“Assumed,” echoed Roger. He tried to think, and absolutely nothing happened. “How would I know?” he asked himself, and the voice, unbidden, answered, “You are a product of that time.”
“Yes, but I’m a designer. I don’t know anything about science or progress or anything like that. All I know is designing. What you need is a scientist, or a sociologist, or a—”
He stopped, suddenly hopeful. “Maybe,” he whispered. “Maybe, just maybe.” He looked at the wall again, and asked, “This search you’re making. Who’s actually behind it, the people or the machines?”
“The machines,” said the voice. “The people are too self-satisfied to worry, is that it?”
“Yes,” said the voice.
“Then I know what you should do.” He said it with great confidence and assurance, though he had no idea whether he was right or wrong. “I have one more use for your time machine,” he said. “After you send me home, I mean. There’s somebody else you should bring here. Then you should destroy the time machine, and make it impossible to build another one. So he’ll know he won’t be able to get back, he’ll just have to build a new life for himself here.” And also, he thought, so you can’t come get me if this doesn’t work. Aloud, he added, “Then you should put yourselves completely in this man’s hands. All the machines should do exactly as he tells them. Let him know he’s boss, the minute he gets here. Got that?”
“Yes,” said the voice, and somehow the monotone monosyllable managed to sound doubtful.
“What you people need,” said Roger positively, “is a leader. Look at the Twentieth Century. It was the time of leaders, of mass movements and conflicting ideologies. Every leader had a bunch of theories for how to make human society work. All the Stir and commotion that was brought on by this was what forced change and progress. The people of the Twenty-second Century don’t have anything to get all stirred up over. They don’t have a leader, somebody to give them a reason to look for change, somebody who’ll push them toward change whether—” He faltered, since he’d been going to say, “whether they like it or not,” and had realized just in time that that wasn’t what the machines had in mind. Instead, he finished, “they fully understand his methods or not.”
For the first time, the voice spoke without being asked a question. “We had decided,” it said, “that the change would have to be made within the people of our own time. We are looking for a way to make them similar—”
“I know, I know,” interrupted Roger. “That’s where you’re making your mistake. They are similar already. You’ve had seventeen failures. Don’t you see what that means? The people of my century are exactly the same as the people of yours. The only difference is that they have leaders. Without a leader, they act just the way the people of this time do.”
“Of course,” said the voice. It had apparently given up the practice of speaking only when asked questions. “The failure of the other seventeen puzzled us. We hadn’t expected it from Twentieth Century men. Do you have a particular leader in mind?”
“Certainly,” said Roger, though he didn’t. He thought rapidly. A sociologist? A physicist? A—
All at once, he smiled. “I have solved your problem,” he said with finality. “And mine.” And everybody else’s, he added to himself. “I don’t think he speaks English, though,” Roger said. “He speaks Russian. But I can positively assure you that there will be a great change here if you bring him.”
“That’s all right,” said the voice.
1961
Break-Out
Alcatraz is probably the toughest and best-known prison in the United States, long considered an impregnable, escape-proof penitentiary. The entire imprisoned population there consists of hard cases transferred from less rugged federal penitentiaries. In the middle of San Francisco Bay, it is surrounded by treacherous currents and is almost always enveloped by thick fog and high winds. A high percentage of the prisoners sent there are men who have already escaped from one or more other prisons and penitentiaries. “Now you are at Alcatraz,” they are told. “Alcatraz is escape-proof. You can’t get away from here.”
It was a challenge, and sooner or later someone had to accept it. That someone was a felon named Ted Cole. Cole had already escaped once, from an Oklahoma prison, where he had been assigned duty in the prison laundry. That escape had been made by hiding in a laundry bag. But now Cole was on Alcatraz, and Alcatraz, he was told repeatedly, was escape-proof.
Cole’s work assignment was in the prison machine shop, which suited him perfectly. Through an involved code in his infrequent mail, he managed to line up outside assistance from friends in the San Francisco area. While waiting for things to be set up outside, he spent a cautious part of each workday on the machine-shop wall, on the other side of which was the rocky, surf-torn beach of the island.
The day finally came. Leaving right after a head count, so he would have an hour or two anyway before his absence was noticed, Cole went through the machine-shop wall and dove into the water, swimming straight out from the island, the fog so thick around him he could barely see the movement of his own arms as he swam.
This, as far as he was concerned, was the only really dangerous part of the escape. If his friends couldn’t find him in the fog, he would simply swim until he drowned from exhaustion or was recaptured by a police patrol from the island.
Finally, a launch came out of the fog ahead, throttling down beside him, and Cole treaded water, staring anxiously, wondering whether this was escape or capture.
It was escape. His friends fished him out of the water, gave him blankets and brandy, and the launch veered away toward shore. Yet again, society’s challenge had been accepted, and another “escape-proof” prison had been conquered.
Accepting society’s challenge in his own antisocial way is second nature to the habitual criminal. The desire for freedom is strong in most men, and perhaps it is strongest in those who have, by the commission of crime, tried to free themselves from the restraint of society’s laws. The much harsher and much more complete restraint of a narrow prison cell and an ordered, repetitive existence within the prison walls, plus the challenge of being told that escape from this prison is impossible, increase this yearning for freedom to the point where no risk seems too great, if only there is the possibility of freedom. No matter what the builders of the prison have claimed, the imaginative and determined prisoner can always find somewhere, in a piece of wood or a rusty nail or the manner of the guards’ shift changes, the slim possibility that just might end in freedom.
This yearning for freedom, of course, doesn’t always result in imaginative and ingenious escapes. At times, it prompts instead wholesale riots, with hostages taken and fierce demands expressed and the senseless destruction of both lives and property. Such outbreaks are dreaded by prison officials, but they never result in successful escapes. They are too noisy and too emotional. The successful escapee is silent, and he uses his wits rather than his emotions.
The prisoner who is carefully working out the details of an escape, in fact, dreads the idea of a riot fully as much as do the prison officials themselves.
The result of a riot is inevitably a complete search and shakedown of the entire prison. And this means the discovery of the potential escapee’s tunnel or hacksaw or dummy pistol or specially constructed packing case or rope ladder or forged credentials. And the escapee has to think of some other plan.