These people were too efficient. They hung my wristcuffs over a hook high on the wall and cut away my clothes, boots, everything, in a calmly depressing way. Then they cleaned me out, efficiently, operating like a vacuum cleaner klyster. All of the obvious devices, picklocks, grenades, blades, saws, were stripped from me first. Then they went over me again slowly with fluoroscopes and metal detectors removing, painfully, those other devices that were better hidden. They even x-rayed my jaws and removed a few teeth that had never been discovered before. When they were done I was pounds lighter and as bereft of helpful gadgetry as a newborn babe. It was all quite humiliating. Particularly when they took everything away and just left me lying there, naked, on the cold deck.
Which, I discovered, was getting colder all the time. When moisture began to condense on it I found myself growing blue and chattering with the chill. I began to howl and thrash about. This warmed me up a bit and eventually led to one of the gray men poking his head in the door.
“I am freezing to death!” I clattered through trembling teeth at him. “You are deliberately chilling the air to torture me.”
“No,” he answered with utmost blandness. “That is not one of our tortures. This ship was warmed when the ports were open and is now returning to normal temperature. You are weak.”
“I am freezing to death. Maybe you chilly chaps from your icebox world can live at this temperature—but I can’t. So give me some clothes or kill me quickly now.”
I think I half meant it. There really did seem to be little left to live for at this point. He thought about it for a bit, then exited. But returned fairly soon with four helpers and a padded coverall. They took off the fetters and dressed me. I made no protests while this was happening because one of them held a fully charged pistol, the muzzle of which he put directly into my mouth. His finger was bent, the trigger half pulled. I knew he meant it. I did not move or twitch while I was being dressed and the heavy boots slipped over my feet. The gun stayed there until the locks on the cuffs clicked shut once more.
It took days to reach our destination. My captors were the worst conversationalists in the galaxy and refused to respond to even my wittiest and most insulting sallies. The food was completely unpalatable but, I am sure, nourishing. The only drink was water. A portapotty took care of my sanitary needs and I was getting bored out of my skull. My thoughts were constantly on escape and many and fearful were the plans I devised. All of them useless, of course. Singlehanded, without a weapon, I would never be able to take control of the ship even if I could break out of this room. Which I could not. I was sinking into a coma of boredom by the time we finally landed.
“Where are we?” I asked the guards who came to get me. “Come on you chatterboxes, speak up. Would you be shot if you at least told me the name of the planet? Do you think I will tell anyone else?”
They thought about this for quite awhile until one of them finally made up his mind. “Kekkonshiki,” he said.
“You’re excused—but don’t wipe your nose with the back of your hand. Ha-ha.” I had to laugh at my own sallies. No one else would.
But it was ironic. Here I was, bearer of the information that would put an end to the gray men menace forever. The name of their world—and its location. And I couldn’t pass it on. If I had any trace of psi ability I could have the troops rushing there in a minute. I did not. I had tried and been psi-tested often enough in the past. There was absolutely nothing that I could do.
At least the unaccustomed action gave me something new to think about, to take my mind off of the depression that had depressed me for days. At last it was time to think about escape again.
Nor was I mad to consider it at this time. We had landed and would be leaving the ship soon. They were taking me someplace where it was guaranteed not-very-good-things would happen to me. I did not yet know what they were and, as far as I was concerned, life would be far more peaceful if I never found out. We would leave this ship, and even for a very brief spell, we would be in transit. That would be the time to act. The mere fact that I did not have the slightest idea of what would be waiting outside was completely and totally beside the point. I had to do something.
Not that they made it very easy for me. I tried to act indifferent when they stripped off my chains and produced a metal collar and snapped it around my neck. Although my blood ran chill on the instant. I had worn that collar before. A thin cable ran from the collar to a small box that one of them held in his hand.
“No need to demonstrate,” I said in what was meant to be a light and bantering tone and certainly was not. “I’ve worn one of these before and your friend Kraj—you must remember Kraj?– demonstrated its working to me over quite a period of time.”
“I can do this,” my captor said, poising a finger over one of the many buttons on the box.
“It’s been done,” I shouted, pulling back. “Those very same words, I know, you never change your routines. You press the button and…”
Fire washed over me. I was blind, burning to death, my skin aflame, my eyes seared out. Every one of my pain nerves switched on to full by the neural currents generated by the box. I knew this but it did not help. The pain was real and it went on and on and on.
When it ended I found myself lying on the floor, curled up, drained of energy and almost helpless. Two of them lifted me to my feet and dragged me, legs flopping, down the corridor. My master with the box walked behind, giving me a little tug on the neck from time to time to remind me who was in charge. I did not argue with him. I could stumble along by myself after a bit, but they still kept their hands locked tight on my arms.
I liked that. I fought hard not to smile. They were so sure I could not escape.
“Getting cold out?” asked when we reached the airlock. No one bothered to answer me. But they were pulling on gloves and fur hats which certainly meant something. “How about some gloves for me?” I was still ignored.
When the lock door swung open I knew why the preparations. A swirl of snow was blown in on a wave of arctic air that chilled, then numbed. It certainly wasn’t summer outside. I was dragged forth into the blizzard.
Maybe not a blizzard, but some very heavy flurries. There was a blinding wave of flakes about us that was gone in a few moments. A thin sun shone down on the blindingly white landscape. Snow, nothing but snow in all directions. Wait, something dark ahead, a stone wall or building of some kind, obscured an instant later. We plodded on and I tried to ignore the numbness in my hands and face. Yet our destination was still a good two hundred meters away. My body and feet were warm enough, but my exposed skin was something else again.
We were roughly halfway from the ship to our waiting warm haven when another miniblizzard swept down upon us, a roaring snow squall. Just before it hit I slipped and fell, pulling one of my captors down with me as he slid on the icy surface. He made no complaints, though the sadist holding the torture box did give me a quick blast of pain as a warning to watch my step. All done in silence. Silence on my part too because I had managed to get a loop of cable from the box over my shoulder when I went down and then caught it in my mouth. And bit it in two.
This is not as hard to do as it sounds, since under the caps of my front teeth were set serrated edges of silicon carbide. They were invisible to x-ray, having the same density as the enamel of my teeth—but were as hard as tool steel. The caps on my teeth chipped and splintered away as I ground down, chewing desperately before anyone noticed what was happening. The swirling snow concealed what I was doing for the vital seconds needed. The human jaw muscles can exert thirty-five kilos of pressure on each side and I was exerting, chomping and biting to my utmost.
The cable parted. As it did I twisted to the side and brought my knee up into the groin of the captor on my right. He grunted loudly and folded and released my arm. For a quick cross chop into the throat of the other man. Then my hands were free and I spun about.
The man behind me lost vital seconds depending on technology rather than
on his reflexes. My back was to him all the time I was chopping up his partners. And he did nothing. Nothing that is other than push wildly at the buttons on the torture box. He was still pushing when my foot caught him in the pit of the stomach. As he fell I got under him so he collapsed onto my shoulder.
I did not stop to see who was doing the yelling as I staggered off with him into the snow-filled, storm-beaten, frozen wastes.
All of this may seem like madness—but what greater madness to go quietly to the slaughter at the hands of these creatures? I had been there once before and still had the scars. Now there was a good chance I would freeze to death. But that was also better than giving in to them. Plus the very remote chance that I might stay free for awhile, cause them trouble, anything.
Nor was I as weak as I pretended to be; this had been only a simple ruse to get them off guard. Though now I was weakening—and freezing—very fast. My limp ex-captor weighed at least as much as I did which necessarily slowed my pace. Yet I kept going, at right angles to our previous track, until I stumbled and fell headfirst into the snow. My face and hands were too numb to feel anything.
People were calling out on all sides, but none were in sight at the moment as the snow swirled down heavily. My fingers were like thick clubs as I pawed the man’s hat from his head and put it on mine. It was almost impossible to open the closures on his suit but I managed it finally. Then plunged my arms inside, pushing my hands up into his armpits. They burned worse than the torture had, as feeling began to return.
Unconscious as he was, this chill clasp brought the gray man around. As soon as his eyes opened I pulled one hand out just long enough to make a fist and drive it into his jaw. He slept better then and I crouched there, half-covered with snow, until most of the pain had gone. One of the pursuers went by, very close, but never saw us. I felt no compunction in taking my captive’s gloves, though I noticed he was stirring again as I pushed off through the snowdrifts.
After this I ran hard, panting but still going on. I was no longer cold and that was the only solace. When the rushing snowflakes began to thin I hurled myself backward into a snowbank, sinking well below the surface. There were still a lot of shouts, but they were weaker and in the distance now. I lay there until my breathing slowed down and I could feel the sweat freezing on my face. Only then did I roll over carefully and poke an opening in the side of the snow near my face.
There was no one in sight. I waited until the snowfall started again, then ran on—full-tilt into a chain-metal fence. It vanished in the snow in both directions and rose up high above me. If it were wired for an alarm I had already tripped it so I might as well keep going. I clambered halfway up it, thought better of the idea—then dropped back into the soft snow below.
If an alarm had gone off they would be converging on this spot. I was not going to make it easy for them. Instead of going over at this place I hurried along the fence, running as fast as I could for what I hoped was at least ten minutes. I saw no one. Then I climbed the fence, dropped over it, and headed into the white wilderness. Running until I dropped. Then lay, half-buried in the snow until I got my wind back, before taking a cautious look in all directions.
Nothing. Just snow. No footsteps or marks of any kind. No bushes, trees, rocks or signs of life. A sterile white waste that went on and on for as far as I could see, delimitated only by the snow flurries on the horizon. One of them opened for a bit and I had a glimpse of the dark construction I had done all this to avoid.
I turned my back on it and shambled off into the driving blizzard.
Twelve
“You’re a free man, Jim, free. Free as the birds!”
I talked to myself in an effort at morale boosting and it helped a little bit. But there were no birds here to be free as. Nothing in the frozen waste except myself, slogging along one snow-impeded step after another. What had Kraj said about this planet, so many years ago? Doing a little memory-racking helped take my thoughts away from the present predicament for a few moments. All the memory training courses I had taken should be of some use now. I made the correct sequence of associations—and up the memory popped. Very good.
Always cold, he had said. True enough, as well as nothing green, nothing ever growing. This could be a midsummer day for all I knew. If so they could keep the winter. Fish in the sea, Kraj had said, all native life in the sea. Nothing lived on the snow. Except me, that is. And how long I lived depended on how long I kept moving. The clothes I was wearing were fine—as long as I put a little heat into them by putting one foot after the other. This could not go on forever. But I had seen one building when we landed. There should be others. There had to be something other than the unending snow.
There was—and I almost fell into it. As I put my foot down I felt something give way, shift out from under me. Purely by reflex I threw myself backward, falling into the snow. Before me the packed snow cracked open, moved away, and I looked down at the dark water. As the crack widened and I saw the edge of the ice I realized I was not on the land at all—but had walked out onto the frozen surface of the sea.
At this temperature if I fell in, as much as got a hand or foot wet, I would be dead. Frozen. I did not think much of this idea at all. Without standing up, keeping my weight spread out as much as I could, I pushed and slithered back from the brink. Only when I was well away from the edge did I dare stand and shamble back the way I had come, retracing the track of my rapidly disappearing footsteps.
“Now what, Jim? Think fast. There’s water out there, which is very difficult stuff to walk on.”
I stopped and looked around carefully in a complete circle. The snow had stopped falling, but the wind kept picking it up and whipping it about in gusty clouds. But, now that I knew what to look for, I could see the dark line of the ocean in the moments when visibility cleared. It stretched as far as I could see to right and left, directly across the route I had been taking.
“Then you won’t go that way.” I turned about. “From the looks of your ragged trail, mighty arctic explorer, you came in from that direction. There is no point in going back. Yet. The reception party will be sharpening their knives now. So think.”
I thought. If the land were as barren as Kraj had said, their settlements and buildings would never be far from the ocean’s edge. Therefore I had to stay close to the shore as I could without falling in. Follow the edge of the ice away from the direction I had come. Hoping that the spaceport building I had left was not the last one on the outskirts of town. I plodded on. Trying very hard to ignore the fact that the feeble glow of the sun was lower in the sky. When night fell so would I. I had no idea how long the days and nights on Kekkonshiki were—but I had a sinking sensation that, short or long, I would not be around to see the dawn. Shelter must be found. Go back? Not yet. Madness probably—but press on.
As the sun sank so did my hopes. The snow plain was darker now, but still featureless. Pushing through the heavy snow had wearied me to exhaustion and past. Only the knowledge that I would be dead if I stopped kept me putting one leaden foot in front of the other. Although I had pulled the hat far down over my face there was little sensation left in my nose and cheeks.
Then I found myself falling and had to stop. On my hands and knees in the snow, panting hoarsely, gasping for breath.
“Why not stay here, Jim?” I asked myself. “It will be easier than going on, and they say it is painless to freeze to death.” It sounded like a good idea.
“It does not sound like a good idea, you idiot. Stand up and keep going.”
I did, though it took a decided effort to struggle to my feet. An even greater effort to put one foot in front of the other. The simple act of walking took so much of my attention that the dark spots on the horizon were visible for some time before I became consciously aware of them. At first all I did was stand and stare, trying to gather my ice-numbed thoughts. They were moving, getting larger. With this realization I dropped full length in the snow. Lay there, watching intently, while three figu
res whipped silently by on skis no more than a hundred meters away.
After they had passed I forced myself to wait until they were out of sight before getting to my feet again. This time I was not even aware that it took any effort to do this. A small spark of hope had not only been kindled but burst into flame. The snow had stopped falling and the wind had died down. The tracks of the skis were sharp and clear. They were going someplace—someplace they planned to be before dark. Well, so was I! Filled with sudden false energy I stepped onto the tracks and turned to follow them.
Although the energy burned away very quickly I still kept going. Now the approaching night brought encouragement instead of despair. The skiers were faster than I—but not that fast. They would be at their destination before nightfall and, hopefully, so would I. I slogged on.
The theory had to be correct, but in practice it was just not working out. The sun was still above the horizon, but behind thick and nasty-looking clouds, while the visibility was falling. The tracks were getting harder and harder to follow. And I had to rest. Tottering to a stop I looked up and blinked and peered ahead and saw a black smudge on the horizon. My brain was still in the deepfreeze and it took a good number of seconds to understand the significance of what I was looking at.
“Black is beautiful!” My voice was hoarse, almost gone. “It is not white snow and anything but snow is what you need right now.”
My shambling walk became a far superior shamble, and I swung my arms and kept my head high. I tried to whistle too, but my lips were too cracked and cold for that. It was a good thing, since the wind had died as sunset approached and everything was deathly still. The dark blur resolved itself into a building—no, a group of buildings. Closer and closer. Dark stone. Small windows. Slanted roofs that would not collect snow. Solid and ugly. What was that squeaking, crunching sound, growing louder?
I was walking silently because I was still in the heavy snow. But those were footsteps on packed snow. Getting closer. Back? No, drop. As I dived for cover the footsteps turned the corner of the nearest building.
The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You ssr-4 Page 9