The Stainless Steel Rat

We must be as stealthy as rats in the wainscoting of their society. It was easier in the old days, of course, and society had more rats when the rules were looser, just as old wooden buildings have more rats than concrete buildings. But there are rats in the building now as well. Now that society is all ferrocrete and stainless steel there are fewer gaps in the joints. It takes a very smart rat indeed to find these openings. Only a stainless steel rat can be at home in this environment...

I have been followed by enough police robots to know by now how indestructible they are. You can blow them up or knock them down and they keep coming after you; dragging themselves by one good finger and spouting saccharine morality all the while.

At times there can be a very thin line between right and wrong. If you are emotionally involved the line is almost impossible to see.

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.

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

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. [...] My theory is that the aberration is a philosophical one, not a psychological one. At a certain stage the realization strikes through that one must either live outside of society's bonds or die of absolute boredom. 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.

I went to sleep with the tape player whispering softly in my ears such ego-building epigrams as, 'You are better than everyone else and you know it, and people who don't know it had better watch out,' and 'They are all fools and if you were in charge things would be different, and why aren't you in charge, it's easy enough.

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 could say. “Well I damn well knew what

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.

You're not a stupid man, Grav Diebstall," he said, which means he thought I was a lot stupider than he was.

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

I hate to look a gift rocket in the tubes," I told her, "nevertheless -- why me?

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. Single-handedly she was organizing a revolution on a peaceful planet -- and it stood every chance of succeeding. In my small way I helped. The few times she mentioned a problem to me I had a ready answer and in all the cases she went along with my suggestions. Of course I had never toppled governments before, but there are basic laws in crime as in everything else, and it is just a matter of application.

Your majesty, this is the Baron -- " "Grav not Baron," I cut in with my hideously rich accent. "Grav Bent Diebstall from a poor provincial family, cheated centuries ago of our rightful title by thieving and jealous counts." I scowled straight at my guide as if he had been in the plot and he turned the flush on again.

Put any name to it you want -- I suppose love will do as well as any, though this was no throbbing adolescent passion. I wasn't blind to her faults, in fact I rather detested them now that I knew her murderously amoral existence had an echo in my own mind. But logic and convictions have very little to do with emotions. Hating this side of her didn't remove the attraction of a personality so similar to my own.

She must spend her life feeling damned because she was a woman, knowing she was better than the rest of the cruds around, then proving it to herself and them over and over again.

After a half day of this kind of preparation I realized I was making excuses. "Well it's not easy to deliberately go insane," I told my rather pale reflection in the mirror. The reflection agreed but that didn't stop either of us from rolling up our sleeves and filling large hypodermic needles with murky madness.

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.

Your conversation is both dull and repetitious," I told him, because it was.

When ill, we deliver ourselves completely into the doctor's hands. We give a complete stranger the opportunity to toy with that which we value most. If this trust is violated there is naturally a hotness of temper among the witnesses or survivors.

You’re none of these things out of the past. I had shouted. None of these things … Angelina. I had bellowed this and there had been no protest from her.

Then he made a rush for the bar and choked down about a water-glass full of the local spirits. Only when he was working on his second glass did he remember to offer me some of this potable aqua regia.

Only when he was working on his second glass did he remember to offer me some of this potable aqua regia.

When you have a plan put it into action instantly. Don’t let it lie around and get stale and have other people start thinking about it themselves.

His old personality had been stripped from his mind and a new one implanted. Only the body remained of the old Pepe who had loved Angelina and stolen a battleship.