The Stainless Steel Rat Go's To Hell

by Harry Harrison

  "Wonderful-what will happen to the me in there if you do that?"

  "Interesting thought. A neural blast cleans everything out and sets the synapses back to neutral. But-not to worry. We'll make a recording of you in a different TF. This technique works quite well, as Jim will tell you. So whatever happens with Slakey, in the end we will get yourself back inside yourself."

  "All right." He rose to his feet slowly, his face very pale under the dark scars. "Do it quickly before I have a chance to change my mind."

  Quickly really was very quick with Coypu. He must have been holding a psycho blaster in his lap because there was a loud humming and Berkk folded. Angelina and I were there to catch him before he hit the floor.

  A padded operating table rolled out of the massed machinery and we placed him gently on it. Coypu got to work. He took an empty TF from the shelf and plugged it into the back of Berkk's head. Worked the controls and nodded happily.

  "There. This very brave young man can now go back on the shelf. If Slakey causes trouble I will then zap him Out of the neurons and get Berkk back with this. Now-to work."

  He seized up the Slakey TF and placed it onto the workbench, then slipped a multiganged plug into the TF's socket. He ran an electronic check of the contents before reeling out the contact and connecting it to Berkk's head.

  "Wait," I said. He stopped. "How about securing Berkk's body in place so he doesn't hurt himself-or us."

  "I will have him securely under electronic control-"

  "Slakey has never been under control in the past. So let us be sure and take no chances now."

  Coypu threw a few switches and padded clamps hummed out from below the table. I locked them securely into place on ankles and wrists. Found a large belt and secured that around his waist and nodded to Coypu. He put the final connection into place, then threw some more switches as he swung a microphone down in front of his mouth.

  "You are asleep. Very much asleep. But you can hear me. Hear my words. You will not wake up. But you will hear me. Can you hear me?"

  The speaker rustled a bit and there was a sound like a sigh. Then the words, almost inaudible: "I can hear you."

  "That's very good." He turned up the amplification a bit. "Now, tell me-who are you?"

  I don't know why they are called pregnant silences, perhaps because they are pregnant with possibilities. This one had all kinds of possibilities. The loudspeaker rustled again.

  "My name is... Justin Slakey..

  Who can blame us for shouting with joy. We had done it!

  Not quite. Berkk, or his body, was writhing and fighting against the bonds. He bit his lips until they bled. Then his eyes opened.

  "What are you doing to me? Are you trying to kill me? I'll kill you first..

  The writhing stopped and he dropped back heavily as Coypu let him have it with his handy psycho blaster.

  It was not going to be easy. Even with James helping, a far more skilled hypnotist than Coypu, it was impossible to exercise any control over Slakey. Just about the time they would hypnotize one Slakey another would take over. And all the subsequent thrashing about wasn't doing Berkk's body much good, what with fighting against the restraints, chewing on his lips and so forth.

  "Time for some professional help," Coypu said. "Dr. Mastigophora is on his way. He is the leading clinical psychosemanticist in the Corps."

  "Super-shrink?" I asked.

  "Absolutely."

  Dr. Mastigophora was lean to the point of emaciation, all sinew and leather, carrying an instrument case and sporting a great growth of gray hair.

  "I assume that is the patient?" he said, pointing a long and knobby finger.

  "It is," Coypu said. Mastigophora glared around at his auclience.

  "Everyone out of here," he ordered as he opened his instrument case. "With the single exception of Professor Coypu."

  "There is a physical problem with the patient," I explained. "We don't want him to hurt the body, which is only on loan."

  "Up to your mind-swapping tricks again, hey Coypu? One of these days you will go too far-" He looked at me and scowled. "I said out and I mean out. All of you."

  As he said this he sprang forward and seized my wrist and applied-a very good armlock. Of course I let him do it since I don't beat up on doctors. He was strong and good enough-I hoped-to handle Berkk's body in an emergency. I left with the others as soon as he let go.

  A number of hours passed and we were beginning to yawn and head for bed when the communicator buzzed. Angelina and I were wanted in the lab.

  Coypu and Mastigophora were slouched deep in their chairs. trying to outmatch each other in looking depressed.

  "Impossible," Mastigophora moaned. "No control, can't erect blocks, can't access, terrible. It's the multiple personality thing, you see. My colleague has explained that Professor Slakey has in some unspecified manner multiplied his body, or bodies. His brain or brains or personality is in constant communication or something like that. It sounds like absolute porcuswinewash. But I have seen it in action. I can do nothing."

  "Nothing," Coypu echoed hollowly.

  "Nothing?" I shouted. "There has to be something!"

  "Nothing.. ." they intoned together.

  "There is something," Angelina said, ever the practical one. "Forget Slakey and get back to looking into the guts of your interuniversal machine. Surely there has to be some way to get it working again."

  Coypu shook his head looking, if possible, even gloomier. "While Dr. Mastigophora was brain-draining I tackled the problem again. I even stopped all the other projects that were running in the Special Corps Prime Base Central Computer. In case you didn't know it, the SCPBCC is the largest, fastest and most powerful computer ever built in the entire history of mankind." He turned on the visiscreen and pointed. "Do you see that satellite out there? Almost a third the size of this entire station. That's not a satellite-that's the computer. I had it working flat Out on this problem and this problem alone. I used the equivalent of about one billion years of computer time."

  "And?"

  "It has tackled this question from every point of view in every way. And the conclusion was the same every time. It is impossible to alter the access frequencies in the interumversal commutator."

  "But it happened?" I said.

  "Obviously."

  "Nothing is obvious to me." I was very tired and my temper was shredding and all this gloom and doom was beginning to be very irritating. I jumped to my feet, walked over to the shiny steel control console, looked at its blinking lights and tracing graphs. And kicked it. I. hurt my toe but at least I had the pleasure of seeing one of the needles on a meter jump a bit. I started to bring my foot back for another kick. And froze.

  Stood there on one leg for long seconds while my brain raced around in circles.

  "He has just had an idea," Angelina said, her voice seemingly coming from a great distance. "Whenever he freezes up like that it means he has thought of something, had an inspiration of some kind. In a moment he will tell us-"

  "I'll tell you now!" I shouted, jumping about to face them and neatly clicking my heels in the air as I did. "Your computer is absolutely right, Professor, and you should have more respect for its conclusions. Those universes will always be in the same place. As soon as we realize that, why the answer becomes obvious. We must look for the real reason why you cannot access those universes. Do you know what that is?"

  I had them now, professorial jaws gaping, heads shaking, Angelina nodding proudly, waiting for my explanation.

  "Sabotage," I said, and pointed at the control console.

  "Someone has changed the settings on the controls."

  "But I set them myself," Coypu said. "And I have checked the original calculations and conclusions over and over again,"

  "Then they must have been changed too."

  "Impossible!"

  "That's the right word for it. When all the possibilities have been tried-then it is tune to look to the impossible."

 
; "My first notes, I think that I still have them," he said, stumbling across the room and tearing open a drawer. It fell to the floor and spilled out pens, paper clips, bits of paper, cigar butts and empty soup cans, all the things we leave in desk drawers. He scrabbled among the debris and pulled Out a crumpled piece of paper, smoothed it and held it up.

  "Here. My own writing, my first calculations, the beginnings of determining the locations and settings. This could not be changed." He stamped over to the controls, flickered his fingers across the console keys, pointed a victorious finger at the equation on the screen. "There you see-the same as this."

  He looked at the paper, then at the screen, then back to the paper until it looked like he was watching an invisible PingPong match.

  "Different..." he said hoarsely. I must admit that my smile was a bit smug and I did enjoy it when Angelina gave me a loving hug and a kiss.

  "My husband the genius," she whispered.

  While Coypu hammered away at the computer, Dr. Mastigophora went to look at his patient.

  "How is he?" I asked.

  "Unconscious. We had to use the psycho blaster on him, paralyze his entire body as well as the brain. Nothing else seems to work."

  "There it is! Hell!" Coypu shouted and we turned to look at his screen which showed a loathsome red landscape under a redder and even more loathsome sun.

  "Hell," he said. "And Heaven. They are all there still. It was the calculations, the primary equations...changed, just slightly, just enough to make the later calculations vary farther and farther from the correct figures. But-how did it happen? Who has done this?"

  "I told you-a saboteur. There is a spy in our midst." I said, very firmly.

  "Impossible! There are no spies in the Special Corps. Certainly, none here in Prime Base. Impossible."

  "Very possible. thinking about it in great detail and, unhappy as I am to say this, I can identify the spy."

  I had them now. Even Angelina was leaning forward, waiting for further revelation. I smiled serenely, buffed my fingers on my shirt, turned and pointed.

  "There's your spy."

  They all turned to look.

  "The spy is none other than my good companion from the rock mine-Berkk."

  CHAPTER 26

  "HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT, Jim!" Angelina said. "He saved your life."

  "He did-and I saved his."

  "He was a prisoner like you. He wouldn't spy for Slakey."

  "He was. And he did."

  Coypu got into the disbelieving act. "Impossible. You told me, he's a simple mechanic. It would take a mathematician of incredible skill to alter those equations so subtly that I would never notice the changes."

  I raised my hands to silence the growing protest.

  "Dear friends-why don't we put this to the empirical test. Let's ask him."

  In a matter of seconds the professor had pumped a massive electronic charge into Berkk's brain and drained it out of his heel. Leaving the brain empty of all intelligence. The captive Slakey was now just random fizzling electrons, which was fine; there were certainly enough other manifestations of him around. Then Coypu seized up the other fully charged TF that was full of Berkk and plugged it back to his body. A switch was thrown and, hopefully, Berkk was back home again. Dr. Mastigophora filled a hypodermic with psycho blaster antidote and shot it into Berkk's arm. He stirred and moaned and his eyes fluttered open.

  "Why am I strapped down?"

  I recognized his voice. Slakey was gone and Berkk was home again.

  "Free him if you please, Professor." The clamps jumped open and I went to remove the restraining belt.

  "Ouch," Berkk said, touching his bruised lips. "It was Slakey, wasn't it? He did this to me." He sat up and groaned. "Was it worth it? Did you get what you needed?"

  "Not quite," I said. "But before we go into that-I would like to ask you one simple question."

  "What's that?"

  "Why did you sabotage Professor Coypu's interuniversal transporter?"

  "Why. . . why do you think I would do a thing like that?"

  "You tell me, Berkk."

  He looked around at us, not smiling, with a very trapped animal look. This suddenly changed. He looked up blankly; and a horrified expression transformed his face. "No!" he shouted hoarsely. "Don't do that-you can't. .

  Then he dropped his face into his hands and wept unashamedly. No one spoke, not knowing what was happening. Finally he looked up, dragged his sleeve across his wet eyes.

  "Gone," he said. "Back to the rock quarrying. Back to that hell in Heaven."

  "Would you be kind enough to explain?" I asked.

  "Me, I, you know. Me twice. He, I mean me, is back in the quarry. Grabbed by that foul one-eyed robot."

  Sudden realization struck. "Did Slakey duplicate you the way he duplicates himself?"

  "Yes.

  "Then all is clear," I said smugly

  "Not to a lot of us, diGriz," Angelina said, all patience gone. "Spell it out so we peasants can understand. And quickly."

  "Sorry, my love. But the explanation is a simple one. When Slakey had me thrown into the rock works he must have been worried about my presence in Heaven, and even more concerned about what Coypu or the Special Corps would do next. So he enlisted Berkk here to watch me. Doubled him and must have done horrible things to one of him to make the other be his spy."

  "Chains," Berkk moaned. "Torture. Electric shock. I had to do what he told~ me because I felt everything that he was doing to the other me. Chained to the wall in Slakey's lab."

  'And of course because you knew everything that you and I were doing, the other you also knew everything that we were doing and reported it to Slakey?"

  "All the time. Slakey had me build those rebar cages so we could escape. He knew just what we were doing at the very moment we were doing it."

  "But escaping in those cages was very dangerous!"

  "What did he care? If we died it wouldn't have bothered him in the slightest. But once we had landed on the rock pile safely, he cleared out the cyclotron building so we could get through it. When we reached the unnildecnovum sorting tables he sent the robot after us to see what would happen, if we had any way of escaping. We did."

  "You spying rat," Angelina said, and I saw her fingers arching into claws. "A viper in our bosom. We save your life and all you can do is sabotage the professor's machine."

  "I had no choice," Ron moaned. "The me with Slakey told him everything. Slakey was ready to kill that me at any time if I didn't do what he ordered. When I woke up after the operation you had all gone away. I came here and this laboratory was empty-the professor was sleeping. That was Slakey's perfect chance to do the sabotage. I did exactly what he told me to do. Changed the equations and the settings and everything."

  "Did he also order you to volunteer to have his brain pumped into your head?"

  "That was my idea, I really meant I was volunteering-he also ordered me to do it, knowing you would get nothing out

  of it. And it would add to my credibility. I had no choice. .

  "Forget it," I said. "It's all in the past and we can get through to the other universes again since the professor has undone your damage. Your spying days for Slakey are over, so now you can spy for us. You could very well be the key to putting paid to all the Slakeys. Help us and maybe we will be able to save the other you."

  "Could you really?"

  "We can but try. Now-the first question. What is going on with all the rock mining and crushing and sorting? We still have no idea of what Slakey's operation is all about. You used the word 'unnildeenovum.' What is it?"

  "I have no idea. But since the other me was with Slakey all of the time I could see and hear everything that he did. He used the word in reference to the sorting tables, just once."

  "It must be the substance we were looking for," Angelina said. "But what is it used for?"

  "I don't know. But I do know it is the most important thing for Slakey. Nothing else really matters. And I think I know
where it goes. Slakey kept me chained to the machine, the one like the professor's there, so! could tell him everything that was happening. But I could also see everything that he was doing. There were sometimes up to three of him present at one time. They didn't talk because, after all, they were all the same person. But one time he had that robot on the screen and he said something like 'Take the unnildeenovum there.' That was all."

  "That's enough," Professor Coypu said, throwing some switches and pointing at the screen. Blue skies and floating white clouds. "Heaven. That's where it is all happening. He could have his mine on any one of a thousand planets, but what he mines ends up n Heaven for processing-"

  "Just a moment if you please, Professor," I said. "What was that remark about any one of a thousand planets?"

  "The substance he is mining. Very common."

  "You know what it is?"

  "Of course. Your clothing and Angelina's were coated with it. It is called coal. A crystalline form of carbon. It can be found on a great number of planets. He has it mined and ground to a fine powder. It is then bombarded in the cyclotron where a certain small proportion is changed to unnildecnovum, which is then sorted out by the women. Its very name reveals its identity. Unnildecnovum, one hundred and nineteen in the periodic table. A new element with unknown qualities. Entropy is involved, that is all we can be sure of. The women can detect that, so they can sort the unnildecnovum from the coal dust. This is then collected by that shoddy robot and taken-some place for some reason."

  "Find the place-and we find the reason," I said triumphantly. "It has to be in Heaven, that is one thing we can be sure of."

  "I'll take care of that," Inskipp said as he marched in. He had undoubtedly been monitoring everything that was happening in the lab and had picked the right moment to take over. "The Space Marines are on their way here. Gunships, tanks, flame throwers, field guns..

  "No way, Jose," I said with a great deal of feeling. "You can't hijack my operation at this late date. Nor do we need all the troops and armaments. We keep this small. Remember-we have only one man to fight. Even if he has a number of manifestations. Him-end his rickety robot which Angelina has promised to take care of in a suitably destructive manner. We have put together a good fighting team and we all go in together. If Professor Coypu can give us defenses against Slakey's weapons."