Next of Kin

by Eric Frank Russell

  “To the Most Exalted Lousy Screw,” began Leeming.

  “What does ‘lousy screw’ mean?” asked Kolum as he struggled to put down the strange Terran words phonetically.

  “It’s a title. It means your highness. Man, how high he is!” Leeming pinched his nose while the other pored over the paper. He continued to dictate, going very slowly to keep pace with Kolum’s literary talent. “The food is insufficient and very poor in quality. I am physically weak, I have lost much weight and my ribs are beginning to show. My Eustace does not like it. The thinner I get the more threatening he becomes. The time is fast approaching when I shall have to refuse all responsibility for his actions. Therefore I beg Your Most Exalted Lousy Screwship to give serious consideration to this matter.”

  “There are many words and some of them long ones,” complained Kolum, managing to look like a reptilian martyr.

  “I shall have to rewrite them more readably when I go off duty.”

  “I know and I appreciate the trouble you are taking on my behalf.” Leeming bestowed a beam of fraternal fondness. “That’s why I feel sure you’ll live long enough to do the job.”

  “I must live longer than that,” insisted Kolum, popping the eyes again. “I have the right to live, haven’t I?”

  “That is precisely the argument I’ve been using,” said Leeming in the manner of one who has striven all night to establish the irrefutable but cannot yet guarantee success.

  “I cannot talk to you any longer,” informed Kolum, picking up his gun. “I am not supposed to talk to you at all. If the sergeant of the guard should catch me he will—”

  “The sergeant’s days are numbered,” Leeming told him in, judicial tones. “He will not live long enough to know he’s dead.”

  His hand extended in readiness to close the spyhole, Kolum paused, looked as if he’d been slugged with a sockful of wet sand. Then he said, “How can anyone live long enough to know that he’s dead?”

  “It depends on the method of killing,” assured Leeming. “There are some you’ve never heard of and cannot imagine.” At this point Kolum found the conversation distasteful: He closed the spyhole. Leeming returned to the bench, sprawled upon it. The light went out. Seven stars peeped through the window-slot and they were not unattainable.

  In the morning breakfast came an hour late but consisted of one full bowl of lukewarm pap, two thick slices of brown bread heavily smeared with grease and a large cup of warm liquid vaguely resembling paralysed coffee. He got through the lot with mounting triumph. By contrast with what they had been giving him this feast made the day seem like Christmas. His spirits perked up with the fullness of his belly.

  No summons to a second interview came that day or the next. The Commandant made no move for more than a week. His Lousy Screwship was still awaiting a reply from the Lathian sector and did not feel inclined to take further action before he received it. However meals remained more substantial, a fact that Leeming viewed as positive evidence that someone was insuring himself against disaster.

  Then early one morning the Rigellians acted up. From the cell they could be heard but not seen. Every day at about an hour after dawn the tramp of their two thousand pairs of feet sounded somewhere out of sight and died away toward the workshops. Usually that was all that could be heard, no voices, no desultory conversation, just the weary trudge of feet and an occasional bellow from a guard.

  This time they came out singing, their raucous voices holding a distinct touch of defiance. They were bawling in thunderous discord something about Asta Zangasta’s a dirty old geezer, got fleas on his chest and sores on his beezer. It should have sounded childish and futile. It didn’t. The corporate effect seemed to convey an unspoken threat.

  Guards yelled at them. Singing rose higher, the defiance increasing along with the volume. Standing below his window-slot, Leeming listened intently. This was the first mention he’d heard of the much-abused Asta Zangasta, presumably this world’s king, emperor or leading hooligan.

  The bawling of two thousand voices rose crescendo. Guards screamed frenziedly and were drowned within the din. Somewhere a warning shot was fired. In the watchtowers the guards edged their guns around, dipped them as they aimed into the yard.

  “Oh, what a basta is Asta Zangasta!” hollered the distant Rigellians as they reached the end of their epic poem.

  There followed blows, shots, scuffling sounds, howls of fury. A bunch of twenty fully armed guards raced flatfooted past Leeming’s window, headed for the unseeable fracas. The uproar continued for half an hour before gradually it died away. Resulting silence could almost be felt.

  At exercise-time Leeming had the yard to himself, there being not another prisoner in sight. He mooched around, puzzled and gloomy, until he encountered Marsin on yard.

  “Where are the others? what has happened to them?”

  “They misbehaved and wasted a lot of time. They are being detained in the workshops until they have made up the loss in production. It is their own fault. They started work late for the deliberate purpose of slowing down output. We didn’t even have time to count them.”

  Leeming grinned into his face. “And some guards were hurt?”

  “Yes.” Marsin admitted.

  “Not severely,” Leeming suggested. “Just enough to give them a taste of what is to come. Think it over!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I meant what I said-think it over.” Then he added, “But you were not injured. Think that over too!”

  He ambled away, leaving Marsin uneasy and bewildered. Six times he trudged around the yard while doing some heavy thinking himself. Sudden indiscipline among the Rigellians certainly had stirred up the prison and created enough excitement to last a week. He wondered what had caused it. Probably they’d done it to gain relief from incarceration and despair. Sheer boredom can drive people into performing the craziest tricks.

  On the seventh time round he was still pondering when suddenly a remark struck him wit, force like the blow of a hammer. “We had not time even to count them.” Holy smoke! that must be the motive of this morning’s rowdy performance. The choral society had avoided a count. There could be only one reason why they should wish to dodge the regular numbering parade.

  Finding Marsin again, he promised, “Tomorrow some of you guards will wish you’d never been born.”

  “Are you threatening us?”

  “No, I am making a prophetic promise. Tell the guard officer what I have said. Tell the Commandant, too. It might help you to escape the consequences.”

  “I will tell them,” said Marsin, mystified but grateful.

  The following morning proved that he had been one hundred per cent correct in his supposition that the Rigellians were too shrewd -to invite thick ears and black eyes without good reason. It had taken the enemy a full day to arrive at the same conclusion.

  At one hour after dawn the Rigellians were marched out dormitory by dormitory in batches of fifty instead of the usual continuous stream. They were counted in fifties, the easy way. This simple arithmetic became thrown out of kilter when one dormitory produced only twelve, prisoners, all of them sick, weak, wounded or otherwise handicapped.

  Infuriated guards rushed indoors to drag out the absent thirty-eight. They weren’t there. The door was firm and solid, the window-bars intact. Guards did considerable confused galloping around before one of them detected the slight shift of a well-trampled floor-slab. They lugged it up, found underneath a narrow but deep shaft from the bottom which ran a tunnel. With great unwillingness one of them went down the shaft, crawled into the tunnel and in due time emerged a good distance outside the walls. Needless to say he had found the tunnel empty.

  Sirens wailed, guards pounded all over the jail, officers shouted contradictory orders, the entire place began to resemble a madhouse. The Rigellians got it good and hard for spoiling the previous morning’s count and thus giving the escapees a full day’s lead. Boots and gun-butts were freely used, bodies dragged as
ide badly battered and unconscious.

  The surviving top-ranker of the offending dormitory, a lieutenant with a severe limp, was held responsible for the break, charged, tried, sentenced, put against a wall and shot. Leeming could see nothing of this but did hear the hoarse commands of, “Present… aim… fire!” and the following volley.

  He prowled round and round his cell, clenching and unclenching his fists, his stomach writhing like a sack of snakes and swearing mightily to himself. All that he wanted, all that he prayed for was a high-ranking Zangastan throat under his thumbs. The spyhole flipped open but hastily shut before he could spit into somebody’s eye. The upset continued without abate as inflamed guards searched all dormitories one by one, testing doors, bars, walls, floors and even the ceilings. Officers screamed bloodthirsty threats at sullen groups of Rigellians who were slow to respond to orders.

  At twilight outside forces dragged in seven tired, be-draggled escapees who’d been caught on the run. Their reception was short and sharp. “Present… aim… fire!” Frenziedly Leeming battered at his door but the spyhole remained shut and nobody answered. Two hours later he made another coiled loop with the last of his wire. He spent half the night talking into it menacingly and at the tap of his voice. Nobody took the slightest notice.

  By noon next day a feeling of deep frustration had come over him. He estimated that the Rigellian breakout must have taken most of a year to prepare. Result: eight dead and thirty-one still loose. If they kept together and did not scatter the thirty-one could form a crew large enough to seize a ship of any size up to and including a space-destroyer. But on the basis of his own experiences he thought they had remote chance of making such a theft.

  With the whole world alarmed by an escape of this size there’d be a strong military screen around every spaceport and it would be maintained until the last of the thirty-one had been rounded up. The free might stay-free for quite a time if they were lucky, but they were planet-bound, doomed to ultimate recapture and subsequent execution.

  Meanwhile their fellows were getting it rough in consequence and his own efforts had been messed up. He did not resent the break, not one little bit. Good luck to them. But if only it had taken place two months earlier or later.

  Moodily he finished his dinner when four guards came for him. “The Commandant wants you at once.” Their manner was edgy and subdued. One wore a narrow bandage around his scaly pate, another had a badly swollen eye.

  Just about the worst moment to choose, thought Leeming. The Commandant would be all set to go up like a rocket at first hint of opposition of any kind. You cannot argue with a brasshat in a purple rage; emotion comes uppermost, words are disregarded, logic is treated with contempt. He was going to have a tough job on his hands.

  The four marched him along the corridor, two in front, two behind. Left, right, left, right, thud, thud, thud it made him think of a ceremonial parade to the guillotine. Around the corner in a little triangular yard there should be waiting a priest, a hanging knife, a wicker basket, a wooden box.

  Together they tramped into the same room as before. The Commandant was sitting behind his desk but there were no junior officers in attendance. The only other person present was an elderly civilian occupying a chair on the Commandant’s right; he studied the prisoner with a sharp, intent gaze as he entered and took a seat.

  “This is Pallam,” introduced the Commandant with amiability so unexpected that it dumbfounded the listener. Showing a touch of awe, he added, “He has been sent here by no less a person than Zangasta himself.”

  “A mental specialist, I presume?” invited Leeming, wary of a trap.

  “Nothing like that,” said Pallam quietly. “I am especially interested in all aspects of symbiosis.”

  Leeming’s back hairs stirred. He did not like the idea of being cross-examined by an expert. Such characters had penetrating, unmilitary minds and a pernicious habit of destroying a good story by exhibiting its own contradictions. This mild-looking civilian, he decided, was definitely a major menace.

  “Pallam wishes to ask you a few questions,” informed the Commandant, “but those will come later:” He put on a self-satisfied expression. “Far a start I wish to say that I am indebted for the information you gave at our previous inter-view.”

  “You mean that it has proved useful to you?” asked Leeming, hardly believing his ears.

  “Very much so in view of this serious and most stupid mutiny. All the guards responsible for Dormitory Fourteen are to be drafted to battle areas where they will be stationed upon spaceports liable to attack. That is their punishment for gross neglect of duty.” He gazed thoughtfully at the other, went on; “My own fate would have been no less had not Zangasta considered the escape a minor matter when compared with this important data I got from you.”

  Though taken by surprise, Leeming was swift to cash in. “But when I asked you saw to it personally that I had better food. Surely you expected some reward?”

  “Reward?” The Commandant was taken aback: “I did not think of such a thing.”

  “So much the better,” approved Leeming, admiring the other’s magnanimity. “A good deed is trebly good when done with no ulterior motive. Eustace will take careful note of that.”

  “You mean;” put in Pallam, “that his code of ethics is identical with your own?”

  Damn the fellow! Why did he have to put his spoke in? Be careful now!

  “Similar in some respects but not identical.”

  “What is the most outstanding difference?”

  “Well,” said Leeming, playing for time, “it’s hard to decide.” He rubbed his brow while his mind whizzed dizzily. “I’d say in the matter of vengeance.”

  “Define the difference,” ordered Pallam, sniffing along the trail like a hungry bloodhound.

  “From my viewpoint,” informed Leeming, inwardly cursing the other to hell and perdition, “he is unnecessarily sadistic.”

  There, that gave needed coverage for any widespread claims it might be desirable to make later on.

  “In what way?” persisted Pallam.

  “My instinct is to take prompt action, to get things over and done with. His tendency is to prolong the agony.”

  “Explain further,” pressed Pallam, making a thorough nuisance of himself.

  “If you and I were mortal enemies, if I had a gun and you, had not, I would snoot and kill you. But if Eustace had you marked for death he’d make it slower, more gradual.”

  “Describe his method.”

  “First, he’d let you know that you were doomed. Then he’d do nothing about it until eventually you become obsessed with the notion that it was all an illusion and that nothing ever would be done. At that point he’d remind you with a minor blow. When resulting fear and alarm had worn off he’d strike a harder one. And so on and so on with increasing intensity spread over as long a time as necessary.”

  “Necessary for what?”

  “Until your doom became plain and the strain of waiting for it became too much to bear.” He thought a moment, added, “No Eustace ever has killed anyone. He uses tactics peculiarly his own. He arranges accidents or he chivvies a victim into dying by his own hand.”

  “He drives a victim to suicide.”

  “Yes, that’s what I’ve said.”

  “And there is no way of avoiding such a fate?”

  “Yes, there is,” Leeming contradicted. “At any time the victim can gain personal safety and freedom from fear by redressing the wrong he has done to that Eustace’s partner.”

  “Such redress immediately terminates the vendetta?”

  “That’s right”

  “Whether or not you approve personally?”

  “Yes. If my grievance ceases to be real and becomes only imaginary, my Eustace refuses to recognise it or do anything about it.”

  “So what it boils down to,” said Pallam pointedly, “is that his method provides motive and opportunity for repentance while yours does not?”

  “I s
uppose so.”

  “Which means that he has a more balanced sense of justice?”

  “He can be darned ruthless,” objected Leeming, momentarly unable to think of a retort less feeble.

  “That is beside the point,” snapped Pallam. He lapsed into meditative silence, then remarked to the Commandant, “It seems that the association is not between equals. The invisible component is also the superior one. In effect, it is the master of a material slave but exercises mastery with such cunning that the slave would be the first to deny his own status.”

  He shot a provocative glance at Leeming who set his teeth and said nothing. Crafty old hog, thought Leeming if he was trying to tempt the prisoner into a heated denial he was going to be disappointed. Let him remain under the delusion that Leeming had been weighed in the balance and found wanting. There is no shame in being defined as inferior to a figment of one’s own imagination.

  Now positively foxy, Pallam probed, “When your Eustace takes it upon himself to wreak vengeance he does so because circumstances prevent suitable punishment being administered either by yourself or the Terran community? Is that correct?”

  “Near enough,” admitted Leeming cautiously.

  “In other words, he functions only when you and the law are impotent?”

  “He takes over when the need arises.”

  “You are being evasive. We must get this matter straight If you or your fellows can and do punish someone does any Eustace also punish him?”

  “No,” said Leeming, fidgeting uneasily.

  “If you or your fellows cannot or do not punish someone does a Eustace then step in and enforce punishment?”

  “Only if a living Terran has suffered unjustly.”

  “The sufferer’s Eustace takes action on his partner’s behalf?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good!” declared Pallam. He leaned forward, watched the other keen-eyed and managed to make his attitude intimidating. “Now let us suppose that your Eustace finds justifiable reason to punish another Terran—what does the victim’s Eustace do about it?”