“We had big guns,” I said, “and, besides, there was no place to run.”
We got into the car, with Rila next to me. She put both hands on my arm and squeezed hard.
“The same to you;” I said.
“I forgot to tell you about the films,” she said. “And you forgot to ask. They’re safe. In the vault of a New York bank.”
“As soon as this matter becomes public,” said Courtney, “we’ll have distributors bidding for them, and bidding high.”
“I’m not sure,” I said, “that we’ll want to sell them.”
“We’ll sell anything,” said Rila, “if the price is right.”
I backed out of the parking space. There were only a few other cars. Courtney’s plane and another were the only ones on the strip. Over in the ramshackle hangar, on the other side of the field, I knew, were a few others, locally owned.
A mile or two down the road, at the edge of town, we came to a small shopping center — a supermarket, a hardware store, a small department store, a branch bank, a men’s clothing store, and a few other shops.
“Let’s pull in here and park,” said Courtney. “Away from other cars.”
“Sure, if you want to,” I said, “but why?”
“Please humor me,” he said.
I pulled in and found a place to park at the near edge of the parking area. There were no other cars nearby. I shut off the motor and sat back in the seat.
“This is a conspiracy,” said Courtney. “I shudder at the possibility of eavesdropping.”
“So go ahead,” I said. I looked at Rila and saw that she was as puzzled as I was.
Courtney squirmed into a comfortable position.
“I’ve spent a lot of sleepless nights,” he said, “considering your position, and in many respects it seems to me you could be vulnerable. Oh, so far as I can determine, this project of yours is entirely legal.
Unique, of course, but legal. But the thing that worries me is that Internal Revenue can clobber you but good-If everything goes as well as I expect it will, you’ll be making a lot of money, and when someone makes a lot of money, it’s always been my position that as much of it be kept as is possible within the framework of the law.”
“Courtney,” said Rila, “I don’t quite understand …”
“Do you have any idea the bite IRS can take,” he asked, “out of a million dollars?”
“I have a rough idea,” I said, “but only a rough idea.”
“The trouble is,” he said, “that you won’t have the opportunity of the business pattern, such as is found in large corporations, to set up the sort of tax shelters and loop holes that will afford some protection. We could set you up as a corporation, of course, but it would take a lot of time and would have a number of built-in disadvantages. There is one possibility, however. It looks good to me and I want to see what you think about it. If you did not conduct your business in the United States there’d be no problem. Income tax does not apply to businesses outside the country.”
“But we have to stay at Willow Bend,” said Rila.
“That’s where our business is.”
“Not so fast,” said Courtney. “Let’s give it a little thought. Let us say you used your time-travel capability to provide you a residence a thousand years into the past, or a million years, or wherever was best to go. I suppose that any time prior to the emergence of the United States would do, but it might be better to pick a time prior to any European knowledge of North America. If you could find some desert island, of course, unclaimed by any world power, that would do as well, but I don’t know where one is or even if one exists. If it does, you’d still be a long ways from Willow Bend, but if you resided in time, as I suggest, you’d be just a short walk from the farm in Willow Bend.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “We’d still be living on land that, in time, would be a part of the nation.”
“Yes, I know,” said Courtney, “and IRS might try to make something of that. They might bring suit, but if they do, I think we could prove that national sovereignty does not extend through time.”
“But the farm in Willow Bend is really where we’d conduct our business.” Rila said.
“Not if you lived someplace else. We’d be very sure you conducted no business in Willow Bend. Nor provided any services there. You could get Hiram and this Catface thing to move into time with you?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“But Willow Bend would still be there,” said Rila.
“Only as your American agency,” said Courtney.
“You’d have to have someone to serve as your agent.
I had your friend Ben in mind. The time road or tunnel or whatever you want to call it would simply be an entry port to your place of residence, where you’d conduct your business and provide your services. The time roads used to supply your services would be set up from your place of residence. You’d pay your agent a commission — perhaps one percent of all the business that he sent you. That seems the safest way. In effect, he’d then be the agent for a foreign firm. I think it might be best, as well, to sell the farm to him. That way, IRS couldn’t seize it as your property for non-payment of taxes. Ben would be paying his taxes, of course, and that way, they’d not be able to grab the farm, which is your port of entry. Also, it would lend weight to his being in business for himself.”
“But they still might try to seize it,” I said.
“Certainly, they might try. Faced with the facts, I don’t think they would. Especially if Ben paid a fair price for it before you went into the time business.
That’s the crux of the matter. To have even a prayer of escaping the IRS, you can’t do any business in the United States. That’s why I refused yesterday to talk business with Safari. If they want to talk business, they have to come to your place of residence.”
“But I talked to Safari originally,” said Rila, “and we showed them the film.”
“That fact could make matters a little sticky,” said Courtney, “but I think I can handle that. I think I could demonstrate to the satisfaction of the courts that no business actually was done. As to what happened yesterday, I could show that we refused to negotiate.”
“But there’ll be contracts,” said Rila.
“Drawn and executed in New York or in other cities where the party of the second part is headquartered, between an American firm and a non-American company. That is customary. It would stand in law.
No trouble there. But you’d have to have an address-Where do you think you might like to set up residence?”
“In one of the more recent interglacial periods,” I said. “Probably the Sangamon. The climate would be good, the environment more homelike.”
“Dangerous?”
“Mastodons,” I said. “Sabertooths. Some bears. Dire wolves. But we could manage. They probably sound worse than they are.”
“We could call our new home Mastodonia,” said Rila.
“Perfect,” Courtney said. “That name carries with it the implications of another time and place.”
“But would we have to stay there all the time?” asked Rila. “I don’t think I would like that.”
“Not all the time,” said Courtney, “but enough of the time so you could honestly call it home. You could visit Willow Bend frequently, travel otherwise as you wished. But all your business would have to be conducted from Mastodonia. I had even toyed with the idea that you could proclaim yourself a nation and apply to the State Department, and to other countries, of course, for recognition. But with only two or three residents, that might be hard to do. I’m not sure it would be of any advantage, either. If doing so eventually became advisable, could you get some of your Willow Bend neighbors to move there?”