Part 28 (1/2)

Hoddan stared blankly at nothing. As an event, it was preposterous, and yet it was wholly natural. When in the course of human events somebody does something that puts somebody else to the trouble of adjusting the numb routine of his life, the adjustee is resentful. The richer he is and the more satisfactory he considers his life, the more resentful he is at any change, however minute. And of all the changes which offend people, changes which require them to think are most disliked. The high bra.s.s on the Power Board considered that everything was moving smoothly. There was no need to consider new devices.

Hoddan's drawings and plans had simply never been bothered with, because there was no recognized need for them. And when he forced acknowledgment that his receptor worked, the unwelcome demonstration was highly offensive in itself. It was natural, it was inevitable, it should have been infallibly certain that any possible excuse for not thinking about the receptor would be seized upon. And a single dead man found near the operating demonstrator . . . Now, if one a.s.sumed that the demonstrator had killed him, why one could react emotionally, feel vast indignation, frantically command that the device and its inventor be suppressed together-and then go on living happily without doing any thinking or making any other change in anything at all.

Hoddan was appalled. Now that it had happened, he could see that it had to. The world of Walden was at the very peak of human culture. It had arrived at so splendid a plane of civilization that n.o.body could imagine any improvement; unless a better tranquilizer could be designed to make the boredom more endurable. n.o.body can want anything he doesn't know exists, or that he can't imagine to exist. On Walden n.o.body wanted anything, unless it was relief from the tedium of ultra-civilized life. Hoddan's electronic device did not fill a human need, only a technical one. It had, therefore, no value that would make anybody hospitable to it.

And Hoddan would spend his life in jail for failing to recognize this fact soon enough.

He revolted immediately.Hewanted something! He wanted out. He set about designing his escape. He put his mind to work on the problem, simply and directly. And this time he would not make the mistake of furnis.h.i.+ng other people with what they did not want. He took the view that he mustseem,at least, to give his captors and jailers and-as he saw it-his persecutors, what they wanted.

They would be pleased to have him dead, provided their consciences were clear. He built on that as a foundation.

Very shortly before nightfall he performed certain cryptic actions. He unraveled threads from his s.h.i.+rt and put them aside. There would be a vision-lens in the ceiling of his cell, and somebody would certainly notice what he did. He turned on a light. He put the threads in his mouth, set fire to his mattress, and lay down calmly upon it. The mattress was of excellent quality. It would smell very badly as it smoldered.

It did. Lying flat, he kicked convulsively for a few seconds. He looked like somebody who had taken poison. Then he waited.

It was a long time before his jailer came down the corridor, dragging a fire hose. Hoddan had been correct in a.s.suming that he was watched. His actions had been those of a man who'd antic.i.p.ated a possible need to commit suicide, and who'd had poison in a part of his s.h.i.+rt for convenience. The jailer did not hurry, because if the inventor of a death ray committed suicide, everybody would feel better.

Hoddan had been allowed a reasonable time in which to die.

He seemed impressively dead when the jailer opened his cell door, dragged him out, removed the so-far-unscorched other furniture, and set up the fire hose to make an aerosol fog which would put out the fire. He went back to the corridor to wait for the fire to be extinguished.

Hoddan crowned him with a stool, feeling an unexpected satisfaction in the act. The jailer collapsed.

He did not carry keys. The system was for him to be let out of this corridor by a guard outside. Hoddan took the fire hose. He turned its nozzle back to make a stream instead of a mist. Water came out at four hundred pounds pressure. He smashed open the corridor door with it. He strolled through and bowled over a startled guard with the same stream. He took the guard's stun-pistol. He washed open another door leading to the courtyard. He marched out, washed down two guards who sighted him, and took the trouble to flush them across the pavement until they wedged in a drain opening. Then he thoughtfully reset the hose to fill the courtyard with fog, climbed into the driver's seat of a parked truck, started it, and smashed through the gateway to the street outside. Behind him, the courtyard filled with dense white mist.

He was free, but only temporarily. Around him lay the capital city of Walden-the highest civilization in this part of the galaxy. Trees lined its ways. Towers rose splendidly toward the skies, with thousands of less ambitious structures in between. There were open squares and parkways and malls, and it did not smell like a city at all. But he wasn't loose three minutes before the communicator in the truck squawked the all-police alarm for him.

It was to be expected. All the city would shortly be one enormous man trap, set to catch Bron Hoddan.

There was only one place on the planet, in fact, where he could be safe. And ironically, he wouldn't have been safe there if he'd been officially charged with murder. But since the police had tactfully failed to mention murder, he could get at least breathing-time by taking refuge in the Interstellar Emba.s.sy.

He headed for it, bowling along splendidly. The police truck hummed on its way until the great open square before the emba.s.sy became visible. The emba.s.sy was not that of a single planet, of course. By pure necessity every human-inhabited world was independent of all others, but the Interstellar Diplomatic Service represented humanity at large upon each individual globe. Its amba.s.sador was the only person who Hoddan could even imagine as listening to him, and that because he came from off-planet, as Hoddan did. But he mainly counted upon a breathing-s.p.a.ce in the emba.s.sy, during which to make more plans as yet unformed and unformable. He began, though, to see some virtues in the simple, lawless, piratical world on which he had spent his childhood.

Another police truck rushed frantically toward him down a side street. Stun-pistols made little pinging noises against the body of his vehicle. He put on more speed, but the other truck overtook him. It ranged alongside, its occupants bellowing stern commands to halt. And then, just before they swerved to force him off the highway, he swung instead and they crashed thunderously. One of his own wheels collapsed.

He drove on with the crumpled wheel producing an up-and-down motion that threatened to make him seasick. Then he heard yelling behind him. The cops had piled out of the truck and were in pursuit on foot.

The tall, stone wall of the emba.s.sy was visible, now, beyond the monument to the first settlers of Walden. He leaped to the ground and ran. Stun-pistol bolts, a little beyond their effective range, stung like fire. They spurred him on.

The gate of the emba.s.sy was closed. He bolted around the corner and scrambled up the conveniently rugged stones of the wall. He was well aloft before the cops spotted him. Then they fired at him industriously and the charges crackled all around him.

But he'd reached the top and had both arms over the parapet before a charge hit his legs and paralyzed them. He hung fast, swearing at his bad luck.

Then hands grasped his wrists. A white-haired man appeared on the other side of the parapet. He took a good, solid grip, and heaved. He drew Hoddan over the top of the wall and helped him down to the walkway.

”A near thing, that!” said the white-haired man pleasantly. ”I was taking a walk in the garden when I heard the excitement. I got to the wall just in time.” He paused, and added, ”I do hope you're not just a common murderer, we can't offer asylum to such. But if you're a political offender . . .”

Hoddan began to try to rub sensation and usefulness back into his legs. Feeling came back, and was not pleasant.

”I'm the Interstellar Amba.s.sador,” said the white-haired man politely.

”My name,” said Hoddan bitterly ”is Bron Hoddan and I'm guilty of trying to save the Power Board millions of credits a year.” Then he said more bitterly, ”If you want to know, I ran away from Zan to try to be a civilized man and live a civilized life. It was a mistake. Now I'm to be permanently jailed for using my brains!”

The amba.s.sador c.o.c.ked his head thoughtfully to one side.

”Zan?” he said. ”The name Hoddan fits with that somehow . . . Oh, yes! s.p.a.ce-piracy! They say the people of Zan capture and loot a dozen or so s.h.i.+ps a year, only there's no way to prove it on them. And there's a man named Hoddan who's supposed to head a particularly ruffianly gang.”

”My grandfather,” said Hoddan defiantly. ”What are you going to do about it? I'm outlawed! I've defied the planetary government! I'm disreputable by descent, and worst of all I've tried to use my brains!”

”Deplorable!” said the amba.s.sador mildly. ”I don't mean outlawry is deplorable, you understand, or defiance of the government, or being disreputable. But trying to use one's brains is bad business! A serious offense! Are your legs all right now? Then come on down with me and I'll have you given some dinner and some fresh clothing. Offhand,” he added amiably, ”it would seem that using one's brains would be cla.s.sed as a political offense rather than a criminal one on Walden. We'll see.”

Hoddan gaped up at him.

”You mean there's a possibility that-”

”Of course!” said the amba.s.sador in surprise. ”You haven't phrased it that way, but you're actually a rebel. A revolutionist. You defy authority and tradition and governments and such things. Naturally the Interstellar Diplomatic Service is inclined to be on your side. What do you think it's for?”

Chapter 2.

In something under two hours Hoddan was ushered into the amba.s.sador's office. He'd been refreshed, his torn clothing replaced by more respectable garments, and the places where stun-pistols had stung him, soothed by ointments.

But, more important, he'd worked out and firmly adopted a new point of view.

He'd been a misfit at home on Zan. He was not contented with the humdrum and monotonous life as a member of a s.p.a.ce-pirate community. Piracy was a matter of dangerous take-offs in cranky rocket s.h.i.+ps, to be followed by weeks or months of tedious and uncomfortable boredom in highly unhealthy re-breathed air. No voyage ever contained more than ten seconds of satisfactory action. All fighting took place just out of the atmosphere of the embattled planet. Regardless of the result of the fight, the pirates had to get away fast when it was over, lest overwhelming forces swarm up from the nearby world. It was intolerably devoid of anything an ambitious young man would want.

Even when one had made a good prize-with the life-boats of the foreign s.h.i.+p darting frantically for ground-and even after one got back to Zan with the captured s.h.i.+p, even then there was little satisfaction to a pirate's career. Zan had not a large population. Piracy couldn't support a large number of people.

Zan couldn't attempt to defend itself against even single, heavily armed s.h.i.+ps that sometimes came in pa.s.sionate resolve to avenge the disappearance of a rich freighter or a fast, new liner. So the people of Zan, to avoid being hanged, had to play innocent. They had to be convincingly simple, harmless folk who cultivated their fields and lived quiet, blameless lives. They might loot, but they couldn't use their loot where investigators could find it. They had to build their own houses and make their own furniture and grow their own food. So life on Zan was dull. Piracy was not profitable in the sense that one could live well by it. It simply wasn't a trade for anybody like Hoddan.

So he'd abandoned all that. He'd studied electronics in books looted from pa.s.senger-s.h.i.+p libraries.

Within months after his arrival on a law-abiding planet, he was able to earn a living at electronics as an honest trade.

And that was unsatisfactory, too. Law-abiding communities were no more thrilling or rewarding than piratical ones. A payday now and then did not make up for the tedium of earning. Even when one had money there was not much to do with it. On Walden, to be sure, the level of civilization was so high that most people took to psychiatric treatments so they could stand it, and the neurotics vastly out-numbered the more normal folk. But on Walden, electronics was only a way to make a living, like piracy, and there was no more fun to be had out of being civilized.

What Hoddan craved, of course, was a sense of achievement. Technically, there were opportunities all about him. He'd developed one, and it would save millions of credits a year if it were adopted. But it did not happen to be anything that anybody wanted. He'd tried to force its use and he was in trouble. Now he saw clearly that a law-abiding world was no more satisfactory than a piratical one.

The amba.s.sador received him with a cordial wave of the hand.

”Things move fast,” he said cheerfully. ”You weren't here half an hour before there was a police captain at the gate. He explained that an excessively dangerous criminal had escaped jail and been seen climbing the emba.s.sy wall. He very generously offered to bring some men in and capture you and take you away-with my permission, of course. He was shocked when I declined.”

”I can understand that,” said Hoddan.

”By the way,” said the amba.s.sador. ”Young men like yourself . . . Ah . . . is there a girl involved in this?”

Hoddan considered.