“But you’ve always said that my quest was ridiculous,” Simon mumbled. “Now you want me to take it up again. Is there no pleasing you?”
“I don’t want you to be doing something so it’ll please me,” she said. “Anyway, I was happier when you had a goal, a worthwhile goal, I mean. I didn’t think, and still don’t, that you’ll ever get there. But you were happy trying to get there. And so I was happy because you were happy. Or as happy as anyone can expect to be in this world. Anyway, I like to travel, and I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Simon said, and he burst into tears. After wiping his eye and blowing his nose, he said, “O.K. I’ll do it. And I’ll quit drinking forever.”
“Make that vow when you’re sober,” she said. “Come on. Let’s get off this swinery.”
19
THE PRISON PLANET
At that moment, they were surrounded by a dozen men. These wore tight-fitting manure-colored uniforms and had matching faces. Their eyes looked as if they were covered with a semiopaque horn. This was because the eyes had seen too much and had grown a protective shield. Or so it seemed to Simon in his intoxication. Sometimes a drunk does have flashes of perception, even if he usually doesn’t remember them.
“What’s the trouble, officers?” Simon said.
“You two are under arrest,” their chief said.
“On what charge?” Chworktap said in a ringing voice. She didn’t look at them. She was estimating the distance to the ship. But Simon and his pets were in no shape to run. Anyway, the dog and the owl were already in custody; some men were putting them in a wheeled cage. Simon would never desert them.
“The man is charged with cruelty to animals,” the chief said. “You’re charged with illegal flight from your master on Zelpst and theft of a spaceship.”
Chworktap exploded into attack. Later, she told Simon that she meant to get to the spaceship herself and then use it to chase the policemen away while Simon got his pets aboard. At the moment, she had no time for explanations. A chop of the edge of a palm against a neck, a kick in the crotch, stiff fingers in a soft liquor-and-food-sodden belly, a kick against a knee, and an elbow in a throat later, Chworktap was off and running. The chief, however, was a veteran who seldom lost his calm. He had stepped out of the area of furious activity, and as Chworktap sped away, far too fast to be caught, he pulled out his revolver. Chworktap fell a moment later with a bullet in her leg.
Additional charges were issued. Resisting arrest and injuring officers was a serious crime. Simon, though he had not moved during the carnage or flight, was charged with being an accessory before, during, and after the fact. That he had not the slightest idea that Chworktap was going to attack and that he had not tried to help her did not matter. Not assisting the officers was the same as aiding and abetting Chworktap.
After Chworktap’s wound was tended to, the two aliens, with their animals, were carried off to a night court, stood before a judge for four minutes, and then were taken for a long ride. At the end, they got out of the paddy wagon before an immense building. This was of stone and cement, ten stories high, and a mile square. It was used mainly to hold people waiting to be tried. They were marched in, Chworktap hobbling, fingerprinted, photographed, made to strip and shower, and taken into a room where they were given medical examinations. A doctor also probed their anuses and Chworktap’s vagina for concealed weapons and drugs. Then they were taken up an elevator to the top story, and all four were put into a cell. This was a room ten feet wide, twenty feet long, and eight feet high. It had a big comfortable bed, several over-stuffed chairs, a table with a vase of fresh flowers, a refrigerator holding cold meats, bread, butter, and beer, a washbasin and toilet, a rack of magazines and paperback books, a record player and records, a radio, and a telephone.
“Not bad,” thought Simon as the iron door was locked behind him.
The bed was full of fleas, the chairs concealed several families of mice, the flowers, food, and beer were plastic, the washbasin faucets gave only cold water, the toilet tended to back up, the magazines and books had only blank pages, the record player and radio were empty cases, and the telephone was to be used in emergency cases only.
“How come?” Simon asked a guard.
“The state can’t afford the real thing,” the guard said. “The fake things are to give a similitude of comfort and home; they’re provided to buck up your morale.”
The local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals had accused Simon of making his pets alcoholics. Chworktap’s master on Zelpst was trying to get her extradited.
“I can beat the rap,” Simon said. “I never gave the animals a single drink. It was those barflies, the bums.”
“I can beat my case in the courts in a few minutes,” Chworktap said. She looked smug.
There wasn’t any chance of being declared innocent on the resistance and flight charges. But Chworktap was sure that she could plead extenuating circumstances and get off with a light or suspended sentence.
“If justice is as slow here as on Earth,” Simon said, “we’ll have to put up with this dump for at least a month. Maybe two.”
Actually, it was ten years.
It would have been twenty if Simon and Chworktap had not been special cases.
The backlog constipating the courts was basically due to one thing. This was a law requiring every prisoner to be completely rehabilitated before being released. A secondary reason, almost as important as the primary, was the strict enforcement of the laws. On Earth, the police had let a lot of things go by because they didn’t consider them important enough. To arrest everybody who spat on the sidewalks or broke traffic laws or committed adultery would mean arresting the entire population. There weren’t enough policemen for this, and even if there had been they wouldn’t have done so. They would have been tied up with an incredible amount of paperwork.
The Goolgeases, however, thought differently. What use having laws if they weren’t enforced? And what use the enforcement if the offender got off lightly? Moreover, to protect the accused from himself, no one was allowed to plead guilty. This meant that even parking violations had to be tried in court.
When Simon entered jail, one-eighth of the population was behind bars and another eighth was composed of prison guards and administration. The police made up another eighth. The taxes to support the justice department and penal institutions were enormous. To make it worse, a person could go to jail if he couldn’t pay his taxes, and many couldn’t. The more who were jailed for failing to pay taxes, the greater the burden on those outside.
“There’s something to be said for indifference to justice after all,” Simon said.
The economic system was bent when Simon went into custody. By the time his trial came up, it was broken. This was because the giant corporations had shifted their industries to the prisons, where they could get cheap employees. The prison industries had financed the campaigns of both candidates for the presidency and the senate to ensure that the system would remain in force. This fact was eventually exposed, and the presidentelect, the incumbent, and many corporation heads went to jail. But the new president was taking payoffs, too. At least, everybody thought so.
Meantime, Simon and Chworktap weren’t getting along together at all. Except for an hour of exercise out in the yard, they never got to talk to anybody else. Being alone together on a honeymoon is all right for a couple. But if this condition is extended for over a week, the couple gets on each other’s nerves. Moreover, Simon had to console himself with his banjo, and this caused Anubis to howl and the owl to have diarrhoea. Chworktap complained bitterly about the mess.