"Harry Harrison - SSR 06 - A Stainless Steel Rat is Born" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

dissections on live birds and other small and harmless creatures. Then his rapid fall after
cutting a boy and being caught. Sentenced to Juvenile Hall, released, then more trouble and back
to Hall yet again. Until here he was, at the zenith of his career as a knife-carrying punk,
imprisoned for extorting money by threat of violence. From a child of course. He was far too
insecure to attempt to threaten an adult.
Of course he did not say all this, not at once, but it became obvious after endless rambling
complaints. I tuned him out and tuned my inner thoughts in. Bad luck, that

was all it was. I had probably been put in with him to keep me from the company of the real
hardened criminals who filled this prison.
The lights went out at that moment and I lay back on the bunk. Tomorrow would be my day. I would
meet the other inmates, size them up, find the real criminals among them. Befriend them and begin
my graduate course in crime. That is surely what I would do.
I went happily to sleep, washed over by a wave of wimpish whining from the adjoining bunk. Just
bad luck being stuck in with him. Willy was the exception. I had a roommate who was a loser, that
was all. It would all be different in the morning.
I hoped. There was a little nag of worry that kept me awake for a bit, but at last I shrugged it
off. Tomorrow would be fine, yes it would be. Fine. No doubt about that, fine....


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CHAPTER THREE

Breakfast was no betterтАФand no worseтАФthan the ones I made for myself. I ate automatically,
sipping the weak cactus tea and chewing doggedly at the gruel, while I looked around at the other
tables. There were about thirty prisoners stuffing their faces in this room, and my gaze went from
face to face with a growing feeling of despair.
Firstly, most of them had the same vacuous look of blank stupidity as my cellmate. All right, I
could accept that, the criminal classes would of course contain the maladjusted and the mental
mud walls. But there had to be more than that! I hoped.
Secondly they were all quite young, none out of their twenties. Weren't there any old criminals?
Or was criminality a malfunction of youth that was quickly cured by the social adjustment
machines? There had to be more to it than that. There had to be. I took some cheer from this
thought. All of these prisoners were losers, that was obvi-

ous, losers and incompetents. It was obvious once you thought about it. If they had been any good
at their chosen profession they wouldn't be inside! They were of

no use to the world or to themselves.
But they were to me. If they couldn't supply the illegal facts that I needed, they would surely
be able to put me in touch with those who did. From them I would get leads to the criminals on the
outside, the professionals still uncaught. That was what I had to do. Befriend them and extract
the information that I needed. All was not lost yet.
It didn't take long for me to discover the best of this despicable lot. A little group was
gathered around a hulk-