“Drop dead, you …” I followed with some of the choicer selections from my interstellar vocabulary, and tried to knock the cup out of his hand. He fooled me by raising it and drinking it himself, not in the least annoyed.
“Is that any kind of language to use on your superior officer in the Special Corps?” He asked and refilled the cup. “It’s a good thing we’re a relaxed organization without too many rules. Still—there are limits.” He held out the cup again and this time I grabbed it and drained it.
“Why did you do it?” I asked, still wracked by conflicting emotions.
“Because you didn’t, that’s why. The operation is over, you are a success. Before you were merely on probation, but now you are a full agent.”
He grubbed in one pocket and pulled out a little gold star made of paper. After licking it carefully and solemnly he reached out and stuck it to the front of my shirt.
“I hereby appoint you a full Agent of the Special Corps,” he intoned, “by authority of the power vested in me.”
Cursing, I reached to pick the damn thing off—and laughed instead. It was absurd. It was also a fine commentary on the honors that went with the job.
“I thought I was no longer a member of the crew,” I told him.
“I never received your resignation,” Inskipp said. “Not that it would have meant anything. You can’t resign from the Corps.”
“Yeah—but I got your message when you gave me a discharge. Or did you forget that I stole a ship and you set off the scuttling charge by remote to blow me up? As you see I managed to pull the fuse just before it let go.”
“Nothing of the sort, my boy,” he said, settling back to sip his second drink. “You were so insistent about looking for the fair Angelina that I thought you might want to borrow a ship before we had a chance to assign you one. The one you took had the fuse rigged as it always is on these occasions. The fuse—not the charge—is set to explode five seconds after it is removed. I find this gives a certain independence of mind to prospective agents who regret their manner of departure.”
“You mean—the whole thing was a frame-up?” I gurgled.
“You might say that. I prefer the term ‘graduating-exercise’. This is the time when we find out if our crooked novices really will devote the rest of their lives to the pursuit of law and order. When they find out, too. We don’t want there to be any regrets in later years. You found out, didn’t you Jim?”
“I found out something … I’m not quite sure what yet,” I said, still not able to talk about the one thing closest to me.
“It was a fine operation. I must say you showed a lot of imagination in the way you carried it out.” Then he frowned. “But that business with the bank, I can’t say I approve of it. The Corps has all the funds you will need …”
“Same money,” I snapped. “Where does the Corps get it? From planetary governments. And where do they get it from? Taxes of course. So I take it directly from the bank. The insurance company pays the bank for the loss, then declares a smaller income that year, pays less taxes to the government—and the result is exactly the same as your way!”
Inskipp was well acquainted with this brand of logic so didn’t even bother to answer. I still didn’t want to talk about Angela.
“How did you find me?” I asked. “There was no bug on the ship.”
“Simple child of nature that you are,” Inskipp said, raising his hands in feigned horror. “Do you really think that any of our ships aren’t bugged? And the job done so well it cannot be detected if you don’t know where to look. For your information the apparently solid outer door of the spacelock contains quite a complex transmitter, strong enough for us to detect at quite a distance.”
“Then why didn’t I hear it?”
“For the simple reason that it wasn’t broadcasting. I should add that the door also contains a receiver. The device only transmits when it receives the proper signal. We gave you time to reach your destination and then followed you. We lost you for a while in Freiburbad, but picked up your trail again in the hospital, right after you played musical chairs with the corpses. We lent you a hand there, the hospital was justifiably annoyed but we managed to keep them quiet After that it was just a matter of keeping an eye on doctors and surgical equipment since your next move was obvious. I hope you’ll be pleased to know that you are carrying a very compact transmitter in your sternum.”
I looked at my chest but of course saw nothing.
“It was too good an opportunity to miss,” Inskipp went on. There was no stopping the man. “One night when you were under sedation the good doctor found the alcohol we had seen fit to include in one of your supply packages. He of course took advantage of this shipping error and a Corps surgeon made a little operation of his own.”
“Then you have been following me and watching ever since?”
“That’s right. But this was your case, just as much as it would have been if you knew we were there.”
“Then why did you move in for the kill like this?” I snapped. “I didn’t blow the whistle for the marines.”
This was the big question for the hour and the only one that mattered to me. Inskipp took his time about answering.
“It’s like this,” he drawled, and took a sip of his drink. “I like a new man to have enough rope. But not so much that he will hang himself. You were here for what might be called a goodly long time, and I wasn’t receiving any reports about revolutions or arrests you had made.”
What could I say?
His voice was quieter, more sympathetic. “Would you have arrested her if we hadn’t moved in?” That was the question.
“I don’t know,” was all I could say.
“Well I damn well knew what I was going to do,” he said with the old venom. “So I did it. The plot is well nipped before it could bud and our multiple murderess is offplanet by now.”
“Let her go!” I shouted as I grabbed him by the front of the jacket and swung him free of the ground and shook him. “Let her go I tell you!”
“Would you turn her loose again—the way she is?” was all he answered.
Would I? I suppose I wouldn’t. I dropped him while I was thinking about it and he straightened out the wrinkles in the front of his suit.
“This has been a rough assignment for you,” he said as he started to put the flask away. “At times there can be a very thin line between right and wrong. If you are emotionally involved the line is almost impossible to see.”
“What will happen to her?” I asked.
He hesitated before he answered. “The truth—for a change,” I told him.
“All right, the truth. No promises—but the psych boys might be able to do something with her. If they can find the cause of the basic aberration. But that can be impossible to find at times.”
“Not in this case—I can tell them.”
He looked surprised at that, giving me some small satisfaction.
“In that case there might be a chance. I’ll give positive orders that everything is to be tried before they even consider anything like personality removal. If that is done she is just another body, of which there are plenty in the galaxy. Sentenced to death she’s just another corpse—of which there is an equal multitude.”
I grabbed the flask away from him before it reached his pocket, and opened it. “I know you, Inskipp,” I said as I poured. “You’re a born recruiting sergeant. When you lick them—make them join.”
“What else,” he said. “She’d make a great agent.”
“We’d make a great team,” I told him and we raised our cups.
“Here’s to crime.”
THE STAINLESS STEEL RAT’S REVENGE
Harry Harrison
www.sfgateway.com
Contents
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven<
br />
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
CHAPTER ONE
I STOOD IN LINE, as patient as the other taxpayers, my filled out forms and my cash gripped hotly in my hand. Cash, money, the old fashioned folding stuff. A local custom that I intended to make expensive to the local customers. I was scratching under the artificial beard, which itched abominably, when the man before me stepped out of the way and I was at the window. My finger stuck in the glue and I had a job freeing it without pulling off the beard as well.
‘Come, come, pass it over,’ the aging, hatchet-faced, bitter and shrewish female official said, hand extended impatiently.
‘On the contrary,’ I said, letting the papers and banknotes fall away to disclose the immense .75 recoilless pistol that I held. ‘You pass it over. All of that tax money you have extracted from the sheep-like suckers who populate this backward planet.’
I smiled to show that I meant it and she choked off a scream and began scrabbling in the cash drawer. It was a broad smile that showed all of my teeth, which I had stained bright red, which should have helped her decide on the proper course of action. As the money was pushed towards me I stuffed it into my long topcoat that was completely lined with deep pockets.
‘What are you doing?’ the man behind me gasped, eyes bulging like great white grapes.
‘Taking money,’ I said and flipped a bundle at him. ‘Why don’t you have some yourself.’ He caught it by reflex, goggled at it, and all the alarms went off at once and I heard the doors crashing shut. The cashier had managed to trigger an alarm.
‘Good for you,’ I said, ‘but don’t let a minor thing like that prevent you from keeping the cash coming.’
She gasped and started to slip from sight, but a wave of the gun and another flash of my carmine dentures restored a semblance of life, and the flow of bills continued. People started to rush about and gun waving guards began to appear looking round enthusiastically for someone to shoot, so I triggered the radio relay in my pocket. There was a series of charming explosions all about the bank, from every wastebasket where I had planted a gas bomb, followed by the even more charming screams of the customers. I stopped stowing money long enough to slip on the gas-tight goggles and settle them into place. And to clamp my mouth shut so I was forced to breathe through the filter plugs in my nostrils.
It was fascinating to watch. Blackout gas is invisible and has no odor but it does contain a chemical that acts almost instantly, bringing about a complete but temporary paralysis of the optic nerve. Within fifteen seconds everyone in the bank was blind.
With the exception of James Bolivar diGriz, myself, man of many talents. Humming a happy tune through closed lips I stowed away the remaining money. My benefactress had finally slid from sight and was screaming incontinently somewhere behind the counter. So were a lot of other people. There was plenty of groping about and falling over things as I made my way through this little blacked out corner of bedlam. An eerie sensation indeed, the one-eyed man in the country of the blind and all that. A crowd had already gathered outside, pressing in fascinated awe against the windows and glass doors, to watch the drama unfolding inside. I waved and smiled and a shudder passed through the nearest as they pushed back in panic from the door. I shot the lock out, angling the gun so the bullets shrieked away over their heads, and kicked the doors open. Before exiting myself I threw a screamer out onto the sidewalk and quickly pushed the stoppers into my ears.
The screamer sounded and everyone began to leave quickly. You have to leave quickly when you hear one of these things. They send out a mixed brew of devilish sounds at the decibel level of a major earthquake. Some are audible, sounds like a magnified fingernail on a blackboard, while others are supersonic and produce sensations of panic and imminent death. Harmless and highly effective. The street was otherwise empty when I walked out to the car that was just pulling up to the curb. My head was throbbing with the supersonics that got past the plugs and I was more than happy to slip through the open door and relax while Angelina gunned the machine down the street.
‘Everything go all right?’ she asked, keeping her eyes on the road as she whipped around a corner on the outside wheels. Sirens began to sound in the distance.
‘A piece of cake. Smooth as castor oil …’
‘Your similes leave a lot to be desired.’
‘Sorry. A touch of indigestion this morning. But my coat is lined with more money than we could possibly need.’
‘How nice!’ she laughed, and she meant it. That irresistible grin, the crinkled nose. I longed to nibble it, or at least kiss her, but settled for a comradely pat on the shoulder since she needed all her concentration for driving. I popped a stick of gum in my mouth that would remove the red tooth dye and began to peel off my disguise.
As I changed so did the car. Angelina turned into a side street, slowed and then found an even quieter street to drive along. There was no one in sight. She pressed the button.
My, but technology can do some interesting things. The license plate flipped over to reveal a different number, but that was too simple a trick to even discuss. Angelina flicked on the windscreen wipers as a fine spray of catalytic fluid sprang out of jets on the front of the car. Wherever it touched the blue paint turned a bright red. Except for the top of the car which became transparent so that in a few moments we were sitting in a bubble-top surveying the world around. A good deal of what appeared to be chrome plated metal dissolved and washed away altering the appearance and even the make of the car. As soon as this process was complete Angelina sedately turned a corner and started back in the direction from whence we had come. Her orange wig was locked away with my disguise and I held the wheel while she put on an immense pair of goggly sunglasses.
‘Where to next?’ she asked as a huddle of shrieking police cars tore by in the opposite direction.
‘I was thinking of the shore. Wind, sun, sand, that sort of thing. Healthy and bracing.’
‘A little too bracing if you don’t mind my saying so.’ She patted the rounded bulge of her midriff with a more than satisfied smile. ‘It’s six months now, going on seven, so I’m not feeling that athletic. Which reminds me …’ She flashed me a quick scowl, then turned her attention back to the road. ‘You promised to make an honest woman out of me so that we could call this a honeymoon.’
‘My love,’ I said, and clasped her hand in all sincerity. ‘At the first possible moment. I don’t want to make an honest woman out of you – that would be physically impossible since you are basically as larcenous minded as I am – but I will certainly marry you and slip an expensive—’
‘Stolen!’
‘—ring on this delicate little finger. I do promise. But the second we try to register a marriage we’ll be fed into the computer and the game will be up. Our little holiday at an end.’
‘And you’ll be hooked for life. I think I better grab you now before I get too round to run and catch you. We’ll go to your beach resort and enjoy one last day of mad freedom. And tomorrow, right after breakfast, we are getting married. Do you promise?’
‘There is just one question …’
‘Promise, Slippery Jim, I know you!’
‘You have my word except …’
She braked the car to a skidding stop and I found myself looking down the barrel of my own .75 recoilless. It looked very big. Her knuckle was white on the trigger.
‘Promise, you quick-witted slippery tricky crooked lying con man or I’ll blow your brains out.’
‘My darling, you do love me!’
‘Of course I do. B
ut if I can’t have you all to myself I’ll have you dead. Speak!’
‘We get married in the morning.’
‘Some men are so hard to convince,’ she whispered, slipping the gun into my pocket and herself into my arms. Then she kissed me with such delicious intensity that I almost looked forward to the morrow.
CHAPTER TWO
‘WHERE ARE YOU GOING, SLIPPERY JIM?’ Angelina asked, leaning out of the window of our room above. I stopped with my hand on the gate.
‘Just down for a quick swim, my love,’ I shouted back and swung the gate open. A .75 roared and the ruins of the gate were blown out of my hand.
‘Open your robe,’ she said, not unkindly, and blew the smoke from the gun barrel at the same time.
I shrugged with resignation and opened the beach robe. My feet were bare. But of course I was fully dressed, with my pant legs rolled up and my shoes stuffed into my jacket pockets. She nodded understandingly.
‘You can come back upstairs. You’re going nowhere.’
‘Of course I’m not.’ Hot indignation. ‘I’m not that sort of chap. I was just afraid you might misunderstand. I just wanted to nip into the shops and …’
‘Upstairs.’
I went. Hell hath no fury etc. was invented to describe my Angelina. The Special Corps medics had stripped her of her homicidal tendencies, unknotted the tangled skeins of her subconscious and equipped her for a more happy existence than circumstance had previously provided. But when it came to the crunch she was still the old Angelina. I sighed and mounted the stairs with leaden feet.
And I felt even more of an unthinking fiend when I saw that she was crying. ‘Jim, you don’t love me!’ A classic gambit since the first woman in the garden, but still unanswerable.
‘I do,’ I protested, and I meant it. ‘But, it’s just … reflex. Or something like that. I love you, but marriage is, well, like going to prison. And in all my crooked years I have never been sent up.’
The Stainless Steel Rat eBook Collection Page 83