The Stainless Steel Rat quotes

As he said it I pressed the button that set off the charge of black powder in the ceiling, the crossbeam buckled and the three-ton safe dropped through right on the top of the cop’s head.

He squashed very nicely, thank you.

The cloud of plaster dust settled and all I could see of him was one hand, slightly crumpled. It twitched a bit and the index finger pointed at me accusingly. His voice was a little muffled by the safe and sounded a bit annoyed.

In the open air now I could hear the sirens for the first time—a wonderful sound. They must have had half of the entire police force out from the amount of noise they were making.

I accepted it as any artist accepts tribute.

The board was behind the elevator shaft where I had left it. A little weather-stained but still strong. A few seconds to carry it to the edge of the parapet and reach it across to the next building.

No attempt was being made to stop people from going in and out of the building, most of them didn’t even notice the camera and the little group of cops around it. I walked towards it at an even pace.

Strong nerves count for a lot in this business.

For one instant I was square in the field of that cold, glass eye, then I was past. Nothing happened so I knew I was clear.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There is no future or freedom in the circumscribed life and the only other life is complete rejection of the rules. There is no longer room for the soldier of fortune or the gentleman adventurer who can live both within and outside of society.

Today it is all or nothing. To save my own sanity I chose the nothing.

The cab just reached the spaceport as I hit on this negative line of thought and I was glad to abandon it. Loneliness is the thing to fear in this business, that and self-pity can destroy you if they get the upper hand.

The cab just reached the spaceport as I hit on this negative line of thought and I was glad to abandon it.

Loneliness is the thing to fear in this business, that and self-pity can destroy you if they get the upper hand.

Action has always helped me, the elation of danger and escape always clears my mind. When I paid the cab I short-changed the driver right under his nose, palming one of the credit notes in the act of handing it to him.

Don’t raise the face value—there is too good a chance that this will be noticed. If you lower the value and lose money on the deal, even if it is caught, people will be sure it is a mistake on the machine’s part.

There is never the shadow of a doubt, since why should anyone change a ticket to lose money?

Before the police could be suspicious I had the suit off the bug and tried it on, taking my time. Almost everything was ready now, I had about an hour to kill before the ship left.

Almost everything was ready now, I had about an hour to kill before the ship left. I spent the time wisely by going to an automatic cleaner and having all my new clothes cleaned and pressed.

Nothing interests a customs man more than a suitcase full of unworn clothes.

Customs was a snap and when the ship was about half full I boarded her and took a seat near the hostess. I flirted with her until she walked away, having classified me in the category of male, brash, annoying.

An old girl who had the seat next to mine also had me filed in the same drawer and was looking out of the window with obvious ice on her shoulder.

I dozed off happily since there is one thing better than not being noticed and that is being noticed and filed into a category.

Your description gets mixed up with every other guy in the file and that is the end of it.

As fast as I could run I went to the last door on the opposite side of the building. This time I made sure the alarm was disconnected before I went through the door. I locked it behind me.

It is the hardest job in the world to run and be quiet at the same time.

My lungs were burning before I reached the employees’ entrance. A few times I saw flashlights ahead and had to double down different aisles, it was mostly luck that I made it without being spotted.

“

Have one of these, diGriz, I believe they’re your brand.

”

“Have one of these, diGriz, I believe they’re your brand.”

The body is a slave of habit. Even with death a few inches away it will respond to established custom.

My fingers moved of their own volition and took the cigar, my lips clenched it and my lungs sucked it into life. And all the time my eyes watched the man behind the desk waiting for death to reach out.

“I will admit it has its ludicrous side—but only at first glance.

If you stop to think, you will have to admit that who is better qualified to catch a thief than another thief?

”

They’re crooks. All crooks. The better they were on their own, the better a job they do for the Corps. It’s a great, big, brawling universe and you would be surprised at some of the problems that come up.

The only men we can recruit to do the job are the ones who have already succeeded at it.

It had happened too fast and I hadn’t had time to think. I would probably go on arguing for an hour. But way down in the back of my mind the decision had been made. I was going to do it, I couldn’t say no.

I have never been more wrong.

The people I met were dull to the point of extinction.

They treated me like just another cog going around with the rest of the wheels. I was coggy all right, and kept wondering how I had ever gotten into this mess. Not really wondering, since the memory was still quite vivid.

One of my most effective mottoes has always been, “

Secrecy can be an obviousity.

” What the magicians call misdirection. Let people very obviously see what you want them to see, then they’ll never notice what is hidden. This was why I landed at midday, on the largest field on the planet, after a very showy approach.

I didn’t. The ship on the ways still resembled a warship to six places. And knowing human nature the way I do, that was too much of a coincidence to expect.

Occam’s razor always points the way.

If there are two choices to take, take the simpler. In this case I chose the natural acquisitive instinct of man as opposed to blind chance and accident. Nevertheless I put the theory to the test.

I would keep my identity as an admiral for the rest of the job. I was to keep him informed of progress. Only those ominous last words in clear kept my happiness from being complete.

I had been handed my long-awaited assignment. But translated into simple terms my orders were to get the battleship, or it would be my neck.

Never a word about my efforts in uncovering the plot in the first place. This is a heartless world we live in.

I had been handed my long-awaited assignment. But translated into simple terms my orders were to get the battleship, or it would be my neck. Never a word about my efforts in uncovering the plot in the first place.

This is a heartless world we live in.

This moment of self-pity relaxed me and I immediately went to bed. Since my main job now was waiting, I could wait just as well asleep.

That’s not the answer,” I told him. “This Pepe is smart and as tricky as a fixed gambling machine. That’s his strength—and his weakness as well.

Characters like that never think it possible for someone else to outthink them.

Which is what I’m going to do.”

“I try not to be,” I told him. “

False modesty is the refuge of the incompetent.

I’m going to catch this thug and I’ll tell you how I’ll do it. He’s going to hit again soon, and wherever he hits there will be some kind of a periodical with my plant in it.

Rain and darkness washed over me as I struck out for the unseen shore. I imagined rather than heard the gurgle behind me as the ship sank gently to the bottom.

Swimming in a spacesuit is about as easy to manage as making love in free fall.

I churned my way to shore in a state of near exhaustion. After crawling out of the suit I had a great deal of pleasure watching it burn to a cinder under the heat of three thermite bombs.

It was this that set me to trembling and sweating with terror.

How quickly we lose the ingrained habits of a lifetime.

After a month on the side of law and order I was acting like an honest man!

“You’re a criminal,” I muttered through clenched teeth, and spat on a No Spitting sign. “You hate the law and live happily without it.

You are a law unto yourself, and the most honest man in the galaxy. You can’t break any rules since you make them up yourself and change them whenever you see fit.

”

I put the goggles in my pocket and kept my eyes closed until I had groped clear of the gas. Some worthy citizens helped me and I thanked them, tears streaming down my face from the fringes of the gas, and went my way.

That’s how easy it is. That’s how easy it always is if you plan ahead and don’t take foolish risks.

My morale was high and the blood sang in my veins. Life was deliciously crooked and worth living again. Finding Angelina’s trail now would be simplicity itself. There was nothing I couldn’t do.

That’s how easy it is. That’s how easy it always is if you plan ahead and don’t take foolish risks. My morale was high and the blood sang in my veins.

Life was deliciously crooked and worth living again.

Finding Angelina’s trail now would be simplicity itself. There was nothing I couldn’t do.

My heart gave the second grinding thump of the evening when I realized the dead-end trail down which my emotions were leading me.

Angelina was disaster to anyone she came near.

Inside that lovely head squatted a highly intelligent but strangely warped brain. For my own sake I would be better off thinking about the corpses she had piled up, not about her figure. There was only one thing to be done.

“Here’s a D.O.A., Svend,” someone called out, rustling the papers behind my head. I heard the robot rolling away, untroubled by the fact that his writing, pillow-shedding patient was suddenly dead.

This lack of curiosity is what I like about robots.

I tried to think dead thoughts and hoped the right expression was showing on my face. Something jerked at my left foot and my boot and sock were pulled off. A hand grabbed my foot.

She had stolen the battleship from under my nose, torn a wide swath through galactic shipping, then escaped neatly right under my gun. What made the situation most embarrassing was that she had set a trap for me—when I thought I was hunting her.

Hindsight is a great revealer of obviousities and this one was painfully clear now.

While escaping from the captured battleship she had not been hysterical in the slightest. That role had been feigned. She had been studying me, every bit of my face that could be seen, every intonation of my voice.

But very often there were juicy muggings, sluggings and such which proved the quieting hand of galactic civilization still hadn’t throttled Freibur completely. In among these exaggerated tales of violence lay the murky crime I was searching for.

Mankind has always been capricious in its lawmaking, inventing such intriguingly different terms as manslaughter, justified homicide and such, as if dead wasn’t dead.

Though fashions in both crime and sentencing come and go, there is one crime that will always bring universal detestation. That is the crime of being a bungling doctor.

Our crooked little minds rotated in many of the same cycles of dishonesty. Up to a certain point I felt I could predict her reactions with firm logic. Firstly—she would be very happy about my bloody destruction.

She got the same big bang out of corpses that most girls get from new clothes.

Thinking me dead would make following her that much easier. I knew she would take normal precautions against the police and other agents of the Corps. But they wouldn’t know she was on Freibur—there was nothing to connect my death with her presence.

While drowning my sorrows in a bottle of distilled spirits the solution to this dilemma finally struck me. Admittedly I was sodden with drink at the time, yet the paralysis of my neural axons was undoubtedly the source of the idea.

Any man that says he thinks better drunk than sober is a fool.

But this was a different case altogether. I was feeling, not thinking, and my anger at her escape cracked the lid off my more civilized impulses.

Well, well—old chickenhearted revealed at last. Rough and tough diGriz the Killer who never killed! It was nothing to be ashamed of, quite the opposite in fact.

I placed a value on human life, the one unchanging value in existence.

Angelina valued herself and her desires, and nothing else. To follow her down the twisted path of her own making I would have to place myself in the same mental state that she lived in.

Well, well—old chickenhearted revealed at last.

Rough and tough diGriz the Killer who never killed!

It was nothing to be ashamed of, quite the opposite in fact. I placed a value on human life, the one unchanging value in existence. Angelina valued herself and her desires, and nothing else.

This is not as difficult as it sounds—at least in theory. I have had some experience with the psychotomimetic drugs and was well aware of their potency. Centuries of research have produced drugs that can simulate any mental condition in the user.

Like to be paranoid for a day? Take a pill. You too can go around the bend, friend.

It is a matter of record that people have actually tried these concoctions for kicks, but that bored with life I don’t want to be.

All too vividly I could recall the details of my interlude of madness. Though I sickened at the things I had thought and done, I simultaneously felt a twinge of regret that could not be abolished.

There had been terrible freedom in standing so alone that even the lives of other men meant less than nothing.

Undoubtedly a warped sensation, but still a tremendously attractive one. Like taking drugs. Even while detesting the thought I felt the desire for more of the same.

Hating this side of her didn’t remove the attraction of a personality so similar to my own. I echoed my psychotic self’s attitude—what a team we might have made! This was of course impossible, but that didn’t stop me from wanting it.

Love and hate are reputed to be very close and in my case they were certainly rubbing shoulders.

And the whole confused business wasn’t helped in the slightest by the fact that Angelina was so damnably attractive. I took a long drag at my drink.

For these two days I was kept busy on the many small tasks that put the polish of perfection on a job like this.

Any boob can crash a party, in fact usually does, since that is all one seems to meet at this kind of affair.

It takes a unique talent like mine to construct a cover personality that is unshakeable. Research supplied me with a homeland, a distant province poor in everything except a thick dialect that provided the base for most Freibur jokes.

I had arranged things perfectly to bring me to the attention of Angelina. But unless she became interested in me soon I stood a good chance of spending the rest of my days behind these grim walls.

Waiting has always been bad for my nerves.

I am a thinker during moments of peace, but a man of action most of the time. It is one thing to prepare a plan and leap boldly into it.

“Outside, dammit, outside!” the Count shouted, coughing at the same time. The smoke was a little thick.

I poured another drink and decided right then that I was going to like Rdenrundt.

I would have liked it a lot better if I could have found Angelina. This whole affair bore every sign of her light touch, yet she was nowhere in sight.

“Well … yes, you might say. I mean the Count was married, but there was an accident, he’s not married now. …” His voice tapered away and he drew my attention to something else, happy to leave the topic.

Now if there is one thing that always marks Angelina’s trail it is a corpse or two.

It took no great amount of inspiration to connect her with the “accidental” death of the Count’s wife. If the death had been natural Kurt would not have been afraid to talk about it.

He searched me quickly and efficiently, then stepped aside. The Count opened the door and I followed him in, trying not to tread on his heels.

One thing about reality⁠—it is always so much superior to theory.

I had every reason to believe that Angelina would be here, yet it was still a healthy shock to see her sitting at the table. A kind of electric charge in my spine tingled right up to the roots of my hair.

“Why thank you, Cassitor,” she said.

Cassitor indeed! I’d look unhappy too if I had to go through life with a handle like Cassitor Rdenrundt.

“It was very nice of you to bring Grav Bent here,” she added in the same light and empty voice.

No, Angelica love, I wouldn’t be surprised at all. But I couldn’t just tell all without a little resistance. “You’re the one behind this revolution idea, aren’t you,” I said as a statement, not a question.

“Yes,” she said, laying her cards on the table so she could see mine.

“Well if you must know then,” I said, “I was smuggling. It is a very interesting occupation if you happen to know what to take where. For a number of years I found it was a most lucrative business.

They returned at night all right and chopped at my conscience, but I was always tired and went to sleep quickly before they could get through and bother me.

Life was a bed of roses, and I might as well enjoy it before the blossoms withered.

Watching Angelady at work was a distinct pleasure, and if you stood my back to the wall and made me swear, I would be forced to admit that I learned a thing or two from her.

“It would be something, wouldn’t it. You and I … together.”

Wouldn’t it! There are occasions when words can’t say it all and your body speaks for you.

This was a time like that. Without physical deliberation my arms were around her, pulling her to me, my mouth pushing down on hers.

The slow upward climb through crime and murder—to beauty. And during the climb the wonderful brain that had been housed in the illformed flesh had been warped and changed.

Poor Angelina. I could be sorry for her without forgetting the ones she had killed.

Poor, tragic, alone girl who in winning half the battle had lost the other half. Purchased skill had shaped the body into a lovely—truthfully an angelic—form.

Purchased skill had shaped the body into a lovely—truthfully an angelic—form. Yet in succeeding, the strength of the mind that had accomplished all this had been deformed until it had been made as ugly as the body had been in the beginning.

Yet if you could change a body⁠—couldn’t you change a mind?

Could something be done for her?

The guard. He was there for a purpose, and smoking on duty wasn’t considered the best behavior for a sentry. Perhaps I was being finicky, but it is a failing of mine.

Take care of all the small factors and the big ones take care of themselves.

In any case, simply thinking about it was bothering me, so I might as well go around and say a word to him.

Sweat almost blinded me, but I could still see well enough to notice the twisted way his other arm hung. I had broken a bone when I hit—yet he had never made a sound.

There is no such thing as fair fighting when you are struggling for your life.

I squirmed my leg out from under him and managed to bend it enough to dig the knee into his broken arm. His whole body shuddered. I did it again. Harder. He twisted, trying to pull away from the pain.

“I think that you can do the job she is doing. Just as well, and perhaps better. How would you like that?”

Without a doubt I was just brimming over with talent⁠—or there was a shortage of revolutionaries on this planet.

This was the second time within twelve hours that I had been offered a partnership in the new order. One thing I was sure of though—Angelovely’s offer had been sincere. Cassi Duke of Rdenrundt’s proposition had a distinctly bad odor to it.

He scratched away industriously on a note plate.

What a knowledge of history he had⁠—just the man to plan a revolution!

I searched my memory for a few more old saws to supply him with, until my brain was flooded with a sudden anger. I jumped to my feet.

“No, I wasn’t listening,” she said with that amazing self-possession and calm that marked all her actions. She smiled in the mirror at me. “I was busy just remembering last night.”

Women! They insist on mixing everything up together.

Perhaps they operate better that way, but it is very hard on those of us who find that keeping emotion and logic separate produces sounder thinking. I had to make her understand the seriousness of this situation.

Just at this point the bottom dropped out of everything.

There is a little process called selective forgetting whereby we suppress and distort memories we find distasteful.

My disguise hadn’t been meant to stand inspection this long. Originally I had been sure she would have penetrated it by now. With this realization came the memory of what I had said the night before.