A Galaxy Of Strangers

by Lloyd Biggle Jr

  But the Anachron had performed its own careful, long-term investigation of those regulars who were admitted to the secret sublevel taproom. They were reliable. Some quaffed the forbidden beverage as the only means of rebellion open to them. Others had developed a taste for the berr. If some managed to make a few mugs of berr last through a day or an evening or a night of companionable talk, who was to notice? It was not without forethought that the Anachron had endowed itself with eight entrances—and exits.

  On this afternoon Eman Xavion Helpflin was the taproom’s only customer. He had been there since morning; much of the time he was alone, because Melisander, the drawer, worked in the storerooms when business was slack.

  Helpflin sat in the darkest corner of the room and at lengthening intervals tilted his mug, sipped, and watched the flecks of foam slowly slide back into the berr. He was an employee of the International Poverty Control Agency, and at the most recent E (for Extermination ) Day, an employed man and his family went to the ovens because the agency had stupidly snarled its records. This was not Helpflin’s fault. The contrary—he received a commendation for his own attempts to straighten out the mess. He did straighten it out, but an accumulation of minor errors of omission elsewhere negated his efforts. He received a commendation; the man and his family nevertheless were dead.

  Commendation and merit citations carried automatic grants of leave, and Helpflin was spending his in the dark corner of the Anachron’s secret taproom, tilting his berr mug and staring at the foam.

  If Wace Farley had been able to articulate his ideas concerning the human soul, Helpflin would not have believed him, but he would have liked to.

  *

  Dr. Marnis Murgatroyd Savron carried his lank form at a slight forward tilt, which enabled him to view the world with close suspicion through his bulging pol lenses. Resident Administrator Mallod read him easily: He knew nothing, he had no previous experience with criminal attractions, and he would have preferred to send a subordinate but hadn’t dared. He would be far more difficult to deal with than a professional; knowing nothing, he’d be terrified of making a mistake.

  Mallod asked, “How many accommodations does Rolling Acres have?”

  “Twenty displays,” Savron said, sounding apologetic.

  “Twenty!” exclaimed Wace Farley, who had been listening quietly while Mallod and Savron exchanged greetings. “Why, no other public exhibit has more than—”

  Mallod silenced him with a glance and spoke firmly to Savron. “Absolutely impossible.” He opened a folder and inventoried Karlson’s list of low-bid attractions. “Six is the very best I can do for you. That’s just to get you started, of course—we’ll add to them whenever we can until we’ve filled your displays, but it can’t be done quickly. To help tide you over, I can let you have a couple of short-term attractions—a pickpocket and a con woman—in addition to the six.”

  “I’d hoped for at least two murderers,” Savron said, still sounding apologetic.

  Mallod shook his head. “There’s only one available: Brenda Barris, the cohabitant poisoner.”

  “Poisoner?” Savron grimaced. “I don’t think our public would like that.”

  “She has a very good act,” Mallod assured him. “You’ll see her. You’ll see all of them.”

  “I heard that Whipple hasn’t been assigned yet.”

  “He hasn’t.” Mallod smiled at him. “And the bids have reached half a million.”

  Dr. Savron’s startled, “Oh,” was a mixture of incredulity and disappointment.

  “We’re the only branch of government that shows a profit,” Mallod said, still smiling. “We turn millions back to the treasury annually, and those millions support many worthwhile projects—such as the Rolling Acres Recreational Center. We’re sympathetic to free public exhibits in parks and recreational centers and community malls, but the directors much understand that merely because the attractions are transferred from one branch of government to another doesn’t mean that they’re without cost. They cost whatever we would have been able to lease them for to private exhibitors. If we turned our really valuable attractions over to public exhibits, the budget wouldn’t balance and there’d be an investigation. Did you by chance get the written approval of the Penal Commission before you built the twenty displays? No? The code limits you to twelve, you know.”

  Savron said uncertainly, “Well, the funds were available, and the people seem to enjoy the displays, so we thought—”

  Mallod was nodding grimly. “I’ll do the best I can for you. If you’ll promise not to complain, I’ll promise not to call anyone’s attention to the twenty displays. Fair enough?”

  “Well-I suppose.”

  Mallod patted his shoulder familiarly. “Come along. You can pick out your six.”

  *

  Melisander, the Anachron’s taproom drawer, was becoming deeply concerned about Eman Helpflin. The man had stretched three mugs of berr over most of a day, which did not seem excessive, but he had been staring into his mug for so long that Melisander knew he either was intoxicated or hypnotized.

  “Don’t you think you ought to eat something?” he asked.

  Melisander’s suggestions were the taproom’s only code of law. Helpflin knew he wouldn’t get a refill until he had eaten, so he pushed his empty mug aside and went up to the Anachron’s private dining room. An hour later he was back in the taproom, slowly sipping berr and staring at the foam.

  *

  Karlson was waiting in the central concourse when Savron, Mallod, and Farley arrived. A garrulous, middle-aged man of limited intelligence, he had been maneuvered into his job by a prominent politician relative to save him from extermination, and he ploddingly attempted to use the same tired entertainment ideas over and over. Farley, who felt sorry for him, helped him out whenever he could, but persuading him to drop a bad idea in favor of a good one was not easy—Karlson couldn’t tell the difference.

  With a smug little smile Karlson led them to the Brenda Barris display; probably he expected her to charm Savron into accepting the rest of his badly trained riffraff. He sounded the warning buzzer; the stage lights came on; the curving panels became transparent.

  Brenda Barris was a faded, bulgy, graying woman whose cohabitant had wanted to leave her for obvious reasons. Karlson attempted to make sirens out of all of his female criminals, and he had attired Barris in trousers cut so short they were almost nonexistent and a transparent shirt. She wearily went through the motions of setting a table, making cafron, adding simulated poison to one cup, and then seating herself to wait for her doomed cohabitant.

  Savron was shaking his head disgustedly. He knew he was inexperienced, but he resented being considered stupid. Mallod said to Farley, “Tell Karlson what’s wrong.”

  “The casting,” Farley said. “An ugly old woman doesn’t become an attractive young woman merely because she’s committed murder. Make Barris a surrogate mother. Dress her conservatively and teach her to smile. And when she’s made the drink, she ought to pretend she’s inviting someone in the audience to share it with her.”

  “Get working on it now,” Mallod ordered. “We’ll make the rounds without you. By the time we’re back here, I want to see a good act.”

  “Yes, sir,” Karlson muttered and turned away.

  “Give her a bigger bottle for the poison, with a warning label large enough for the audience to read,” Farley called after him.

  They took Savron, still savoring his disappointment, to see Farley’s short-term pickpocket; but the pickpocket was in fact very good. He did dexterity tricks and juggling, and during the act he picked his own pockets. Savron accepted him eagerly.

  “I think I’m beginning to understand this,” he said. “You need a few sensational attractions to pull the people in, and once they’re in it’s good solid acts like this one that keep them entertained.”

  “That’s true enough for the private exhibitor,” Mallod said. “He charges admission, and he has to have sensational attractions
to make people buy tickets. Free exhibitions pull crowds regardless.”

  Savron did not seem convinced. He grudgingly accepted the short-term con woman while complaining about her ugliness, and Mallod said tartly, “All kinds of people commit crimes, and we have to do the best we can with what’s available. If Barris were young and pretty she’d fetch a high price without any act.”

  Karlson’s next offering was a half-witted burglar he’d tried to make funny by having him tiptoe about in a dim setting knocking things over. While Savron was gloomily contemplating this, Mallod took Farley aside.

  “We’ve got to give him one really good attraction,” he said. “How about letting him market-test an arsonist for us?” Farley suggested. “I’ve worked out a new act for our twelve-year-old.” “Good idea.”

  Mallod drew Savron away from the burglar’s dreary performance. “That’s no act at all,” he said apologetically, “but we have to give every one of them a chance. I know you’ll like the next one. An arsonist.”

  Savron was doubtful, but his attitude quickly became rapturous. The pink-cheeked youngster artfully spread combustibles through the display and ignited them. And as the display went up in flames, the youngster broke into a frenzied, elated dance, his body trembling, his mouth drooling, his face twitching spasmodically, his eyes wildly flashing excitement.

  Savron’s enthusiasm so mellowed him that they took him back to Barris and got his grudging approval on her act as a kindly, poisoning surrogate mother.

  “But I wish I had another murderer,” he said.

  “How about an ax murderer?” Mallod suggested.

  “Really? You’d let me have one? That’s wonderful! Who is it?”

  He had never heard of Harl Ranno Lyndyl, and when he saw the cherubic little man seated on the floor of his cage and smiling vacantly, he refused to believe it. Lyndyl did in fact look like the most congenial of toenail curlers, which he had been before he took an ax to a patron.

  Unfortunately—from the Penal Authority’s point of view—he bungled the job. The patron was on his tenth heart transplant and hadn’t long to live anyway, and his heirs managed to dampen the publicity. When the patron finally died there was doubt as to whether Lyndyl really killed him. Not only did that make Lyndyl an unknown, unsuccessful murderer, but he had no talent of any kind for entertaining. Farley worked out several acts for him, but all Lyndyl would do was sit in his cage and smile.

  They abandoned Lyndyl. Savron indifferently accepted an attraction where two criminals convicted of thuggery pounded each other with gloves too padded to do harm, and he was delighted with a con man who had worked up a monologue in which he tried to sell the audience the continent of Brazil. In the end Savron had put together six nicely varied attractions plus the two short-term acts—a good beginning even though he had nothing sensational. He arranged to take immediate delivery, and Mallod escorted him out past the checkpoints.

  When he returned, he said sternly to Farley, “We’ve got to do something about Lyndyl, or we’ll have him on our hands for life. Anyway, we have so few murderers that we can’t afford to waste one.”

  “It’s hard to train a man who won’t do anything but sit and smile,” Farley pointed out.

  “Put him in punishment,” Mallod said. “Make him understand he’s going to stay there until he has an act worth viewing. If that doesn’t work, I’ll see if we can get him released temporarily on some pretext.”

  “But he’s certified a dangerous homicidal maniac!” Farley protested.

  “Right. By the time we’d get him back, he ought to have a reputation that’d make him worth a quarter of a million, at least.”

  *

  “The maximum?” the punishment attendant asked hopefully. He was one Penal Authority employee who enjoyed his work. Farley told him to start Lyndyl with five per cent and give him a daily increase.

  They chose the electrical regimen. There was one neutral spot in the punishment cage, which changed with each cycle, and until the criminal found it everything he touched shocked him painfully. Lyndyl hopped wildly about the cage, a pathetic, whimpering, slobbering animal. When finally he located the neutral spot, he had to stand on one foot while the charge built up around him. Once he lost his balance and landed screaming on the floor. At the end of the cycle, at the moment prescribed in Lyndyl’s medical chart, the neutral spot delivered one massive shock that knocked him unconscious. On a five per cent electrical regimen, this happened once every twenty hours.

  Farley visited the punishment cages only when he had to, but the sight of a criminal being privately and scientifically punished affected him far less than the sight of one being publicly humiliated in an entertainment exhibit. Those who committed crimes merited punishment. No one merited humiliation; which was, Farley thought, why he hated his work.

  *

  The Anachron’s taproom was crowded that evening when Wace Farley arrived. Farley had been a regular customer since his student days, and Melisander, the drawer, gave him a friendly grin as he passed him a brimming mug of berr. Farley noticed an apparently empty table in a dark corner and started toward it, but before he reached it he saw that it was occupied. He was looking about him again when Eman Helpflin glanced up and motioned Farley to join him. For a time the two of them sipped berr together and contemplated the foam.

  Helpflin, without knowing it, was intoxicated. He didn’t know it because he’d never been intoxicated before. Very few living men ever had been intoxicated. One hundred seventy-two governmental departments would indulge in a frenzy of investigation if Helpflin’s condition became public knowledge.

  Helpflin said, speaking slowly and distinctly, “I killed a man.”

  Farley eyed him skeptically. He associated with all sorts of criminals during his working hours, and it took more than a confession of murder to ruffle his equanimity. “So why aren’t you in a cage?” Farley demanded.

  “Cage?” Helpflin echoed.

  “Murderers get put in cages. All criminals get put in cages.”

  “Never thought about that. Anyway, it wasn’t my fault.”

  “That’s irrelevant,” said Farley, wise to the ways of the law. “Most criminals didn’t mean to do it. You should be in a cage.” He chuckled. “Heard a funny one today. Promoter found he couldn’t afford new criminal attractions. He’d read somewhere that people used to pay money to see animals in cages, so he decided to add some animal attractions. Turned out it’s against the law!”

  “Do you mean to say,” Helpflin asked slowly, “that it’s illegal to exhibit animals, but it isn’t illegal to exhibit people?”

  “Right. Animals can’t be subjected to inhumane treatment. Humans can.”

  “But only under the proper circumstances,” Helpflin pointed out. “That is, only if they’re criminals.”

  “Wrong.” Farley leaned forward and lowered his voice. “They can if there’s money in it. Government makes huge amounts of money leasing criminals for exhibitions. Government wouldn’t make any money if animals were exhibited.”

  “Is it illegal to kill animals?” Helpflin asked.

  “I suppose.”

  “But it’s perfectly legal to kill people. They do it every E Day.”

  “But only under the proper circumstances,” Farley pointed out. “That is, only if the people are unemployed.”

  “Meaning that there’s money in it,” Helpflin said quietly. “In this case, money to be saved.”

  “True. Fellow can’t find work, he draws unemployment for two years, still no job, zip.” Farley drained his mug, excused himself, went for a refill, and returned licking the foam from the top of the mug.

  They spoke of other things, the mugs were refilled again, and the evening wore on pleasantly. “Getting put in cages,” Farley said suddenly, “is worse than dying.”

  “Why do you say that?” Helpflin asked.

  “Two years, no job, zip. But go beat an old woman to death or something worse, and they put you in a cage. Doesn’t that prove
being caged is worse than dying? Otherwise, they’d put the guy that can’t find a job in a cage, and they’d exterminate the murderer.”

  “That way there wouldn’t be any money in it.”

  The taproom temporarily had changed drawers. Melisander had become suspicious about the two quietly talking figures in the corner, both of whom had been drinking far too long. His substitute was unaware of this; he cheerfully refilled their mugs. There now were two intoxicated men in the room, and if the hundred seventy-two governmental departments found it out there would be a hundred seventy-two cases of departmental apoplexy.

  “I still think it’s inhumane putting people in cages,” Farley said half a mug later.

  “Let ‘em out,” Helpflin suggested.

  Farley stared at him.

  “Then they’d be unemployed, and the government would exterminate them!” Helpflin guffawed.

  “Never thought of that,” Farley admitted. “Can’t let ‘em all out. Too many checkpoints. Might let Lyndyl out, though. They’re torturing him with electric shocks.”

  “They shouldn’t ought to do that,” Helpflin observed. “It sounds inhumane.”

  “Naw—it’s just punishment. He’s a murderer, he should be punished, but they’re not punishing him for that. They’re punishing him because he won’t learn an act and perform in public in a cage, and that’s inhumane.”

  “Why don’t you let him out, then?”

  “I will. It’ll take planning, though. Will you help?”

  “Of course. I’m good at helping people. They die anyway, but I’m good at helping. I have a commendation.”