Damon Knight - Orbit 19

No. Nothing seems to be wrong with him. I could have HQ ask him, I suppose—there’s a speaker set into the concrete post not two feet above his head—but if my suspicions are well-founded, that would only drive him into someone else’s area, and give someone else the points. I’ll wait; he can make the first move.

Dammit! He’s going for the hubcaps of the Lincoln Continental parked ten yards north of me. As a precautionary measure, I ask the BMV computer for the name and description of the car’s owner. It comes back in eighteen seconds: “Mrs. Esmeralda Washington, age sixty-eight, height . . .” but I stop listening. I wait till he comes around the front of the car, and then I squeeze the trigger. The hubcaps clatter on the concrete. One of them rolls fifteen feet on its edge, and I mark it mentally so that it can be retrieved later. Then I put in the call to HQ requesting a cruiser.

It arrives in less than two minutes. One cop sprints to the inert form on the sidewalk while the other throws me a mock salute. I blink my searchlight at him. It’s not much, but it’s the best I can do in the way of repartee. He approaches the pillar, selects a key from the jingling ring on his belt, and unlocks the metal door. Inside is the video-tape cassette that the D.A. will use as evidence in court.

As the cruiser glides away, my point board flickers briefly, then settles down to display a new reading: granted—4789. pending— 2753. My instant curse is a ritual reply. It was a ten-point bust, added to the pending column because I don’t get official credit until after conviction and all appeals. My guess is that this one won’t take long—few people contest petty larceny charges.

Five thousand two hundred eleven points to go. Or eight years. The sentence was ten thousand points, or ten years, whichever came first. I’ve been up here for just about two years.

All things considered, it’s not such a bad life. The container is a little cramped, but I don’t need much space, and I can’t move freely, anyway. I’m connected to dozens of tubes—for feeding, waste removal, and oxygen supply—and an assortment of wires links me to the equipment that makes me semi-superhuman. Like the auto-focusing binoculars, with their infrared attachments and their various filters. My mike can monitor the heartbeat of a mouse fifty yards away, with a filter to block out the traffic noise. And the gun will bring down anything smaller than a Tyrannosaurus Rex. About the only thing I don’t have is a sense of smell, for which I’m grateful. I doubt if this place smells very good.

They tell me that if I serve the entire ten years, I’ll cost the city a few cents more than a hundred thousand dollars. In one sense, I may have already paid for myself: people aren’t afraid to be out at night anymore. The street was bustling till long after midnight. The Merchants’ Association even awarded me a plaque for having contributed to their economic renaissance. That’s something.

I suppose that if cops did my job, they’d have to stash me in a prison, and that’d cost. Plus cops wouldn’t do the job as well: they can be convinced to look the other way. Money’ll do it for some, threats for others. Nothing will do it for me.

Then, of course, there’s the incentive for positive law enforcement. If some poor bastard in a uniform stumbles into a tight spot while he’s walking his beat, he’s got everything to lose and precious little to gain by going for his gun. It’s in his best interests to stick up his hands and let the bad guys go on with what they were doing—that is, if he wants to see his family and friends again. But me . . . my container is bullet-and bomb-proof; the life-support system is armor-plated; and every bust brings me that much closer to freedom. I’m hungrier than any flatfoot ever has been.

Finally, from the city’s point of view, my presence high above the street is an A-1 deterrent. I’m invisible to the people on the ground, who can’t tell where I’m looking. All they know is that I’m up here, ready for any kind of action, from a purse-snatch to a street riot, and equipped with video-tape cameras that will document whatever charges I make. That makes thema little nervous; it tends to keep them on the right side of the law.

So I can’t understand why some of them go ahead and commit crimes anyway. It’s possible that they haven’t read the newspaper articles about my kind, but damn near every radio or TV news broadcast includes the familiar report: “Watchtower Number —, on — Street, this afternoon captured . .

My only theory is that would-be street criminals are stupid. I, for one, wasn’t too bright. I figured that since mine was an indoor job, the tower wouldn’t see it, and that once I got onto the street, I could melt into the crowd. Didn’t work that way. I thought it did, up until I turned a corner and got blasted with the damn stun. The towers had just been keeping me in view, waiting for my victim to make a positive ID. After a couple minutes, they got it, and then I got it.

A perfect example is the guy who’s in the lobby of the apartment building across the street. He’s betting that since I can’t see him, I don’t know he’s there. He’s forgotten about my infrareds and my parabolic mike. I noticed his body heat an hour ago, so I’ve been listening carefully. Like an idiot, he talks to himself. He’s waiting for somebody to come late, and may be a little drunk. He’ll rob whoever it is, and then try to saunter down the street as though he belonged here. Doesn’t he realize that I know all the residents of my area?

The rest of the street is dead. At this time of night, nothing moves but rats, cockroaches, and windblown papers. It’s a good time to fit in some therapy. Not that I want to, but if I don’t do it before the end of my shift, they’ll dock me ten points. Since that’s all I’ve earned so far tonight, I’m not about to risk losing it.

With a resigned sigh, I press the button. The shadow-dappled street scene fades from my vision and is replaced by a snug, warmly-lit living room. I blink, and lay down my book. My name is now Michael Takser; I’m a fifty-three-year-old shoe salesman who’s just married off his last daughter. My eyes wander around the familiar room, picking out the frayed furniture, the shabby carpet, the cracked plaster. I think of the few dollars I have in the bank, and of how they’ll grow now that I face no more major expenses.

There’s a knock on the door. My wife calls, “Who is it, Mike?” from the kitchen, and I tell her, as I always do, “I don’t know, I haven’t answered it yet.” I sense, of course, the kind of visitor it is— the therapy persona isn’t strong enough to blank out all knowledge of what’s happening. But it does override my anxieties, and make me step across the bottle-green rug and swing the door open.

There are three of them, all in their twenties, and the first one jabs the barrel of his revolver into my stomach. My pained grunt brings Nancy from the kitchen, still drying her hands on a dish towel. She gasps, and the towel flutters to the floor like a duck shot out of the sky. The last intruder closes the door and smiles. He has bad teeth.

“What do you want?” I mutter from my doubled-over stance.

“For starters,” says their leader, smoothing his greasy black hair, “all the cash you got would be nice.”

I give them that, naturally, and also a suitcase into which they load all our liquor. They remember that my wife might have jewelry. They’re very patient, and don’t make fun of her for crying while she tugs her wedding ring off her pudgy finger. After unplugging the TV, they decide it’s too big to carry away, so one of them hurls the marble ashtray into the glass and it implodes. Like a starter’s gun, the noise sets them off. Five minutes later, my apartment is a shambles. I’m neither excited nor outraged; I’m too stunned. My mind won’t behave. It looks at the splintered dining room table and computes how many salesmanly smiles will be needed before I can replace it. It measures the pile of shattered china and tells me how many sweaty feet I’ll smell before we can eat off something like it. It weighs the rubbish that used to give ease to our lives, and balances it against my remaining years. I start to shake my head in sorrow, but the pistol barrel cuts across my temple and drops me to the floor. I’m only vaguely aware that they’re pushing my wife into the bedroom.