The Collection

by Fredric Brown

  True, Olliver had started his political career as a judge; four years ago he'd been on the bench the one previous time Crag had been arrested and tried. The evidence had, that time, been insufficient and the jury had freed him. But he still remembered the blistering jeremiad Olliver had delivered to him afterward, in the private conversation between judge and accused that was customary whether the latter was convicted or acquitted.

  Ever since, Crag had hated Jon Olliver as a man, and had admired him as a judge and as a statesman, after Olliver had gone into politics and had so nearly been elected Coordinator.

  But Coordinator was the highest position to which any man could aspire. The only authority higher was the Council of Coordinators, made up of seven Coordinators of Earth and four from the planets, one from each major planet inhabited by the human race. The Council of Coordinators was the ultimate authority in the Solar System, which, since interstellar travel looked a long way off, meant the ultimate authority in the known-to-be-inhabited universe. So it seemed almost incredible to Crag that a man who'd almost been a Coordinator should now, in the six months since his candidacy, have dropped back down to the unimportant job he'd held five years ago. But that was politics for you, he thought, in this corrupt age; an honest man didn't have a chance.

  No more of a chance than he was going to have against this frameup the police had rigged against him.

  The trial started and he knew he'd been right. The evidence was there-on recording tapes; there were no witnesses-and it proved him completely guilty. It was false, but it sounded true. It took only ten minutes or so to run it off. The prosecuting attorney took no longer; he didn't have to. His own attorney made a weak and fumbling-but possibly sincere-effort to disprove the apparently obvious.

  And that was that. The jury went out and stayed all of a minute, and came back. The defendant was found guilty as charged.

  Judge Jon Olliver said briefly, "Indeterminate sentence on Callisto."

  The technician shut off the recording machine; the trial was over.

  Crag let nothing show on his face, although there was relief in his mind that it had not been the psycher. Not too much relief; he'd have killed himself if it had been, and death wasn't much worse than life on Callisto. And he knew that indeterminate sentence on Callisto meant life sentence-unless he volunteered to be psyched. That was what an indeterminate sentence really meant; it gave the convicted his choice between a life sentence and the psycher.

  A signal from the judge and the others began to leave. Crag did not move; he knew without being told that he was expected to wait for the customary private conversation with the judge. That always came after the sentencing and, in very rare cases, could make a change in the sentence. Sometimes, but not often, after private conversation with a prisoner a judge lessened or increased the sentence; he had power to do so up to twenty-four hours after his original pronouncement.

  It was optional with the judge whether the guards remained; if he thought there was a possibility of the prisoner attempting physical violence, he could have them remain, with heaters ready, but back out of hearing range in a far corner of the room. That was what Olliver had done the last tune Crag had appeared before him, after the acquittal. Undoubtedly it was because he had recognized the violence in Crag and had feared to provoke him by the things he was going to say.

  But this time Oliver signaled to the guards to leave the room with the others.

  Crag stepped forward. He thought, 1 can reach across that bench and kill him easily. He was tempted, simply by how easy it would be, even though he knew that it would mean the psycher-or his own private alternative.

  Olliver said, "Don't do it, Crag."

  Crag didn't answer. He didn't intend to, unless he found himself provoked beyond endurance by what he was going to have to hear. But he knew the best way to handle one of these interviews was to keep it strictly a one-way conversation by refusing to talk back. Silence might annoy Olliver, but it would not annoy him sufficiently to make him increase the sentence. And nothing he could say would make Olliver lessen it.

  "You'd be sorry if you did, Crag. Because I'm not going to ride you this time. In fact, I'm going to make you a proposition."

  What kind of a proposition, Crag wondered, could a judge want to make to a man he'd just sentenced to life on Callisto? But he didn't ask; he waited.

  Olliver smiled. His face was handsome when he smiled.

  He leaned forward across the bench. He said softly, "Crag, how would you like your freedom, and a million credits?"

  CHAPTER TWO

  ESCAPE TO DANGER

  Crag said hoarsely, "You're kidding. And if you are-"

  He must have swayed forward or, without knowing it, started to lift his hand, for Olliver jerked back and his face was a bit white as he said "Don't" again, this time sharply.

  And he went on, fast: "I'm not-kidding, Crag. A million credits, enough to keep you drunk the rest of your life. Freedom. And a chance to help humanity, to null the human race out of the bog into which it has sunk in this period of mankind's decadence. A rare chance, Crag."

  Crag said, "Save that for your speeches, Judge. The hell with humanity. But I'll settle for my freedom and a million. One thing, though. This trial was a frameup. I didn't do it. Was it your frameup?"

  Olliver shook his head slowly. He said, "No, not mine. But I rather suspected it was framed. The evidence was too good. You don't leave evidence like that, do you, Crag?"

  Crag didn't bother to answer that. He asked, "Who did it, then?"

  "The police, I imagine. There's an election coming up-and the Commissioner's office is elective. A few convictions like yours will look good on the records. You're pretty well known, Crag, in spite of the fact that there's never been a conviction against you. The newscasts from the stations on the Gilded side are going to give Commissioner Green plenty of credit for getting you."

  It sounded logical. Crag said, "I know what I'm going to do with part of my freedom, then."

  Olliver's voice was sharp again. "Not until after, Crag. I don't care what you do-after the job I want you to do for me. You agree to that?"

  Crag shrugged. "Okay. What's the job?" He didn't really care what it was, or even how risky it was. For the difference between life on Callisto and freedom and a million, he couldn't think of anything he wouldn't do. He'd try it even if there was one chance in a thousand of his pulling it off and staying alive.

  Olliver said, "This isn't the time or place to tell you about it; we shouldn't talk too long. You'll be a free man when we talk. That much comes first. The million comes afterwards, if you succeed."

  "And if I turn down the job after you've let me go?”

  “I don't think you will. It's not an easy one, but I don't think you'll turn it down for a million, even if you're already free. And there might be more for you in it than just money-but we won't talk about that unless you succeed. Fair enough?"

  "Fair enough. But-I want to be sure about this framing business. Do you mean to tell me it was just coincidence that you wanted me to do something for you and that I got framed and you sat on the case?"

  Olliver smiled again. "It's a small world, Crag. And it's partly a coincidence, but not as much of a one as you think. First, you're not the only man in the system that could do what I want done. +You're one of several I had in mind. Possibly the best, I'll give you that. I was wondering how to contact one of you. And I saw your name on the docket and requested to sit on the case. You should know enough about law to know that a judge can ask to sit on a case if he has had previous experience with the accused."

  Crag nodded. That was true, and it made sense.

  Olliver said, "But to brass tacks; we shouldn't be talking much longer than this. I don't want any suspicion to attach to me when you escape."

  "Escape?"

  "Of course. You were judged guilty, Crag, and on strong evidence. I couldn't possibly free you legally; I couldn't even have given you a lighter sentence than I did. If I free
d you now, you I'd he impeached. But I-or perhaps I should say we-can arrange for you to escape. Today, shortly after you're returned to your cell to await transportation to Callisto."

  "Who's we?" Crag asked.

  "A new political party, Crag, that's going to bring this world-the whole System-out of the degradation into which it has sunk. It's going to end the bribery and corruption. It's going to take us back to old-fashioned democracy by ending the deadlock between the Guilds and the Syndicates. It's going to be a middle-of-the-road party. 'We're going to bring honest government back and-he stopped and grinned boyishly. "I didn't mean to start a lecture. In which I suppose you aren't interested anyway. We call ourselves the Cooperationists."

  "You're working under cover?"

  "For the present. Not much longer. In a few months we come into the open, in time to start gathering support-votes-for the next elections." He made a sudden impatient gesture. "But I'll tell you all this later, when we're at leisure. Right now the important thing is your escape.

  "You'll he taken back to your cell when I give the signal that we're through talking. I'll put on the record that you were intransigent and unrepentant and that I am making no modification of your sentence. Within an hour from your return, arrangements for your escape will be made and you'll be told what to do."

  "Told how?"

  "By the speaker in your cell. They're on private, tap-proof circuits. A member of the party has access to them. Simply follow instructions and you'll be free by seventeen hours."

  "And then? If I still want to earn the million?"

  "Come to my house. It's listed; you can get the address when you need it. Be there at twenty-two."

  "It's guarded?" Crag asked. He knew that houses of most important political figures were.

  "Yes. And I'm not going to tell the guards to let you in. They're not party members. I think they're in the pay of the opposition, but that's all right with me. I use them to allay suspicion."

  "How do I get past them, then?"

  Olliver said, "If you can't do that, without help or advice from me, then you're not the man I think you are, Crag and you're not the man I want. But don't kill unless you have to. I don't like violence, unless it's absolutely necessary and in a good cause. I don't like it even then, but-"

  He glanced at his wrist watch and then reached out and put his fingers on a button on one side of the bench. He asked, "Agreed?" and as Crag nodded, he pushed the button.

  The two guards came back in. Oliver said, "Return the prisoner to his cell."

  One on each side of him, they led him back up the ramp to the floor above and escorted him all the way to his cell.

  The door clanged. Crag sat down on the bed and tried to puzzle things out. He wasn't modest enough about his particular talents to wonder why Olliver had chosen him if he had a dirty job to be done. But he was curious what dirty job a man like Olliver would have to offer. If there was an honest and fair man in politics, Olliver was that man. It must be something of overwhelming importance if Olliver was sacrificing his principles to expediency.

  Well, he, Crag, certainly had nothing to lose, whether he trusted Olliver's motives or not. And he thought he trusted them.

  He went back to the window and stood there looking down at the teeming city, thinking with wonder how greatly his fortunes had changed in the brief space of an hour and a half. That long ago he'd stood here like this and wondered whether to batter through the plastic pane and throw himself from the window. Now he was not only to be free but to have a chance at more money than he'd ever hoped to see in one sum.

  When an hour was nearly up, he went over and stood by the speaker grille so he would not miss anything that came over it. One cannot ask questions over a one-way communicator, and he'd have to get every word the first time.

  It was well that he did. The voice, when it came, was soft-and it was a woman's voice. From the window he could have heard it, but might have missed part of the message. "I have just moved the switch that unlocks your cell door," the voice said. "Leave your cell and walk as you did on your way to the courtroom. I will meet you at the portal, at the place where two guards met you before."

  The cell door was unlocked, all right. He went through it and along the corridor.

  A woman waited for him. She was beautiful; not even the severe costume of a technician could completely conceal the soft, lush curves of her body; not even the fact that she wore horn-rimmed spectacles and was completely without makeup could detract from the beauty of her face. Her eyes even through glass, were the darkest, deepest blue he had ever seen, and her hair-what showed of it beneath the technician's beret-was burnished copper.

  He stared at her as he came near. And hated her, partly because she was a woman and partly because she was so beautiful. But mostly because her hair was exactly the same color as Lea's had been.

  She held out a little metal bar. "Take this," she told him. "Put it in your pocket. It's radioactive; without it or without a guard with you who has one, every portal here is a death-trap."

  "I know," he said shortly.

  A paper, folded small, was next. "A diagram," she said, "showing you a way out along which, if you're lucky, you'll encounter no guards. In case you do-"

  A pocket-size heater was the next offering, but he shook his head at that. "Don't want it," he told her. "Don't need it."

  She put the gun back into her own pocket without protest, almost as though she had expected him to refuse it.

  "One more thing," she said. "A visitor's badge. It won't help you on the upper three levels, but below that, it will keep anyone from asking you questions."

  He took that, and put it on right away.

  "Anything else?"

  "Only this. Ten yards ahead, to your right, is a lavatory. Go in there and lock the door. Memorize this diagram thoroughly and then destroy it. And remember that if you're caught, it will do no good to tell the truth; your word won't mean a thing against-you know whose."

  He smiled grimly. "I won't be caught," he assured her. "I might he killed, but I won't be caught."

  Their eyes locked for a second, and then she turned quickly without speaking again and went through a door behind her.

  He went on along the corridor, through the portal. In the lavatory he memorized the diagram quickly but thoroughly and then destroyed it. He had nothing to lose by following orders implicitly.

  There was another portal before he came to the ramp. The radioactive bar she'd given him prevented whatever deathtrap it concealed from operating.

  He made the twenty-ninth level and the twenty-eighth without having met anyone. The next one, the twenty-seventh, would be the crucial one; the first of the three floors of cells and courtrooms. Despite that diagram, he didn't believe that there wouldn't be at least one guard between that floor and the one below, the top floor to which elevators went and the public-with visitor's permits-was allowed.

  The ramp ended at the twenty-seventh floor. He had to go out into the corridor there, and to another ramp that led to the floor below. He felt sure there would be a guard at the door that led from the end of that ramp to freedom. And there was. He walked very quietly down the ramp. There was a sharp turn at the bottom of it and he peered around the turn cautiously. A guard was sitting there at the door, all right.

  He smiled grimly. Either Olliver or the woman technician must have known the guard was there. It was only common sense that there'd be a guard at that crucial point, in addition to any deathtrap that might be in the door itself. Olliver didn't want him-unless he was good enough to do at least part of his own jailbreaking.

  And, of all things, to have offered him a heater-gun. That would really have been fatal. There, right over the guard's head, was a hemispherical blister on the wall that could only be a thermocouple, set to give off an alarm at any sharp increase in temperature. A heater ray, whether fired by or at a guard, would give an immediate alarm that would alert the whole building and stop the elevators in their shafts. A fat lot o
f good that heater would have done him, and the gorgeous technician who'd offered it to him must have known that.

  Crag studied the guard. A big, brutish man, the kind who would fire first and ask questions afterward, despite the visitor's badge Crag wore. And there was a heater in the guard's hand, lying ready in his lap. With a different type of man, or even with a ready-to-shoot type with a holstered heater, Crag could have made the six paces. But, with this guard, he didn't dare risk it.

  He stepped back and quickly unstrapped the twelve-pound hand from his wrist and held it in his right hand. He stepped into sight, pulling back his right arm as he did so.

  The guard looked up-Crag hadn't even tried to be silent-and started to raise the heater. It was almost, but not quite, pointed at Crag when the heavy artificial hand struck him full in the face. He never pulled the trigger of the heater. He'd never pull a trigger again.

  Crag walked to him and got his hand back, strapping it on again quickly. He picked up the guard's heater, deliberately handling it by the barrel to get his finger-prints on it. They'd know who killed the guard anyway-and he'd rather have them wonder how he'd taken the guard's own weapon away from him and bashed his face in with it than have them guess how he had killed the guard. That method of killing was part of his stock in trade. A trade secret. Whenever he killed with it and there was time afterwards, he left evidence in the form of some other heavy blunt instrument that the police would think had been used.

  He went through the door, using the key that had hung from the guard's belt, and whatever death-trap had been in the portal of it didn't operate. He could thank the girl technician for that much, anyway. She-or Olliver-had given him a fair break, knowing that without that radioactive bar, it would have been almost impossible for him to escape. Yes, they'd given him a fair chance.

  Even if she hadn't told him to get rid of the bar here and now. It would have been had if he hadn't known that, outside of the sacred precincts, those bars sometimes worked in reverse and set off alarms in elevators or at the street entrance. The guards never carried theirs below the twenty-sixth level. So he got rid of the bar in a waste receptacle by the elevator shafts before he rang for an elevator. The waste receptacle might conceivably have been booby-trapped for radioactive bars. But he took a chance because he didn't want to put it down in plain sight. No alarm went off.