A Stainless Steel Rat Is Born

Chapter 14

I looked at my watch, snapped my fingers, then turned away from the service road in case my actions were being observed. And marched on smartly until I came to the first Speedydine. Just to make my day complete there were two policemen sitting in the first booth. Looking at me, of course. I marched past, eyes front, and found the seat farthest from them. There was an itching between my shoulder blades that I didn't dare scratch. I couldn't see them - but I knew what they were doing. They were looking at me, then talking to each other, deciding I was not quite what I looked like. Better investigate. Stand, walk my way, lean over my booth ...

I saw the blue-trousered legs out of the corner of my eye and my heart instantly began hammering so loudly I was sure the whole restaurant could hear it. I waited for the accusing words. Waited... let my eyes travel up the blue-clad legs...

To see a uniformed linear driver sitting down across from me. "Coffee," he said into the microphone, shook his newspaper open, and began to read.

My heart slowed to something resembling normal and I silently cursed myself for suspicion and cowardice. Then spoke aloud into my own microphone in the deepest voice I could sum up.

"Black coffee and mulligatawny dumplings." "Deposit six bucks, if you please. " I inserted the coins. There was a rumble of machinery at my elbow and my breakfast slid out onto the table. I ate slowly, then glanced at my watch, then went back to sipping my coffee. As I well knew from the earlier occasion when I had nipped into the freezer, when I had been hiding out there, thirty minutes was the minimum service time for a Macswineys mechanic. I allowed forty before I slid out of the booth, I tried not to think about what I would find when I finally got into the back of the fastfood parlor. I remembered my parting words only too well, I would be the next person through the door. Ho-ho. The next person had been the mechanic. Had he caught The Bishop? I sweated at the thought. I would find out soon enough. I passed the booth where the police had been. They were gone - out searching some other part of the city for me I hoped - and I headed back to the shopping center. To be greeted by the glorious sight of the Macswineys van drawing out into the road ahead of me.

The key was ready in my hand as I approached the door. The road ahead was empty - then I heard the footsteps coming up behind me. The police? With boring repetition my heart started the thudding routine again. I walked slower as I came close to the door. Then stopped and bent over and slipped the palmed key into my hand as though I had just picked it up. I examined it closely as someone came up, then passed me. A young man who showed not the slightest interest in my existence. He went on and turned into the back entrance to the market.

I took one look over my shoulder - then jumped for the door before anything else happened. Turned the key, pushed - and of course it didn't open.

The delay mechanism I had installed was working fine. It would unlock in one minute. Sixty short seconds.

Sixty incredibly crawling seconds. I stood there in my fine business outfit, as out of place in this alley as teats on a boar porcuswine, as we used to say back on the ranch. Stood there and sweated and waited for police or passersby to appear. Waited and suffered.

Until the key turned, the door opened - and I fell through.

Empty! On the far wall the automatic machinery clattered and whiirred. The drink dispenser gurgled and a filled container whistled down its track and vanished. To be followed by the steaming bulk of a burger. Night and day this went on. But among all this mechanical motion no human form appeared. They had captured him - the police had The Bishop. And they would capture me next... "Ahh, my boy, I thought it might be you this time." The Bishop emerged from the freezer, immense in his insulated gear, his sleeping roll and carryall tucked under his arm. He slammed the door behind him and the strength went out of me with a woosh and I slumped down with my back to the wall.

"Are you all right?" he asked, concern in his voice. I waved a weak hand, "Fine, fine - just let me catch my breath. I was afraid they had you." "You shouldn't have worried. When you did not reappear within a reasonable time I assumed there had been some hitch in your plans. So I rehearsed my evacuation moves just in case the legitimate users appeared today. And they did. It is really quite cold in there. I wasn't sure how long they would be, but I was sure you had installed some way of discovering when they left..." "I meant to tell you!" "No need. I found the hidden speaker and switch and listened to someone who mutters profanities while he works. After some time the slam of the door and silence were welcome information indeed. Now about yourself. There were problems?" "Problems!" I burst out laughing with relief. Then stopped when I heard a hysterical edge to the sound. I told him, omitting some of the more gruesome details. He made appropriate noises at the right places and listened attentively until the bitter end.

"You are being too harsh on yourself, Jim. A single lapse after all the tension of the day is not to be unexpected." "But not to be allowed! Because I was stupid I almost had both of us caught. It won't happen again." "There is where you are wrong," he said, shaking a thick admonitory finger. "It could happen at any time until you have trained yourself in your work. But you will be trained and trained efficiently..." "Of course!" "...until a lapse like this one will be impossible. You have done incredibly well, for one of your inexperience. Now you can only improve." "And you will teach me how - how to be a successful crook like you!" His brow turrowed at my words and his expression was grave. What had I said that was wrong? I chewed my sore lip with worry as he unrolled his bedroll in silence, spread it out then sat upon it cross-legged. When at last he spoke I hung upon his every word.

"Now your first lesson, Jim. I am not a crook. You are not a crook. We do not want to be criminals for they are all individuals who are stupid and inefficient. It is important to comprehend and appreciate that we stand outside of society and follow strict rules of our own, some of them even stricter than those of the society that we have rejected. It can be a lonely life - but it is a life you must choose with your eyes open. And once the choice has been made you must abide by it. You must be more moral than they are because you will be living by a stricter moral code. And this code does not contain the word 'crook'. That is their word for what you are and you must reject it." "But I want to be a criminal..." "Abandon the thought - and the title. It is, and you must excuse me saying it, a juvenile ambition. It is only your emotional striking out at the world you dislike and cannot be considered a reasoned decision. You have rejected them - but at the same time accepted their description of what you are. A crook. You are not a crook, I am not a crook." "Then - what are we?" I asked, all eagerness. The Bishop steepled his fingers as he intoned the answer.

"We are Citizens of the Outside. We have rejected the simplistic, boring, regimented, bureaucratic, moral, and ethical scriptures by which they live. In their place we have substituted our own far superior ones. We may physically move among them - but we are not of them. Where they are lazy, we are industrious. Where they are immoral, we are moral. Where they are liars, we are the Truth. We are probably the greatest power for good to the society that we have discarded." I blinked rather rapidly at that one, but waited patiently because I knew that he would soon make all clear. He did.

"What kind of galaxy do we live in? Look around you. The citizens of this planet, and of every other planet in the loose organization known as the Galactic League, are citizens of a fat, rich union of worlds that has almost forgotten the real meaning of the word 'crime'. You have been in prison, you have seen the dismal rejects whom they consider criminals. And this is what is called a frontier world! On the other settled planets there are few malcontents and even fewer who are socially maladjusted. Out there the handful who are still being born, in spite of centuries of genetic control, are caught early and their aberrations quickly adjusted. I made one single trip offplanet in my life, a tour of the nearest worlds. It was terrible! Life on those planets has all the color and wonder of a piece of wet cardboard. I hurried back to Bit O'Heaven for, loathsome as it can be at times, it is still a bit o'heaven compared to the others." "Someday ... I would like to see these other worlds." "And so you shall, dear boy, a worthy ambition. But learn your way around this one first. And be thankful they don't have complete genetic control here yet - or the machines to mentally adjust those who struggle against society. On other planets the children are all the same. Meek, mild, and socially adjusted. Of course some do not show their genetic weakness - or strength as we call it - until they are adults. These are the poor displaced ones who try their hands at petty crimes - burglary, shoplifting, rustling and the like. They may get away with it for a week or two or a month or two, depending on their degree of native intelligence. But as sure as atomic decay, as sure as the fall of leaves in the autumn - and just as predestined - the police will eventually reach out and pull them in." I digested this information, then asked the obvious question.

"But if that is all there is to crime, or rebellion against the system - where does that leave you and me?" "I thought you would never ask. These dropouts I have described, whom you have associated with in prison, comprise ninety-nine point nine percent of crime in our organized and dandified society. It is the last and vital one-tenth of one percent that we represent that is so vital to the fabric of this same society. Without us the heat death of the universe would begin. Without us the lives of all the sheep-like citizenry would be so empty that mass suicide to escape it would be the only answer. Instead of pursuing us and calling us criminals they should honor us as first among them!" There were sparks in his eyes and thunder in his voice when he spoke. I did not want to interrupt his fulminatory speech, but there were questions to be asked.

"Please excuse me … but would you be so kind as to point out just why this is so?" "It is so because we give the police something to do, someone to chase, some reason for rushing about in their expensive machines. And the public - how they watch the news and listen for the latest reports on our exploits, how they talk to each other about it and relish every detail! And what is the cost of all this entertainment and social good? Nothing. The service is free, even though we risk life, limb, and liberty to provide it. What do we take from them? Nothing. Just money, paper, and metal symbols. All of it insured. If we clean out a bank, the money is returned by the insurance company who, at the end of the year, may reduce their annual dividend by a microscopic amount. Each shareholder will receive a millionth of a buck less. No sacrifice, no sacrifice at all. Benefactors, my boy, we are nothing less than benefactors.

"But in order for us to accomplish all this good for them we must operate outside their barriers and well outside of their rules. We must be as stealthy as rats in the wainscoting of their society. It was easier in the old days of course, and society had more rats when the rules were looser, just as old wooden buildings have more rats than concrete buildings. But there are rats in the buildings now as well. Now that society is all ferroconcrete and stainless steel there are fewer gaps between the joints. It takes a very smart rat indeed to find these openings. Only a stainless steel rat can be at home in this environment." I broke into spontaneous applause, clapping until my hands hurt, and he nodded his head with gracious acceptance of the tribute.

"That is what we are," I enthused. "Stainless steel rats! It is a proud and lonely thing to be a stainless steel rat!" He lowered his head in acknowledgment, then spoke. "I agree. Now - my throat is dry from all this talking and I wonder if you could aid me with the complex devices about us. Is there any way you might extract a doublecherry oozer from them?" I turned to the maze of thudding and whirring machinery that covered the inner wall.

"There is indeed, and I shall be happy to show you how. Each of these machines has a testing switch. This, if you will look close, is the one on the drink dispenser. First you must turn it to on, then you can actuate the dispenser, which will deliver the drink here instead of to a customer on the other side. Each is labeled - see, this is the cherry oozer. A mere touch and... there!" With a whistling thud it dropped into place and The Bishop seized it up. As he began to drink he froze, then whispered out of the corner of his mouth.

"I just realized, there is a window here and a young lady is staring in at me!" "Fear not," I reassured him. "It is made of one-way glass. She is just admiring her face. It is the inspection port to look at the customers. " "Indeed? Ahh, yes, I can see now. They are indeed a ravenous lot. All that mastication causes a rumble in my own tum, I am forced to admit." "No trouble at all. These are the food controls. That nearest one is for the Macbunnyburger, if you happen to like them." "Love them until my nose crinkles." "Then here." He seized up the steaming package, traditionally decorated with beady eyes and tufted tail of course, and munched away. It was a pleasure to watch him eat. But I tore myself away before I forgot and pushed coins into the slot on back of the armored coinbox.

The Bishop's eyes widened with astonishment. As soon as he swallowed he spoke.

"You are paying! I thought that we were safely ensconced in a gustatorial paradise with free food and drink at our beck and call, night and day?" "We are - for all of this money is stolen and I am just putting it back into circulation to keep the economy healthy. But there is no slack in the Macswineys operation. Every morsel of porcine tissue, every splinter of ice is accounted for. When the mechanic tests the machines he is responsible for every item delivered. The shops computer keeps track of every sale so that the frozen supplies are filled exactly to the top each time they are replenished. All of the money collected is taken away each day from the safe on the outer wall - which is automated as well. An armored van backs over it just as the time lock disengages. A code is keyed in and the money disgorged. So if we simply helped ourselves, the records would reveal the theft. Prompt investigation would follow. We must pay for what we use, precisely the correct amount. But, since we won't be coming back here, we will steal all the money on the day we leave." "Fine, my boy, fine. You had me worried there for a minute with your bit of forced honesty. Since you are close to the controls, please trigger another delicious morsel of Lepus Cuniculus while I pay. "