“So what’s with the titanium futures?”
The glare I directed at J. Davis Alexander was in the same league as his own for high-intensity balefulness: he knew perfectly well what was with Granddame Maynerd and the titanium futures. Nevertheless, just for the record, I explained. “A year or so ago she started getting cold calls on her vu-mail from a broker named Wivvel at the Three Blind Mice over on Pallas, about how much money he could make for her in futures trading.”
J. Davis Alexander rolled his eyes in indignation and righteous disgust: the Three Blind Mice—actual name Bleine, Blinder & Miesen—are our principal rivals throughout the Belt in the field of ethical stockbroking. Incorporated on Pallas, a Libertarian’s paradise where regulation of the securities markets is close to nonexistent, the Three Blind Mice frequently give new and inventive dimensions to the word ethical. “Bohuslav Wivvel?” muttered J. Davis Alexander incredulously. “Bo Wiv-vel? I thought he’d been enjoined for life from ever working in the securities field again after that Ganymede Bubble fraud.”
“Only on Ceres and Vesta; on Pallas he was snapped up as soon as he got out of Confinement Rock. Old lady Maynerd never actually talked to him, of course, but she did listen to all of his vu-mail. And after a while she started calling me to ask about titanium futures, that being what this Wivvel creature was trying to get her to put her money into. Naturally 1 told her in a polite way that she was absolutely crazy. Finally, last March 26th, she ordered me to go long on ten million buckles worth of futures for delivery next December. That was when I said we had to see you in order to open a commodities account.”
“See me?” J. Davis Alexander’s habitual scowl deepened and he tugged fretfully at the unruly beard that spilled across his rotund breast. “I certainly don’t recall—”
“As bureau manager you don’t recall that anyone wanting to open a commodities account for even a hundred buckles has to sign a 9,000-word waiver, disclaimer, and general quitclaim in the actual physical presence of the bureau manager?” I snarled. “Stating that she recognizes the inherent risks of speculating in commodities and that she specifically holds Hartman, Bemis & Choupette free of—”
“Yes, yes, perhaps I do,” muttered J. Davis Alexander sulkily. “Tiresome old bat, as I recall. I distinctly recall trying to talk her out of getting involved in such risky investments at her age.”
Tactfully, I said nothing. J. Davis Alexander had been as eager as the unspeakable Bo Wivvel and the Three Blind Mice to see how much money our agency could siphon off from the Clarke-Maynerd fortune by judicious churning of the futures market. Ashamed to meet my eye, he swiveled around in his overstuffed chair to contemplate his million-buckle view of Westlake Park.
This morning it was far from inspiring: the city’s waste management engineers had been on strike for three weeks and for lack of any better place the local citizenry had been dumping their rotting garbage bags in the park. Towering mounds of lumpy brown bags now obscured the edges of the duck pond and threatened the carousel. A family of baby ducks was learning to fly in our barely noticeable gravity by jumping off the mounds, flailing desperately through the air, and finally falling with enormous splashes into the barely cohesive water. Bright shards of water pinwheeled slowly through the air.
The chair swiveled around again: J. Davis Alexander’s face had cleared. He had just remembered that the waiver signed by Granddame Maynerd was an absolute safeguard against the firm’s assuming any liability in the case of investment losses. “Ha!” he grunted triumphantly, stabbing a pudgy finger at the controls of his concealed console. “White, why do you persist in wasting my time like this? Just let me pull up a copy of that waiver so that we can wave it at—” He broke off to glare at his screen. “That’s funny, I can’t find it. I know she signed it, right on that deskpad that’s right there in front of you…”
I glanced down at the glowing white surface of the built-in deskpad in the otherwise shiny green top of his malachite desk. Yes, that was where I had watched Jessica Maynerd sign her name to the ironclad waiver that stood between us and a trillion-buckle lawsuit.
Only… only our accounts department now seemed to have no record at all of the waiver.
Nor did Granddame Maynerd’s personal file.
Nor did Central Registry at City Hall.
J. Davis Alexander removed his stubby fingers from the interface and began to shout instructions at the computer.
Then orders.
Finally threats.
Twenty minutes later he looked at me with eyes that were more haunted than baleful. “I… I remember now,” he croaked in a hoarse whisper. “That was the day the city power went off all afternoon because of that damned ceresquake over at Harvey’s Hollow, the same day we were installing the new information backup system and overhauling the standby power system. It must… it must—” he stared helplessly at his immaculate paperless desk as if now, a lull half-century after a piece of paper had last crossed a desk at Hartman, Bemis & Choupette, he might find it miraculously covered with sheaf upon sheaf of thick paper contracts and trade confirmations. “It must have somehow messed up the information system so that the waiver wasn’t recorded.”
Now J. Davis Alexander finally spoke the familiar words I had been waiting for: “White, you’re fired!”
The next day I went to work as usual. Just because it looked as if sometime in the near future I might be excavating nickel-iron ore from Confinement Rock the old-fashioned way, with a sledgehammer and shovel, there was nothing to be unduly gloomy about: at least I’d have the distinct pleasure of watching J. Davis Alexander wielding his own hammer next to mine.
No sooner had I conjured up this pleasing image than his infinitely less pleasing head of all too solid flesh and bone popped around the corner of my cubicle. “White! What on Ceres are you doing here? You were fired, remember? Now—”
“I’m playing around with the computer,” I said shortly. “I know she signed it while the power was on. Somewhere in here there has to be a record of—”
“Ha! I told you after that power failure to make sure all the records had been restored!” J. Davis Alexander’s nostrils distended. “White, you’re fired!”
I nodded wearily. “I know. But the law says that you have to give me thirty days’ notice, with full payment.”
“I do? The law says that?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Well, in that case, you can spend your time turning your accounts over to my nephew, Horton—he’ll be joining the firm to take over your job.”
I managed a hollow chuckle. “Firm? What firm? When the court hears in tearful detail how we browbeat the eighty-seven-year-old daughter of the founder of Clarkeville into losing six million buckles in titanium futures, and then awards her a billion buckles in punitive damages, there won’t be a firm!”
“Ah. I hadn’t thought of that.” J. Davis Alexander’s hairy head vanished with the same abruptness with which it had appeared.
Twenty minutes later my secretary beeped to tell me it had just received a vu-mail. “Who is it?” I muttered without looking up from my fruitless wanderings through the dark soul of the world’s information system.
“A Mr. Bohuslav Wivvel, calling from Pallas.”