“Of Star Towers? The idea was to make a space colony, where people could live just the way they do on Earth, only better. You know, no pollution, no overcrowding, no bureaucrats. But that was a joke. Seven hundred people built this place, and it cost two trillion dollars. Figure out how much apiece we’d have to pay if we wanted to own it.”
“Two billion nine,” Harry said.
“Right. The project was supposed to be paid for by building solar power satellites, but that never worked, and anyhow they’ve got better power sources now and they don’t need solar. Okay, the only other thing is a tourist trap. People come here because they can afford it and other people can’t. Maybe that isn’t a great reason, but that’s the way it is. Sound familiar?”
“Yeah.” Harry hung his head. “This trip might be the dumbest thing I’ve done since ought five.”
“Don’t feel bad. You’ll get respect for it, just like the pilgrims do when they go to Mecca. I don’t know what your business is, but I’ll bet it will pay off.”
“Yeah. You might be right. Well, thanks for everything.”
“No problem.” She rose. “So long, lover.”
In the hotel elevator, a young man in a silver jacket got on with him. “Hi,” he said pleasantly.
“You staying here too?”
“Seems that way.” As the doors opened and Harry started to leave, the young man stuck out his hand. “Here’s something you forgot.” Harry accepted it automatically; it was a little crystic cube with an image on one side. He took one look, then barged back through the closing doors. He grabbed the young man by the shirt. “Did you cube that?” He turned the cube over in his fingers: one of the two linked figures had his face. The young man, looking startled and afraid, pulled away and swung at him. Harry took a tighter grip, hit the guy square in the nose and felt it crunch, but then the young man pulled something out of his pocket that gave him a pain in his chest greater than he had ever known. Fortunately, it didn’t last long.
By the time the general manager heard about the killing, it was too late to do anything different. Bobby Dalziel had hidden the body in a closet while he called Caroline. Together they had smuggled it into the docking elevator, put it in a sallyport and blown it out into space.
At this point, they had at least had the sense to confide in the sexual services manager. She had bucked the problem up to the GM, Edward Goodhew, who met with his executive committee in extraordinary session at about three-thirty in the morning. The committee, which had had one or two problems of this kind in the past, authorized a substantial bribe to the purser of a departing spacecraft to accept a seventy-three-kilo consignment without putting it on the manifest, and to add Harry’s name to the passenger list. The consignment was waste water in sealed carboys, just enough to compensate for Harry’s missing mass. An agent in Houston would dump the carboys, and that would be that. The records would show that Harry had disappeared after he got to Houston; with luck, he would never be seen again, and his widow would never find out what happened.
The bribe came out of the contingency fund, to be replaced from the earnings of the two employees. A smaller amount was budgeted to contrive the purser’s accidental death later on.
Bobby had acted hastily, and both he and Caroline would have to be disciplined, of course; but there had been no scandal, nothing to hurt the image of Star Towers. That was the important thing, after all. The committee members yawned and went back to their beds. Heigh-ho. Another day on the high frontier, another fifty million dollars.
31
The island of Singapore, only some 387 square miles in area, was the most valuable piece of real estate on earth. There was no room for the poor except in vertical slums managed by the government. These were in the Tanglin district, discreetly concealed by a row of high-rise government office buildings windowless on the north side. By means of shore patrols, detect-and-destroy machines at harbor and airports, and frequent sweeps, the government headed by General Sun Pak had kept the island free of symbionts. Everything impossible in the rest of the world was now possible here. Murder was common. Every taste in illicit sex could be satisfied in one or more of the city’s two thousand bordellos. One of the most famous was Evans’ Hideaway; its slogan was “Thank Evans for Little Girls.”
Here, out of cock-fighting, bareknuckle prizefighting, and Russian roulette, a new game evolved. It was described in a tourist brochure of the time:
Game is played by two brave players in Game Circus. Player are Black and Purple, or sometime White and Red. After ceremony, each player hold revolver with one bullet to other head. Computer fire both revolver. Sometime player are killed in first game, sometime still alive after twenty game. Player still alive after five game called Virtuous, after ten game Observant, after fifteen game Glorious and after twenty game Shining.
Another kind of Game, player are tied into holder. Body divided into twelve zones, one small charge explosive each zone. Computer chooses zone for each player, but nobody knows. Then one player or other can decide to press button and fire charges into body of self and other. If both player decide not, computer chooses zones again. No zone for vital organ. Doctor always present. When doctor says one player in danger of die, other player wins.
The player Norville Quinn wrote in his memoirs:
If you took the Big Game, or Head Game it was sometimes called, you had five chances out of six in each contest. It didn’t pay much at first, but if you survived the first five, it paid a little better, and then if you were still alive after ten, a lot better, and plenty of contestants retired after fifteen, with the cash awards and the presents people gave them. If you stayed in competition, you were expected to appear once a week in the prelims, then at least once every two weeks, and once every month for champions. There were ten contests every day in the Circus, and always at least one guy died, usually two, and once in a while as many as four. The fans bet their money on who would win and who would die. The big champions dressed like princes and had attendants spraying them with perfumed oil, and they always went behind a curtain with a beautiful woman before, although it was generally known that they couldn't do anything. But they came out and strutted and puffed their chests, and the fans roared. Big money changed hands in every champion contest.
On certain holidays there were elimination contests using drugged amateurs. The contest would begin with five pairs of contestants, or sometimes seven or nine. When the first player died, the survivor of that pair would form a triad with another pair; then when the second player died, the survivor of that pair or triad would form a pair with the first survivor. With ceremonies, times out, little plays, singing and dancing, the contest would go on all day, ending when only one player was left alive. That player would be offered a place in the regular Game, but they seldom did very well.
During the first decade much attention was focused on space. The manned Martian expedition of2004 returned safely but brought little scientific information. The unmanned Jupiter probe, which began to return data in 2007, was more successful, revealing hitherto unknown facts about the giant planet. New McMurdo Base on the Moon was established in 2010. The first space colony was completed in 2015, bilt the planned microwave solar eneigy system was plagued by accidents and failures.
Other advances in science and technology led to unexpected changes in social habits. Molecular storage and retrieval went into commercial use in 2002, making possible nanominiaturization of computers. This in turn brought about a radical reshaping of the educational system.