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Title: The Akkra case
Author: Miriam Allen De Ford
Illustrator: Dan Adkins
Release date: November 22, 2023 [eBook #72197]
Language: English
Original publication: United States: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1961
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AKKRA CASE ***
_Miriam de Ford has given a good deal of thought to crime and
criminology of other times and spaces (see Editorial). Now she
turns her talents to constructing a "true crime" of the future--and
its solution. Herewith, then, a criminologist's lecture-report on_:
THE AKKRA CASE
By MIRIAM ALLEN de FORD
Illustrated by ADKINS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Amazing Stories January 1962.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Deliberate murder being so very rare a crime in our society, an
account of any instance of it must attract the attention not only
of criminologists but also of the general public. Very many of my
auditors must remember the Akkra case well, since it occurred only
last year. This, however, is the first attempt to set forth the bizarre
circumstances hitherto known only to the authorities and to a few
specialists.
On February 30 last, the body of a young girl was found under the
Central Park mobilway in Newyork I. She had been struck on the head
with some heavy object which had fractured her skull, and her auburn
hair was matted with congealed blood. Two boys illegally trespassing on
one of the old dirt roads in the park itself stumbled upon the corpse.
She was fully dressed, but barefoot, with her socsandals lying beside
her. An autopsy showed only one unusual thing--she was a virgin, though
she was fully mature.
Two hundred years ago, say, this would have been a case for the
homicide branch of the city police. Now, of course, there are no city
police, all local law enforcement being in the hands of the Federal
government, with higher supervision and appeal to the Interpol; and
since there has been no reported murder (except in Africa and China,
where this crime has not yet been entirely eradicated) for at least 20
years, Fedpol naturally has no specialists in homicide. Investigation
therefore was up to the General Branch in Newyork Complex I.
The murderer had stupidly broken off the welded serial number disc from
her wristlet--stupidly, because of course everybody's fingerprints
and retinal pattern are on file with Interpol from birth. It was soon
discovered that the victim was one Madolin Akkra, born in Newyork I
of mixed Irish, Siamese, and Swedish descent, aged 18 years and seven
months. Since it is against the law for any minor (under 25) to be
gainfully employed, and there was no record of any exemption-permit,
she had necessarily to be a student. She was found to be studying
spaceship maintenance at Upper Newyork Combined Technicum.
People who deride Fedpol and call it a useless anachronism don't know
what they are talking about. It is true that in our society criminal
tendencies are understood to be a disease, amenable to treatment, not
a free-will demonstration of anti-social proclivities. But it is also
true that every member of Fedpol, down to the merest rookie policeman,
is a trained specialist in some field, and that most of its officers
are graduate psychiatrists. As soon as Madolin Akkra's identity was
determined, it was easy to find out everything about her.
* * * * *
The circumstances surrounding her in life were sufficiently odd in
themselves. Her mother was dead, but she lived with her own father and
full younger sister in a small (only 20 stories and 80 living-units)
co-operative apartment house in the old district formerly called
Westchester, once an "exclusive" settlement but now considerably run
down, and populated for the most part by low-income families. Few of
the residents had more than one helicopter per family, and many of them
had to commute to their jobs or schools by public copter. The building
where the Akkras lived was shabby, its chrome and plastic well worn,
and showed the effects of a negligent local upkeep system. The Akkras
even prepared and ate some of their meals in their own quarters--an
almost unheard-of anachronism.
The father had served his 20 years of productive labor from 25 to 45,
and the whole family was therefore supported by public funds of one
sort or another. When the Fedpol officers commenced their investigation
by interviewing this man, they found him one of the worst social
throwbacks discovered in many years--doubtless a prime reason for the
bizarre misfortune which had overtaken his misguided daughter. To
begin with, the investigators wanted to know, why had he not reported
his daughter missing? To this, Pol Akkra made the astonishing reply
that the girl was old enough to know her own business, and that he had
never asked any questions as to what she did! Everyone knows it is
every adult's responsibility to report any deviation by the young more
serious than the mischievous trespassing by the boys who had found
Madolin Akkra's body, and who at least had gone to Fedpol at once. The
officers could get no lead whatever from the girl's father.
To find the murderer, it was of first importance to establish the
background of this strange case. Access to the park is difficult--has
been difficult ever since, more than a century ago, the area became a
hunting-ground for thieves and hoodlums, and was transformed into a
cultivated forest and garden preserved for aesthetic reasons, and to
be viewed only from the mobilways above. (The boys who found the body
are, of course, proof that the sealing-off of the park is not entirely
effective--but surely only a daring and agile child could insinuate
himself under the thorn-set hedges surrounding the park, or swing down
to the tree-tops from the structure above.)
If the victim had been killed elsewhere, how was her body carried to
the spot where it was found? Both murderer and corpse would have had
to penetrate unobserved into an almost impenetrable area. Could the
body have been thrown from above? But if so, how could the remains of
a full-grown girl have been transported from either a ground car or a
copter on to the crowded mobilway, brightly lighted all night long?
She must have gone there alive, either under duress or of her own
accord.
The first and most natural question, to Fedpol, was: who did have
access to the park? The answer was, the gardeners. But the gardeners
were out: they were all robots, even their supervisor. No robot is able
to harm a human being. Moreover, no robot could have brought the victim
in from outside if she had been killed elsewhere. The gardeners never
leave the park, and they would repel any strange robot from elsewhere
who tried to enter it. And one could hardly imagine a sane human being
who would go to the park for a rendezvous with a robot!
* * * * *
It was Madolin's little sister, Margret, who interrupted the futile
interrogation of the surly and resistant Pol Akkra and provided the
first clue. She caught the eye of the investigating officer, Inspector
Dugal Kazazian, and quietly went into the next room, where Kazazian
followed her after posting his assistant with the father.
"I promised Madolin I would never tell on her," she whispered, "but now
she's--now it doesn't matter." She had loved her sister; her eyes were
puffy from weeping. "She--she'd been going to Naturist get-togethers."
Kazazian almost groaned aloud. He might have known--this was the first
time they had been linked with murder, but it seemed to him that in
almost every other affair he had investigated for the past few years,
the subversive Naturists somehow had crept in. And if he had reflected,
he would have suspected them already, since there seems to be no
school or college which does not harbor an underground branch of these
criminal lunatics.
I need hardly explain to my auditors who and what the Naturists
are. But to keep the record complete, let me say briefly that this
pernicious worldwide conspiracy, founded 50 years ago by the notorious
Ali Chaim Pertinuzzi, is engaged in an organized campaign to tear
down all the marvelous technical achievements of our civilization.
It pretends to believe that we should eat "natural" foods and wear
"natural" textiles instead of synthetics, walk instead of ride, teach
children the obsolete art of reading (reading what?--the antique books
preserved in museums?), make our own music, painting, and sculpture
instead of enjoying the exquisite products of perfected machines,
open up all parks and the few remaining rural preserves to campers,
hunters and fishers (if any specimens worth hunting can be found
outside zoos), and what they call "hikers"--in a word, go back to the
confused, reactionary world of our ancestors. From this hodgepodge
of "principles" it is a natural transition to political and economic
subversion. No wonder that the information that Madolin Akkra had been
corrupted by this vile outfit sent a chill down Inspector Kazazian's
spine.
* * * * *
It explained a great deal, however. The Naturists profess to oppose
our healthy system of sexual experimentation, and Madolin had been a
virgin. The weird family situation, and her father's attitude both
toward her and toward the Fedpol, aroused suspicion that he too was
affiliated with the Naturists, not simply that Madolin had flirted with
the outer edges of the treasonable organization, as a "fellow-seeker,"
without her father's knowledge.
Suppose the girl, fundamentally decent and ethically-minded, had
revolted against the false doctrine and threatened to betray its
advocates? Then she might have been killed to silence her--and what
more likely than that, as a piece of brazen defiance, her murdered
corpse should have been deposited in the only bit of "natural" ground
still remaining in the Newyork area?
But how, and by whom?
* * * * *
The first step, of course, was to fling a dragnet around all known or
suspected Naturists in the district. In a series of flying raids they
were rounded up; and since there no longer exist those depositories
for offenders formerly known as prisons, they were kept incommunicado
in the psychiatric wards of the various hospitals. For good measure,
Pol Akkra was included. Margret, at 13, was old enough to take care of
herself.
Next, all Madolin's classmates at the Technicum, the operators of her
teach-communicators, and members of other classes with whom it was
learned she had been on familiar terms, were subjected to an intensive
electronic questioning. (Several of these were themselves discovered
to be tainted with Naturism, and were interned with the rest.) One of
the tenets of Naturism is a return to the outworn system of monogamy,
and the questioning was directed particularly to the possibility that
Madolin had formed half of one of the notorious Naturist "steady
couples," who often associate without or before actual mating. But day
after day the investigators came up with not the slightest usable lead.
Please do not think I am underrating Fedpol. Nothing could have been
more thorough than the investigation they undertook. But this turned
out in the end to be a case which by its very nature obfuscated
the normal methods of criminological science. Fedpol itself has
acknowledged this, by its formation in recent months of the Affiliated
Assistance Corps, made up of amateurs who volunteer for the detection
of what are now called Class X crimes--those so far off the beaten path
that professionals are helpless before them.
For it was an amateur who solved Madolin Akkra's murder--her own little
sister. When Margret Akkra reaches the working age of 25 she will be
offered a paid post as Newyork Area Co-ordinator of the AAC.
* * * * *
Left alone by her father's internment, Margret began to devote her
whole time out of school hours to the pursuit of the person or persons
who had killed her sister. She had told Kazazian all she actually
knew; but that was only her starting-point. Though she herself, as
she had told the Inspector, believed that the murder might be traced
to Madolin's connection with the Naturist (and though she probably at
least suspected her father to be involved with them also), she did not
confine herself to that theory, as the Fedpol, with its scientific
training, was obliged to do.
Concealed under a false floor in her father's bedroom--mute
evidence of his Naturist affiliation--she found a cache of printed
books--heirlooms which should long ago have been presented to a museum
for consultation by scholars only. They dated back to the 20th century,
and were of the variety then known as "mystery stories." Margret of
course could not read them. But she remembered now, with revulsion,
how, when she and Madolin were small children, their mother had
sometimes (with windows closed and the videophone turned off) amused
them by telling them ancient myths and legends that by their very
nature Margret now realized must have come from these contraband books.
Unlike her father and her sister, and apparently her mother as
well, Margret Akkra had remained a wholesome product of a civilized
education. She had nothing but horror and contempt for the subversive
activities in the midst of which, she knew now, she had grown up. The
very fact, which became plain to her for the first time, that her
parents had lived together, without changing partners, until her mother
had died, was evidence enough of their aberration.
But, stricken to the heart as the poor girl was, she could not cease to
love those she had always loved, or to be diverted from her resolution
to solve her sister's murder. Shudder as she might at the memory of
those subversive books, she yet felt they might inadvertently serve to
assist her.
It was easy to persuade the school authorities that her shock and
distress over Madolin's death had slowed up her conscious mind, and
to get herself assigned to a few sessions with the electronic memory
stimulator. It took only two or three to bring back in detail the
suppressed memories, and to enable her to extrapolate from them.
* * * * *
One feature of these so-called "mysteries" that came back to her struck
Margret with especial force--the frequent assertion that murderers
always return to the scene of their crime. She decided that she too
must plant herself at the spot where her sister's body had been found,
and lie in wait for the returning killer.
It would be useless to try to obtain official permission, but she was
only 13, as lean and agile as any other child, and if boys could evade
the hedges and the robot gardeners, so could she. The audiovids had
displayed plenty of pictures of the exact scene, and Margret knew where
to find it. But an inspection of the hedges showed her that it would be
easier for her to get in from above, at night--a likelier time also for
her prey.
She located a place where the trees grew almost to the mobilway and
shaded a section of it between the lamps. Perched on the stand-pave and
watching for a pause in the stream of gliders-by, she dropped lightly
into a tree and climbed down to the park beneath. Hiding from the
gardeners, she made her way to the bushes where the boys had discovered
Madolin.
For nearly a week, fortified by Sleepnomer pills, Margret spent every
moment after dark in this hideaway. It was a long, nerve-wracking
vigil: the close contact with leaves and grass, the sound of the wind
in the trees, the unaccustomed darkness away from the lights above, the
frightening approach of wild squirrels and rabbits and even birds, the
necessity to stay concealed from passing robots, kept her on edge. But
stubbornly she persisted. And at last she was rewarded.
It was not late--only about 20 o'clock--when she heard a scramble and
bump not far from her own means of access to the park. It was not the
first time since her watch began that she had heard other adventurers,
invariably small and rather scared boys who dared one another to walk
for a few feet along the dirt paths, then in a panic rushed back
the way they had come. But this time the steps came directly toward
her--human footsteps, not the shuffle of a robot.
Hidden behind a bush, Margret saw them approach--two boys of about her
own age. And then, with a sickening lurch of her heart, she recognized
them. She had seen them, acclaimed as heroes, on the videoscreen. They
were the two who had found Madolin. She could hear every word they said.
"Come on," one of them urged in a hoarse whisper. "There's nothing to
be afraid of."
"Yes, there is," the other objected. "Ever since then, they've got the
gardeners wired to describe and report anybody they find inside the
park."
"I don't care. We've _got_ to find it. Give me the beamer."
* * * * *
Margret crouched behind the thickest part of the shrubbery, her
infra-red camera at the alert. The tape-attachment was already
activated.
The second boy still held back. "I told you then," he muttered, "that
we shouldn't have reported it at all. We should have got out of here
and never said a word to anyone."
"We couldn't," the first boy said, shocked. "It would have been
anti-social. Haven't you ever learned anything in school?"
"Well, it's anti-social to kill somebody, too, isn't it?"
Margret pressed the button on the camera. Enlarged enough, even the
identification discs on the boys' wristlets would show.
"How could we guess there was a human being there, except us? What was
she doing here, anyway? Come on, Harri, we've got to find that thing.
It's taken us long enough to get a chance to sneak in here."
"Maybe they've found it already," said Harri fearfully.
"No, they haven't; if they had, they'd have taken us in as soon as they
dusted the fingerprints."
"All right, it's not anywhere on the path. Put the beamer on the ground
where it will shine in front of us, and let's get down on our stomachs
and hunt underneath the bushes."
Grabbing her camera, Margret jumped to her feet and dashed past the
startled boys. She heard a scream--that would be Harri--and then their
feet pounding after her. But she had a head start, and her eyes were
more accustomed to the dark than theirs could be. She reached a tree,
shinnied up it, jumped from one of its limbs to another on a higher
tree beneath the mobilway, chinned herself up, and made her way out
safely.
She went straight to Fedpol headquarters and asked for Inspector
Kazazian.
The frightened boys were picked up at once. They were brought into
headquarters, where they had been praised and thanked before, and
as soon as they saw the pictures and heard the tape-recording they
confessed everything.
That night, they said, they were being initiated into one of those
atavistic fraternities which it seems impossible for the young to
outgrow or the authorities to suppress. As part of their ordeal, they
had been required to sneak into Central Park and to bring back as
proof of their success a captured robot gardener. Between them they
had decided that the only way they could ever get their booty would be
to disassemble the robot, for though it could not injure them, if they
took hold of it, its communication-valve would blow and the noise would
bring others immediately; so they had taken along what seemed to them
a practical weapon--a glass brick pried out of the back of a locker in
the school gym. Hurled by a strong and practiced young arm, it could
de-activate the robot's headpiece.
When, as they waited in the darkness for a gardener to appear, they
saw a figure moving about in the shrubbery bordering the path, one of
them--neither would say which one it was--let fly. To their horror,
instead of the clang of heavy glass against metal, they heard a muffled
thud as the brick struck flesh and bone. They started to run away. But
after a few paces they forced themselves to return.
It was a girl, and the blow had knocked her flat. Her head was bleeding
badly and she was moaning. Terrified, they knelt beside her. She gasped
once and lay still. One of the boys laid a trembling hand on her
breast, the other seized her wrist. There was no heart-beat and there
was no pulse. On an impulse, the boy holding her wrist wrenched away
her identification disc.
Panic seized them, and they dashed away, utterly forgetting the brick,
which at their first discovery one of them had had the foresight to
kick farther into the shrubbery, out of view. Sick and shaking, they
made their way out of the park and separated. The boy who had the disc
threw it into the nearest sewer-grating.
The next day, after school, they met again and talked it over. Finally
they decided they must go to Fedpol and report; but to protect
themselves they would say only that they had found a dead body.
* * * * *
Day after day, they kept seeing and hearing about the case on the
videaud, and pledged each other to silence. Then suddenly one of the
boys had a horrible thought--they had forgotten that the brick would
show their fingerprints!... They had come desperately to search for
it when Margret overheard them. Kazazian's men found it without any
difficulty; it had been just out of the gardeners' regular track.
In view of the accidental nature of the whole affair, and the boys'
full confession, they got off easy. They were sentenced to only five
years' confinement in a psychiatric retraining school.
The suspects against whom nothing could be proved were released and
kept under surveillance. Pol Akkra, and all the proved Naturists, were
sentenced to prefrontal lobotomies. Margret Akkra, in return for her
help in solving the mystery, secured permission to take her father home
with her. A purged and docile man, he was quite capable of the routine
duties of housekeeping.
The killing of Madolin Akkra was solved. But one question remained: how
and why had she been in Central Park at all?
The answer, when it came, was surprising and embarrassingly simple. And
this is the part that has never been told before.
Pol Akkra, a mere simulacrum of the man he had been, no longer knew
his living daughter or remembered his dead one. But in the recesses
of his invaded brain some faint vestiges of the past lingered, and
occasionally and unexpectedly swam up to his dreamlike consciousness.
One day he said suddenly: "Didn't I once know a girl named Madolin?"
"Yes, father," Margret answered gently, tears in her eyes.
"Funny about her." He laughed his ghastly Zombie chuckle. "I _told_ her
that was a foolish idea, even if it was good Nat--Nat-something theory."
"What idea was that?"
"I--I've forgotten," he said vaguely. Then he brightened. "Oh, yes, I
remember. Stand barefoot in fresh soil for an hour in the light of the
full moon and you'll never catch cold again.
"She was subject to colds, I think." (About the only disease left we
have as yet no cure for.) He sighed. "I wonder if she ever tried it."
THE END
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