The judge was impressive in his black robes, and omniscient in the chromium perfection of his skull. His voice rolled like the crack of doom, rich and penetrating.
"Carl Tritt, this court finds you guilty as charged. On 2182423 you did willfully and maliciously steal the payroll of the Marcrix Corporation, a sum totaling 318,000 cr., and did attempt to keep these same credits as your own. The sentence is twenty years.”
The black gavel fell with the precision of a pile driver and the sound bounced back and forth inside Carl's head. Twenty years. He clamped bloodless fingers on the steel bar of justice and looked up into the judge's electronic eyes. There was perhaps a glint of compassion, but no mercy there. The sentence had been passed and recorded in the Central Memory. There was no appeal.
A panel snapped open in the front of the judge's bench and exhibit A slid out on a soundless piston. 318,000 cr., still in their original pay envelopes. The judge pointed as Carl slowly picked it up.
"Here is the money you stole — see that it is returned to the proper people."
Carl shuffled out of the courtroom, the package clutched weakly to his chest, sunk in a sodden despair. The street outside was washed with a golden sunlight that he could not see, for his depression shadowed it with the deepest gloom.
His throat was sore and his eyes burned. If he had not been an adult male citizen, age twenty-five, he might have cried. But twenty-five-year-old adult males do not cry. Instead he swallowed heavily a few times.
A twenty-year sentence — it couldn't be believed. Why me? Of all the people in the world why did he have to receive a sentence severe as that? His well-trained conscience instantly shot back the answer. Because you stole money. He shied away from that unpleasant thought and stumbled on.
Unshed tears swam in his eyes and trickled back into his nose and down his throat. Forgetting in his misery where he was, he choked a bit. Then spat heavily.
Even as the saliva hit the spotless sidewalk, a waste can twenty feet away stirred into life. It rotated on hidden wheels and soundlessly rolled towards him. In shocked horror Carl pressed the back of his hand to his mouth. Too late to stop what was already done.
A flexible arm licked out and quickly swabbed the sidewalk clean. Then the can squatted like a mechanical Buddha while a speaker rasped to life in its metal insides. A tinny metallic voice addressed Carl.
"Carl Tritt; you have violated Local Ordinance number bd-14-668 by expectorating on a public sidewalk. The sentence is two days. Your total sentence is now twenty years and two days."
Two other pedestrians had stopped behind Carl, listening with gaping mouths as sentence was passed. Carl could almost hear their thought. A sentenced man. Think of that! Over twenty years sentence! They bugged their eyes at him in a mixture of fascination and distaste.
Carl rushed away, the package clutched to his chest and his face flushed red with shame. The sentenced men on video had always seemed so funny. How they fell down and acted bewildered when a door wouldn't open for them.
It didn't seem so funny now.
The rest of that day crept by in a fog of dejection. He had a vague recollection of his visit to the Marcrix Corporation to return his stolen money. They had been kind and understanding, and he had fled in embarrassment. All the kindness in the world wouldn't reprieve his sentence.
He wandered vaguely in the streets after that, until he was exhausted. Then he had seen the bar. Bright lights with a fog of smoke inside, looking cheery and warm. Carl had pushed at the door, and pushed again, while the people inside had stopped talking and turned to watch him through the glass. Then he had remembered the sentence and realized the door wouldn't open. The people inside had started laughing and he had run away. Lucky to get off without a further sentence.
When he reached his apartment at last he was sobbing with fatigue and unhappiness. The door opened to his thumb and slammed behind him. This was a refuge at last.
Until he saw his packaged bags waiting, for him.
Carl's video set hummed into life. He had never realized before it could be controlled from a Central. The screen stayed dark but the familiar voder voice of Sentence Control poured out.
"A selection of clothing and articles suitable for a sentenced man has been chosen for you. Your new address is on your bags. Go there at once."
I It was too much. Carl knew without looking that his camera and his books and model rockets — the hundred other little things that meant something to him — were not included in those bags. He ran into the kitchen, forcing open the resisting door. The voice spoke from a speaker concealed above the stove.
"What you are doing is in violation of the law. If you stop at once your sentence will not be increased."
The words meant nothing to him, he didn't want to hear them. With frantic fingers he pulled the cupboard open and reached for the bottle of whiskey in the back. The bottle vanished through a trapdoor he had never noticed before, brushing tantalizingly against his fingers as it dropped.
He stumbled down the hall and the voice droned on behind him. Five more days sentence for attempting to obtain alcoholic beverages. Carl couldn't have cared less.
The cabs and buses wouldn't stop for him and the sub-slide turnstile spat his coin back like something distasteful. In the end he tottered the long blocks to his new quarters, located in a part of town he had never known existed. There was a calculated seedi-ness about the block where he was to stay. Deliberately cracked sidewalks and dim lights. The dusty spiderwebs that hung in every niche had a definitely artificial look about them. He had to climb two flights of stairs, each step of which creaked with a different note, to reach his room. Without turning the light on he dropped his bags and stumbled forward. His shins cracked against a metal bed and he dropped gratefully into it. A blissful exhaustion put him to sleep.
When he awoke in the morning he didn't want to open his eyes. It had been a nightmare, he tried to tell himself, and he was safely out of it now. But the chill air in the room and the gray light filtering through his lids told him differently. With a sigh he abandoned the fantasy and looked around at his new home.
It was clean — and that was all that could be said for it. The bed, a chair, a built-in chest of drawers — these were the furnishings. A single unshielded bulb hung from the ceiling. On the wall opposite him was a large metal calender sign. It read: 20 years, 5 days, 17 hours, 25 minutes. While he watched the sign gave an audible click and the last number changed to 24.
Carl was too exhausted by the emotions of the previous day to care. The magnitude of his change still overwhelmed him. He settled back onto the bed in a half-daze, only to be jolted up by a booming voice from the wall.
"Breakfast is now being served in the public dining room on the floor above. You have ten minutes." The now familiar voice came this time from a giant speaker at least five feet across, and had lost all of its tinny quality. Carl obeyed without thinking.
The meal was drab but filling. There were other men and women in the dining room, all very interested in their food. He realized with a start that they were sentenced too. After that he kept his own eyes on his plate and returned quickly to his room.
As he entered the door the video pickup was pointing at him from above the speaker. It followed him like a gun as he walked across the room. Like the speaker, it was the biggest pickup he had ever seen; a swiveled chrome tube with a glass eye on its end as big as his fist. A sentenced man is alone, yet never has privacy.
Without preliminary warning the speaker blasted and he gave a nervous start.
"Your new employment begins at 1800 hours today, here is the address." A card leaped out of a slot below the calendar sign and dropped to the floor. Carl had to bend over and scratch at its edges to pick it up. The address meant nothing to him.