“But—but Larry, murders happen every day, people are killed every day, and don’t vanish retroactively and leave no trace behind them.”
“But they were not killed by me,” Kane said earnestly. “And if the universe is a product of my imagination, that should make a difference. The girl on the bicycle is the first person I ever killed.”
Mearson sighed. “So you decided to check by committing a murder. And shot Queenie Quinn. But why didn’t she—?”
“No, no, no,” Kane interrupted. “I committed another first, a month or so ago. A man. A man—and there’s no use my telling you his name or anything about him because, as of now, he never existed, like the girl on the bicycle.
“But of course I didn’t know it would happen that way, so I didn’t simply kill him openly, as I did the stripper. I took careful precautions, so if his body had been found, the police would never have apprehended me as the killer.
“But after I killed him, well—he just never had existed, and I thought that my theory was confirmed. After that I carried a gun, thinking that I could kill with impunity any time I wanted to—and that it wouldn’t matter, wouldn’t be immoral even, because anyone I killed didn’t really exist anyway except in my mind.”
“Ummm,” said Mearson.
“Ordinarily, Morty,” Kane said, “I’m a pretty even tempered guy. Night before last was the first time I used the gun. When that damn stripper hit me, she hit hard, a roundhouse swing. It blinded me for the moment, and I just reacted automatically in pulling out the gun and shooting her.”
“Ummm,” the attorney said. “And Queenie Quinn turned out to be for real, and you’re in jail for murder, and doesn’t that blow your solipsism theory sky-high?”
Kane frowned. “It certainly modifies it. I’ve been thinking a lot since I was arrested, and here’s what I’ve come up with. If Queenie was real—and obviously she was—then I was not, and probably am not, the only real person. There are real people and unreal ones, ones that exist only in the imagination of the real ones. How many, I don’t know. Maybe only a few, maybe thousands, even millions. My sampling—three people, of whom one turned out to have been real—is too small to be significant.”
“But why? Why should there be a duality like that?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea.” Kane frowned. “I’ve had some pretty wild thoughts, but any one of them would be just a guess. Like a conspiracy—but a conspiracy against whom? Or what? And all of the real ones couldn’t be in on the conspiracy, because I’m not.”
He chuckled without humor. “I had a really far-out dream about it last night, one of those confused, mixed-up dreams that you can’t really tell anybody, because they have no continuity, just a series of impressions. Something about a conspiracy and a reality file that lists the names of all the real people and keeps them real. And—here’s a dream pun for you—reality is really run by a chain, only they’re not known to be a chain, of reality companies, one in each city. Of course they deal in real estate too, as a front. And—oh hell, it’s all too confused even to try to tell.
“Well, Morty, that’s it. And my guess is that you’ll tell me my only defense is an insanity plea—and you’ll be right because, damn it, if I am sane I am a murderer. First degree and without extenuating circumstances. So?”
“So,” said Mearson. He doodled a moment with a gold pencil and then looked up. “The head-shrinker you went to for a while—his name wasn’t Galbraith, was it?”
Kane shook his head.
“Good. Doc Galbraith is a friend of mine and the best forensic psychiatrist in the city, maybe in the country. Has worked with me on a dozen cases, and we’ve won all of them. I’d like his opinion before I even start to map out a defense. Will you talk to him, be completely frank with him, if I send him around to see you?”
“Of course. Uh—will you ask him to do me a favor?”
“Probably. What is it?”
“Lend him your flask and ask him to bring it filled. You’ve no idea how much more nearly pleasant it makes these interviews.”
The intercom on Mortimer Mearson’s desk buzzed, and he pressed the button on it that would bring his secretary’s voice in. “Dr. Galbraith to see you, sir.” Mearson told her to send him in at once.
“Hi, Doc,” Mearson said. “Take a load off your feet and tell all.”
Galbraith took the load off his feet and lighted a cigarette before he spoke. “Puzzling for a while,” he said. “I didn’t get the answer till I went into medical history with him. While playing polo at age twenty-two, he had a fall and got a whop on the head with a mallet that caused a bad concussion and subsequent amnesia. Complete at first, but gradually his memory came back completely up to early adolescence. Pretty spotty between then and the time of the injury.”
“Good God, the indoctrination period.”
“Exactly. Oh, he has flashes—like the dream he told you about. He could be rehabilitated—but I’m afraid it’s too late now. If only we’d caught him before he committed an overt murder— But we can’t possibly risk putting his story on record now, even as an insanity defense. So.”
“So,” Mearson said. “I’ll make the call now. And then go see him again. Hate to, but it’s got to be done.”
He pushed a button on the intercom. “Dorothy, get me Mr. Hodge at the Midland Realty Company. When you get him, put the call on my private line.”
Galbraith left while he was waiting, and a moment later one of his phones rang and he picked it up.
“Hodge?” he said, “Mearson here. Your phone secure?… Good. Code eighty-four. Remove the card of Lorenz Kane—L-o-r-e-n-z K-a-n-e—from the reality file at once… Yes, it’s necessary and an emergency. I’ll submit a report tomorrow.”
He took a pistol from a desk drawer and a taxi to the courthouse. He arranged an audience with his client, and as soon as Kane came through the door—there was no use waiting—he shot him dead. He waited the minute it always took for the body to vanish, and then went upstairs to the chambers of Judge Amanda Hayes to make a final check.
“Hi, Your Honor,” he said. “Somebody recently was telling me about a man named Lorenz Kane, and I don’t remember who it was. Was it you?”
“Never heard the name, Morty. It wasn’t me.”
“You mean ‘It wasn’t I.’ Must’ve been someone else. Thanks, Your Judgeship. Be seeing you.”
Recessional
The king my liege lord is a discouraged man. We understand and do not blame him, for the war has been long and bitter and there are so pathetically few of us left, yet we wish that it were not so. We sympathize with him for having lost his Queen, and we too all loved her—but since the Queen of the Blacks died with her, her loss does not mean the loss of the war. Yet our King, he who should be a tower of strength, smiles weakly and his words of attempted encouragement to us ring false in our ears because we hear in his voice the undertones of fear and defeat. Yet we love him and we die for him, one by one.
One by one we die in his defense, here upon this blooded bitter field, churned muddy by the horses of the Knights—while they lived; they are dead now, both ours and the Black ones—and will there be an end, a victory?
We can only have faith, and never become cynics and heretics, like my poor fellow Bishop Tibault. “We fight and die; we know not why,” he once whispered to me, earlier in the war at a time when we stood side by side defending our King while the battle raged in a far corner of the field.