A Stainless Steel Rat Is Born

The police had finally broken down the door and were swarming in. I raised my hands over my head and prepared to welcome them with warm smiles.

The birthday, 'that is the final reason. My seventeenth birthday. Becoming seventeen here on Bit 0' Heaven is a very important time in a young man's life.

Chapter 2

The judge leaned forward and looked down at me, not unkindly. " "Now come on, Jimmy, tell me what this tomfoolery is all about." Judge Nixon had a summer house on the river, not too far from our farm, and I had been there often enough with his youngest son for the judge to get to know me.

"My name is James diGriz, buster. Let us not get too familiar." This heightened his color a good deal, as you might imagine. His big nose stuck out like a red ski slope and his nostrils flared. "You will have more respect in this courtroom! You are faced with serious charges, my boy, and it might help your case to keep a civil tongue in your mouth. I am appointing Arnold Fortescue, the public defender, as your attorney..." "I don't need an attorney-and I particularly don't need old Skewey who has been on the sauce so long there isn't a man alive who has seen him sober..." There was a ripple of laughter from the public seats, which infuriated the judge. "Order in the courti" he bellowed, hammering his gavel so hard that the handle broke. He threw the stub across the room and glared angrily at me. "You are trying the patience of this court. Lawyer Fortescue has been appointed..." "Not by me he hasn't. Send him back to Mooney's Bar. I plead guilty to all charges and throw myself on the mercy of this merciless court.

He drew in his breath with a shuddering sigh and I decided to ease off a bit before he had a stroke and collapsed; then there would be a mistrial and more time would be wasted.

"I'm sorry, judge." I hung my head to hide an unrepressed smile. "But I done wrong and I will have to pay the penalty. " "Well, that's more like it, Jimmy. You always were a smart lad and I hate to see all that intelligence going to waste. You will go to Juvenile Correction Hall for a term of not less than-" "Sorry, your honor," I broke in. "Not possible. Oh, tfl only had committed my criraes last week or last month! The law is firm on this and I have no escape. Today is my birthday. My seventeenth birthday.

That slowed him down all right. The guards looked on patiently while he punched for information on his computer terminal. The reporter for the Bit 0' Heaven Bugle working just as hard on the keys of his own portable terminal at the same time. He was filing quite a story. It didn't take the judge long to come up with the answers. He sighed.

"That is true enough. The records reveal that you are seventeen this day and have achieved your majority. You are no longer a juvenile and must be treated as an adult. This would mean a prison term for certain-if I didn't allow for the circumstances. A first offense,the obvious youth of the defendant, his realization that he has done wrong. It is within the power of this bench to make exceptions, to suspend a sentence and bind a prisoner over. It is my decision..." The last thing I wanted to do was hear his decision now. Things were not going as I had planned, not at all. Action was required. I acted. My scream drowned out the judge's words. Still screaming I dived headlong from the prisoner's dock, shoulder-rolled neatly on the floor, and was across the room before my shocked audience could even consider moving.

"You will write no more scurrilous lies about me, you grubbing hack," I shouted. As I whipped the terminal from the reporter's hands and crashed it to the floor. Then stamped the six-hundred-buck machine into worthless junk. I dodged around him before he could grab me and pelted towards the door. The policeman there grabbed at methen folded when I planted my foot in his stomach.

I could probably have escaped then, but escape at this point wasn't part of my plan. I fumbled with the door handle until someone grabbed me, then struggled on until I was overwhelmed.

This time I was manacled as I stood in the dock and there was no more Jimmy-my-boy talk from the judge. Someone had found him a new gavel and he waved it in my direction, as though wishing to brain me with it. I growled and tried to look surly.

"James Bolivar diGriz," he intoned. "I sentence you to the maximum penalty for the crime that you have committed. Hard labor in the city jail until the arrival of the next League ship, whereupon you will be sent to the nearest place of correction for criminal therapy." The gavel banged. "Take him away." This was more like it. I struggled against my cuffs and spat curses at him so he wouldn't show any last moment weaknesses. He didn't. Two burly policemen grabbed me and hauled me bodily out of the courtroom and jammed me, not too gently, into the back of the black Maria. Only after the door had been slammed and sealed did I sit back and relax-and allow myself a smile of victory.