The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (8 page)

“Aye aye. Senator. May I give him that flesh wound?”

“No, no! Not if he behaves. Bill, you’re going to behave, aren’t you?”

“Ain’t I been behaving? Senator, make her put the safety on that thing, at least!”

“Now, now! Yours didn’t even have a safety. And you are in no position to insist on terms. Bill, what did you do with the proctor you slugged?”

“Huh!”

“Oh, come now. You show up here in a proctor’s tunic that does not fit you. And your pants don’t match your coat. I ask to see your credentials and you pull a gun—a rumble gun, for the love of Pete! And you haven’t bathed in—how long? You tell me. But tell me first what you did with the owner of that tunic. Is he dead? Or just sapped and stuffed into a closet? Answer quickly or I’ll ask Mistress Hardesty to give you a memory stimulant. Where is he?”

“I don’t know! I didn’t do it.”

“Now, now, dear boy, don’t lie to me.”

“The truth! On my mother’s honor it’s the simple truth!”

I had doubts about his mother’s honor but it would have been unmannerly to express them, especially in dealing with so sorry a specimen. “Bill,” I said gently, “you are not a proctor. Must I explain why I am certain?” (Chief Proctor Franco is a System-class martinet. If one of his stooges had shown up for morning roll call looking—and stinking—the way this poor slob did, the delinquent would have been lucky merely to have been shipped dirtside.) “I will if you insist. Did you ever have a pin stuck under a fingernail, then the outer end of the pin heated? It improves one’s memory.”

Gwen said eagerly, “A bobby pin works better. Senator—more mass to hold the heat. I’ve got one right here. Can I do it to him? Can I?”

“You mean, ‘May I,’ do you not? No, dear girl, I want you to continue to keep Bill under your sights. If it becomes necessary to resort to such methods, I won’t ask a lady to do it for me.”

“Aw, Senator, you’ll get soft-hearted and let up on him just when he’s ready to spout. Not me! Let me show you—please!”

“Well…”

“Keep that bloodthirsty bitch away from me!” Bill’s voice was shrill.

“
Bill!
You will apologize to the lady at once. Otherwise I will let her do to you whatever she wishes.”

He moaned again. “Lady, I apologize. I’m sorry. But you scare it right out of me.
Please
don’t use a bobby pin on me—I seen a guy once had that done to him.”

“Oh, it could be worse,” Gwen assured him pleasantly. “Twelve-gauge copper wire conducts the heat much better and there are interesting places in the male body to use it. More efficient. Quicker results.” She added thoughtfully, “Senator, I’ve got some copper wire in my small case. If you’ll hold this pistol for a moment, I’ll get it for you.”

“Thank you, my dear, but it may not be needed; I mink Bill wants to say something.”

“It’s no trouble, sir. Don’t you want me to have it ready?”

“Perhaps. Let’s see. Bill? What did you do with that proctor?”

“I didn’t, I never saw him! Just two skins said they had a cash job for me. I don’t make ’em, never seen ’em, they ain’t with it. But there are always new ones and Fingers said they passed. He—”

“Hold it. Who is ‘Fingers’?”

“Uh, he’s mayor of our alley. Okay?”

“More details, please. Your alley?”

“Man’s got to sleep somewhere, ain’t he? VIP like you has got a compartment with his name on it. I should be so lucky! Home is where it is—right?”

“I think you’re telling me that your alley is your home. Where is it? Ring, radius, and acceleration.”

“Uh…that’s not exactly how it is.”

“Be rational. Bill. If it’s inside the main cylinder, not off in one of the appendages, its location can be described that way.”

“Maybe so but I can’t describe it that way because that’s not how you get there. And I won’t lead you the way you have to go because—” His face screwed up in utter despair and he looked about ten years old. “Don’t let her hot-wire me and don’t let her shoot me a little bit at a time. Please! Just space me and get it over with—okay?”

“Senator?”

“Yes, Mistress Hardesty?”

“Bill’s afraid that, if you hurt him enough, he will tell you where he hides to sleep. Other nightwalkers sleep there, too; that’s the point. I suspect that the Golden Rule isn’t big enough to hide him from those others. If he tells you where they sleep, they’ll kill him. Probably not quickly.”

“Bill, is that why you’re being stubborn?”

“Talked too much already. Space me.”

“Not while you’re alive. Bill; you know things I need to know and I intend to squeeze them out of you if it takes copper wire and Mistress Hardesty’s most whimsical notions. But I may not need the answer to the question I asked you. What happens to you if you tell me or show me where your alley is?”

He was slow in answering; I let him take his time. At last he said in a low voice, “Nosies caught a skin six seven months ago. Cracked him open. Not from my alley thank Jesus. His alley was a maintenance space near a hundred ten and down at full gee.

“So the nosies gassed it and a lot of skins died…but this skin they turned loose. Cold help that was to him. He hadn’t been walking twenty-four hours when he was grabbed and locked in with rats. Hungry ones.”

“I see.” I glanced at Gwen.

She gulped and whispered, “Senator, no rats. I don’t like rats. Please.”

“Bill, I withdraw the question about your alley. Your hide-out. And I won’t ask you to identify any other nightwalker. But I expect you to answer anything else fully and quickly. No more stalling. No waste of time. Agreed?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Go back. These two strangers offered you a job. Tell me about it.”

“Uh, they tell me just a few minutes of razzle-dazzle; nothing to it. They want me to wear this jacket, make like a nosie. Bong the door here, ask for you. ‘Message from the Manager,’ that’s what I have to say. Then the rest like we did—you know. When I say, ‘Hey? You ain’t the Senator! Or are you?’, they are supposed to close in and arrest you.”

Bill looked at me accusingly. “But you messed it up. You fouled it, not me. You didn’t do
anything
like you was supposed to. You clamped the door on me—and you shouldn’t uh. And you turned out to be the Senator after all…and you had
her
with you.” His voice was especially bitter when he referred to Gwen.

I could understand his resentment. How is a sincere criminal, trying hard, going to get ahead in his profession if his victim fails to cooperate? Almost all crime depends on the acquiescence of the victim. If the victim refuses his assigned role, the criminal is placed at a disadvantage, one so severe that it usually takes an understanding and compassionate judge to set things right. I had broken the rules; I had fought back.

“You’ve certainly had a run of bad luck. Bill. Let’s check this ‘Message from the Manager’ you were supposed to deliver. Keep him covered. Mistress Hardesty.”

“Can I take my hands down?”

“No.” The clipboard was still on the deck, between Gwen and Bill but a bit toward me; I could reach it without crossing her line of fire. I picked it up.

Clipped to the board was a receipt form for messages, with a place for me (or someone) to sign. Clipped beside it was the familiar blue envelope of Mackay Three Planets; I opened it.

The message was in five-letter code groups, about fifty of them. Even the address was in code. Written in longhand above the address was “Sen. Cantor, St. Oil.”

I tucked it into a pocket without comment. Gwen queried me with her eyes; I managed not to see it. “Mistress Hardesty, what shall we do with Bill?”

“Scrub him!”

“Eh? Do you mean, ‘Waste him’? Or are you volunteering to scrub his back?”

“Heavens, no! Both. Neither. I am suggesting that we shove him into the refresher and leave him there until he’s sanitary. Bathed, hot water and lots of suds. Hair shampooed. Clean fingernails and toenails. Everything. Don’t let him out until he whiffs clean.”

“You would let him use
your
’fresher?”

“Things being the way they are, I don’t expect to use it again. Senator, I’m tired of his stink.”

“Well, yes, he does put one in mind of rotten potatoes on a hot day in the Gulf Stream. Bill, take off your clothes.”

The criminal class is the most conservative group in any society; Bill was as reluctant to strip down in the presence of a lady as he had been to divulge the hideout of his fellow outcasts. He was shocked that I would suggest it, horrified that a lady would go along with this indecent proposal. On the latter point I might have agreed with him yesterday…but I had learned that Gwen was not easily daunted. In fact I think she enjoyed it.

As he peeled down. Bill gained a bit of my sympathy; he looked like a plucked chicken, with a woebegone expression to match. When he was down to undershorts (gray with dirt), he stopped and looked at me. “All the way,” I said briskly. “Then duck into the ’fresher and take the works. If you do a poor job, you’ll do it over. If you stick your nose outside in less than thirty minutes, I won’t bother to check you; I’ll simply send you back in. Now get those drawers off—fast!”

Bill turned his back to Gwen, took off his shorts, then scuttled sideways to the refresher in a futile effort to retain a fraction of his modesty. He sealed the door behind him.

Gwen put her pistol into her purse, then worked her fingers, flexing and extending them. “I was getting stiff from holding it. Beloved, may I have those cartridges?”

“Eh?”

“The ones you took from Bill. Six, wasn’t it? Five and one.”

“Certainly, if you wish.” Should I tell her that I too had use for them? No, data of that sort should be shared only on a “need to know” basis. I got them out, handed them to her.

Gwen looked them over, nodded, again took out her sweet little pistol—slid out its clip, loaded the six confiscated rounds into it, replaced the clip, jacked one into the chamber, locked the weapon and returned it to her purse.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” I said slowly. “When I first called on you to back me, you covered him with a pocket pen. Then, after you disarmed him, you held him with an empty gun. Is that correct?”

“Richard, I was taken by surprise. I did the best I could.”

“I was not criticizing. On the contrary!”

“There never seemed to be a good time to tell you.” She went on, “Dear, could you spare a pair of pants and a shirt? There are some right on top in your duffel bag.”

“I suppose so. For our problem child?”

“Yes. I want to shove his filthy clothes down the oubliette, let them be recycled. The stench won’t clear out of here until we get rid of them.”

“So let’s get rid of them.” I shoved Bill’s clothes down the chute (all but his shoes), then washed my hands at the buttery’s fountain. “Gwen, I don’t think I have anything more to learn from this lunk. We could leave him some clothes and simply leave. Or…we could leave right away and
not
leave him any clothes.”

Gwen looked startled. “But the proctors would pick him up at once.”

“Exactly. Dear girl, this lad is a born loser; the proctors will grab him before long anyhow. What do they do with nightwalkers today? Have you heard any gossip?”

“No. Nothing with the ring of truth.”

“I don’t think they ship them down to Earth. That would cost the Company too much money, thus violating the Golden Rule the way it is interpreted here. There is no jail or prison in Golden Rule; that limits the possibilities. So?”

Gwen looked troubled. “I don’t think I like what I’m hearing.”

“It gets worse. Outside that door, perhaps not in sight but somewhere near, are a couple of hoodlums who mean us no good. Or who mean me no good, at least. If Bill leaves here, having flubbed the job he was hired to do, what happens to him? Do they feed him to the rats?”

“Ugh!”

“Yes, ‘ugh.’ My uncle used to say, ‘Never pick up a stray kitten…unless you’ve already made up your mind to be owned by it.’ Well, Gwen?”

She sighed. “I think he’s a good boy. Could be, I mean, if anyone had ever bothered with him.”

I echoed her sigh. “Just one way to find out.”

“Don’t lock the barn after it is stolen.”

HARTLEY M. BALDWIN

It is difficult to punch a man in the nose through a terminal.

Even if one does not intend to use such direct persuasion, discussion via computer terminal can be less than satisfactory. With the flick of a key your opponent can shut you off or turn you over to a subordinate. But if you are physically present in his office, you can counter his most reasonable arguments simply by being more stupidly stubborn than he is. Just sit tight and say no. Or say nothing. You can face him with the necessity of either assenting to your (oh so reasonable) demands or having you thrown out bodily.

The latter probably will not fit his public
persona
.

For these reasons I decided to skip calling Mr. Middlegaff, or anyone at the housing office, and went directly to the Manager’s office, in person. I had no hope of influencing Mr. Middlegaff, who clearly had had a policy handed to him, which he was now carrying out with bureaucratic indifference (“Have A Nice Day” indeed!). I had little hope of getting satisfaction from the Manager—but, at least, if the Manager turned me down, I would not have to waste time going higher. The Golden Rule, being a privately-owned company not chartered by any sovereign state (i.e., being itself sovereign) had no authority higher than the Manager—God Almighty Himself was not even a minority partner.

Decisions by the Managing Partner might be utterly arbitrary…but they were utterly final. There was no possibility of years of litigation, no way a higher court could reverse his decision. The “Law’s Delays” that so blemished the workings of “justice” in democratic states down dirtside could not exist here. I recalled only a few capital cases in the five years I had lived here…but in each case the Manager had sat as magistrate, then the condemned had been spaced that same day.

In such a system the question of miscarriage of justice becomes moot.

Add to that the fact that the profession of law, like the profession of prostitution, is neither licensed nor forbidden and the result is a judicial system having little resemblance to the crazy ziggurat of precedent and tradition that passes for “justice” dirtside. Justice in the Golden Rule might be astigmatic if not totally blind; it could not be slow.