Гарри Гаррисон - The Stainless Steel Rat (Short story, 1957)

'Had me worried there for a minute, the way you stood there rolling your eyes and waving this piece of field artillery around.'

'Who. are you?'

He smiled at the abruptness of my tone. 'Well, it doesn't matter who I am. What does matter is the organisation that I represent.'

'The Corps?'

'Exactly. The Special Corps. You didn't think I was the local police, did you? They have orders to shoot you on sight. It was only after I told them how to find you that they let the Corps come along on the job. I have some of my men in the building, they're the ones who herded you up here. The rest are all locals with itchy trigger fingers.'

It wasn't very flattering but it was true. I had been pushed around like a class M robot, with every move charted in advance. The old boy behind the desk - for the first time I realised he was about sixty-five - really had my number. The game was over.

'All right Mr Detective, you have me so there is no sense in gloating. What's next on the programme? Psychological reorientation, lobotomy – or just plain firing squad?'

'None of those I'm afraid. I am here to offer you a job on the Corps.'

The whole thing was so ludicrous that I almost fell out of the chair laughing. Me. James diGriz, the interplanet thief working as a policeman. It was just too funny. The other one sat patiently, waiting until I was through.

'I will admit it has its ludicrous side - but only at first glance. If you stop to think, you will have to admit that who is better qualified to catch a thief then another thief?'

There was more than a little truth in that, but I wasn't buying my freedom by turning stool pigeon.

'An interesting offer, but I'm not getting out of this by playing the rat. There is even a code among thieves, you know.'

That made him angry. He was bigger than he looked sitting down and the fist he shook in my face was as large as a shoe.

'What kind of stupidity do you call that? It sounds like a line out of a TV thriller. You've never met another crook in your whole life and you know it! And if you did you would cheerfully turn him in if you could make a profit on the deal. The entire essence of your life is individualism - that and the excitement of doing what others can't do. Well that's over now, and you better start admitting it to yourself. You can no longer be the interplanet playboy you used to be - but you do a job that will require every bit of your special talents and abilities. Have you ever killed a man?'

His change of pace caught me off guard, I stumbled out an answer.

'No... not that I know of.'

'Well you haven't, if that will make you sleep any better at night. You're not a homicidal, I checked that on your record before I came out after you. That is why I know you will join the Corps and get a great deal of pleasure out of going after the other kind of criminal who is sick, not just socially protesting. The man who can kill and enjoy it.'

He was too convincing, he had all the answers. I had only one more argument and I threw it in with the air of a last ditch defence.

'What about the Corps, if they ever find out you are hiring half-reformed criminals to do your dirty work we will both be shot at dawn.'

This time it was his turn to laugh. I could see nothing funny so I ignored him until he was finished.

'In the first place my boy, I am the Corps - at least the man at the top - and what do you think my name is? Harold Peters Inskipp, that's what it is!'

'Not the Inskipp that -'

'The same. Inskipp the Uncatchable. The man who looted the Pharsydion II in mid-flight and pulled all those others deals I'm sure you read about in your misspent youth. I was recruited just the way you were.’

He had me on the ropes. He must have seen my rolling eyes, so he moved in for the kill.

'And who do you think the rest of our agents are? I don't mean the bright-eyed grads of our technical schools, like the ones on my squad downstairs, I mean the full agents. The men who plan the operations, do the preliminary fieldwork and see that everything comes off smoothly. They're crooks. All crooks. The better they were on their own, the better a job they do for the Corps. It's a great, big, brawling universe and you would be surprised at some of the problems that come up. The only men we can recruit to do the job are the ones who have already succeeded at it.

'Are you on?'

It had happened too fast and I hadn't had time to think, I would probably go on arguing for an hour. But way down in the back of my mind the decision had been made. I was going to do it, I couldn't say no.

There was the beginning of a warm glow, too. The human race is gregarious, I knew that even though I had been denying it for years.

I was going to keep on doing the loneliest job in the universe - only I wasn't going to be doing it alone.