One in 300

by J. T. McIntosh

  But she wasn't allowed to leave 92. Ritchie was the PL, and PLs had a lot of power -- quite apart from the extra strings Ritchie could pull. Why Ritchie wanted to keep her in 92 wasn't clear. Apparently he said nothing whatever about Sammy -- no comment, no congratulations, no protest. He simply ignored the whole affair.

  I still thought, so help me, that Ritchie was overrated. People kept muttering about what a bad influence he was, how powerful he was becoming, how essential it was to find some way of checking him.

  Undoubtedly he was a bad influence, but how much did he really matter? Not very much, I thought.

  Which shows that even I didn't know everything.

  7

  It wasn't without reason that Leslie had said in those early days that there was always something worse on the way. Whenever you were over the hill -- there was another one in front of you.

  But we couldn't really rail against Fate, for every time we should have known about those hills. Every new thing we had to face was new only because we hadn't thought of it -- not because we couldn't have known about it.

  We should have known about the sun, back on Earth, long before we did, and we could have known; we knew some of it. We should have known that the lifeships we made could only be space buggies, and that it would be a labor of Hercules to get them safely to Mars. We should have known what would happen when a cold, dead world, its inner fires all but out, was suddenly and unevenly heated and thrown into climatic chaos. We should have known that people couldn't get on without some kind of exchange, and that our free, moneyless Utopia would soon be a glorious breeding ground for power-mad economic emperors. We should have known that if we had breezes and winds and gales we might any day have to withstand a great storm which was the grandmother and grandfather of them all.

  And we should have known, before they happened, about the murders.

  It was easy, the way we lived, to murder anyone in the settlement. That was demonstrated in one short, terrible week.

  On Monday night Gregor Wolkoff, a member of 67, was found knifed outside the main entrance to bachelors' hall. There was uproar and horror, certainly, but nothing to what was to come. No real fear. It was a crime of passion, obviously, and soon the killer would be found.

  In fact, quite a few people I talked to stressed the utter stupidity of the murder rather than anything else. How could anyone think for a moment he could get away with such a crime, cooped up in a small space with some eighteen thousand people, all of them watching for the faintest sign of the killer's guilt?

  One of the reasons why Wolkoff's death was taken so lightly was that by all accounts it was no loss to the community. Some people, true, were horrified by the very fact of murder, which we had all thought we had left behind us. But most of the people who had known Wolkoff shrugged and said he was capable of anything and there might have been strong provocation. It might be a case of self-defense -- though if that was so, we wondered, why was he stabbed in the back?

  However, the situation changed completely after Wednesday night, when Jean Martine was found in the shadows among the parked ships, stabbed in the same way.

  Jean Martine wasn't a member of a Iifeship crew at all. He had been third navigator in one of the regular spaceships, and was of quite a different type from Wolkoff. He was young, popular, good-looking. Nobody knew anything against him. He had a girl, and no one knew of any other love affairs.

  Aileen came flying into our room soon after we heard about this second murder, breathless, wild, and scared.

  "Ritchie's behind this," she gasped. "What am I going to do?"

  We couldn't get anything coherent out of her for quite a while. She was obviously hysterical, and I wondered whether I should slap her. But there are some girls you hesitate to slap, and Aileen, for me, was one of them. Leslie tried to soothe her, but without much success.

  Sammy came in, saw Aileen, and said mildly: "Thought you'd be here. Aren't you supposed to be looking after Leslie? Seems she's looking after you."

  Whether Sammy's handling of the situation was good psychology or not, it certainly had the desired effect. Aileen gulped and shook her head to clear it.

  "You think I'm crazy," she said. "You don't know Ritchie. I do."

  "How do you know he's concerned?" I asked.

  "Because I know him," she said bitterly.

  It's a funny thing, but when people are hysterical, particularly women, you discount what they say, even when, as in Aileen's case, you know perfectly well they aren't given to hysteria. We said soothing things, but if among them there was any admission that she was probably right, it was merely because that seemed expedient.

  Two days later everyone was saying that Ritchie was behind all three murders.

  That third one did it. The man who died this time was PL Venters, a known opponent of Ritchie, one he had never managed to pacify, involve, or cow. And suddenly it became obvious that the three murders were a part of some plan for power, and that the planner must be Ritchie. Now that it was obvious, people remembered that Ritchie and Wolkoff had been seen together a lot, and that Martine had spoken violently and tellingly against Ritchie. They also pointed out that though Ritchie had provided himself with an alibi for all three murders, Morgan Smith, his known ally, had no alibi at all.

  Public opinion is often wrong, but I didn't think it was wrong this time. Now I believed Mleen. Now I knew I'd been mistaken about Ritchie.

  So I was wrong. So Ritchie was a killer. So Aileen probably had good reason to hate him.

  All I can take credit for is that when I knew I was wrong I admitted it fairly and squarely to myself and revised all my ideas about Ritchie and Aileen and Winant.

  I didn't like what I came up with.

  Some people wanted to string Ritchie and Morgan up without trial. If I'd been in charge of things, I'd have let them do it. We couldn't afford, yet, to be fair and impartial. It was, let's say, a sixty-five per cent probability that Morgan and Ritchie between them had killed all three people, and that was good enough. Even if we had the wrong people, this swift, decisive retribution would keep the actual murderers quiet for a long time. It wasn't the justice of civilization, it was the expediency of emergency.

  Unfortunately, though, since we had such a big proportion of decent, fair-minded people among us, that was vetoed. Martian law wasn't going to start with hanging without trial.

  "He knew that would happen," said Aileen listlessly. "Why don't people see that law doesn't prevent crime, it makes it easy for a clever man?"

  The council passed a few more laws, and one of them made it clear that we weren't following the old principle of not trying a man twice for the same crime. We would try him, and keep on trying, until we proved his guilt or his innocence.

  Then we tried Morgan and Ritchie for the three murders. We didn't even manage to make it look particularly likely that they were guilty.

  But they did, by their attitude.

  "You have nothing for us to answer," said Ritchle blandly, "nothing for us to deny, except that we murdered these three men. I can't speak for Morgan Smith; I can only say, for myself, I didn't kill any of these men, and you all know it. I don't see why I should bother to deny inciting Smith to commit a crime which no one has established he did commit."

  "Why pick on me?" said Morgan resentfully, when he was called. "I'm only one of about five thousand people who might have stuck a knife in these three guys. Are you going to hang everybody who can't prove he didn't do it?"

  And that was that. There was no evidence, let alone proof. We could only discharge them. We hadn't proved Morgan's innocence, but we certainly hadn't proved his guilt.

  Nevertheless, a lot of people who had been uncertain before the brief, impromptu, abortive trial were quite sure after it. Ritchie and Morgan didn't act like innocent men. They acted, very deliberately, like guilty men who were quite certain their guilt couldn't be proved.

  Unfortunately that wasn't evidence.

  Very soon we found we'd play
ed into Ritchie's hands. It was now generally known that he and Morgan were killers, and that nobody could do anything about it. Ritchie could use it as a threat. He did, almost openly. His power grew and grew. It was no use people saying he wouldn't dare. Obviously he would dare.

  Before this I'd never had any actual demonstration of his power. Ritchie had never really seemed any concern of mine. I had issued no contracts, nor had Leslie; there seemed no hold he could possibly have over us.

  But when I made a serious attempt to have Aileen transferred to 94, I found out something of what Ritchie could do if he felt like it.

  Leslie had her baby, a girl. We called her Patricia. The idea was Leslie's, not mine. I agreed without asking her whether she was thinking of Pat Darrell or not. At any rate, Aileen was so useful that Leslie felt we ought to do something for her, and what Aileen wanted was to get completely clear of Ritchie.

  I thought her rather weak in this matter. You read of Trilbys completely dominated by Svengalis, but a normal person isn't so easy to dominate. All that was needed, I was certain, was that Aileen should take a firm stand and tell Ritchie firmly and without heroics what it was. However, there it was; Aileen thought she was in her father's power, and if she was to stop thinking so, someone else would have to take a hand.

  I pulled all the strings I could think of to have Aileen declared independent of her PL, or transferred to another group, or anything else that would serve the purpose. Each time I was told, as I expected, "See So-and-so." On Mars people in authority were already back to the old game of refusing all responsibility, of passing the buck, of doing nothing rather than do anything wrong.

  About every third time the person I was told to see was Ritchie, even if I hadn't mentioned Aileen by name. Apparently Ritchie had things arranged so that most changes had to be made, sooner or later, through him.

  So I went and saw Ritchie. He had acquired one of the top flats, though he had no woman, and unlike the rest of us, he had all three rooms. That alone showed his power, wealth, and authority. He even had a stairway to the roof and had somehow managed to get part of it fenced off for his own private use. He probably saw himself as a millionaire with a penthouse.

  Inside, too, there were many evidences of his special privileges. His flat was more nearly finished than any I had seen so far. He even had some rough furniture.

  I ignored all that and went straight to the point.

  "Why don't you leave Aileen alone, Ritchie?" I demanded.

  "She's my daughter, Bill," Ritchie said gently.

  "She doesn't want to be your daughter."

  "She can't help it. It's an accident of Fate."

  "What percentage is there for you in keeping her tied to you?"

  Ritchie spoke in the same gentle tone: "I told you long ago, Bill, it wasn't money that mattered, but what you could get for it. I'm going to explain myself to you, Bill. But first I'm going to tell you why I'm doing it."

  He sat back comfortably and looked at me. He was in no hurry.

  "Drink?" he asked casually.

  I shot a puzzled glance at him.

  He reached behind him and from a recess in the wall produced a bottle and two glasses. He poured me out a drink and handed it to me. I sniffed it and sipped it.

  It was raw, but it was alcohol.

  "How the devil . . . ?" I began.

  "Just drink it," said Ritchie. "I'll come to that. I'm going to show you a few more things, Bill. I'm glad you came to see me. I was going to ask you to come anyway, one of these days."

  He downed the liquor and poured himself some more.

  "What I want," he said, "is what quite a lot of people want. But I can get it. They can't. I want to be able to do what I like, eat what I like, drink what I like. I want to do things just to show I can do them. This, for example." He raised his glass. "I don't really give a damn for liquor. I can take it or leave it alone. But I like having it made, keeping it here. I like being the only man alive who can have a drink when he likes."

  He smiled happily at me.

  "I sell it too, of course," he said reflectively, "on a very limited scale. And it's no use thinking you can report that and have something done about it, because you can't."

  He put the bottle away again.

  "Now you wonder why I'm telling you this," he went on.

  "I think I know," I said bitterly.

  "Perhaps you do. You're thinking of fighting me, Bill. I strongly advise against it. I hate to mention Jean Martine as a threat, but in some ways Jean was very like you."

  If I give the impression that Ritchie talked like an oily villain in very cheap melodrama, that's about right. The only thing he lacked was the unreasonable anger of such stage types. I don't think Ritchie knew how to be angry. He was always friendly, even when he was threatening your life. He had only one record to play. Friendliness, good humor, pleasure in your company -- however false it all was, that was the invariable background music to anything his words might happen to mean.

  "Soon I will have a very efficient bodyguard," Ritchie remarked. "Even now -- Morgan!"

  Morgan Smith appeared in the doorway. He had a gun in his hand, and he enjoyed pointing it at me.

  "This is crazy," I snapped. "You get some scared chemist to supply you with alcohol, and there may be a lot of people who have made you silly promises, and you may control a lot of votes, but if Morgan shot me now a lot of people would dash in and you'd both be hanged. There's too much weight against you, Ritchie."

  He nodded. "That's true. At the moment, anyway. No, if I really wanted to kill you, I'd have to arrange it another way. But it would be very little more difficult, Bill. You must know that. And I'm building up weight on my side. Morgan, send Edith here."

  Morgan disappeared.

  I got up. "I don't want any further demonstration," I said disgustedly. "No doubt this girl Edith will do anything you like. I'll believe that. I've also heard your threats."

  Ritchie held up his hand in protest. "Edith works here as a servant, that's all," he said. "As far as women are concerned, I'm highly moral, Bill. I'm sorry marriage was abolished. I'm not in favor of these loose sex relations. Soon I'll have marriage reinstated, and then perhaps I might marry. But that's not what I want to talk about."

  "I don't care what you want to talk about. I'm going. I take it you insist on making Aileen miserable to prove you can do that, too?"

  "I'll always see," he retorted coolly, "that Aileen will have no real cause to be miserable. If she insists on pretending to herself that she is, I can't stop that. Just a minute, Bill. I expect you're even more determined to fight me now. Remember you have a daughter and a wife."

  "You're threatening Pat and Leslie?"

  "And you," he added easily. "If you yourself are a nuisance, it'll be you I have removed. But I know better than to try to scare you on your own account. Remember your daughter and wife when you think of doing anything."

  I turned from him in white anger. A girl, Edith presumably, came in as I went out. I paid no attention to her, but I did notice she wasn't pretty. Probably Ritchie was as blameless from the sex point of view as he claimed.

  Possibly also he was no sadist, unlike Morgan. Perhaps his deals were straight, according to the business ethics of dead Earth. Perhaps in many other ways he was blameless.

  But none of that prevented him from being a fount of corruption, in a way I hadn't dreamed he was only a few days since.

  Aileen was terribly right about Ritchie. She was right to be afraid of him.