Man Who Used the Universe

by Alan Dean Foster

  Again the helpmate jabbed, this time catching the domeister in one ear. He howled, clutched at himself. Satisfied, Kees turned and inspected the riot swirling around him.

  The older boy who'd tripped him suddenly turned pale. He started to run, got tangled up with a chair, and fell to the stew-sodden floor.

  Kees was on him instantly, stabbing with the helpmate at legs, rump, back, groin. The boy screamed as the rest of the mob howled happily. The sounds of running adult feet could be dimly discerned, still far in the distance.

  The older boy rolled over, and Kees began to swing the stick instead of poke with it. He worked methodically, silently. The older boy's nose shattered, sending blood flying. A cheekbone cracked next, then several teeth. Blood covered his face and he'd stopped screaming.

  The amusement was soon gone from the howling and then the shouting itself faded, until the only sound in the room was that of the helpmate stick striking bone and meat. The boy on the ground had stopped moving. Still Kees continued to flail away at him. Aware that something adult and vicious and nasty had entered their midst, the other boys had drawn back from their ugly cluster mate. They were staring at him now with mouths agape in that special childish stare reserved by the young for those who have crossed a bridge in defiance of an unspoken law.

  The sound of nearing attendants was loud now. Off to one side the stunned domeister was regaining control of himself. He was a big man and wouldn't be taken by surprise again.

  Panting steadily, the muscular boy named Kees studied the bloody mass beneath him with interest. Then he looked back toward the groaning domeister, then at his cluster mates, letting the hate which had been building all his life come pouring out through his eyes.

  No one would ever humiliate him again. There would be no more tripping, no more beatings, no more taunts about his face and body. No more. And no more shocks from the ubiquitous helpmates. Never again. Never, never, never.

  He ran forward, jumped atop a chair, which teetered precariously under his weight. Then he was pulling himself nimbly up into a high window box. Two blows of the helpmate cracked the glass. Two more sent fragments showering into the room. A couple cut his face. He ignored them.

  "What . . . hey . . . there he is!" the newly arrived attendants yelled as they arrived in the chaos which had been the eating room. They started for the window.

  Kees turned and heaved the helpmate at them, slowing them for the necessary second or two. Then he threw himself out the window, leaving behind the wreckage of the moment as well as that of his early childhood.

  It was the only time in his life he'd completely lost his temper. . . .

  His hair was graying now but the memory of that burning, humiliating, stinging helpmate stick was still fresh in his brain. Poor Cairns had never understood the source of Loo-Macklin's violent reaction that day at QED. Neither had Basright.

  Loo-Macklin did not yet have interests on every one of the eighty-three worlds of the UTW. Not yet.

  The decisions he'd made as head of QED had led to innovations in entertainment, which had rocked the industry. The money, which they generated, had been put to good use, leading to expansion in other areas of commerce. Little of this was evident to observers, so tightly held was the design and detail of his financial empire, so intricately dispersed were his manifold interests.

  Only Loo-Macklin himself, Basright, and three top assistants knew how the forty-four companies were actually tied together in mutual support of each other. Even the operators who ran the financial computers, which handled the economics of the individual worlds of the UTW, had only a suspicion that of the hundred largest companies in the human sphere, the one listed as thirty-third in assets actually ranked number one.

  When a company entered the top ten, it became a target for intense competition by many smaller companies, which would temporarily combine to try to reduce its power and influence. Many such immense combines came crashing down of their own weight, for it is difficult enough to manage a diversified business on a single world, let alone many.

  No one had Loo-Macklin's ability to juggle figures and facts, nor his peculiar genius for organization, nor, even less, his magic with computers. Information bound his secretive interests together, interests whose common director was able to supply a mental glue no competitor could match.

  Of all the giants of industry and government, there was only one who studied Loo-Macklin's seemingly innocuous operations from afar and suspected. That was Counselor Momblent, now retired Counselor Momblent. He was still Loo-Macklin's superior in experience, but not in much else. Not anymore.

  He said nothing of his suspicions to anyone else, held his silence, smiled, and observed. He was on his way to a hundred years of life, still vital and alert, still toying with his private interests more out of paternal concern than real desire.

  Counselor (retired) Momblent had seen a great deal in his near century of existence and had grown jaded and indifferent to many things early in life. Little aroused him any more. Of all the new kinds of entertainment, which Loo-Macklin's enterprises had developed for the population, none gave Momblent as much delight as Loo-Macklin's own devious machinations.

  From solid bases in entertainment and transportation, communications and light manufacturing, Loo-Macklin's concerns reached out acquisitive fingers to buy interests in food processing and shipping, in education and decorative horticulture. His plants built the equipment, which supplied the great computer networks. His schools trained the operators and programmers. His utilities ran the fusion plants that lit the cities of two dozen worlds, cities, which Loo-Macklin's construction corps had helped to build.

  All apart from each other, of course. All independent. As their own employees would have testified under truth machines, because they truly knew no different.

  Loo-Macklin was not the only industrialist to practice such deviousness in order to avoid the attentions of rapacious competitors, but he was by far the most skillful and subtle in devising unusual methods of obfuscation. After a while, however, some of his individual holdings became so powerful that they themselves attracted the nervous attention of many people.

  Not all of that attention arose from legal sources. In at least one field, that of entertainment, potential profits had caused Loo-Macklin to acquire through his underlings interests in some of the less reputable and most degrading varieties of personal amusement. Loo-Macklin did not hold moral opinions regarding them, of course. Only society at large did that. To him they were simply services he was providing. Supply and demand were his arbiters of conscience.

  As far as he was concerned, every thinking individual had the choice to go to hell in his or her own way. He had no intention of standing in the way of anyone who wished to do so. In fact, for a few credits, he didn't mind helping you along your chosen path, be it healthful or destructive. Most citizens had started out in life with far more advantages than he, so who was he to rise up and say what an individual should or should not do? No, no, not Kees vaan Loo-Macklin.

  His services were available freely and without prejudgment or, for that matter, without caring. He did not create the demand for such services, he merely filled the needs, much as he did the salted fernal nuts requested by the Inner Six Worlds of the Orischians or the giant cargo ships needed by the bulk hauling concerns of the Three-Ring Giants.

  All the same to him: product. Whether sex or steel, bread or bitugle building compound. Commodities all, supplied with equanimity to all.

  From time to time, individuals within Loo-Macklin's organizations spoke out against his unwillingness to draw a sharp line between the legal and the illegal, the moral and the not. These people soon found themselves quietly demoted, or shunted to minor posts, or otherwise removed from positions where their concerns might be noted. Loo-Macklin had neither the time nor room for such people and he kept watch on his personnel as carefully as he did on his computers.

  In truth, he saw no difference between them. All were circuits in the va
st machine he was building. If they did not integrate properly, he excised them.

  Not every decision he made was right, not every acquisition profitable. There were reversals and setbacks. Sometimes he went against the advice of his employees and they turned out to be right.

  In such cases these prescient individuals were always promoted. Loo-Macklin rewarded nothing so lavishly as correctness, punished nothing as severely as failure. He did not like being wrong when someone else was right. Not ever. But he had no ego. Right was right, to be acclaimed no matter who the perpetrator.

  He did not live ostentatiously, considering his accomplishments. Nor did he give the appearance or put on the airs of one who has acquired both great wealth and great power.

  In fact, he was not nearly as personally wealthy as he could have been. There were many high-level employees who had grown far wealthier from his efforts and would have been startled to learn that their personal incomes were greater than his own.

  Wealth had no real attraction for Loo-Macklin. The vast sums he amassed were put back into this or that new enterprise, new business venture. Many of these speculations never paid back what he put into them, but enough did to make even more money for him, which in turn fueled still additional expansion and development.

  Only rarely did he take note of anything affecting him personally. His concern was wholly for his businesses, in fulfilling the grand schematic he'd designed so many years ago. Once in a great while something did pique his interest, though.

  He didn't see Basright much anymore, both men being too busy for personal contact. They communicated largely by machine, by the intricate electronic communications system Loo-Macklin had designed to facilitate private conversation with his most important personnel.

  When Basright arrived, he was surprised at how little the office on Evenwaith had changed during the past decade. Once impressive, it now seemed empty and spartan. His own office on Restavon was far larger, the decor far grander. To have seen both, an outsider would have instantly assumed it was Basright who was the master and Loo-Macklin the employee, and not a particularly important employee at that.

  "What is it?" Loo-Macklin asked him.

  "I had business in Nekrolious, on the south continent . . ." Basright began.

  "I know."

  ". . . and I thought I'd bring this by personally." He set a sheet of printed plastic down in front of Loo-Macklin. "It's the recent printout from the Board of Operators on Terra, Social Census Section, Individual Status." He tapped the sheet. "Check the sixteenth column under the viewer."

  Loo-Macklin slipped the sheet into an enlarger. Each dot on the sheet contained thousands of letters, and there were thousands of dots on the sheet.

  "Look under the Ls," Basright urged him.

  And there it was, Loo-Macklin's name among the rest of the elevated legals, raised to the rarified domain of eighth class.

  "You've broken the tenth level, sir. My congratulations on your accomplishment."

  Loo-Macklin removed the sheet and handed it back to Basright. Then he turned his attention back to the computer viewer he'd been studying when the older man had walked in.

  "Means nothing to me."

  "Nothing, sir? Are you sure?" Basright had been with Loo-Macklin long enough to tease, though he knew it would probably have no effect on his boss. That never prevented him from trying, however.

  "I doubt if there is another citizen of the UTW who has risen from illegal status to eighth-class legal in as short a time as yourself. A mere twenty years, sir."

  "Twenty years." Loo-Macklin glanced away from the screen. "Has it been that long?"

  "It has, sir," said Basright, knowing the question to be rhetorical.

  Loo-Macklin turned to stare at him, his eyes wide open. Basright could take that stare now. No one else could.

  "We've done quite a lot in twenty years, haven't we, Basright?"

  "No, sir, we haven't. You have. Me, I've just been along for the ride."

  "I couldn't have done it without you, Basright," Loo-Macklin said appreciatively.

  "Yes you could have, sir. Quite easily, I think."

  "I don't flatter myself half as much as you do." He gestured at the sheet of microdots. "I don't need that. Status isn't what I'm after, be it eighth class or first."

  "I know that, sir, but I still thought you'd be curious to know." He sounded slightly hurt.

  "I suppose I was," said Loo-Macklin placatingly. "It might prove useful." He leaned back and thought aloud.

  "E. G. Grange, president and principle shareholder in Polpoquel Tool Making. They have seven large plants on Zulong. He refuses to even talk with anyone less than tenth class and he won't talk to representatives at all. Shrewd old bullyprimewot. That's why I've never tried to buy him out before now. Yes, eighth status could prove useful. Thank you for bringing it to my notice, Basright."

  "You're welcome, sir." The older man stood waiting a moment longer, then turned and walked out of the room. There was business to attend to in Nekrolious, and then on Restavon and Matrix. There was much traveling, and he was weary of traveling. But it was necessary. There was no one else to handle the sensitive work, and you could only accomplish so much by relay and computer. Sometimes a man's presence was still required.

  He glanced back, saw Loo-Macklin once again staring intently into the small viewer, and realized he was no nearer understanding that hard-faced, soft-voiced manipulator of worlds and men than he'd been twenty years ago.

  The land had been cleansed and scrubbed. Loo-Macklin enjoyed taking strolls through the parks that had multiplied outside the tubes of Cluria. He derived as much pleasure from the ironic developments, which had accompanied the cleanup of the landscape and atmosphere as he did from the solitude and exercise.

  Although it had been many years since his companies had initiated the washout of Cluria's pollution, there were citizens of the city who still were not used to the idea of walking around outside the tubes without protection. They still carried breathing masks and safety goggles attached to their belts, just in case.

  It was mostly the younger people, the children and adolescents who'd been raised without preconceived fears subsequent to the washout, whom he encountered on his long walks.

  They didn't recognize him, of course, though an occasional attentive adult might. That suited him just fine. It offered him the opportunity to study the always interesting antics of the young of the species, whose frivolous activities he found of consuming interest, never having had the chance to partake of them himself. Loo-Macklin had never been young.

  Irony, he thought again to himself. Oh, the medals and praise and honors they'd showered on him during and after the washout! Savior of the good life, cleanser of Cluria they called him. The man who benevolently made the valley of the great industrial city safe to walk through once again, to walk through as men were meant to walk, without the appurtenances of plastic and metal which gave them the appearance of insects.

  Of course, there had been nothing in the least benevolent about his intentions.

  He recalled the growls and angry missives he'd received from his fellow Clurian industrialists, none of whom realized the extent of his off-world interests. Loo-Macklin had caused to have made a number of extensive and expensive studies of worlds such as Terra and Restavon where pollution had been eliminated or at least substantially brought under control. The results were interesting.

  In every case, research revealed that the productivity of individual workers was much higher than on such poisoned worlds as Evenwaith and Photoner. Studies revealed a simple equation: clean air and clean water results in greater productivity, hence greater profits.

  So the grand, much-acclaimed washout and cleanup of Cluria, which he'd instigated, had been done not out of any desire to make Cluria a better place to live, not out of any civic pride or philanthropic interest, but simply out of a desire to increase profits through greater productivity. A healthy happy worker is a harder worker, the statistic
s showed. The increased production would more than offset, in time, the cost of the washout.

  That was not what he told the Cluria Society of Journalists when asked to speak to their annual gathering. Nor was it what he said in response to the honors and praise public officials and civic-minded organizations heaped upon him. Combined with his earlier work in the field of crime control, this new accomplishment firmly entrenched him in the public mind as a powerful force for the general good, a perception which by now had spread well beyond the provincial boundaries of Evenwaith.

  Those few industrialists who knew better kept tight rein on their cynicism and joined in the praise. They admired Loo-Macklin's duplicity all the more because they understood it better than the public. A few took the lead and commenced their own pollution-cleanup programs on other worlds, and reaped corresponding benefits.

  Through it all Loo-Macklin kept as low a profile as possible. He borrowed from his powerful image as freely and astutely as he would from any bank, when he needed a piece of legislation changed in his favor or a concession on mining rights. You couldn't influence the computers, of course, or even the members of the boards of operators. But you could always influence people who could influence the board members who could occasionally influence programming.

  It was all a great game to Loo-Macklin.

  He turned around a flowering locust tree and started down toward a favorite creek. In addition to giving him the chance to watch children, he enjoyed these walks because they got him out of the city and away from the press of humanity. His wealth and fame had made him a target for those whose business it was to solicit contributions for various organizations and charities.

  Not that he didn't give a reasonable amount. He was very generous with truly needy or helpful groups. In addition to the publicity, which resulted from the giving of such gifts and which further enhanced his image in the public eye, it put such powerful pressure groups as the Interstellar Family for the Aid to the Poor or The Society for Universal Literacy permanently in his debt. Sometimes when liberal offerings of credit or pressure tactics failed with a certain politician, a word from such highly respected organizations could work wonders.