The Robert Sheckley Megapack

by Robert Sheckley

  “What for?” Barrent asked.

  “Non-drug addiction,” one of the men told him. “You have three minutes to dress.”

  “What’s the penalty?”

  “You’ll find out in court,” the man said. He winked at the other guards and added, “But the only way to cure a nonaddict is to kill him. Eh?”

  Barrent dressed.

  * * * *

  He was taken to a room in the sprawling Department of Justice. The room was called the Kangaroo Court, in honor of ancient Anglo-Saxon judicial proceeding. Across the hall from it, also of antique derivation, was the Star Chamber. Just past that was the Court of Last Appeal.

  The Kangaroo Court was divided in half by a high wooden screen, for it was fundamental to Omegan justice that the accused should not see his judge nor any of the witnesses against him.

  “Let the prisoner rise,” a voice said from behind the screen. The voice, thin, flat and emotionless, came through a small amplifier. Barrent could barely understand the words; tone and inflection were lost, as had been planned for. Even in speaking, the judge remained anonymous.

  “Will Barrent,” the judge said, “you have been brought before this court on a major charge of non-drug addiction and a minor charge of religious impiety. On the minor count we have the sworn statement of a priest. On the major count we have the testimony of the Dream Shop. Can you refute either of these charges?”

  Barrent thought for a moment, then answered, “No, sir, I can’t.”

  “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 our entire way of life. Furthermore, I say to you that the nonaddicted 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 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 nonpunitive, is that you shall undergo a Trial by Ordeal. And that, if you survive such a trial, you shall be returned to appropriate 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 TEN

  On Omega, so the saying went, you couldn’t fit a knife blade 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 half-sphere, 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 admirers 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 men and women of status; high in the ranks of the Privileged Classes.

  Then he saw, sitting in a front row seat, the girl who had lent 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 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 sort 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 tubes as alternative 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.

  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 loss 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 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 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.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  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 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; 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 a thoughtful voice he continued, “The highest type of man on Omega is the individual who understands the laws, appreciates their necessity, knows the penalties for infraction, then breaks them—and succeeds! 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 unmarried woman, 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 spectators’ 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?”

  “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 ladies. All of them have affidavits of good performance. Several are graduates of the Women’s 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. Tem 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.”

  Barrent shook his head. “You’re the only girl I’m interested in.”

  “Then you won’t reconsider?”

  “Not a chance.”

  Moera sighed and leaned back. “Are you really interested in me?”

  “Much more than interested,” Barrent said.

  “Well,” Moera said, “if you won’t change your mind, I suppose I’ll just have to put up with you.” She turned away; but before she did, Barrent caught the faintest suggestion of a smile.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Lake of Clouds was Omega’s finest vacation resort. Upon entering the district, all weapons had to be checked at the main gate. No duels were allowed under any circumstances. Quarrels were arbitrarily decided by the nearest barman, and murder was punished by immediate loss of all status.

  Every amusement was available at the Lake of Clouds. There were the exhibitions such as fencing bouts, bull fighting, and bear baiting. There were sports like swimming, mountain climbing, and skiing. In the evenings there was dancing in the main ballroom, behind glass walls which separated residents from citizens and citizens from the elite. There was a well-stocked drug bar containing anything the fashionable addict could desire, as well as a few novelties he might wish to sample. For the gregarious, there was an orgy every Wednesday and Saturday night in the Satyr’s Grotto. For the shy, the management arranged masked trysts in the dim passageways beneath the hotel. But most important of all, there were gently rolling hills and shadowy woods to walk in, free from the tensions of the daily struggle for existence in Tetrahyde.