About all I could do was lie there motionless and hope that I would not be seen. It was sheer luck that I was not. The footsteps, more than one person, grew louder and louder, crunched by and died away. I risked a quick look and saw the retreating backs of a column of short figures. About twenty of them. They turned another corner and were out of sight and hearing. With a desperate effort I scratched and scrambled to my feet and stumbled after them. Turning the corner behind the column just in time to see the last one vanishing into a building. A large and heavy door closed with a positive sound. That was for me. I was falling forward more than running, using my last reserves of energy, reserves I had not known I had. Ending up against the gray metal door, tugging at the handle.
It did not move.
Life has moments like this that are best forgotten and glossed over. In later years they may seem funny, and people can laugh over them when they are described after dinner, warming drink in hand, sitting by a roaring fire. At the time, though, this not only didn’t seem funny, it seemed to be the absolute end.
Pulling didn’t work and the handle did not turn when I fumbled at it with numb fingers. In the end I fell forward with exhaustion, leaning against the handle so I wouldn’t fall. It pushed in and the door opened.
Just for once I made no attempt to reconnoiter what was on the other side. I half walked, half fell into the dark alcove inside and let the door close behind me. Warmth, delicious warmth washed over me and I just leaned against the wall and appreciated it. Looking down a long and badly illuminated corridor of roughly carved stone. I was alone, but there were doors all along the corridor and someone could emerge at any moment. But there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. If the wall had been taken away I would have fallen down. So I leaned there like a frozen statue, dripping melting snow onto the flagstones of the floors, feeling life ooze back as the heat seeped in. The nearest door, just two meters before me, opened and a man stepped out.
All he had to do was turn his head a bit to spot me. I could see him clearly, even in the dim light, the gray clothes, long greasy hair—even the flecking of dandruff on his shoulders. He closed the door, still with his back turned, inserted a key and locked it.
Then he walked away from me down the corridor and was gone.
“It’s almost time you stopped leaning here and thought of something to do, you rusty stainless steel rat,” I encouraged myself in a throaty whisper. “Don’t stretch your luck. Get out of the corridor. Why not through that door? After he locked it that way the chances are good that no one else is inside.”
Good thinking, Jim. Except what do I do for a picklock? Improvise, that’s what. I pulled off the gloves and tucked them into my jacket along with the fur hat. Though it was probably chill and dank inside the building it felt like a furnace after the outside. Life, as well as a certain amount of tingling pain, was coming back to my blue fingers. I took up the dangling end of the cable that hung from the metal collar still locked around my neck. Wires inside. Small but possible. I chewed them into a pointed mass with my teeth, then probed the lock.
It was a simple lock, the keyhole was very big, I have great burglar’s skills. Well…I was lucky. I pushed and twisted and grunted and did everything but kick the door until the lock sprung open. Darkness beyond. I eased through, closed and locked it behind me—and breathed a very deep sigh of relief. For the first time since I had made my break I felt that I had a chance. With a happy sigh I slumped to the floor and fell asleep.
Well, almost. Tired and exhausted as I was, even as my eyes were closing, I realized that this was definitely not the right thing to do. To have come this far—and to be recaptured because I fell asleep. That was ludicrous.
“To work,” I told myself, then bit my tongue. It worked fine. I lurched to my feet, muttering uncouthly at the pain, and felt my way through the blackness with outstretched hands. I was in a narrow room or corridor, little wider than my shoulders. There was nothing to be accomplished standing there so I shuffled forward to a bend where there was a dim glow of light. Still wary, I poked my head around it carefully to see a window set into the wall beyond. A small boy was standing on the other side of the window, looking directly at me.
It was too late to pull back. I tried smiling at him, then frowning, but he did not respond. Then he raised his fingers and ran them through his hair, patting the hair into place afterward. A bell rang dimly in the distance and he turned his head to look, then walked away.
Of course. One-way glass. A mirror from his side, a foggy window from mine. Set there with a purpose. To observe without being observed. To observe what? I walked around and looked at what was obviously a classroom. The boy, along with a number of counterparts, now sat at a desk watching the teacher intently. This individual, a gray man with equally gray hair, stood before the glass lecturing unemotionally. His face was expressionless as he talked. And so were—I realized suddenly—the faces of the boys. No smiling, laughter, gum-chewing. Nothing but stolid attention. Very unschoolroomlike, at least in my experience. The framed poster behind the teacher’s back carried the message. In large, black letters it read:
DO NOT SMILE
A second sign to one side of it continued the message.
DO NOT FROWN
Both admonitions were being grimly obeyed. What kind of a schoolroom was this? As my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness I saw a switch and a loudspeaker next to the glass; the function seemed obvious. I flicked the switch and the teacher’s voice rolled over me in drab tones.
“…Moral Philosophy. This course is a required course and every one of you will take it and stay with the course until you have a perfect grade. There are no failures. Moral Philosophy is what makes us great. Moral Philosophy is what enables us to rule. You have read your history books, you know the Days of Kekkonshiki. You know how we were abandoned, how we died, how only the Thousand were left alive. When they were weak, they died. When they were afraid, they died. When they allowed emotion to rule reason, they died. All of you are here today because they lived. Moral Philosophy enabled them to live. It will enable you to live as well. To live and grow and to leave this world and bring our rule to the weaker and softer races. We are superior. We have that right. Now tell me. If you are weak?”
“We die.” The boyish voices chanted in expressionless harmony.
“If you are afraid?”
“We die.”
“If you allow emotion…”
I switched off the program, having the feeling that I had heard more than enough for the moment. It gave pause for thought. For all of the years that I had been pursuing and battling with the gray men I had never bothered to stop and think why they were what they were. I had just taken their nastiness for granted. The few words I had overheard told me that their brutality and intransience was no accident. Abandoned, that’s what the teacher had said. For reasons lost in the depths of time a colony must have been established on this planet. For ore or minerals of some kind, possibly. It was so inhospitable, so far from the nearest settled worlds, that there had to have been a good reason to come here, to work to establish a settlement. Then the people here had been abandoned. Either for local reasons, or during the bad years of the Breakdown. Undoubtedly the colony had never been meant to be self-sustaining. But, once on its own, it had to be. The majority must have died; a handful lived. Lived—if it can be called that—by abandoning all human graces and emotions, lived by devoting their lives simply to the battle for existence. They had fought this implacably brutal planet and had won.
But they had lost a good deal of their humanity in doing this. They had become machines for survival and had brutalized themselves emotionally, crippled themselves. And passed on this disability as a strength to the future generations. Moral Philosophy. But moral only when it related to surviving on this savage planet. Most unmoral when it came to subjugating other people. Yet there was a horrible kind of correctness to it—at least from their point of view. The rest of mankind was weak and filled w
ith unneeded emotions, smiling and frowning, wasting energy on frivolities. These people not only thought they were better– their training forced them to believe that they were better. That and the inculcated generations of hatred of the others who had abandoned them here made them into the perfect galaxy conquerors. On their terms they were helping all the planets they conquered. The weak should die; that was right. The survivors would be led down the path of righteousness to a better life.
Being few in number they could not conquer directly but must work through others. They had engineered and managed the interplanetary invasions of the Cliaand. Invasions that had been succeeding until the Special Corps had busted things up. A busting-up that I had organized. No wonder they had been eager to get their cold little hands on me.
And this was the training ground. The school that made sure that every little Kekkonshiki kid was turned into an emotionless copy of his elders. No fun here. This school for survival that perverted every natural tendency of youth fascinated me. I was warm now, and safe enough for the moment, and the more I learned about this place the better chances I would have to make some plan to do something. Other than lurk in dark corridors. I went on to the next classroom. A workshop, applied science or engineering. Bigger boys here working on apparatus of some kind.
Some kind. That kind! I clutched the metal ring about my neck while I looked on, as hypnotized and paralyzed as a bird by a snake.
They were working on the little metal boxes with push buttons. Boxes with cables that ran to collars like the one I was wearing. Scientific torture machines. I moved my hand slowly and switched on the speaker.
“…the difference is in application, not in theory. You assemble and test these synaptic generators in order to familiarize yourself with the circuitry. Then, when you go on to axion feeds you will have a working knowledge of the steps involved. Now, turn to the diagram on page thirty…”
Axion feeds. That was something I would have to learn more about. It was only a guess—but it seemed a sound one—that this gadget was the one I had never seen. But had experienced. The brainstomper that had generated all my horrible memories. Memories of things that had never happened, never existed outside of my brain. But which were none the better for that. It was all very revealing.
All very stupid of me. Standing there like a sadistic voyeur and not thinking of my flanks. Because of the teacher’s voice muttering away and I did not hear the footsteps approaching, did not know the other man was there until he turned the corner and almost walked right into me.
Thirteen
Action is superior to thought in a situation like this and I hurled myself at him, hands gasping for his throat. Silence first then quickly unconscious. He did not move but he did speak.
“Welcome to Yurusareta School. James diGriz. I was hoping you would find your way here—”
His words shut off as my thumbs closed down on his wind-pipe. He made no move to resist nor did his expression change in the slightest as he looked me calmly in the eyes. His skin was loose and wrinkled and I realized suddenly that he was very, very old.
Although I am well equipped by training and circumstance to fight, and even kill, in self-defense, I am not really very good at throttling old grandfathers to death while they are quietly watching me. My fingers loosened of their own accord. I matched the man stare for stare and snarled in my most nasty manner.
“Shout for help and you are dead in an instant.”
“That is the last thing I wish to do. My name is Hanasu and I have been looking forward to meeting you ever since you escaped. I have done my best to lead you here.”
“Would you mind explaining that?” I let my hands fall, though I was still alert for trouble.
“Of course. As soon as I heard the radio report I tried to put myself in your place. If you went south or east you would end up among the buildings of the city where you would be quickly found. If you did not do this your course would take you west in the direction of this school. Of course if you headed north you would come to the sea very quickly and would then still have to go west. Operating on this theory I changed today’s schedules and decided that all of the boys needed more exercise. They are all hating me now because they missed hours of classroom study that will have to be made up tonight. But they all did a number of kilometers on skis. Their course, not by chance, took them first south then west, to return here in a large loop along the shore. This was designed so that if you did see any of them you would follow them here. Is that what you did?”
There was no point in lying. “Yes. Now what do you plan to do?”
“Do? Why, talk to you of course. You were not seen entering the building?”
“No.”
“Better than I expected. I was sure I would have to axion-feed some people. You are very ingenious, I should have remembered that. Now, the other end of this observation gallery leads to my office. Shall we go there?”
“Why? You’re going to turn me in?”
“No. I want to talk to you.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Naturally, you have no reason to. But you have little choice. Since you did not kill me at once I doubt if you will do it now. Follow me.”
At that Hanasu turned and walked away. There was little else I could do except trot after him. And stay close. Maybe I couldn’t chop him down in the prime of his senile life, but I could certainly grab him and wrap him like a package if he tried to call in any alarms.
The gallery wound up and down by many other classes, and I had tantalizing glimpses of what they were doing. But no chance to stop. I was right behind him when he climbed a short flight of steps and reached for the door handle. I put my hand out and stopped him.
“What’s in here?” I asked.
“My office, as I said.”
“Is anyone in there?”
“I doubt it. They have no permission to enter when I am not there. But I can look—”
“I think I would prefer to do that myself.” Which I did, and he was right. I felt very much like a lizard as I searched the room trying to keep one eye on him and the other on the fixtures, both at the same time. A narrow window opening out onto blackness, shelves of books, a large desk, files, a few chairs. I waved him to the one furthest from the desk—where any buttons or alarms would not be located. He went quietly, sitting and folding his hands while I prowled a bit more. There was a jug of water and a glass on the sideboard and I suddenly realized how thirsty I was. I poured and glugged and managed to finish all of it. Then I dropped into the chair behind his desk, put my feet up on it.
“And you really want to help me?” I asked, in my most skeptical tone of voice.
“Yes, I do.”
“For openers you might show me how to take this collar off my neck.”
“Of course. You’ll find a key in the right hand drawer of the desk. The keyhole is just below the cable connection on the collar.”
It took a bit of fumbling, but the collar finally snapped open and I threw it into the corner. “Great. A wonderful feeling.” I looked around. “A nice office. Do you run this place?”
“I am the headmaster, yes. I was exiled here as punishment. They would have killed me, but they did not dare.”
“I haven’t the slightest idea what you are talking about. Would you care to explain?”
“Of course. The Committee of Ten rule this planet. I was on this committee for many years. I am an extremely good organizer. I originated and planned the entire Cliaand operation. When it was terminated, thanks to your efforts, I returned and became First of the Committee. That was when I attempted to alter our programs and they punished me for it. I have been at this school ever since. I cannot leave here nor can I change one word of the program which is fixed and immutable. It is a very safe prison.”
This was getting more and more interesting. “What changes did you try make?”
“Radical ones. I began to doubt all of our aims. I had been exposed to other cultures, corrupted they
said, as I began to question ours more and more. But as soon as I tried to put my new ideas into force I was apprehended, removed, sent here. There can be no new ideas on Kekkonshiki…”
The door opened and a wheeled cart was pushed in by a small boy.
“I have brought your dinner, Headmaster,” he said, then saw me behind the desk. His expression did not alter in the slightest. “That is the prisoner who escaped.”
Only fatigue kept me in the chair; I had been through a lot this day and my mind was as tired as my body. What was I to do with this child?
“You are correct, Yoru,” Hanasu said. “Come in and watch him while I go for help.”
I was on my feet when I heard that, ready to knock some heads together. But Hanasu did not leave the room. Instead he stepped behind Yoru and silently closed the door. Then he took a black metal device from a shelf and touched it lightly to the back of the boy’s neck. The boy froze, eyes open, immobile.
“There is no danger now,” Hanasu said. “I will remove a few minutes of the lad’s memory, that is all.”
My throat closed and I felt the disgust—mixed with hatred and, yes, fear—rising within me. “That thing in your hand. What is it?”
“The axion feed. You will have seen it many times, though of course you have no memory of that. It can remove memories and replace them with others. Now if you will step behind the door to the gallery the boy will enter again and leave.”
Did I have a choice? I don’t know. Perhaps the sight of the braintramping machine along with my fatigue was making me simple. I did not question; I just obeyed. Though I did leave the door open a crack to watch. Hanasu made some adjustments on the machine and pressed it to the boy’s neck again. Nothing appeared to happen. Then he opened the door and regained his seat. A few seconds later the boy moved, pushing the cart further into the room.
The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You ssr-4 Page 10