Asimov's SF, July 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  There were complications, of course. From day one, many people hated the whole idea of D-treatment. It was unnatural, monstrous, contrary to God's will, dangerous, premature, and unpatriotic. I never understood that last, but apparently D-treatment offended the patriotism of several different countries in several different parts of the world. Objectors wrote passionate letters. Objectors organized on the Internet and, later, on the Link. Objectors subpoenaed scientists to testify on their side, and some tried to subpoena God. A few were even sure they'd succeeded. And, inevitably, some objectors didn't wait for anything formal to develop: they just attacked.

  * * * *

  I stay with Stevan two days. He houses me in a guest cottage, well away from the Rom women, which I find immensely flattering. I am eighty-six years old, and although renewal has made me feel good again, it isn't that good. Sap doesn't rise in my veins. I don't need sap; I just need to see Daria again.

  “Why, Max?” Stevan asks, as of course he was bound to do. “What do you want from her?"

  “Another lock of hair, another kiss on paper."

  “And this makes sense to you?” He leans toward me, hands on his knees, two old men sitting on a fallen log in the mountain woods. There is a snake by the log, beyond Stevan. I watch it carefully. It watches me, too. We have mutual distaste, this snake and I. If man was meant to be in naked woods, we wouldn't have invented room service, let alone orbitals. Although in fact this woods is not so naked—the entire kumpania and its archaically lush land are encased under an invisible and very expensive mini-Dome and are nourished by underground irrigation. This is largely due to me, as Stevan knows. I don't have to issue any reminders.

  I say, “What in this world makes sense? I need another lock of hair and a paper kiss, is all. I have to have them. Is this so hard to understand?"

  “It's impossible to understand."

  “Then is understanding necessary?"

  He doesn't answer, and I see that I need to say more. Stevan has still not noticed the snake. He is ten years younger than me, he still has much of the strength in his arms, he lives surrounded by his wife and family. What does he know from desperation?

  “Stevan, it's like this: To be old, in the way I'm old, this is to live in a war zone. Zap zap zap—who falls next? You don't know, but you see them fall, the people all around you, the people you know. The bullets are going to keep coming, you know this, and the next one could just as well take you. Eventually it will take you. So you cherish any little thing you still care about, anything that says you're still among the living. Anything that matters to you."

  I sound like a damn fool.

  But Stevan lumbers to his feet and stretches, not looking at me. “Okay, Max."

  “Okay? You can do it? You will?"

  “I will."

  We are still wortácha. We shake hands and my eyes fill, the easy tears of the old. Ridiculous. Stevan pretends not to notice. All at once I know that I will never see him again, that this completes anything I might be owed by the Rom. Whatever happens, they will not set a pomona sinia, a death-feast table, for me, the gajo. That is all right. You can't have everything. And anyway, the important thing is not to get, but to want.

  After so long, I am grateful to want anything.

  We walk out of the woods. And I am right, Stevan never notices the snake.

  Nicklos drives me back to the Manhattan Dome. “BaXt, gajo."

  “Good-bye, Nicklos.” The young—they believe that luck is what succeeds. I don't need luck, I have planning. Although this time I have planned only to a point, so maybe I will need luck after all. Yes, definitely.

  “BaXt, Nicklos."

  I climb out of the car at the Manhattan Space Port, and a ‘bot appears to take my little overnight bag and lead me inside. It seats me in a small room. Almost immediately a woman enters, dressed in the black-and-green uniform of the Federal Space Authority. She's a shicksa beauty, tall and blonde, with violet eyes. Genemod, of course. I'm unmoved. Next to the Rom women, she looks sterile, a made thing. Next to Daria, she looks like a pale cartoon.

  “Max Feder?"

  “That's me."

  “I'm Jennifer Kenyon, FSA. I'd like to talk to you about the trip you just booked up to Sequene."

  “I bet you would."

  Her face hardens, pastry dough left out too long. “We've notified Agent Alcozer of the CIB, who will be here shortly. Until then, you will wait here, please."

  “I've notified my lawyer, who will holo here shortly. Until then, you will bring me a coffee, please. Something to eat would be nice, too.” Rom food, although delicious, is very spicy for my old guts.

  She scowls and leaves. A ‘bot brings very good coffee and excellent doughnuts. Max Feder is a reprobate suddenly awakened from the safely dead, but money is still money.

  Twenty minutes later Agent Alcozer shows up, no female sidekick. He, Ms. Kenyon, and I sit down, a cozy trio. Almost I'm looking forward to this. Josh holos in and stands in front of the wall screen, sighing. “Hello, Joe. Ms. Kenyon, I'm Josh Zyla, Max Feder's attorney of record. Is there a problem?"

  She says, “Mr. Feder is not cleared for space travel. He has a criminal record."

  “That's true,” Josh agrees genially. He's even more genial than his father, who represented me for thirty years. “But if you'll check the Space Travel Security Act, Section 42, paragraph 13a, you'll see that the flight restrictions apply only to orbitals registered in countries signatory to the Land-Gonzalez Treaty and—"

  “Sequene is registered in Bahrain, a sig—"

  “—and which received global Expansion Act monies to subsidize some or all construction costs and—"

  “Sequene received—"

  “—and have not filed a full-responsibility liability acceptance form for a given prospective space-faring individual."

  Ms. Kenyon is silent. Clearly she, or her system, has not checked to see if Sequene had filed a full-responsibility liability acceptance form to let me come aboard. At least, she hasn't checked in the last hour.

  Alcozer frowns. “Why would Sequene file a flight acceptance for Max Feder?"

  Why indeed? Full-liability acceptances were designed to allow diplomats from violent countries, who might violently object to exclusion, attend international conferences. The acceptances are risky. If said diplomat blows up the place, no government is legally responsible and no insurance company has to pay. The demolition is then considered just one of those things. Full-liability acceptances are rare, and not designed for the likes of Max Feder.

  Josh shrugs. “Sequene didn't tell me how it made its decisions.” This is true, since Sequene doesn't know yet that I am coming upstairs. Money isn't the only thing that can be stolen. Every alteration of every record is a kind of theft. Stevan's people are very good thieves. They have had eight centuries to practice.

  Jennifer Kenyon, that blonde buttress of bureaucracy, finishes examining her handheld and says, “It's true—the form is on file. I guess you can fly, Mr. Feder."

  Alcozer, still frowning, says, “I don't think—"

  Josh says, “Are you arresting my client, Agent Alcozer? If not, then this interview is over."

  Alcozer leaves, unhappy. Josh shoots me a puzzled look before his holo vanishes. Jennifer Kenyon says stiffly, “I need to ask you some questions, Mr. Feder, preparatory to your retinal and security scans. Please be advised that you are being recorded. What is your full name and citizen ID?"

  “Max Michael Feder, 03065932861."

  “What is your flight number and destination this afternoon?"

  “British Spaceways Flight 165, to Sequene Orbital."

  “How long will you be staying?"

  “Three days."

  “And what is the purpose of your visit?"

  Our eyes meet. I know what she sees: a very old man with the hectic and temporary glow of renewal artificially animating his sagging face, too-thin arms, weak legs. A man with how long to live—a year? Two? Maybe five, if he's lucky and
his mind doesn't go first. A dinosaur with the meteor already a foot above the ground, and a criminal dinosaur at that. One who should be getting ready to check out already, preferably without causing too much fuss to everybody staying longer at the party.

  I say, “I'm going to Sequene to take D-treatment so I can stay eighty-six years old."

  * * * *

  Fifteen years after I established the Feder Group, a girl stopped me as I left the office. A strange-looking girl, dressed in a shapeless long robe of some kind with her hair hidden under an orange cap with wings. I didn't remember her name. I had hired her reluctantly—the orange was some kind of reactionary cult and who needs the trouble—but Moshe Silverstein had insisted. Moshe was my—what? If we'd been Italian, he'd have been my “consigliere.” We weren't Italian. He was my number-two until, I hoped, Geoffrey became old enough. It was not a robust hope. Geoffrey, now sixteen, was a prig.

  The girl said, “Mr. Feder, could I talk to you a minute?"

  “Certainly. Talk."

  She grimaced. Under the silly hat, the skinned-back hair, she had a pretty face. She was the accountant for show, absolutely honest, in charge only of the books for the Feder Group, which was also honest. You have to present something to the IRS. “She's brilliant,” Moshe had argued. I'd argued back that for this small part of our operations we didn't need brilliant, but here the girl was. I hardly ever saw her, since I was hardly ever in the Feder Group office. My real business all took place elsewhere.

  “I've found an irregularity,” the girl said, and all at once I remembered her name: Gwendolyn Jameson, and the cult with the modest dress and orange hats was the Daughters of Eve. Opposed to any kind of genetic engineering at all.

  “What kind of irregularity, Gwendolyn?"

  “An inexplicable and big one. Please come look at this screen of—"

  “Screens I don't need. What's the problem?” I was already late to meet a man about a deal.

  She said, “A quarter million credits have been moved from the Feder Group to an entity called Cypress, Ltd., that's registered in Hong Kong. I can't trace them from there, and even though the authorization has your codes on it, and although I found your hand-written back-up order in the files, something just doesn't seem right."

  I froze. I hadn't authorized any transfer, and nobody should have been able to connect Cypress, Ltd. with the Feder Group. Nobody.

  “Let me see the hand-written order."

  She brought it to me. It looked like my handwriting, but I had not written it. It was inside our paper files. And somebody had my personal codes.

  “Freeze all accounts now. Nothing moves in, nothing moves out. You got that?"

  “Yes, sir."

  I called Moshe, who called his nephew Timothy, who was my real accountant. We went over everything. I paced around the secret office while Tim ran heavily encrypted software for which I'd paid half my fortune. I chewed my nails, I cursed, I pounded on the wall. Like such foolishness could help? It didn't help. Finally Tim looked up.

  “Well?” My throat could barely get the syllable out.

  “Two and a half million is missing. They've penetrated three accounts—Cypress, Mu-Nova, and the Aurora Group."

  “Zurich?” I said. “Did they get into Zurich?"

  “No."

  Thank you, Master of the Universe. Also thank the Swiss. Zurich held the bulk of my credits.

  “This guy's good,” Tim said, and the professional admiration in his voice only made me madder.

  “Find him,” I said.

  “I don't do that kind of—"

  “I'll find him,” Moshe said. “But it will cost. A lot."

  “I don't care. Find him."

  Two weeks later he said, “I have him. You won't believe this—it's a goddamn gypsy. The name he's using is Stevan Adams."

  * * * *

  It's not that hard to kidnap a Rom. They rely on hiding, moving, stealth, gypsy-nation loyalty, not so much on pure muscle. What with one thing and another, drought and flooding and war and famine and bio-plagues, the population of the United States is half what it was a hundred years ago. The Romani population has doubled. They take care of their own, but in their own way. Four Rom in a beat-up truck, even an armed and armored truck, were no match for what I sent against them.

  Moshe flew me to an abandoned house somewhere in the Pennsylvania mountains. It was old, this house, and peculiar. How did people manage to live here, sixty years ago? Miles from everything, perched on a mountainside, no wind or solar or geothermal energy, facing north with huge expanses of real glass, now shattered. A vacation home, Moshe said. Some vacation—all the place had was a view, which I didn't see because we were using only the basement.

  “Where is he?"

  “In there."

  “Alone, Moshe?"

  “Just as you said. The others are in that room over there, the laundry room, drugged. He's just tied up."

  “Are you sure you got the right one? Gypsies switch identities, you know. More names for the same person than a Russian novel.” I'd done research on the flight in.

  Moshe looked insulted. “I have the right one."

  I opened the door to what might have once been a wine cellar. Dank, moldy, spiders. Moshe's men had set up a floodlight. Stevan Adams sat bound to a chair, a big man dressed in rough work clothes, with short dark hair and a luxurious mustache. His eyes glittered with intelligence, with contempt. But controlled contempt, this was no cheap cyberthug. This was a man you'd have to kill to break. I didn't kill, not even when it lost me money. There was plenty to take from the world without blood on your hands.

  I said, “I'm Max Feder."

  He said, “Where are my son and nephews?"

  “They're safe. I hurt no one."

  “Where are they?"

  “In the next room. Drugged but unharmed."

  “Show me."

  I said to Moshe, “Take the other side of that chair and help me pull it."

  Moshe looked startled—this was not how we did things. But it was how I wanted them done now. What so many people never understand is that it's not enough to make money. It's not even enough to be handed money, like Daria (whom I was still, in those years, cursing) handed to me. You have to also be able to keep money, and for that you must be a good judge of people. No—a superb judge of people. This is more than watching them closely, reading body language, seeing when they blink, blah blah blah. It's a kind of smell, a tingling high in the nose that I never ignore. Never. The mind sees what it wants to see, but the body—the body knows.

  This smell is a talent, my only one really. I'm not an accountant, not a software expert (as Geoffrey never tires of telling me), not even a particularly good thief when I'm alone. Always I needed Moshe and the Robin Hoods I used, those shadowy young men so adept at stealing from the rich and so bad, without me, at not dying violently. Me, I don't need violence. I can smell.

  Moshe and I grabbed the chair and dragged it out of the fruit cellar and into a crumbling laundry room. We gasped and lurched; Stevan was heavy and we were not exactly athletes. Three young men, one scarcely older than Geoffrey, lay bound on the rotted floor, angelic smiles on their sleeping faces. Whatever Moshe had given them, it looked happy.

  “See, Mr. Adams? They breathe, they'll be fine."

  “Bring them awake so I can see."

  Moshe said, “Who do you think you—"

  Again I cut him off. “Bring them awake, Moshe."

  He grimaced and called, “Dena!” His daughter, our doctor, came in from outside, carrying her weapon. Her face was masked; I don't risk anybody but Moshe and me. She slapped patches on the boys and they woke up, easily and profanely. Stevan and they conversed in Romanes and even though I didn't speak the language, I could see the moment he told them it was no good trying any kind of physical assault. The youngest spat at me, a theatrical bit of foolishness I forgave at once. They were good boys. And would Geoffrey have done as much for me? I doubted this.

  W
e dragged Stevan back into the other room and locked in the bound boys, Dena on guard. Even if they got themselves loose—which, it eventually turned out, they did—she had knock-out gases and everything else she needed.

  I said, “You took two and a half million credits from accounts belonging to me."

  Stevan said, “So?"

  How do I convey the attitude in that one word? Not just contempt but pleasure, pride, deliberate goad. Even if I killed him, he was not going to back down. A mensch.

  “So you also took my authorization codes. And you slipped into my paper files a forged back-up authorization. How did you do that, Mr. Adams?"

  Again just that look.

  “I'm not going to harm you, or your relatives. Never. In fact, I want to hire you. My operation can use a man like you."

  “I do not work for gaje."

  “Right. I know. Usually you don't work for gaje. You people go freelance, this is gutsy, more power to you. But together, you and me together, I can make you rich beyond anything you can imagine."

  “I don't need more riches."

  Astoundingly, I later found out this was true, and not just because Stevan now had my two and a half million credits. The Rom are not interested in owning very much. Not property: they prefer to rent, so as to move easily and quickly. Vehicles, yes, even planes and helicopters, but always old and beat-up, not conspicuous. Gold for their women but not jewels, and how much gold can one woman wear? Mostly they want to live together in their densely carpeted rooms, getting all they need from gossiping and fighting and loving each other while stealing from everybody else.

  Stevan said, “You have nothing I want, gajo."

  “I think I do. My holdings are big, vaster than anything you've penetrated.” So far, anyway. “And I know people. I can offer you something you can't get anyplace else. Safety."

  Moshe echoed blankly, “Safety?” I had not told him about this part.