“There was one letter that I pulled out that you should see,” said Mr. Tsung. “It’s from Lord Voraz to MacAdam with a copy to you, and Dries said MacAdam had to hear from you before he answered.”
Trouble, thought Jonnie.
"Voraz wants a formula to determine the validity of a commercial loan.”
“That's not diplomatic or social,” said Jonnie.
“It’s kind of diplomatic,” said Mr.
Tsung, “Voraz and MacAdam being who they are, one does not wish to see tensions. The whole problem is consumer products should arms companies convert to. If they convert to the wrong ones, the whole program will fail and the bank will have granted useless loans.”
His own problem in a different dress, thought Jonnie. He thought of the red ink of Desperation Defense.
“Intergalactic Mining,” said Mr. Tsung, looking at the Voraz letter, “was sitting on hundreds of thousands of inventions that were on file in the Hall of Legality to prevent other nations from using them. I know this isn't diplomatic, but it could make a big diplomatic mess if the bank lends money to make the wrong products. Also, all the invention formulas are in Psychlo math.”
Jonnie had finished the venison stew and he gave the bowl back to Chrissie. There was something in the old man-books about this. What was the subject?... Marketing as a factor in profit. “You tell MacAdam to have banks get out survey teams– people that go around and ask people questions– and find out what people in each planetary area think they would want to buy: not what they should buy, but what they want to buy. Don't offer suggestions. Just ask them. For all they know it might be as little as a...”– he recalled his own discovery that glass would cut-'...as something to skin hides more easily. The subject is 'marketing surveys.'
And I’m working on Psychlo math right now.”
Tinny had been listening. She was already punching phone buttons. This was a new system. But it was kind of overdone. The smallest exchange the Chatovarians made for a planet had two billion individual radio channels, and since the war, they only had about thirty-one thousand people. There were radio phone printers everywhere. She was on to the Zurich bank, plugging in the recording she had just made of his voice. Tsung saw Jonnie wasn't going to say more and nodded to her and she let it start. The printed reply would be rolling off onto MacAdam's desk right now. She fed in the reference letter Tsung gave her.
“Dries left you this,” said Mr. Tsung. He handed Jonnie a little blue disc with a pin on the back of it. It said “Galactic Bank” on the front of it. When he saw Jonnie looking at it but not taking it, he added, “The Chatovarian deadly-device officer passed it.”
Jonnie took it. “He give you anything else?”
“Oh, you know Dries,” said Mr. Tsung. “He said there was an excess supply of butter up in the Highlands now and he brought Chrissie a whole bucket of it. Some old woman has fifteen Holstein cows and he says he's financing a butter business.”
Jonnie laughed. There had been no Holstein cows in Scotland that he knew of. Dries must have persuaded a pilot to fly them up from Germany or Switzerland where they roamed wild. Another “peppermint industry.” “Do we give him anything in return?”
“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Tsung. “We always feed him a tub of fried rice. He loves it! And my son-in-law found a book of colored plates offish and he made up some fish medallions and we give him one of those each time. He says they're valuable.”
“And you pay Lin Li,” said Jonnie, wise to the ways of commerce and the Chinese.
“Of course. From your social petty cash.”
The term “petty cash” could be pretty general. The Earth Planetary Bank was paying for Earth's defense system out of petty cash.
But Mr. Tsung was going on. “That button is a pre-run of prizes they are giving out in their new neighborhood bank program all through the universes– you know, to people who open up accounts. It will in each case be in the local language. You put it on your color tab or a place like that and then you hum a note and as long as you move your mouth, the button will sing. They are gathering up all the folk songs of each local region.”
Jonnie got a kit out of his bag. He had brought it to help the project he was on right now. He took a microannealer and opened the button up and looked at its insides with a microviewer. It was just a molecular-sized set of storage cells with little triggers and relays. A tiny battery charged itself from room heat. An electron vibrating prong set atmosphere molecules in motion to make sound. Simple, rather cheap.
But that wasn't what Jonnie was looking for. He often suspected the bank acquired information in peculiar ways and he checked vocoders and suchlike to make sure they didn't contain a radio mike or a recording thread that could be taken back later. He had never found one so far. But that was the world he now lived in.
He microannealed it back together and hung it on his buckskin collar.
“That isn't a standard one, he said to tell you,” piped Mr. Tsung through his own monotone vocoder. “He collected some old records of American ballads and put them in it. There aren't very many Americans, so it won't be manufactured for them.”
Jonnie cleared his throat and moved his mouth. The button hummed a wordless tune. Hadn't he heard that tune before? Scottish, German? Ah...it was called “Jingle Bells.” Then the button sang:
Galactic Bank!
Galactic Bank!
My friend so tried and true.
Oh what fun it is to have
A neighbor such as you!
And then in a proud voice it said, “lam a customer of the Galactic Bank!”
Well, that certainly wasn't any “American ballad!” Was Dries having a joke? He never joked, really. A very serious, small gray man.
Jonnie was about to take it off. But his laugh started it up again.
Home, home on the range, Where the deer and the buffalo
Jonnie remembered you had to keep moving your jaws to make it sing. Saliva pops or muscle tension or something. He started moving his jaws again.
Where there seldom is heard A discouraging word...
“Mister Tyler!" came through the intercom from the nervous Pierre, “I can see Lake Victoria on the viewscreens through the overcast. It 's totally clouded in ahead. Hadn't I better go on to Kariba?"
Jonnie went forward and took over the console. It was always overcast at Victoria.
Jonnie opened his mouth to call in for clearance. But the button sang:
And the skies are not cloudy all day!
What a lousy forecast, thought Jonnie, and put the button in his pocket.
Chapter 4
After glancing over the flying conditions, Jonnie could not much blame Pierre. For a while now they had been flying through the night: a fact which an experienced instrument pilot would not have thought about twice, and indeed, Jonnie had scarcely noticed it.
By looking very hard, and only then with trained pilot's eyes, one could just barely make out Mount Elgon rising above the black cloud carpet, for there was no moon and such a peak became mainly visible because it blocked out certain stars.
It was the screens which caused Jonnie to forgive Pierre. So thick was the cloud layer below them that the viewscreens, aimed at it, were more snowstorm than image. You would actually have to know the shape of the lake and the compound to have any notion of what you were looking at. A lot of electrostatic disturbance; it must be raining like fury at the compound, rain flicked with lightning.
Pierre, however, was in a state of mind that wasn't asking for anything but to stand on solid ground. He could not read the screens. He could not see anything but some stars above them and blackness below them, a blackness lashed now and then by some internal flash. He thought they were done for