"Don't shoot - I want him alive. For the moment."
I stood frozen, not breathing until the trigger fingers relaxed. Looked up and quickly found the security bug in the ceiling. Must be one in every room and corridor down here. They had been watching me all the time. A good try, Jim. The Colonel grated his teeth horribly and stabbed a finger in my direction.
"Take him. Chain him. Bind him. Bring him."
This was all done with ruthless efficiency. My toes dragged along the floor as I was whisked back to the cell, stripped at gunpoint, thrown to the floor with my black robe thrown on top of me. The door clanged shut and I was alone. Very much alone.
"Cheer up, Jim, you've been in worse trouble before," I chirped smilingly. Then snarled, "When?"
Back in the pits again. My abortive attempt at escape had only gained me a few bruises.
"This can't be it!" I shouted. "It can't all end just like this."
"It can - and it will," the Colonel's funereal voice intoned as the cell door opened again. A dozen guns were pointed at me as a guard brought in a tray with a bottle of champagne on it and a single glass.
I watched in stupefied disbelief as he twisted the cork out. There was a pop and a gush as the golden fluid filled the glass. He handed it to me.
"What's this, what's this?" I mumbled, staring wide-eyed at the rising bubbles.
"Your last request," Neuredan said. "That and a cigarette."
He took one from a package and lit it, holding it out to me. I shook my head. "I don't smoke." He ground the cigarette under his heel. "Anyway - champagne and a cigarette that's not my last request."
"Yes it is. Forms of last request are standardized by law. Drink."
I drank. It tasted all right. I belched and handed back the glass. "I'll take a refill." Anything to gain time, to think. I watched the wine being poured and my brain was dull and empty. "You never told me about the… execution."
"Do you want to know?"
"Not really."
"Then I will be pleased to tell you. I assure you that there was extensive deliberation over the correct method to be used. Thought was given to the firing squad, electrocution, poison gas - a number of possibilities were actively considered when the law was passed. But all of them involve someone pulling a switch or a trigger, and that would not be humane to the someone."
"Humane! What about the prisoner?"
"Of no importance. Your death has been decreed and will take place as soon as possible. This is what will happen. You will be taken to a sealed chamber and chained there. The entrance will be locked. After this the chamber will be flooded with water by an automatic device actuated by your body heat. It is always there, always turned on. You alone will be responsible for your own execution. Now isn't that quite humane?"
"Drowning is humane all of a sudden?"
"Possibly not. But you will be left a pistol containing a single bullet. You can commit suicide if you wish to."
I opened my mouth to tell him what I thought of their humanity, but I was seized by many hands and dragged forward before I could speak. The glass was whisked away - and so was I. Deep down to a dank chamber, walls damp with water and covered with moss. A cuff was clamped around my ankle; a chain ran from it to a staple in the wall. They all exited except for the Colonel who stood with his hand on the operating lever of the thick, undoubtedly watertight, door.
He grinned in victorious triumph, bent over and placed an antique pistol on the floor. As I dived for it the door shut and sealed with a final thud.
Was this really the end? I turned the pistol over in my hands, saw the dull shape of the single cartridge. End of Jim diGriz, end of the Stainless Steel Rat, end of everything.
There was the distant thank of a valve opening and cold water gushed down on me from a thick pipe in the ceiling. It gurgled and slopped, covering my feet, then quickly up to my ankles. When it reached my waist I lifted the gun and looked at it. Not much of a choice. The water rose steadily. Covered my chest, up to my chin. I shuddered.
Then the water stopped splashing down. It was cold and I was shivering uncontrollably. The light in the waterproof fixture revealed only stone wall, dark water.
"What are you playing at bastardacoj?" I shouted; "Humane torture to go with your humane murder?"
A moment later I got my answer. The level began to drop.
"I was right - torturers!" I bellowed. "Torture first - then murder. And you call yourself civilized. Why are you doing this?"
The last of the water gurgled down the drain and the door slowly opened. I aimed the pistol at it. I wouldn't mind drowning if I could take the cretinous colonel or the sadistic sergeant with me.
Something dark appeared through the partly open door. The gun banged and the bullet thudded into it. A briefcase.
"Cease fire!" a male voice called out. "I am your lawyer."
"He only has one bullet, you're safe," I heard the Colonel say.
The briefcase came hesitantly into the room, carried by a grayhaired man who was wearing the traditional gold-flecked and diamond decorated black suit that adorned lawyers throughout the galaxy.
"I am your court-appointed lawyer, Pederasis Narcoses."
"What good will you do me - if the trial will be after my execution?"
"None. But that is the law. I will have to interview you now to enable me to conduct your defense at the trial."
"This is madness - I'll be dead?"
"That is correct. But it is the law." He turned to the Colonel. "I must be alone with my client. That is also the law."
"You have ten minutes, no longer."
"That will suffice. Admit my assistant in five minutes. He has the court papers and the will."
The door thunked shut and Narcoses opened his briefcase and took out a plastic bottle filled with a greenish liquid. He removed the top and handed it to me.
"Drink this, all of it. I'll hold the gun."
I handed him the weapon, took the bottle, smelled it and coughed. "Horrible. Why should I drink it?"
"Because I told you to. It is of vital importance and you have no choice."
Which was true - and what difference would it make anyway?
I gulped it down. The champagne had tasted a lot better.
"I will now explain," he said, recapping the bottle and putting it back into his briefcase. "You have just drunk a thirty-day poison. This is a computer-generated complex of toxins that are neutral now - but which will kill you horribly in exactly thirty days if you are not given the antidote. Which is also computer-generated and impossible to duplicate."
He jumped back quite smartly when I leaped at him. But the chain on my ankle would not quite reach. My fingers snapped ineffectually just in front of his throat.
"If you will cease clawing at the air I will explain," Narcoses said with an air of weary sophistication. Had he done this kind of thing before I wondered? I folded my arms and stepped back.
"Much better. Although I am a lawyer licensed to practice on this planet, I am also a representative of the Galactic League."
"Wonderful. The Paskonjakians want to drown me - you poison me. I thought this was a galaxy of peace?"
"You are wasting time. I am here to free you, under certain conditions. The League has need of a criminal. One who is both skilled and reliable. Which is an oxymoron. You have proved your criminalistic ability by your almost-successful theft. The poison guarantees your reliability. Do I assume that you will cooperate? At the minimum you have a life extension of thirty days."
"Yes, sure, you're on. Not that I have a choice."
"You don't." He looked at the watch set into his little fingernail and stepped aside as the door opened. A chubby, bearded youth came in with a sheaf of papers.
"Excellent," Narcoses said. "You have the will?" The young man nodded. The door was closed and sealed again.
"Five minutes," Narcoses said.
The newcomer pulled down a zipper that sealed his onepiece suit. Took off the suit - and a lot of flesh with it. The suit was padded. He was not fat at all, but lean and muscular quite like me. When he peeled off the fake beard I realized that he looked exactly like me. I blinked rapidly as I stared at my own face.