After breakfast Gunny and Bue went off to their duties and Herzer headed downtown. He thought, again, that while Gunny was still sharp as a tack, he seemed to be losing the edge just a hair. He’d picked up that Gunny no longer ran the basic entry test for the Blood Lord trainees; the first ruck run up the Hill. He just couldn’t make the time anymore. It had only been two years, but two years of running class after class had clearly taken it out of the old NCO.
Retiring him was out; he’d either be one of those guys who just hung around all the time or he’d die or commit suicide. All he had known before Fall was living what he had researched as the life of a senior noncommissioned officer. Something was going to have to be done, but offhand Herzer couldn’t think what.
Herzer wondered, not for the first time but the first time clearly, what Gunny had been like when he was a youngster. Or Duke Edmund, for that matter. He had looked at both of them, when he first started out, as the near order of gods. And now there were people who looked at him the same way. Had they been screw-ups? What was the force that drove them to be who they were? You had to have something seriously odd in your background to live the lives that they had lived before the Fall, not to mention what they had done after it.
Who were they really? People looked at him as if he was something special. Even as he walked downtown, people would come up to him and nod and whisper as he passed. Herzer, the victor of the Line. Herzer the Undefeatable. He knew he wasn’t any of those things. But he wore the mask, wore it so well sometimes it felt as if he was becoming their belief. But he knew, inside, that he was the same screwed-up kid who had run away from Daneh’s rape. Who had needed to be hammered on the anvil of the Blood Lords, and of life, to attain any sort of competence. Who still screwed up from time to time.
Who were they, really?
Those thoughts carried him as far as the bank and he wandered in abstractedly, scarcely noticing when he reached the newly installed desks.
“Can I help you?” the woman at the desk asked.
“Stephanie?”
Gone was the flippant social butterfly. The woman had her hair up in a bun and a severe expression of less than friendly competence on her face.
“Lieutenant Herrick, I believe?” Stephanie replied.
“I’m looking for Tom,” Herzer said.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“Nooo,” Herzer replied with a slight grin. “But I thought I’d drop by for old time’s sake.”
“Mr. Sloan is quite busy, but I’ll see if he has a moment.” She got up and went through a side door as Herzer took his first real look around.
Tom Sloan had started small. Prior to the Fall there was no such thing as “currency.” There were energy credits but they were traded, to the extent that any trading occurred, through the Net. Everyone had a relative sufficiency. Even Herzer, who as a young man had been “released” by his parents, had enough to not only pay for advanced medical treatment but also to maintain elaborate “enhanced reality” simulations. It took real energy to use up all your energy credits.
After the Fall, currency had at first been based on food. Food was distributed based on “credit chits.” One chit, one meal. Or rough food, slightly more than one meal, if you knew how to cook it. Over time the chits had transformed into the standard currency and as the society got more complex they had become the standard monetary form. You still could buy a meal or food from the government with chit in hand. But most of them were traded through what was becoming more and more of an economy. And even the term “chit” was falling out of the lexicon, replaced by “credit.”
Tom had gotten into the trading of chits early. He had accumulated stores of them, based on loans from the government and deposits by people who had a surplus. And he’d put the money to use, loaning it out in turn at often usurious rates. But he was scrupulously fair and honest, which went a long way to people letting his interest rates slide; too many of his early competitors had played fast and loose with people’s money. He had also handled investments and contracts for people like Herzer, people who had a small surplus and wanted to put it to work.
He’d clearly come up in the world. The small office he used to have had been expanded into a large building. There was a counter with some women behind it and a few offices off of the main lobby which apparently had Stephanie to guard it. There were also two inconspicuous real guards, hulking men nearly Herzer’s size. One of them he recognized from the town militia. He’d tried out for the Blood Lords but hadn’t been able to make the full training. He still looked more than capable of ripping any troublemaker in the bank limb from limb. Herzer nodded at him and the guard nodded back, not warily but fully aware that the Blood Lord would be difficult to rip if push came to shove.
“Herzer!”
Tom Sloan was a tall, good-looking guy anywhere between thirty and a hundred and fifty years in age, wearing a fine linen tunic and a pair of light-blue cosilk pants that just matched his eyes. He had sandy hair, a ready smile and a firm grip. Herzer was sure that he practiced the smile and handshake in the mirror every morning.
“Hey, Tom, got a minute?” Herzer asked.
“Always,” Sloan replied with a toothy smile. “Miss Vega, could you pull the lieutenant’s files and bring them to my office?”
“Certainly, sir,” Stephanie simpered, then scurried away. Herzer had been sure that the woman could never scurry, but she did it well.
“Come on,” Tom said, laying his hand on Herzer’s arm and leading him through the door. There was a corridor with more offices to either side. Most of them had their doors open and in each there were people, mostly women, poring over piles of paper.
“If one more thing changes in this town I’ll scream,” Herzer said.
“You’ve got no idea.” Tom sighed. He opened a door with “Sloan, President” on a brass plaque and led Herzer inside.
The room was comfortably but not flashily appointed. There were a couch and table, a couple of chairs and a medium sized desk. An étagère behind the desk had a few personal effects in it, including a small oil painting of Tom and a woman. Herzer vaguely recognized her but couldn’t place the face.
“You’re married?” he asked, taking one of the chairs. He fit in it poorly, which was normal, but he realized his legs were shoved up higher than usual. Then he realized that if he was “normal” sized he would have been looking up at the bank president.
“Last year,” Tom said. “I had an invitation for you…”
“But I was out of town?” Herzer grinned.
“Somewhat.”
“So what’s with the banker look?” Herzer asked.
“Changes.” Sloan grimaced. “Practically the first thing the new Congress did was pass banking laws and set up an independent federal bank board. I had to get investors, set up a charter, and do all the paperwork. Stuff that I could keep up myself blossomed into a full-time job to manage the reports that the feds require. I had to shift most of the investments that I was managing to another firm. I sent you a letter about that.”
“Got it,” Herzer admitted. “But they’re still filtering the returns through you?”
“Yes, but I can’t advise on any of it or manage it,” Sloan admitted. “But I can bring you up to date on what we’re keeping in-house. Your deposits, fixed securities, things like that.”
“Okay, what is a fixed security?” Herzer said.
“Well,” Tom grinned. “You remember when I used to say: ‘Look, Herzer, leave it with me and I’ll give you five percent a year, guaranteed’?”