“Here’s to a new friend,” he said. He was gratified to see her blush.
At the doorway, Nairla blinked in and said, “Aren’t you two cute?”
“Oh, spare me,” said Revlyn, and went inside.
“Love Comes to the Middleman” copyright 1987 by Marc Laidlaw. First appeared in Mathenauts: Tales of Mathematical Wonder, edited by Rudy Rucker (1987).
MIDDLEMAN’S RENT
Liss must have heard him coming up the ramp. She opened the front door before he knocked, and met him with a kiss that on an ordinary day would have broken his bad mood instantly. The best he could do today, though, was to take his hands out of his pockets and give her a weak hug.
“Jack, what’s wrong? You look really depressed.”
He nodded as she led him in. As always, her apartment was a mess: paint spattered the floor, her tools lay everywhere, and something that looked like an incomplete sculpture teetered on three spindly, twisted legs in the middle of the room.
“I finished it this morning,” she said when she saw him looking at it. “Do you like it?”
“It’s nice,” he said. “I lost my job.”
“Jack! Oh no, why?” She caught both his hands and drew him down to the cushions in one corner of the room.
He shrugged. He couldn’t exactly say it was because of her, though indirectly that was so. In the twenty days since he and Liss had met, he’d called in sick seven times, and left work earlier and earlier each day. This morning he had come in late—having stayed up almost all last night—and Mr. Dopnitta had informed him that there was no room in the office for a laggard, no matter how well intentioned.
“I was getting tired of the job anyway,” he said.
Liss sighed and got up to brew tea. “It’s because of me, isn’t it?”
“No! Don’t be ridiculous. It was time for a change. That job doesn’t suit me anymore. It’s too much all of a level.”
She giggled. “Jack, you didn’t used to talk like that.”
He felt his mood unraveling, and grinned back at her. “O.K., maybe you had something to do with it.”
“I’ll consider it a victory. Have you thought about what you’re going to do now?”
“No. I don’t have any money saved. Enough to pay my current bills, and that’s it.”
“You can move in with me,” she said.
“There’s not enough room for two in here.”
“So we’ll rent a bigger place. Maybe something not so fancy. I’m getting tired of these walls, you know? Wouldn’t you like to find a place with a view of trees and hills? A nice country home?”
He took a long look at her walls, and had to admit that he’d grown tired of tract housing. From floor to ceiling, there was nothing to see but houses and a few little patches of community parkland. Like the wall in his room, the development was deserted most of the day, during business hours. A few tiny adults strolled on the ramps, or watched their tinier children climbing on the vines in the parks, but otherwise the neighborhood was dead.
“And how will I make money?”
“You’ll think of something, Jack.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You’ve got your arts grants, but what am I? A paper pusher.”
“…Excuse me.”
Jack turned to the wall just behind him, above the cushions, and saw an old man leaning out from the window of his house.
“Were you talking to me?” Jack said.
“Couldn’t help overhearing you two,” said the neighborling.
“Have I introduced you two?” Liss asked. “I’m sorry, Ganly. This is Jack. Jack, Ganly.”
“Pleasure,” Jack said.
“I just thought I’d point out,” Ganly said, “there’s plenty you could do right in this room to earn money. I don’t think most people realize. I’ve been independent since I was your age, and I make good money at it. Enough to retire without any help from the Equalization Board.”
“Maybe stuff like that works at your level,” Jack said, instantly regretting the disparagement in his tone.
“I like that!” Ganly snapped. “Here I come out with a bit of advice, and I get—well, it’ll teach me to butt in.”
“No, no, no!” Liss said, kneeling down by Ganly’s house. “I’m sure Jack didn’t mean anything. He’s not used to thinking on more than three levels at a time.”
“He’s not even doing that!”
Liss gave Jack a withering look. He crouched down next to her.
“Uh, look, I’m sorry if that came out the wrong way. I’m sure you know what you’re talking about.”
Ganly stared at him a moment with a stern expression, then cocked his head and relaxed into a smile. “You listening?”
“Sure.”
“Now Jack, this doesn’t require thinking on more than the three levels you’re used to. Just put yourself in my place for a moment, and you’ll know what I mean.”
Jack tried to imagine himself at Ganly’s size, standing in Ganly’s living room. It was easy enough. Ganly’s walls were covered with little houses, just like the houses on Jack’s level; and on the walls of those houses were tinier houses with tinier houses on their walls. It was simple to imagine, because if he looked out Liss’s window, he could see that her house was on the wall of a large room, where Nairla and her husband lived. And Nairla’s house was on the wall of a house that was on a larger wall of a larger house….
“Now think of an old man like me,” Ganly said. “I can’t get around the way I used to, you know. Say I want to rearrange the furniture in my house, or get rid of this old table that’s taking up so much space. Now for me that could be quite a chore—hard on my heart, you get me?”
Jack nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“But for you, now, it’s no big deal to pry the roof off this place and move my furniture around. And if you did that for me, why shouldn’t I pay you scale?”
“You mean… pay me what you’d pay some samesize guy?”
“Sure, why not? The work’s worth it to me.” Ganly tapped his forehead with a finger. “There’re plenty of people would agree with that. But whoever thinks of it? Bah—they’re wrapped up on their own level, that’s what it is. Easier to get a desk job and talk to samesizes all day. Now for me, I’d rather get a different perspective on things—the little guy’s point of view, if you know what I mean.”
“That’s a great idea,” Jack said.
“And it works both ways. There’re things you can do for the giants that they can’t do for themselves, and they’ll pay you handsomely to do it—because for them, it’s the tiny work they have trouble with. It’s worth a lot to have someone who knows his way around the inside of a radio.”
“That wouldn’t be me,” Jack said. “I can’t even load a mechanical pencil.”
“Now there are a few guys,” said Ganly, “who act as agents, go-betweens. They make deals not among three or five levels, but among seven, nine, eleven—“
“The Plenary Council is a chair organization,” Liss said. “Its connections run upscale and down for as far as we can tell. I had a job last year working for a giant thirteen levels up. He needed someone to rearrange particles in a microscopic art exhibit. To him they were particles, anyway; to me it was like—well, rearranging furniture. And some of those particles had downscale people on them, working out the most fantastic, intricate textures….”
“I’m not an artist,” Jack said.
“You don’t need to be!” Ganly cried. “There’s plenty of practical work needing to be done. And if you’re thinking of moving to the country—well, farmers can always use an extra hand to dig irrigation ditches, put in fences, bring in the crops.”