The Stainless Steel Rat eBook Collection (2 page)

And where did I get the money to bribe the teacher? Not from Dad, I can tell you. Three bucks
a week was my allowance, enough to buy maybe two Gaspo-Fizzes and a small sized Get-Stuffed candy bar. Need, not greed, taught me my first economics lesson. Buy cheap and sell dear and keep the profits for yourself.

Of course there was nothing I could buy, having no capital, so I resorted to not paying at all for the basic product. All kids shoplift. They go through the phase and usually get
it beaten out of them when they are detected. I saw the unhappy and tearstained results of failure and decided to do a market survey as well as a time and motion study before I entered on a career of very petty crime.

Firstly – stay away from the small merchants. They know their stock and have a strong interest in keeping it intact. So do your shopping at the large multis. All you have to worry
about then are the store detectives and alarm systems. Then careful study of how they operate will generate techniques to circumvent them.

One of my earliest and most primitive techniques – I blush at revealing its simplicity – I called the book-trap. I constructed a box that looked exactly like a book. Only it had a spring-loaded, hinged bottom. All I needed to do was to push it down on an
unsuspecting Get-Stuffed bar to have the candy vanish from sight. This was a crude but workable device that I used for a good length of time. I was about to abandon it for a superior technique when I perceived an opportunity to finish it off in a most positive manner. I was going to take care of Smelly.

His name was Bedford Smillingham, but Smelly was the only name we ever called him. As some
are born dancers or painters, others are shaped for lesser tasks. Smelly was a born snitch. His only pleasure in life was ratting on his school-mates. He peeked and watched and snitched. No juvenile peccadillo was too minor for him to note and report to the authorities. They loved him for this – which will tell you a lot about the kind of teachers we had. Nor could he be beat up with impunity. His
word was always believed and it was the beater-uppers who suffered the punishment.

Smelly had done me some small ill, I forget exactly what, but it was enough to stir dark and brooding thoughts, to eventually produce a plan of action. Bragging is a thing all boys enjoy and I achieved great status by revealing my book-shaped candy bar collector to my peer group. There were oohs and ahhs, made
more ooh and ahhish by portioning out some of the loot free for the taking. Not only did this help my juvenile status – but I made sure that it was done where Smelly could eavesdrop. It is like yesterday, and I still glow warmly with the memory.

‘Not only does it work – but I’ll show you just how! Come with me to Ming’s Multistore!’

‘Can we, Jimmy – can we really?’

‘You can. But not in a bunch.
Drift over there a few at a time and stand where you can watch the Get-Stuffed counter. Be there at 1500 hours and you will really see something!’

Something far better than they could possibly have imagined. I dismissed them and watched the Head’s office. As soon as Smelly went through the door I nipped down and broke into his locker.

It worked like a charm. I take some pride in this since it
was the first criminal scenario that I prepared for others to take part in. All unsuspecting, of course. At the appointed time I drifted up to the candy counter at Mings, working very hard to ignore the rentaflics, who were working equally hard pretending they weren’t watching me. With relaxed motions I placed the book atop the candies and bent to fix my boot fastener.

‘Nicked!’ the burlier of
them shouted, seizing me by the coat collar. ‘Gotcha!’ the other crowed, grabbing up the book.

‘What are you doing?’ I croaked – I had to croak because my
coat was now pulled tight about my throat as I hung suspended from it. ‘Thief – give me back my seven buck history book that my Mom bought with money earned from weaving mats from porcuswine quills!’

‘Book?’ the great bully sneered. ‘We know
all about this book.’ He seized the ends and pulled. It opened and the look on his face as the pages flipped over was something sweet to behold.

‘I have been framed,’ I squeaked, opening my coat and dropping free, rubbing at my sore throat. ‘Framed by the criminal who bragged about using that same technique for his own nefarious ends. He stands there, one Smelly by name. Grab him guys before
he runs away!’

Smelly could only stand and gape while the ready hands of his peers clutched tight. His school books fell to the floor and the imitation book burst open and disgorged its contents of Get-Stuffeds upon the floor.

It was beautiful. Tears and recriminations and shouting. A perfect distraction as well. Because this was the day that I field-tested my Mark II Get-Stuffed stuffer. I
had worked hard on this device which was built around a silent vacuum pump – with a tube down my sleeve. I brought the tube end close to the candy bars and – zip! – the first of them vanished from sight. It ended up in my trousers, or rather inside the hideous plus-fours we were forced to wear as a school uniform. These bagged out and were secured above the ankle by a sturdy elastic band. The candy
bar dropped safely into it, to be followed by another and yet another.

Except I couldn’t turn the damn thing off. Thank goodness for Smelly’s screaming and struggling. All eyes were on him and not me as I struggled with the switch. Meanwhile the pump still pumped and the Get-Stuffeds shot up my sleeve and into my trousers. I turned it off eventually but if anyone had bothered to look my way,
why the empty counter and my bulging-legged form would have been a mite suspicious. But thankfully no one did. I exited with a rolling gait, as quickly as I could. As I said, a memory I will always cherish.

Which, of course, does not explain why I have now, on my birthday, made the major decision to hold up a bank. And get caught.

The police had finally broken down the door and were swarming
in. I raised my hands over my head and prepared to welcome them with warm smiles.

The birthday, that is the final reason. My seventeenth
birthday. Becoming seventeen here on Bit O’Heaven is a very important time in a young man’s life.

The judge leaned forward and looked down at me, not unkindly.

‘Now come on, Jimmy, tell me what this tomfoolery is all about?’

Judge Nixon had a summer house on the river, not too far from our farm, and I had been there often enough with his youngest son for the judge to get to know me.

‘My name is James diGriz, buster. Let us not get too familiar.’

This heightened his colour
a good deal, as you might imagine. His big nose stuck out like a red ski slope and his nostrils flared. ‘You will have more respect in this courtroom! You are faced with serious charges, my boy, and it might help your case to keep a civil tongue in your mouth. I am appointing Arnold Fortescue, the public defender, as your attorney …’

‘I don’t need an attorney – and I particularly don’t need old
Skewey who has been on the sauce so long there isn’t a man alive who has seen him sober …’

There was a ripple of laughter from the public seats, which infuriated the judge. ‘Order in the court!’ he bellowed, hammering his gavel so hard that the handle broke. He threw the stub across the room and glared angrily at me. ‘You are trying the patience of this court. Lawyer Fortescue has been appointed
…’

‘Not by me he hasn’t. Send him back to Mooney’s Bar. I plead guilty to all charges and throw myself on the mercy of this merciless court.’

He drew in his breath with a shuddering sigh and I decided to ease off a bit before he had a stroke and collapsed. Then there would be a mistrial and more time would be wasted.

‘I’m sorry, Judge.’ I hung my head to hide an unrepressed smile. ‘But I done
wrong and I will have to pay the penalty.’

‘Well that’s more like it, Jimmy. You always were a smart lad and I hate to see all that intelligence going to waste. You will go to Juvenile Correction Hall for a term of not less than …’

‘Sorry, Your Honour,’ I broke in. ‘Not possible. Oh, if only I had committed my crimes last week or last month! The law is firm on this and I have no escape. Today
is my birthday. My seventeenth birthday.’

That slowed him down all right. The guards looked on patiently while he punched for information on his computer
terminal. The reporter for the
Bit O’Heaven Bugle
was working just as hard on the keys of his own portable terminal at the same time. He was filing quite a story. It didn’t take the judge long to come up with the answers. He sighed.

‘That is
true enough. The records reveal that you are seventeen this day and have achieved your majority. You are no longer a juvenile and must be treated as an adult. This would mean a prison term for certain – if I didn’t allow for the circumstances. A first offence, the obvious youth of the defendant, his realisation that he has done wrong. It is within the power of this bench to make exceptions, to suspend
a sentence and bind a prisoner over. It is my decision …’

The last thing I wanted to do was hear his decision now. Things were not going as I had planned, not at all. Action was required. I acted. My scream drowned out the judge’s words. Still screaming I dived headlong from the prisoner’s dock, shoulder-rolled neatly on the floor and was across the room before my shocked audience could even
consider moving.

‘You will write no more scurrilous lies about me, you grubbing hack,’ I shouted. As I whipped the terminal from the reporter’s hands and crashed it to the floor. Then stamped the six-hundred buck machine into worthless junk. I dodged around him before he could grab me and pelted towards the door. The policeman there grabbed at me – then folded when I planted my foot in his stomach.

I could probably have escaped then, but escape at this point wasn’t part of my plan. I fumbled with the door handle until someone grabbed me, then struggled on until I was overwhelmed.

This time I was manacled as I stood in the dock and there was no more ‘Jimmy-my-boy’ talk from the judge. Someone had found him a new gavel and he waved it in my direction as though wishing to brain me with it.
I growled and tried to look surly.

‘James Bolivar diGriz,’ he intoned. ‘I sentence you to the maximum penalty for the crime that you have committed. Hard labour in the city jail until the arrival of the next League ship, whereupon you will be sent to the nearest place of correction for criminal therapy.’ The gavel banged. ‘Take him away.’

This was more like it. I struggled against my cuffs and
spat curses at him so he wouldn’t show any last moment weaknesses. He didn’t. Two burly policemen grabbed me and hauled me bodily out of the courtroom and jammed me, not too gently, into the back of the black Maria. Only after the door had been
slammed and sealed did I sit back and relax – and allow myself a smile of victory.

Yes, victory, I mean that. The whole point of the operation was to
get arrested and sent to prison. I needed some on the job training.

There is method in my madness. Very early in life, probably about the time of my Get-Stuffed successes, I began to consider seriously a life of crime. For a lot of reasons – not the least of which was that I
enjoyed
being a criminal. The financial awards were great; no other job paid more for less work. And, I must be truthful,
I enjoyed the feeling of superiority when I made the rest of the world look like chumps. Some may say that is a juvenile emotion. Perhaps – but it sure is a pleasurable one.

About this same time I was faced with a serious problem. How was I to prepare myself for the future? There had to be more to crime than lifting Get-Stuffed bars. Some of the answers I saw clearly. Money was what I wanted.
Other people’s money. Money is locked away so the more I knew about locks the more I would be able to get this money. For the first time in school I buckled down to work. My grades soared so high that my teachers began to feel there might be hope for me yet. I did so well that when I elected to study the trade of locksmith they were only too eager to oblige. It was supposed to be a three-year course
but I learned all there was to know in three months. I asked permission to take the final examination. And was refused.

Things were just not done that way, they told me. I would proceed at the same stately pace as the others and in two years and nine months I would get my diploma, leave the school – and enter the ranks of the wage slaves.

Not very likely. I tried to change my course of study
and was informed that this was impossible. I had
locksmith
stamped on my forehead, metaphorically speaking of course, and it would remain there for life. They thought.

I began to cut classes and avoid the school for days at a time. There was little they could do about this, other than administer stern lectures, because I showed up for all the examinations and always scored the highest grades.
I ought to, since I was making the most of my training in the field. I carefully spread my attentions around so the complacent citizens of the city had no idea they were being taken. A vending machine would yield a few bucks in silver one day, a till at the parking lot the next. Not only did this field work perfect my talents but it paid for my education. Not my school education of course – by law
I had to remain there until the age of seventeen – but in my free time.

Since I could find no guidelines to prepare myself for a life of crime I studied all of the skills that might be of service. I found the word
forgery
in the dictionary which encouraged me to learn photography and printing. Since unarmed combat had already stood me in good stead I continued my studies until I earned a Black
Belt. Nor was I ignoring the technical side of my chosen career. Before I was sixteen I knew just about all there was to know about computers – while at the same time I had become a skilled microelectronic technician.

All of these things were satisfying enough in themselves – but where did I go from there? I really didn’t know. That was when I decided to give myself a coming-of-age birthday present.
A term in jail.