“This is my ship, Mister and Owner Rod McBan to the hundred and fifty-first! An Earth ship. I pulled it out of orbit and grounded it with the permission of the Commonwealth. They don’t know you’re on it yet. They can’t find out right now because my Humanoid-Robot Brainwave Dephasing Device is on. Nobody can think in or out through that, and anybody who tries telepathy on this boat is going to get himself a headache here.”
“Why you?” said Rod. “What for?”
“In due time,” said the Lord Redlady. “Let me introduce you first. You know these people.” He waved at a group.
Lavinia sat with his hands, Bill and Hopper, with his workwoman Eleanor, with his Aunt Doris. They looked odd, sitting on the low, soft, luxurious Earth furniture. They were all sipping some Earth drink of a color which Rod had never seen before. Their expressions were diverse: Bill looked truculent, Hopper looked greedy, Aunt Doris looked utterly embarrassed, and Lavinia looked as though she were enjoying herself.
“And then here …” said the Lord Redlady.
The man he pointed to might not have been a man. He was the Norstrilian type all right, but he was a giant, of the kind which were always killed in the Garden of Death.
“At your service,” said the giant, who was almost three meters tall and who had to watch his head, lest it hit the ceiling, “I am Donald Dumfrie Hordern Anthony Garwood Gaines Wentworth to the fourteenth generation, Mister and Owner McBan. A military surgeon, at your service, sir!”
“But this is private. Surgeons aren’t allowed to work for anybody but government.”
“I am on loan to the Earth government,” said Wentworth the giant, his face in a broad grin.
“And I,” said the Lord Redlady, “am both the Instrumentality and the Earth Government for diplomatic purposes. I borrowed him. He’s under Earth rules. You will be well in two or three hours.”
The doctor, Wentworth, looked at his hand as though he saw a chronograph there:
“Two hours and seventeen minutes more.”
“Let it be,” said the Lord Redlady. “Here’s our last guest.”
A short, angry man stood up and came over. He glared out at Rod and held forth an angry hand.
“John Fisher to the hundredth. You know me.”
“Do I?” said Rod, not impolitely. He was just dazed.
“Station of the Good Fresh Joey,” said Fisher.
“I haven’t been there,” said Rod, “but I’ve heard of it.”
“You needn’t have,” snapped the angry Fisher. “I met you at your grandfather’s.”
“Oh, yes, Mister and Owner Fisher,” said Rod, not really remembering anything at all, but wondering why the short, red-faced man was so angry with him.
“You don’t know who I am?” said Fisher.
“Silly games!” thought Rod. He said nothing but smiled dimly. Hunger began to stir inside him.
“Commonwealth Financial Secretary, that’s me,” said Fisher. “I handle the books and the credits for the government.”
“Wonderful work,” said Rod. “I’m sure it’s complicated. Could I have something to eat?”
The Lord Redlady interrupted: “Would you like French pheasant with Chinesian sauce steeped in the thieves’ wine from Viola Siderea? It would only cost you six thousand tons of refined gold, orbited near Earth, if I ordered it sent to you by special courier.”
For some inexplicable reason the entire room howled with laughter. The men put their glasses down so as not to spill them. Hopper seized the opportunity to refill his own glass. Aunt Doris looked hilarious and secretly proud, as though she herself had laid a diamond egg or done some equal marvel. Only Lavinia, though laughing, managed to look sympathetically at Rod to make sure that he did not feel mocked. The Lord Redlady laughed as loudly as the rest, and even the short, angry John Fisher allowed himself a wan smile, while holding out his hand for a refill on his drink. An animal, a little one which looked very much like an extremely small person, lifted up the bottle and filled his glass for him; Rod suspected that it was a “monkey” from Old Old Earth, from the stories he had heard.
Rod didn’t even say, “What’s the joke?” though he realized plainly that he was himself in the middle of it. He just smiled weakly back at them, feeling the hunger grow within him.
“My robot is cooking you an Earth dish. French toast with maple syrup. You could live ten thousand years on this planet and never get it. Rod, don’t you know why we’re laughing? Don’t you know what you’ve done?”
“The Onseck tried to kill me, I think,” said Rod.
Lavinia clapped her hand to her mouth, but it was too late.
“So that’s who it was,” said the doctor, Wentworth, with a voice as gigantic as himself.
“But you wouldn’t laugh at me for that—” Rod started to say. Then he stopped himself.
An awful thought had come to him.
“You mean, it really worked? That stuff with my family’s old computer?”
The laughter broke out again. It was kind laughter, but it was always the laughter of a peasant people, driven by boredom, who greet the unfamiliar with attack or with laughter.
“You did it,” said Hopper. “You’ve bought a billion worlds.”
John Fisher snapped at him, “Let’s not exaggerate. He’s gotten about one point six stroon years. You couldn’t buy any billion worlds for that. In the first place, there aren’t a billion settled worlds, not even a million. In the second place, there aren’t many worlds for sale. I doubt that he could buy thirty or forty.”
The little animal, prompted by some imperceptible sign from the Lord Redlady, went out of the room and returned with a tray. The odor from the tray made all the people in the room sniff appreciatively. The food was unfamiliar, but it combined pungency and sweetness. The monkey fitted the tray into an artfully concealed slot at the head of Rod’s couch, took off an imaginary monkey cap, saluted, and went back to his own basket behind the Lord Redlady’s chair.
The Lord Redlady nodded. “Go ahead and eat, boy. It’s on me.”
Rod sat up. His shirt was still blood-caked and he realized that it was almost worn out.
“That’s an odd sight, I must say,” said the huge doctor Wentworth. “There’s the richest man in many worlds, and he hasn’t the price of a new pair of overalls.”
“What’s odd about that? We’ve always charged an import fee of twenty million percent of the orbit price of goods,” snapped angry John Fisher. “Have you ever realized what other people have swung into orbit around our sun, just waiting for us to change our minds so they could sell us half the rubbish in the universe? This planet would be knee-deep in junk if we ever dropped our tariff. I’m surprised at you, doctor, forgetting the fundamental rules of Old North Australia!”
“He’s not complaining,” said Aunt Doris, whom the drink had made loquacious. “He’s just thinking. We all think.”
“Of course we all think. Or daydream. Some of us leave and go off-planet to be rich people on other worlds. A few of us even manage to get back here on severe probation when we realize what the offworlds are like. I’m just saying,” said the doctor, “that Rod’s situation would be very funny to everybody except us Norstrilians. We’re all rich with the stroon imports, but we’ve kept ourselves poor in order to survive.”
“Who’s poor?” snapped the fieldhand Hopper, apparently touched at a sensitive point. “I can match you with megacredits, doc, any time you care to gamble. Or I’ll meet you with throwing knives, if you want them better. I’m as good as the next man!”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” said John Fisher. “Hopper here can argue with anybody on the planet. We’re still equals, we’re still free, we’re not the victims of our own wealth—that’s Norstrilia for you!”
Rod looked up from his food and said, “Mister and Owner Secretary Fisher, you talk awfully well for somebody who is not a freak like me. How do you do it?”
Fisher started looking angry again, though he was not really angry:
“Do you think that financial records can be dictated telepathically? I’m spending centuries out of my life, just dictating into my blasted microphone. Yesterday I spent most of the day dictating the mess which you have made of the Commonwealth’s money for the next eight years. And you know what I’m going to do at the next meeting of the Commonwealth Council?”
“What?” said Rod.
“I’m going to move the condemnation of that computer of yours. It’s too good to be in private hands.”
“You can’t do that!” shrieked Aunt Doris, somewhat mellowed by the Earth beverage she was drinking. “It’s MacArthur and McBan family property.”
“You can keep the temple,” said Fisher with a snort, “but no bloody family is going to outguess the whole planet again. Do you know that boy sitting there has four megacredits on Earth at this moment?”
Bill hiccuped. “I got more than that myself.”
Fisher snarled at him, “On Earth? FOE money?”
A silence hit the room.
“FOE money. Four megacredits? He can buy Old Australia and ship it out here to us!” Bill sobered fast.
Said Lavinia mildly, “What’s foe money?”
“Do you know, Mister and Owner McBan?” said Fisher, in a peremptory tone. “You had better know, because you have more of it than any man has ever had before.”
“I don’t want to talk about money,” said Rod. “I want to find out what the Onseck is up to.”
“Don’t worry about him!” laughed the Lord Redlady, prancing to his feet and pointing at himself with a dramatic forefinger. “As the representative of Earth, I filed six hundred and eighty-five lawsuits against him simultaneously, in the name of your Earth debtors, who fear that some harm might befall you …”
“Do they really?” said Rod. “Already?”
“Of course not. All they know is your name and the fact that you bought them out. But they would worry if they did know, so as your agent I tied up the Hon. Sec. Houghton Syme with more law cases than this planet has ever seen before.”
The big doctor chuckled. “Dashed clever of you, my Lord and Mister! You know us Norstrilians pretty well, I must say. If we charge a man with murder, we’re so freedom-minded that he has time to commit a few more before being tried for the first one. But civil suits! Hot sheep! He’ll never get out of those, as long as he lives.”
“Is he onsecking any more?” said Rod.
“What do you mean?” asked Fisher.
“Does he still have his job—Onseck?”
“Oh, yes,” said Fisher, “but we put him on two hundred years’ leave and he has only about a hundred and twenty years to live, poor fellow. Most of that time he will be defending himself in civil suits.”
Rod finally exhaled. He had finished the food. The small polished room with its machined elegance, the wet air, the bray of voices all over the place—these made him feel dreamlike. Here grown men were standing, talking as though he really did own Old Earth. They were concerned with his affairs, not because he was Roderick Frederick Ronald Arnold William MacArthur McBan the hundred and fifty-first, but because he was Rod, a boy among them who had stumbled upon danger and fortune. He looked around the room. The conversations had accidentally stopped. They were looking at him, and he saw in their faces something which he had seen before. What was it? It was not love. It was a rapt attentiveness, combined with a sort of pleasurable and indulgent interest. He then realized what the looks signified. They were giving him the adoration which they usually reserved only for cricket players, tennis players, and great track performers—like that fabulous Hopkins Harvey fellow who had gone offworld and had won a wrestling match with a “heavy man” from Wereld Schemering. He was not just Rod any more. He was their boy.
As their boy, he smiled at them vaguely and felt like crying.
The breathlessness broke when the large doctor, Mister and Owner Wentworth, threw in the stark comment, “Time to tell him, Mister and Owner Fisher. He won’t have his property long if we don’t get moving. No, nor his life either.”
Lavinia jumped up and cried out, “You can’t kill Rod—”
Doctor Wentworth stopped her. “Sit down. We’re not going to kill him. And you there, stop acting foolish! We’re his friends here.”
Rod followed the line of the doctor’s glance and saw that Hopper had snaked his hand back to the big knife he wore in his belt. He was getting ready to fight anyone who attacked Rod.
“Sit, sit down, all of you, please!” said the Lord Redlady, speaking somewhat fussily with his singsong Earth accent. “I’m host here. Sit down. Nobody’s killing Rod tonight. Doctor, you take my table. Sit down yourself. You will stop threatening my ceiling or your head. You, Ma’am and Owner,” said he to Aunt Doris, “move over there to that other chair. Now we can all see the doctor.”
“Can’t we wait?” asked Rod. “I need to sleep. Are you going to ask me to make decisions now? I’m not up to decisions, not after what I’ve just been through. All night with the computer. The long walk. The bird from the Onseck—”
“You’ll have no decisions to make if you don’t make them tonight,” said the doctor firmly and pleasantly. “You’ll be a dead man.”
“Who’s going to kill me?” asked Rod.
“Anybody who wants money. Or wants power. Or who would like unlimited life. Or who needs these things to get something else. Revenge. A woman. An obsession. A drug. You’re not just a person now, Rod. You’re Norstrilia incarnate. You’re Mr. Money himself! Don’t ask who’d kill you! Ask who wouldn’t! We wouldn’t … I think. But don’t tempt us.”
“How much money have I got?” said Rod.
Angry John Fisher cut in: “So much that the computers are clotted up, just counting it. About one and a half stroon years. Perhaps three hundred years of Old Earth’s total income. You sent more Instant Messages last night than the Commonwealth government itself has sent in the last twelve years. These messages are expensive. One kilocredit in FOE money.”
“I asked a long time ago what this ‘foe money’ was,” said Lavinia, “and nobody has got around to telling me.”
The Lord Redlady took the middle of the floor. He stood there with a stance which none of the Old North Australians had ever seen before. It was actually the posture of a master of ceremonies opening the evening at a large night club, but to people who had never seen those particular gestures, his movements were eerie, self-explanatory and queerly beautiful.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, using a phrase which most of them had only heard in books, “I will serve drinks while the others speak. I will ask each in turn. Doctor, will you be good enough to wait while the Financial Secretary speaks?”
“I should think,” said the doctor irritably, “that the lad would be wanting to think over his choice. Does he want me to cut him in two, here, tonight, or doesn’t he? I should think that would take priority, wouldn’t you?”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the Lord Redlady, “the Mister and Doctor Wentworth has a very good point indeed. But there is no sense in asking Rod about being cut in two unless he knows why. Mister Financial Secretary, will you tell us all what happened last night?”
John Fisher stood up. He was so chubby that it did not matter. His brown, suspicious, intelligent eyes looked over the lot of them.
“There are as many kinds of money as there are worlds with people on them. We here on Norstrilia don’t carry the tokens around, but in some places they have bits of paper or metal which they use to keep count. We talk our money into the central computers which even out all our transactions for us. Now what would happen if I wanted a pair of shoes?”
Nobody answered. He didn’t expect them to.
“I would,” he went on, “go to a shop, look in the screen at the shoes which the offworld merchants keep in orbit. I would pick out the shoes I wanted. What’s a good price for a pair of shoes in orbit?”
Hopper was getting tired of these rhetorical questions so he answered promptly,
“Six bob.”
“That’s right. Six minicredits.”
“But that’s orbit money. You’re leaving out the tariff,” said Hopper.
“Exactly. And what’s the tariff?” asked John Fisher, snapping.
Hopper snapped back, “Two hundred thousand times, what you bloody fools always make it in the Commonwealth Council.”
“Hopper, can you buy shoes?” said Fisher.
“Of course I can!” The station hand looked belligerent again but the Lord Redlady was filling his glass. He sniffed the aroma, calmed down and said, “All right, what’s your point?”
“The point is that the money in orbit is SAD money—S for secure, A for and, D for delivered. That’s any kind of good money with backing behind it. Stroon is the best backing there is, but gold is all right, rare metals, fine manufactures, and so on. That’s just the money off the planet, in the hands of the recipient. Now how many times would a ship have to hop to get to Old Earth itself?”
“Fifty or sixty,” said Aunt Doris unexpectedly. “Even I know that.”
“And how many ships get through?”
“They all do,” said she.
“Oh, no,” cried several of the men in unison.
“About one ship is lost every sixty or eighty trips, depending on the solar weather, on the skills of the Pinlighters and the Go-Captains, on the landing accidents. Did any of you ever see a really old captain?”
“Yes,” said Hopper with gloomy humor, “a dead one in his coffin.”
“So if you have something you want to get to Earth, you have to pay your share of the costly ships, your share of the Go-Captain’s wages and the fees of his staff, your share of the insurance for their families. Do you know what it could cost to get this chair back to Earth?” said Fisher.
“Three hundred times the cost of the chair,” said Doctor Wentworth.
“Mighty close. It’s two hundred and eighty-seven times.”
“How do you know so mucking much?” said Bill, speaking up. “And why waste our time with all this crutting glubb?”
“Watch your language, man,” said John Fisher. “There are some mucking ladies present. I’m telling you this because we have to get Rod off to Earth tonight, if he wants to be alive and rich—”
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