“I won’t,” said Baines, his grin becoming broader than ever. He favored the onlooking Harrison with a fat, significant wink.
It made something spark vividly inside Harrison’s mind. His jaw dropped, he took the plague from his pocket, stared at it as if seeing it for the first time.
“Give it me back,” requested Baines, watching him.
Replacing it in his pocket, Harrison said very firmly, “I won’t.”
Baines chuckled. “Some folks catch on quicker than others.”
Resenting that remark, Gleed held his hand out to Harrison. “Let’s have another look at that thing.”
“I won’t,” said Harrison, meeting him eye for eye.
“Hey, that’s not the way—” Gleed’s protesting voice died out. He stood there a moment, his optics slightly glassy while his brain performed several loops. Then, in hushed tones, he said, “Good grief!”
“Precisely,” approved Baines. “Grief, and plenty of it. You were a bit slow on the uptake.”
Overcome by the flood of insubordinate ideas now pouring upon him, Gleed said hoarsely to Harrison, “Come on, let’s get out of here. I gotta think. I gotta think some place quiet.”
There was a tiny park with seats and lawns and flowers and a little fountain around which a small bunch of children were playing. Choosing a place facing a colorful carpet of exotic un-Terran blooms, they sat and brooded a while.
In due course, Gleed commented, “For one solitary guy it would be martyrdom, but for a whole world—” His voice drifted off, came back. “I’ve been taking this about as far as I can make it go and the results give me the leaping fantods.”
Harrison said nothing.
“F’rinstance,” Gleed continued, “supposing when I go back to the ship that snorting rhinoceros Bidworthy gives me an order. I give him the frozen wolliker and say, ‘I won’t!’ He either drops dead or throws me in the clink.”
“That would do you a lot of good.”
“Wait a bit—I ain’t finished. I’m in the clink, but the job still needs doing. So Bidworthy picks on someone else. The victim, being a soulmate of mine, also donates the icy optic and says, ‘I won’t!’ In the clink he goes and I’ve got company. Bidworthy tries again. And again. There’s more of us warming the jug. It’ll only hold twenty. So they take over the engineer’s mess.”
“Leave our mess out of this,” Harrison requested.
“They take the mess,” Gleed insisted, thoroughly determined-to penalize the engineers. “Pretty soon it’s crammed to the roof with I-won’ters. Bidworthy’s still raking ’em in as fast as he can go—if by that time he hasn’t burst a dozen blood vessels. So they take over the Blieder dormitories.”
“Why keep picking on my crowd?”
“And pile them with bodies ceiling-high,” Gleed said, getting sadistic pleasure out of the notion. “Until in the end Bidworthy has to get buckets and brushes and go down on his knees and do his own deckscrubbing while Grayder, Shelton and the rest act as clink guards. By that time, His Loftiness the ambassador is in the galley busily cooking for you and me, assisted by a disconcerted bunch of yes-ing pen-pushers.” He had another somewhat awed look at the picture and finished, “Holy smoke!”
A colored ball rolled his way, he stooped, picked it up and held on to it. Promptly a boy of about seven ran up, eyed him gravely.
“Give me my ball, please.”
“I won’t,” said Gleed, his fingers firmly around it.
There was no protest, no anger, no tears. The child merely registered disappointment, turned to go away.
“Here you are, sonny.” He tossed the ball.
“Thanks.” Grabbing it the other ran off.
Harrison said, “What if every living being in the Empire, all the way from Prometheus to Kaldor Four, across eighteen hundred light-years of space, gets an income-tax demand, tears it up and says, ‘I won’t!’? What happens then?”
“We’d need a second universe for a pen and a third one to provide the guards.”
“There would be chaos,” Harrison went on. He nodded toward the fountain and, the children playing around it. “But it doesn’t look like chaos here. Not to my eyes. So that means they don’t overdo this blank refusal business. They apply it judiciously on some mutually recognized basis. What that basis might be beats me completely.”
“Me, too.”
An elderly man stopped near them, surveyed them hesitantly, decided to pick on a passing youth.
“Can you tell me where I can find the roller for Martinstown?”
“Other end of Eighth,” informed the youth. “One every hour. They’ll fix your manacles before they start.”
“Manacles?” The oldster raised white eyebrows. “Whatever for?”
“That route runs past the spaceship. The Antigands may try to drag you out.”
“Oh, yes, of course.” He ambled on, glanced again at Gleed and Harrison, remarked in passing, “These Antigands—such a nuisance.”
“Definitely,” indorsed Gleed. “We keep telling them to get out and they keep on saying, ‘We won’t.’ ”
The old gentleman missed a step, recovered, gave him a peculiar look, continued on his way.
“One or two seem to cotton on to our accents,” Harrison remarked. “Though nobody noticed mine when I was having that feed in Seth’s.”
Gleed perked up with sudden interest. “Where you’ve had one feed yon can get another. Cmon, let’s try. What have we got to lose?”
