“Deathwish Drang …” he breathed.
“The same.”
“Save me!” Bill gasped, running to G.B.I. agent Pinkerton and hugging him about the knees.
“Save you?” Pinkerton laughed, and kneed Bill under the jaw so that he sprawled backward. “I’m the one who called them. We checked your record, boy, and found out that you are in a heap of trouble. You have been AWOL from the troopers for a year now, and we don’t want any deserters on our team.”
“But I worked for you-helped you-”
“Take him away,” Pinkerton said, and turned his back.
“There’s no justice,” Bill moaned, as the hated fingers sank into his arms again.
“Of course not,” Deathwish told him, “you weren’t expecting any, were you?”
They dragged him away.
E=mc2 OR BUST
I
“I want a lawyer, I have to have a lawyer! I demand my rights!” Bill hammered on the bars of the cell with the chipped bowl that they had served his evening meal of bread and water in, shouting loudly for attention. No one came in answer to his call, and finally, hoarse, tired, and depressed, he lay down on the knobbed plastic bunk and stared up at the metal ceiling. Sunk in misery, he stared at the hook for long minutes before it finally penetrated. A hook? Why a hook here? Even in his apathy it bothered him, just as it had bothered him when they gave him a stout plastic belt with a sturdy buckle for his shoddy prison dungarees. Who wears a belt with one-piece dungarees? They had taken everything from him and supplied him only with paper slippers, crumpled dungarees, and a fine belt. Why? And why was there a sturdy great hook penetrating through the unbroken smoothness of the ceiling?
“I’m saved!” Bill screamed, and leaped up, balancing on the end of the bunk and whipping off the belt. There was a hole in the strap end of the belt that fitted neatly over the hook. While the buckle made a beautiful slip knot for a loop on the other end that would fit lovingly around his neck. And he could slip it over his head, seat the buckle under his ear, kick off from the bunk and strangle painfully with his toes a full foot above the floor. It was perfect.
“It is perfect!” he shouted happily, and jumped off the bunk and ran in circles under the noose, going yeow-yeow-yeow by flapping his hand in front of his mouth. “I’m not stuck, cooked, through, and finished. They want me to knock myself off to make things easy for them.”
This time he lay back on the bunk, smiling happily, and tried to think it out. There had to be a chance he could wriggle out of this thing alive, or they wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble to give him an opportunity to hang himself. Or could they be playing a double, subtle game? Allowing him hope where none existed? No, this was impossible. They had a lot of attributes: pettiness, selfishness, anger, vengefulness, superiority, power-lust, the list was almost endless; but one thing was certain-subtlety was not on it. They? For the first time in his life Bill wondered who they were. Everyone blamed everything on them, everyone knew that they would cause trouble. He even knew from experience what they were like. But who were they? A footstep shuffled outside the door, and he looked over to see Deathwish Drang glowering in at him.
“Who are they?” Bill asked.
“They are everyone who wants to be one of them,” Deathwish said philosophically twanging a tusk. “They are both a state of mind and an institution.”
“Don’t give me any of that mystical bowb! A straight answer to a straight question now.”
“I am being straight,” Deathwish said, reeking of sincerity. “They die off and are replaced, but the institution of theyness goes on.”
“I’m sorry I asked,” Bill said, sidling over so he could whisper through the bars. “I need a lawyer, Deathwish old buddy. Can you find me a good lawyer?”
“They’ll appoint a lawyer for you.”
Bill made the rudest noise he possibly could. “Yeah, and we know just what will happen with that lawyer. I need a lawyer to help me. And I have money to pay him-”