We reached Freiburbad before noon. Zug had more of an ambition to talk
than to be talked to, and a few vague remarks of mine about going to
the city satisfied him. He greatly enjoyed the food concentrates from
my pack and reciprocated by producing a flask of some noxious home brew
he had distilled in his mountain retreat. The taste was indescribably
awful and left the mouth feeling as if it had been rasped by steel wool
soaked in sulphuric acid. But the first few drinks numbed and after
that we enjoyed the trip--until we tied up at a fish-smelling dock
outside the city. We almost swamped the boat getting out of it, which
we thought hysterically funny, and which will give you some indication
of our mental state at the time. I walked into the city proper and sat
in a park until my head cleared.
The old and the new pressed shoulders here, plastic fronted buildings
wedged in between brick and plaster. Steel, glass, wood and stone all
mixed with complete indifference. The people were the same, dressed in
a strange mixture of types and styles. I took more notice of them than
they did of me. A newsrobot was the only thing that singled me out for
attention. It blatted its dull offerings in my ear and waved a board
with the printed headlines until I bought a paper to get rid of it.
League currency was in circulation here, as well as local money, and
the robot made no protest when I slipped a credit in its chest slot,
though it did give me change in Freibur _gilden_--undoubtedly at a
ruinous rate of exchange. At least that's the way I would have done it
if I were programming the thing.
All of the news was unimportant and trivial--the advertisements were
of much more interest. Looking through the big hotels I compared their
offered pleasures and prices.
It was this that set me to trembling and sweating with terror. How
quickly we lose the ingrained habits of a lifetime. After a month on
the side of law and order I was acting like an honest man!
"You're a criminal," I muttered through clenched teeth, and spat on a
NO SPITTING sign. "You hate the law and live happily without it. You
are a law unto yourself, and the most honest man in the galaxy. You
can't break any rules since you make them up yourself and change them
whenever you see fit."
All of this was true, and I hated myself for forgetting it. That
little period of honesty in the Corps was working like a blight to
destroy all of my best anti-social tendencies.
"Think dirty!" I cried aloud, startling a girl who was walking by
on the path. I leered to prove that she had heard correctly and she
hurried quickly away. That was better. I left myself at the same time,
in the opposite direction, looking for an opportunity to do bad. I
had to reestablish my identity before I could even consider finding
Angelina.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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