The Star Virus

"She doesn't play it at all," Rodrone told him. "She just makes you think she does. I've come across one like it just once before in my life, and it's lucky for us I did. There's not much to it, really: the resonators are precisely tuned to rhythms in the nervous system. She can give those suckers up there any emotion she wants to. With a bit more skill she can take control of the motor system, make them walk, run, turn cartwheels. If she's really skilled, which I don't think she is, she can make them have thoughts, hallucinations. But as a matter of fact I don't think she can even control it at motor level more than enough to play a few nasty tricks."

Clave stared at him in amazement. "Why does she do it?"

"She enjoys it. She likes being Queen of the May. They all sit there and talk about how wonderful she is."

Clave chuckled. Something of his old air came back as he struggled to overcome the degradation he felt at having been emotionally manipulated. "I guess we all have our thing."

Yes, thought Rodrone, but few people found a way to such complete realization of such tawdry desires, as had the woman upstairs. When he thought of it, he had met her everywhere. Fat women in drinking places playing keyboard instruments of every description, jealously guarding the attention they imagined their position brought them and spitefully resentful towards any interloper.

Something of a mystery surrounded the origin of the nerve organs. Rodrone believed there were only a few in existence, created by some twisted master of the art. Many men had tried to make replicas, but they just didn't work reliably.

"Say," said Clave, "wouldn't the Merchant Houses like to own gadgets like that!"

They sauntered down the street and slipped into the shadow in the porch of the Desert Trading Company. Clave slipped an instrument from his pocket, waved it about vaguely in the air. "No response."

There wouldn't be. The House of Jal-Dee was relying on subterfuge to guard its secrets, not alarm systems. Clave applied a small slab of metal to the door, near the lock. It clicked and hummed. Clave pressed a stud and pushed the door open.

"Enter O King," he said, turning to Rodrone with a grin. They went inside, slipped on goggles and surveyed the interior by the light of an ultraviolet flashlamp so as not to be seen from outside. They were in an office: a couple of desks, chairs, and a cupboard. Three doors led to other rooms further back.

Clave waved his gadget about, expertly interpreting a series of writhing images that incoming pulse-trains built up on an image plate. "They've got it in the cellar," he said. After trying all the doors, they located a flight of descending steps.

The computer stood in a steel mesh cage. The only access was through a tiny door which appeared deceptively simple to open.

"Yeah… well, this one has alarms, naturally." Clave flashed the ultraviolet beam about in the darkness, then on a sudden thought switched to visible light and pushed back his goggles. He dipped into his tool-bag and pulled out something looking like a gun with a six-inch wide barrel

"Any problems?" Rodrone asked.

"No, there's nothing very elaborate here. This thing should keep the alarm happy." Locating the alarm, he fixed the gun to the wall nearby. Any changes in the flow of current which might trigger the alarm would automatically be compensated.

Stooping, they stepped into the cage and looked the computer over. It was a standard model with high capacity and an autonomous internal economy, befitting its function as an unsupervised storage unit. It would be in constant contact with Jal-Dee offices light-years away, using a short-burst space-tensor communicator that was suitable for computers, though inconvenient for normal human conversations.

A print-out unit was also attached. Clave had been worried that this part of the equipment might have been removed when the computer was installed, complicating the operation; all he had to do now was to induce the computer to render a print-out without notifying its masters, which wasn't hard.

For the purpose he had brought along what was practically a miniature computer in its own right. It was box-shaped, just small enough to pick up with one hand. One surface was metallic and perfectly smooth; the other had a glistening picture plate, at the moment blank.

He blew dust off it, leaned with one hand on the computer to steady himself. He was, Rodrone realized, slightly less than sober. The Roadrunners he had drunk had taken effect.

"Say, I just thought." Clave started to laugh. "All the others back there, being put through their paces by the Queen of the May. They'll never live it down."

Rodrone looked at him somberly. "Your humor could be classed as misplaced," he said evenly. "That woman is evil and vicious. And that thing she plays can make your muscles contract so as to break every bone in your body."

"What? And we left them in there?"