Robert Heinlein - The Cat Who Walked Through Walls

"I'm thinking of keeping him awake till he dies. Lack of sleep is worse than anything you listed, dear, if pushed far enough. The victim's judgment goes to pieces long before he stops breathing. He hallucinates. Including all his worst phobias. He dies in his own private hell and never escapes from it."

"Gwen, you sound as if you had used this method."

Gwen did not comment.

I shrugged. "Whatever you decide, let me know how I can help."

"I will, sir. Mmm, I think highly of drowning in caterpillars. But I don't know how to get that many caterpillars other than by having them shipped up from Earth. Except- Well, one can always arrange for them through the insomnia method. Toward the end you can cause the condemned to create his own caterpillars just by suggesting it to him." She shivered. "Schrecklich! But I won't use rats, Richard. Never rats. Not even imaginary rats."

"My sweet and gentle bride, I'm glad to know you draw the line at something."

"Certainly I do! Beloved, you startled me with the notion that bad manners could be judged a hanging offense. My own concern is for evil, rather than for bad manners. I think evil deeds should never go unpunished. God's arrangements for punishing evil are too slow to suit me; I want it done now. Take hijacking. Hijackers should be hanged on the spot as soon as they are caught. An arsonist should be burned at the stake on the site of the fire he started, if possible before its ashes grow cold. A rapist should be killed by-"

I did not leam then what complex way of dying Gwen favored for rapists because a polite bureaucrat (male, gray, dandruffy, built-in risus) stopped in front of us and said, "Dr. Ames?"

"I am Dr. Ames."

"I am Mungerson Fitts, Assistant Deputy Administrator for Superrogatory Statistics. I'm helping out. I'm sure you understand how terribly busy the Manager's office is just now with the new addition being brought up to spin-all the temporary relocations that have to be made and all the disruptions to routine that have to be accommodated before we can all settle down in a larger and greatly improved Golden Rule." He gave me a winning smile. "I understand you want to see the Manager."

"That's right."

"Excellent. Because of the present emergency I am helping here in order to maintain the proud quality of Golden Rule service to our guests during alterations. I have been fully empowered to act for the Manager; you can think of me as his alter ego... because to all intents and purposes I am the Manager. This little lady-she is with you?"

"Yes."

"Honored, ma'am. Delighted. Now, friends, if you will please come with me-"

"No."

"Excuse me?"

"I want to see the Manager."

"But I explained to you-"

"I'll wait."

"I don't think you understood me. Please come with-"

"No."

(At this point Fitts should have grabbed me with a come-along and tossed me out on my arse. Not that it is easy to do mis to me; I trained with the Dorsai. But that is what he should have done. However, he was inhibited by custom, habit, and policy.)

Fitts paused and looked baffled. "Uh- But you must, you know."

"No, I don't know."

"I'm trying to tell you-"

"I want to see the Manager. Did he tell you what to do about Senator Cantor?"

"Senator Cantor? Let me see, he's the Senator from, uh, from..."

"If you don't know who he is, how do you know what to do about him?"

"Uh, if you will just wait a moment while I consult."

"You had better take us along-since you don't seem to be 'fully empowered' on this critical issue."

"Uh... please wait here."

I stood up. "No, I had better get back. The Senator may be looking for me. Please tell the Manager that I'm sorry I could not arrange it." I turned to Gwen. "Come, Madam. Let's not keep him waiting." (I wondered if Mungerson would notice that "him" was a pronoun without a referent.)

Gwen stood up, took my arm. Fitts said hastily, "Please, friends, don't leave! Uh, come with me." He herded us to an unmarked door. "Wait just one moment, please!"

He was gone more than a moment but nevertheless only a short time. He returned with his face wreathed with smiles (I think that is the expression). "Right this way, please!" He took us through the unmarked door, down a short passage, and into the Manager's inner office.

The Manager looked up from his desk and inspected us, not with the familiar, fatherly expression of the too-frequent "Word from the Manager" announcements that come over every terminal. On the contrary Mr. Sethos looked as if he had found something nasty in his porridge.

I ignored his chilly demeanor. Instead I stood just inside the door, Gwen still on my arm, and waited. I once lived with a fussy cat (is there another sort?) who, when faced with an offering of food not perfectly to his taste, would stand still and, with dignified restraint, look offended-a remarkable bit of acting for one whose face was completely covered with ftir;

however, he did it mostly by body language. I now did this to Mr. Sethos, primarily by thinking about that cat. I stood... and waited.

He stared at us... and at last stood up, bowed slightly and said, "Madam... will you please be seated?"

Whereupon we both sat down. Round one to us, on points. I could not have done it without Gwen. But I did have her help and once I got my butt into his chair he was not going to get it out-until I got what I wanted.

I sat still, kept quiet, and waited.

When Mr. Sethos's blood pressure reached triggering level, he said, "Well? You've managed to bull your way into my office. What's this nonsense about Senator Cantor?"

"I expect you to tell me. Have you assigned Senator Cantor to my wife's compartment?"

"Eh? Don't be ridiculous. Mistress Novak has a one-room efficiency compartment, the smallest size in first class. The Senator from Standard Oil, if he came here, would be in a deluxe suite. Of course."

"Mine, perhaps? Is that why you evicted me? For the Senator?"

"What? Don't put words in my mouth; the Senator isn't aboard. We've been forced to ask a number of our guests to shift around, you among them. The new section, you know. Before it can we welded on, all compartments and spaces adjacent to ring one-thirty must be evacuated. So we have to double up temporarily to make room for our displaced guests. Your compartment will have three families in it, as I recall. For a short while, that is."

"I see. Then it was just an oversight that I was not told where to move?"

"Oh, I'm sure you were told."

"I surely was not. Will you please tell me my new address?"

"Doctor, do you expect me to carry housing assignments in my head? Go wait outside and someone will look it up and tell-you."

I ignored his suggestion/order. "Yes, I do think you carry them in your head."

He snorted. "There are more than one hundred eighty thousand people in this habitat. I have assistants and computers for such details."

"I'm sure you do. But you have given me strong reason to think that you do have such details in your head... when they interest you. I'll give an example. My wife was not introduced to you. Mungerson Fitts did not know her name, so he could not have told you. But you knew without being told. You knew her name and what compartment she lived in. Did live in, I mean, until you had her locked out. Is that how you apply the Golden Rule, Mr. Sethos? By kicking out your guests without even the courtesy of warning them ahead of time?"

"Doctor, are you trying to pick a fight?"

"No, I'm trying to find out why you have been hassling us. Bullying us. Persecuting us. You and I both know that it has nothing to do with the temporary dislocations caused by bringing the new section up to spin and welded on; that's certain ... because the new section has been building for over three years and you've known for at least a year the date you were going to bring it up to spin... yet you had me kicked out of my compartment with less than thirty minutes' warning. My wife you treated even worse; you simply locked her out, no warning at all. Sethos, you aren't just moving us around to allow for attaching the new section. If that were true, we would have been told at least a month ago, along with temporary reassignments and with dates for moving into new permanent quarters. No, you're rousting us right out of Golden Rule habitat ... and I want to know why!"