"Your Drug Is the Greatest Single Crime-Preventive Aid of the Century"

"There Is a Crooked Man."
By Jack Wodhams (born 1931).
Novelette.
First appearance: Analog, February 1967.
Online HERE (where the author's name is misspelled and typos abound) and (HERE; go to text page 24).

Getting from here to there has always been something of a problem, but Instravel is supposed to do away with that difficulty. However . . . .

A few passages:

Police methods have advanced enormously in the last thirty years. They will, inevitably, advance still more. Sure . . . but you can also bet the equally inevitable crooked man will also advance. Here, the Crooked Man advances most hilariously.

~ ~ ~

. . . Mr. Frederic Traff looked down at himself and choked back a cry of dismay. He had been incorrectly reassembled. His legs were on backwards and his toes pointed to the rear.

~ ~ ~

. . . "Their concern is not with ethics but results."

~ ~ ~

. . . "If Instravel fails, you can be sure that the failure is due to deliberately contrived outside interference."

~ ~ ~

. . . "The continuing expansion of our technology greatly increases the variety of criminal ways and means. . ."

~ ~ ~

. . . "They call it togetherness."

~ ~ ~

. . . "After all, how much genius can we use?"

~ ~ ~

. . . Professor Muldible stepped from the receiver cabinet smiling broadly at his success as Professor Muldible stepped from the dispatch cabinet slowly shaking his head in perplexity . . .

~ ~ ~

. . . "Warfare today is as it should be, a nonviolent mental conflict that will give a bloodless victory to those most fitted to rule, the wisely intelligent people."

~ ~ ~

. . . "Your self-realization is illusory. You are a carbon copy without carbon . . ."

~ ~ ~

. . . Sir Edgar switched off his secret viewer. "If that doesn't give me an uncontested divorce, I don't know what will."

~ ~ ~

. . . "I can only jump to the obvious conclusion: Somehow, by some disintegration or disorientation process, a vertical hole was made inside the building. Dorphelmyer stepped into it and fell to his death."

~ ~ ~

. . . Much more than cosmetic surgery, a most promising and rewarding field for development. Instravel Re-Creative Physical Perfectionizing.

~ ~ ~

. . . "Why do people commit crimes? And why, when organized crime is practically nonexistent, when crime is now the province of the rare amateur, why should crime prevention cost more?"

~ ~ ~ 

. . . "Right under my nose all the time. The most obvious suspect and I discarded him. Why? Because he didn't have the know-how, the scientific background, the technical knowledge."

~ ~ ~

. . . "Taken all round, I must say that your drug is the greatest single crime-preventive aid of the century . . ."

~ ~ ~

. . . "Between us we have overcome practically every obstacle. We can create a chronomorphous state, and our main difficulty now is period selectivity."

~ ~ ~

. . . He rubbed his chin. It might work. He could envision her whereabouts and influence something to fall on her. Or perhaps give her a push. Or maybe put a glidocar out of control and . . .

~ ~ ~ 

. . . "Your memory will be gone for about a week."

~ ~ ~ 

. . . "I saw no reason why such a fortuitous discovery should become public property."

Resources:

- Jack Wodhams, a British-born Australian SF writer, has a short Wikipedia article about him HERE and a more substantial one in the SFE HERE, with bibliographical data HERE.

Category: Science fiction about the abuses of protean technology