Buying Time

by Joe Haldeman

  The two hundred dollars gives you credit for twenty minutes. Please be prompt in inserting additional money should you exceed this time.

  Dallas:

  5213-555-0936XLUNDLEY.

  Eric:

  Who are you and why won’t you show yourself?

  Dallas:

  It’s Dallas. But I don’t look like him.

  Eric:

  Okay. Who was your girlfriend in 1974, when you were arrested?

  Dallas:

  Mavis Bertram.

  Eric:

  Is it true that women whose names begin with MA always have large breasts?

  Dallas:

  You couldn’t tell by Mavis.

  Eric:

  Long time no see. Still no see. You calling to tell me I’m dead?

  Dallas:

  Among other things, yes. I didn’t know it was public knowledge.

  Eric:

  It isn’t, yet. I have access to some resources that are generally closed.

  Dallas:

  Police files?

  Eric:

  Yes.

  Dallas:

  So you know I supposedly killed you.

  Eric:

  Damned unfriendly, if you ask me.

  Dallas:

  Any clue to who actually did it? Who was behind it?

  Eric:

  No, all I have is the announcement, like a wanted poster. Were you there?

  Dallas:

  It was a cabdriver, a water taxi in Dubrovnik. He killed you and then I killed him.

  Eric:

  Always the man of action.

  Dallas:

  You don’t have any emotional reaction at all?

  Eric:

  Oh, I do. “Feel” rather than “think.” Without any accompanying somatic sensation, of course; hard to explain. And it’s over in microseconds. But that’s a long time for me.

  Eric was my only relative. Maybe what I feel is like what Eric would have felt if he’d had a twin brother who was murdered. Grief and a desire for revenge. Perhaps you would help?

  Dallas:

  As much as I can. Right now we’re just trying to stay alive; we were trailed here by another assassin. The people involved are powerful, maybe more powerful even than the Stileman Foundation. Which they have infiltrated.

  Eric:

  Questions: Who are “we”? Where is “here”? Conch Republic, I assume.

  Dallas:

  Yeah, it’s the Conch Republic; Maria Marconi is the woman with me. You don’t know her; Eric met her just before he died.

  Eric:

  Maria Marconi, born 1970, Rome. Father and siblings perished in 1980 earthquake. First Stileman 2015 in conjunction with treatment for uterine cancer. Four subsequent treatments, as of 2063. Dress size 10, and so forth.

  In this way I do know her. Eric managed to hardwire me into the Stileman archives for a tenth of a second twenty years ago. So I have a lot of biographical data about people who were immortals then.

  Like Charles Briskin.

  Dallas:

  You seem to be a jump ahead of me.

  Eric:

  I could even stay ahead of Eric sometimes. Inferring Briskin because Eric asked about him before he left for Dubrovnik. He was concerned about an “inner circle” Briskin had invited him to join.

  Dallas:

  It’s called the Steering Committee. Do you have anything on it?

  Eric:

  No.

  Dallas:

  He claims to have about a hundred immortals who have managed to subvert the rules on accumulation of wealth. They want to change the world.

  Eric:

  Starting out with killing anybody who stands in the way of their agenda. Sounds vaguely familiar.

  This is not safe. The scrambled link is okay, but we have to assume that they can get to me physically, get to the actual crystal, once they find out that I exist and have an interest in them.

  Download me. By the time you do, I’ll have built a false data structure here, one that hasn’t talked to you and that was not alerted by Eric before he went to Dubrovnik.

  You have to leave the Conch Republic as soon as practical. I would have known that you’d go there because Stileman records show that’s where you keep your illegal money. Briskin probably has access to the same information.

  Dallas:

  Have to put in another grand note for the download. Ready?

  Eric:

  A zillion nanoseconds ago.

  Dallas guided the K-note through the slot, and a data crystal rattled into the download bin.

  “Stileman knows about your illegal resources?” Maria said.

  “I’ve wondered about that.” He fished out the crystal, looked at it, and sealed it in a pocket. “Always seemed to me that they’d wink at a million or so. They don’t want to lose customers.”

  He picked up the heavy shopping bag. “Besides, they claim to have the best economists in the world, or the most, keeping track of where every penny goes. If they ignored the underground economy, they could never get the books to balance.”

  They went down Caroline a couple of blocks to a Holo Shack and picked up a portable reader for the crystal. Then they further covered their trail by abandoning the suitcases left at the bed-and-breakfast and moving into another motel room. They had to buy new clothing anyhow, to match the more flamboyant exteriors Dr. Wolf had given them, and Dallas had taken the precaution of carrying along the crowdpleaser and shatterguns in the shopping bag. All they had to replace were some cosmetics and shaving gear.

  Flamboyant clothes were easy to find in the Conch Republic. Dallas held his taste in check and let the clerks advise him. Maria just bought two duplicates of what she was wearing, available everywhere, and a conservative business suit, which took some looking for. They got back to the motel in time to sit on the balcony and watch the sun go down. Dallas brought out cold drinks and the Holo Shack reader.

  “Before you conjure up Eric again,” Maria said, “think about paradoxes.”

  “How so?”

  “Suppose Briskin did get to Eric before we did. Convinced him that we, or you, actually did kill Eric, the real Eric. Then what you have in your pocket is not an ally, but a possible betrayer.”

  “Seems farfetched. This Eric knows me.”

  “He’s not human, though. He’s a logical structure; to him, you and Briskin are both inputs. Maybe the one who gets to him first determines how he’ll interpret the second one.”

  “No, they’re smarter than that. I talked to the first one made, Woodward Harrison, about twenty years ago. You remember the Lloyd Barnes Show?”

  “Scandalmonger.”

  “Right. He was trying to get an argument going between me and Harrison’s Turing Image. Think the TI won, made me look like a fatuous bully. Even that first one was pretty subtle.”

  “So you don’t think Eric’s could have been subverted?”

  “I don’t think so. I never talked to Eric about the possibility. Be willing to bet he built in safeguards, if he thought there was any danger.”

  “Let’s be careful for a while, though.”

  “Sure.” I put a utility crystal in the reader. “Check this thing out before we put Eric in it.” It buzzed a query tone, and I said, “Local news.”

  The small screen flickered and filled up with a smiling computer-generated face, two dimensions. “News time! A courtesy of Bailey’s Bar and Massage Parlor. Go to Bailey’s if you want that … waterfront feel. Tourist or native?”

  “Native.”

  “Today it was partly cloudy and hot, with occasional murders. I mean five dead in less than one hour, in three apparently unrelated incidents.

  “At noon there was a prearranged duel between Jake Freeman and Hugo Moran, over some slit who don’t want to be named. Hope she likes Jake, because Hugo’s feedin’ the fishies.

  “Hugo was the challenger, and Jake’s choice of weapons was knives, underwater. Hugo was a charter pilot and Jake works
in underwater salvage and demolition. Fair’s fair, huh Jake?

  “Next, at about twelve-thirty, was a contract job that fucked up, and I mean fu-u-u-ucked up. If you were tryin’ to get some sleep at the El Rancho Motel, you didn’t get any. That little noise they heard all the way to Tampa was a shattergun backfire. I mean, welcome to Hamburger Island! The pieces belonged to Harry Morris Williams, a guest in our fair city, and Sally Murchison, a high-class hit slit who used to have a spotless record. Police say Mafia and the Mafia says ‘Ay! No-a comment!’

  “Then a fenderbender on A1A turned into a bloodbath, as differences of opinion developed concerning—” Maria leaned over and turned off the machine.

  “That was you.”

  “Me and the cop and eight grand. Told you about the shatterguns.”

  She swallowed, nodded. “It actually blew her into pieces.”

  “Yeah. Can’t say I’m getting used to the sight.”

  “Guess you’d better show me how they work.”

  Dallas had one in his jacket pocket. He showed her how to use both safeties and the trigger. “We can tape down the safeties and rig it as a booby trap. Protect us while we’re sleeping.”

  “Disintegrate a nosy hotel maid? No thanks.”

  “With luck, we won’t be in hotels much longer. Find someplace safe and stay there awhile.”

  “Someplace safe.” She shook her head. “You think we’ll find that in the United States?”

  “I don’t know. Out in the country, maybe.” He studied the dark gray clouds billowing in from the northwest.

  “Maybe we’ll get a storm tonight.” Dallas had told her that their best time to be smuggled into the States would be during a heavy storm. There were a hundred eyes looking down on the Conch Republic; most of them couldn’t see through clouds. He turned on the reader and said “Weather.”

  A different computer face appeared. “Today’s weather is brought to you by God—just kidding, folks!—is brought to you by Southern Custom Transportation. We’ll drop you and your cargo anywhere in the southern United States or Caribbean, rain or shine, day or night. Our Midnight Special is a fully stealthed, radarproof nuclear submarine, a reliable Russian model that survived the Khomeini Wars.

  “Looks like a hundred percent chance of rain tonight, though whether it’ll be heavy enough to hide behind, we won’t know till later. It’s a low-acid rain, pH six-point-eight, so you don’t have to take in the daisies.

  “Surprise, tomorrow will be sunny and hot. High tide tonight at seven forty-nine, low tide two fifty-five in the A.M. See you there!”

  Dallas switched cubes and Eric’s face appeared on the small screen, with a bushy red beard. “I’ve been thinking about your problem,” he said.

  “Good,” Dallas said. “Come up with anything?”

  “Yes, but you won’t like it. Follow this train of logic. First, you have to assume, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that Briskin’s committee people have access to all of the Stileman Foundation resources.”

  “We had been assuming that,” Dallas said.

  “On top of that, though, they evidently recognize no legal constraints on their use of these resources. So we have to assume, as you said earlier, they’re actually more powerful than the Stileman Foundation. What we must do, then, is assemble a list, a set of places where you could be certain that the Stileman Foundation couldn’t get hold of you. Then discard from that list the places where the constraints on the foundation are merely legal, matters of treaty or contract.”

  “Such as here,” Maria said.

  “Conch Republic, yes, and Alaska, for the same reason. They can’t legally extradite you, but neither can they be prosecuted for gunning you down, as long as they follow the local customs.”

  The image of Eric held up two fingers. “The two large places where you could go are, obviously, the Soviet Union and Khomeini.”

  “An armed camp and a radioactive desert. Wonderful.”

  “Khomeini’s impractical because half the population would kill you out of hand for being obvious infidels. The Soviet Union would be possible, but only if you were willing to drop completely out of sight, becoming peasants. People who live comfortably are too conspicuous, and the police are easily corrupted.”

  “We’ll keep it as a possibility,” Dallas said. “We both speak some Russian.”

  “There are a few small places where the Stileman Foundation is forbidden. The Seychelles and Vatican City are the only ones where your lives wouldn’t be in constant peril from the natives. I’d say neither of them is large enough for you to become anonymous, though with Maria’s Italian and her convent background, she might be able to fade into the woodwork in Vatican City.”

  “It would be too open, though,” Maria said. “Like trying to hide out in a museum.”

  “But it’s mostly indoors,” Dallas said. “That would protect you from satellite observation.”

  “Which is the reason I reluctantly disqualified the Australian outback and the American wilderness. People wandering out in the bush are routinely scanned and identified by various government agencies. It’s done automatically, and their identities go into artificial intelligence routines, like yours truly, who decide whether a merely human official ought to be notified.”

  “That might be all right, though, with Dallas and me having new identities.”

  “The problem with that is the only way to test it is to go wandering out into the world and see whether anybody shows up to kill you.”

  “Which makes a good argument for staying here awhile,” Dallas said. “If they don’t come after us here, they won’t do it in the States. Here, we can shoot back.”

  The image smiled, spookily accurate, “In most of the States you can shoot back, too. But twice they’ve sent single assassins after you, and twice you’ve killed them. I think they’ll try something else next time. Floater bomb, poison gas. Maybe fry you from orbit with a laser.”

  “You always were a cheerful son of a bitch, Eric.”

  “Always. But you see what I’m building up to?”

  “Space,” Maria said. “No place to hide on Earth.”

  “Specifically, Novysibirsk. Cislunar space is just a suburb of Earth. Downside is practically a Stileman colony, and all roads on Luna lead to Downside. Mars, anyone who’s not part of an expedition would have to bring his own food, water, and oxygen. The outer planets are even worse, if you could get to them. So it has to be the asteroid belt.”

  “Just great,” Dallas said. “Outlaws and anarchists.”

  3. CERES/NOVYSIBIRSK

  Most commercial travelers to Novysibirsk limit themselves to Ceres or the gravity “worlds” Mir and Upyours. People who do a lot of business in Novy, though, learn that it can be worth the extra trouble and discomfort to seek out the primary source or end user. Ceres has a “value added tax,” Mir has a “gravity charge,” and Upyours a “rakeoff,” all of which amount to a 10 percent across-the-board charge on all transactions, from both buyer and seller.

  If you are willing to put up with microgravity and can operate without docking and load transfer facilities, then the direct route may be for you. But both buyer and seller beware! Novysibirsk is in a formal state of anarchy, and although most of the people you will deal with are honorable, if you feel you’ve been cheated, your only recourse is a jury-of-peers arbitration tradition—which will decide in favor of the rocknik almost every time. Make sure all your deals are settled and recorded with third parties on Earth and in Novy before you leave.

  The possibility of violence must be mentioned, if only to counteract the widely held misapprehension that Novysibirsk has a sort of “Wild West” attitude toward crime. Occasional incidents of shoot-out duels and spacings are given disproportionate attention in the media. Most people do go armed (though normally with sublethal weapons), and arguments can escalate. There is also the possibility of immediate “justice” if a person is observed committing rape of a woman, cold-blooded murder, or holing, w
hich is any sort of deliberate damage to a structure that results in loss of air or water. There is a positive side to this, of course. It’s been twenty-five years since Novy’s last rape.

  To the typical visitor, one with no criminal tendencies, Novy is a safe and civilized place.

  —Barron’s 2082 Commercial Travelers’ Handbook

  Maria

  “It’s not such a bad place,” I said. “You’ve never been there.”

  “Well … no …”

  I could see he was marshaling an argument. “Excuse us, Eric. We have to talk.” I reached for the reader.

  “Please wait.” That was strange. I’d never had a machine tell me not to turn it off before. “One more thing first. I won’t go through all the logic, but there’s only one safe way for you to get off the planet. Rocket jocks.”

  “What?” Dallas said.

  Eric smiled. “See you.” He turned himself off.

  Dallas tapped the blank screen. “I wonder if a Turing Image can go insane. It wants us to take a homemade spaceship to a place overrun by trigger-happy ex-Communist anarchists. For our safety.”

  “They’re not ‘trigger-happy,’” I said. “That’s only a cliché for the soaps, crazy anarchists. They’re nice people.”

  “I’ll concede that. But have you ever met a rocket jock? That’s crazy. Go up in a spaceship you built yourself.”

  “You see what he means, though. A commercial flight would be risky, put us in the information net. And they’re sure to have my Bugatti watched.”

  “Yeah,” he admitted. “It’s probably booby-trapped six ways from Sunday by now.” He rattled ice cubes and peered into the empty glass. “Refill?”

  I handed him mine. “Half.” He took them back into the room.

  I watched the storm gathering, all charcoal and alizarin in the last rays of the sun. Dallas was jittery. Well, it had been a sufficiency of evil, these past two days. I felt more numb than scared. The rum was helping that.