Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  “For the present,” the judge said, “your religious impiety can be waived, since it is a first offense. But non-drug addiction is a major crime against the state of Omega. The uninterrupted use of drugs is an enforced privilege of every citizen. It is well known that privileges must be exercised, otherwise they will be lost. To lose our privileges would be to lose the very cornerstone of our liberty. Therefore to reject or otherwise fail to perform a privilege is tantamount to high treason.”

  There was a pause. The guards shuffled their feet restlessly. Barrent, who considered his situation, hopeless, stood at attention and waited.

  “Drugs serve many purposes,” the hidden judge went on. “I need not enumerate their desirable qualities for the user. But speaking from the viewpoint of the state, I will tell you that an addicted populace is a loyal populace; that drugs are a major source, of tax revenue; that drugs exemplify and personify our entire way of life. Furthermore I say to you that the non-addicted minorities have invariably proven hostile to native Omegan institutions. I give you this lengthy explanation, Will Barrent, in order that you may better understand the sentence which is to be passed upon you.”’

  “Sir,” Barrent said, “I was wrong in avoiding addiction. I won’t plead ignorance, because I. know the law doesn’t recognize that excuse. But I will ask you most humbly for another chance. I ask you to remember, sir, that addiction and rehabilitation are still possible for me.”

  “The court recognizes that,” the judge said. “For that reason, the court is pleased to exercise its fullest powers of judicial mercy. Instead of summary execution you may choose between two lesser decrees. The first is punitive; that you shall suffer the loss of your right hand and left leg in atonement for your OMEGA!

  crime against the state; but that you shall not lose your life.”

  Barrent gulped and asked, “What is the other decree, sir?”

  “The other decree, which is non-punitive, is that you shall undergo a Trial by Ordeal. And that, if you survive such a trial, you shall be restored to your rightful rank and position in society.”

  “I’ll take the Trial by Ordeal,” Barrent said.

  “Very well,” said the judge. “Let the case proceed.”

  Barrent was led from the room. Behind him, he heard a quickly concealed laugh from one of the guards. Had he chosen wrong, he wondered. Could a trial by ordeal be worse than outright mutilation?

  CHAPTER 10

  ON OMEGA, so the saying went, you couldn’t fit a knifeblade between the trial and the execution of the sentence. Barrent was taken at once to a large, circular stone room in the basement of the Department of Justice. White arc-lights glared down at him from a high, arched ceiling. Below, one section of wall had been cut away to, provide a reviewing stand for spectators. The stands were almost filled when Barrent arrived, and hawkers were selling copies of the day’s legal calendar.

  For a few moments Barrent was alone on the stone floor. Then a panel slid away in one curved wall, and a small machine rolled out.

  A loudspeaker set high in the reviewing stand announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please! You are about to witness Trial 642-BG223, by Ordeal, between Citizen Will Barrent and GME 213. Take your seats, please. The contest will begin in a few minutes.”

  Barrent looked over his opponent. It was a glistening black machine shaped like a halfsphere, standing almost four feet high. It rolled restlessly back and forth on small wheels. A pattern of red, green, and amber lights from recessed glass bulbs flashed across its smooth metal hide. It stirred in Barrent a vague memory of some creature from Earth’s oceans.

  “For the benefit of those who are visiting our gallery for the first time,” the loudspeaker said, “a word of explanation is in order. The prisoner, Will Barrent, has freely chosen the Trial by Ordeal. The instrument of justice, which in this instance is GME 213, is an example of the finest creative engineering which Omega has produced. The machine, or Max, as its many friends and admirer-s call it, is a murder weapon of exemplary efficiency, able to utilize no less than twenty-three killing modes, many of them extremely painful. For trial purposes, it is set to operate upon a random principle. This means that Max has no choice over the way in which it kills. The modes are selected and abandoned by a random arrangement of twenty-three numbers, linked to an equally random time-selection of one to six seconds.”

  Max suddenly moved toward the center of the room, and Barrent backed away from it.

  “It is within the prisoner’s power,” the loudspeaker voice continued, “to disable the machine; in which case, the prisoner wins the contest and is set free with full rights and privileges of his station. The method of disabling varies from machine to machine. It is always theoretically possible for a prisoner to win. Practically speaking, this has happened on an average of 3.5 times out of a hundred.”

  Barrent looked up at the gallery of spectators. To judge by their dress, they were all of the upper classes; Privileged Citizen was the least rank among them.

  Then he saw, sitting primly in a front row seat, the girl who had loaned him her gun on his first day in Tetrahyde. She was as beautiful as he had remembered her; but no hint of emotion touched her pale, oval face.

  She stared at him with the frank and detached interest of someone watching an unusual bug under a jar.

  “Let the contest begin!” the loudspeaker announced.

  Barrent had no more time to think about the girl, for the machine was rolling quickly toward him.

  He circled warily away from it. Max extruded a single slender tentacle with a white light winking in the end of it. The machine rolled toward Barrent, backing him toward a wall.

  Abruptly it stopped. Barrent heard the clank of gears. The tentacle was withdrawn, and in its place appeared a jointed metal arm which ended in a knife-edge. Moving more quickly now, the machine cornered him against the wall. The arm flickered out, but Barrent managed to dodge it. He heard the knife-edge scrape against stone. When the arm withdrew, Barrent had a chance to move again into the center of the room.

  He knew that his only chance to disable the machine was during the pause when its selector changed it from one killing mode to another. But how do you disable a smooth-surfaced turtle-backed machine?

  Max came at him again, and now its metal hide glistened with a dull green substance which Barrent immediately recognized as Contact Poison. He broke into a spring, circling the room, trying to avoid the fatal touch.

  The machine stopped. Neutralizer washed over its surface, clearing away the poison. Then the machine was coming toward him again, this time with no weapons visible, apparently intending to ram.

  Barrent was badly winded. He dodged, and the machine dodged with him. He was standing against the wall, helpless, as the machine picked up speed.

  It stopped, inches from him. Its selector clicked. Max was extruding some kind of a club.

  This, Barrent thought, was an exercise in applied sadism. If it went on much longer, the machine would run him off his feet and kill him at its leisure. Whatever he was going to do, he had better do it at once, while he still had the strength.

  Even as he thought that, the machine swung a clubbed metal arm. Barrent couldn’t avoid the blow completely. The club struck his left shoulder, and he felt his arm go numb.

  Max was selecting again. Barrent threw himself on its smooth, rounded back. At the very top he saw two tiny holes. Praying that they were air intake openings, Barrent plugged them with his fingers.

  The machine stopped dead, and the audience roared. Barrent clung to the smooth surface with his numbed arm, trying to keep his fingers in the holes. The pattern of lights on Max’s surface changed from green through amber to red. Its deep-throated buzz became a dull hum.

  And then the machine extruded two more intake holes.

  Barrent tried to cover them with his body. But the machine, roaring into sudden life, swiveled rapidly and threw him off. Barrent rolled to his feet and moved back to the center of the arena.r />
  The contest had lasted no more than five minutes, but Barrent was exhausted. He forced himself to retreat from the machine, which was coming at him now with a broad, gleaming hatchet.

  As the hatchet-arm swung, Barrent threw himself at it instead of away. He caught the arm in both hands and bent it back. Metal creaked, and Barrent thought he could hear the joint beginning to give way. If he could break off the metal arm, he might disable the machine; at the very least, the arm would be a weapon . . .

  Max suddenly went into reverse. Barrent tried to keep his grip on the arm, but it was yanked away. He fell on his face.

  The hatchet swung, gouging his shoulder.

  Barrent rolled over and looked at the gallery. He was finished. He might as well accept the machine’s next attempt gracefully and have it over with. The spectators were cheering, watching Max begin its transformation into another killing mode.

  And the girl was motioning to him.

  Barrent stared, trying to make some sense out of it. She gestured at him to turn something over, turn it over and destroy.

  He had no more time to watch. Dizzy from lose of blood, he staggered to his feet and watched the machine charge. He didn’t bother to see what weapon it had extruded; his entire attention was concentrated on its wheels.

  As it came at him, Barrent quickly threw himself under the wheels.

  The machine tried to brake and swerve, but not in time. The wheels rolled onto Barrent’s body, tilting the machine sharply upward. Barrent grunted under the impact. With his back under the machine, he put his remaining strength in an attempt to stand up.

  For a moment the machine teetered, its wheels spinning wildly. Then it flipped over on its back. Barrent collapsed beside it.

  When he could see again, the machine was still on its back. It was extruding a set of arms to turn itself over.

  Barrent threw himself on the machine’s flat belly and hammered with his fists. Nothing happened. He tried to pull off one of the wheels, and couldn’t. Max was propping itself up, preparing to turn over and resume the gruesome, deadly contest.

  The girl’s motions caught Barrent’s eye. She was making a plucking motion, repeatedly, insistently.

  Only then, Barrent saw a small fuse box near one of the wheels. He yanked off the cover, losing most of a fingernail in the process, and removed the fuse.

  The machine expired gracefully.

  Barrent fainted.

  (To be concluded)

  OMEGA!

  This novel will be published in the fall by Signet Books under the title “The Status Civilization.”

  (Conclusion)

  SYNOPSIS

  Number 420 had no memories when he woke up in the cell of a spaceship. Then they told him his name was Will Barrent, that he was a murderer, and that his punishment was exile to Omega, the prison planet where everyone was a criminal, evil was the rule, and the average life expectancy was three years.

  Barrent could know nothing. Yet a recurrent dream convinced him he was not a killer. He determined to find out more about both Omega and himself. He found that newly-arrived men were fair game on Landing Day. But a strange girl gave him a gun, and Barrent killed the man who was ready to kill him. Under the law, Barrent inherited the man’s possessions—mainly a busy shop that sold antidotes for poisons. Poisoning was a common affair on Omega.

  Neither religion nor drug-induced dreams brought Barrent any closer to the secret of his search for his own background. He dropped both church and Dream Shop and was promptly arrested for impiety and nondrug addiction. The penalty: mutilation or Trial by Ordeal. Barrent chose the Ordeal, and the guards snickered. He was led at once to a circular stone room; one part of the wall was cut away for a spectators’ seating section: among them was the beautiful girl who had loaned him the gun on his first day in Omega.

  Barrent duels a machine—a four-foot-high half-sphere, rolling on wheels. It can kill 23 different ways; random impulses change the method of murder every one to six seconds. Barrent must find the one way to disable the machine during the split-second when it pauses to switch weapons. Barrent avoids a knife, poison, a club, a hatchet. But he is running himself into exhaustion. Desperate, Barrent Sees the girl quickly make a turning motion with her hands. As the machine charges he throws himself under its wheels and heaves upward. He turns the machine on its back, pries off the cover of a fuse box and removes a fuse. The machine dies, and Bar-rent falls to the floor, unconscious.

  CHAPTER 11

  ON Omega, the law is supreme.

  Hidden and revealed, sacred and profane, the law governs the actions of all citizens, from the lowest of the low to the highest of the high. Without the law, there could be no privileges for for those who made the law; therefore the law was absolutely necessary. Without the law and its stern enforcement, Omega would be an unthinkable chaos in which a man’s rights could extend only as far and as long as he personally could enforce them. This anarchy would mean the end of Omegan society; and particularly, it would mean the end of those senior citizens of the ruling class who had grown high in status, but whose skill with a gun had long passed its peak.

  Therefore the law was necessary.

  But Omega was also a criminal society, composed entirely of individuals who had broken the laws of Earth. It was a society which, in the final analysis, stressed individual endeavor. It was a society in which the lawbreaker was king; a society in which crimes were not only condoned but were admired, and even rewarded; a society in which deviation from the rules was judged solely on its degree of success.

  And this resulted in the paradox of a criminal society with absolute laws which were meant to be broken.

  The judge, still hidden behind his screen, explained all this to Barrent. Several hours had passed since the end of the Trial by Ordeal. Barrent had been taken to the infirmary, where his injuries were patched up. They were minor, for the most part; a broken left arm, two cracked ribs, a deep gouge in his left shoulder, and various cuts and bruises.

  “Accordingly,” the judge went on, “the law must simultaneously be broken and not broken. Those who never break a law never rise in status. They are usually killed off in one way or another, since they lack the necessary initiative to survive. For those who, like yourself, break laws, the situation is somewhat different. The law punishes them with absolute severity—unless they can get away with it.”

  The judge paused. In an almost dreamy voice he continued, “Obviously, the highest type of man bred upon Omega is the man who understands the laws, appreciates their necessity, knows the penalties if he breaks them, breaks them anyhow—and gets away with it! That, sir, is your ideal criminal and your ideal Omegan. And that is what you have succeeded in doing, Will Barrent, by winning the Trial by Ordeal.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Barrent said.

  “I wish you to understand,” the judge continued, “that success in breaking the law once does not imply that you will succeed a second time. The odds are increasingly against you each time you try—just as the rewards are increasingly greater if you succeed. Therefore I counsel you not to act rashly upon your new acquisition of knowledge.”

  “I won’t, sir,” Barrent said.

  “Very well. You are hereby elevated to the status of Privileged Citizen, with all the rights and obligations which that entails. You are allowed to keep your business, as before. Furthermore, you are granted a week’s free vacation in the Lake of Clouds region; and you may go on that vacation with any female of your choice.”

  “I beg pardon?” Barrent said. “What was that last?”

  “A week’s vacation,” the hidden judge repeated, “with any female of your choice. It is a high reward, since men outnumber women on Omega by six to one. You may pick any woman, married or single, willing or unwilling. I will grant you three days in which to make a choice.”

  “I don’t need three days,” Barrent said. “I want the girl who was sitting in the front row of the spectator’s gallery. The girl with black hair and green
eyes. Do you know which one I mean?”

  “Yes,” the judge said slowly, “I know which one you mean. Her name is Moera Ermais. I suggest that you choose someone else.”

  “Is there any reason why I can’t have her?”

  “No. But you would be much better advised if you selected someone else. My clerk will be pleased to furnish you with a list of suitable young lades. All of them have affidavits of good performance. Several are graduates of the Womens Institute, which, as you perhaps know, gives a rigorous two-year course in the geishan arts and sciences. I can personally recommend your attention to—”

  “Moera is the one I want,” Barrent said.

  “Young man, you err in your judgment.”

  “I’ll have to take that chance.”

  “Very well,” the judge said. “Your vacation starts at nine tomorrow morning. I sincerely wish you good fortune.”

  Guards escorted Barrent from the judge’s chambers, and he was taken back to his shop. His friends, who had been waiting for the death announcement, came to congratulate him. They were eager to hear the complete details of the Trial by Ordeal; but Barrent had learned now that secret knowledge was the road to power. He gave them only the sketchiest outline.

  There was another cause for celebration that night. Tom Rend’s application had finally been accepted by the Assassin’s Guild. As he had promised, he was taking Foeren on as his assistant.

  The following morning, Barrent opened his shop and saw a vehicle in front of his door. It had been provided for his vacation by the Department of Justice. Sitting in the back, looking beautiful and very annoyed, was Moera.

  She said, “Are you out of your mind, Barrent? Do you think I have time for this sort of thing? Why did you pick me?”

  “You saved my life,” Barrent said.

  “And I suppose you think that means I’m interested in you? Well, I’m not. If you have any gratitude, you’ll tell the driver that you’ve changed your mind. You can still choose another girl.”