Next of Kin

SEVEN

It was a week before Leeming was fit enough to reappear in the yard. The price of confidence had proved rough, tough and heavy and his features were still an ugly sight. He strolled through the crowd, ignored as before, chose a soft spot in the sun and sat.

Soon afterward a prisoner sprawled tiredly on the ground a couple of yards away, watched distant guards and spoke in little more than a whisper.

“Where d’you come from?”

“Terra.”

“How’d you get here?”

Leeming told him briefly.

“How’s the war going?”

“We’re pushing them back slowly but surely. But it’ll take a long time to finish the job.”

“How long do you suppose?”

“I don’t know. It’s anyone’s guess.” Leeming eyed him curiously. “What brought your bunch here?”

“We’re not combatants but civilian colonists. Our government placed advance parties, all male, on four new planets that were ours by right of discovery. Twelve thousand of us altogether.” The Rigellian paused while he looked carefully around, noted the positions of various guards. “The Combine descended on us in force. That was two years ago. It was easy. We weren’t prepared for trouble, weren’t adequately armed, didn’t even know that a war was on.”

“They grabbed your four planets?”

“You bet they did. And laughed in our faces.”

Leeming nodded understanding, Cynical and ruthless claim-jumping had been the original cause of the fracas now extended across a great slice of the galaxy. On one planet a colony had put up an heroic resistance and died to the last man. The sacrifice had fired a blaze of fury, the Allies had struck back and were still striking good and hard.

“Twelve thousands, you said. Where are the others?”

“Scattered around in prisons like this one. You certainly picked a choice dump on which to sit out the war. The Combine had made this its chief penal planet. It’s far from the fighting front, unlikely ewer to be discovered. The local lifeform isn’t much good for space-battles but plenty good enough to hold what its allies have captured. They’re throwing up big jails all over the world. If the war goes on long enough this cosmic dump will become solid with prisoners.”

“So your crowd has been here about two years?”

“Sure have and it seems more like ten.”

“And done nothing about it?”

“Nothing much,” agreed the Rigellian. “Just enough to get forty of us shot for trying.”

“Sorry,” said Leeming sincerely.

“Don’t let it bother you. I know exactly how you feel. The first few weeks are the worst. The idea of being pinned down for keeps can drive you crazy unless you learn to be philosophical about it.” He mused awhile, indicated a heavily. built guard patrolling by the farther wall. “A few days ago that lying swine boasted that already there are two hundred thousand Allied prisoners on this planet and added that by this time next year there would be two millions. I hope he never lives to see it.”

“I’m getting out of here,” said Leeming.

“How?”

“I don’t know yet. But I’m getting out. I’m not going to stay here and rot.” He waited in the hope of some comment about others feeling the same way, perhaps evasive mention of a coming break, a hint that he might be invited to join in.

Standing, up, the Rigellian murmured, “Well, I wish you luck. You’ll need all you can get.”

He ambled away, having betrayed nothing. A whistle blew, the guards shouted; “Merse, faplaps! Amash!” And that was that.

Over, the next four weeks he had frequent conversations with the same Rigellian and about twenty others, picking up odd items of information but finding them peculiarly evasive whenever the subject of freedom came up. They were friendly, in fact cordial, but remained determinedly tightmouthed.

One day he was having a surreptitious chat and asked, “Why does everyone insist on talking to me secretively and in whispers? The guards don’t seem to care how much you gab to one another.”

“You haven’t yet been cross-examined. If in the mean-time they notice that we’ve had plenty to say to you they will try to force out of you everything we’ve said—with, particular reference to ideas on escape.”

Leeming immediately pounced upon the lovely word. “Ah escape, that’s all there is to live for right now. If anyone is thinking of making a bid maybe I can he1p them and they can help me. I’m a competent space-pilot and fact is worth something.”

The other cooled at once. “Nothing doing.”

“Why not?”

“We’ve been behind walls a long time and have been taught many things that you’ve yet to learn.”

“Such as?”

“We’ve discovered at bitter cost that escape attempts fail when too many know what is going on. Some planted spy betrays us. Or some selfish fool messes things up by pushing in at the wrong moment.”

“I am neither a spy nor a fool. I’m certainly not enough of an imbecile to spoil my own chance of breaking free.”

“That may be,” the Rigellian conceded. “But imprisonment creates its own special conventions. One firm rule we have established here is that an escape-plot is the exclusive property of those who concocted it and only they can make the attempt by that method. Nobody else is told about it. Nobody else knows until the resulting hullabaloo starts going. Secrecy is a protective screen that would-be escapers must maintain at all costs. They’ll give nobody a momentary peek through it, not even a Terran and not even a qualified space-pilot.”

“So I’m strictly on my own?”

“Afraid so: You’re on your own in any case. We sleep in dormitories, fifty to a room. You’re in a cell all by yourself. You’re in no position to help with anything.”

“I can damned well help myself,” Leeming retorted angrily.

And it was his turn to walk away.

He’d been in the pokey just thirteen weeks when the tutor handed him a metaphorical firecracker. Finishing a session distinguished only by Leeming’s dopiness and slowness to learn, the tutor scowled at him and gave forth to some point “You are pleased to wear the cloak of idiocy. But am I an idiot too? I do not think so! I am not deceived-you are far more fluent than you pretend. In seven days’ time I shall report to the Commandant that you are ready for examination.”

“How’s that again?” asked Leeming, putting on a baffled frown.

“You will be questioned by the Commandant seven days hence.”

“I have already been questioned by Major Klavith.”

“That was verbal, Klavith is dead and we have no record of what you told him.”

Slam went the door. Came the gruel and a jaundiced lump of something unchewable. The local catering department seemed to be obsessed by the edibility of a rat’s buttocks. Exercise-time followed.

“I’ve been told they’re going to put me through the mill a week from now.”

“Don’t let that scare you,” advised the Rigellian. “They would as soon kill you as spit in the sink. But one thing keeps them in check.”

“What’s that?”

“The Allies are holding a stack of prisoners too.”

“Yes, but what they don’t know they can’t grieve over.”

“There’ll be more grief for the entire Zangastan species if the victor finds himself expected to exchange very live prisoners for very dead corpses.”

“You’ve made a point there,” agreed Leeming. “Maybe it would help if I had nine feet of rape to dangle suggestively in front of the Commandant.”

“It would help if I had a very large bottle of vitx and a shapely female to stroke my hair,” sighed the Rigellian.

“If you can feel that way after two years of semi-starvation what are you like on a full diet?”

“It’s all in the mind,” the Rigellian said. “I like to think of what might have been.”

The whistle again. More intensive study while daylight lasted. Another bowl of ersatz porridge. Darkness and a few small stars peeping through the barred slot high up. Time seemed to be standing still, as it does with a high wall around it.

He lay on the bench and produced thoughts like bubbles from a fountain. No place, positively no place is absolutely impregnable. Given brawn and brains, time and patience, there’s always a way in or out. Escapees shot down as they bolted had chosen the wrong time and wrong place, or the right time but the wrong place, or the right place but the wrong time. Or they had neglected brawn in favour of brains, a common fault of the overcautious. Or they’d neglected brains in favour of, brawn, a fault of the reckless.

With eyes closed he carefully reviewed the situation. He was in a cell with rock walls of granite hardness at least four feet thick. The only openings were a narrow gap blocked by five massive steel bars, also an armour-plated door in constant view of patrolling guards.

On his person he had no hack-saw, no lock-pin, no implement of any sort, nothing but the bedraggled clothes in which he reposed. If he pulled the bench to pieces and somehow succeeded in doing it unheard he’d acquire several large lumps of wood, a dozen six-inch nails and a couple of steel bolts. None of that junk would serve to open the door or cut the window-bars. And there was no other material available.

Outside stretched a brilliantly illuminated gap fifty yards wide that must be crossed to gain freedom. Then a smooth stone wall forty feet high, devoid of handholds. Atop the wall an apex much too sharp to give grip to the feet while stepping over an alarm-wire that would set the sirens going if either touched or cut.

The great wall completely encircled the entire prison. It was octagonal in shape and topped at each angle by a watch-tower containing guards, floodlights and guns. To get out, the wall would have to be surmounted right under the noses of itchy-fingered watchers, in bright light, without touching the wire. That wouldn’t be the end of it either; beyond the wall was another illuminated area also to be crossed. An unlucky last-lapper could get over the wall by some kind of miracle only to be shot to bloody shreds during his subsequent dash for darkness.

Yes, the whole set-up had the professional touch of those who knew what to do to keep prisoners in prison. Escape over the wall was well nigh impossible though not completely so. If somebody got out of his cell or dormitory armed with a rope and grapnel, and if he had a daring confederate who’d break into the power-room and switch off everything at exactly the right moment, he might make it. Up the wall and over the dead, unresponsive, alarm-wire in total darkness.

In a solitary cell there is no rope, no grapnel, nothing capable of being adapted as either. There is no desperate and trustworthy confederate. Even if these things had been available he’d have considered such a project as near suicidal.

If he pondered once the most remote possibilities and took stock of the minimum resources needed, he pondered them a hundred times. By long after midnight he’d been beating his brains sufficiently hard to make them come up with anything, including ideas that were slightly mad.

For example: he could pull a plastic button from his jacket, swallow it and hope that the result would get him a transfer to hospital. True, the hospital was within the prison’s confines but it might offer better opportunity to escape. Then he thought a second time, decided that an intestinal blockage would not guarantee his removal elsewhere. They might do no more than force a powerful purgative down his neck and thus add to his present discomforts.

As dawn broke he arrived at a final conclusion. Thirty, forty or fifty Rigellians working in a patient, determined group might tunnel under the wall and both illuminated areas and get away. But he had one resource and one only. That was guile. There was nothing else he could employ. He let a loud groan and complained to himself, “So I’ll have to use both my heads!”

This inane remark percolated through the innermost recesses of his mind and began to ferment like yeast. After a while he sat up startled, gazed at what he could see of the brightening sky and said in a tone approaching a yelp, “Yes, sure, that’s it—both heads!”

Stewing the idea over and over again, Leeming decided by exercise-time that it was essential to have a gadget. A crucifix or a crystal ball provides psychological advantages too good to miss. His gadget could be of any shape, size or design, made of any material so long as it was visibly and undeniably a contraption. Moreover, its potency would be greater if not made from items obtainable within his cell such as parts of his clothing or pieces of the bench. Preferably it should be constructed of stuff from somewhere else and should convey the irresistible suggestion of a strange, unknown technology.

He doubted whether the Rigellians could help. Twelve hours per day they slaved in the prison’s workshops, a fate that he would share after he’d been questioned and his aptitudes defined. The Rigellians made military pants and jackets, harness and boots, a small range of light engineering and electrical components. They detested producing for the enemy but their choice was a simple one: work or starve.

According to what he’d been told they hadn’t the remotest chance of smuggling out of the workshops anything really useful such as a knife, chisel, hammer or hacksaw blade. At the end of, each work period the slaves were paraded and none allowed to break ranks until every machine had been checked, every loose tool accounted for and locked away.

The first fifteen minutes of the mid-day break he spent searching the yard for any loose item that might somehow be turned to advantage. He wandered around with his gaze fixed on the ground like a worried kid seeking a lost coin. The only things he found were a couple of pieces of wood four inches square by one inch thick and these he slipped into his pocket without having the vaguest nation of what he intended to do with them.

Finishing the hunt, he squatted by the wall, had a whispered chat with a couple of Rigellians. His mind wasn’t on the conversation and the pair mooched off when a curious guard came near. Later another Rigellian edged up to him.

“Earthman, are you still going to get out of here?”

“You bet I am.”

The other chuckled and scratched an ear, an action that his species used to express polite scepticism. “I think we’ve a better chance than you’re ever likely to get.”

Leeming shot him a sharp glance. “Why?”

“There are more of us and we’re together,” evaded the Rigellian as though realising that he’d been on the point of saying too much. “What can one do on one’s own?”

“Bust out and run like blazes first chance,” said Leeming. Just then he noticed the ring on the other’s ear-scratching finger and became fascinated with it. He’d seen the modest ornament before. A number of Rigellians were wearing similar objects. So were some of the guards. These rings were neat affairs consisting of four or five turns of thin wire with the ends shaped and soldered to form the owner’s initials.

“Where’d you dig up the jewellery?” he asked.

“Where did I get what?”

“The ring.”

“Oh, that.” Lowering his hand, the Rigellian studied the ring with satisfaction. “We make them ourselves in the workshops. It breaks the monotony.”

“Mean to say the guards don’t stop you?”

“They don’t interfere. There’s no harm in it. Besides, we’ve made quite a few for the guards themselves. We’ve made them some automatic lighters as well and could have turned out a lot for ourselves if we’d had any use for them.” He paused, looked thoughtful and added, “We think the guards have been selling rings and lighters outside. At least, we hope so.”

“Why?”

“Maybe they’ll build up a nice, steady trade. Then when they are comfortably settled in it we’ll cut supplies and demand a rake-off in the form of extra rations and a few unofficial privileges.”

“That’s a smart idea,” approved Leeming. “It would help all concerned to have a high-pressure salesman pushing the goods in the big towns. How about putting me down for that job?”

Giving a faint smile, the Rigellian continued, “Handmade junk doesn’t matter. But let the guards find that one small screwdriver is missing and there’s hell to pay. Everyone is stripped naked on the spot and the culprit suffers.”

“They wouldn’t care about losing a small coil of that wire, would they?”

“I doubt it. There’s plenty of it, they don’t bother to check the stock. What can anyone do with a piece of wire?”

“Heaven alone knows,” Leeming admitted: “But I want some all the same.”

“You’ll never pick a lock with it in a million moons,” warned the other. “It’s too soft and thin.”

“I want enough to make a set of Zulu bangles. I sort of fancy myself in Zulu bangles.”

“And what are those?”

“Never mind. Get me some of that wire-that’s all I ask.

“You can steal it yourself in the near future. After you’ve been questioned they’ll send you to the workshops.”

“I want it before then. I want it just as soon as I can get it. The more the better and the sooner the better.”

Going silent, the Rigellian thought it over, finally said, “If you’ve a plan in your mind keep it to yourself. Don’t let slip a hint of it to anyone. Open your mouth once too often and somebody will beat you to it.”

“Thanks for the good advice, friend,” said Leeming. “Now how about a supply of wire?”

“See you this time tomorrow.”

With that, the Rigellian left him, wandered into the crowd.

At the appointed hour the other was there, passed him the loot. “Nobody gave this to you, see? You found it lying in the yard. Or you found it hidden in your cell. Or you conjured it out of thin air. But nobody gave it to you.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t involve you in any way. And thanks a million.”

The wire was a thick, pocket-sized coil of tinned copper. When unrolled in the darkness of his cell it measured a little more than his own length, or about seven feet.

Leeming doubled it, waggled it to and fro until it broke, hid one half under the bottom of the bench. Then he spent a couple of hours worrying a nail out of the bench’s end. It was hard going and it played hob with his fingers but he persisted until the nail was free.

Finding one of the small squares of wood, he approximated its centre, stamped the nail-point into it with the heel of his boot. Footsteps sounded along the corridor, he shoved the stuff out of sight beneath the bench, lay dawn just in time before the spyhole opened. The light flashed on, a cold reptilian eye looked in, somebody grunted. The light cut off, the spyhole shut.

Resuming his task, Leeming twisted the nail one way and then the other, stamping on it with his boot from time to time. The task was tedious but at least it gave him something to do. He persevered until he had drilled a neat hole two-thirds of the way through the wood.

Next, he took his half-length of wire, broke it into two unequal parts, shaped the shorter piece to form a neat loop with two legs each three or four inches long. He tried to make the loop as near to a perfect circle as possible. The larger piece he wound tightly around the loop so that it formed a close-fitting coil with legs matching the others.

Propping his bench against the wall, he climbed it to the window and examined his handiwork in the glow from outside floodlights, made a few minor adjustments and felt satisfied. He replaced the bench and used the nail to make on its edge two small nicks representing the exact diameter of the loop. Lastly he counted the number of turns to the coil. There were twenty-seven.

It was important to remember these details because in all likelihood he would have to make a second gadget as nearly identical as possible. That very similarity would help to bother the enemy. When a plotter makes two mysterious objects to all intents and purposes the same it is hard to resist the notion that he knows what he is doing and has a sinister purpose.

To complete his preparations he coaxed the nail back into the place where it belonged. Sometime he’d need it again as a valuable tool. They’d never find it and deprive him of it because, to the searcher’s mind, anything visibly not disturbed is not suspect.

Carefully he forced the four legs of the coiled loop into the hole that he’d drilled, thus making the square of wood function as a supporting base. He now had a gadget, a thingumbob, a means to an end. He was the original inventor and sole proprietor of the Leeming-Finagle something-or-other.

Certain chemical reactions take place only in the presence of a catalyst, like marriages legalised by the presence of an official. Some equations can be solved only by the inclusion of an unknown quantity called X. If you haven’t enough to obtain a desired result you’ve got to add what’s needed. If you require outside help that doesn’t exist you must invent it.

Whenever Man had found himself unable to master his environment with his bare hands, thought Leeming, the said environment had be coerced or bullied into submission by Man plus X. That had been so since the beginning of time: Man plus a tool or a weapon.

But X did not have to be anything concrete or solid, it did not have to be lethal or even visible. It could be as intangible and unprovable as the threat of hellfire or the promise of heaven. It could be a dream, an illusion, a whacking great thundering lie-just anything.

There was only one positive test: whether it worked.

If it did, it was efficient.

Now to see.

There was no sense in using the Terran language except perhaps as an incantation when one was necessary. Nobody here understood Terran, to them it was just an alien gabble. Besides, his delaying tactic of pretending to be slow to learn the local tongue was no longer effective. They knew that he could speak it almost as well as they could themselves.

Holding the loop assembly in his left hand he went to the door, applied his ear to the closed spyhole, listened for the sound of patrolling feet. It was twenty minutes before heavy boots came clumping towards him.

“Are you there?” he called, not too loudly but enough to be heard. “Are you there?”

Backing off fast, he lay on his belly on the floor and stood the loop six inches in front of his face. “Are you there?”

The spyhole clicked open, the light came on, a sour eye looked through.

Completely ignoring the watcher and behaving with the air of one far too absorbed in his task to notice that he was being observed, Leeming spoke through the coiled loop.

“Are you there?”

“What are you doing?” demanded the guard.

Recognising the other’s voice, Leeming decided that for once luck must be turning his way. This character, a chump named Marsin, knew enough to point a gun and fire it, or, if unable to do so, yell for help. In all other matters he was not of the elite. In fact Marsin would have to think twice to pass muster as a half-wit.

“What are you doing?” insisted Marsin, raising his voice.

“Calling,” said Leeming, apparently just waking up to the other’s existence.

“Calling? Calling what or where?”

“Mind your own quilpole business,” Leeming ordered, giving a nice display of impatience. Concentrating attention upon the loop, he turned it round a couple of degrees. “Are you there?”

“It is forbidden,” insisted Marsin.

“Letting go the loud sigh of one compelled to bear fools gladly, Leeming said, “What is forbidden?”

“To call.”

“Don’t display your ignorance. My species is always allowed to call. Where would we be if we couldn’t, enk?”

That got Marsin badly tangled. He knew nothing about Earthmen or what peculiar privileges they considered essential to life, Neither could he give a guess as to where they’d be without them.

Moreover, he dared not enter the cell and put a stop to whatever was going on. An armed guard was strictly prohibited from going into a cell by himself and that rule had been rigid ever since a fed-up Rigellian had slugged one, snatched his gun and killed six people while trying to make a break.

If he wanted to interfere he’d have to go and see the sergeant of the guard and demand that something be done to stop pink-skinned aliens making noises through loops. The sergeant was an unlovely character with a tendency to shout the most intimate details of personal histories all over the landscape. It was the witching hour between midnight and dawn, a time when the sergeant’s liver malfunctioned most audibly. And lastly he, Marsin, had proved himself a misbegotten faplap far too often.

“You will cease calling and go to sleep,” ordered Marsin with a touch of desperation, “or in the morning I shall re-port your insubordination to the officer of the day.”

“Go ride a camel,” Leeming invited. He rotated the loop in manner of one making careful adjustment. “Are you there?”

“I have warned you,” Marsin persisted, his only visible eye popping at the loop.

“Fibble off!” roared Leeming. Marsin shut the spyhole and fibbled off.

As was inevitable after being up most of the night, Leeming overslept. His awakening was abrupt and rude. The door burst open with a loud crash; three guards plunged in followed by an officer.

Without ceremony the prisoner was jerked off the bench, stripped and shoved into the corridor stark naked. The guards then searched through the clothing while the officer minced around watching them. He was, decided Leeming, definitely a fairy.

Finding nothing in the clothes they started examining the cell. Right off one of them discovered the loop-assembly and gave it to the officer who held it gingerly as if it were a bouquet suspected of being a bomb.

Another guard trod on the second piece of wood, kicked it aside and ignored it. They tapped the floor and walls, seeking hollow sounds. Dragging the bench away from the wall, they looked over the other side of it but failed to turn it upside-down and see anything underneath. However, they handled the bench so much that it got an Leeming’s nerves and he decided that now was the time to take a walk. He started along the corridor, a picture of nonchalant nudity.

The officer let go a howl of outrage and pointed. The guards erupted from the cell, bawled orders to halt. A fourth guard, attracted by the noise, came sound the bend of the corridor, aimed his gun threateningly. Leeming turned around and ambled back.

He stopped as he reached the officer who was now outside the cell and fuming with temper. Striking a modest pose, he said, “Look-September Morn.”

It meant nothing to the other who flourished the loop, did a little dance of rage and yelled, “What is this thing?”

“My property,” declared Leeming with naked dignity.

“You are not entitled to possess it. As a prisoner of war you are not allowed to have anything.”

“Who says so?”

“I say so ” informed the fairy somewhat violently.

“Who’re you?” asked Leeming, showing no more than academic interest.

“By the Great Blue Sun, I’ll show you who I am! Guards, take him inside and —”

“You’re not the boss;” interrupted Leeming, impressively cocksure. “The Commandant is the boss here. I say so and he says so. If you want to dispute it, let’s go ask him.”

The guards hesitated, assumed expressions of chronic uncertainty. They were unanimous in passing the buck to the officer. That worthy was taken aback. Staring incredulously at the prisoner, he became wary.

Are you asserting that the Commandant has given permission for you to have this object?”

“I’m telling you that he hasn’t refused permission. Also that it is, not for you to give or refuse it. You roll in your own hog-pen and don’t try usurp the position of your betters.”

“Hog-pen? What is that?”

“You wouldn’t know.”

“I shall consult the Commandant about this.” Deflated and unsure of himself, the officer turned to the guards.

“Put him back in his cell and give him his breakfast as usual.

“How about returning my property, enk?” Leeming prompted.

“Not until I have seen the Commandant.”

They hustled him into the cell. He got dressed. Breakfast came, the inevitable bowl of slop. He cussed the guards for not making it bacon and eggs. That was deliberate and of malice aforethought. A display of self assurance and some aggressiveness was necessary to push the game along.

For some reason the tutor did not appear so he spent the morning furbishing his fluency with the aid of the books. At mid-day they let him into the yard and he could detect no evidence of a special watch being kept upon him while he mingled with the crowd.

The Rigellian whispered, “I got the opportunity to take another coil of wire. So I grabbed it in case you wanted more.” He slipped it across, saw it vanish into a pocket “That’s all I intend to steal. Don’t ask me again. One can’t tempt fate too often.”

“What’s the matter? Is it getting risky? Are they suspicious of you?”

“Everything is all right so far.” He glanced cautiously; around. “If some of the other prisoners learn that I’m pinching wire they’ll start taking it too. They’ll snatch it in the hope of discovering what I intend to do with it, that they can use it for the same purpose. Two years in prison is two years of education in unmitigated selfishness. Everybody is always on the watch for some advantage, real or imaginary, that he can grab off somebody else. This lousy life brings out the worst in us as well as the best.”

“A couple of small coils will never be missed,” the other went on. “But once the rush starts the stuff will evaporate in wholesale quantities. And that’s when all hell will break loose. I daren’t take the chance of creating a general ruckus.”

“Meaning you fellows can’t afford to risk a detailed search right now?” suggested Leeming pointedly.

The Rigellian shied like a frightened horse. “I didn’t say that.”

“I can put two and two together as expertly as anyone else.” Leeming favoured him with a reassuring wink. “I can also keep my mouth shut.”

He watched the other mooch away. Then he sought around the yard for more pieces of wood but failed to find any. Oh, well, no matter. At a pinch he could do without. Come to that, he’d darned well have to do without.

The afternoon was given over to linguistic studies on which he was able to concentrate without interruption. That was one advantage of being in the clink, perhaps the only one. A fellow could educate himself. When the light became too poor and the first pale stars showed through the barred opening in the wall he kicked the door until the sound of it thundered all over the block.