Joe listened numbly to his voice as it came from one of the hundreds of machines on the walls, "Scream. Scream as loud as you can, and when the cops get here, tell 'em I tried to rape you." And then the girl's voice, "Sorry, buddy. Can't help—"
He waved his hand. "Okay. Shut it off. I confess to conspiracy."
Hendricks rose from behind the desk, walked leisurely to where Joe was slouched in a chair. "Give me your CPA ID."
Joe handed him the card with trembling fingers. He felt as if the world had collapsed beneath him. Conspiracy to commit a crime wasn't a crime. Anyone could conspire. And if the conspirators were prevented from committing a crime, then that meant the CPA had functioned properly once again. That meant the CPA had once again prevented crime, and the CPA didn't punish crimes or attempted crimes, and it didn't attempt to prevent crimes by punishment. If it did, that would be a violation of the New Civil Rights.
Hendricks crossed the room, deposited the card in a slot and punched a button. The machine hummed and a new card appeared.
When Hendricks handed him the new card, Joe saw that the words DANGEROUS CRIMINAL TENDENCIES were now in red and larger than before. And, in slightly smaller print, the ID card stated that the owner was a DCT First Class.
"You've graduated," Hendricks said coldly. "You guys never learn, do you? Now you're a DCT First Class instead of a Second Class. You know what that means?"
Hendricks leaned closer until Joe could feel his breath on his face. "That means your case history will be turned over to the newspapers. You'll be the hobby of thousands of amateur cops. You know how it works? It's like this. The Joneses are sitting around tomorrow night and they're bored. Then Mr. Jones says, 'Let's go watch this Joe Harper.' So they look up your record—amateur cops always keep records of First Classes in scrapbooks—and they see that you stop frequently at Walt's Tavern.
"So they go there and they sit and drink and watch you, trying not to let you know they're watching you. They watch you all night, just hoping you'll do something exciting, like trying to kill someone, so they can be the first ones to yell 'Police!' They'll watch you because it's exciting to be an amateur cop, and if they ever did prevent you from committing a crime, they'd get a nice reward and they'd be famous."