Or did I?
Wasn't it perhaps a matter of knowing that all of it wasn't real and
that the safety cutoffs in even a free-choice model of a Dream Machine
couldn't let me come to any real harm? I had been suspiciously brave,
disarming a dedicated maniac. With only an hour to spare for gym a day,
I could barely press 350 pounds. I was hardly in shape for personal
combat.
On the other hand, maybe I actually wanted something to go wrong so my
sleep sentence would be extended. Or was it that, in some sane part of
my mind, I wanted release from unreality badly enough to take any risk
to prove that I was morally capable of returning to the real world?
It was a carrousel and I couldn't catch the brass ring no matter how
many turns I went spinning through.
I hardly heard Horbit when he half-shouted at me as my men led him from
the room. Glancing up sharply, I saw him straining purposefully against
the bonds of muscle and narcotic that held him.
"You have to send me back now, Warden," he was shrilling. "You have to!
I tried to coerce you with a gun. That's a crime, Warden--you _know_
that's a crime! I have to be put to sleep!"
Keller flicked his mustache with a thick thumbnail. "How about that?
You won't let a guy back into the sleepy-bye pads, so he pulls a gun
on you to make you, and _that_ makes him eligible. He couldn't lose,
Warden. No, sir, he had it made."
My answer to Keller was forming, building up in my jaw muscles, but I
took a pill and it went away.
"Hold him in the detention quarters," I said finally. "I'm going to
make a study of this."
Keller winked knowingly and sauntered out of the office, his left hand
swinging the blackjack the Committee had taken away from him a decade
before.
The problem of what to do with Keller wasn't particularly atypical of
the ones I had to solve daily and I wasn't going to let that worry me.
Much.
I pressed my button to let Mrs. Engle know I was ready for the next
interview.
* * * * *
They came. There were the hysterical relatives, the wives and mothers
and brothers who demanded that their kin be Awakened because they were
special cases, not really guilty, or needed at home, or possessed of
such awesome talents and qualities as to be exempt from the laws of
lesser men.
Once in a while I granted a parole for a prisoner to see a dying mother
or if some important project was falling apart without his help, but
most of the time I just sat with my eyes propped open, letting a sea of
vindictive screeching and beseeching wailings wash around me.
The relatives and legal talent were spaced with hungry-eyed mystics
who were convinced they could contemplate God and their navels
both conscientiously as an incarnation of Gautama. To risk sounding
religiously intolerant, I usually kicked these out pretty swiftly.
The onetime inmate who wanted back in after a reprieve was fairly rare.
Few of them ever got _that_ crazy.
But it was my luck to get another the same day, _the_ day for me, as
Horbit.
Paulson was a tall, lean man with sad eyes. The clock above his sharp
shoulder bone said five till noon. I didn't expect him to take much out
of my lunch hour.
"Warden," Paulson said, "I've decided to give myself up. I murdered a
blind beggar the other night."
"For his pencils?" I asked.
Paulson shifted uneasily. "No, sir. For his money. I needed some extra
cash and I was stronger than he was, so why shouldn't I take it?"
I examined the projection of his file. He was an embezzler, not a
violent man. He had served his time and been released. Conceivably he
might embezzle again, but the Committee saw to it that temptation was
never again placed in his path. He would not commit a crime of violence.
"Look, Paulson," I said, a trifle testily, "if you have so little
conscience as to kill a blind old man for a few dollars, where do you
suddenly get enough guilt feelings to cause you to give yourself up?"
Paulson tried his insufficient best to smile evilly. "It wasn't
conscience, Warden. I never lie awake a minute whenever I kill
anybody. It's just--well, Dreaming isn't so bad. Last time I was Allen
Pinkerton, the detective. It was exciting. A lot more exciting than the
kind of life I lead."
I nodded solemnly. "Yes, no doubt strangling old men in the streets can
be pretty dull for a red-blooded man of action."
"Yes," Paulson said earnestly, "it does get to be a humdrum routine.
I've been experimenting with all sorts of murders, but I just don't
seem to get much of a kick out of them now. I'd like to try it from the
other end as Pinkerton again. Of course, if you can't arrange it, I
guess I'll have to go out and see what I can do with, say, an ax." His
eye glittered almost convincingly.
"Paulson, you know I could have you watched night and day if I thought
you really were a murderer. But I can't send you back to the sleep
vaults without proof and conviction for a crime."
"That doesn't sound very reasonable," Paulson objected. "Turning loose
a homicidal maniac who is offering to go back to the vaults of his own
free will just because you lack a little trifling proof of his guilt."
"Sure," I told him, "but I don't want to share the same noose with you.
My job is to keep the innocent out and the convicted in. And I do my
job, Paulson."
"But you have to! If you don't, I'll have to go out and establish my
guilt with another crime. Do you want a crime on your hands, Warden?"