Tomorrow's Crimes

by Donald E. Westlake

  Confess? Confess what?

  I drank the soup, pouring it down my throat as though I were a cold and empty pitcher, hollow and white inside, and it did help to ease the chill. When I was done with it, Phail asked me again to recount my history since escaping from the mine, and this time I did. I told him everything, Torgmund and the cabin, the journey out of the darkness, the errors of direction, the death of the hairhorse, the three days in the UC Embassy, everything.

  He listened intently, and when I was done he said, “Plausible. You had nothing on you, no papers, no maps, nothing to show—Still, it could be in your mind.”

  “What could?”

  He leered at me. “Are you ignorant, or are you merely illustrating ignorance? An act, or reality?”

  “I know nothing that I haven’t told you.”

  “Patently false,” he said briskly. “Whole areas of your life and knowledge haven’t been touched upon at all.”

  “I meant, since I left the mine.”

  “Of course.” He frowned, and tapped a knuckle against his chin. “It would be easier to believe you,” he said thoughtfully, “but perhaps more dangerous as well. That you should disappear in precisely that direction, that you should return from that area, that you should have an animal and equipment you did not have before, all of this is suspicious. Even that you should be here on Anarchaos is itself suspicious. But your explanations are invariably plausible, for the hairhorse, for the clothing and equipment, for your whereabouts while not under surveillance.”

  “You might be able to find Torgmund’s cabin,” I said. “That would prove what I said.”

  “I am not interested in proof,” he said. “Proof is secondary’ to judgment. I am interested solely in judging you, for truth or falsehood. Why did you come to Anarchaos?”

  “To work for the Wolmak Corporation. For Ice.”

  “I believe you are lying now,” he said “But persuasively. If you can lie persuasively now, could you have been lying just as persuasively about the other things?”

  “I was going to work with my brother,” I said “Wolmak paid my way from Earth; you can find out for yourself.”

  “Proof again. Only a liar needs proof. To prove details is simple, can be done no matter how complex the lie, but to judge overall veracity is much more difficult. It is the latter which is necessary. Why didn’t you leave when you found out that your brother was dead?”

  “There isn’t any truth that I know that will hurt me if I tell you,” I said. “I knew my brother was dead before I left Earth. I’d been offered the job, Gar got me the job, but just before I was supposed to leave the news came he’d been killed. I came anyway.”

  ‘To get the job?”

  “No. I didn’t care about the job. I came to find out what happened to my brother.”

  He smiled as though I’d just confessed a childishness, and said. “You wanted revenge?”

  “I thought so.”

  “You thought so?”

  “What I wanted.” I said, being as truthful as I knew how, telling myself the way things were through this medium of apparently talking to Phail, “what I actually wanted was to understand.”

  “Why your brother was killed, you mean.”

  “Specifically that, yes.”

  He frowned again, saying. “Are you leading me away from the subject? These are strange answers. What do you mean, specifically?”

  “I mean I wanted to understand. Everything. Myself, and everything around me in relation to myself. It seemed if I could understand about Gar’s killing, it might be a clue, I could—” I hunted for the word.

  “Extrapolate,” he said.

  “Yes. Extrapolate the general answer from the specific.”

  “And therefore understand.

  “Yes.”

  “And have you been successful? Do you understand?”

  “I’m no longer sure it was a thing that could be looked for.”

  ‘You are taking me away! The subject is not philosophy, the subject is money!”

  I looked at him, saw the patrician face being angry, and said, “Money? What money?”

  “You claim to know nothing,” he said, enraged by me. “You claim to have come here on a philosophical quest. You say the word money and you look at me with an open guileless face, as though the existence of money had never before been pointed out to you. No one is that remote from money.”

  “I don’t know what money you mean,” I said.

  He said, “Are you very stupid, or very clever? You present me with your mythic qualities, love and death, the slain brother, eternal questions, the unworldly view. You think if you show yourself to me as a saint you’ll impress me and I’ll stay away from you.”

  I didn’t understand him, yet it did seem to be true that he was impressed by something. He was getting more and more nervous. I said, ‘I’m not stupid, but I’m not clever either. I came here, I came to this planet, I thought I was hard, I thought I was the strongest thing there was and it would all go my way, and nothing went my way. I lost every fight. I lost a hand. I learned nothing, and I’m sitting here a prisoner of a man I don’t know, caught up in some sort of problem I don’t understand. You’re the one making the myths, the money myth, the golden fleece. I don’t have what you want.”

  He glowered at me in surly indecision, and finally said, “I cannot believe in you. No one is a money virgin. What did you do on Earth? Where were you when you decided to come here?’

  “In jail.”

  He sat up, looking hopeful. “For theft?”

  ‘Manslaughter. I have—I used to have—a bad temper.” I looked inside myself but couldn’t tell, and said so: ‘I don’t know if it’s gone or not.”

  ‘Bad temper,” he mimicked, in a sudden return to his angry contempt He’d made up his mind about me, all at once. He pointed a finger at me and said, “You were at the site, I know you were. You’ll tell us where it is, you’ll lead us to it, you’ll give us the whole thing. You’ll either do it now, with no trouble, or you’ll do it later on, after a great deal of trouble.”

  I said. “I don’t want any trouble. I won’t fight anybody, I won’t hide anything. I don’t want to be involved anymore. I’ll answer anything you ask me, I swear I will.”

  “You’ll take us to the site?”

  There was nothing for me to say. I sat and looked at him, feeling helpless and very frightened.

  He nodded cynically. “Ignorant again,” he said. “Such touching innocence, such a blank expression. There is a drug called antizone, have you ever heard of it?”

  “No.”

  “It is used with the hopelessly insane. One injection, and your brain empties itself through your mouth. You will speak your entire history, all your memories, every bit of your knowledge, the total of your conjectures, each of your hopes and expectations. You will state every item aloud, and in the act of staring it you will forget it. Sometimes this process takes days. When it is finished, your mind will be empty. You will then be retrained in those rudimentary skills necessary for survival, and you will be sent back to the mine. And this time, you won’t escape.”

  Of course! A great light seemed to bloom in my mind, a beautiful illumination, and with it a lovely sensation of peace. I had found my golden fleece!

  I closed my eyes. I caressed the prospect he offered me.

  He said, “Well? Is that what you want?”

  I said, “Yes.” I kept my eyes closed.

  He slapped me stingingly across the face. My eyes popped open, and I saw him standing over me, glaring at me. “Don’t play with me!”

  “I want the drug,” I said. “I am finished, but afraid to die. I didn’t know about that drug, I would like it very much.”

  He backed away from me, stumbling against his chair but staving on his feet. “How clever are you? What game are you playing?”

  There was no way to make him believe me, but surely be would do it anyway. I closed my eyes again. In the darkness inside I felt at peac
e.

  I heard Phail moving around the room, prowling back and forth, muttering to himself. He asked himself what intricacies I might be plotting, if perhaps there were some drug he didn’t know about which could be taken at some earlier date and leave the taker immune to antizone, if perhaps I were under some hypnotic protection which would allow him to empty my mind without getting the information he wanted, if I were perhaps merely trying a desperate bluff.

  Finally he said, with abrupt decisiveness, “Very well. We’ll fall back on proof. Malik, get all he can tell you about this alleged cabin where he spent so much of his time. Then see if you can find it, see if it exists.”

  I opened my eyes, hoping to see his face, but he had already turned away and was going out the door.

  XXVIII

  They fed me three meals, and I slept. Then they fed me three meals, and I slept. I counted five such cycles, then I stopped counting; a while later I counted again for another three cycles, then gave it up again, and between the second and third meals on some subsequent cycle the door was unlocked and opened and Phail came in to see me.

  We both stood. There was no furniture in this room other than the blanket-covered board on which I slept. The walls and ceiling and floor were all gray metal. There was no window. Each time the door was opened I caught a narrow glimpse of gray corridor. At all times there was the throb of the ship’s engines; we were in insistent motion somewhere.

  Phail gave me a hard look and checked off the points briskly on his fingers: “There was a trapper named Torgmund. He has disappeared. His cabin has been found and searched, and it matches your description. His two hairhorses are gone. A half-built addition to his cabin was noted.” There were five points, adding up to the five Fingers of his right hand. He closed this hand into a fist, lowered the fist to his side, and said, “It would appear you were telling the truth.”

  I said, “How long have I been here? In this room.”

  “That doesn’t make any difference,” he said. “The point is, you can still help us.”

  “All the time I’ve been here,” I said, “I thought of nothing but antizone.”

  “I don’t care,” he said, with all of his arrogance and impudence.

  “Nevertheless,” I said carefully, “it is a fact. Antizone has been my only thought. I never believed, in all that darkness out there beyond the rim, you would find Torgmund’s cabin, and so I thought eventually you would come back and give me the injection of antizone.”

  “There’s no point in that now,” he snapped.

  “Nevertheless,” I said again, “it is what I thought. And I want to tell you about it.”

  He said, “Why should I listen to you?”

  “Because it’s important,” I said. “Important to me. You think I can help you. I don’t know why you think that, I don’t know if you’re right or not, but you do think it. I will help you, if you’re right and it’s possible for me to. But first you must listen to what I have to say.”

  He smiled thinly. “An odd bargain,” he said. “All right, I’ll listen.”

  “At first,” I said, “I was impatient for the search to be given up. I couldn’t think of anything lovelier than an end of self. Oblivion without death, who could ask for anything more? I expressed this attitude when you first mentioned antizone.”

  “Yes. I thought it was a bluff. Now I’m not so sure.”

  “I continued to think that way,” I said, ‘for some rime after being put into this room. But gradually my attitude began to change. I saw that I was being defeatist and cowardly. I cannot help yearning for antizone, but I began to see that the yearning was shameful, and I want you to know that I am ashamed. I am ashamed of the way I acted about antizone the last time. I want you to know that.”

  He studied me in some perplexity, and finally said, ‘Is that all?’

  “Yes.”

  “You want me to know you’re ashamed of wanting antizone.”

  “Yes.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know about you. I can’t touch you anywhere; I can’t relate you to anything I know. Could it simply be that you’re insane?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I’ve thought about it, but I don’t know.”

  He waved a hand in sudden irritation, as though brushing away cobwebs. ‘You keep taking me away, leading me off the subject. The site, that’s the important thing. I believe you now, you don’t know where it is. But you might be able to help us find it.”

  “Then I will,” I said.

  “Good. Come along with me.”

  He turned and rapped on the door. The guard opened it, and we left the little gray room. I followed him down the corridor, feeling the ship move sluggishly beneath my feet, and through another door, and out on deck.

  The deck was covered, with lights spaced along the roof. To our left as we walked along it was the metal skin of the ship. To our right was blackness, utter and complete. Small water sounds could be heard in the blackness. The impression was that this ship was flying with great speed through empty black space It was very cold.

  Phail led me through another door, inside the ship again, up a flight of stairs, and into a gorgeous room full of bright colors. Carpeting on the floor. Polished wood furniture. Gleaming brass fixtures. Ornate windows onto the outer blackness. Opulence and luxury. In the center, a large and beautiful wooden desk with a polished and empty top.

  Phail motioned at this desk. “Sit down.” he said. “You’ll work there. You’ll find pencils and paper in the center drawer.”

  Feeling that some mistake was being made, I went to the desk and sat down. I opened the center drawer, and pencils and paper were there, as Phail had said they would be. Since it seemed the proper thing to do, I removed them from the drawer and placed them on the desk. Then I leaned forward, and in the polished top I could see an unclear view’ of my own face.

  In the meantime, Phail had gone to a safe in the comer, had pressed his palm to the scanner of the personnel lock, and had opened the safe door. As he took from the safe a package wrapped in brown paper, the room door burst open and a sailor came in, very excited. “Mister Phail!” I recognized this man as Davus, the one who had me thrown into the water.

  Phail looked up at him with apparent annoyance. “What now?”

  “General Ingor!”

  Phail sprang to his feet. “The General! Where?”

  “Coming here! They just radioed.”

  Phail glanced at the package in his hand, then at me, then back at Davus. “How long do we have?”

  Davus pointed at the ceiling. “He’s right up there! In a plane. They’re landing now.”

  In a sudden fury, Phail cried, “How did he find us? Someone on board—” But he cut it abruptly off, spun around, tossed the package back into the safe and shut the safe door. He pointed at me and said to Davus, “Get him out of sight. Back in his room.”

  “Yes, sir.” Davus came toward me.

  Phail said to him, with cold authority, “Gently. Davus. He’ll go with you, there won’t be any trouble.”

  Davus pouted, as though he’d been scolded by a teacher. “Yes, sir,” he said sullenly.

  Phail said to me, “Go with him. We’ll get back to this later.”

  I said, “Should I put the paper and pencils away?”

  Phail made a crooked smile and said, “No, that won’t be necessary. Just go with Davus.”

  “All right.”

  I followed Davus out of the room. He took me back the same way I had come. This rime, as we walked along the deck, the ship was on our right and the empty dark on our left. There was suddenly light out there in the emptiness. I stopped and looked, my hand resting on the rail, and saw an airplane, outlined by its own lights, sail on a long diagonal across the black, from upper right to lower left, its landing lights suddenly picking out at the end of the diagonal the choppiness of black water in the black night. The plane landed on the water and made a long sweeping turn toward us, its lights creating choppy water where
ver they touched.

  Davus tugged at my arm. “You’re supposed to come along peaceful,” he said. “Don’t get your hopes up about the General. He isn’t here to save you from anybody.”

  I let him pull me away, and after that followed him without trouble back to my room.

  XXIX

  There was no third meal in that cycle. Being without it made me hungry, and this hunger made it difficult for me to go to sleep, but there was nothing else to do and so eventually sleep did come to me.

  For the first time in a long while I was not permitted to sleep until I woke up of my own volition. Rough hands shaking me drove me out of sleep, and it seemed as though I’d barely closed my eyes. I sat up, bleary-eyed and fuzzy-minded, and saw that it was Davus who had awakened me.

  Davus, speaking swiftly and softly, said to me, “The General wants you. He wants to see you. You awake?”

  “I haven’t been fed,” I said. “The food was never brought to me.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. Listen to me. If you’re smart, you’ll listen to me. Keep a close mouth when you talk to the General, you hear me?”

  “A close mouth?”

  “Nobody mistreated you,” he said. “Mister Phail asked you some questions and you gave him the answers, and that’s all. And nobody hit you or threw you in the water or anything like that.”

  “You had me thrown in the water,” I said.

  “Not if you know what’s good for you,” he said, still speaking low and fast. “Not if you don’t want trouble later on. You just be careful and watch yourself.” He straightened. “Come on.”

  I got up from the bed and followed him and he took me the same route back to the same room. We entered, and this time the room was full of people.

  Rack in the comer, near the safe, stood Phail, looking wary. In another comer, their arms folded over their chests and their faces carefully blank, stood Malik and Rose. Sitting at the desk was a big old man as gnarled and thick as an old tree. He had thick white hair, a heavy and strong-looking body, huge jagged hands resting on the desktop, and a weathered craggy face dominated by burning eyes of a pale pale blue. Standing behind him, one to either side, were the other two young officials who had been with Phail on the inspection tour of the mine.