Martin Greenberg - Visions of Liberty

“With what result?”

“He quit without notice. Went to one of the more distant mines, the Shangri-la, and got a job there. I know that because they asked me for his work record. I never heard him mentioned again.”

Dantler’s next stop was the Llayless Record Section, where he was given a computer station and access to the complete record of Roger Lefory—to the extent that the world kept records on one of its lesser residents. Lefory’s entire employment history was there as far as the Shangri-la. Every employer, including the last one, remarked that the man was lazy and avoided work whenever he could. The file ended with a terse note from the Shangri-la manager, dated almost a year before. Employee Roger Lefory was missing from his job. There was nothing unusual about that—he had left every job he had held without notice—but this time there was no record that he had gone anywhere else. He had simply vanished.

Dantler made inquiries. There were a few solitary prospectors searching for paydirt on the far side of the mountains surrounding Pummery. Some of them had developed a knack for living off the country. There were edible plants, berries, and fruits. There were game birds and animals for those who had the skill to catch them. Most Llayless residents had no time for that sort of thing, but prospectors usually had little money and in any case didn’t want to take the time for a long trip back to a commissary. There was nothing unusual about a man being missing for almost a year.

Before leaving for the Shangri-la mine, Dantler paid another call on Jeffrey Wallingford Pummery. The factor greeted him courteously and asked how he could be of service.

Dantler described his investigation to date. “A man was murdered,” he said. “There are witnesses who saw it done. No report was made to anyone on the management level of the mines where Lefory worked, or to the smelter where he worked, or to world management because no report was required. The murderer was left free to drift from job to job. Now he has gone prospecting and may be difficult to find. This represents a flagrant violation of the Inter-World Federation’s constitution—failing to protect the lives of your citizens by providing no mechanism for taking action against a murderer. I’m going to recommend that your world’s status be changed immediately from ‘Unnullified’ to ‘Nullified.’ I’ll get a spacegram off today. As the law requires, I am giving you written notice of that fact so you can prepare your defense. There will be a hearing, of course.”

Pummery glanced at the paper Dantler handed to him and then handed it back. There was a faint smile

on his face. “I suggest that you hold off with your report—and with your notification—until you have completed your investigation. You haven’t visited the Shangri-la mine, yet. Surely your investigation will be incomplete without evidence from the last place Lefory is known to have worked.”

Dantler studied him warily. He scented a trap. After a moment’s thought, he said, “Certainly, if you prefer it. It probably won’t delay things more than a day.”

The Shangri-la was just as promising a mine as the Laughingstock, its manager—one Pierre Somler—told Dantler, but it was still in an early stage of development. Thus far its profits had been invested in machinery; the dwellings were shacks, and so was the office.

The manager vividly remembered Lefory. “The record said he was lazy. He was spectacularly lazy. On my visits to the diggings, I rarely found him working. He was always taking a break.”

“But you kept him on because of the labor shortage,” Dantler said wearily.

Somler nodded. “That, and because we always hope that a poor employee will change his habits.

Usually that happens when dividends are paid and everyone else receives a tidy bonus. A poor employee’s long list of demerits results in his receiving nothing. He immediately decides to be at the top of the list when the next dividends are declared. But it didn’t happen that way with Lefory. Shiftless he was; shiftless he remained.

“Then there were his complaints about his fellow workers. He kept saying they were trying to ‘get’ him. He had the darndest accidents, some of them almost unbelievable. He wanted to be a heavy machine operator, but on his first try, a freak short circuit nearly electrocuted him. After that he wouldn’t go near one of the machines. The head flew off a fellow worker’s pickax and put him in the hospital for a few days. If it’d hit him in the head instead of the back, it would have killed him. That sort of thing. Finally he vanished.”

“Was it a planned disappearance? I mean—did he accumulate supplies for a stay in the wilderness and take prospecting equipment with him?”

“I think he did. He had mentioned to one of the workers that he was going back to Pummery the next morning and leave Llayless on the first ship out. He thought this was an unlucky world for him, and he could do better starting fresh somewhere else. But that night someone broke into the commissary and took the sort of supplies a prospector would want, and a worker saw Lefory sneaking away on a mountain path with a pack on his back.”

“Is there any other evidence that he is out there in the wilderness?”

“No. But it’s the ideal place for him. No fellow workers he has to get along with, he can work whatever hours he sets for himself, and take a day off when he wants to. All he has to do is figure out how to eat regularly.”

“And all I have to do,” Dantler said, “is figure out how to catch him. A world without a government, and without any police force, is a poor place for a manhunt.”

Jeffrey Wallingford Pummery said with interest, “Do you mean you’ve abandoned your search?”

“Right. Lefory is bound to show up sometime. I’ll leave a warrant for him. You’ll have to apprehend him the moment he appears.”

“Solitary prospectors who go off into the blue are usually looking for gold. They show up only at long intervals to cash in their accumulation, and if they’ve been lucky, they may buy supplies that will last for years.”

“If he shows up at all, the warrant will see that he is detained for galactic police authorities.”

“Have you considered the possibility that he might live the rest of his life out without being seen again?” Pummery asked. “He might be able to cash in his gold without being seen if he has a confederate. Are you still intent on changing the status of this world to ‘Nullified?’”

“I am.”

“We’ll contest the petition, of course. And we’ll win.”

“How can you possibly win? There is no doubt at all that organizations on Llayless harbored a murderer. Not only did they fail to punish him, but they helped him avoid punishment.”

Pummery smiled. “I told you when you arrived—an Unnullified world, a world without government, can be far more law-abiding than your so-called normal worlds. According to the results of your own investigation, Lefory is one of the most severely punished men in galactic history.”

“How do you figure that? No one punished him at all.”

“Study your notes again. At the Last Hope mine, he was shouldered. At the Laughingstock, he was much more emphatically shouldered. Once he was almost killed. At Smelter No. 2, more of the same thing. The danger to his life was increasing. Finally, at the Shangri-la, he was escaping death by narrower and narrower margins.

“It isn’t necessary for management to take a hand in the punishment of a murderer, you see. Every person on Llayless knows that if a Roger Lefory can murder in a fit of temper and escape the consequences, no person is safe. So the people of Llayless set about making an example of him. They put him through living hell, one place after another. And when he finally announced to a fellow worker that he was leaving Llayless, they gave his punishment the final twist.”