let an ambulance slide in beside the motorcycles.
A policeman came up, and Hob told him that Fauchon had sent for him.
"Wait just a moment," the policeman said. "He is just finishing an interrogation."
"What's it about?" Hob asked.
"The Inspector will tell you what he wishes."
Fauchon was lucky enough to have an eyewitness account of the murder at Metro Sainte-Gabrielle. Two witnesses, in fact: old Benet, the retired ringmaster from the Lémieux Circus, and Fabi-ola, the India Rubber girl. Not actually a girl, of course; Fabiola was in her forties. But her long, pale face was unwrinkled, and her hair was tied back in a long braided pigtail. In repose, she gave an appearance of boneless and oddly inhuman grace. She was extremely thin, probably no more than a hundred pounds, yet her movements were so supple that even in so simple a thing as lighting a cigarette she reminded Fauchon of a snake. Her straight black hair had an oily sheen to it and was tied with a bit of colored wool. She was blue eyed, with a tiny rosebud mouth and a pointed chin. She wore a small diamond on the third finger of her right hand—Benet's gift, no doubt, though where the old man had found the money for it was beyond conjecture. The Lémieux Circus wasn't noted for largesse toward its retired members. Benet was a big man, getting on toward his seventies. His thin gray hair showed traces of former dyeing. It was combed in streaks that showed his freckled pink skull. He wore a black-and-white check suit, one step above a circus clown's, a little tight on him now that he was growing a paunch. He had fierce, hooded eyes and a small gray mustache that he brushed with the back of his hand.
Benet had come out of the Metro Sainte-Gabrielle at approximately nine-thirty that evening. Fabiola had been with him. It was a Thursday, the day he went to Samaritaine to take part with the other circus old-timers in their circus festivity for the children of Paris in honor of Saint Edouard, the patron saint of circuses. It had been a chilly day for June, quite unseasonable, and he had worn his English tweed overcoat and Fabiola was wearing her sealskin jacket, the sole possession she had brought from Riga with her in 1957, when she made her escape to Stavanger in Sweden.
"I didn't notice anything wrong at first, Inspector," Benet said. "You don't expect to run across a murder at Sainte-Gabrielle. It is a poor district, but quite a safe one. Good working-class people. Some retirees, like ourselves. Did you ever see us perform, Inspector?"
"I did not have that pleasure," Fauchon said.
"Well, never mind. I was good enough, if I say so myself. But Fabiola, she was sensational. The grace of a temple odalisque."
"What was the first thing you noticed?" Fauchon asked.
"Well, the first thing was people shouting. They didn't sound frightened, not particularly. You know how quickly an argument can boil up in the streets. That's what I thought it was."
"Tell him about the horse," Fabiola said. Her voice was light, soft, breathy.
"It plays no part," Benet said, patting her hand. "You see, Inspector, there were the people shouting, and then some people were running, and then a horse came running down the street. Naturally we thought the horse was somehow a part of whatever was going on. It was only later we learned that Scharnapp, the old-clothes dealer who lives in the rue Sainte-Gabrielle and stables his horse in the little cul-de-sac just behind—Fourgerelles, it is called—well, sir, Scharnapp had unhitched his horse and was preparing to lead it into the stables to rub it down, give it food, water, talk to it—I used to come with him sometimes, because there's something comforting about a horse, especially for a man like myself who has been a ringmaster and lived around animals all his life. But now the horse was running, you see, wild-eyed with fear because the car had grazed its side when it came around the corner on two wheels, tossing poor Scharnapp against the stone-fronted house when its right-side fender caught him in the middle of his back. But before that, although I didn't see it, the car had cut through the crowd, knocking down Mme. Sauvier who owns the dress shop down the block and two other people I didn't know. I am glad to hear they will live, Inspector. It was a classical nightmare—the people shouting, three of them down when the car smashed through them in pursuit of the man with the straw hat. The hat had a shiny green band. Funny what the eye sees, even at a moment like that. I saw his face clearly enough, and I had seen him once or twice before. But I didn't know his name. He was a stranger to the district, probably a foreigner."
Fabiola said, "The car was after him, you see. First the one car, the Peugeot, and then the other, the little German one. What was it, André?"
"A Porsche," Benet said. "A nine-eleven. They are not difficult to spot. And they corner like the devil, eh? I suppose it adds a certain frisson, to be killed by a car like that."
"The Porsche didn't kill him," Fabiola said.
"Not for lack of trying. But you're right, it didn't kill him. The man had been leaving the Cafe Argent in the Square Sainte-Gabrielle when the cars came for him. He dived for the gutter. He must have hurt his shoulder, landing like that on the cobbiestones, but at least he saved his life. For the moment, anyway. I don't suppose he'd had time to think about the other car."
"It came from the other direction," Fabiola said. "It was a big car."
"A Mercedes three-fifty, I believe," Benet said. The driver must have seen him go under the car. So he put the Mercedes right into the parked car. He must have been going forty kilometers an hour and he went into it head on. I don't remember what make the parked car was—perhaps an Opel. The collision rocked it right up onto the curb. It uncovered the man in the straw hat like taking off a turtle's carapace. Only he didn't have on his straw hat any longer. It had come off when he dived under the car."
"He had blond hair," Fabiola said. "He wore a leather jacket. It looked expensive."
"And he lay there for a moment, blinking. Then he must have seen the first car, the Porsche, come around, because he scrambled to his feet and began to run, like the other people. I suppose there were a dozen out there. Some had come out of the cafe to see what the trouble was. They found themselves being chased by these two cars. Then, I don't remember how, the cars were in the Square Sainte-Gabrielle."
"They had mounted the curb following the blond man," Fabiola said.
"You know the square, Inspector? The cafe in the middle with the newspaper kiosk beside it? Cars circle around it, and in the square itself there are a few plane trees and some benches. There's also a bus shelter. The man had run there. And there were other people in the square, too, but the cars ignored them, if not deliberately hitting them can be said to be ignoring them, because they were determined to get the blond man. They were like cowboys, Inspector, trying to cut one longhorn out of the herd. One has seen the movies, one knows. And so they chased him, and he ran from them, dodging around benches. They smashed right through, damaging their cars most horribly. The blond man had not lost his courage. He dodged around, and, when the time seemed right, tried to cut back across the boulevard. And that is when they got him."
Just then a gendarme came over, saluted the inspector and said, "I found this, sir. It was in the man's jacket pocket."
He handed Fauchon a small address book with a sealskin cover.
"That should help," Fauchon said, putting it in his pocket. "And there's also this," the gendarme said. "The deceased was holding it in his hand."
He handed Fauchon a small green bottle made of what looked like jade.
4
"AH, HOB, good to see you." Fauchon was conservatively dressed as always. His round face expressed gravity. The high eyebrows indicated irony. The narrow upper lip showed reserve; the full lower one, passion, or perhaps gluttony. The small brown eyes were shrewd, and they seemed to glow with a light of their own. He said, "I wonder if you can identify a person for me?"
"Why me?"
"Because he is a foreigner, and we believe he lives in Ibiza." "What made you think that?"
"That he is a foreigner? Because we have his passport. He is English. As for the Ibiza connection, he was carrying a straw basket with ibiza embroidered on it. And I believe he is wearing a Spanish kerchief knotted around his neck. Also a Spanish shirt."
"Only about a million people pass through Ibiza a year," Hob said.
"Perhaps he is a resident, like you."
"There must be thousands of year-round residents, most of whom I haven't had the pleasure of meeting. Still, I'll take a look if you want me to."
"I would be much obliged."
"What is it, a traffic accident?" Hob had just caught sight of the hastily erected police barricade. "Unless you have some important reason, I don't think I want to see this. I'm supposed to cook chili tonight, and if I'm right about what's in that car, it's going to kill my appetite."
"Really, Hob," Fauchon said in his precise, idiomatic, and utterly foreign English, "for a private detective you have little taste for blood."
"It may seem strange to you," Hob said, "but even an American private detective doesn't go out of his way to wade in gore."
"Gore," Fauchon said. "Good word. Dickensian? Never mind. Come with me, Hob. This is necessary."
The body had been carried to the sidewalk and a b...
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