"Harry Harrison - SSR 01 - The Stainless Steel Rat" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

would have been notified and I would have been pinned before I had taken a step. You can't outmove
a computer-robot combination, not when they move and react in micro-seconds - but you can outthink
them. I had done it again.
A cab took me about ten blocks away. I waited until it was out of sight then took another one.
It wasn't until I was in the third cab that I felt safe enough to go to the space terminal. The
sounds of sirens were growing fainter and fainter behind me and only an occasional police car tore
by in the opposite direction.
They were sure making a big fuss over a little larceny, but that's the way it goes on these
overcivilized worlds. Crime is such a rarity now that the police really get carried away when they
run across some. In a way I can't blame them, giving out traffic tickets must be an awful dull
job. I really believe they ought to thank me for putting a little excitement in their otherwise
dull lives.


Chapter 2

It was a nice ride to the spaceport, being located, of course, far out of town. I had time to
lean back and watch the scenery and gather my thoughts. Even time to be a little philosophical.
For one thing I could enjoy a good cigar again, I smoked only cigarettes in my other personality
and never violated that personality, even in strictest privacy. The cigars were still fresh in the
pocket humidor where I had put them six months ago. I sucked a long mouthful and blew the smoke
out at the flashing scenery. It was good to be off the job, just about as good as being on it. I
could never make my mind up which period I enjoyed more - I guess they are both right at the time.
My life is so different from that of the overwhelming majority of people in our society that I
doubt if I could even explain it to them. They exist in a fat, rich union of worlds that have
almost forgotten the, meaning of the word crime. There are few malcontents and even fewer that are
socially maladjusted. The few of these that are born, in spite of centuries of genetic control,
are caught early and the aberration quickly adjusted. Some don't show their weakness until they
are adults, they are the ones who try their hand at petty crime - burglary, shoplifting or such.
They get away with it for a week or two or a month or two, depending on the degree of their native
intelligence. But sure as atomic decay - and just as predestined - the police reach out and pull
them in.
That is almost the full extent of crime in our organized, dandified society. Ninety-nine per
cent of it, let's say. It is that last and vital one per cent that keeps the police departments in
business. That one per cent is me, and a handful of men scattered around the galaxy. Theoretically
we can't exist, and if we do exist we can't operate - but we do. We are the rats in the
wainscoting of society - we operate outside of their barriers and outside of their rules. Society
had more rats when the rules were looser; just as the old wooden buildings had more rats than the
concrete buildings that came later. But they still had rats. Now that society is all ferroconcrete
and stainless steel there are fewer gaps between the joints, and it takes a smart rat to find
them. A stainless steel rat is right at home in this environment.
It is a proud and lonely thing to be a stainless steel rat - and it is the greatest experience
in the galaxy if you can get away with it. The sociological experts can't seem to agree why we
exist, some even doubt that we do. The most widely accepted theory says that we are victims of
delayed psychological disturbance that shows no evidence in childhood when it can be detected and
corrected and only appears later in life. I have naturally given a lot of thought to the topic and
I don't hold with that idea at all.


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