Martin Greenberg: Visions of Liberty

The receptionist must have warned everyone that Dantler was coming. He moved as if by magic through the various barricades that Pummery had erected to protect himself from unwanted intruders. Five minutes later, having been shown into a cramped office that was as spartan as Dantler expected, Dantler was settled comfortably in a guest chair and scrutinizing the great man himself while a scowling Pummery scrutinized him. He might have been a retired university professor—tall, slender, neatly bearded, scholarly. The beard was gray, but Pummery looked young and energetic.

Dantler passed a letter across the desk. It was not the letter he had shown the receptionist—that one had functioned merely to get him into Pummery’s presence. This one was highly confidential. Pummery read it with obvious astonishment.

“You’re a Galactic Bureau of Investigation Officer?” he asked.

“Officer Dantler, at your service,” Dantler murmured politely.

“Nonsense. The GBI doesn’t serve anyone unless by doing so it forwards it’s own interests. You’re here on a special inspection trip to reevaluate the world’s status?”

Dantler nodded diffidently.

“The letter says you are also here to conduct an investigation. The Inter-World Council has something it wants investigated on Llayless?”

“It does.”

Pummery tilted back in his chair and regarded him with puzzled interest. “This is a world without a government. For that reason, people call it a totally lawless world, and they couldn’t be more wrong. The fact that a world has no government doesn’t mean it has no laws. Humankind brings its own laws with it wherever it goes—sometimes like unwanted baggage it can’t get rid of, but it always has them. They are an expression of the deep-seated customs and attitudes it must live by. Is the Inter-World Council trying to introduce its own brand of law and order here?”

“Surely you have read the Federation’s constitution,” Dantler murmured. “I’m here to evaluate the world’s status as the constitution provides and to conduct an investigation of something that has already occurred. If my investigation confirms information the Bureau has received, then I will see that proper action is taken.”

“What is it that they want investigated?”

“A murder.”

“There has been a murder on Llayless?”

“There has. After I have confirmed that the murder has taken place and that the identity of the murderer has been reported to the GBI correctly, I intend to apprehend the murderer and bring him to justice.”

Pummery took the time to read the letter through again, slowly. Then he touched a button and spoke in a normal tone of voice. “Mr. Jabek, please.”

While they waited, Dantler amusedly counted the seconds. He had reached six when the door opened. As he expected, Pummery kept everyone who worked for him on his toes.

Pummery did not bother to introduce Jabek. Instead, he introduced Dantler. He said, “This is Birk Dantler, an officer of the GBI, the Galactic Bureau of Investigation. The GBI is the investigative arm of the Inter-World Council. He has been sent here on a confidential mission of inspection and investigation. Do you know what that means?”

“No, sir,” Jabek answered apologetically.

“The Inter-World Council has a stranglehold on every world in the galaxy—if it chooses to apply it. At this moment, Officer Dantler is the most powerful man on the world of Llayless. If he finds this organization or any organization or individual on the world less than completely cooperative, he can express his dissatisfaction, and an absolute embargo will be placed on us. No ship will arrive; no ship will leave.

“You will prepare the necessary credentials for him. He can go wherever he likes, and transportation is to be arranged for him whenever he needs it; he is to see whatever he wants to see; he is to talk with whomever he wants to talk with. Any person who fails to cooperate fully will find him or herself on the next outbound spaceship. The credentials you give him should make that clear.”

Pummery turned to Dantler. “I can order everyone on the world of Llayless to cooperate with you, but I have no control over what they say, and I can’t make them tell the truth. Neither can I tell you anything about this murder myself because I have no knowledge about it.

“I want to make one thing clear. We may have no government here, but as I already mentioned, we are not without laws—though we don’t call them that. We have rules of conduct that we impose on ourselves, and they make human society possible. Until you arrived I would have said lawless Llayless is the most law-abiding world in the galaxy. If there has been a murder on this world, the fact that I never heard of it doesn’t mean that the crime hasn’t been noticed and the murderer hasn’t already been punished—under our form of law, not yours. If I can assist you further, come and see me.”

He got to his feet and touched Dantler’s hand briefly. Mr. Jabek murmured, “Come with me, please,” and led him into the adjoining office.

Half an hour later, armed with every credential Mr. Jabek could provide for him, Dantler returned to the ground floor and nodded perfunctorily at the blue-blond receptionist as he passed her on his way to the exit.

Hunting for a murderer on a world without government was an entirely new experience for Dantler. Regardless of what Pummery had said, there was a principle that held true everywhere in the galaxy: No government meant no laws. As he left for the Last Hope mine, the reported scene of the murder, he wondered again what he would charge the murderer with when he caught him, and what court of justice he would bring him before on a world that had no courts.

Probably it would have to be an intergalactic court on some other world, but on strictly local issues, such courts usually applied the laws of the world on which the lawbreaking occurred. There would have to be some roundabout charge—perhaps based on the fact that by murdering Douglas Vaisey, Roger Lefory had summarily terminated his right to that nebulous old saw of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The attorneys would have the time of their lives with it, but Dantler was confident of a conviction. Murder was the most serious charge in the legal arsenal, and courts would lean over backward to properly punish a murderer—especially when the murder had occurred on an Unnullified world that had neither government, law, nor courts.

Now Dantler was back in Pummery again, having tracked his murderer to Pummery’s huge Smelter No. 2. It was an all-electric operation—clean, quiet, and effectively temperature controlled. Dantler’s credentials gave him direct and immediate access to its superintendent, a youngish-looking black man named Edwin Sharle, who seemed as quietly competent and efficient as his smelter.

He was completely unaware that he had harbored a murderer among his employees, but the name “Roger Lefory” was familiar to him. “The man was always complaining about something,” he said. “He kept claiming that the other employees were making him the victim of all their pranks. They smeared glue on his chair, and when he sat in it, he couldn’t get up. He had to cut his trousers off, and they were ruined. His fellow workers had a way of timing their breaks so he was left with all the work to do. They filled his locker with trash, and another time they balanced a can of paint so it dumped on him when he opened the locker’s door. That’s only the beginning of a list. I’m sure a record was made. Do you want to see it?”

Dantler shook his head. “What did you make of all that?”

“I checked his work record from the Last Hope mine and, before and after that, the Laughingstock. Everywhere he worked, he found excuses for not working. Many of the pranks he described sounded like fellow workers being fed up with his constantly shifting his workload to them. So I told him to try to be more friendly and cooperative with the people who worked with him and to do a little work himself.”