The Gateway to Never Read online

  "That is correct, sir."

  Grimes got into the front of the car with Dunbar. Giles said that he was going aboard Rim Malemute to see Williams to handle the arrival formalities. Dunbar drove off, wasting no time.

  Grimes looked with interest at the berthed ships as they passed them—Rim Cougar, Rim Panther, the Shakespearean Line's Othello, the Waverley Royal Mail's freighter Countess of Ayrshire. It could have been Port Forlorn, but for the weather. The sky overhead was blue, with a very few white clouds, not a dismal gray overcast—mainly natural, but contributed to by the smoke from the towering stacks of Lorn's heavy industry. Ahead, once they were through the main gates, was the city of Port Last, and beyond the white and red buildings towered the snowcapped pinnacles of the Ultimate Range. The road ran straight as an arrow through fields of wheat, some still green and some already golden. In these latter the harvesters, looking like huge mechanical insects, were busily working.

  Ultimo, thought Grimes. The Granary of the Rim Worlds. A planet of farmers. A world where anything, anything at all, is welcome as long as it breaks the deadly monotony. Like Elsinore, another farming world, but dairy products rather than grain, where compulsive gambling is the main social problem. . . .

  He asked Dunbar, "Where have they got young Pleshoff?"

  "In the Central Jail, Commodore. I could have got him out on bail, but thought that if I did he'd be getting into more trouble."

  "What are the charges, exactly?"

  "As far as we're concerned, mutiny. As far as the civil authorities are concerned, drug addiction. I should have liked to have held Captain Gaynes and his Chief Officer as witnesses—but, as you know, Rim Caribou was already behind schedule and it would have taken too much time to get reliefs for them. But they left affidavits."

  "Mphm. What do you think, Captain?"

  "What can I think? The young fool was in the control room, testing gear an hour before lift-off, while Gaynes was in my office and the Chief Officer was seeing the ship buttoned up for space. The engineers had been doing last minute maintenance on the inertial drive, had made a test run on one twentieth power and then, with departure time so close, had left it on Stand By. Pleshoff slammed it into maximum thrust and the old Caribou went up like a rocket. Gaynes and I saw it from my office window. It shook us, I can tell you. Then Pleshoff thought he'd try his hand at a few lateral maneuvers. He wiped the radio mast off the top of the spaceport control tower. He buzzed the market place in Port Last—and it was market day, too, just to improve matters. By this time the Chief and Second Officers had managed to break into the control room. They overpowered him and got the ship back into her berth—just as the entire police force came screaming in through the spaceport gates."

  "And what does he say?"

  "That it seemed a good idea at the time."

  "Mphm. I suppose that all of us, as junior officers, have wanted to become instant captains. This drug addiction charge . . . do you think it will stick?"

  "It'll stick, all right. Pleshoff was running around with a very unsavoury bunch of kids of his own age, bearded boys and shaven-headed girls. The Blossom People, they call themselves."

  "There are Blossom People on Francisco. I suppose they modeled themselves on these originals."

  "Probably. The gang that he was mixed up in seem to have a source of supply for—what do they call the muck?—dreamy weed. Ugh!"

  "They smoke it?"

  "Yes. In long, porcelain pipes. They claim that it's not habit forming. They claim that it's no worse than alcohol, that its effects are far less injurious. They even have a religion based on it."

  "Is this . . . this dreamy weed grown locally?"

  Dunbar laughed. "On Ultimo? You must be joking, Commodore. Every square inch of soil on this planet has to nourish the sacred grain. It's smuggled in, from somewhere. The Police and the Customs are running around in small circles trying to get their paws onto the runners. But even the pushers are too smart for them."

  The car had entered the city now, was running through a wide street on either side of which were low, graceful stone houses. The houses gave way to shops, to office buildings, taller and taller as the vehicle approached the centre. And then they were in the great square, with the fountains and the statue of some Ancient Greek-looking lady proudly holding a sheaf of wheat. Surrounding the square were the official buildings—Town Hall, City Library, State Church, Aero-Space Authority, Police Headquarters, and Prison. The jail was a cylindrical tower, windowless except at ground level. It was well proportioned, graceful even—but it looked grim.

  Dunbar said, "I've warned them that we're coming. They'll let us in."

  "As long as they let us out," said Grimes.

  IV

  The police lieutenant in charge of the ground floor office eyed Grimes and Dunbar as though they were candidates for admission. "Yes?" he barked.

  "I am Captain Dunbar," said the Local Astronautical Superintendent. "This gentleman is Commodore Grimes."

  The policeman's manner softened very slightly. He asked, "And what can I do for you gentlemen?"

  "We wish to see Mr. Pleshoff. Colonel Warden said that it would be in order."

  "Oh, yes. Pleshoff." The swarthy and burly young man leafed through a book on his desk. "We still have him."

  Pleshoff, thought Grimes. With no "Mister." But if you get on the wrong side of the law you soon lose your rank and status.

  "Cell 729," muttered the lieutenant. He raised an imperious hand and a constable obeyed the summons. "Bamberger, take these visitors to see the prisoner Pleshoff."

  "It is a work period, sir."

  "I know that. But I think that the sovereign state of Ultimo can afford to dispense with his services for half an hour, or even longer."

  "Follow me, please, gentlemen," said the brawny Bamberger. He led the way to a bank of elevator doors. He addressed a grille set in the nearest one, said. "Constable Bamberger, No. 325252, with two visitors, Commodore Grimes and Captain Dunbar." Then, to his charges, "Stand beside me, please. One on either side of me." And again to the grille, "Constable Bamberger and party positioned."

  There was a flash of intense light, lasting for the briefest fraction of a second. Grimes allowed himself to wonder how he would look in the instantaneous photograph. The door slid open to reveal an empty cage. There was no control panel. The door silently shut as soon as they were all inside. Bamberger said, "Level 33." There was only the slightest tug of acceleration to indicate that they were being slowly carried upwards.

  Grimes said, "I take it that your various robots are programmed to obey only the voices of the prison staff."

  "I cannot answer that question, sir."

  "Mphm. And I suppose, too, that the elevators move very slowly unless some key word or phrase is used, so that any prisoner attempting to escape from an upper level in one cage would find that those on the ground floor had been given ample time to prepare for his reception."

  "I cannot answer that question, sir."

  "If the machinery running the elevators obeys only the voices of the guards," said Dunbar, "how could a prisoner persuade it to work for him?"

  "In the history of penology," said Grimes, "there are many instances of prisoners persuading guards to help them to escape. And not only with a knife or gun in the back."

  "I'm afraid that I can't see Pleshoff doing any bribery," said Dunbar. "Not on Rim Runners' Third Officer's salary. I couldn't do it on mine."

  "Mphm," grunted Grimes, and Bamberger looked relieved at the change of subject.

  "What work do the prisoners do?" asked Grimes.

  "Pleshoff, sir," said the constable, "is in the workroom where playmaster components are assembled. All the convicts receive full Award rates for whatever work they are doing. In the case of a prisoner not yet tried and convicted, even when undeniably guilty of the offense with which he is charged, he is allowed to keep the money he earns after the cost of his keep has been deducted. After conviction, of course, all his earnings
revert to Consolidated Revenue."

  "Mphm." Grimes turned to Dunbar. "I'm surprised that our Mr. Pleshoff hasn't been up before the Beak yet."

  "He's had to take his place in the queue, Commodore."

  "So they're keeping you busy," said Grimes to Bamberger.

  The constable's wooden face at last betrayed some emotion. "It's these Blossom People, sir. They get a lungful of dreamy weed and the things they get up to aren't at all funny. We never have the same trouble with proper criminals."

  "I suppose not. A proper criminal you just regard as one of the family."

  Bamberger gave Grimes a very nasty look, then lapsed into sulky silence.

  "But they are becoming a menace," said Dunbar. "The Blossom People, I mean."

  "I suppose they are," said Grimes. Performing aerobatics in a 3,000 ton spaceship certainly could be classed as being a menace.

  "Floor 33," announced Bamberger. He led the way out through the opening door.

  Most of Floor 33 was occupied by the workroom. Through the space ran long, slow-moving conveyor belts. Industriously engaged at these were about a hundred men, each of whom was dressed in drab gray coveralls, each of whom had his number stenciled on to the chest and back of his garment. Blue-and-silver uniformed guards strolled watchfully along the lines, and other guards stood behind mounted guns of some kind in inward-facing balconies. Those screwdrivers, thought Grimes with a twinge of apprehension, could be used as weapons. And the soldering irons. . . . But how long would a prisoner who tried to attack a guard last? Not long. He transferred his attention to an almost completed playmaster that was sliding past him. He wondered if the machine in his own home had been assembled in a place like this.

  One of the guards who had more silver braid on his sleeves than the others came to meet them. He said, "Commodore Grimes? Captain Dunbar? You wish to see Pleshoff, Number 729. You may use the refreshment room. It will not be required for general use until the next smoke, forty five minutes from now. Take these gentlemen there, Bamberger."

  "Yes, Sergeant."

  The refreshment room was grim, gray, cheerless. It contained an ice-water dispenser and dispensers for tea and coffee. Bamberger asked if they wanted a drink. Dunbar refused one. The constable drew paper cups of coffee for Grimes and himself. The fluid was lukewarm, black, and bitter and could have been an infusion of anything at all but what it was called.

  Escorted by two guards Pleshoff came in. Grimes remembered the young man, had interviewed him when he applied for a position in Rim Runners. He had been a junior officer in Trans-Galactic Clippers and had met a girl from Faraway when his ship had carried a number of Rim Worlds passengers on a cruise. He seemed to remember that Pleshoff had married the girl—yes, he had applied for an extension of leave during his honeymoon. And hadn't Pleshoff's captain mentioned to him, not so long ago, that the marriage had broken up?

  There are some men who look like spacemen, like officers, no matter what they are wearing. Pleshoff was not one of them. Out of uniform—or in the wrong uniform—he looked like a very ordinary, very frightened young man. At least he didn't look like a criminal, thought Grimes.

  The Commodore said to the guards, "Do you think that you could leave us alone with the . . . er . . . prisoner?"

  Bamberger said, "These gentlemen were vouched for by Colonel Warden."

  One of the other men asked, "Aren't you Commodore Grimes, sir? The Commodore Grimes?"

  "There's only one of me as far as I know," said Grimes. "On this Continuum."

  Bamberger was puzzled by this remark and said doubtfully, "We have to ask the Sergeant."

  But the Sergeant was agreeable, and after a few minutes Grimes, Dunbar, and Pleshoff had the refreshment room to themselves, the two superintendents seated on a hard wooden bench and the young officer facing them, perched on a chair that looked even harder than their own seat.

  V

  "And now, Mr. Pleshoff," said Grimes sternly, "what have you to say for yourself?"

  "I suppose it's no good my saying that I'm sorry, sir."

  "It's not," Grimes told him. But, he thought, I'm sorry. I'm sorry to see a youngster ruin his career.

  "I suppose, sir, that I'm finished with Rim Runners."

  "I'm afraid, Mr. Pleshoff, that you're finished in space. After what you did, your Certificate of Competency will have to be dealt with. There's no way out of it. But I don't think that we shall be pressing the mutiny charge."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "You haven't much to thank me for, Mr. Pleshoff. You're on the beach. You still have to face the drug charges. But I shall instruct our legal people to do what they can for you."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "And you might do something for me."

  "Anything I can, sir." Pleshoff was pitifully eager.

  "I'll be frank with you. Until now I've never taken this drug business seriously. I've thought, if people want to blow their minds, let 'em. It just never occurred to me that anybody in a position of trust, of responsibility, would get . . . hooked? Is that the right word?"

  "But I'm not hooked, sir. I tried the dreamy weed only once, and they told me that its effects would be for that night only."

  "And who," demanded Grimes sharply, "are they?"

  Pleshoff's immature features set into a mask of stubbornness. He muttered, "Keep them out of it. They're my friends."

  "You mean," said Grimes, "that she's your friend."

  "Yes," admitted the young man. And then the words poured out. "I've been very lonely, sir. Ever since Sheila and I broke up. Then I met this girl, here, in Port Last. It was in the park. I'd been given the afternoon off and had gone for a walk. You know how it is, sir. You meet somebody and you sort of click. She's like the girls I used to know at home. You know—more free in her talk than the girls out here on the Rim Worlds, more way out in her dress. I took her to dinner that evening. She decided on the place. A little restaurant. Intimate. Candles on the tables, and all that. The menu on a blackboard. I didn't know until then that there were such places out here. That was just the first night, of course. There were Other nights. We . . . we became friendly. And with the ship on a regular trade, coming in to Port Last every three weeks or so, I . . ." he grinned weakly, "I had it made.

  "She had other friends, of course. All in the same age group. One night she asked me round to a party at one of their places. There was music, of course, and plenty to drink, and things to nibble on, and we were all dancing some of the time, and talking some of the time. You know.

  "And then the chap who was throwing the party got up and said, 'Quiet, everybody! Silence in Court! I have an announcement!' Then he went on to say that the pusher had come good at last, and that the gateway to never was open. This didn't make any sense to me. He started passing out long, pretty, porcelain pipes, and then brought out from somewhere a can of what looked like a greenish tobacco. 'What is it?' I asked my girl. 'Where were you dragged up?' she asked me. After all we mean to each other, don't tell me that you're a block.' "

  "A block?" asked Grimes.

  "It's what they call stiff and stodgy and conventional people, sir. Well, I told her that I wasn't a block. Then she said that I must be, otherwise I'd recognize dreamy weed when I saw it. Well, I'd heard about dreamy weed, of course, but you never see it in the Academy, although when I was there, for my pre-Space training, two senior cadets were booted out for smoking it. And there's something in TG Clippers' Company's Regulations about it not being allowed aboard their ships. So I wasn't keen on trying it and said that we were lifting off the next day.

  "She told me that I'd be right as rain in the morning. She told me, too, that to get the full benefit of it you had to smoke it with somebody, somebody towards whom you felt affectionate. If I wouldn't smoke with her, she was going to smoke with . . . the name doesn't matter.

  "You know what it's like, sir. How a girl can make you do things you wouldn't do ordinarily."

  " 'Lord,' " quoted Grimes, " 'the woman tempted m
e, and I fell.' "

  "Who said that, sir?"

  "A man called Adam. Rather before your time, and even mine. But go on."

  "It was odd, sir. The smoke, I mean. She and I shared the pipe, passing it back and forth between us. It seemed that I was inhaling something of her, and that she was inhaling something of me. And it was like breathing in a fluid, a liquid, rather than a gas. A warm, sweet, very smooth liquid. And then, somehow, as we smoked we were . . . doing other things." Pleshoff blushed in embarrassment. "The people round us were . . . doing the same. But it wasn't always boys with girls. There were some boys with boys, and there were girls together. And the lights were dim, and dimmer all the time, and redder, and redder, like blood. But it wasn't frightening. It was all . . . warm, and . . . cozy. And there was a pulsing sound like a giant heartbeat. It must have been my own heart that I was hearing, or her heart, or the hearts of all of us. And we were very close, the two of us, all of us. And. . . .