Allan Cole: Sten

The robot bent forward, heatgun ready. Sten felt a sudden bout of nausea wash over him. This would be it for the rest of his life, listening to the gray blob preach.

Sten lurched forward. The seat slid into the robot, and the machine yowled as it welded itself to seat and mover frame.

"Help! Help! I'm trapped," it whined. "Notify master control."

Sten blinked. Then hid a grin. "Sure. Right away."

He ambled slowly off the mover to the line control panel, took a deep breath, and punched the TASK COMPLETE button. The doors of the tube slid closed, and the mover slid toward the freight tube. "Notify. . .control. . .help. . .help. . ." And for the first time since he'd been promoted to full worker, Sten felt the satisfaction of a job well done.

STEN HAD BEEN "sick" for over a week before the Counselor showed up.

Actually, he really had been sick the first day. Scared sick that somebody might have discovered his little game with the robot. It'd be considered outright sabotage, he was sure. If he was lucky, they'd put him under a mind-probe and just burn away any areas that didn't seem to fit the Ideal Worker Profile.

But there probably was something worse. There usually was on Vulcan. Sten wasn't sure what something worse could be. He had heard stories about hellshops, where incorrigibles were sent. But nobody knew anybody who'd actually been sent to such a shop. Maybe the stories were just that—or maybe nobody ever came back from those places. Sten wondered sometimes if he wouldn't rather just be brainburned and turned into a vegetable.

The second day, Sten woke up smiling. He realized that nobody'd ever figure out what had happened to the robot. So he celebrated by staying home again, lounging in bed until two hours past shift-start. Then he dug out a few of the luxury food items his parents had saved and just stared at the nonsnowing wall mural. He knew better than to stick his card in the vid and watch a reel, or to go out to a rec area. That'd make it even easier for the Company to figure out that he was malingering.

The flakes hanging in the air on the mural fascinated Sten. Frozen water, falling from the sky. It didn't seem very sanitary. Sten wondered if there was any way at all that he could get offworld. Even though those snowflakes didn't look very practical, they might be something to see. Anything might be something to see—as long as it was away from the Company and Vulcan.

By the third day, he'd decided he wasn't going to work anymore. Sten didn't know how long he was going to get away with malingering. Or what would happen to him when they caught him. He just sat. Thinking about the snowflakes and what it would be like to walk in them, with no card in his pocket that said where he was supposed to be and what he was supposed to do when he got there. He'd just learned that if he squinched his eyes a bit, the snowflakes would almost move again, when the door buzzer went off.

He didn't move. The door buzzed again. "Sten," the Counselor shouted through the panel, "I know you're there. Let me in. Everything is fine. We'll work it out. Together. Just open the door. Everything is fine."

Sten knew it wasn't. But finally he pulled himself up and walked toward the door. The buzzer sounded again. Then something started fumbling in the Identilock. Sten waited at the door.

Then he hesitated, and moved to one side. The Identilock clicked, and the door slid open. The Counselor stepped inside. His mouth was already open, saying something. Sten leaped, both hands clubbed high above him. The blow caught the Counselor on the side of his head, slamming him into the wall. The Counselor slid down the panel and thumped to the floor. He didn't move. His mouth was still open. Sten began to shake.

But suddenly, he felt calm; he'd eliminated all the possibilities now. He could do only one thing. He stooped over the unconscious Counselor and riffled quickly through his pockets. Sten found and pocketed the man's card. If he used that instead of his own, it might take Control a little longer to track him down. It'd also give him entry into areas forbidden by Sten's Mig card.

Sten turned and looked around the three bare rooms. Whatever happened next, it would be the last time he'd ever see them. Then he ran out the door, heading for the slideway, the spaceport, and some way off Vulcan.

He felt out of place the moment he stepped off the slideway. The people had begun to change. Only a few Migs were visible, conspicuous in their drab coveralls. The rest were richer and flashier: Techs, clerks, administrators, and here and there the sparkle of strange offworld costumes.

Sten hurried over to a clothes-dispensing machine, slid the Counselor's card into the slot and held his breath. Would the alarms go off now? Were Sociopatrolmen already hurrying to the platform?

The machine burped at him and began displaying its choices. Sten punched the first thing in his size that looked male, and a package plopped into a tray. He grabbed it and pushed his way through the crowd into a rest area.

Sten carded his way into the spaceport administration center, trying to look as if he belonged there. He had to do something about the Counselor's card soon. Everywhere he went, he was leaving a trail as wide as a computer printout sheet.

Nearby, an old, fat clerk was banging at a narcobeer dispenser. "Clotting machine. Telling me I don't have the clotting credits to. . ."

Sten ambled up to him, bored but slightly curious. The man was drunk and probably so broke that the central computer was cutting him off.

"It's sunspots," Sten said.

The clerk bleared up at him. "Think so?"

"Sure. Same thing happened to me last off-shift. Here. Try my card. Maybe a different one will unjam it."

The clerk nodded and Sten pushed a button and the man's card slid out. He took it and inserted the Counselor's card. A minute later the clerk was happily on his way, chugging a narcobeer.

Three hours later they grabbed him. The clerk was sitting in his favorite hangout, getting pleasantly potted when what seemed like six regiments of Sociopatrolmen burst in. Before he had time to lower his glass, he was beaten, trussed, and on his way to an interrogation center.

In front, the chief Sociopatrolman peered victoriously at the clerk's ID card. Except, of course, it wasn't his. It was the Counselor's.

Sten could feel it as soon as he entered the spaceport Visitors' Center. Even on the run, there was a sense of—well, what it was exactly, he couldn't tell. But he thought it might be freedom.

He moved through the exotic crowd—everything from aliens and diplomats to stocky merchantmen and deep-space sailors. Even the talk was strange: star systems and warp drive, antimatter engines and Imperial intrigue.

Sten edged past a joygirl into a seedy tavern. He elbowed his way through the sailors and found an empty space at the bar. A sailor next to him was griping to a buddy.

"The nerf lieutenant just ignores me. Can you believe that? Me! A projector with fifteen damned years at the clotting sig-board."

His friend shook his head. "They're all the same. Two years in the baby brass academy and they think they know it all."

"So get this," said the first man. "I report blips and he says no reason there should be blips. I tell him there's blips anyway. Few minutes later we hit the meteor swarm. We had junk in our teeth and junk comin' out our drive tubes.

"Pilot pulled us out just in time. Slammed us into an evasion spiral almost took the captain's drawers off."

Sten got his drink—paying with one of his few credit tokens—and moved down the bar. A group of sailors caught his eye. They were huddled around a table, talking quietly and sipping at their drinks instead of knocking them back like the others. They were in fresh clothes, cleanshaven, and had the look of men trying to shake off hangovers in a hurry.