A Stainless Steel Rat Is Born

Chapter 10

Well, that was that. There is nothing like an overwhelming depression to bring one down from the heights of elation. I had done exactly what I had set out to do. My complex plan had worked perfectly. I had unearthed The Bishop from his secret lair and had made him an offer he couldn't refuse.

Except he had. Even the pleasure of having pulled off the successful robbery now meant nothing. The bucks were like ashes in my hand. I sat in my room at the hotel and looked into the future and could see only a vast vacuity. I counted the money over and over until the sums were meaningless. In making my plans I had considered all of the possibilities but one - that The Bishop would turn me down. It was kind of hard to take.

By the time I got back to Biliville the next day I was wallowing in a dark depression and thoroughly enjoying the bath of self-pity. Which I normally cannot stand. Nor could I this time. I looked in the mirror at the holloweyed and woebegone face and stuck my tongue out at it.

"Sissy!" I said. "Momma's boy, whiner, self-indulgent wimp," and added whatever other insults I could think of. Having cleansed the air a bit, I made a sandwich and a pot of coffee - no alcohol to clog the synapses! - and sat down to munch and guzzle and think about the ftiture. What next?

Nothing. At least nothing constructive that I could think of at this moment. All of my plans had ended at a blank wall and I could see no way around or over it. I slumped back and snapped my fingers at the 3V. A commercial channel came on and before I could change channels the announcer appeared in glorious three dimension and color. I didn't switch because the announcer was a she and wearing only the flimsiest of swim suits.

"Come where the balmy breezes blow," she cajoled. "Come join me on the silver sands of beautiful Vaticano Beach, where the sun and waves will refresh your soul..." I turned the thing off. My soul was in fine shape and the fine shape of the announcer only gave me more problems to think about. Future first, heterosexual love later. But the commercial had at least given me the beginning of an idea.

A holiday? Take a break? Why not - lately I had been working harder than any of the businessmen I so badly did not want to become. Crime had paid, and paid nicely, so why didn't I spend some of the hard-earned loot? I probably wouldn't be able to escape firom my problems. I had learned by experience that physical displacement was never a solution. My troubles always went with me, as everpresent and nagging as a toothache. But I could take them with me to someplace where I might find the leisure and opportunity to sort them out.

Where? I punched up a holiday guide from the database and flipped through it. Nothing seemed to appeal. The beach? Only if I could meet the girl from the commercial, which seemed far from likely. Posh hotels, expensive cruises, museum tours, all of them seemed about as exciting as a weekend on a porcuswine ranch. Maybe that was it - I needed a breath of fresh air. As a farm boy I had seen enough of the great outdoors, usually over the top of a pile of porcuswine you-know-what. With that sort of background I had welcomed my move to the city with open arms - and hadn't ventured out since.

That might be the very answer. Not back to the farm but into the wilderness. To get away from people and things, to do a little chatting with mother nature. The more I thought of it the better it sounded. And I knew just where I wanted to go, an ambition I had had since I was knee-high to a porcuswinelet. The Cathedral Mountains. Those snow-covered peaks, pointing towards the sky like giant church towers, how they used to fill my childish dreams. Well, why not? About time to make a few dreams come true.

Shopping for backpack, sleeping bag, thermal tent, cooking pots, lights - all the gear needed - was half the fan. Once outfitted, I couldn't waste time on the linear but took the plane to Rafael instead. I bulged my eyes at the mountains as we came in to land and snapped my fingers and fidgeted while I waited for the luggage. I had studied the maps and knew that the Cathedral Trail crossed the road in the foothills north of the airport. I should have taken the connecting bus like the others instead of being conspicuous in a taxi, but I was in too much of a rush.

"Pretty dangerous, kid, I mean walking the trail alone." The elderly driver smacked his lips as he launched into a litany of doom. "Get lost easily enough. Get eaten by direwolves. Landslides and avalanches. And..." "And I'm meeting friends. Twenty of them. The Boy Sprouts Hiking Team of Lower Armmpitt, We're gonna have fun," I invented rapidly.

"Didn't see no Boy Sprouts out here lately," he muttered with senile suspicion.

"Nor would you," I extemporized, bent over in the back seat and flipping through the maps quickly, "Because they took the train to Boskone, got off there, right at the station close to where the trail crosses the tracks. They'll be waiting for me, troop leader and all. I would be afraid to be alone in the mountains, sir." He muttered some more, muttered even louder when I forgot to tip him, then chuckled in his gray whiskers as he drove away because, childishly, I had then overtipped him. While resisting strongly the impulse to slip him a phoney five buck coin. The sound of tne motor died away and I looked at the well-marked trail as it wound up the valley - and realized that this had been a very good idea indeed.

There is no point in waxing enthusiastic about the joys of the Great Outdoors. Like skiing, you do it and enjoy it, but don't talk about it. All the usual things happened. My nose got sunbumed, ants got into my Bacon. The stars were incredibly clear and close at night, while the clean air did good things to my lungs. I walked and climbed, froze myself in mountain streams - and managed to forget my troubles completely. They seemed very out of place in this outdoor world. Refreshed, cleansed, tired but happy, and a good deal thinner, I emerged from the mountains ten days later and stumbled through the door of the lodge where I had made reservations. The hot bath was a blessing, and the cold beer no less. I turned on the 3V and got the tailend of the news, slumped down and listened with half an ear, too lazy to change channels.

"...reports a rise in ham exports exceeding the four percent growth predicted at the first of the year. The market for porcuswine quills is slipping however, and the government is faced with a quill mountain that is already drawing criticism.

"Closer to home, the computer criminal who broke into Federal Files goes on trial tomorrow. Federal prosecutors treat this as a most serious crime and want the death penalty reestablished. However..." His voice faded from my attention as his smarmy face vanished from the screen to be replaced by the computer criminal himself being led away by a squad of police. He was a big man, and very fat, with a mane of white hair. I felt a clutch in my chest just near the place I imagined my heart to be. Wrong color hair-but wigs would take care of that. There was no mistaking him. It was The Bishop!

I was out of the tub and across the room and hitting the frame freeze controls. It is a wonder I did not electrocute myself. Shivering with cold, and scarcely aware of it, I flipped back, then zoomed for detail, Enlarged the frame when he looked back over his shoulder for an instant. It was he - without a doubt.

By the time I had wiped off the suds and dressed, the general shape of my plans was clear. I had to get back to the city, to find out what had happened to him, to see what I could do to help. I punched up flight information; there was a mail flight just after midnight. I booked a seat, had a meal and a rest, paid my bill, and was the first passenger aboard.

It was just dawn when I entered my office in Biliville. While the computer was printing out all the news items on the arrest, I made a pot of coffee. Sipping and reading, my spirits sank like a rock in a pond. It was indeed the man I knew as The Bishop, although he went under the name of Bill Vathis. And he had been apprehended leaving the Federal Building, where he had installed a computer tap which he had been using to access Top Secret files. All of this had happened the day after I left on my escapist holiday.

I had the sudden realization of what this meant. Guilt assailed me because I was the one who had put him into jail. If I had not started my mad plan, he would never have bothered with the Federal files. He had only done that to see if the robberies had been part of a police operation.

"I put him in jail - so I will get him out!" I shouted, leaping to my feet and spilling coffee across the floor. As I mopped it up I cooled down a bit. Yes, I would like to get him out of jail. But could I do it? Why not? I had some experience now in jail-breaking. It should be easier to get from the outside in than it had been doing it the other way. And, after flirther thought, I realized that perhaps I would not have to go near the jail. Let the police get him out for me. He would have to be taken to court, so would be in transit in various vehicles.

I soon discovered that it was not going to be that easy. This was the first major criminal that had been caught in years and everyone was making a big fuss over it. Instead of being taken to the city or state jail. The Bishop was being held in a cell inside the Federal Building itself. I could get nowhere near it. And the security measures when he was taken to the courthouse were unbelievable. Armed vans, guards, monocycles, police hovercraft and copters. I was not going to get to him that way either. Which meant I was baffled for the moment. Interestingly enough, so were the police-but for very different reasons.

They had discovered, after endless search, that the real Bill Vathis had left the planet twenty years before. All of the records of this fact had vanished from the computer files - and it was only a note written by the real Vathis to a relative that had established the disappearance of the original. Well - if their prisoner wasn't Vathis. Who was he?

When their captive was questioned, according to the report released to the press, "He answered the question only with silence and a distant smile." The prisoner was now referred to as Mr. X. No one knew who he was - and he chose not to speak on the matter. A date was fixed for the trial, not eight days away. This was made possible by the fact that Mr. X refused to plead neither innocent nor guilty, would not defend himself - and had refused the services of a state-appointed attorney. The prosecution, greedy for a conviction, stated that their case was complete and asked for an early trial. The judge, eager as well to be in the limelight, agreed to their request and the date was set for the following week.

I could do nothing! Back to the wall, I admitted defeat for the moment. I would wait until after the trial. Then The Bishop would simply be one more prisoner and would have to be taken from the Federal Building at last. When he was safely in jail I would arrange his escape. Well before the arrival of the next spacer that would take him away for brain-cleansing and purifying. They would use all of the miracles of modern science to turn him into an honest citizen and, knowing him, I was sure that he would rather die than have that happen. I must intervene.

But they were not making it easy for me. I could not find a way to be in the courtroom when the trial began. So I, along with every other inhabitant of the planet as far as could be determined, watched the trial on TV when it began.

And ended with suspicious speed. All of the first morning was taken with recitals of the well-documented account of what the defendant had done. It was pretty damning. Computer malfeasance, memory bank barratry, CPU violation, terminal treachery, dropping solder on classified documents - it was terrible. Witness after witness read out their statements, all of which were instantly accepted and entered into the evidence. Through all this The Bishop neither watched nor listened. His stare was into the distance, as though he were looking at much more interesting things than the simple operation of the court. When the evidence had been given, the judge banged his gavel and ordered a break for lunch.

When the court reconvened - after a break long enough for a seventeen-course banquet with dancing girls for afters - the judge was in a jovial mood. Particularly after the prosecution had done a damning summoning up. He nodded agreement most of the time and thanked all the smarmy ambulance chasers for the excellent job that they had done. Then he looked his most pontifical and spoke in pregnant periods for the records.

"This case is so clear that it is transparent. The state has brought charges so damning that no defense could possibly stand before them. That no defense was offered is even greater evidence of the truth. The truth is that the defendant did wilfully, with malice and forethought commit all of the crimes for which he stands accused. There can be no doubt about that. The case is an open and shut one. Nevertheless I shall deliberate the rest of this day and far into the night. He will have his chance of justice that he rejected. I will not find him guilty until tomorrow morning when this court resumes. At that time I will pass sentence. Justice will be done and will be seen to be done." Some justice, I muttered through my teeth and started to switch off the set. But the judge wasn't through.

"I have been informed that the Galactic League is very interested in this case. A spacer has been dispatched and will be here within two days. The prisoner will then be taken from our custody and we will, if you will excuse and understand my emotions, be well rid of him." My jaw dropped and I stared moronically at the screen. It was over. Just two days. What could I do in two days? Was this to be the end of The Bishop - and the end of my scarcely launched career in crime?