The Past Through Tomorrow by Robert A. Heinlein
The clerk whispered in his ear. The judge threw MacKinnon a look of mixed annoyance and suspicion, then told the customs’ guard to come forward. Blackie told a clear, straightforward tale with the ease of a man used to giving testimony. MacKinnon’s condition was attributed to resisting an officer in the execution of his duty. He submitted the inventory his colleague had prepared, but failed to mention the large quantity of goods which had been abstracted before the inventory was made.
The judge turned to MacKinnon. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
“I certainly have, Doctor,” he began eagerly. “There isn’t a word of—”
Bang! The gavel cut him short. A court attendant hurried to MacKinnon’s side and attempted to explain to him the proper form to use in addressing the court. The explanation confused him. In his experience, “judge” naturally implied a medical man—a psychiatrist skilled in social problems. Nor had he heard of any special speech forms appropriate to a courtroom. But he amended his language as instructed, “May it please the Honorable Court, this man is lying. He and his companion assaulted and robbed me. I was simply—”
“Smugglers generally think they are being robbed when customs officials catch them,” the judge sneered. “Do you deny that you attempted to resist inspection?”
“No, Your Honor, but—”
“That will do. Penalty of fifty per cent is added to the established scale of duty. Pay the clerk.”
“But, Your Honor, I can’t—”
“Can’t you pay it?”
“I haven’t any money. I have only my possessions.”
“So?” He turned to the clerk. “Condemnation proceedings. Impound his goods. Ten days for vagrancy. The community can’t have these immigrant paupers roaming at large, and preying on law-abiding citizens. Next easel”
They hustled him away. It took the sound of a key grating in a barred door behind him to make him realize his predicament.
“Hi, pal, how’s the weather outside?” The detention cell had a prior inmate, a small, well-knit man who looked up from a game of solitaire to address MacKinnon. He sat astraddle a bench on which he had spread his cards, and studied the newcomer with unworried, bright, beady eyes.
“Clear enough outside—but stormy in the courtroom,” MacKinnon answered, trying to adopt the same bantering tone and not succeeding very well. His mouth hurt him and spoiled his grin.
The other swung a leg over the bench and approached him with a light, silent step. “Say, pal, you must ‘a’ caught that in a gear box,” he commented, inspecting MacKinnon’s mouth. “Does it hurt?”
“Like the devil,” MacKinnon admitted.
“We’ll have to do something about that.” He went to the cell door and rattled it. “Hey! Lefty! The house is on fire! Come arunnin’!”
The guard sauntered down and stood opposite their cell door. “Wha‘ d’yuh want, Fader?” he said noncommittally.
“My old school chum has been slapped in the face with a wrench, and the pain is inordinate. Here’s a chance for you to get right with Heaven by oozing down to the dispensary, snagging a dressing and about five grains of neoanodyne.”
The guard’s expression was not encouraging. The prisoner looked grieved. “Why, Lefty,” he said, “I thought you would jump at a chance to do a little pure charity like that.” He waited for a moment, then added, “Tell you what —you do it, and I’ll show you how to work that puzzle about ‘How old is Ann?’ Is it a go?”
“Show me first.”
“It would take too long. I’ll write it out and give it to you.”
When the guard returned, MacKinnon’s cellmate dressed his wounds with gentle deftness, talking the while. “They call me Fader Magee. What’s your name, pal?”
“David MacKinnon. I’m sorry, but I didn’t quite catch your first name.”
“Fader. It isn’t,” he explained with a grin, “the name my mother gave me. It’s more a professional tribute to my shy and unobtrusive nature.”
MacKinnon looked puzzled. “Professional tribute? What is your profession?”
Magee looked pained. “Why, Dave,” he said, “I didn’t ask you that. However,” he went on, “it’s probably the same as yours—self-preservation.”
Magee was a sympathetic listener, and MacKinnon welcomed the chance to tell someone about his troubles. He related the story of how he had decided to enter Coventry rather than submit to the sentence of the court, and how he had hardly arrived when he was hijacked and hauled into court. Magee nodded. “I’m not surprised,” he observed. “A man has to have larceny in his heart, or he wouldn’t be a customs guard.”
“But what happens to my belongings?”
“They auction them off to pay the duty.”
“I wonder how much there will be left for me?”
Magee stared at him. “Left over? There won’t be anything left over. You’ll probably have to pay a deficiency judgment.”
“Huh? What’s that?”
“It’s a device whereby the condemned pays for the execution,” Magee explained succinctly, if somewhat obscurely. “What it means to you is that when your ten days is up, you’ll still be in debt to the court. Then it’s the chain gang for you, my lad—you’ll work it off at a dollar a day.”
“Fader—you’re kidding me.”
“Wait and see. You’ve got a lot to learn, Dave.”
Coventry was an even more complex place than MacKinnon had gathered up to this time. Magee explained to him that there were actually three sovereign, independent jurisdictions. The jail where they were prisoners lay in the so-called New America. It had the forms of democratic government, but the treatment he had already received was a fair sample of the fashion in which it was administered.
“This place is heaven itself compared with the Free State,” Magee maintained. “I’ve been there—” The Free State was an absolute dictatorship; the head man of the ruling clique was designated the “Liberator.” Their watchwords were Duty and Obedience; an arbitrary discipline was enforced with a severity that left no room for any freedom of opinion. Governmental theory was vaguely derived from the old functionalist doctrines. The state was thought of as a single organism with a single head, a single brain, and a single purpose. Anything not compulsory was forbidden. “Honest so help me,” claimed Magee, “you can’t go to bed in that place without finding one of their damned secret police between the sheets.”
“But at that,” he continued, “it’s an easier place to live than with the Angels.”
“The Angels?”
“Sure. We still got ‘em. Must have been two or three thousand die-hards that chose to go to Coventry after the Revolution—you know that. There’s still a colony up in the hills to the north, complete with Prophet Incarnate and the works. They aren’t bad hombres, but they’ll pray you into heaven even if it kills you.”
All three states had one curious characteristic in common—each one claimed to be the only legal government of the entire United States, and each looked forward to some future day when they would reclaim the “unredeemed” portion; i.e., outside Coventry. To the Angels, this was an event which would occur when the First Prophet returned to earth to lead them again. In New America it was hardly more than a convenient campaign plank, to be forgotten after each election. But in the Free State it was a fixed policy.
Pursuant to this purpose there had been a whole series of wars between the Free State and New America. The Liberator held, quite logically, that New America was an unredeemed section, and that it was necessary to bring it under the rule of the Free State before the advantages of their culture could be extended to the outside.
Magee’s words demolished MacKinnon’s dream of finding an anarchistic Utopia within the barrier, but he could not let his fond illusion die without a protest. “But see here, Fader,” he persisted, “isn’t there some place where a man can live quietly by himself without all this insufferable interference?”
“No—” considered Fader, “no??
“No… not exactly—but I’ve read all the classics: Zane Grey, and Emerson Hough, and so forth.”
“Well… maybe you could do it. But if you really want to go off and be a hermit, you ‘ud do better to try it on the Outside, where there aren’t so many objections to it.”
“No”—MacKinnon’s backbone stiffened at once—“no, I’ll never do that. I’ll never submit to psychological reorientation just to have a chance to be let alone. If I could go back to where I was before a couple of months ago, before I was arrested, it might be all right to go off to the Rockies, or look up an abandoned farm somewhere… But with that diagnosis staring me in the face… after being told I wasn’t fit for human society until I had had my emotions re-tailored to fit a cautious little pattern, I couldn’t face it. Not if it meant going to a sanatarium—”
“I see,” agreed Fader, nodding, “you want to go to Coventry, but you don’t want the Barrier to shut you off from the rest of the world.”
“No, that’s not quite fair… Well, maybe, in a way. Say, you don’t think I’m not fit to associate with, do you?”
“You look all right to me,” Magee reassured him, with a grin, “but I’m in Coventry too, remember. Maybe I’m no judge.”
“You don’t talk as if you liked it much. Why are you here?”
Magee held up a gently admonishing finger. “Tut! Tut! That is the one question you must never ask a man here. You must assume that he came here because he knew how swell everything is here.”
“Still… you don’t seem to like it.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t like it. I do like it; it has flavor. Its little incongruities are a source of innocent merriment. And anytime they turn on the heat I can always go back through the Gate and rest up for a while in a nice quiet hospital, until things quiet down.”
MacKinnon was puzzled again. “Turn on the heat? Do they supply too hot weather here?”
“Huh? Oh, I didn’t mean weather control—there isn’t any of that here, except what leaks over from outside. I was just using an old figure of speech.”
“What does it mean?”
Magee smiled to himself. “You’ll find out.”
After supper—bread, stew in a metal dish, a small apple—Magee introduced MacKinnon to the mysteries of cribbage. Fortunately, MacKinnon had no cash to lose. Presently Magee put the cards down without shuffling them. “Dave,” he said, “are you enjoying the hospitality offered by this institution?”
“Hardly— Why?”
“I suggest that we check out.”
“A good idea, but how?”
“That’s what I’ve been thinking about. Do you suppose you could take another poke on that battered phiz of yours, in a good cause?”
MacKinnon cautiously fingered his face. “I suppose so—if necessary. It can’t do me much more harm, anyhow.”
“That’s mother’s little man! Now listen—this guard, Lefty, in addition to being kind o‘ unbright, is sensitive about his appearance. When they turn out the lights, you—”
“Let me out of here! Let me out of here!” MacKinnon beat on the bars and screamed. No answer came. He renewed the racket, his voice an hysterical falsetto. Lefty arrived to investigate, grumbling.
“What the hell’s eating on you?” he demanded, peering through the bars.
MacKinnon changed to tearful petition. “Oh, Lefty, please let me out of here. Please! I can’t stand the dark. It’s dark in here—please don’t leave me alone.” He flung himself, sobbing, on the bars.
The guard cursed to himself. “Another slugnutty. Listen, you—shut up, and go to sleep, or I’ll come in there, and give you something to yelp for!” He started to leave.
MacKinnon changed instantly to the vindictive, unpredictable anger of the irresponsible. “You big ugly baboon! You rat-faced idiot! Where’d you get that nose?”
Lefty turned back, fury in his face. He started to speak. MacKinnon cut him short. “Yah! Yah! Yah!” he gloated, like a nasty little boy, “Lefty’s mother was scared by a warthog—”
The guard swung at the spot where MacKinnon’s face was pressed between the bars of the door. MacKinnon ducked and grabbed simultaneously. Off balance at meeting no resistance, the guard rocked forward, thrusting his forearm between the bars. MacKinnon’s fingers slid along his arm, and got a firm purchase on Lefty’s wrist.
He threw himself backwards, dragging the guard with him, until Lefty was jammed up against the outside of the barred door, with one arm inside, to the wrist of which MacKinnon clung as if welded.
The yell which formed in Lefty’s throat miscarried; Magee had already acted. Out of the darkness, silent as death, his slim hands had snaked between the bars and imbedded themselves in the guard’s fleshy neck. Lefty heaved, and almost broke free, but MacKinnon threw his weight to the right and twisted the arm he gripped in an agonizing, bone-breaking leverage.
It seemed to MacKinnon that they remained thus, like some grotesque game of statues, for an endless period. His pulse pounded in his ears until he feared that it must be heard by others, and bring rescue to Lefty. Magee spoke at last:
“That’s enough,” he whispered. “Go through his pockets.”
He made an awkward job of it, for his hands were numb and trembling from the strain, and it was anything but convenient to work between the bars. But the keys were there, in the last pocket he tried. He passed them to Magee, who let the guard slip to the floor, and accepted them.
Magee made a quick job of it. The door swung open with a distressing creak. Dave stepped over Lefty’s body, but Magee kneeled down, unhooked a truncheon from the guard’s belt, and cracked him behind the ear with it. MacKinnon paused.
“Did you kill him?” he asked.
“Cripes, no,” Magee answered softly, “Lefty is a friend of mine. Let’s go.”
They hurried down the dimly lighted passageway between cells toward the door leading to the administrative offices—their only outlet. Lefty had carelessly left it ajar, and light shone through the crack, but as they silently approached it, they heard ponderous footsteps from the far side. Dave looked hurriedly for cover, but the best he could manage was to slink back into the corner formed by the cell block and the wall. He glanced around for Magee, but he had disappeared.
The door swung open; a man stepped through, paused, and looked around. MacKinnon saw that he was carrying a blacklight, and wearing its complement—rectifying spectacles. He realized then that the darkness gave him no cover. The blacklight swung his way; he tensed to spring—He heard a dull “clunk!” The guard sighed, swayed gently, then collapsed into a loose pile. Magee stood over him, poised on the balls of his feet, and surveyed his work, while caressing the business end of the truncheon with the cupped fingers of his left hand.
“That will do,” he decided. “Shall we go, Dave?”
He eased through the door without waiting for an answer; MacKinnon was close behind him. The lighted corridor led away to the right and ended in a large double door to the street. On the left wall, near the street door, a smaller office door stood open.
Magee drew MacKinnon to him. “It’s a cinch,” he whispered. “There’ll be nobody in there now but the desk sergeant. We get past him, then out that door, and into the ozone—” He motioned Dave to keep behind him, and crept silently up to the office door. After drawing a small mirror from a pocket in his belt, he lay down on the floor, placed his head near the door frame, and cautiously extended the tiny mirror an inch or two past the edge.
Apparently he was satisfied with the reconnaissance the improvised periscope afforded, for he drew himself back onto his knees and turned his head so that MacKinnon could see the words shaped by his silent lips. “It’s all right,” he breathed, “there is only—”
Two hundred pounds of uniformed nemesis landed o
MacKinnon could hear running feet somewhere, but could see nothing but the struggling figures before him. He shook his head and shoulders like a dazed animal, then kicked the larger of the two contestants in the face. The man screamed and let go his hold. MacKinnon grasped his small companion by the scruff of the neck and hauled him roughly to his feet.
Magee’s eyes were still merry. “Well played, my lad,” he commended in clipped syllables, as they burst out the street door, “—if hardly cricket! Where did you learn La Savate?”
MacKinnon had not time to answer, being fully occupied in keeping up with Magee’s weaving, deceptively rapid progress. They ducked across the street, down an alley, and between two buildings.
The succeeding minutes, or hours, were confusion to MacKinnon. He remembered afterwards crawling along a roof top and letting himself down to crouch in the blackness of an interior court, but he could not remember how they had gotten on the roof. He also recalled spending an interminable period alone, compressed inside a most unsavory refuse bin, and his terror when footsteps approached the bin and a light flashed through a crack.
A crash and the sound of footsteps in flight immediately thereafter led him to guess that Fader had drawn the pursuit away from him. But when Fader did return, and open the top of the bin, MacKinnon almost throttled him before identification was established.
When the active pursuit had been shaken off, Magee guided him across town, showing a sophisticated knowledge of back ways and shortcuts, and a genius for taking full advantage of cover. They reached the outskirts of the town in a dilapidated quarter, far from the civic center. Magee stopped. “I guess this is the end of the line, kid,” he told Dave. “If you follow this street, you’ll come to open country shortly. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”
“I suppose so,” MacKinnon replied uneasily, and peered down the street. Then he turned back to speak again to Magee.