The Stainless Steel Rat eBook Collection (116 page)

What was I to do with my companion here, happily shoveling food into
his gaping gob? His existence was a constant threat to my existence; there was room enough for only one Vaska Hulja in the scheme of things. Kill him? That would be easy enough. Dismember
him in the bathtub and feed the parts and gallons of blood into an easily constructed arc furnace until I was left with a handful of dust. It was tempting, he had certainly killed enough people in his short and vicious lifetime to call this justice. But not tempting enough. Cold-blooded killing is just not my thing. I’ve killed in self-defense, I’ll not deny that, but I still maintain an exaggerated
respect for life in all forms. Now that we know that the only thing on the other side of the sky is more sky, the idea of an afterlife has finally been slid into the history books alongside the rest of the quaint and forgotten religions. With heaven and hell gone we are faced with the necessity of making a heaven or hell right here. What with societies and metatechnology and allied disciplines
we have come a long way, and life on the civilized worlds is better than it ever was during the black days of superstition. But with the improving of here and now comes the stark realization that here and now is all we have. Each of us has only this one brief experience with the bright light of consciousness in that endless dark night of eternity and must make the most of it. Doing this means we
must respect the existence of everyone else and the most criminal act imaginable is the terminating of one of these conscious existences. The Cliaandians did not think this way, which was why I intensely enjoyed dropping gravel in their gearboxes, but I still did. Which meant that I couldn’t take the easy way out of reducing gravy-stained Vaska to his component molecules. If I did this I would be
no better than they and I would be getting into the old game of the ends justifying the means and starting on that downward track. I sighed, sipped, and the
diagrams I had been visualizing for an arc furnace faded and vanished.

Well what then? I could chain him in a cave with an automatic food dispenser if I had a cave and so forth. Out. Given time and hard work I could alter his appearance and
plant false memories that would last at least six months and get him into a prison or a work gang or a mental home or such. Except I did not have the time for anything this complex. I had until morning – or less – unless I wanted to abandon all the work I had already done in creating the false Vaska and having him accepted. They were probably getting involved in roll calls right now so I really
should be thinking about ways of getting back into Glupost rather than worrying about my swinish companion. I noticed his stomach beginning to bulge so I turned off his appetite. He sat back and sighed and belched, with good reason. There was a rustling on the far wall as a panel slid back and the robot cleaner trundled in.

‘May I give you a good cleaning?’ it whispered in a sexy contralto voice.
I told it what it could do, but it wasn’t equipped to take this kind of instruction and only clicked and whirred until I ordered it to go to work. I watched it gloomily as it bustled about and made the bed—and the first spark of an idea began to glimmer in the darkness.

Vaska had stayed in the Robotnik for an entire day without any trouble. How long would it be possible to hold him here? Theoretically
forever if enough money were deposited to the room’s account. But he could not be kept subjugated by hypnosis for more than a day or two if I were not there to reinforce the suggestion. Or could he…? I would have to find the control center of the hotel before I could make any final decisions. But this could be the right idea.

I left Vaska watching an historic space opera on TV, with the suggestion
that this was the finest entertainment he had ever witnessed, which might possibly be the truth. Loaded with instruments and tools I went on the prowl. There would be a serviceway for the robots behind the rooms, but it was undoubtedly small, dark and dusty. That was a last resort. As mechanized as this hotel was, human beings had built it and could repair it if they had to. A quick prowl of the
lower hallways near the entrance uncovered a concealed door with a disguised keyhole. It was flush with the wall and outlined with paneling, designed to be unobtrusive to maintain the fiction that the Robotnik was a hundred percent robot run. I spent more time with my instrumentation, making sure there were no bugs on the door, than I did opening it. The lock was a joke. There was no one in sight
when I slipped through the door and closed it behind me.

I felt like a roach inside a radio. Electronic components hung, projected and bulged out on all sides; cables and wires looped and sagged in a profusion of electric spaghetti. Rolls of tape clicked and whirred on the computers, relays opened and closed, and gear trains chattered. It was a very busy place. I worked my way through it examining
the labels and stepping over the little hutches where off duty robots rested, until I found what might be called a control center. There was even a chair here before a console that was designed for the human form, and I dropped into it. And set to work. I had been mulling my new plan over while tripping through this mechanical jungle and now knew what had to be done.

First, the electronic bugs
in Vaska’s room. I did not want him observed or listened to. The bugging circuits were easy enough to find and there was even a monitor screen that could be connected to any of them. I tested this out and apparently there was a bug in every room in the hotel and some interesting things were going on, but I have never been much
of a voyeur, preferring participation to observation, and a married
man now as well. And time was passing quickly. All of the bugging circuits came together into a cable that vanished through the wall, to the local police station or other government bureau. Which gave me the idea. I had no time to fix a tape and soundtrack that would pump phoney information into the bugging circuit, I had to improvise. This was done easily enough by feeding the signal from the bugging
circuit of another room into the wire from the room Vaska was occupying. From the way this setup was arranged it was obvious that the bugs were used to watch only one room at a time, for reasons best known to the people who built it. There was about one chance in ten thousand that it would ever be noticed that the same signal was coming from two rooms. And these odds were good enough for me.
Over half of the rooms were empty in any case, which improved the odds even more.

Vaska could neither be seen nor heard now. The room and associated pleasures had to be paid for, but before I left I would deposit enough money (all stolen) to last a year if needs be.

A way to keep him in the room for that length of time was now needed and I – with my usual fertile imagination and basically nasty
nature – had already devised that scheme. A small tape recorder was wired into the speaker circuit for the room, a timer attached, and the whole device concealed in the maze of other circuits and components. I programmed the tape, set the timer and started it up. Then rushed back to the room to watch my creation begin its job.

Vaska still had his eyes glued to the TV screen, panting with passion
as mighty spaceships locked in frenzied destruction. Blasted cannon sizzled and ravening energies raved, and through this cut my recorded voice.

‘Now hear this, Vaska, now
hear this. You have had a long day and you are sleepy. You are yawning. You are going to turn off the lights and retire now, to sleep the sound sleep of the blessed for tomorrow is another day.’

And that was the big lie. For
tomorrow would not be another day, not for dear Vaska. It was going to be the same one all over again. He would be lulled into a deep sleep and an even deeper trance by my soothing voice. And while there it would be explained to him that he would forget this day so he could wake up on the morning of his last day of leave before reporting for active duty. He would wake up with a slight hangover
from the celebrations of the night before and would make an easy day of it. Just lie around the hotel room, read a bit, eat some food, watch TV, and retire early. He would enjoy himself. He would enjoy himself the same way every day until the programme was broken.

It was a wonderful plan and as foolproof as possible. I fed over half of my liquid funds into the paying hopper and the balance of
the wall indicator shot up to an enormous number.

Slowly and happily, I reached out and hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the outside of the door.

And then I got depressed and turned the lights back on and looked around for the bottle that had provided me with so much inspiration so far. Vaska was well taken care of.

But how did I get back into the thrice-guarded and now doubly wakeful military
base?

That high stone wall loomed as large in my brain as it did in reality. I had made a fuss going over it and alerted everyone. It would be nice if I could return without anyone knowing, sneaking under it perhaps. Out of the question, digging and earth moving and things like that could not be accomplished in a few hours. Steal a plane, fly over, parachute in? And be shot down
before I hit
the ground. There could be no worse time than the present to try to enter or leave the base. The guards would be suspicious and reinforced and the place crawling with troops. Which of course gave me the clue as to what I had to do. Turn their strength against them, use their own number to defeat them, judo on a giant basis. But how?

The answer came quickly enough once the problem had been correctly
stated. I put together the equipment I would need, it was quite bulky, then stowed it all into a large suitcase and fitted the suitcase with a destruct apparatus. A disguise would be needed, nothing complex, just something to hide my real-assumed identity. Ahh, the levels of deception we must enter into. A long coat buttoned high concealed my uniform, my cap went into my pocket to be replaced
by a floppy black hat, and my old faithful gray beard muzzled my face in anonymity. I was ready. I took a deep breath and a small drink and slipped out, locking the door behind me and pocketing the key. As I went out I slipped this into a waste chute and the flare of instant destruction brightened my way. Going a good distance from the hotel I signaled and a robocab stopped and I heaved in my suitcase.

‘Main entrance, Glupost base,’ I ordered and away we went.

Madness? Perhaps. But it was the only way.

Not that I didn’t have a trapped butterfly or two beating for release from my stomach. This was only to be expected as we rolled up the approach street under the high lights, towards the suspicious and heavily armed guards who stood about fondling their weapons. Dawn was already lightening the
sky.

‘The base is closed!’ a lieutenant shouted, pulling open the door of the cab. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Base,’ I quavered in a very bad imitation of an old man’s falsetto. ‘Isn’t this the Carrot
Juice Center for Natural Health? This cab has done me wrong …’

The officious lieutenant snorted through his nostrils and turned away – and I rolled a pair of gas grenades out through his bowed
legs. And heaved five more after them. As the first ones went off I pulled the gas mask down out of my hat and slapped it over my face, beard and all.

My, but things got busy. The grenades were a fine mixture of blackout gas, smoke and happy gas. Blind, laughing, cursing, coughing men stumbled about on all sides and a few guns went off. I worked my way through their confused ranks, sowing more
confusion as I went, and up to the main gates and put down my suitcase and opened it. The shaped charges had adhesive bases and stuck to the steel of the gate when I slapped them into place.

A rocket slug burst against the gate and pieces of shrapnel tore at my flapping coat. I hit the ground. Tearing out two smoke grenades and dropping them behind me. Just as the smoke roiled up I had a quick
glimpse of a squad coming up on the double, still outside the gassed area, firing as they came. Two more blackout gas bombs in that direction helped a lot. Now, as much in the dark as everyone else, I pushed in the caps by touch and linked them with fuse wire to the radio igniter.

Time was passing too quickly. They were alert inside the gate now and would be waiting for me. But I had come too
far to back out. I closed the suitcase, again by touch, grabbed it up and inched my way along the wall and pressed the transmitter switch in my pocket.

Explosions banged out in the darkness and were followed by the clang of steel.

Hopefully an opening had been blasted in the gate.

I stumbled back towards it with all the sounds of bedlam in the darkness around me.

T
HE HOLE WAS THERE ALL RIGHT
, with
glimpses of lights on the other side as the smoke cloud roiled through it. There were troops there too because a hail of small arms fire clanged against the door with some chance slugs coming through the new-blasted opening. Screams sounded behind me as someone was hit. The fools were shooting each other, helping to spread the confusion I had sown.
Keeping out of the line of fire from inside the gate I hurled grenade after grenade through and, when the smoke was at its thickest there, went through myself as fast and low as I could.

It really sounded great. Sirens were moaning, men shouting, weapons barking: the voices of utter confusion. I threw more grenades in all directions, throwing them as far as I could to widen the area of cover,
until only a half dozen were left. These I saved for possible emergencies, which were sure to emerge, jamming them into my coat pockets. The self-destruct on the suitcase had a five second delay which I tripped, then hurled the suitcase away in the opposite direction. I crept along the wall, my only point of reference in the blackout, towards the guardhouse I had noticed when I had first examined
the gate. There had been a clutch of vehicles parked there – at the time – and I muttered prayers that at least one of them still remained. The cloud thinned and I hurled two more grenades ahead of me. In the darkness I heard a motor start up.

Forgetting caution, I ran. Someone slammed into me and fell heavily but I kept my feet and
stumbled on. Then I tripped over a curb and did fall, but did
a quick roll and came up running minus my hat. The engine was louder and then I saw the squarish van just beyond the edge of the smoke cloud. It was turning to start down the road and I threw two of my remaining four grenades as far ahead of it as I could. The driver hit the brakes as the mushrooming clouds sprang out, then I was at the door tearing it open. He was in cook’s white, cap and all,
and I reached out and dragged him to me, landing a swift right cross on his gaping jaw as he went by. Then I was in the driver’s seat and pushing the thing into gear and jumping the deadweight of the vehicle forward as fast as I could, letting the door swing shut with the sudden acceleration. Once out of the smoke I saw that daylight had arrived.