The Stainless Steel Rat’s Revenge ssr-2

by Harry Harrison

  “He could work a bit faster. Three days now and we’re still in my childhood.”

  “You must have been a terrible little boy. Some of the things I’ve heard…”

  Before I could think of a snappy comeback the elevator whooshed to a stop and we emerged at water level. Steps led down into the ocean from an enclosed diving room. The attendant was waiting with our scuba gear ready and we buckled it on and dove in. Straight to the bottom and out among the coral reefs. Even if they came looking they would never find us here. I snapped on the sonar communicator and called in.

  “Not much of a search,” the operator told me. “I’ll let you know when they reach the lower level.”

  Angelina and I dove deep. Rainbow-hued fish burst out and around us, green plants bowed to our passing. The water was clear and warm and was rapidly restoring my thoughts and good spirits. We swam to a grotto, completely surrounded by coral, that we had found on an earlier visit during an alert, and settled down on the golden sand. I put my arm around Angelina and she snuggled up to me, both for the fun of it and to get our masks touching so we could talk.

  “Anything new come in on Kraj and his boys while the doc was slogging through my gray matter?”

  “They’ve been located, but that’s all. Now that the first stage of invasion is over the Cliaand forces seem to be settling down for the occupation. They’ve taken over this immense office building, the Octagon it’s called probably because it has eight sides, and have cleared everyone out. They seem to have moved most of their administrative operations there—and one of Kraj’s gray men was seen coming out of the building. This must be where they are holed up.”

  “I wonder why they left the last building?”

  “Afraid of you and your relentless revenge, no doubt.”

  I snorted. Hard to do in a face mask. “You’re only saying that, but by Belial there is more than an element of truth in it. The Cliaand operation in general has to be knocked out, but those gray men need special attention. But first we have to grab one of them. I’ll have to get inside the building.”

  “You’ll do nothing of the sort.” She pinched the skin over my ribs and I tried to slap her hand away but you can’t do this under water. I settled for a pinch myself, and she was surely far more pinchable than I, and we played around like this for awhile until I remembered why she had distracted me and returned ruthlessly to the interrupted conversation.

  “Why can’t I try to get into the building? I’ll be disguised, I speak Cliaandian, I know the ropes…”

  “And they know yours. They’ll have cameras on every entrance feeding data to the computers. Which will know your height, your build, your weight, manner of walk, retinal pattern, the works. You can’t disguise everything and you know it. They’ll have you in the bag the instant you walk into the place.”

  “You’re just saying that because it is true,” I muttered. “So I suppose you have a better plan?”

  “I do. I speak Cliaandian and they have no records on me at all. And I’m an experienced field operator, the only one on this planet besides you.”

  “No!”

  “Why the instant no?” She scowled at me and the next pinch hurt. “You’re my husband, not my owner—remember? I’m as good at this business as you are, maybe better, and there is a job that needs doing. Let’s have none of your male superiority and possessiveness.”

  She was right of course, but I couldn’t let her know it.

  “I was only worried about your safety.”

  She melted at this, even the smartest woman is a sucker for the loving attention, and rubbed against me. I felt like the heel I was.

  “You do love me, Jim, in your own horrible way. But I’ll be all right, you’ll see. There are some women among the Cliaandian supporting echelons—I don’t see how they can wear those ugly uniforms—and the girls and I will grab onto one. With her uniform and identification I’ll get into the building, find Kraj—”

  “You won’t do anything foolish?”

  “Of course not. This is too important to bungle by trying it alone. I told you I wanted to give him my personal attention at my leisure. This will be a scouting trip only. I’ll locate the gray men, map the layout and take a look at the detection devices—and leave at once.”

  “Great.” I was getting enthusiastic now and trying to put my fears for her safety aside. “That is all we will need to mount a quick kidnapping. Hit them fast and hard, walk right in and grab Kraj and right out again. Foolproof.”

  The sonar communicator buzzed and I flicked it on.

  “The search party has gone. You may return.”

  We swam back slowly, hand in hand, enjoying the moment. Doctor Mutfak was waiting when we climbed out of the water.

  “Good, we pick up where we left off. “There was no warmth at all in his smile. “The teddy bears, we must probe the symbolism here so we can move on to more recent things.”

  He tapped his foot impatiently while Angelina and I clutched in a nice wet embrace and kissed with abandon. Wearing the masks had been quite frustrating. Then back to the room. I let the doctor put me under at once since I didn’t want Angelina to catch my jumpiness before she left. The mission would be difficult enough without my giving her things to worry about. She waved and went to dress and I waved back and Mutfak stuck a needle in my arm. No romance in his soul.

  We must have moved along nicely because when I awoke next the teddy bears had long since vanished and the last dream I remembered had something to do with exploding spaceships and solar flares. Dr. Mutfak was packing up his instruments and the last glimmer of daylight was fading in the night sky outside.

  “Very good,” he said. “Coming along nicely.”

  “Have you uncovered any traces of Kraj’s tampering yet?”

  “Traces!” His nostrils flared and he puffed out his cheek. “They are like heavy boot marks all through your cortex! Butchers, those people, simply butchers! Lucky in a way because their traces are so easy to find. Memory blocks all over, areas of amnesia with connections to patterns of false memory. These memories are the only thing of any clinical value and I must find out what techniques they use. They were placed there very quickly, you told me that, yet they are incredibly complete, all senses involved, and detailed as well.”

  “I’ll vouch for that.”

  “I think you will have found them impossible to tell from real memories, that is the strength of their technique. I have removed some major ones that seemed to be disturbing you and in later sessions I will take care of the others. Now—look at your wrists and tell me about the red lines you see there.”

  “They look just like red lines,” I said. Then I remembered waking up in the cell and, for some reason believing that my hands had been cut off. I don’t know why. They were just red lines.

  “A false memory?” I asked.

  “Yes, and an outstandingly repulsive one. I’ll tell you about it at the next session. But right now you need rest.”

  “A fine idea, after I get something to eat…”

  The door flew open and Taze ran in and, as she passed, I had a quick glimpse of the horrified expression on her face. Sudden fear hit me in the stomach and I sat, watching her, saying nothing while she turned on the TV. The Cliaandians had a propaganda station operating now, though no one bothered to watch it.

  The screen lit up and I found myself looking at Kraj. He almost smiled as he spoke.

  “It’s a tape, it keeps repeating,” Taze said.

  “.. . that we want him to know. Someone out there must know the man known as James diGriz. Contact him. Tell him to listen to this broadcast. This message is for you, diGriz. We want you back here. I have Angelina here. She is unharmed—as yet—and will remain that way until dawn. I suggest you contact me and see me.

  “Welcome home, Jim.”

  Chapter 18

  I had a number of moments of numb shock after this, during which period I wished to be alone. Taze was understanding enough to leave when I poin
ted at the exit, but the doctor tried to start a conversation which I terminated by clutching his neck and the seat of his trousers and heaving through the door which she obligingly held open. Then I kicked in the TV set, an act of wanton destruction that helped a bit, before I poured a stiff cogitating drink. With this in hand I droned into the chair, looked out unseeingly at the star spread sky, and worked out a plan. This was not going to be simple—and dawn was not that far away.

  The thought that kept nibbling at the edge of my awareness was finally faced. I was going to have to surrender and get a collar back on—there was no way of avoiding that. My memories of what that was like were not very nice, in fact my brain sort of twitched a bit inside the bone case at the thought. There had been entirely too much traffic through my gray matter of late and I was not looking forward to any more. Yet it was unavoidable. The collar and torture box had to be part of any plan, and they had to be neutralized. Not a very easy thing to accomplish. I mumbled over all the possibilities, and when the attack plan was blocked out I sent for Taze and told her what I was going to do.

  “You can’t,” she said, and I swear those large lovely eyes were filled with tears, “turn yourself over to those fiends. To save a woman. If only the men on this planet were like you. Impossible to believe…”

  I resisted the impulse to enjoy a little warm female solace and turned to snapping open some of the weapon containers. At the sight of the grenades Miss Taze retreated and Sergeant Taze looked on with interest.

  “This will be a two part operation,” I told her. “I’ll take care of the first part myself, which will be the penetration of the building and freeing Angelina. I hope to grab a gray man as well, but if that slows me down we’ll save that part of the job for another time. The second part of the operation will be getting out of the Octagon, and for that I am going to need your help. I’ll need plans of the building, I want to talk to someone who knows his way around it well, someone on the custodial staff if possible, so I can find an area of vulnerability. Can you do this now?”

  “At once,” she called back over her shoulder as she left. A reliable girl our Taze. I dug into the equipment containers.

  Dawn was only two hours away before we were ready to move. I had completed my part of the operation, but setting up the escape afterwards wasn’t that simple. The Octagon was very much like a fortress in the eyes of the small forces we could muster quickly. And we were hampered by our lack of any aircraft or heavy equipment. There seemed no way out by air or on the ground. It was one of the maintenance staff, finally located and dragged in shivering, who found the exit and pointed it out with a trembling finger on the blueprints.

  “Cable tunnel, sir and mam, goes under the street and under the walls and comes up in sub-basement 17. Big-tunnel for wires and telephone and that kind of thing.”

  “It’s sure to be bugged,” I said. “But if we plan this right it won’t matter. Take notes, ladies, because I don’t want to repeat myself. This is how the operation is going to work.”

  By the time everything had been taken care of it was less than twenty minutes to dawn and I was in a cold sweat. The first units were moving into position when I put the viewphone call in to Kraj. We were connected at once and I talked before he could say anything.

  “I want to see Angelina instantly, and talk to her. I have to be absolutely sure she has not been banned.”

  He didn’t argue, he had been expecting this. She came into focus and I saw that hated collar with its cable leading up out of the picture.

  “Are you all right?”

  “As fine as I could possibly be while in the same room with this creature,” she said calmly.

  “They’ve done nothing to you?”

  “Nothing as yet, other than to clap this collar around my neck and hook the thing up to the ceiling so I wouldn’t run away. But you can just imagine the threats this repulsive man has made. I don’t think I could live for a moment with a mind like his…”

  She stiffened then and her eyes rolled up out of sight although her lids didn’t close. Kraj had given her a shot of the nerve torture. I knew at that moment that he would never live if I could get my hands on him. His face reappeared on the screen and it took an effort I did not think myself capable of to stare at him calmly and say nothing.

  “You’ll come to me now, diGriz, and surrender. You only have a few minutes left. You know what will happen to your wife if you don’t. If you surrender she will be released at once.”

  “What proof do I have that you will keep your word?”

  “None whatsoever. But you don’t have a choice, do you?”

  “I’ll be there,” I said as calmly as I could manage and turned the phone off—but not before I heard Angelina’s shouted no in the background.

  “Are those clothes dry yet?” I asked, tearing off my shirt and kicking out of my boots at the same time.

  “Just about,” Taze said. She and another girl were holding hot air blowers to a Cliaand uniform that I thought was just right for this occasion. It had been soaked in a chemical bath and was now being force dried.

  “Almost is good enough, we can’t wait any longer.”

  There were some damp patches, but nothing that mattered. We left, and the powerboat was waiting at the hotel dock below, motor rumbling. So far so good. And the car was there on shore with Dr. Mutfak in the back, black bag on his knees, muttering to himself.

  “I don’t like it,” he said. “It is really a violation of my medical code of ethics.”

  “War is a violation of any code of ethics or morality, a monstrosity against which any weapons must be used. Do what you have been asked.”

  “I’ll do it, that goes without saying, but a man is allowed to comment upon the ethics involved.”

  “Comment. But fill the needle at the same time.”

  We parked in a side street, in the darkness, with the Octagon just around the corner.

  “Catalyst,” I said, “and don’t spill any. Under my arms where the dampness won’t be noticed.”

  I raised both arms and felt the warmth of the liquid from the insulated container, then quickly lowered my arms to trap the wet fabric between my upper arms and my sides. Then I climbed out of the car and put my hand back in through the window, The needle bit into my flesh and that was that. As I started around the corner I heard the car pull away.

  The Octagon loomed up like a mountain before me, the sky beginning to lighten behind it. We had cut this very close. There was an entrance ahead, the one I had been directed to, and two of the gray men were waiting. Both wore gausspistols which were still in the holsters. They were very sure of themselves. I walked up to them silently and one of them clamped a come-along cuff on my wrist and led me in through the doors and past the silent guards. I stumbled going up the stairs and after that looked down carefully to see where I put my feet. The injection was beginning to take effect. There was nothing I wanted to say and my captors, they in their usual fashion, had nothing to say to me. They prodded me in the direction they wanted me to go and pushed me through the doorway of the room they wanted me to enter. Once inside they covered me with their guns while the wrist-cuff was unlocked.

  “Clothes off,” one of them ordered.

  It was an effort not to smile. There was the fluoroscope off to one side and the other test equipment. These characters were running true to type, following the same routine they had used when I had first been captured. Didn’t they realize that routine was a trap and a losing game? No they did not. I fumbled off my clothes and let them work their will upon me.

  They found nothing of course, since there was nothing there to find. Or rather there was one thing that I was sure they would not find. And they didn’t. They slowly plodded through their routine examinations and I began to wish they would finish and be done. My head was getting a little foggy from the drug and I felt as though I were wrapped in cotton wool. The injection must be reaching the peak of its effectiveness and would be tapering off soon. What I ha
d to do must be done when the drug was at the height of its power—or close to it—or all the preparations would be useless.

  “Put these on,” a wooden faced captor said and threw me the familiar transparent dungarees. I bent to pick them up and to cover the smile that I could no longer resist. Done it! They did not seem impatient when I fumbled with the closings on the clothes. I had to watch my fingers carefully to be sure they did their job. When the collar locked around my neck I almost heaved a sigh of relief. We were getting close, and the timing was just about perfect. As one of the guards took the torture box and led me out I lowered my head so I could see where I put my feet so I would not stumble. If this generated an illusion of defeat all the better. We went down a wide corridor and past a staircase, and I made a mental note of its location, even counting the paces after it to get some estimate of its distance from our destination.

  Which was Kraj’s lair. He was waiting behind his desk, as patiently and as emotionlessly as a spider in its web. Angelina sat before him, her torture box hooked to the ceiling.

  “Are you all right?” I asked as I came through the door.

  “Of course. Nothing has happened. You shouldn’t have come.”

  As soon as I had this reassurance I turned my attention to Kraj, aware at the same time of the guard closing the door behind us.

  “You’ll release her now, won’t you?” I asked.

  “Naturally not. There would be no advantage in that.” His expression never changed while he spoke.

  “I didn’t think you would. Is there any reason why you shouldn’t tell me how you caught her?”

  “Your memory contained an exact description of your wife. When we discovered that two women had aided your escape we naturally assumed that one might have been this Angelina. The computer identified her as soon as she entered the building.”

  “We were foolish to take the risk,” I said, apparently turning to face her, but looking at the guard instead. He was about to hook my torture box to another hook in the ceiling—and if he did we were trapped.