Tomorrow's Crimes Read online

  Laughing, Carrie said. “It’s not quite that easy.”

  “Still,” Fay said, “I don’t suppose prenatal care is exactly up to our standards.”

  “One reason we’re back,” Greg said. Chip-clock. “Also, we wanted Vickie born in the U.S.A.”

  “That’s the company lake,” Carrie said.

  The people along the shore were of no clearly defined types. “Even in bathing suits,” Fay said, “Americans look like Americans.”

  Carrie said, “Remember the summer we both took cabins on Lake Monequois? Doesn’t it look like that?”

  “Except for the volcanoes.”

  “Maybe we can do the lake again next summer,” Carrie said. “Now that we’re back.”

  “You can’t swim there anymore. They say it’s algae or something.”

  “Oh, too bad.” Bur Carrie’s smile remained sunny, and she said, “Well, there’s still the ocean.”

  Reed said, “Is that your Julio again? Are all those kids his?”

  “I told you so,” Greg said, “like rabbits. Of course, we had to let the locals use the company lake. I mean we’re democratic, for Christ’s sake.”

  A child behind Julio was crawling toward the water. Fay said, “Where’s his legs?”

  Chip-dock. “What?” Greg said.

  “Nothing. Never mind.” Fay frowned at the white wall.

  Carrie said, “That’s the end of that box, honey.”

  Greg’s watch was a masterpiece of several technologies. Consulting it, he said, “Seven fifty-three, dear. You wanted to know.”

  “Oh, my goodness.” Carrie’s long legs had been curled beneath her while they watched the slides; now she unlimbered and rose, saying, “Dinner’s in five minutes. Later on, if we feel like it, we can look at the rest.”

  Greg said, “Maybe that’s enough for tonight. One of the best things about being back, we’ve left all those hassles behind.”

  Fay said to Carrie, “Can I help?”

  “Oh, no, just relax.”

  But of course Fay didn’t. Leaving Greg and Reed to talk about government restrictions, she followed Carrie to the kitchen, where small red lights on various machines gave assurance that the meal was coming along. Carrie said, peering through the oven window, “Lord, this is one thing I’m glad to get back to. Modem appliances.”

  “Didn’t the company housing have all that?”

  “Microwave? Are you kidding?” Lifting a pot lid, releasing a pillow of vegetable-scented steam, Carrie said, “All you get there is the basics. A tiny Italian refrigerator, barely enough ice cubes for two people—Do you know, if you had friends over for dinner, they’d bring their own ice cube trays? Honestly.”

  “Other company people, you mean.”

  “Who else was there? Fay, I can’t tell you how much we missed you and Reed.”

  “We’re glad you’re back,” Fay said. And it was true. The uneasiness and discontent were all on Fay’s side, and pointless. Carrie was her best friend, since college, since they’d been dating the boys who were now their husbands. “Very happy you’re back,” Fay said, and impulsively kissed Carrie’s smooth, round cheek.

  There really was nothing for Fay to do in the kitchen, and very little even for Carrie. The machines had everything under control. Having rime. Fay went through the bedroom into the bath to refresh her makeup and wash her hands. Returning, she passed what had been Greg’s den and was now the nursery, and movement caught her eye. Vickie was awake.

  The baby had been asleep earlier, when they’d ail come in to look at her. Now Fay stepped into the nursery, half-lit by a small table lamp, and leaned over the crib to smile down at Carrie’s child.

  Vickie was fair, like her mother, with wide-set eyes and pug nose. Her eyes were closed, but her pudgy hands and feet were moving, in that aimless way of infants learning their bodies. Light gleamed on her soft stretching throat.

  Perhaps sensing Fay’s presence, the baby abruptly opened her eyes and gazed upward with intense concentration. Beautiful green eyes, darker than jade. Then the wide mouth opened and the baby gave a gassy smile, complete with bubbles.

  It’s a trick of the light. Fay thought, but it wasn’t. Holding tight to the side of the crib, she watched Vickie laugh. We think we’re soft, she thought. We move the danger far away where it can only hurt people we don’t care about, and we stay here safe. But it’s coming, anyway.

  In the doorway, Carrie said, “Fay? Dinner.”

  I can’t let her guess I know. Fay thought, but when she turned the truth must have been plain in her eyes because Carrie, smiling with some irritation, said, “Oh, you noticed.”

  “Carrie.”

  “It’s nothing, it’s nothing.” Taking Fay’s arm, walking her out to the master bedroom, Carrie said, “There’s a company doctor knows all about it, there’s a little operation when Vickie’s just a bit older, there won’t be a trace.”

  “A company doctor? This has happened before?”

  “And they’re all just as healthy and happy as can be,” Carrie said, smiling her contented smile. “Come along to dinner.” She leaned close, the smile turning confidential. “But don’t mention it to anyone, all right? I mean, it’s going to be fixed.”

  “Oh, no. I wouldn’t.”

  And she wouldn’t. Following Carrie to the dining room, Fay knew she would never mention it to a soul. But she would remember. Clear in her mind’s eye it would remain, the vision of Vickie, the wide-set deep green eyes, the little pug nose, the forked tongue.

  ANARCHAOS

  I

  Those who see by the light of Hell are blind to evil.” Rohstock said that, in his Voyages To Seven Planets. As I rode the shuttle to Anarchaos his words circled and circled through my thoughts, the answer to a question I preferred not to ask.

  The shuttle was nearly empty: myself, two other passengers, the steward. Up front were the two pilots, of course, but I never saw them, and so they don’t count.

  There is nothing more tedious than a shuttle flight between unimportant planets, even for someone like me, his first time away from home. On a shuttle there is nothing to do, nothing to see; one merely sits in an enclosed tube and is hurtled through hyperspace from here to here, without even the sensation of motion. The only difference between an elevator and such a shuttle is the distance covered. And, of course, the time spent in the voyage.

  This one, from Cockaigne to Anarchaos, took four hours. It was the last leg of my journey, and in objective time the shortest, but subjectively it was the longest of all.

  I had left Earth five days before on a liner to Valhalla, a three-day trip filled with comfort and luxurious distraction. The customs inspection at Valhalla had taken me by surprise—after all, I was merely passing through their domain—and I had no chance adequately to hide my weapons. They were confiscated, and I was held overnight for questioning. My claim that I was simply a nervous tourist who had brought the weapons along for self-defense was, I suppose, absurd on the face of it; Anarchaos, my destination, was unlikely to attract even self-confident tourists, and the arsenal I’d been carrying was surely excessive for purposes of self-defense. Still, it was the only explanation I would give, and in any case I wasn’t planning to visit Valhalla at all, so the next morning I was—without apologies—released. The weapons were not returned; I would have to get new ones on Anarchaos.

  The trip from Valhalla to Cockaigne took seventeen hours. I was saved from boredom by a pleasant conversation with a fellow passenger in the first half of the trip, and by a long and dreamless sleep in the second half.

  But now, on this final stage, boredom had me strongly in its grip. I occupied my mind with study of the steward and the other passengers as long as I could, but they were a dull trio, offering little to excite interest or speculation. The steward was male, fairly young, of medium height and weight, blank of face, given to that invisibility or lack of personality common among those in the service occupations. The two passengers, both male, were almost equa
lly invisible; the young, pale, nervously smiling one in the clerical collar was obviously a missionary on his way to his first post, and the older one. with his briefcase and his threadbare dignity, was surely a governmental or industrial functionary of a minor sort, traveling on his employer’s business.

  There was only one brief conversation the whole trip, and that between the steward and the missionary. The latter, asking how much longer till we reached Anarchaos, stumbled over the name, smiled apologetically, and said, “It’s a hard word to say.”

  “There’s a way to make it easy,” the steward told him. “Start to say anarchy, and midway through switch and say chaos”

  The missionary tried it: “Anarchaos.” The apologetic smile flared again, and he thanked the steward, saying, “It certainly is a name to give one pause.”

  “I suppose they meant it that way,” said the steward.

  “And their sun,” said the missionary. “Do they really call it Hell?”

  “It 0 Hell,” said the steward.

  II

  The hatch was opened, and we three passengers stepped out onto the mesh-sided elevator which would lower us to the ground. Beside me, the missionary blinked and whispered, “Oh, dear! Oh, dear me!”

  He was right to be awed. It would take the most intrepid of missionaries not to be awed by his first sight of Anarchaos.

  Above us, Hell stood at its perpetual zenith, a swollen red sun, huge and ancient, in the flushed fury of its long decline. Its light was red, rust-red, tingeing everything it touched: the shuttle ship we’d just departed, this elevator and its mesh housing, the flat and nearly empty expanse of the landing pad, the customs and administration shacks across the way, and the distant towers of the city of Ni. So long as Hell stood in the sky, there would be no color here but the shades of red.

  The elevator descended, and we were met at the bottom by a slender young man in the uniform of the Union Commission; Anarchaos having no government of its own, the UC maintained a staff at the landing pad here for the assistance and advice of visitors.

  “Come this way, please,” he said, without that facile smile of impersonal good fellowship for which the UC is famous; Anarchaos, I suppose, made even official smiles impossible to retain.

  We followed him toward the shacks. Behind us, our luggage was being unloaded by other UC men and piled onto a mechanized can, which buzzed by us before we reached the edge of the pad.

  How dreary this world was; walking along with the others I felt weighted down, morose, lethargic. Only with the greatest difficulty could I keep my sense of urgency and feeling of purpose. Already, it seemed, Anarchaos was draining me, sapping my strength.

  Our guide led us to a small wooden building, marked on its door ORIENTATION, and motioned us inside, where we found several rows of seats facing a raised platform a; the far end.

  “Sit anywhere, gentlemen,” he said, and walked down the room and onto the platform. Facing us there he said, “My task, gentlemen, is to acquaint you with some few of the facts of Anarchaos.” And he proceeded to tell us several things which I for one already knew.

  That Anarchaos was the only planet circling its sun. That it always showed the same face to its sun, as Earth’s moon shows ever the same face to Earth, so that here there was no night or day in the Earthly sense that I was used to; the city of Ni, for instance, lived in perpetual noon. Hell motionless and unchanging directly overhead. That the planer’s orbit was almost precisely circular, so that there were no seasons here. That humans had colonized it eighty-seven years ago and were to be found only along a narrow band north and south along the sunward face, with Mon Goth, the city Earthest to the west and Ulik Earthest to the east; at Moro-Geth, Hell stood forever in the attitude of mid-morning, while at Ulik the day was frozen at mid-afternoon. That the night side of the planet was dead and cold and no place for men. That the planet had a deep atmosphere, which constantly drained Hell’s heat to east and west, dissipating most of it on the frigid night side, leaving the day side temperatures well within man’s capacity; at Ni it was Fahrenheit eighty-five degrees and at Moro-Geth and Ulik approximately sixty degrees.

  And more, about the humans here; their “society,” if that’s the word for it.

  That they had no native government but were maintained entirely by the Union Commission. That they were total anarchists, and yet managed to maintain cities. That they were idealists of nihilism, and yet pragmatic and practical. That individuals should be approached with utmost caution, as nearly anything was liable to give offense. That as there were no laws there was statistically no crime, which merely meant that cheating, stealing, killing and so on were not considered crimes here, or even socially unacceptable.

  “Finally,” he said, “I wish to tell you gentlemen that the sun and planet here have been misnamed. It’s the planet that should be called Hell, because its citizens arc devils. You’re safe from them here, on Commission territory, but once you go outside the gate you are totally on your own. Each major city’ has a Commission embassy where it is theoretically possible for off-worlders to take refuge in case of trouble, but I wouldn’t depend upon it. According to the most recent report on the subject I’ve seen, seventy-two per cent of off-world visitors here in the last ten years disappeared without trace and are presumed to have been murdered. My urgent advice to all three of you is to get right back on that shuttle and return at once to Cockaigne. As I remember it, Cockaigne is a beautiful place, very friendly and completely safe. The tall blond girls of that world are noted throughout the Union. Will you go?”

  He looked at each of us in turn. The missionary blinked and gulped, but stood his ground. The functionary gave him the defiant glare of the petty authoritarian. I, when it came my turn, merely met his gaze and shook my head.

  He shrugged. “Very well. It’s my job to warn you, and you’ve been warned. Just remember; statistically, less than one visitor in three survives. It’s possible one of you will live to get off this planet again, but extremely unlikely that more than one will.”

  There was a table behind him on the platform. He went to it now, picked up a needle mike, and said, “I’ll ask each of you to give his name, home world, purpose in coming here, expected duration of stay, and name and address of whoever you want notified in the event of your death or disappearance. This is for the record, so please speak distinctly.”

  He extended the mike toward the missionary, who said, in a high and somewhat shaky voice, “My name is Brother Roderus, Capeline Order, and my home world is Vicon. I am here as a missionary, to bring converts to the true faith and to establish a Capeline monastery here. I am expected to stay for three years. In the event of . . . of anything happening to me, notification should go to the Abbot, Capeline Monastery, New Augustus, Wainwright, Vicon.”

  The functionary was next: “William zi Mandell, of Cockaigne, employed by Roth Brothers Data Corporation. One of our ZT series computers was leased by a certain Allied Furriers of Ulik, who are now over a year deficit in their rental payments. I have been assigned to go to Ulik and either collect the rental due or reclaim the machine. I expect to be here a week, perhaps two. Earth Standards Terms. In the unlikely event of my death or disappearance, my home office should be contacted: Roth Brothers Data Corporation, Scottsville, Sedalia, Cockaigne.”

  Then the needle was pointed at me. I said, “Rolf Malone, of Earth. I’m here as a tourist, for an indefinite period, probably no longer than six months. There’s no one to notify in case anything happens to me.”

  He continued to point the needle at me a few seconds longer, as though unwilling to believe I was finished, then shook his bead, put the mike back on the table, and said, “Now I’ll try to talk specific sense to you. Brother Roderus, missionaries aren’t wanted on Anarchaos, please believe me. You’ll gain no converts. By your manner, I suppose it’s unlikely you’ll give offense to any of the locals, so you’re safe in that respect, but you aren’t safe from bullying, and on Anarchaos bullying frequently ends in bloods
hed. Unless you’re determined on martyrdom, I strongly advise you to go back to Vicon.”

  The missionary looked frightened but game; that is to say, foolish. “I’ll stay,” he said. “I’ve been sent. I’ll stay.”

  The UC man shrugged fatalistically and turned to the computer renter saying, “Mr. Mandell, I assume this is the first time your company has had dealings with anyone on this planet.”

  Mandell nodded curtly. “It is.”

  “You can’t rent or lease property here, Mr. Mandell; you can only sell it. Allied Furriers has stolen your computer. If you go to them and demand your fees, they’ll laugh in your face. If you try to repossess the machine, they’ll kill you. This isn’t a possibility I’m telling you, this is a certainty.’

  Mandell didn’t think so. “Kill me?” he asked. “You’re being melodramatic.”

  “Mr. Mandell, please. We can put you up temporarily. Send a message to your home office; ask them to contact the Commission and get the legal and economic situation here. Once your company understands the peculiar problem of Anarchaos, I’m sure they’ll recall you.”

  “Nonsense.” Mandell’s spine was getting straighter and straighter, his voice stiffer and stiffer, his expression more and more severe. “I’m a businessman,” he said, “and I’m here to discuss a business transaction.”

  “I can’t stop you from leaving here,” the UC man told him, “any more than I can protect you if you do.”

  “I’ll need no protection. Is that all?”

  The UC man spread his hands. “Yes, that’s all. You and Brother Roderus can go to the customs shack across the way and pick up your luggage now. Mr. Malone. I’d like you to stay a moment longer, if you would.”

  The other two looked at me curiously as they left. Once the door was closed behind them I said, “You can’t stop me either, you know.”

  “I know that. Mr. Malone, there are no tourists on Anarchaos. “

  “There’s me. I’m a tourist.”