The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You ssr-4

by Harry Harrison

  “I have brought your dinner, Headmaster,” he said.

  “Leave it and do not return tonight. I do not wish to be disturbed.”

  “Yes, Headmaster.” He turned and left and I emerged from my hiding place.

  “That machine—it’s the one they used on me?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s the foulest, most disgusting thing I have ever heard of.”

  “It is just a machine,” he said emotionlessly, then replaced it on the shelf. “I do not need food now and you will be hungry after your exposure. Help yourself.”

  Too many things had been happening too quickly for me to think about my appetite. But now that he had mentioned it I realized that I was hungry enough to eat a cow, raw. I threw back the cover on the plate and there was a rush of saliva at the sight of the food. It was the same tasteless dried fish ration I had had on the spacer, but was the finest dinner imaginable at that moment. I shoveled and chomped and listened to Hanasu.

  “I am trying to understand your reasons for saying that the machine is disgusting. You mean the uses it is put to, don’t you?” I nodded, my mouth too full to talk. “I can understand your reasoning. That is my trouble. I am very intelligent or I would not have been first in my classes and then first on the Committee. During the years I have given this much thought and have concluded that most of the people on this planet are both stupid and unimaginative. Intelligence and imagination are handicaps to basic survival in an environment as harsh as ours. We have selectively bred them out. Which means I am a sport, a mutant. These differences lay dormant during my early years. I believed everything I was taught and excelled in my studies. I did not question then because questioning is unknown here. Obedience is all. Now I question. We are not superior to all of the rest of mankind—just different. Our attempts to destroy or rule them all were wrong. Our liaison with the aliens to war on our own specie the biggest crime of all.”

  “You’re right,” I said, swallowing the last bite regretfully. I could have started all over again. Hanasu went on as though he had not heard me.

  “When I discovered these facts I tried to change our aims. But it is impossible. I cannot even change one word of the training these children get—and I am in charge of the school.”

  “I can change everything,” I told him.

  “Of course,” he said, turning to face me. Then his immobile face cracked, the corners of his mouth turned up. He smiled, ever so slightly—but it was still a smile. “Why do you think I wanted to get you here? You can do what I have labored my lifetime to accomplish. Save the people of this chill planet from themselves.”

  “One message would do it. Just the location of this planet.”

  “And then—your League would come and destroy us. It is tragic but inevitable.”

  “No. Wouldn’t harm a hair of your heads.”

  “That is a jest and I do not like it! Do not mock me!” There was almost a trace of anger in his voice.

  “It’s the truth. You just don’t know how a civilized society will react. I admit that a lot of people, if they knew who you were, would relish dropping a planet buster onto you. But with luck the general public will never know. The League will just keep an eye on your people to see that they don’t cause any more trouble. And offer you the usual aid and assistance.”

  He was baffled. “I don’t understand. They must kill us—”

  “Stop with the killing already. That’s your trouble. Live or die. Kill or be killed. That philosophy belongs to a darker stage of mankind’s development that we have hopefully left behind. We may not have the best of all possible ethical systems or civilizations, but we at least have one that forbears violence as an institution. Why do you think your alien friends are doing so well? We no longer have armies or fleets to fight wars. We no longer have wars. Until people like yours come along and try to turn the clock back twenty thousand years or so. There is no need for killing as a tool of government. Ever.”

  “There must be the rule of law. If a man kills he be killed in return.”

  “Nonsense. That does not bring the dead back to life. And the society doing the killing then becomes no more than a murderer itself. And I see your mouth open for the next argument. Capital punishment is no deterrent to others, that has been proven. Violence breeds violence, killing breeds killing.”

  Hanasu paced back and forth the length of the room, trying to understand these—to him—alien concepts. I scraped the plate again and licked off the spoon. He sighed and dropped back into his chair.

  “These things you tell me—they are beyond understanding. I must study them, but that is not important now. What is important is that I have made my mind up. I have been thinking about it for years and have decided. The Kekkonshiki plans must be stopped. There has been too much killing. It is only fit that it end by all of us being killed. You have told me this will not happen and I would like to believe you. But it does not matter. The message must be sent to your League.”

  “How?”

  “You must tell me. Don’t you think I would have contacted them well before this if I had the means?”

  “Yes, of course.” Now I was pacing the floor. “No mail service to other planets, of course. No psimen here—or are there? Not that it’s important. They wouldn’t send this message. Radio?”

  “The nearest League base is 430 light years away.”

  “Yes, well, we don’t want to wait that long. I’ll just have to find a way to get aboard one of the ships when they leave.”

  “I think that will be next to impossible.”

  “I’m sure of it. So what do you suggest. I know—you just asked me that same question. But there has to be a way. Maybe I had better sleep on it. Is there any place safe…”

  I was interrupted by a high warbling sound. My eyebrows shot up. “It is the communicator. An outside call. Stand against that wall where you will be out of range of the eye.”

  He seated himself at the desk and switched on.

  “Hanasu,” he said, face and voice frozen.

  “A squad will reach you in a few minutes. They will seal all exits from the school. The foreigner has been traced in your direction and may be hiding there. Transportation is on the way now with six more squads. The school will be searched and he will be found.”

  Fourteen

  “What evidence do you have that he is at the school?” Hanasu asked.

  “Footprints in the snow. Going in your direction. He is either hidden in your school or he is dead.”

  “The students will aid in the search. They know the school buildings well.”

  “Issue that order.”

  Hanasu turned off the communicator and looked at me coldly. “We will not be able to carry out our plans after all. After they capture you they will use the axion feed to uncover my part in this. Do you wish to commit suicide to protect me?”

  All of this was delivered deadpan with no change in tone. Although the room was chill I felt small prickles of sweat breaking out.

  “Not so fast! All is not lost yet. Let us sort of save the suicide bit as a last resort. There must be someplace I can hide?”

  “No. They will look in every place.”

  “What about here? In your quarters. Tell them you searched and I’m not there.” “You do not understand our people. Whatever I—or anyone—might say the search will still go on as planned. We are very thorough.”

  “But unimaginative. I’ll out-think them.” I was feeling very unimaginative myself at the moment. Only the spurt of adrenalin generated by the suicide offer kept my engines chugging away at all. I looked around with a feeling of desperation. “The window! I can go through it, hide…”

  “It does not open. It is fixed in place.”

  “Never opens? Not even in the summer?”

  “It is summer.”

  “I was afraid you would say that. All is not lost yet!” There was a tinge of desperation in my voice because I had the awful feeling that everything was lost. “
I know. If not inside I’ll hide outside. There must be a way to get up onto the roof. Make repairs, nail down loose shingles.”

  “There are no shingles.”

  I resisted the urge to tear out a handful of hair. “Look—I don’t mean it literally. But is there a way to get on the roof from inside the building?”

  “There might be.”

  I fought hard with myself not to shake him by the neck until he gave me the right answers. “Are there plans? Blueprints of the school?”

  “Yes. There in the file.”

  “Then get them. Quickly if you please.” How long would it be before the search squads arrived? I cracked my knuckles and chewed my thumb and grabbed the sheets when he produced them. Flipping through them rapidly. Trying to ignore Hanasu’s cheery observations.

  “This is a waste of time. There is no escape. I do not wish to be interrogated with the axion feed. Therefore if you will not commit suicide I will…”

  “Stop with the gloom already!” I snarled. It was depressing. My finger stabbed down. “There! What is that, that symbol?”

  Hanasu held the sheet at arm’s length, adjusted the light, squinted at it. My pulse rate doubled. “Yes, I see it,” he finally said. “It is a door.”

  I clapped him on the back. “We’re home free! If you do just as I say. First—order everyone in the school to get together. Not just the students but the teachers, cooks, gardeners, torture specialists. Everyone.”

  “We don’t have any gardeners.”

  “I don’t care!” My voice was beginning to crack and I had to fight a measure of control back into it. “Just get them all together—now–to help in the search. Talk first and I’ll explain later.”

  He obeyed without question. Good old Kekkonshiki discipline. By the time he had made the announcement I knew what came next.

  “I can’t risk being seen, so you will have to get what I need from the labs. I want a power tool—make sure it’s fully charged—at least ten long nails or screws, fifty meters of 500-kilo test line, a battery light and a lubricator. Where is the safest place for me to wait while you get them?”

  “Here. There will be people in the corridors. By the time I return they will all be in the assembly hall.”

  “That was sort of my idea too.”

  “I do not know what you are planning but I will help you. There will be time for me to commit suicide after you are captured.”

  “That’s it, Hanasu boy, always look on the bright side. Now go!”

  He went and I prowled the carpet and looked for an unchewed fingernail to chew. I jumped when the communicator buzzed, but I stayed far away from it. Hanasu was gone all of four minutes. It felt like four days.

  “You had a call,” I said, grabbing the goods from him. I stowed them about my person while he went to the communicator.

  “They are all assembled and the search squads are here,” he said.

  “That’s good news. Go down and organize them. See that they do a good and thorough job and work upwards from the bottom to the top. I’ll need all the time I can get since I have no idea what I will find.”

  “You are going on to the roof?”

  “What you don’t know you can’t tell. Get moving.”

  “You are of course correct.” He started for the door and, as he opened it, turned back for an instant. “Good luck. Isn’t that what is said in a circumstance like this?”

  “It is. Thanks. Good luck yourself. And I’ll see if we can’t avoid the mutual suicide pact.”

  I was out right behind him, running up the stairs as he tottered down, the construction diagram clutched in my hand. The climb was nice and warming, but I was panting loudly by the time I had reached the top floor. It had been a long day. Down to the end of the corridor to what appeared to be a storeroom. The door of which was locked.

  “Jim diGriz laughs at locks,” I laughed as I used one of the large nails to pick the even larger lock. The door swung open with a loud squeaking and I was through and slammed it behind me. There was no light switch that I could find and the air was frigid and musty. I turned on the light I had brought and looked around, treading between the heaped boxes and ancient files. The door I was looking for was at the far end of the room, a good four meters above the floor. There was no ladder.

  “Better and better,” I chortled and began to collect boxes that I could climb up on.

  This took some time since I could not drag any of them and leave marks that might be noticed. I had to carry each one and stack it on the ones below to build a pile. Before I was done I was no longer feeling chill. In fact I sweated a bit when I thought of the searchers and wondered how close they were getting. I stacked faster.

  The door was more of a trapdoor, a meter-square lid let into the angle of the roof just below the peak. When I pushed at it it squeaked and a fine rain of rust particles showered down on me, which is about what I expected. I carefully applied the lubricant so it didn’t drip, then wiped up all the rust. It would have been obvious it had been opened recently if I left it in its original condition. Now it was just another smooth-working trapdoor—and I only hoped that whoever was in charge of trapdoors like this wasn’t around when the search was made. This was a chance I had to take. Now, when I pushed up on the trapdoor, it lifted easily and a blast of freezing air rushed in. I opened it all the way and poked my head out into the freezing night. Stars sparkled in the darkness above giving just enough light for me to see that there was absolutely no place of concealment on the roof.

  “Solve that one when you come to it, Jim,” I told myself with false good humor. “One step at the time, you crafty devil. You’ve licked them so far—you’ll win in the end.”

  While I babbled this fatuous morale boosting I was driving a heavy nail into the coping outside. When it was well home I tied the end of the line to it. The 500-kilo test had enough diameter to take a grip, which is why I had selected it.

  After that it was simply a matter of putting the boxes back where I had found them while trying not to think of the searchers getting closer every second. I was almost there—though I still wasn’t quite sure where “there” was. All I wanted to do was to rush up to the roof and to close the trapdoor. What I did was to carefully go over the entire floor with my light to be sure I had left no traces of my passage. I found a lovely big footprint in the dust of one of the boxes; I turned the box on its side. Only when I was sure that nothing obvious indicated my visit did I go to the line leading up to the opening. After making sure that all my equipment was secure, I turned off the light, stowed it in my pocket and seized the line.

  Behind me, in the darkness, I heard a key rattle in the lock.

  Now, I don’t know if there is any athletic event called the four-meter rope climb. But if there is I am sure that I set a new record at that moment. Without pausing for breath I was up it, hand over hand, grappling with insane desperation. One instant I was on the floor, the next I had the edge of the opening in my hand, was up and through it, stretched full length on the peak of the roof with one leg on each side, pulling up the rest of the rope. It seemed endless and I had finally pulled it all clear and was closing the trapdoor—when a light appeared in the room below.

  “You take that side, Bukai, and I’ll do this one,” a gruff and toneless voice said. “Look behind all the boxes. Open ones big enough for a man.”

  With desperate caution I closed the door, holding fast with my fingertips until it was in place. What next? Would the searchers come up here? To ask the question was to have the answer. Of course they would. They would look everywhere a man could possibly be. Then I must find an impossible place. The featureless, welded metal surface of the roof filled me with no enthusiasm. It slanted away on both sides at a steep angle. Ahead of me, not five meters away, was the end of the roof. Featureless. Nothing in that direction, so perhaps in the other. I grunted as I pulled one leg up to turn around. It was then that I discovered that the metal was covered with a thin sheet of ice. My feet shot out from
under me and I started to slide.

  Down the slippery surface, my fingers scrabbling for holds that did not exist, faster and faster toward the edge and the drop to the frozen surface far below.

  Until I remembered that the line was still attached. I grabbed at it with both hands. It slithered through my gloves. Then I gripped harder and held on. The shock on my arms when I stopped was something else again.

  All I could do was hold on. Waiting for the pain to go away. Aware that my feet were hanging over the abyss. As soon as I could I dragged myself up, hand over hand, to the peak of the roof again. Where I remembered the searchers below and the fact that trapdoor was going to be open very soon.

  Of course the roof in the other direction was as featureless. Maybe they would not see me in the starlight. I had to get as far away from the trapdoor as I could. Unfastening the rope with numb fingers, I straddled the peak and began to crawl along it, arms and legs widespread. Dragging myself really, sliding on the ice. Knowing that if I slipped to one side or the other that would be the end.

  The end. That’s what the roof did. Stopped. When I looked over my shoulder I saw that the trapdoor was clearly visible. As I would be to anyone putting his head out.

  The line had held me before; it was going to have to do it again. Carefully and slowly, so I wouldn’t lose my balance, I worked the power tool out and fitted one of the nails into the jaws. I would have to take the risk that the thick roof would muffle the sound. One touch on the trigger drove the nail in, through the metal, at the peak of the roof at the very end. My fingers were cold—and clumsy in the gloves—as I worked desperately to tie a knot on the line, to slip it over the nail, to tie a loop further down. To fit my foot into it and to let myself slide carefully over the edge. To hang down the end of the building. To ignore the creaking as the nail took up the strain.

  There was a loud bang further back on the roof as the trap-door was thrown open. I hung quietly, listening, smiling at my success as I heard the searchers talking clearly.