Overruled

by Hank Davis

  All these things are forbidden to mankind. No one shall have any contact whatsoever with an Invisible—not even a fellow Invisible. Especially not a fellow Invisible. There is no wish on society’s part to foster a secret bond of fellowship among its pariahs.

  I knew all this.

  I turned and followed him, all the same.

  For three blocks I moved along behind him, remaining twenty to fifty paces to the rear. Security robots seemed to be everywhere, their scanners quick to detect an infraction, and I did not dare make my move. Then he turned down a side street, a gray, dusty street five centuries old, and began to stroll, with the ambling, going-nowhere gait of the Invisible. I came up behind him.

  “Please,” I said softly. “No one will see us here. We can talk. My name is—”

  He whirled on me, horror in his eyes. His face was pale. He looked at me in amazement for a moment, then darted forward as though to go around me.

  I blocked him.

  “Wait,” I said. “Don’t be afraid. Please—”

  He burst past me. I put my hand on his shoulder, and he wriggled free.

  “Just a word,” I begged.

  Not even a word. Not even a hoarsely uttered, “Leave me alone!” He sidestepped me and ran down the empty street, his steps diminishing from a clatter to a murmur as he reached the corner and rounded it. I looked after him, feeling a great loneliness well up in me.

  And then a fear. He hadn’t breached the rules of Invisibility, but I had. I had seen him. That left me subject to punishment, an extension of my term of invisibility, perhaps. I looked around anxiously, but there were no security robots in sight, no one at all.

  I was alone.

  Turning, calming myself, I continued down the street. Gradually I regained control over myself. I saw that I had done something unpardonably foolish. The stupidity of my action troubled me, but even more the sentimentality of it. To reach out in that panicky way to another Invisible—to admit openly my loneliness, my need—no. It meant that society was winning. I couldn’t have that.

  I found that I was near the cactus garden once again. I rode the liftshaft, grabbed a token from the attendant, and bought my way in. I searched for a moment, then found a twisted, elaborately ornate cactus eight feet high, a spiny monster. I wrenched it from its pot and broke the angular limbs to fragments, filling my hands with a thousand needles. People pretended not to watch. I plucked the spines from my hands and, palms bleeding, rode the liftshaft down, once again sublimely aloof in my invisibility.

  * * *

  The eighth month passed, the ninth, the tenth. The seasonal round had made nearly a complete turn. Spring had given way to a mild summer, summer to a crisp autumn, autumn to winter with its fortnightly snowfalls, still permitted for esthetic reasons. Winter had ended, now. In the parks, the trees sprouted green buds. The weather control people stepped up the rainfall to thrice daily.

  My term was drawing to its end.

  In the final months of my invisibility I had slipped into a kind of torpor. My mind, forced back on its own resources, no longer cared to consider the implications of my condition, and I slid in a blurred haze from day to day. I read compulsively but unselectively. Aristotle one day, the Bible the next, a handbook of mechanics the next. I retained nothing; as I turned a fresh page, its predecessor slipped from my memory.

  I no longer bothered to enjoy the few advantages of invisibility, the voyeuristic thrills, the minute throb of power that comes from being able to commit any act with only limited fears of retaliation. I say limited because the passage of the Invisibility Act had not been accompanied by an act repealing human nature; few men would not risk invisibility to protect their wives or children from an invisible one’s molestations; no one would coolly allow an invisible to jab out his eyes; no one would tolerate an Invisible’s invasion of his home. There were ways of coping with such infringements without appearing to recognize the existence of the Invisible, as I have mentioned.

  Still, it was possible to get away with a great deal. I declined to try. Somewhere Dostoevsky has written, “Without God, all things are possible.” I can amend that. “To the invisible man, all things are possible—and uninteresting.” So it was.

  The weary months passed.

  I did not count the minutes till my release. To be precise, I wholly forgot that my term was due to end. On the day itself, I was reading in my room, morosely turning page after page, when the annunciator chimed.

  It had not chimed for a full year. I had almost forgotten the meaning of the sound.

  But I opened the door. There they stood, the men of the law. Wordlessly, they broke the seal that held the mark to my forehead.

  The emblem dropped away and shattered.

  “Hello, citizen,” they said to me.

  I nodded gravely. “Yes. Hello.”

  “May 11, 2105. Your term is up. You are restored to society. You have paid your debt.”

  “Thank you. Yes.”

  “Come for a drink with us.”

  “I’d sooner not.”

  “It’s the tradition. Come along.”

  I went with them. My forehead felt strangely naked now, and I glanced in a mirror to see that there was a pale spot where the emblem had been. They took me to a bar nearby, and treated me to synthetic whiskey, raw, powerful. The bartender grinned at me. Someone on the next stool clapped me on the shoulder and asked me who I liked in tomorrow’s jet races. I had no idea, and I said so.

  “You mean it? I’m backing Kelso. Four to one, but he’s got terrific spurt power.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “He’s been away for a while,” one of the government men said softly.

  The euphemism was unmistakable. My neighbor glanced at my forehead and nodded at the pale spot. He offered to buy me a drink too. I accepted, though I was already feeling the effects of the first one. I was a human being again. I was visible.

  I did not dare spurn him, anyway. It might have been construed as a crime of coldness once again. My fifth offense would have meant five years of Invisibility. I had learned humility.

  Returning to visibility involved an awkward transition, of course. Old friends to meet, lame conversations to hold, shattered relationships to renew. I had been an exile in my own city for a year, and coming back was not easy.

  No one referred to my time of invisibility, naturally. It was treated as an affliction best left unmentioned. Hypocrisy, I thought, but I accepted it. Doubtless they were all trying to spare my feelings. Does one tell a man whose cancerous stomach has been replaced, “I hear you had a narrow escape just now?” Does one say to a man whose aged father has tottered off toward a euthanasia house, “Well, he was getting pretty feeble anyway, wasn’t he?”

  No. Of course not.

  So there was this hole in our shared experience, this void, this blankness. Which left me little to talk about with my friends, in particular since I had lost the knack of conversation entirely. The period of readjustment was a trying one.

  But I persevered, for I was no longer the same haughty, aloof person I had been before my conviction. I had learned humility in the hardest of schools.

  Now and then I noticed an Invisible on the streets, of course. It was impossible to avoid them. But, trained as I had been trained, I quickly glanced away, as though my eyes had come momentarily to rest on some shambling, festering horror from another world.

  It was in the fourth month of my return to visibility that the ultimate lesson of my sentence struck home, though. I was in the vicinity of the City Tower, having returned to my old job in the documents division of the municipal government. I had left work for the day and was walking toward the tubes when a hand emerged from the crowd, caught my arm.

  “Please,” the soft voice said. “Wait a minute. Don’t be afraid.”

  I looked up, startled. In our city strangers do not accost strangers.

  I saw the gleaming emblem of invisibility on the man’s forehead. Then I recognized him—
the slim man I had accosted more than half a year before on that deserted street. He had grown haggard; his eyes were wild, his brown hair flecked with gray. He must have been at the beginning of his term, then. Now he must have been near its end.

  He held my arm. I trembled. This was no deserted street. This was the most crowded square of the city. I pulled my arm away from his grasp and started to turn away.

  “No—don’t go,” he cried. “Can’t you pity me? You’ve been there yourself.”

  I took a faltering step. Then I remembered how I had cried out to him, how I had begged him not to spurn me. I remembered my own miserable loneliness.

  I took another step away from him.

  “Coward!” he shrieked after me. “Talk to me! I dare you! Talk to me, coward!”

  It was too much. I was touched. Sudden tears stung my eyes, and I turned to him, stretched out a hand to his. I caught his thin wrist. The contact seemed to electrify him. A moment later, I held him in my arms, trying to draw some of the misery from his frame to mine.

  The security robots closed in, surrounding us. He was hurled to one side, I was taken into custody. They will try me again—not for the crime of coldness, this time, but for a crime of warmth. Perhaps they will find extenuating circumstances and release me; perhaps not.

  I do not care. If they condemn me, this time I will wear my invisibility like a shield of glory.

  •

  Robert Silverberg, prolific author not just of SF, but of authoritative nonfiction books, columnist for Asimov’s SF Magazine, winner of a constellation of awards, and renowned bon vivant surely needs no introduction—but that’s never stopped me before. Born in 1935, Robert Silverberg sold his first SF story, “Gorgon Planet,” before he was out of his teens, to the British magazine Nebula. Two years later, his first SF novel, a juvenile, Revolt on Alpha C followed. Decades later, his total SF titles, according to his semi-official website, stands at 82 SF novels and 457 short stories. Early on, he won a Hugo Award for most promising new writer—rarely have the Hugo voters been so perceptive.

  Toward the end of the 1960s and continuing into the 1970s, he wrote a string of novels much darker in tone and deeper in characterization than his work of the 1950s, such as the novels Nightwings, Dying Inside, The Book of Skulls, and other novels. He took occasional sabbaticals from writing, to return with new works, such as the Majipoor series. His most recent novels include The Alien Years, The Longest Way Home, and a new trilogy of Majipoor novels. In addition The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted him in 1999. In 2004, the Science Fiction Writers of America presented the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. For more information see his “quasi-official” website at www.majipoor.com heroically maintained by Jon Davis (no relation).

  LICENSE TO STEAL

  Louis Newman

  Mr. Newman seems to be a one-story author, unless he’s a pseudonym. If you read this, sir, please get in touch. And thank you for this nifty satire of cops who had fun with a naïve alien bumpkin, which “fun” spectacularly backfired!

  •

  The history of man becomes fearfully and wonderfully confusing with the advent of interstellar travel. Of special interest to the legally inclined student is the famous Skrrgck Affair, which began before the Galactic Tribunal with the case of Citizens vs. Skrrgck.

  The case, and the opinion of the Court, may be summarized as follows:

  Skrrgck, a native of Sknnbt (Altair IV), where theft is honorable, sanctioned by law and custom, immigrated to Earth (Sol III) where theft is contrary to both law and custom.

  While residing in Chicago, a city in a political subdivision known as the State of Illinois, part of the United States of America, one of the ancient nation-states of Earth, he overheard his landlady use the phrase “A license to steal,” a common colloquialism in the area, which refers to any special privilege.

  Skrrgck then went to a police station in Chicago and requested a license to steal. The desk sergeant, as a joke, wrote out a document purporting to be a license to steal, and Skrrgck, relying on said document, committed theft, was apprehended, tried and convicted. On direct appeal allowed to the Galactic Tribunal, the Court held:

  (1) All persons are required to know and obey the law of the jurisdiction in which they reside.

  (2) Public officials must refrain from misrepresenting to strangers the law of the jurisdiction.

  (3) Where, as here, a public official is guilty of such misrepresentation, the requirement of knowledge no longer applies.

  (4) Where, as here, it is shown by uncontradicted evidence that a defendant is law-abiding and willing to comply with the standards of his place of residence, misrepresentation of law by public officials may amount to entrapment.

  (5) The Doctrine of Entrapment bars the State of Illinois from prosecuting this defendant.

  (6) The magnitude of the crime is unimportant compared with the principle involved, and the fact that the defendant’s unusual training on Sknnbt enabled him to steal a large building in Chicago, known as the Merchandise Mart, is of no significance.

  (7) The defendant, however, was civilly liable for the return of the building, and its occupants, or their value, even if he had to steal to get it, provided, however, that he stole only on and from a planet where theft was legal.

  The Skrrgck case was by no means concluded by the decision of the Galactic Tribunal, but continued to reverberate down the years, a field day for lawyers, and “a lesson to all in the complexities of modern intergalactic law and society,” said Winston, Harold C, Herman Prof, of Legal History, Harvard.

  Though freed on the criminal charge of theft, Skrrgck still faced some 20,000 charges of kidnapping, plus the civil liability imposed upon him by the ruling of the Court.

  The kidnapping charges were temporarily held in abeyance. Not that the abductions were not considered outrageous, but it was quickly realized by all concerned that if Skrrgck were constantly involved in lengthy and expensive defenses to criminal prosecutions, there would be no chance at all of obtaining any restitution from him. First things first, and with Terrans that rarely means justice.

  Skrrgck offered to pay over the money he had received for the building and its occupants, but that was unacceptable to the Terrans, for what they really wanted, with that exaggerated fervor typical of them, provided it agrees with their financial interests, was the return of the original articles. Not only were the people wanted back, but the building itself had a special significance.

  Its full title was “The New Merchandise Mart” and it had been built in the exact style of the original and on the exact spot on the south side of the Chicago River where the original had stood prior to its destruction in the Sack of Chicago. It was more than just a large commercial structure to the Terrans. It was also a symbol of Terra’s unusually quick recovery from its Empire Chaos into its present position of leadership within the Galactic Union. The Terrans wanted that building back.

  So Skrrgck, an obliging fellow at heart, tried first to get it back, but this proved impossible, for he had sold the building to the Aldebaranian Confederacy for use in its annual “prosperity fiesta.”

  The dominant culture of the Aldebaranian system is a descendant of the “conspicuous destruction” or “potlatch” type, in which articles of value are destroyed to prove the wealth and power of the destroyers. It was customary once every Aldebaranian year—about six Terran—for the Aldebaranian government to sponsor a token celebration of this destructive sort, and it had purchased the Merchandise Mart from Skrrgck as part of its special celebration marking the first thousand years of the Confederacy.

  Consequently, the building, along with everything else, was totally destroyed in the “bonfire” that consumed the entire fourth planet from the main Aldebaranian sun.

  Nor was Skrrgck able to arrange the return to Terra of the occupants of the building, some 20,000 in number, because he had sold them as slaves to the Boötean League.

  * * *

  It is com
monly thought slavery is forbidden throughout the Galaxy by the terms of Article 19 of the Galactic Compact, but such is not the case. What is actually forbidden is “involuntary servitude” and this situation proved the significance of that distinction. In the case of Sol v. Boötes, the Galactic Tribunal held that Terra had no right to force the “slaves” to give up their slavery and return to Terra if they did not wish to. And, quite naturally, none of them wished to.

  It will be remembered that the Boöteans, a singularly handsome and good-natured people, were in imminent danger of racial extinction due to the disastrous effects of a strange nucleonic storm which had passed through their system in 1622. The physiological details of the “Boötean Effect,” as it has been called, was to render every Boötean sterile in relation to every other Boötean, while leaving each Boötean normally capable of reproduction, provided one of the partners in the union had not been subjected to the nucleonic storm.

  Faced with this situation, the Boöteans immediately took steps to encourage widespread immigration by other humanoid races, chiefly Terrans, for it was Terrans who had originally colonized Boötes and it was therefore known that interbreeding was possible.

  But the Boöteans were largely unsuccessful in their immigration policy. Terra was peaceful and prosperous, and the Boöteans, being poor advertisers, were unable to convince more than a handful to leave the relative comforts of home for the far-off Boötean system where, almost all were sure, some horrible fate lay behind the Boöteans’ honeyed words. So when Skrrgck showed up with some 20,000 Terrans, the Boöteans, in desperation, agreed to purchase them in the hope of avoiding the “involuntary servitude” prohibition of Article 19 by making them like it.

  In this, they were spectacularly successful. The “slaves” were treated to the utmost luxury and every effort was made to satisfy any reasonable wish. Their “duties” consisted entirely of “keeping company” with the singularly attractive Boöteans.

  Under these circumstances it is, perhaps, hardly surprising that out of the 20,101 occupants, all but 332 flatly refused to return to Terra.