The Stainless Steel Rat for President

"I am General James diGriz of the Paramilitary Organization of Political Investigation. You may call me sir. " He struck me sharply across the shin with the club. It should have hurt a good deal. I didn't even notice it. One thing that the examination hadn't shown was that I had been filled to the gills with neocain, a very potent pain-killer. I might not feel very good wheft it wore off, but for the present nothing could get through.

"No lies and no more of your not so ftinny jokes. Who are you. The truth this time." "I've already told you. My name and organization. We of POOPI make it our life's work to right wrongs, to aid in the political growth of backward planets, to help honest politicians like Harapo. To supervize the downfall of criminals like Zapilote." He struck me again and again and I just sat there and watched him. "Does it give you pleasure to do that?" I finally asked. "If so you must be a very sick man." He raised the club higher-then threw it away. What good is it to be a bully and a sadist if your victim doesn't even notice it? I nodded approval.

"Now that you have stopped we can converse like adults. My organization is giving aid to Harapo, as I told you. Last night you succeeded in capturing one of my operatives. That will not do. I want him released at once." "Never! We have him and now we have you and you are both as good as dead..." "More threats? You really are a stupid man." I stood up, very slowly, since it took a greal deal of effort because of the heavy chains. "I shall just have to go over your head. I will see Zapilote now." "I'll kill you!" he frothed, grabbing up the club again and raising it over his head.

"If you do, Zapilote will have you shot on the spot. My organization will continue to work without me and he will lose the election. Because of your stupidity. Is that what you want?" He stood there, club raised, trembling, lusting to beat my brains out, but knowing that if he did that he might very well be dead as well. In the end he had to lower it. I nodded approval.

"That's better. We will now go to see the General-President so I can tell him of a compromise plan that I am sure will please him." "What is it?" "You will discover that if he permits your presence during our discussion. Call him." Oliveira was neatly impaled on the horns of a dilemma, and I enjoyed watching him twitch there. He wanted to kill me, or at least to maim me-but he didn't dare. What I had said about Zapilote was true. In the end he realized that and stamped out of the room, I dropped back into the chair and looked gloomily at the bruises that were beginning to appear on my body and tried not to think what I was going to feel like when the neocain wore off. There was a suspicious soft spot on the side of my chest where a rib or two was broken. It was then that I decided that something really loathsome had to happen to Colonel Oliveira before this affair was through. While I was brooding over his fate he returhed with a squad of soldiers.

I was hauled to my feet. The soldiers formed a solid wall around me as we marched off down the hall, up a stairway, very tiring, and through a number of anterooms to face a pair of large gilt doors. It had armed guards, weapons ready, stationed on each side. We were getting close to the holy of holies. The doors swung wide, my personal bodyguards pushed me forward, staying so close that I had to peek over their shoulders to assure myself that we were indeed in the Presence. The General-President squatted in a chair like a loathsome toad, his bandy arms resting on an immense desk.

"Tell me about this person," Zapilote said. Still as frogmouthed and ugly as the first time I had met him. If he recognized me as a beardless Harapo he wasn't letting on.