A Galaxy Of Strangers

by Lloyd Biggle Jr

  “You’d shock them. They’d think we were married.”

  “Isn’t there anything more expensive than a hotel suite?” Allen asked. “Supposing we find some kind of rental agent and inquire.”

  They found a rental agent. He arranged a week’s sublease on a luxurious apartment, rent four hundred rallods, paid to them in advance. He also paid them his commission, which was forty rallods. He engaged a maid and a cook for them, and the two servants happily handed their week’s wages to Ann when they reported for work.

  Allen and Ann treated themselves to an unrestrained shopping tour. They bought luggage, for which they left their thumbprints in receipt and were paid a hundred and fifty rallods. Allen selected a new suit, and the beaming clerk took his thumbprint and paid him ninety-five rallods. They outfitted themselves completely and added more than five hundred rallods to their accumulation.

  Then they returned to their apartment. “We have our thousand rallods,” Allen said. “So I suppose we can leave any time.”

  Ann looked about the dazzling living room and gazed pensively at the fountain that bubbled in a far corner. “Yes, I suppose we can.”

  “We really should be getting back. Doris will have her hands full.”

  “Yes, I suppose she will.”

  Allen seized her roughly. “Hang Doris. We never had a proper honeymoon. Let’s have it now. Doris can handle things for a week. She won’t like it, but she can do it.”

  “Let’s,” Ann agreed happily. “Who can say when we’ll be able to afford anything like this again?”

  Allen embraced her fondly. “Paradise!”

  “No,” Ann said. “Esidarap.”

  They made it a week to remember. They flitted lightly from nightclub to nightclub. They ran up staggering bills and exchanged their thumbprints for cash when they left. The waiters tipped them lavishly. They attended the theater and received cash along with their tickets. They shopped, after the initial sensation of awe wore off, only for compact and expensive items that they could carry back with them. They gradually became accustomed to starting a meal with dessert and finishing up with an appetizer. They almost became accustomed to backward-running clocks, a calendar that worked in reverse, and riding down to their forty-fifth floor. It was, indeed, Esidarap.

  At the end of the week they were still in a mood of unrestrained happiness but reluctantly ready to return to their normal world and go back to work. And on that fateful seventh day a fist descended rudely upon their door, followed by two heavy-set, official-looking men who brushed their frightened maid aside and stood looking them over coolly.

  “IBF,” one of them said, flashing his credentials. “We have been reliably informed that you two are unemployed. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, we’re unemployed,” Allen admitted.

  “We’ve come to talk to you about your unemployment compensation.”

  Ann giggled foolishly, and Allen muttered, “All this and Esidarap too!”

  “We are in the process, now, of checking your past record to see if you are paid up to date. But we’ve established that the compensation is unpaid for the past week, and we intend to collect that now. For the two of you, that amounts to seven thousand rallods. Cash or certified check, please.”

  Allen choked suddenly on nothing at all and glanced at Ann’s white face. He said slowly, “You mean—we owe—”

  “Every now and then people try to slip away and beat the government,” the IBF agent said. “But they soon find out that it’s rather expensive not to work. If you’ll take my advice, you’ll go back to wherever it is you came from, and go to work, and pay your wages like a good citizen. Right now I want seven thousand rallods.”

  “My gawd!” Allen exclaimed. “I wonder what the income tax amounts to!”

  The agent was momentarily flustered. “If the government owes you income tax, we can, of course, apply that against your unemployment compensation. It would take time to check, though. Better just pay us and take your refund in the usual way.”

  Allen got out his wallet and counted carefully. “I have four thousand, five hundred and twenty rallods,” he said. “Ann?”

  She was searching through her purse. “Twenty-one hundred,” she said.

  “Leaving you three hundred and eighty short,” the IBF man said.

  “If you’ll excuse us a moment, we’ll make a couple of quick purchases,” Allen told him.

  The IBF men accompanied them while they bought a diamond ring for Ann—her third. It brought them four hundred rallods. They paid off the balance they owed and went despondently back to their apartment.

  The rental agent was waiting for them. He was a quiet, white-haired, fatherly sort of man, and his face wore a mournful expression that suggested someone near and dear to him had let him down badly. “You two have disappointed me,” he said.

  “How is that?” Allen asked.

  “I’d hoped you would be able to keep this place for the summer. But now—” He shook his head. “Why did you do it?” “Do what?”

  “Live so recklessly. I don’t know what sort of wages you pay in your normal occupation, but even if it’s above average, you’ve used up your luxury and entertainment allowances for years. You’d have been stopped if you hadn’t done it so fast, but—all in one week! The reports are tabulated, now, and out you go.”

  “How did you know about it?” Allen demanded.

  “My dear young man. Why do you suppose your thumbprint is taken with every purchase? All bills go to central accounting, and a full statement of purchases is compiled as often as the volume requires it. Surely you knew that!”

  “Yeah,” Allen said. “Surely I knew that.”

  “So—out you go. You’ll be living at a mere subsistence level for a long time. But—” He shrugged. “When you get your credit back, come and see me again. Perhaps I can arrange something just as nice as this—if you promise to conduct your affairs intelligently.” He left, calling a reminder over his shoulder that they were to be moved out by noon.

  “There goes four hundred rallods a week,” Ann said. “And we’re down to twenty, and it’s a long way to a thousand. We should have left when we had it.” “I suppose we should have. It has been fun, though.” “So what do we do now?” Allen asked.

  The beautifully toned door chimes sounded. It was a detective with a court summons. An hour later they were in court. In another fifteen minutes they were out again, tried, convicted, soundly lectured by the judge, and sentenced.

  They were, the judge informed them, a cancerous blight gnawing on the roots of the entire economic system. Their offense was twofold—first, that they had received more for purchases than they were spending in wages; and second, that they were unemployed and therefore not spending anything in wages. Allen had an inspiration. “Your Honor,” he protested, “I couldn’t find a job.” . .

  His Honor flushed angrily and shattered his gavel with one vicious stroke. “This court will not tolerate such a fiction!” he shouted. “You know perfectly well that any citizen who is unable to find employment privately can pay wages to the government.”

  But their sentence did not seem unduly severe. His Honor placed them on probation, banged a fresh gavel, and called for the next case.

  A burly police officer led them out of the courtroom and into a small anteroom, where white-robed technicians took charge of them, got them seated at a table, and before they quite knew what was happening had clamped their right thumbs in a small, boxlike device.

  Allen protested, “The judge said probation. He didn’t say anything about thumb screws.”

  “Quite a card, aren’t you?” a technician sneered.

  Allen did not reply. He felt a sudden stab of pain, nothing more. At the same time Ann winced and looked over at him, puzzled.

  “All right,” the police officer said. “You can go, now.” He chuckled. “And don’t do it again.”

  On the steps of the courthouse they stopped to examine their thumbs. Neatly engraved on ea
ch was a small P. “I’ll be damned,” Allen exclaimed. “They’ve branded us.”

  They went to the office of their rental agent, and that worthy gentleman greeted them with obvious displeasure. “What do you want now?”

  “We’ll have to live somewhere,” Allen said. “We thought perhaps-“

  “I don’t handle rentals in your class.” “Could you refer us to someone?”

  He sighed and buzzed his secretary. “These people are on probation,” he said. “See if you can find them something.”

  The secretary went out, giving them contemptuous glances over her shoulder.

  “This may sound like an odd question,” Allen said, holding up his thumb, “but would you mind explaining this probation business?”

  “Try buying something,” the rental agent said. “You’ll understand it immediately. You can’t make a purchase without receipting it with your thumbprint. A probation print is not acceptable unless accompanied by a waiver of probation officially certified by the court.”

  “What do they want to do?” Allen demanded hotly. “Starve us?”

  “Oh, you can buy the essentials. The bare essentials. You must register at one store and make all your food purchases there. You can buy clothing, but only such clothing as is necessary for your work, and your employer must furnish a requisition. I don’t know the exact amount of your excess, of course, but if you behave yourselves for a few years, the court may take your good behavior into consideration.”

  “I see. Are there any lending institutions around here?” “I don’t understand.” “Banks, loan companies—”

  “Oh. You mean borrowing institutions. Of course. Why do you ask?”

  “I’d like to borrow a thousand rallods.”

  “My dear young man! Were you born yesterday? You don’t borrow money from those institutions. You lend them money!”

  “Why, yes, of course,” Allen said. “Naturally.”

  The secretary returned and handed Allen a slip of paper. “There’s the address,” she said. “It isn’t much. Just a furnished room. The neighborhood is poor, and it’s a walkdown, but I don’t think you can do any better than that.”

  “Thank you for everything,” Allen said. “Does the government confiscate the things we bought?”

  “Certainly not,” the rental agent said. “The government merely keeps you from buying more until you have retired the excess.”

  They attempted to transport their belongings by taxi, and the driver took one look at the “P” that registered neatly in the center of Allen’s thumbprint and drove away in disgust. They made four trips by bus and learned later that they had used up their week’s quota. Their new landlady was fat, owlish-looking, and hideously suspicious.

  “One of those, eh?” she said, studying Allen’s thumbprint. “Well —all right. But I’ll have you know this is a decent house, and if the police start nosing around here, out you go.” She paid him for a week in advance—six rallods.

  They got settled in their cramped room, and Allen sat in the lone chair feeling miserable while Ann stretched out on the bed and sobbed.

  “I suppose we’d better get something to eat,” Allen said finally. “I’m not hungry.”

  “We’ll have to buy food, whether we eat it or not. If we don’t, we won’t have any money to pay our wages with, and we can’t get jobs. And if we don’t go to work, we’ll have to pay another seven thousand rallods in unemployment compensation at the end of the week “

  Ann got up wearily. “All right. We’ll buy some food, but I won’t eat it. And I suppose we’d better start looking for jobs.”

  They registered at a neighborhood grocery store and bought their entire week’s allowance of groceries, concentrating on canned goods that would not require cooking. They took their groceries, and seventeen rallods, back to their room, where Allen inventoried their wealth—twenty rallods left from the ring purchase, six from rent, two and a fraction from bus rides, seventeen from groceries.

  “Forty-five rallods,” he said. “That means we can’t afford jobs that cost more than twenty-two and a half. Do you suppose they have such a thing?”

  “You take twenty-five,” Ann said. “I’ll take twenty.”

  They found an employment agency and went their separate ways for interviews and classification. Allen’s interviewer scowled at his blemished thumbprint, scowled at Allen, and said disgustedly, “Hardly worth the trouble, bothering with one like you. Well—I suppose you want the lowest-paying job you can find. Some kind of a sales job, perhaps. You pay a small guaranteed salary and a commission on what you sell. If you don’t sell much, you might get along. It better be something that isn’t expensive, because selling one large item a week, such as an automobile, would ruin you. This might do it—cemetery lots. Here’s the address. And here—” He handed Allen five rallods. “Here is the agency fee. I hope we won’t see you again.”

  Ann was already back at the room when Allen returned that evening. She was lying face down on the bed, and she did not look up when he came in. He sat down wearily and slipped out of his shoes. “I’m a salesman,” he said. “I’m selling cemetery lots. They cost a hundred and fifty rallods each. Meaning that the person who buys one is paid a hundred and fifty rallods. I’m on salary and commission. I pay the boss twenty rallods a week, and I pay the customer fifteen rallods of that hundred and fifty for every lot I sell. I don’t intend to sell any.”

  She spoke with her face muffled in the pillow. “I’m a filing clerk. It was the best I could do, and it’s thirty-five rallods a week. All I had was the twenty you gave me and five from the employment agency. I have to bring the other ten tomorrow, or I’ll be fired. I almost got fired anyway, because using the alphabet backward confuses me. Where can I get ten rallods?”

  “Did you try the new-clothes angle?”

  She sat up. “What’s that?”

  “I told my boss this was the only suit I had. He thought it looked pretty good—it ought to, it cost two hundred and fifty rallods—but he agreed that a salesman should have more than one suit. He gave me a requisition, and I bought a new suit for forty rallods. That’s the most expensive one they’d let me have. It gives us a little cushion.”

  “Some cushion. We’re getting six rallods a week for this room. We’re allowed seventeen for groceries. That’s twenty-three. And I have to pay thirty-five in wages and you have to pay twenty.” She lay down again and went on tonelessly, “How can we save a thousand rallods if we go in the hole thirty-two every week?”

  “You ask your boss for a requisition for clothing, and I’ll try to think of some angles. Maybe they’ll let me take a prospect to dinner every now and then. I could pick up a few rallods that way. And maybe something will turn up.”

  Catastrophe struck the next day, when Allen sold a cemetery lot. “The guy practically took the thing away from me,” he moaned. “I tried insulting him, and knocking the product, and everything else I could think of, but I couldn’t get out of it. So there goes fifteen rallods.”

  “I tore my dress and gave the boss a hard-luck story,” Ann said. “He let me buy forty rallods worth of clothing. So we have our wages for next week, but you’d better not sell any more lots.”

  “I won’t,” Allen promised. “I’ll turn and run first.”

  They started the second week with their wages honorably paid and enough surplus to carry them a third week provided that Allen sold nothing. Beyond that lay blank despair.

  On the second day of that second week, Allen avoided making a sale with such obvious evasive tactics that the prospective customer complained to his boss. The boss studied Allen’s sales record, which was not impressive, and threatened to discharge him. Allen was tired, discouraged, and nauseated at the thought of another cold meal out of cans. He was homesick for a glimpse of blue sky. He lurched through the door and halted in amazement.

  Ann had a visitor—a bulky, bald-headed, brownish-red-bearded man who leaned back in the rickety chair and regarded Allen quizzica
lly. It was Mr. Gloob, of the Gloob Travel Agency.

  Mr. Gloob pointed an accusing finger. “You shouldn’t have done it!”

  “You’re telling me!”

  Ann leaped up excitedly. “We just got here. I saw him on the street, and he almost got away from me. I chased along beside him for two blocks, and he wouldn’t pay any attention to me.”

  “She certainly did,” Mr. Gloob said. “I didn’t recognize her, so I tried to ignore her. My old mother always warned me about blatantly forward strange women. But you shouldn’t have done it. Do you realize the confusion you created in our accounting department? Two return trips, with no outgoing prints to match with them. The directors have held three emergency meetings, and the problem seemed utterly incapable of solution. You’ll have to go back, you know. You must promise absolute secrecy and leave at once. I won’t have it any other way.”

  “I won’t, either,” Ann said fervently.

  Gloob was studying the room critically. “Why are you living in such a queer place? I’ve often wondered what people from your backward world would do in our civilization, but this isn’t exactly what I imagined.”

  “It isn’t what we imagined, either,” Allen said. He briefly described their week of reckless extravagance and the depths to which they had fallen.

  Gloob raised his hands in horror. “My word! But why did you let them put you on probation? Why did you try to live like this? This is terrible! Why didn’t you just go back to Centralia?”

  “How could we?” Allen demanded. “The IBF men took every bit of our money. We didn’t have the thousand rallods for tickets.”

  Gloob slowly rose to his feet. “My dear friend Allen! Surely you couldn’t live in our civilization for more than two weeks and have so little understanding of our ways. You do not pay a thousand rallods for tickets. We pay you the thousand rallods!”

  “But I thought—” Allen weakly took the chair Gloob had just vacated. “I mean, you charged us at Centralia, and I paid you, so naturally-“

  The two of them stared at Gloob, whose face was working convulsively, and suddenly all three of them dissolved in laughter. “I’ll start packing,” Ann said. “I’ll help you,” Allen told her.