The Stainless Steel Rat Saves The World (4 page)

“An intoinal-combustion engine we call it. Almost new, should be three hundred horses there. Climb in and we’ll make tracks out of here before anybody sees us.”

I made a mental note to inquire later about the theory behind this intoinal combustion. From earlier conversation I had understood that horses were a rather large quadruped, so perhaps it was an animal miniaturizing process to get a large number of them into the machine. But primitive as the device looked, it certainly moved quickly enough. Slasher manipulated the controls and twisted the large wheel, and we shot out onto the road and were away—apparently without being detected. I was more than satisfied to let Slasher drive while I observed this world that I had arrived on.

“Where is all the money kept? You know, like the place where they lock it up.”

“You must mean the banks. Places with thick walls, big vaults, armed guards. They got at least one in every town.”

“And the bigger the town, the bigger the bank?”

“You’re catchin’ on.”

“Then drive on to the nearest big town and find the biggest bank. I need plenty of bread. So we’ll clean it out tonight.”

Slasher gaped in awe. “You can’t mean it! They got all kinds of alarms and stuff.”

“I laugh at their Stone Age gadgets. Just find the town, find the bank, then find some food and drink. Tonight I’ll make you rich.”

5

IN ALL TRUTH I have never robbed a bank more easily or cracked a simpler crib. The establishment I selected was in the center of a city with the improbable-sounding name of Hartford. It was severely constructed of gray stone, and all the openings were covered with thick metal bars—but these defenses were negated by the fact that there were other buildings joined to the bank on both sides. A rat rarely enters by the front door. It was early evening when we set out, and Slasher was jittery and nervous despite the large quantity of low-quality alcoholic beverage he had consumed.

“We oughta wait until later,” he complained. “There are still plenty of people in the street.”

“Just how I want it. They won’t pay no attention to a couple more. Now park this heap around the corner where we planned and bring the bags.”

I carried my tools in a small case while Slasher followed me with the two large pieces of luggage we had purchased. The building ahead, on the left of the bank, was dark, and the outer door was surely locked. No trouble. I had looked at the lock earlier in the day and had determined that it presented no problem at all. The device in my left hand neutralized the alarm while I inserted the lockpick with my right. It opened so easily that Slasher did not even have to stop but went right on by me with the bags. Not a soul in the street paid us the slightest attention. A corridor led to some more locked doors, which I passed through with the same ease, until we reached an office in the rear.

“This room should share a wall with the bank. Now I’m gonna find out,” I said.

I whistled under my breath as I went to work. This was by no means my first bank robbery, and I had no intention of making it my last. Of all the varied forms of crime, bank robbery is the most satisfactory to both the individual and to society. The individual of course gets a lot of money, that goes without saying, and he benefits society by putting large amounts of cash back into circulation. The economy is stimulated, small businessmen prosper, people read about the crime with great interest, and the police have a chance to exercise their various skills. Good for all. Though I have heard foolish people complain that it hurts the bank. This is arrant nonsense. All banks are insured, so they lose nothing, while the sums involved are minuscule in the overall operation of the insuring firm, where the most that might happen is that a microscopically smaller dividend will be paid at the end of the year. Little enough price to pay for all the good caused. It was as a benefactor of mankind, not a thief, that I passed the echo sounder over the wall. A large opening on the other side; the bank without a doubt.

There were a number of cables and pipes in the wall, power and water I presumed, along with some that were obviously alarms. I marked their positions on the wall until the pattern was clear. There was one area that was free of all obstructions that I outlined.

“We go in here,” I said.

“How we gonna break the wall down?” Slasher swung between elation and fear, wanting the money, afraid he would be caught. He was obviously a petty criminal, and this was the biggest job he had ever been on.

“Not break, dum-dum,” I said, not unkindly, holding up the masser. “We just convince it to open before us.”

Of course he had no idea what I was talking about, but sight of the gleaming instrument seemed to reassure him. I had reversed the device so instead of increasing the binding energy of molecules, it reduced their attraction close to zero. With slow precision I ran the point of the device completely over the chosen area of wall, then turned it off and stowed it away.

“Nuttin’ happened,” Slasher complained.

“Sometin’ will now.” I pushed the wall with my hand, and the entire area I had prepared fell away with a soft whoosh, sliding down like so much fine dust. Which it had become. We looked through into the brightly lit interior of the bank.

We were invisible from the street when we crawled through and crept along behind the high counter where the tellers normally sat. The builders had thoughtfully put their vault in the lower depths of the building and out of sight of the street, so once down the steps, we could straighten up and go about our task in comfort. In rapid sequence I went through a pair of locked doors and a grille made of thick steel bars. Their locks and alarms were too simple to discuss. The vault door itself looked more formidable, yet proved the simplest of them all.

“Look at dat,” I called out enthusiastically. “There is a time lock here that opens automatically sometime tomorrow.”

“I knew it,” Slasher wailed. “Let’s get out before the alarms go off. . . .”

As he ran for the stairs, I tripped him and put one foot on his chest while I explained.

“That is what they call good, dum-dum. All we have to do to open the thing is to advance the clock so it thinks it is the morning.”

“Impossible! It’s sealed behind a couple of inches of steel!”

Of course, he had no way of knowing that an ordinary serviceman’s manipulator is designed to work through casings of any kind. When I felt the field engage the cogs, I rotated it, and the dials whirled, and his eyes bulged—and the mechanism gave a satisfied click, and the door swung open.

“Bring da bags,” I ordered, entering the vault.

Whistling and humming gaily, we packed the two bags solid with the tightly wrapped bundles of crisp notes. Slasher closed and sealed his first, then mumbled impatiently at my slowness.

“What’s da rush?” I asked him, closing the case and assembling my tools. “You gotta take the time to do things the right way.”

As I put the last of my instruments away, I noticed a needle jump, then hold steady. Interesting. I adjusted the field strength, then stood with it in my hand and looked around. Slasher was on the other side of the vault, fumbling with some long metal boxes.

“And what are you doing?” I asked in my warmest voice.

“Takin’ a shufty to see if maybe there are some jewels in these safe-deposit boxes.”

“Oh, that is what you are doing. You shoulda asked me.”

“I can do it myself.” Surly and cocksure.

“Yes, but I can do it without setting off the silent alarm to the police station.” Cold and angry. “As you have just done.”

The blood drained from his face nicely; his hands shook so he dropped the box; then he jumped about to bend and pick up the satchel of money.

“Dum-dum yo-yo,” I snarled and booted hard in the inviting target presented. “Now get that bag and get out of here and start the car. I’m right behind you.”

Slasher stumbled and scrambled up the stairs, and I followed more calmly after, taking a moment to close all the gates and grilles behind me in order to make things as difficult as possible for the police. They would know the bank had been entered but would not know it had been robbed until they rousted out some bank official and opened the vault. By which time we would be long vanished.

But as I came up the stairs, I heard the squeal of tires and saw, through the front windows, a police car pulling up outside.

They had certainly been fast, incredibly so for an ancient and primitive society like this one. Though perhaps that was why; certainly crime and crime detection must consume a large part of everyone’s energies. However, I wasted no time philosophizing over their arrival but pushed the bags ahead of me as I crawled behind the tellers’ counter. As I was going through the hole to the other building, I heard keys rattling in the outer door locks. Just right. As they came in, I would go out—and this proved to be the case. When I looked out at the street, I saw that all the occupants of the police car had entered the bank while a small, but curious, crowd had gathered. With their backs toward me. I exited slowly and strode toward the corner.

The Neolithic fuzz were certainly fast on their feet. It must come from running down and catching their own game or something. Because I had not reached the corner before they popped out of the door behind me, tooting painfully on shrill whistles. They had entered the bank, seen the hole in the wall, then retraced my path. I took one quick look at them, all shining teeth, blue uniforms, brass buttons and guns, and started running myself.

Around the corner and into the car.

Except that the street was empty and the car was gone.

Slasher must have decided that he had earned enough for one evening and had driven away and left me for the law.

6

I AM NOT suggesting that I may be made of sterner stuff than most men. Though I do feel that most men when presented with a situation like this—32,000 years in the past, a load of stolen money, the law in hot pursuit—might give way to more than a little suggestion of panic. Only conditioning, and the fact that I had been in this position far too often during my life, kept me running smoothly while I considered what to do next. In a few moments some heavy-footed minions of the law would come barreling around the corner while, I am sure, a radio alarm would be drawing in reinforcements to cut me off. Think fast, Jim.

I did. Before I had taken five more paces, my entire plan for escape was outlined, detailed, set into type, printed, and bound into a little booklet with page one open in my mind’s eye before me.

First—get off the street. As I jumped into the next doorway, I dropped the money and let a minigrenade fall into my fingers from my holdout. This fitted into the round opening of the keyhole very nicely, and with an impressive thud, it blew out the lock and part of the frame. My pursuers were not in sight yet, so I hesitated until they appeared before pushing open the ruined door. Hoarse shouts and more whistle blowing signaled that I had been observed. The door opened into a long corridor, and I was at the far end of it, hands raised in surrender, when the gun-toting law hesitatingly peeked in through the opening.

“Don’t shoot, coppers,” I shouted. “I surrender, a poor young man led to crime by evil companions.”

“Don’t move or we’ll hole you,” they growled happily, entering warily with strong lights flashing into my eyes. I simply stood there, fingers groping for empty air, until the lights slid away and there was the double thud of falling bodies. There should have been since there was more sleepgas than air in that hallway.

Being careful to breathe through the filter plugs in my nostrils, I stripped the uniform from the snoring figure that was closest to my size, cursing the crude arrangement of fastenings, and put it on over my own clothes. Then I took the hand weapon he had been carrying and restored it to its holster, picked up my bags again and left, walking back up the street toward the bank. Frightened civilians peered out of doorways like animals from their burrows, and at the corner I was met by another police car. As I had guessed, a number of them were converging on this spot.

“I have the loot,” I called in to the solid figure behind the wheel. “I’m takin’ it back to da bank. We have them cornered, da rats, a whole gang. Through that door. Go get them!”

This last advice was unneeded because the vehicle had already left. The first police conveyance still stood where I had last seen it, and under the cowlike eyes of the spectators, I threw the bags into the front seat and climbed in.

“Gowan, beat it. Da show’s over,” I shouted as I groped among the unfamiliar instruments. There were an awful lot of them, enough to fly a spaceship with, much less this squalid groundcar. Nothing happened. The crowd milled back, then milled forward. I was sweating slightly. Only then did I notice that the tiny keyhole was empty and remembered—belatedly—something Slasher had said about using keys to start these vehicles with. Sirens grew louder on all sides as I groped and fumbled through the odd selection of pockets and wallets on the uniform I wore.

Keys! An entire ring of them. Chortling, I pushed one after another into the keyhole until I realized that they were all too big to fit. Outside, the fascinated crowd pressed close, greatly admiring my performance.

“Back, back,” I cried, and struggled the weapon from its holster to add menace to my words.

Evidently it had been primed and was ready to be actuated, and I inadvertently touched the wrong control. There was a terrible explosion and cloud of smoke, and it jumped from my hand. Some kind of projectile hurtled through the metal roof of the car and my thumb felt quite sore.

At least the spectators left. Hurriedly. As they ran in all directions, I saw that one of the police cars was coming up behind me, and I felt that things were just not going as well as they should. There must be other keys. I groped again, throwing the miscellaneous items I discovered onto the seat beside me until there were no more. The other car stopped behind mine and the doors opened.

Was that a glint of metal in that small hide case? It was. A pair of keys. One of them slid gently into the correct orifice as the two minions of law and order walked up on both sides of the car.

“What’s going on here?” the nearest called out as the key turned and there was the groaning of an engine and a metallic clashing.

“Trouble!” I said as I fumbled with the metal levers.

“Get outta there, you!” he said, pulling out his weapon.

“Matter of life and death!” I shouted in a cracked voice as I stamped on one of the pedals as I had seen Slasher do. The car roared with power; the wheels squealed; it leaped to life, hurtling.

In the wrong direction, backward.

There was an intense crashing and clanging of glass and metal, and the police vanished. I groped for the controls again. One of the fuzz appeared ahead, raising his weapon, but jumped for his life as I found the right combination and the car roared at him. The road was clear, and I was on my way.

With the police in hot pursuit. Before I reached the corner, the other car started up and tore forward. Colored lights began rotating on top of it, and its siren wailed after. I drove with one hand and fumbled with my own controls—spraying liquid on the windscreen, then seeing it wiped away by moving arms, hearing loud music, warming my feet with a hot blast of air—until I also had a screaming siren and perhaps, a flashing light. We tore down the wide road in this manner, and I felt that this was not the way to escape. The police knew their city and their vehicles and could radio ahead to cut me off. As soon as I realized this, I pulled at the wheel and turned into the next street. Since I was going a bit faster than I should, the tires screeched and the car bounced up onto the sidewalk and caromed off a building before shuddering back into the roadway. My pursuers dropped behind with this maneuver, not willing to make the turn in this same dramatic manner, but were still after me when I barreled around the next corner. With these two right-angle turns I had succeeded in reversing my course and was now headed back toward the scene of the crime.

Which may sound like madness but was really the safest thing to do. In a few moments, siren wailing and lights going, I was safe in the middle of a pack of screaming, flashing blue and white vehicles. It was lovely. They were turning and backing and getting in one another’s way, and I did what I could to increase the confusion. It was quite interesting with much cursing and the shaking of fists from windows, and I would have stayed longer if reason had not prevailed. When the excitement reached its merriest, I worked my way out and slid my vehicle around the corner. I was not followed. At a more reasonable pace, siren silenced and lights lowered, I trundled along the street looking for a haven. I could never escape in the police car, and I had no intention of doing so; what I needed was a rathole to crawl into.

A luxurious one; I do not believe in doing things halfway. Not very much farther on I saw my goal, ablaze with lights and signs, glittering with ornament, a hotel of the plush and luxury class almost a stone’s throw from the site of the crime. The last place where I would be looked for. I hoped. Certain chances have to be taken always. At the next turning I parked the car, stripped off the uniform, put a bundle of bills in my pocket, then trundled back toward the hotel with my two bags. When the car was found, they would probably think I had changed vehicles, an obvious ploy, and the area of search would widen.

“Hey, you,” I called out to the uniformed functionary who stood proudly before the entrance. “Carry these bags.”

My tone was insulting, my manners rude, and he should have ignored me had I not spoken in another language and pressed a large denomination banknote into his hand. A quick glimpse of this produced smiles and a false obsequiousness as he grabbed for my bags, shuffling after me as I entered the lobby.

Glowing wood paneling, soft rugs, discreet lighting, lovely women in low-cut dresses accompanied by elderly men with low-hung bellies; this was the right place. There were a number of raised eyebrows at my rough clothing as I strode across to the reception desk. The individual behind looked coldly down a long patrician nose, and I could see the ice already starting to form. I thawed it with a wad of money on the counter before him.

“You have the pleasure of meetin’ a rich but eccentric millionaire,” I told him. “This is for you.” The bills vanished even as I offered them. “I have just come back from the boonies, and I want the best room you got.”

“Something
might
be arranged, but only the Emperor Suite is available and that costs. . . .”

“Don’t bodder me with money. Take this loot and let me know when you want more.”

“Yes, well, perhaps something can be arranged. If you would be so kind as to sign your name here. . . .”

“What’s
your
name?”

“Me? Why, it’s Roscoe Amberdexter.”

“Ain’t that a coincidenence—that’s my name, too, but you can call me sir. Must be a very common name around here. So you sign for me since we both got the same name!” I beckoned, and he leaned forward, and I spoke in a hoarse whisper. “I don’t want no one to know I am here. Everyone’s after my loot. Send up the manager if he wants more information.” What he would get would be money, which I was sure would do just as well.

Buoyed on a wave of greenbacks, the rest was clear sailing. I was ushered to my quarters, and I bestowed largess on my two bag carriers for being so smart they didn’t drop them. They opened and shut things and showed me all the controls, and I had one of them call room service for much food and drink, and they left in the best of humors, pockets bulging. I put the bag of money in the closet and opened the smaller case.

And froze.

The indicator needle on the time energy detector had moved and was pointing steadily toward the window and the world outside.