Next of Kin

by Eric Frank Russell

  “You bet I am.”

  The other chuckled and scratched an ear, an action that his species used to express polite scepticism. “I think we’ve a better chance than you’re ever likely to get.”

  Leeming shot him a sharp glance. “Why?”

  “There are more of us and we’re together,” evaded the Rigellian as though realising that he’d been on the point of saying too much. “What can one do on one’s own?”

  “Bust out and run like blazes first chance,” said Leeming. Just then he noticed the ring on the other’s ear-scratching finger and became fascinated with it. He’d seen the modest ornament before. A number of Rigellians were wearing similar objects. So were some of the guards. These rings were neat affairs consisting of four or five turns of thin wire with the ends shaped and soldered to form the owner’s initials.

  “Where’d you dig up the jewellery?” he asked.

  “Where did I get what?”

  “The ring.”

  “Oh, that.” Lowering his hand, the Rigellian studied the ring with satisfaction. “We make them ourselves in the workshops. It breaks the monotony.”

  “Mean to say the guards don’t stop you?”

  “They don’t interfere. There’s no harm in it. Besides, we’ve made quite a few for the guards themselves. We’ve made them some automatic lighters as well and could have turned out a lot for ourselves if we’d had any use for them.” He paused, looked thoughtful and added, “We think the guards have been selling rings and lighters outside. At least, we hope so.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe they’ll build up a nice, steady trade. Then when they are comfortably settled in it we’ll cut supplies and demand a rake-off in the form of extra rations and a few unofficial privileges.”

  “That’s a smart idea,” approved Leeming. “It would help all concerned to have a high-pressure salesman pushing the goods in the big towns. How about putting me down for that job?”

  Giving a faint smile, the Rigellian continued, “Handmade junk doesn’t matter. But let the guards find that one small screwdriver is missing and there’s hell to pay. Everyone is stripped naked on the spot and the culprit suffers.”

  “They wouldn’t care about losing a small coil of that wire, would they?”

  “I doubt it. There’s plenty of it, they don’t bother to check the stock. What can anyone do with a piece of wire?”

  “Heaven alone knows,” Leeming admitted: “But I want some all the same.”

  “You’ll never pick a lock with it in a million moons,” warned the other. “It’s too soft and thin.”

  “I want enough to make a set of Zulu bangles. I sort of fancy myself in Zulu bangles.”

  “And what are those?”

  “Never mind. Get me some of that wire-that’s all I ask.

  “You can steal it yourself in the near future. After you’ve been questioned they’ll send you to the workshops.”

  “I want it before then. I want it just as soon as I can get it. The more the better and the sooner the better.”

  Going silent, the Rigellian thought it over, finally said, “If you’ve a plan in your mind keep it to yourself. Don’t let slip a hint of it to anyone. Open your mouth once too often and somebody will beat you to it.”

  “Thanks for the good advice, friend,” said Leeming. “Now how about a supply of wire?”

  “See you this time tomorrow.”

  With that, the Rigellian left him, wandered into the crowd.

  At the appointed hour the other was there, passed him the loot. “Nobody gave this to you, see? You found it lying in the yard. Or you found it hidden in your cell. Or you conjured it out of thin air. But nobody gave it to you.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t involve you in any way. And thanks a million.”

  The wire was a thick, pocket-sized coil of tinned copper. When unrolled in the darkness of his cell it measured a little more than his own length, or about seven feet.

  Leeming doubled it, waggled it to and fro until it broke, hid one half under the bottom of the bench. Then he spent a couple of hours worrying a nail out of the bench’s end. It was hard going and it played hob with his fingers but he persisted until the nail was free.

  Finding one of the small squares of wood, he approximated its centre, stamped the nail-point into it with the heel of his boot. Footsteps sounded along the corridor, he shoved the stuff out of sight beneath the bench, lay dawn just in time before the spyhole opened. The light flashed on, a cold reptilian eye looked in, somebody grunted. The light cut off, the spyhole shut.

  Resuming his task, Leeming twisted the nail one way and then the other, stamping on it with his boot from time to time. The task was tedious but at least it gave him something to do. He persevered until he had drilled a neat hole two-thirds of the way through the wood.

  Next, he took his half-length of wire, broke it into two unequal parts, shaped the shorter piece to form a neat loop with two legs each three or four inches long. He tried to make the loop as near to a perfect circle as possible. The larger piece he wound tightly around the loop so that it formed a close-fitting coil with legs matching the others.

  Propping his bench against the wall, he climbed it to the window and examined his handiwork in the glow from outside floodlights, made a few minor adjustments and felt satisfied. He replaced the bench and used the nail to make on its edge two small nicks representing the exact diameter of the loop. Lastly he counted the number of turns to the coil. There were twenty-seven.

  It was important to remember these details because in all likelihood he would have to make a second gadget as nearly identical as possible. That very similarity would help to bother the enemy. When a plotter makes two mysterious objects to all intents and purposes the same it is hard to resist the notion that he knows what he is doing and has a sinister purpose.

  To complete his preparations he coaxed the nail back into the place where it belonged. Sometime he’d need it again as a valuable tool. They’d never find it and deprive him of it because, to the searcher’s mind, anything visibly not disturbed is not suspect.

  Carefully he forced the four legs of the coiled loop into the hole that he’d drilled, thus making the square of wood function as a supporting base. He now had a gadget, a thingumbob, a means to an end. He was the original inventor and sole proprietor of the Leeming-Finagle something-or-other.

  Certain chemical reactions take place only in the presence of a catalyst, like marriages legalised by the presence of an official. Some equations can be solved only by the inclusion of an unknown quantity called X. If you haven’t enough to obtain a desired result you’ve got to add what’s needed. If you require outside help that doesn’t exist you must invent it.

  Whenever Man had found himself unable to master his environment with his bare hands, thought Leeming, the said environment had be coerced or bullied into submission by Man plus X. That had been so since the beginning of time: Man plus a tool or a weapon.

  But X did not have to be anything concrete or solid, it did not have to be lethal or even visible. It could be as intangible and unprovable as the threat of hellfire or the promise of heaven. It could be a dream, an illusion, a whacking great thundering lie-just anything.

  There was only one positive test: whether it worked.

  If it did, it was efficient.

  Now to see.

  There was no sense in using the Terran language except perhaps as an incantation when one was necessary. Nobody here understood Terran, to them it was just an alien gabble. Besides, his delaying tactic of pretending to be slow to learn the local tongue was no longer effective. They knew that he could speak it almost as well as they could themselves.

  Holding the loop assembly in his left hand he went to the door, applied his ear to the closed spyhole, listened for the sound of patrolling feet. It was twenty minutes before heavy boots came clumping towards him.

  “Are you there?” he called, not too loudly but enough to be heard. “Are you there?”

>   Backing off fast, he lay on his belly on the floor and stood the loop six inches in front of his face. “Are you there?”

  The spyhole clicked open, the light came on, a sour eye looked through.

  Completely ignoring the watcher and behaving with the air of one far too absorbed in his task to notice that he was being observed, Leeming spoke through the coiled loop.

  “Are you there?”

  “What are you doing?” demanded the guard.

  Recognising the other’s voice, Leeming decided that for once luck must be turning his way. This character, a chump named Marsin, knew enough to point a gun and fire it, or, if unable to do so, yell for help. In all other matters he was not of the elite. In fact Marsin would have to think twice to pass muster as a half-wit.

  “What are you doing?” insisted Marsin, raising his voice.

  “Calling,” said Leeming, apparently just waking up to the other’s existence.

  “Calling? Calling what or where?”

  “Mind your own quilpole business,” Leeming ordered, giving a nice display of impatience. Concentrating attention upon the loop, he turned it round a couple of degrees. “Are you there?”

  “It is forbidden,” insisted Marsin.

  “Letting go the loud sigh of one compelled to bear fools gladly, Leeming said, “What is forbidden?”

  “To call.”

  “Don’t display your ignorance. My species is always allowed to call. Where would we be if we couldn’t, enk?”

  That got Marsin badly tangled. He knew nothing about Earthmen or what peculiar privileges they considered essential to life, Neither could he give a guess as to where they’d be without them.

  Moreover, he dared not enter the cell and put a stop to whatever was going on. An armed guard was strictly prohibited from going into a cell by himself and that rule had been rigid ever since a fed-up Rigellian had slugged one, snatched his gun and killed six people while trying to make a break.

  If he wanted to interfere he’d have to go and see the sergeant of the guard and demand that something be done to stop pink-skinned aliens making noises through loops. The sergeant was an unlovely character with a tendency to shout the most intimate details of personal histories all over the landscape. It was the witching hour between midnight and dawn, a time when the sergeant’s liver malfunctioned most audibly. And lastly he, Marsin, had proved himself a misbegotten faplap far too often.

  “You will cease calling and go to sleep,” ordered Marsin with a touch of desperation, “or in the morning I shall re-port your insubordination to the officer of the day.”

  “Go ride a camel,” Leeming invited. He rotated the loop in manner of one making careful adjustment. “Are you there?”

  “I have warned you,” Marsin persisted, his only visible eye popping at the loop.

  “Fibble off!” roared Leeming. Marsin shut the spyhole and fibbled off.

  As was inevitable after being up most of the night, Leeming overslept. His awakening was abrupt and rude. The door burst open with a loud crash; three guards plunged in followed by an officer.

  Without ceremony the prisoner was jerked off the bench, stripped and shoved into the corridor stark naked. The guards then searched through the clothing while the officer minced around watching them. He was, decided Leeming, definitely a fairy.

  Finding nothing in the clothes they started examining the cell. Right off one of them discovered the loop-assembly and gave it to the officer who held it gingerly as if it were a bouquet suspected of being a bomb.

  Another guard trod on the second piece of wood, kicked it aside and ignored it. They tapped the floor and walls, seeking hollow sounds. Dragging the bench away from the wall, they looked over the other side of it but failed to turn it upside-down and see anything underneath. However, they handled the bench so much that it got an Leeming’s nerves and he decided that now was the time to take a walk. He started along the corridor, a picture of nonchalant nudity.

  The officer let go a howl of outrage and pointed. The guards erupted from the cell, bawled orders to halt. A fourth guard, attracted by the noise, came sound the bend of the corridor, aimed his gun threateningly. Leeming turned around and ambled back.

  He stopped as he reached the officer who was now outside the cell and fuming with temper. Striking a modest pose, he said, “Look-September Morn.”

  It meant nothing to the other who flourished the loop, did a little dance of rage and yelled, “What is this thing?”

  “My property,” declared Leeming with naked dignity.

  “You are not entitled to possess it. As a prisoner of war you are not allowed to have anything.”

  “Who says so?”

  “I say so ” informed the fairy somewhat violently.

  “Who’re you?” asked Leeming, showing no more than academic interest.

  “By the Great Blue Sun, I’ll show you who I am! Guards, take him inside and —”

  “You’re not the boss;” interrupted Leeming, impressively cocksure. “The Commandant is the boss here. I say so and he says so. If you want to dispute it, let’s go ask him.”

  The guards hesitated, assumed expressions of chronic uncertainty. They were unanimous in passing the buck to the officer. That worthy was taken aback. Staring incredulously at the prisoner, he became wary.

  Are you asserting that the Commandant has given permission for you to have this object?”

  “I’m telling you that he hasn’t refused permission. Also that it is, not for you to give or refuse it. You roll in your own hog-pen and don’t try usurp the position of your betters.”

  “Hog-pen? What is that?”

  “You wouldn’t know.”

  “I shall consult the Commandant about this.” Deflated and unsure of himself, the officer turned to the guards.

  “Put him back in his cell and give him his breakfast as usual.

  “How about returning my property, enk?” Leeming prompted.

  “Not until I have seen the Commandant.”

  They hustled him into the cell. He got dressed. Breakfast came, the inevitable bowl of slop. He cussed the guards for not making it bacon and eggs. That was deliberate and of malice aforethought. A display of self assurance and some aggressiveness was necessary to push the game along.

  For some reason the tutor did not appear so he spent the morning furbishing his fluency with the aid of the books. At mid-day they let him into the yard and he could detect no evidence of a special watch being kept upon him while he mingled with the crowd.

  The Rigellian whispered, “I got the opportunity to take another coil of wire. So I grabbed it in case you wanted more.” He slipped it across, saw it vanish into a pocket “That’s all I intend to steal. Don’t ask me again. One can’t tempt fate too often.”

  “What’s the matter? Is it getting risky? Are they suspicious of you?”

  “Everything is all right so far.” He glanced cautiously; around. “If some of the other prisoners learn that I’m pinching wire they’ll start taking it too. They’ll snatch it in the hope of discovering what I intend to do with it, that they can use it for the same purpose. Two years in prison is two years of education in unmitigated selfishness. Everybody is always on the watch for some advantage, real or imaginary, that he can grab off somebody else. This lousy life brings out the worst in us as well as the best.”

  “A couple of small coils will never be missed,” the other went on. “But once the rush starts the stuff will evaporate in wholesale quantities. And that’s when all hell will break loose. I daren’t take the chance of creating a general ruckus.”

  “Meaning you fellows can’t afford to risk a detailed search right now?” suggested Leeming pointedly.

  The Rigellian shied like a frightened horse. “I didn’t say that.”

  “I can put two and two together as expertly as anyone else.” Leeming favoured him with a reassuring wink. “I can also keep my mouth shut.”

  He watched the other mooch away. Then he sought around the yard for
more pieces of wood but failed to find any. Oh, well, no matter. At a pinch he could do without. Come to that, he’d darned well have to do without.

  The afternoon was given over to linguistic studies on which he was able to concentrate without interruption. That was one advantage of being in the clink, perhaps the only one. A fellow could educate himself. When the light became too poor and the first pale stars showed through the barred opening in the wall he kicked the door until the sound of it thundered all over the block.

  EIGHT

  Feet came running and the spyhole opened. It was Marsin again.

  “So it’s you, faplap,” greeted Leeming. He let go a snort of contempt. “You had to blab, of course. You had to curry favour by reporting me to the officer.” He drew himself up to full height. “Well, I am sorry for you. I’d fifty times rather be me than you.”

  “Sorry for me?” Marsin registered confusion. “Why?”

  “Because you are going to suffer.”

  “I am?”

  “Yes, you! Not immediately, if that is any consolation. First of all it is necessary for you to undergo the normal period of horrid anticipation. But eventually you are going to suffer. I don’t expect you to believe me. All you need do is wait and see.”

  “It was my duty,” explained Marsin semi-apologetically.

  “That fact will be considered in mitigation,” Leeming assured, “and your agonies will be modified in due proportion.”

  “I don’t understand,” complained Marsin, developing a node of worry somewhere within the solid bone.

  “You will-some dire day. So also will those stinking faplaps who beat me up in the yard. You can inform them from me that their quota of pain is being arranged.”

  “I am not supposed to talk to you,” said Marsin, dimly perceiving that the longer he stood by the spyhole the bigger the fix he got into. “I shall have to go.”

  “All right. But I want something.”

  “What is it?”

  “I want my bopamagilvie-that thing the officer took away.”

  “You cannot have it unless the Commandant gives permission. He is absent today and will not return before tomorrow morning.”