Overruled

by Hank Davis

  Human bone could always be transplanted, provided the bone was first cleaned of organic matter.

  So matters stood at midcentury.

  * * *

  By 1990 it was possible to store any living human organ for any reasonable length of time. Transplants had become routine, helped along by the “scalpel of infinite thinness,” the laser. The dying regularly willed their remains to the organ banks. The mortuary lobbies couldn’t stop it. But such gifts from the dead were not always useful.

  In 1993 Vermont passed the first of the organ bank laws. Vermont had always had the death penalty. Now a condemned man could know that this death would save lives. It was no longer true that an execution served no good purpose. Not in Vermont.

  Nor, later, in California. Or Washington. Georgia. Pakistan, England, Switzerland, France, Rhodesia…

  * * *

  The pedwalk was moving at ten miles per hour. Below, unnoticed by pedestrians who had quit work late and night owls who were just beginning their rounds, Lewis Knowles hung from the moving strip and watched the ledge go by beneath his dangling feet. The ledge was no more than two feet wide, a good four feet beneath his stretching toes.

  He dropped.

  As his feet struck he caught the edge of a window casement. Momentum jerked at him, but he didn’t fall. After a long moment he breathed again.

  He couldn’t know what building this was, but it was not deserted. At twenty-one hundred at night, all the windows were ablaze. He tried to stay back out of the light as he peered in.

  This window was an office. Empty.

  He’d need something to wrap around his hand to break that window. But all he was wearing was a pair of shoesocks and a prison jumper. Well, he couldn’t be more conspicuous than he was now. He took off the jumper, wrapped part of it around his hand, and struck.

  He almost broke his hand.

  Well…they’d let him keep his jewelry, his wristwatch and diamond ring. He drew a circle on the glass with the ring, pushing down hard, and struck again with the other hand. It had to be glass; if it was plastic he was doomed. The glass popped out in a near-perfect circle.

  He had to do it six times before the hole was big enough for him.

  He smiled as he stepped inside, still holding his jumper. Now all he needed was an elevator. The cops would have picked him up in an instant if they’d caught him on the street in a prison jumper, but if he hid the jumper here he’d be safe. Who would suspect a licensed nudist?

  Except that he didn’t have license. Or a nudist’s shoulder pouch to put it in.

  Or a shave.

  That was very bad. Never had there been a nudist as hairy as this. Not just a five o’clock shadow, but a full beard all over, so to speak. Where could he get a razor?

  He tried the desk drawers. Many businessmen kept spare razors. He stopped when he was halfway through. Not because he’d found a razor, but because he now knew where he was. The papers on his desk made it all too obvious.

  A hospital.

  He was still clutching the jumper. He dropped it in the wastebasket, covered it tidily with papers, and more or less collapsed into the chair behind the desk.

  A hospital. He would pick a hospital. And this hospital, the one which had been built right next to the Topeka County courthouse, for good and sufficient reason.

  But he hadn’t picked it, not really. Had he ever in his life made a decision except on the prompting of others? No. Friends had borrowed his money for keeps, men had stolen his girls, he had avoided promotion by his knack for being ignored. Shirley had bullied him into marrying her, then left him four years later for a friend who wouldn’t be bullied.

  Even now, at the possible end of his life, it was the same. An aging body snatcher had given him his escape. An engineer had built the cell bars wide enough apart to let a small man squeeze between them. Another had put a pedwalk along two convenient roofs. And here he was.

  The worst of it was that here he had no chance of masquerading as a nudist. Hospital gowns and masks would be the minimum. Even nudists had to wear clothing sometime.

  The closet?

  There was nothing in the closet but a spiffy green hat and a perfectly transparent rain poncho.

  He could run for it. If he could find a razor he’d be safe once he reached the street. He bit at a knuckle, wishing he knew where the elevator was. Have to trust to luck. He began searching the drawers again.

  He had his hand on a black leather razor case when the door opened. A beefy man in a hospital gown breezed in. The intern (there were no human doctors in hospitals) was halfway to the desk before he noticed Lew crouching over an open drawer. He stopped walking. His mouth fell open.

  Lew closed it with the fist which still gripped the razor case. The man’s teeth came together with a sharp click. His knees were buckling as Lew brushed past him and out the door.

  The elevator was just down the hall, with the doors standing open. And nobody coming. Lew stepped in and punched O. He shaved as the elevator dropped. The razor cut fast and close, if a trifle noisily. He was working on his chest as the door opened.

  A skinny technician stood directly in front of him, her mouth and eyes set in the utterly blank expression of those who wait for elevators. She brushed past him with a muttered apology, hardly noticing him. Lew stepped out fast. The doors were closing before he realized that he was on the wrong floor.

  That damned tech! She’d stopped the elevator before it reached bottom.

  He turned and stabbed the Down button. Then what he’d seen in that one cursory glance came back to him, and his head whipped around for another look.

  The whole vast room was filled with glass tanks, ceiling height, arranged in a labyrinth like the bookcases in a library. In the tanks was a display more lewd than anything in Belsen. Why, those things had been men! and women! No, he wouldn’t look. He refused to look at anything but the elevator door. What was taking that elevator so long?

  He heard a siren.

  The hard tile floor began to vibrate against his bare feet. He felt a numbness in his muscles, a lethargy in his soul.

  The elevator arrived…too late. He blocked the doors open with a chair. Most buildings didn’t have stairs; only alternate elevators. They’d have to use the alternate elevator to reach him now. Well where was it?…He wouldn’t have time to find it. He was beginning to feel really sleepy. They must have several sonic projectors focused on this one room. Where one beam passed the interns would feel mildly relaxed, a little clumsy. But where the beams intersected, here, there would be unconsciousness. But not yet.

  He had something to do first.

  By the time they broke in they’d have something to kill him for.

  The tanks were faced in plastic, not glass: a very special kind of plastic. To avoid provoking defense reactions in all the myriads of body parts which might be stored touching it, the plastic had to have unique characteristics. No engineer could have been expected to make it shatterproof too!

  It shattered very satisfactorily.

  Later, Lew wondered how he managed to stay up as long as he did. The soothing hypersonic murmur of the stun beams kept pulling at him, pulling him down to a floor which seemed softer every moment. The chair he wielded became heavier and heavier. But as long as he could lift it, he smashed. He was knee deep in nutritive storage fluid, and there were dying things brushing against his ankles with every move; but his work was barely a third done when the silent siren song became too much for him.

  He fell.

  * * *

  And after all that they never even mentioned the smashed organ banks!

  Sitting in the courtroom, listening to the drone of courtroom ritual, Lew sought Mr. Broxton’s ear to ask the question. Mr. Broxton smiled at him. “Why should they want to bring that up? They think they’ve got enough on you as it is. If you beat this rap, then they’ll persecute you for wanton destruction of valuable medical sources. But they’re sure you won’t.”

  “And you?”r />
  “I’m afraid they’re right. But we’ll try. Now, Hennessey’s about to read the charges. Can you manage to look hurt and indignant?”

  “Sure.”

  “Good.”

  The persecution read the charges, his voice sounding like the voice of doom coming from under a thin blond mustache. Warren Lewis Knowles looked hurt and indignant. But he no longer felt that way. He had done something worth dying for.

  The cause of it all was the organ banks. With good doctors and a sufficient flow of material in the organ banks, any taxpayer could hope to live indefinitely. What voter would vote against eternal life? The death penalty was his immortality, and he would vote the death penalty for any crime at all.

  Lewis Knowles had struck back.

  “The state will prove that the said Warren Lewis Knowles did, in the space of two years, willfully drive through a total of six red traffic lights. During that same period the same Warren Knowles exceeded local speed limits no less than ten times, once by as much as fifteen miles per hour. His record has never been good. We will produce records of his arrest in 2082 on a charge of drunk driving, a charge of which he was acquitted only through—”

  “Objection!”

  “Sustained. If he was acquitted, Counselor, the Court must assume him not guilty.”

  •

  Larry Niven is renowned for his ingenious science fiction stories solidly based on authentic science, often of the cutting-edge variety. His Known Space series is one of the most popular “future history” sagas in sf and includes the epic novel Ringworld, one of the few novels to have won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, as well as the Locus and Ditmar awards, and which is recognized as a milestone in modern science fiction. Four of his shorter works have also won Hugos. Most recently, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America have presented him with the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award, given for lifetime achievement in the field. Lest this all sounds too serious, it should be remembered that one of his most memorable short works is “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex,” a not-quite serious essay on Superman and the problems of his having a sex life. Niven has also demonstrated a talent for creating memorable aliens, beginning with his first novel, World of Ptaavs, in 1966. A reason for this, Niven writes, is that, “I grew up with dogs. I live with a cat, and borrow dogs to hike with. I have passing acquaintance with raccoons and ferrets. Associating with nonhumans has certainly gained me insight into alien intelligences.”

  SKULKING PERMIT

  Robert Sheckley

  The colony on the planet of a distant star had been isolated from Earth’s influence for a long time. Still, things had seemed to be going nicely. Then, contact with the homeworld was going to be renewed, and they decided they needed a government, officials, laws, municipal buildings and all that. Oddly, they didn’t decide that they needed a lawyer, but they did now have a card-carrying certified criminal. Almost as good…

  •

  Tom Fisher had no idea he was about to begin a criminal career. It was morning. The big red sun was just above the horizon, trailing its small yellow companion. The village, tiny and precise, a unique white dot on the planet’s green expanse, glistened under its two midsummer suns.

  Tom was just waking up inside his cottage. He was a tall, tanned young man, with his father’s oval eyes and his mother’s easygoing attitude toward exertion. He was in no hurry; there could be no fishing until the fall rains, and therefore no real work for a fisher. Until fall, he was going to loaf and mend his fishing poles.

  “It’s supposed to have a red roof!” he heard Billy Painter shouting outside.

  “Churches never have red roofs!” Ed Weaver shouted back.

  Tom frowned. Not being involved, he had forgotten the changes that had come over the village in the last two weeks. He slipped on a pair of pants and sauntered out to the village square.

  The first thing he saw when he entered the square was a large new sign, reading: NO ALIENS ALLOWED WITHIN CITY LIMITS. There were no aliens on the entire planet of New Delaware. There was nothing but forest, and this one village. The sign was purely a statement of policy.

  The square itself contained a church, a jail and a post office, all constructed in the last two frantic weeks and set in a neat row facing the market. No one knew what to do with these buildings; the village had gone along nicely without them for over two hundred years. But now, of course, they had to be built.

  Ed Weaver was standing in front of the new church, squinting upward. Billy Painter was balanced precariously on the church’s steep roof, his blond mustache bristling indignantly. A small crowd had gathered.

  “Damn it, man,” Billy Painter was saying, “I tell you I was reading about it just last week. White roof, okay. Red roof, never.”

  “You’re mixing it up with something else,” Weaver said. “How about it, Tom?”

  Tom shrugged, having no opinion to offer. Just then, the mayor bustled up, perspiring freely, his shirt flapping over his large paunch.

  “Come down,” he called to Billy. “I just looked it up. It’s the Little Red Schoolhouse, not Churchhouse.”

  Billy looked angry. He had always been moody; all Painters were. But since the mayor made him chief of police last week, he had become downright temperamental.

  “We don’t have no little schoolhouse,” Billy argued, halfway down the ladder.

  “We’ll just have to build one,” the mayor said. “We’ll have to hurry, too.” He glanced at the sky. Involuntarily the crowd glanced upward. But there was still nothing in sight.

  “Where are the Carpenter boys?” the mayor asked. “Sid, Sam, Marv—where are you?”

  Sid Carpenter’s head appeared through the crowd. He was still on crutches from last month when he had fallen out of a tree looking for threstle’s eggs; no Carpenter was worth a damn at tree-climbing.

  “The other boys are at Ed Beer’s Tavern,” Sid said. “Where else would they be?” Mary Waterman called from the crowd.

  “Well, you gather them up,” the mayor said. “They gotta build up a little schoolhouse, and quick. Tell them to put it up beside the jail.” He turned to Billy Painter, who was back on the ground. “Billy, you paint that schoolhouse a good bright red, inside and out. It’s very important.”

  “When do I get a police chief badge?” Billy demanded. “I read that police chiefs always get badges.”

  “Make yourself one,” the mayor said. He mopped his face with his shirttail. “Sure hot. Don’t know why that inspector couldn’t have come in winter. Tom! Tom Fisher! Got an important job for you. Come on, I’ll tell you all about it.”

  He put an arm around Tom’s shoulders and they walked to the mayor’s cottage past the empty market, along the village’s single paved road. In the old days, that road had been of packed dirt. But the old days had ended two weeks ago and now the road was paved with crushed rock. It made barefoot walking so uncomfortable that the villagers simply cut across each other’s lawns. The mayor, though, walked on it out of principle.

  “Now look, Mayor, I’m on my vacation—”

  “Can’t have any vacations now,” the mayor said. “Not now, He’s due any day.” He ushered Tom inside his cottage and sat down in the big armchair, which had been pushed as close to the interstellar radio as possible.

  “Tom,” the mayor said directly, “how would you like to be a criminal?”

  “I don’t know,” said Tom. “What’s a criminal?”

  Squirming uncomfortably in his chair, the mayor rested a hand on the radio for authority. “It’s this way,” he said, and began to explain.

  Tom listened, but the more he heard, the less he liked. It was all the fault of that interstellar radio, he decided. Why hadn’t it really been broken?

  No one had believed it could work. It had gathered dust in the office of one mayor after another, for generations, the last silent link with Mother Earth. Two hundred years ago Earth talked with New Delaware, and with Ford IV, Alpha Centauri, Nueva Espana, and the
other colonies that made up the United Democracies of Earth. Then all conversations stopped.

  There seemed to be a war on Earth. New Delaware, with its one village, was too small and too distant to take part. They waited for news, but no news came. And then plague struck the village, wiping out three-quarters of the inhabitants.

  Slowly the village healed. The villagers adopted their own ways of doing things. They forgot Earth.

  Two hundred years passed.

  And then, two weeks ago, the ancient radio had coughed itself into life. For hours, it growled and spat static, while the inhabitants of the village gathered around the mayor’s cottage.

  Finally words came out: “…hear me, New Delaware? Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, yes, we hear you,” the mayor said.

  “The colony is still there?”

  “It certainly is,” the mayor said proudly. The voice became stern and official. “There has been no contact with the Outer Colonies for some time, due to unsettled conditions here. But that’s over, except for a little mopping up. You of New Delaware are still a colony of Imperial Earth and subject to her laws. Do you acknowledge the status?”

  The mayor hesitated. All the books referred to Earth as the United Democracies. Well, in two centuries, names could change.

  “We are still loyal to Earth,” the mayor said with dignity.

  “Excellent. That saves us the trouble of sending an expeditionary force. A resident inspector will be dispatched to you from the nearest point, to ascertain whether you conform to the customs, institutions and traditions of Earth.”

  “What?” the mayor asked, worried.

  The stern voice became higher-pitched. “You realize, of course, that there is room for only one intelligent species in the Universe—Man! All others must be suppressed, wiped out, annihilated. We can tolerate no aliens sneaking around us. I’m sure you understand, General.”

  “I’m not a general. I’m a mayor.”

  “You’re in charge, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Then you are a general. Permit me to continue. In this galaxy, there is no room for aliens. None! Nor is there room for deviant human cultures, which, by definition, are alien. It is impossible to administer an empire when everyone does as he pleases. There must be order, no matter what the cost.” The mayor gulped hard and stared at the radio. “Be sure you’re running an Earth colony, General, with no radical departures from the norm, such as free will, free love, free elections, or anything else on the proscribed list. Those things are alien, and we’re pretty rough on aliens. Get your colony in order, General. The inspector will call in about two weeks. That is all.”