by Steve Perry
As Khadaji watched, Red jabbed his finger toward the tumbling magazine and fired. It jumped away suddenly at a right angle to its former flight.
“Always aim for the fish’s eye, kid. You might not hit it, but you’ll be more likely to hit the fish somewhere.”
Getting a license for his own spetsdod was easy enough. Khadaji used his own name—in all the billions of people in the galaxy, there had to be thousands with his name—and only lied about background. He’d been a citizen and student on Bocca for four standard years and he had stayed mostly within local laws. The permit was appended to his tag and the spetsdod became a part of his hand. Red had a left-side model he made Khadaji practice with, sometimes requiring him to use both at the same time. Khadaji put in an hour in the range daily, firing off several hundred darts each session. At first, the improvement in his speed and accuracy was radical; after a few months, the improvements came in tiny bits—a half-centimeter closer here, nine hits instead of eight there. In three months, Khadaji could hit a tossed magazine six times out of ten.
In six months, he could hit the magazine nine times out of every ten tosses. He could hit a man-sized target at combat ranges a hundred times in a row with no misses, and he could do it standing, sitting or rolling.
In nine months, Khadaji regularly outshot Red, using either or both hands. He practiced in varied lighting, wearing heavy and awkward clothing, sometimes blindfolded, shooting at generated sounds from the targets. He still missed his targets occasionally, but he took each miss as a personal affront, striving for perfection. The motions of the spetsdod became almost instinctive, a learned reflex which seemed as natural to him as walking.
“Ready?”
Khadaji nodded, feeling relaxed. He wore spetsdods on both hands and he held his arms crossed over his chest.
Red stood to Khadaji’s left, unmoving. With a sudden jerk, he tossed a handful of empty magazines into the air. Four of the small plastic rectangles glittered in the hard light of the firing range as they tumbled through the air.
Khadaji moved, both arms swinging out, his index fingers stabbing at the small targets, the spetsdods coughing. He fired four times; there were four hits.
Khadaji grinned. It was easy. He still wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but he knew one thing for certain: He was good enough at this, now.
Khadaji was off-duty, so he sat at a table with Red, sipping on his latest experimental drink, champagne. It was really quite good, provided he didn’t drink enough to get a headache. Three glasses seemed to be the limit.
“So, what happens now?” Red asked. “You’re better than anybody I’ve ever seen, either with your hands or that.” He pointed at the spetsdod. “Nothing else I can teach you.”
“I’ve got something to do,” Khadaji said. “This is only a part of it.”
“I thought so.”
He didn’t ask the obvious question, and Khadaji didn’t volunteer. He liked that about Red; the man never pried. Still, Khadaji felt a curiosity about his teacher. “What about you? What did I interrupt?”
Red sipped at his drink. “Not much. I’ve done a lot of things, mostly dancing around the edges of legality. Body-guarding, some… courier work, freelance odd jobs. Never could find a place interesting enough to settle for more than a few months. You’ve been interesting, so I’ve stayed around here, but now that I’m done, I think maybe I’ll take off. Lot of galaxy I haven’t seen yet.”
“No family?”
“Not to speak of. I was married a couple of times, they didn’t work out. I have a daughter I’ve never seen, she’d be her late-teens. Geneva, her name is. I’d like her to have more than the stads I send, but I don’t have a lot to offer. Only thing I was ever really good at is what I do.”
Khadaji nodded. This was the most he’d learned about Red in all the months he’d known the man. Impulsively, he decided to say something he hadn’t planned to say. If anybody could be trusted, it was Red. “Listen, if things go the way I want them to, I might be in a good place in a few years; maybe a place you might want share with your daughter. I’ll have a permanent mail code established here, under the name ‘Spit Enterprises’.” Khadaji smiled “Drop a pulse my way every year or two and let me know where I can find you.”
Red grinned. “I was never much for corresponding, kid, but, sure, why the hell not? I can see some kind of fire in you. I dunno what it is, exactly, but something potent. I’ll keep in touch.”
Chapter Sixteen
KHADAJI SAT IN one of the two thousand booths which made up the main university library, staring at the holoproj image generated by the computer. He knew that if he intended to offer any kind of opposition to the Confederation, it would have to be done from a position of strength. He had a strong body, and certain skill with that body, and now, with a spetsdod. But more was needed, he had to have some kind of power base.
Power, he’d learned from his study of politics, could come from several sources. It could be military, it could be political, or religious, or it could be money. Often the different kinds were intertwined.
Khadaji touched a control and the heat-sensitive device caused the holoproj to blur as the computer searched for the chosen subject.
Military was out. He’d have to be a Sector Marshal to command any forces strong enough to rise against the Confed and his chances of that were less than those of a snowball in a supernova. Politics would offer no easy access to power, either. It would take too long—assuming he could manage to work his way into an effective political organization. Religion was simply not in the question; he had no bent in that direction at all.
Which left money. It was easier to get rich than it was to get famous, there were a lot of ways to earn standards.
Of course, the trick was to make the money quickly. Within, say, five to ten years. That eliminated most honest work. Starting at the bottom of some corporate lift and rising slowly through the ranks would take some considerable amount of time, even if he had some particular skill in a given field. Which he didn’t, really. He was fairly well educated in some areas, but it was mostly academically oriented. And pubtenders didn’t die rich.
There were, of course, faster ways to make money honestly. ‘Find a need and fill it’ was the creed of hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs throughout history. If one had the proper kind of drive and luck, one could join the ranks of the self-made millionaires.
But the fastest way to make big stads was much simpler. Do it illegally. As always, it seemed that finding illegal needs and filling them paid the best. There were drugs which were frowned upon here which could be bought legally there; it was then merely a matter of figuring a safe way to transport the chemicals from here to there. Likewise, there were proscribed weapons, banned holos, illicit sexual devices and a myriad number of things and ideas which were worth a lot to someone able to provide them.
Of course, there were risks involved with such endeavors. Lock-time and brain-diddle weren’t pleasant thoughts; neither was being killed by a criminal element which disliked competition. And there were moral issues. Could Khadaji live with himself were he involved in slavery or life-destroying chemicals?
Of course, laws weren’t always just. Some rules outlawed a thing because it was intrinsically bad: child molestation, say. Other rules made harmless activities crimes only because someone wished them to be so. Take cohabitation on a religious holiday. On some worlds, it was legal on one day, illegal the next, and on the third, okay once again. Khadaji could see no moral dilemma there.
The holoproj cleared. The title of the text was: “A Statistical Analysis and Comparison of Activities Violating Major Planetary Laws Involving Crimes Against Property, Indexed by Stellar System.”
Khadaji shook his head. The work was, apparently, an ongoing project for graduate-level students, constantly being revised. According to the computer, the file, if printed out, would fill 25,973 pages. As he watched, the number was raised by a hundred. Then another seventy. Even at full augenblick
speedscan, it would take some time to read it all. He would skim, Khadaji decided, and hit only the highest of the high points. He had no intention of spending the rest of his life trying to read a file which was growing so fast he couldn’t keep pace with new additions…
He bought two travel cases that were identical, from a retail outlet which sold thousands of such cases each year. He wore thinskin gloves when handling the cases, so he left no prints or secretions. One case he filled with ordinary items of travel; clothes, toiletries, novel and travel tapes. The second case was filled much the same, but also had several hundred doses of mescabyn hidden in a tape reader. Mescabyn was a mild and harmless hallucinogen, and legal. At least it was legal on Bocca. On the planet’s nearest neighbor (and the only other occupied body in the Faust System), Ago’s Moon, the chem was illegal, as were most drugs. If he could get it to the right people, the mescabyn would be worth five hundred times what he had paid for it.
Travel between Bocca and Ago’s Moon was easily accomplished and hardly regulated. Naturally, there were smugglers, but inspection of luggage was usually done only on a spot basis. Khadaji bought a fake tag which identified the bearer as Reachardo Hollee and used it to buy a one-way passage to Ago’s Moon. He checked the travel case containing the mescabyn through under the new name and had the claim number imprinted on the tag. Immediately, he booked passage on the same commuter ship under his own name, checking the second case. He was quick enough, and the second claim number was sequential to the first. Step one.
Emile Khadaji was more than a little nervous as he sat in the womb-foam of the morning shuttle to Ago’s Moon. The attendant offered him a soporific, but he declined. He would have to relax, he thought. If his mental state was apparent, he would be caught for certain.
The ship landed uneventfully and Khadaji proceeded to the luggage claim area. He watched as the bags were ejected through a slot, sometimes fired completely over the conveyer by the robot dins assigned to transport them. Finally, he saw the bag containing the contraband. He was sweating as he reached for the case, expecting at any moment to feel someone clamping hands upon him.
Nothing happened, no one seemed to be watching him, so Khadaji moved to the line waiting to have tags checked against bags. The old woman matching numbers looked bored. The reader she used was not equipped with automatic memory Khadaji knew. That was an important part of his plan. If the device had been so fitted, he would never have tried the caper.
The woman glanced at the readout on the fake tag, saw the numbers matched, and waved Khadaji through, pointing with her nose. She didn’t look at him, but immediately began to check the next man through.
Khadaji released a deep breath. So far, so good. Step two.
The corridor led to customs and there were no exits between the luggage area and the inspection tables. There were, however, small disposal tubes lining the corridor. As inconspicuously as he could, Khadaji approached one of these disposals. He attached a thumbnail-sized sticker of phosphoreme to the fake tag, squeezed it, and dropped it into the wall tube. There was a small whoosh! as the tube sucked the plastic tag away, and Khadaji imagined he heard the phosphoreme as it ignited and flashed the ID. Reachardo Hollee no long existed. Step three.
The customs inspectors looked as bored as the woman who checked the claim tags, but Khadaji knew they weren’t. This was the most dangerous part. If they opened his bag, if they found the chem hidden inside the reader, then the caper was aborted. He was, he figured, protected as much as he could be, considering he was guilty of smuggling. He had played the scenario inside his head dozens of times.
“Well, what have we here? Look, Johann, a drug smuggler!”
Khadaji would look astounded. “What? I never saw that before.” He would look at the contents of the bag for a moment and the realization would dawn on him. “Hey, wait a minute! That’s not my bag!”
“Sure it isn’t, chickie. Come over here into my office. Let me see your tag. And move very slowly and carefully when you reach for it, Johann zaps things when he gets nervous.”
He would produce his tag, very carefully, trying to look innocent. They would check it.
“Yeah, it’s the wrong number, all right. How did you get it past Marlerra? Giver her a call, Johann. And check to see if there’s another bag matching this number, too.”
After what would seem like a thousand years, the second bag would show up, probably in the company of the old woman. It would be very thoroughly checked, but would be clear of anything illegal. And the number would match. And Khadaji’s tag would show he’d only checked one bag through. And they would let him go, though they might be suspicious, and begin looking for Hollee the drug smuggler…
“Your tag,” the customs man said, interrupting Khadaji’s mental scenario.
“Oh, sorry.” He handed the tag over and the man shoved it into a reader.
“Purpose of your visit?”
“Vacation. I’m going to Giant Falls, to do some swimming. Maybe some diving.”
“Um. Anything to declare?”
“No sir.”
The man pulled Khadaji’s tag from the reader and handed it back. He looked at the case Khadaji carried. “That all you’re bringing in?”
“Yes sir.” Khadaji made as if to put the case onto the inspection table.
The customs man glanced at Khadaji, then at the bag. “Never mind. Have a pleasant time on Ago’s Moon.” He waved at the next man.
Khadaji forced himself to walk slowly as he moved away from the customs inspector. He was through! Step four.
He had a contact lined up, someone he’d met in the pub on Bocca. Before he went to meet him, Khadaji took his legal permit, went to a weapons supplier and bought a spetsdod and four magazines of shocktox darts. Just in case.
There was no trouble. Ten minutes after he arrived in a respectable clothing producer’s office, Khadaji traded fifty standards worth of mescabyn for twenty-five thousand stads. He saw the money credited to his account, and he and his customer parted on the best of terms. The man would take all Khadaji could supply, he said.
Khadaji grinned as he walked toward his rented cube. He had just made more money in a few hours than in the last two years. He laughed aloud. He was tempted to spend a few days and a chunk of the money on Ago’s Moon, enjoying some of the pleasures which could be had by someone well-off. But he shook the thought. No, this was only a beginning. He would have to devise other ways to make this seed grow. The switched bag caper had worked, but he wouldn’t try that again. According to his research, most law benders were caught when they tried to milk too much from a good thing. He didn’t plan to repeat himself and run that risk.
The term “victimless crimes” might be a misnomer, but it was one Khadaji used as his basis of operation. Smuggling seemed to him to be the best way to go. He didn’t deal in killing weapons; if he smuggled drugs, they were non-addictive; he tended to buy something where it was legal and sell it where it was not. The risks he took justified his profits, in his mind, at least.
“—thing to declare, brother?”
“I bought this camera on Muta Kato,” Khadaji said. “It’s a gift for an old friend here.”
“Looks expensive. Value, brother?”
“Four hundred standards, I’m afraid.” Not counting the flame opals hidden inside the drive motor. “Will I have to pay an import duty?”
“That’s so, sorry, brother. Fifty percent.”
Khadaji pretended to wince. “Well. There goes my mother’s souvenir statue of His Eminence.” He reached for his credit tab.
“I’d hate to deprive somone’s mother of such a gift. What say we value this at… three hundred stads?”
Khadaji smiled. “You are a true saint, brother.”
Khadaji kept smiling as he walked through customs. He was glad he’d had a chance to study history; he owed an easy twelve thousand stads to the writer of an old file called The Purloined Letter.
When the Directorate of Simba Numa declared
rec chem An Abomination and shut down all public pubs, Khadaji was not one of the chemrunners who sold a shipload of common sops and liquids to eager buyers waving credit tags at passing traffic. The Directorate was expecting that kind of business and was prepared for it. Dozens of ships were impounded and their owners and pilots arrested. Khadaji, drawing upon his knowledge gained as a pubtender, approached a legal market selling products which could be easily converted into various popular rec-chems and sold them instructions on how to make those conversions. Bathtub psychedelics and gin became best-sellers and Khadaji left the planet long before the authorities began looking for him.
To cover his travel and illicit activities, Khadaji bought a business, a firm which specialized in sending consultants to help small businesses streamline their operations. He did so through a series of dummy corporations and fronts, then hired himself as a kind of free-cycle investigator, who answered only to the CEO of the company. The same CEO, hired by Khadaji, was allowed to run the legal end of the business as long as he vouched for Khadaji and didn’t ask him any questions.
As he made more money, Khadaji invested it in other legal operations, in stocks and banks and high-profit ventures. He wanted wealth, but it had to be useable wealth. He paid taxes on his legal earnings, hired a team of accountants to shift and juggle and obscure the input made from illegal activities, and poured the money through. The filter of respectability changed dirty stads to clean; Khadaji became solidly middle-class, then well-off, then moderately wealthy.
He put all of his energy into making money. It became a game, exciting at first because of the risks. Later, Khadaji became cautious and began paying others to take his risks for him. He worked through circular dummies, dead-end computer orders and back-check fail-safes; tracing him would be almost impossible, should his people be caught. And, on the rare occasions when one of his employees was detained, a legal fund swung into effect, along with a considerable chunk of tax-paid cash for the arrestee. Few ever willingly talked and those who did could give little away.