The Stainless Steel Rat eBook Collection (14 page)

‘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 double-cherry 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 here, instead of to the customer on the other side. Each is labelled – 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 realised, 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 the back of the armoured 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 Macswiney 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 shop’s computer keeps track of every sale so that 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 armoured 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.’

I suppose that there have been stranger places to go to school, but I can’t think of any. At certain times of day it was hard to be heard above the rattle, hiss and roar of the dispensing machinery. Lunch and dinner were the busiest times, but there was another peak when the schools got out. We would eat then as well, since it was so hard to talk, working our way through the entire
Macswiney inventory. Countless Macbunnyburgers hopped down our throats, and many a Frozen Forney followed. I liked Dobbindogs until one too many cantered past my gums, and switched to jellied porcuswinetrotters, then to feline-fritters. The Bishop was very catholic in his tastes and liked everything on the menu. Then, once the crowds had gone, after we had patted the last taste of gravy from
our lips, we would loll back at our ease and my studies would continue. When we started on computer crime I discovered what The Bishop had been up to for the past couple of decades.

‘Give me a terminal and I can rule the world,’ he said, and such was the authority of his voice that I believed he could. ‘When I was young I delighted in all manner of operations to please the citizens of this planet.
It was quite a thrill to intercept cash shipments while en route, then substitute my calling card for the bundles of bills. They never did find out how I did it …’

‘How did you?’

‘ We were talking about computers.’

‘Digress just this once, I beg of you. I promise to put the technique to good use. Perhaps, with your permission, even leave one of your cards.’

‘That sounds an excellent idea.
Baffle the current crop of coppers as thoroughly as I did their predecessors. I’ll describe what happens – and perhaps you can discover for yourself how it was done. In the Central Mint, a well guarded and ancient building with stone walls two metres thick, are located the giant safes filled with billions of bucks. When a shipment is to be made guards and officials fill a bullion box which is then
locked and sealed while all present look on. Outside the building waits a convoy of coppers all guarding a single armoured car. At a given signal the car backs up against the armour-plated delivery door. Inside the building the steel inner door is opened, the box placed
inside the armoured chamber. This door is sealed before the outer one can be opened. The box then travels in the armoured car
to the linear train where an armoured wagon receives it. This has but the single door, which is locked and sealed and wired with countless alarms. Guards ride in a special chamber of each car as it shuttles through the linear network to the city needing the bucks. Here another armoured car awaits, the box is removed – still sealed – placed in the car and taken to the bank, where it is opened – and
found to contain only my card.’

‘Marvellous!’

‘Care to explain how it was done?’

‘You were one of the guards on the train …’

‘No.’

‘Or drove the armoured car …’

‘No.’

I racked my brains this way for an hour before he relented and explained. ‘All your suggestions, have merit, but all are dangerous. You are far more physical than I ever was. In my operations I always preferred brains to brawn.
The reason that I never had to break into the box and extract the money is that the box was empty when it left the building. Or rather it was weighed with bricks as well as my card. Can you guess now how it was done?’

‘Never left the building,’ I muttered, trying to stir my brain into life. ‘But it was loaded into the box, the box put into the truck …’

‘You are forgetting something.’

I snapped
my fingers and leapt to my feet. ‘The wall, of course it had to be the wall. You gave me all the clues, I was just being dense. Old, made of stone, two metres thick!’

‘Exactly so. It took me four months to break in, I wore out three robots doing it, but I won out in the end. First I bought the building across the road from the mint and we tunnelled under it. With pick and shovel. Very slow, very
silent. Up through the foundations of the building and inside the wall. Which proved to have an outer and inner stone wall, and as is the building custom, it was filled with rubble in between. Our diamond saws were never heard when we opened the side of the armoured vault connecting the inside of the mint with the outside. The mechanism I installed could change boxes in one point oh five seconds.
When the inner door was closed, the lock had to be thrown before the outer door could be opened. That was enough time, almost three seconds, to allow for the switch.
They never did find out how I did it. The mechanism is still in place. But the operation was basically misdirection, along with a lot of digging. Computer crime is something else altogether. Basically it is an intellectual exercise.’

‘But isn’t computer theft almost impossible these days with codes and interlocks?’

‘What man can code or lock, man can decode and unlock. Without leaving any trace. I will give you some examples. Let us begin with the rounding-off caper, also called the salami. Here is how it works. Let us say that you have eight thousand bucks in the bank, in a savings account that earns eight per cent a year.
Your bank compounds your account weekly in order to get your business. Which means at the end of the first week your bank multiples your balance by .0015384 per cent and adds this sum to your balance. Your balance has increased by twelve point three zero bucks. Is that correct? Check it on your calculator.’

I punched away at the sum and came up with the same answer. ‘Exactly twelve bucks and
thirty centimes interest,’ I said proudly.

‘Wrong,’ he said deflatingly. ‘The interest was twelve point three zero seven two wasn’t it?’

‘Well, yes, but you can’t add seventy-two hundreths of a centime to someone’s account, can you?’

‘Not easily, since financial accounts are kept to two decimal places. Yet it is at this precise moment in the calculations that the bank has a choice. It can round
all decimals above point zero zero five up to the nearest centime, all those below point zero zero four nine down to zero. At the end of a day’s trading the rounding-ups and rounding-downs will average out very close to zero so the bank will not be out of pocket. Or, and this is the accepted practice, the bank can throw away all decimal places after the first two, thereby making a small but consistent
profit. Small in banking terms – but very large as far as an individual is concerned. If the bank’s computer is rigged so that all the rounding-downs are deposited to a single account, why at the end of the day the computer will show the correct balance in the bank’s account and in the clients’ accounts. Everyone will be quite pleased.’

I was punching like fury into my calculator, then chuckled
with glee at the results. ‘Exactly so. All are pleased – including the holder of that account that now holds the round-downs. For if only a half a centime is whipped from ten-thousand accounts, the profit is a round fifty bucks!’

‘Exactly. But a large bank will have a hundred times that number of accounts. Which is, as I know from happy experience, a weekly income of five thousand bucks for whoever
sets up this scam.’

‘And this, this is your smallest and simplest bit of computer tomfoolery?’I asked in a hushed voice.

‘It is. When one begins to access large corporative computers the sums become unbelievable. It is such a pleasure to operate at these levels. Because if one is careful and leaves no traces the corporations have no idea that they have even been fiddled! They don’t want to know
about it, don’t even believe it when faced with the evidence. It is very hard to get convicted of computer crime. It is a fine hobby for one of my mature years. It keeps me busily engaged and filthy rich. I have never been caught. Ahh, yes, except once …’