The Pirates of Ersatz Part 2

"Don't you see?" asked Derec pleadingly. "That's why I had to tell the police it was you. We can't have deathrays! The police can't let anybody go free who knows how to make them! This is a wonderful world, but there are lots of crackpots. They'll do anything! The police daren't let it even be suspected that deathrays can be made! That's why you weren't charged with murder. People all over the planet would start doing research, hoping to satisfy all their grudges by committing suicide for all their enemies with themselves! For the sake of civilization your secret has to be suppressed--and you with it. It's terrible for you, Bron, but there's nothing else to do!"

Hoddan said dazedly:

"But I only have to put up a bond to be released!"

"The ... the justice," said Derec tearfully, "didn't name it in court, because it would have to be published. But he's set your bond at fifty million credits! n.o.body could raise that for you, Bron! And with the reason for it what it is, you'll never be able to get it reduced."

"But anybody who looks at the plans of the receptor will know it can't make deathrays!" protested Hoddan blankly.

"n.o.body will look," said Derec tearfully. "Anybody who knows how to make it will have to be locked up. They checked the patent examiners. They've forgotten. n.o.body dared examine the device you had working. They'd be jailed if they understood it! n.o.body will ever risk learning how to make deathrays--not on a world as civilized as this, with so many people anxious to kill everybody else. You have to be locked up forever, Bron.

You have to!"

Hoddan said inadequately:

"Oh."

"I beg your forgiveness for having you arrested," said Derec in abysmal sorrow, "but I couldn't do anything but tell--"

Hoddan stared at his cell wall. Derec went away weeping. He was an admirable, honorable, not-too-bright young man who had been Hoddan's only friend.

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 in 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.... 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 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 it more endurable. n.o.body ever really wants anything he didn't think of for himself. 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 the fact.

He revolted, immediately. _He_ wanted something! He wanted out. And because he was that kind of man he put his mind to work devising something he wanted, simply and directly, without trying to get it by furnis.h.i.+ng other people with what they turned out not to want. He set about designing his escape. With his enforced change in viewpoint, he took the view that he must seem, 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 made a light. He put the threads in his mouth, set fire to his mattress, and laid 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 rather long time before his jailer came down the cell 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 deathray 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 growled and 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 the truck that had brought him here--it was probably the same one--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 he wouldn't be 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 for half a mile; three-quarters. 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 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 in 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 waving stern commands to halt. And then, just before it swerved to force him off the highway, he swung instead and drove it into a tree. It 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, rough-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 swarmed 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 stunned them--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 breast-high top of the wall and let him down to the walkway inside it.

"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-top just in time." He paused, and added, "I do hope you're not just a common murderer with the police after him! We can't offer asylum to such--only a breathing-s.p.a.ce and a chance to start running again. 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 framed for trying to save the Power Board some 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! 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 to that somehow. Oh, yes!

s.p.a.ce-piracy! People 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 and so on. 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?"

II

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.