When the servants were gone, Mary Beth said, “Carl Gatena. He’s one of Ron Rich’s publicity men and awfully cute. He’s just with me every minute. And if not him, one of the others.”
“You seem to be getting the royal treatment,” Rick told her.
She watched him sprinkle the chopped salad vegetables and the croutons onto the soup and imitated him.
“Yes,” she said doubtfully. “But I thought I’d be able to get out and meet the regular space colonists and talk to them and all. You know, and possibly go into their homes and see how they live. And maybe go to one of their parties, or entertainments, and that sort of thing.”
“I see what you mean,” he said sympathetically. “Actually, all you’re really doing is meeting the big shots and seeing the tourist sights.”
“That’s right,” she said, making a face as though she was ashamed to be criticizing just anything at all about the Lagrange Five Project. “I’m only going to be here a couple of more days and…why, I get the darnedest feeling I’m being hurried around here and there, and not seeing the real space colony. Which is what I came for. I…you’ll never believe this…I feel like I’m being used.”
“Oh, come now,” Rick scoffed.
Their fish was being served. It was elegantly presented, complete with fresh parsley.
When Irene was gone, Rick said, “Undoubtedly, it’s because of your limited time. They’ve probably gone far out of their way to show you the most important things. After all, a gang of men shoveling processed moon dirt around, half way up the cylinder, wouldn’t be of much interest to you.”
“I’d like to see it, though, and talk to them and all,” she said stubbornly.
“Actually, I’m a bit busy myself,” Rick told her. The fish was proving as good as Irene’s buildup. Damn it. Who was going to be his contact when Mary Beth was gone? He’d have to see to making some more contacts among those privy to the L5 Hilton.
“I begrudge every minute I’m away from you,” he said, smiling his shy, little boy’s smile. “How about tonight for dinner and afterwards.…” He let his sentence dribble away.
She flushed a little and her eyes went down to her place, as though demurely, which hardly went with the sexual athlete she proved herself in bed. She said, “Why don’t we go to your place tonight? I’m dying to see it.”
He laughed gently. “I’ll match you for it tonight after dinner,” he said.
Someone sauntered up and stood next to their table. “So, here you are,” the newcomer said jovially.
They looked up.
“Oh, hello Carl,” Mary Beth said. “I was just having lunch with Mr. Venner here. We met each other on the Tsiolkowsky coming up. Rick Venner, this is Carl Gatena, who’s been guiding me around. He doesn’t give me a moment to myself.”
The two men shook, Rick rising halfway from his chair.
The flack frowned slightly. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” he said. “I thought I knew everybody in the hotel.”
“Sit down,” Rick told him easily. “Have a glass of wine. The Riesling is excellent here. As good as I’ve had in the Rhone Valley. They don’t export their best, you know, but this is certainly up to it for my taste, and I’m an old hock man.”
Carl Gatena drew up a chair but continued to frown at Rick. “You’re connected with the Prince’s staff?” he said. “Now that I recall, I saw you at his party.”
“Oh, no,” Rick said, pouring himself some more of the wine and proffering the bottle to both Mary Beth and the publicity man, at whose elbow the wine steward had magically materialized a glass. “I’m an engineer. They brought me up to give a hand to Fred Davis.”
“Oh,” Gatena said. “I heard that Supervisor Davis was having some difficulties.”
“Not insurmountable, I trust,” Rick said grandly. “But you know how some of these old-timer construction men are. In actuality, all of them should be required to attend an upgrading school every couple of years. Time passes them by. Hardly a year unfolds but that some major breakthrough takes place in just about every field.”
“I suppose so,” Gatena said, evidently dismissing it. He turned to Mary Beth. “I have a pleasant surprise for you this afternoon, Ms. Houston. Mr. Moore is giving a cocktail party for the Prince.”
“Cocktail party?” she said blankly. “But…good gracious, Carl, my time is so limited. I thought I might tour the cylinder, see them planting the trees and all. Maybe go boating on one of the lakes.”
The publicity man rubbed his chin as though checking his morning shave. He said, “In actuality, the lakes aren’t quite ready for boating as yet.”
She fixed her eyes on him in disbelief. “You must be pulling my leg. I definitely saw a Tri-Di show about Island One with a boat race.”
Rick was inwardly amused. Obviously, it was all the flack could do to refrain from closing his eyes in suppressed grief.
Gatena said hurriedly, “Oh, that race. That was just sort of a preliminary try out, kind of. Just to see if we could do such things once everything was completed. At any rate, there’ll be a lot of people you’ll want to meet at the party. Big-name scientists and all. And Doctor Ryan has mentioned that he wants to see more of you.”
“He has?” Mary Beth said, excited at last.
“Yes, he’s very thankful for all the efforts of the Friends of Lagrange Five. And I heard the Prince mention that he thoroughly approved of your type of American girl and looked forward to talking to you again.”
“Talking to me again? Why, I hardly more than said hello to him at the party.”
“He was evidently impressed by you. You’ll simply have to come to this cocktail party, Ms. Houston.”
“Mary Beth,” she admonished him. “But I haven’t a thing to wear.”
He said smoothly, “Annette will take care of that. But first, of course, you’ll want to go to the beauty salon.” The Secretary of the Friends of L5 looked at him blankly. “Beauty salon? You mean that there’s a beauty salon here in Island One?”
“Right here in the hotel.”
Rick was wondering whether he should attempt to wangle an invitation to the cocktail party. It’d be a chance to make acquaintances with some of the hotel’s permanent residents. He had to make some new contacts fast. It wouldn’t do to be conspicuous around the place by eating and drinking alone, or crashing parties without a date. The way he sized it up, there were several hundred permanent guests in the L5 Hilton, the cream of the cream of the upper echelons of the project. If he could keep a low image and keep the suitability of clothing available, he should be able to milk this indefinitely, but to do so he needed some contacts, preferably one of the women office workers. But no, he’d better play it cool with this Carl Gatena. If the other got a glimmering of suspicion, he’d look Rick up; nothing could be easier. And nothing was more obvious, from the records, than that Rick Venner was not eligible for the goodies of the L5 Hilton.
After dessert, an overly rich Danish pastry, which the publicity man sat through patiently, Mary Beth was whisked off to the beauty salon. She had been taken aback by the presence in the island of such an establishment. Rick was amused. From what he had seen of the female space colonists on the streets, its services were hardly available to them. But, on the other hand, from the perfectly presented women he had noted at the Prince’s party, they did have the best of beautician’s care for the elite.
He thanked Irene graciously for her service—there was no manner in which to tip, obviously—and strolled from the dining room, looking every inch the well-fed, super-level executive.
His way led him to a side door of the kitchens. He strolled through them, hardly noticed by the staff. However, near the door, a salad chef looked up; his eyebrows rose as he took in Rick’s attire.
Rick said easily, “Shortcut to the laboratories. Don’t have to walk all around the front of the hotel.”
“Oh, yeah,” the other said. “I saw you come in earlier this way.”
Hands in pockets, Ri
ck made his way down the alley behind the hotel to the narrow streets of the small space town. Pedestrians in Earthside dress were on the rare side, but not unknown, and none of his fellow walkers bothered to glance at him. They weren’t a happy looking lot, he told himself, but then, what in the hell did they have to be happy about?
Thinking about it now, he asked himself why he had come up here. He must have known, if only subconsciously, that all wasn’t going to be apple strudel with sour cream. He could have taken a relatively small amount of his loot and gone somewhere like Tangier or Brazil and laid low for the five years. Paul Lund could have been instrumental in finding him a small place in the wide-open Moroccan town where he could have remained inconspicuous. Say in the Casbah area. He shook his head and grunted. But no. Every heavy in the world of the grifter would soon have known about his big score, as even Pavel Meer had. And some would have come looking for him. There are those who will go to any ends when over a million dollars are involved. Even had he been a gunman of renown, which he wasn’t, sooner or later a hit man would have gotten to him. Here, deep in space, he was safe. But then he grunted amusement at himself. Safe? Hell, how far could he trust even Tony Black? And were there any others in Island One who knew about him? Face it, he hadn’t actually come for safety. He had come because he wanted to see the last frontier, the very last frontier—space. He was a fucking romantic. He was actually here for the same reasons all these sucker space colonists were. He was just as big a sucker as they were.
He came up to the double-occupancy house that Tony Black had brought him in to share. Automatically, he looked up and down the street; for what, he didn’t know. He saw nothing untoward and entered the living room.
Tony Black was there with a swarthy stranger dressed uncomfortably in cheap Western garb. A Levantine, Rick decided. What was there about Moslems that they never seemed at home in the clothes of the West? Give one a five-hundred-dollar suit and in fifteen minutes he looked as though he had slept in it.
Rick nodded at them unconcernedly and headed for the stairs.
But Tony Black said, “That’s okay, Rick. Ahmud was just leaving.”
Rick hesitated at the stair bottom. But the Arab, or whatever he was, avoided looking at him, bobbed his head at Black and, a slip of paper in his hand, turned and left the house.
“What in the hell was that?” Rick said, coming back to the sparsely furnished living room’s center.
“Business,” the other said, in an offhand tone. He indicated a suitcase on the low table before him. The top was up.
Rick looked into it. Its contents were motley, including, of all things, some fancy women’s brassieres and a half-dozen watches. Rick sent his eyes over to the other.
Tony Black grinned his irritating sly grin. “Black market,” he said. “One of the Prince’s servants. Somehow the staffs of these visiting firemen instinctively know that they can pick up a small fortune smuggling in odds and ends for the local black market. The baggage of an Abou ben Abel goes through our equivalent of customs without search, obviously.”
“Odds and ends such as what?” Rick said, staring down into the suitcase.
“Such as real hash, from India. Sure, some of the colonists grow a little weed of their own. But this is the real stuff. Indian’s the best in the world. They’ve been using cannabis for five thousand years and more. Then there’s nose candy and H. Ahmud brought up some of that, too.”
Rick gazed disbelief at him. “Cocaine and heroin in Island One?”
The other snorted. “You can get anything in Island One, given the credits. Hell, you can get anything anywhere on a local black market if you’re willing to pony up enough. I had a pal once who operated in one of the Antarctic bases. He got himself taken rich in a year and a half.” Black grimaced in memory. “Before some big Navy slob got irritated with him when he found out he was laying his wife. It took him three months and half of his take getting out of the banger.”
He observed Rick’s attire. “Where’ve you been?” he said. “I noticed my soup-and-fish outfit was missing last night. You must’ve been taking the party in.”
Rick lowered himself into a chair. “That’s right,” he said. To his surprise, the other didn’t seem to be especially upset. “And I’ve been to the hotel just now, having lunch.”
The other nodded and sat down, too. “How’d you get in past the Security guards?”
“Professional secret,” Rick said easily. “There’re several entrances to that hotel besides the main one. What’re you doing with these clothes, Tony?”
“Same thing you are. Earthside threads are like a badge or a uniform. Nobody wears ’em except the really big noises. There’s no rule against it, but it’s damn seldom you ever see an ordinary colonist in a suit or dress. Oh, sometimes for a wedding or something like that, an ordinary construction worker will borrow or rent a suit. But usually, well, for one thing, they’re too damn expensive.”
“Where’d you get them? You’ve got three suits upstairs besides this one.”
Tony Black shrugged it off easily. “Traded around. Like I said, you can get anything up here if you’ve got the credits.”
“And from time to time you get done up in them and go into the hotel?”
“I usually slip one of the Security guards a little something and he lets me past. But I’ve got to take it awfully easy. I don’t exactly look the part. Now, you’re another thing. You’ve got the air about you. You look like somebody important, in an easygoing sort of way.
You look like you belong. I suppose it’s part of your stock in trade. You could hang around in those big resorts in Switzerland or the Riviera and nobody’d look twice at you. Okay, that’s great. That’s one of the reasons I brought you in with me.”
“How’s that?” Rick said, contemplating the other with care.
“The hotel’s where the money is. If you can work your way in there, get established, accepted, on whatever terms, we’ve got it made. That’s the place to make arrangements. So many opportunities, you can pick and choose.”
Rick leaned back in his chair and said fretfully, “I’m not exactly anxious to stick my neck out, Tony. I can’t afford to blow my cover for the sake of a few hundred dollars. Sure, it’s one thing eating in the dining room for free and even sleeping with one of the mopsies in a decent bed. If they caught me, I could simply plead that I didn’t know the hotel was for VIPs only and just happened to have this suit.”
“With that cheerful, innocent-looking phizz of yours, you’d probably get away with it,” the weasel-faced Tony Black said in admiration. “But I wasn’t talking about a few hundred dollars, Rocks.”
“Rick.”
“Yeah, wizard, Rick. Sorry. Listen, you want to know what it costs to ship a pound of something up here?”
“Damned expensive, I’d guess.”
“Yeah. Roughly one hundred dollars a pound.”
Rick hissed through his teeth.
“Take a pint of whiskey,” the black marketeer went on. “A pint’s roughly a pound. But that’s not all. The whiskey itself weighs a pound, but if you’re running a class act, the weight of the bottle’s there, too. Say almost another half pound. That brings the price up to about 150. But that’s just the beginning. First you’ve got to buy the guzzle Earthside, then you’ve got to make arrangements to have it shuttled up to the Goddard. There you’ve got to make arrangements to relay it on to either Island One or the moon base. Then you’ve got to get it through customs. All the way along the line, the hands are out to be greased. You know what that bottle of smuggled whiskey finally sells for? Three hundred bucks and up, and usually up, when you can find it at all.”
Rick hissed again.
“And that’s just the beginning, too,” the other told him, happy at the impression he was making. “You’d be surprised what these colonists and contract workers will pay for something they decide they’ve just gotta have. Cigarettes, cigars, pot, hard drugs, cosmetics, even chocolates and cashew nuts. Even t
hings like sardines and crab or anchovies. And that’s not all. Things like watches. You come up here with a watch and it goes on the blink. Where do you get it repaired? There’s no repair shop and there’s no spare parts. To send it to Earth and back would cost plenty. So you buy a new one. Things like mirrors for the mopsies. Things like shampoo and fancy-smelling soaps and perfumes. Even fancy clothes; I imagine half the broads in this island have, in their homes, just one really fancy outfit.” He motioned at the brassieres in the suitcase the Arab had brought. “They’ll pay almost anything for such stuff.”
Rick said, “I thought the project had what they call the Luxury PX where you can buy things like that.”
“Sure, a lot of it. But at sky-high prices. Even worse than the black market. The L5 Corporation doesn’t miss a bet. They milk the suckers for all they can get. I doubt if there are two hundred workers up here, men or women, who save any of their ten thousand a year base pay. And probably if they could get their hands on the twenty thousand a year bonus that accumulates down Earthside, they’d blow that, too.”
Rick said, “That presents a problem. How do your customers pay off? And, ultimately, I assume you want to take it back to Earth with you. How do you arrange that? These Lagrange Five Corporation credit cards we have up here aren’t valid Earthside, except at the New Albuquerque spaceport.”
The dark little man grinned slyly. “There are ways, Rick, there are always ways. When I said I could buy anything up here, given the credits, I meant anything. Say, for instance, diamonds, an old specialty of yours. A diamond that might go for ten thousand on the wholesale market in Amsterdam might go for as high as twenty thousand up here. So, wizard, you accumulate twenty thousand credits working one of the rackets—the black market, drugs, guzzle, gambling, or maybe peddling your ass, if you’re a good-looking mopsy. Then you buy a diamond and stash it away until you return Earthside where you can sell it. Sure, you lose half of your take, but that’s better than nothing. It’s just one of your business expenses.”
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