THE MAN WHO COULD NOT STOP

  THEY AREN'T particular about settlers in the Rim Worlds.

  They can't afford to be. The night sky, at those seasons of the year when the sun is in conjunction with the great lens of the Galaxy, is frightening, even to those who were born and reared there, on the planets of the last, the ultimate frontier. It is the emptiness of the firmament that is so shocking, the emptiness made even worse by the dim, incredibly distant nebulosities that are other galaxies, that are island universes. Many a man has come to Thule, or Faraway, or Ultimo to carve out a new career and, after a stay of only a few months, has taken ship for some planet in towards the Galactic center, for some world where at night the sky is ablaze with stars, with the beckoning, comradely lights of far-flung colonies and kingdoms.

  There is a continual drain of population from the Rim Worlds. Their imports are, literally, everything, and their exports are young men and women. Without Federation aid the colonies would have to be abandoned; but they are lookout posts on the frontier of the endless dark, and as such must be maintained.

  They are also the worlds from which a man on the run can run no further.

  Clavering was on the run, and he ran to Faraway. Clavering was wanted, originally, on Earth, but during his flight he had contrived to make himself interesting to the police forces of at least a dozen other planets. His original crime had been robbery with violence—and what made it worse, from the viewpoint of the Terran authorities, was that the victims of the crime had been non-human, and highly important non-humans at that. It was unthinkable, of course, that the Shaara Empire should go to war with the Federation over the theft of the imperial regalia; even so, the High Queen cut short her visit to Washington and her farewell to Terran dignitaries was rather less than warm.

  Clavering was on the run, and he bribed and hid and forged and stowed away, and somehow he stayed free and somehow kept moving. Plastic surgeons on four planets helped him with changes of identity. Somewhere along the line he added murder to his crimes—although it was really self defense; Clavering's spirit was restless, driving, self-torturing . . . but it was not wholly evil. There were other thefts—mainly of money. The larger items of the High Queen's regalia, even when broken up, were not easy to dispose of.

  He had known for a long time, as do all who live on the wrong side of the Law, that there is no extradition from the Rim Worlds. It was on Van Diemen's Planet that he made his decision. A friendly police officer had warned him, for a consideration, that Terran agents would be arriving on the next in-bound liner, and the tramp freighter Jolly Swagman, owned by the Faraway Line and homeward bound, was almost ready to blast off from Port Tasman. Her captain was ready and willing to supplement his salary by arranging a passage at very short notice.

  It is a long run from Van Diemen's Planet to Faraway, all of twelve weeks, subjective time, and the queer, dimension warping fields of the Drive have time to build up so that the last half of the voyage is made through an utterly unreal continuum. Through the wide viewports are seen not the usual swirls of light, but star upon star, stretching, apparently, to infinity. Some captains making the run to the Rim warn their passengers what to expect when the Inter stellar Drive is shut off. Others don't—and the Captain of Jolly Swagman was one of their number.

  It was a shock like a physical blow—that sudden emptiness where, a split second before, all the hosts of heaven had blazed. The one lonely sun, and beyond it the few dim nebulosities, made it worse than complete emptiness would have been.

  Clavering looked, and gulped, and decided that he would not like Faraway.

  He did not revise his opinion when, two days later, he faced the Immigration officials at Port Remote. He had looked at the mirror in his cabin before going down to the ship's Lounge, had decided that the very ordinary looking Mr. Jones—face-shaped face, hair-colored hair, eye-colored eyes —bore no resemblance to the rather striking James Clavering who had run from Earth. He had checked his papers. They were good papers, as they should have been. He had certainly paid enough for them.

  The senior Immigration inspector sat at one of the Lounge tables, the Purser beside him. He looked up as Clavering approached, bleak, grey eyes belying the almost infantile chubbiness of his rosy face.

  "This is Mr. Jones," said the Purser.

  The Inspector ignored him.

  "Your name," he said, "is Clavering. You are wanted for robbery with violence on Earth, murder on Carribea, forgery on Nova Caledon . . ."

  "My name," said Clavering, "is Jones. I have papers ..."

  "Of course you have. Who did you get 'em from, by the way? Lazarus on Nova Caledon, or Macdonald on Van Diemen's Planet?"

  "My name," repeated Clavering, "is Jones."

  "Mr. Jones," said the Inspector, "I'm sure you know that there's no extradition here. But—and bear this in mind—we can, in extreme cases, deport. Furthermore, we have an efficient police force and our prisons are not the luxury hotels that they are elsewhere in the Galaxy. As I suspect you will learn. I hope I'm wrong—I rarely am."

  The bleak eyes moved on.

  After his passport had been stamped Clavering said a few farewells aboard the ship, then took a taxi from the spaceport to Faraway City. The city was what he had expected it to be, a slightly overgrown town. Dwarfing it were the snow capped mountains of the Last Range—named, as Clavering knew from his reading in the ship's library, after Commodore Last who had made the initial landing on Faraway.

  He booked in at the hotel—Rimrock House—that had been recommended to him by the Purser. After his baggage had been brought up he locked the door and made sure that what remained of the Shaara jewels was safe. Then he sat on the bed to think things over.

  He had had plenty of time for reading on the voyage from Port Tasman. He had discovered that the laws of the Rim Worlds protected criminals from the consequences of crimes committed elsewhere in the Galaxy but, at the same time, were designed to rob them of the proceeds of such crimes. For example, he could take the Shaara High Queen's diamond encrusted belt to any of the city jewellers without fear of arrest. But—the jeweller could take possession of it, turn it in and share in any reward money.

  "They're a bunch of crooks," Clavering growled.

  There must, he thought, be fences on Faraway. The problem was how to find them. Another possible problem was that the news might already have spread that Clavering, the man who stole the Shaara imperial regalia, was on Faraway. In which case Clavering could expect a visit from the local underworld.

  Clavering inspected the contents of his wallet. His Federation currency was legal tender, but he had enough only for a week's board and lodging. He looked at his watch, which he had adjusted to local time and length of day. It was mid-afternoon. By evening, he hoped, he would be well on his way to finding his feet in this new world.

  The jewels he stowed in a large briefacse, which he chained and locked to his wrist. He had noticed, on the way in from the spaceport, that the building next door to the hotel was the First National Bank of Faraway, and his first move was to deposit the briefcase in the bank's strong room.

  He sauntered away from the bank, towards the center of the city. There were, he noted approvingly, plenty of policemen, very smart and efficient looking in their neat uniforms of white shirt and blue kilt. He had already decided what crime he would commit; he did not think that shop-lifting would be a sufficiently heinous offense to merit deportation rather than jail. He hoped that the jails would not be as bad as the Immigration inspector had implied.

  He walked into a large store, took the escalator to the Men's Clothing department, sauntered casually along the aisles until he saw a display—of Altairan crystal silk belts—that took his fancy. He picked up one of the belts, admired the way that it clung to his hands in an almost sentient manner. With elaborate unconcern he rolled it up, slipped it into the inside pocket of his jacket. He walked slowly towards the Down escalator.

  Five yards before he got to it, he felt a firm hand on his elbow . . .

  The Magistrate before whom Clavering appeared was suitably censorious, with reference to abuse of the open-handed hospitality of Faraway. He regretted that the penalty of deportation did not apply to the crime of which Clavering had been found guilty. He passed sentence.

  "Six months," he said happily. "Six months hard labor."

  "But, Your Worship," said Clavering. "This is my first offense."

  "On this world, perhaps," replied the Magistrate. Then, to the policemen, "Take him away."

  They took him away.

  Clavering sat on his cot in the bare cell.

  I'll have to make the best of it, he thought. Six months is longer than I need to find the name of a reliable fence—but I should be able to find out plenty more. When I leave here I'll have all my contacts lined up. I'll know just how far I can go without getting deported . . .

  He stood up as the small shutter at the top of the door slammed open, and took the tray of food that was passed in to him. He looked at the soggy bread, the beans swimming in water gravy, the jug of water. He carried the tray to the cot, sat down and began to eat.

  He passed out the tray when the shutter opened again. He lay down on the cot. He slept.

  He slept surprisingly well. He was ready for his breakfast—although it was no more palatable than his supper had been—when it was passed in to him. When the door was unlocked, he joined a procession of shaven headed figures in glaringly striped uniforms. The guards, he noted,

were well armed and looked as though they would stand no nonsense. He sighed. This was his third spell in jail, but his two previous experiences had been in establishments where the accent was on humanitarianism.

  The hard labor was something about which he had read in historical novels but which he had thought no longer existed. It was stone breaking in the prison quarry—monotonous, back-breaking toil. He had hoped to be able to engage in conversations with fellow inmates during the outdoor activity, but the noise of hammers crashing on rock and the vigilance of the guards made this almost impossible.

  The little, wizened man on his right did manage to ask, out of the corner of his mouth, "Are you a Rimmer?" and Clavering managed a hasty negative reply, and that was all.

  The midday meal was eaten in the open—bread, beans and some unidentifiable meat that was all fat and gristle—but there were no opportunities for conversation. The afternoon passed in monotonous toil. Clavering was glad when he was locked in his cell for the night. . . .

  Six months. One hundred and eighty days. Do they work a seven day week? These damned guards must be recruited from a Trappist monastery, and they expect the rest of us to be Trappists, too . . . At this rate I shall be no wiser when I come out than when I went in. Well, tomorrow I'm going to talk whether they like it or not. After all, they can't shoot me . . .

  Or can they?

  The following day his resolve was unshaken. He noticed that the little, wizened man was walking ahead of him in the procession.

  "You!" he said, in ordinary conversational tones. "You! Shorty! Are you a Rimmer?"

  The huge fist of the nearest guard drove, without warning, into his face. He staggered and fell. More intense than the pain was the feeling of consuming rage. He was on his feet again with a catlike agility, his own fists pounding into the bloated belly of the guard. Again he fell, this time under a rain of blows from behind. He was sufficiently in control of himself to roll into a ball, protecting his face with his arms from the heavy boots. It seemed far too long a time before he lost consciousness.

  Gradually he became aware of a grey ceiling. He became aware, too, of pain—a dull ache over his legs and arms and most of his body, sharper pangs in his chest as he breathed. He turned his head so that the right side of his face lay on the pillow, groaning as the muscles of his neck protested. He could not, he discovered, see too well with his left eye. He saw a grey wall and the blurry figure of a man in convict stripes.

  "Welcome back, Clavering," said the man.

  "Who're you?" Clavering grunted with an effort.

  "I'm the Doctor. Doctor and inmate both. I'm too useful to them ever to be turned loose. Besides, I know too much. . . . Here, drink this!"

  Clavering managed to struggle to a half-sitting position in the bed. He brought his good eye to bear on the doctor, saw an old man with scanty white hair, a deeply lined, grey face. With an effort he took the glass from him.

  It was good brandy, even though it did cause the lacerations inside his mouth to sting painfully. After a few seconds Clavering felt stronger. He looked down at his body, from which the sheet had fallen, saw the taped ribs, the huge, blotchy bruises.

  He said, without passion, "The bastards."

  "You asked for it," said the doctor. "You asked for it, and you got it. I'd have thought that a man with your wide experience would have had more sense than to behave the way you did. I'd have thought that a man with your experience would have had more sense than to have landed in this hell hole in the first place."

  "There were reasons," said Clavering.

  "There always are," said the old man. "But go on."

  "Can I trust you?" asked Clavering.

  "Everybody trusts me—even the guards, even the Governor. They have to."

  "Why don't they release you?"

  "There's a limit to their trust. Besides . . . Do you know, I've no desire to get out into the world again. In many ways I have more freedom here than outside. Of course, I can't dress as I please—but, in compensation, I have no tailor's bills."

  "All right," said Clavering abruptly. "I can trust you. But is this place bugged? It seems to be the one spot where a man can talk . . ."

  "This isn't what you'd call a modern jail," said the Doctor. "As you've found out for yourself. None of them would ever have the intelligence to plant microphones."

  As he spoke, he was scribbling on a pad. He held it so that Clavering could see the crabbed writing.

  Of course, it's bugged. But carry on talking. Use the pad for anything important.

  "I've a little money," said Clavering. "Or I had. It was in my wallet in my jacket pocket. I suppose it's in the Governor's safe now ..."

  He wrote: I'm a stranger here—I thought jail would be the best place to make contacts . . .

  "It may still be there, if you're very lucky," said the Doctor.

  What I want, wrote Clavering, is the name of a good fence.

  He said, "I was hoping that you might be able to get the money out for me. On other worlds prisoners can arrange to buy stuff from the outside—this jail diet needs some help."

  "On other worlds," said the Doctor, "they pamper their convicts."

  He wrote, I can hear them coming. I must flush these pages away.

  "After all," said Clavering to the retreating back, "we are human beings."

  "Are we?" asked the Doctor. There was the sound of running water. "Are we?"

  "A pig couldn't stomach the muck they feed us here," said Clavering.

  A door opened. A tall man in plain black clothing walked in, escorted by two uniformed guards. He nodded curtly to the old Doctor, who replied with a nod of equal curtness. He stood by Clavering's bed, looking coldly down on him.

  Clavering returned the stare. He wondered, as he had wondered when he had first met the Governor in his office, what an ex-spaceman was doing in such a position. In the other jails that he had known, the Governors had been either retired military men or high ranking police officers.

  "No permanent damage, I trust?" said the Governor to the Doctor.

  "No thanks to your bullies. But he'll live."

  "This," said the Governor to Clavering, "is not a Rest Home. On this world, on any of the Rim Worlds, we do not believe in pampering criminals. Criminals may come here, as you have done, to avoid the consequences of their crimes elsewhere in the Galaxy. If they make good citizens they are welcome. If they don't . . ."

  "I'm beginning to regret having come here," said Clavering through swollen lips.

  "No doubt you are. No doubt you have become used to being treated as a hospital patient rather than as a convict, as an interesting case to be studied by gentle and considerate psychiatrists. Here, on Faraway, we recognize only one school of psychology."

  "Which is?" asked Clavering, feeling that it was expected of him.

  "Pavlov's," replied the Governor.

  "It is hard," said the Doctor, "to build up a conditioned reflex against wrongdoing in an adult human being."

  "We can try," said the Governor.

  At last, with no remission for good conduct, the six months were over. Clavering had his last interview with the Governor, handed in his prison uniform and received in exchange his civilian clothing, found that his watch, his wallet and his money were missing. His protests were laughed at.

  He was met at the gate of the jail by a ground car with Prisoners' Aid Society emblazoned on its sides in huge white letters. He had no option but to accept the proferred help. He rode back to Faraway City seated beside the driver, a huge man who, to judge by his appearance, was an ex-policeman. Poverty, thought Clavering, makes strange bedfellows.

  On the outskirts of the city the truck pulled up alongside a drab, barracks-like building which obviously—its occupants being lavish in their use of neon signs—was the headquarters of the Society. The driver of the car took Clavering into the office where a repellently fat woman took down his particulars. He was then told that the Society would find him work and would house and feed him—his hoard and lodging being deducted by his employer from his weekly pay—until such time as he could fend for himself. A job, it appeared, was already waiting for him—one of the firms of importers had a vacancy for a junior clerk. He was to start the following morning.

  Clavering thanked the woman with more politeness than sincerity, was led by a skinny girl to a sparsely furnished cubicle. The girl turned to leave.

 

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