Friday (39 page)

“I wasn’t scowling,” she answered too soberly. “I was simply trying to figure out how to get around the end of the bed to the terminal without waking you two. I want to order breakfast.”

“Order for all of us?” I asked.

“Certainly. What do you want?”

“Some of everything and fried potatoes on the side. Anna hon, you know me—if it’s not dead, I’ll kill it and eat it raw, bones and all.”

“And the same for me,” agreed Burt.

“Noisy neighbors.” Goldie was standing in the doorway, yawning. “Chatterboxes. Go back to bed.” I looked at her and realized two things: I had never really looked at her before, even at the beach. And, second, if Anna was annoyed with me for sleeping with Burt, she didn’t have any excuse for such feelings; Goldie looked almost indecently satiated.

“It means ‘harbor island,’” Goldie was saying, “and it really ought to have a hyphen in it because nobody can ever spell it or pronounce it. So I just go as Goldie—easy to do in the Master’s outfit where last names were always discouraged. But it’s not as hard a name as Mrs. Tomosawa’s—after I mispronounced hers about the fourth time, she asked me to call her Gloria.”

We were finishing off a big breakfast and both of my chums had talked to Gloria and the will had been read and both of them (and Burt, too, to my surprise and his) were now a bit richer and we were all getting ready to leave for Las Vegas, three of us to shop for jobs, Anna simply to stay with us and visit until we shipped out, or whatever.

Anna was then going to Alabama. “Maybe I’ll get tired of loafing. But I promised my daughter that I would retire and this is the right time. I’ll get reacquainted with my grandchildren before they get too big.”

Anna a grandmother? Does anyone ever know anyone else?

Las Vegas is a three-ring circus with a hangover.

I enjoy the place for a while. But after I’ve seen all the shows I reach a point where the lights and the music and the noise and the frenetic activity are too much. Four days is a-plenty.

We reached Vegas about ten, after a late start because each of us had business to do—everybody but me with arrangements to make for the collection of moneys from Boss’s will and me to deposit my closing draft with MasterCard. That is, I started to. I stopped abruptly when Mr. Chambers said, “Do you want to execute an order to us to pay your income tax on this?”

Income tax? What a filthy suggestion! I could not believe my ears. “What was that, Mr. Chambers?”

“Your Confederacy income tax. If you ask us to handle it—here’s the form—our experts prepare it and we pay it and deduct it from your account and you aren’t bothered. We charge only a nominal fee. Otherwise you have to calculate it yourself and make out all the forms and then stand in line to pay it.”

“You didn’t say anything about any such tax when I made the deposit the day I opened this account.”

“But that was a national lottery prize! That’s
yours
, utterly free—that’s the Democratic Way! Besides, the government gets its cut off the top in running the lottery.”

“I see. How much cut does the government take?”

“Really, Miss Baldwin, that question should be addressed to the government, not to me. If you’ll just sign at the bottom, I’ll fill in the rest.”

“In a moment. How much is this ‘nominal fee’? And how much is the tax?”

I left without depositing my draft and again poor Mr. Chambers was vexed with me. Even though bruins are so inflated that you have to line up quite a few of them to buy a Big Mac, I do not consider a thousand bruins “nominal”—it’s more than a gram of gold, $37 BritCan. With their 8 percent surcharge on top, MasterCard would be getting a fat fee for acting as stooge for the Confederacy’s Eternal Revenue Service.

I wasn’t sure that I owed income tax even under California’s weird laws—most of that money had not been earned in California and I couldn’t see what claim California had on my salary anyway. I wanted to consult a good shyster.

I went back to Cabaña Hyatt. Goldie and Anna were still out but Burt was there. I told him about it, knowing that he had been in logistics and accounting.

“It’s a moot point,” he said. “Personal-service contracts with the Chairman were all written ‘free of tax’ and in the Imperium the bribe was negotiated each year. Here an umbrella bribe should have been paid through Mr. Esposito—that is to say, through Ms. Wainwright. You can ask her.”

“In a pig’s eye!”

“Precisely. She should have notified Eternal Revenue and paid any taxes due—after negotiation, if you understand me. But she may be skimming; I don’t know. However—You do have a spare passport, do you not?”

“Oh, certainly! Always.”

“Then use it. That’s what I’ll be doing. Then I’ll transfer my money after I know where I’ll be. Meanwhile I’ll leave it safe on the Moon.”

“Uh, Burt, I’m pretty sure Wainwright has every spare passport listed. You seem to be saying that they’ll be checking us at exit?”

“What if Wainwright has listed them? She won’t turn over the list to the Confederates without arranging her cut, and I doubt that she’s had time to dicker it. So pay only the regular squeeze and stick your nose in the air and walk on through the barrier.”

This I understood. I had been so indignant at that filthy notion that for a moment I had ceased to think like a courier.

We crossed the border into Vegas Free State at Dry Lake; the capsule stopped just long enough for Confederacy exit stamps. Each of us used an alternate passport with the standard squeeze folded inside—no trouble. And no entrance stamp as the Free State doesn’t bother with CHI; they welcome any solvent visitor.

Ten minutes later we checked into the Dunes, with much the same accommodations we had had in San Jose save that this was described as an “orgy suite.” I could not see why. A mirror on the ceiling and aspirin and Alka-Seltzer in the bath are not enough to justify that designation; my doxyology instructor would have laughed in scorn. However I suppose that most of the marks would not have had the advantages of advanced instruction—I’ve been told that most people don’t have
any
formal training. I’ve often wondered who teaches them. Their parents? Is that rigid incest taboo among human persons actually a taboo against talking about it but not against doing it?

Someday I hope to find out such things but I’ve never known anybody I could ask. Maybe Janet will tell me. Someday…

We arranged to meet for dinner, then Burt and Anna went to the lounge and/or casino while Goldie and I went out to the Industrial Park. Burt intended to job-hunt but expressed an intention of raising a little hell before settling down. Anna said nothing but I think she wanted to savor the fleshpots before taking up the life of a grandmother-in-residence. Only Goldie was dead-serious about job-hunting that day. I intended to find a job, yes—but I had some thinking to do first.

I was probably—almost certainly—going to out-migrate. Boss thought I should and that was reason enough. But besides that, the study he had started me on concerning the symptoms of decay in cultures had focused my mind on things I had long known but never analyzed. I’ve never been critical of the cultures I’ve lived in or traveled through—please understand that an artificial person is a permanent stranger wherever she is, no matter how long she stays. No country could ever be mine so why think about it?

But when I did study it, I saw that this old planet is in sorry shape. New Zealand is a pretty good place and so is British Canada, but even those two countries showed major signs of decay. Yet those two are the best of the lot.

But let’s not rush things. Changing planets is something a person doesn’t do twice—unless she is fabulously wealthy, and I was not. I was subsidized for
one
out-migration…so I had better by a durn sight pick the right planet because no mistakes were going to be corrected after I left the window.

Besides—Well,
where
was Janet?

Boss had had a contact address or a call code. Not me!

Boss had had an ear in the Winnipeg police HQ. Not me!

Boss had had his own Pinkerton net over the whole planet. Not me!

I could try to phone them from time to time. I would. I could check with ANZAC and the University of Manitoba. I would. I could check that Auckland code and also the biodep of the University of Sydney. I would.

If none of those worked, what more could I do? I could go to Sydney and try to sweet-talk somebody out of Professor Farnese’s home address or sabbatical address or whatever. But that would not be cheap and I had suddenly been forced to realize that travel I had taken for granted in the past would now be difficult and perhaps impossible. A trip to New South Wales before semiballistics started to run again would be
very
expensive. It could be done—by tube and by float and by going three-fourths the way around the world…but it would be neither easy nor cheap.

Perhaps I could sign on as a ship’s doxy out of San Francisco for Down Under. That would be cheap and easy…but time-consuming even if I shipped in a Shipstone-powered tanker out of Watsonville. A sail-powered freighter? Well, no.

Maybe I had better hire a Pinkerton in Sydney. What did they charge? Could I afford it?

It took less than thirty-six hours from Boss’s death for me to bump my nose into the fact that I had never learned the true value of a gram.

Consider this: Up to then my life had had just three modes of economy:

a) On a mission I had spent whatever it took.

b) At Christchurch I spent some but not much—mainly presents for the family.

c) At the farm, at the next HQ, then still later at Pajaro Sands, I didn’t spend
any
money, hardly. Room and board were in my contract. I did not drink or gamble. If Anita had not been bleeding me, I would have accumulated a tidy sum.

I had led a sheltered life and had never really learned about money.

But I can do simple arithmetic without using a terminal. I had paid in cash my share at Cabaña Hyatt. I used my credit card for my fare to the Free State but jotted down the cost. I noted the daily rate at the Dunes and kept track of other costs, whether card or cash or on the hotel bill.

I could see at once that room and board in first-class hotels would very shortly use up every gram I owned even if I spent zero, nit, swabo, nothing, on travel, clothes, luxuries, friends, emergencies. Q.E.D. I must either get a job or ship out on a one-way colonizing trip.

I acquired a horrid suspicion that Boss had been paying me a lot more than I was worth. Oh, I’m a good courier, none better—but what’s the going rate on couriers?

I could sign up as a private, then (I was fairly sure) make sergeant in a hurry. That did not really appeal to me but it might be where I would wind up. Vanity isn’t one of my faults; for most civilian jobs I am unskilled labor—I know it.

Something else was pulling me, something else was pushing me. I didn’t
want
to go alone to a strange planet. It scared me. I had lost my Ennzedd family (if indeed I ever had them), Boss had died, and I felt like Chicken Little when the sky was falling, my true friends among my colleagues had gone to the four winds—except these three and they were leaving quickly—and I had managed to lose Georges and Janet and Ian.

Even with Las Vegas giddy around me I felt as alone as Robinson Crusoe.

I wanted Janet and Ian and Georges to out-migrate with me. Then I would not be afraid. Then I could smile all the way.

Besides—The Black Death. Plague was coming.

Yes, yes, I had told Boss that my midnight prediction was nonsense. But he had told me that his analytical section had predicted the same thing, in four years instead of three. (Small comfort!)

I was forced to take my own prediction seriously. I must warn Ian and Janet and Georges.

I did not expect to frighten them with it—I don’t think you can scare those three. But I did want to say, “If you won’t migrate, at least take my warning seriously to the extent of staying out of big cities. If inoculation becomes available, get it. But heed this warning.”

The Industrial Park is on the road to Hoover Dam; the Labor Mart is there. Vegas does not permit APVs inside the city but there are slidewalks everywhere and one runs out to Industrial Park. To go beyond there, to the dam or to Boulder City, there is an APV commuter line. I planned to use it as Shipstone Death Valley leases a stretch of desert between East Las Vegas and Boulder City for a charging station and I wanted to see it to supplement my study.

Could the Shipstone complex be the corporation state behind Red Thursday? I could see no reason for it. But it had to be a power rich enough to blanket the globe and reach all the way out to Ceres in a single night. There were not many such. Could it be a superrich man or group of men? Again, not many possibilities. With Boss dead I probably never would know. I used to slang him—but he was the one I turned to when I didn’t understand something. I had not known how much I leaned on him until his support was taken away.

The Labor Mart is a large covered mall, with everything from fancy offices of the
Wall Street Journal
to scouts who have their offices in their hats and never sit down and seldom stop talking. There are signs everywhere and people everywhere and it reminds me of Vicksburg river town but it smells better.