At her apartment on the ninety-second floor, she apologized for the smallness of the place. It didn’t seem so little to me, but then she’d never lived on a spaceship.
Even this high up, there were bars on the windows. The door had four separate locks, one of which didn’t work because somebody had used a crowbar on it.
Mother went off to turn the ground beef into a meatloaf and I settled down with the evening ’fax. She pulled some carrots from her little garden and called the mushroom lady, whose son came over to make the trade. He had a riot gun slung under his arm.
“Mother, where’s the rest of the Star?” I called into the kitchen.
“As far as I know, it’s all there. What were you looking for?”
“Well … I found the classified section, but no ‘Help Wanted.’ ”
She laughed. “Son, there hasn’t been a ‘Help Wanted’ ad in ten years. The government takes care of jobs … well, most of them.”
“Everybody works for the government?”
“No, that’s not it.” She came in, wiping her hands on a frayed towel. “The government, they tell us, handles the distribution of all natural resources. And there aren’t many resources more valuable than empty jobs.”
“Well, I’ll go talk to them tomorrow.”
“Don’t bother, son. How much retirement pay you say you’re getting from the Force?”
“Twenty thousand K a month. Doesn’t look like it’ll go far.”
“No, it won’t. But your father’s pension gave me less than half that, and they wouldn’t give me a job. Jobs are assigned on a basis of need. And you’ve got to be living on rice and water before the Employment Board considers you needy.”
“Well, hell, it’s a bureaucracy — there must be somebody I can pay off, slip me into a good—”
“No. Sorry, that’s one part of the UN that’s absolutely incorruptible. The whole shebang is cybernetic, untouched by human souls. You can’t—”
“But you said you had a job!”
“I was getting to that. If you want a job badly enough, you can go to a dealer and sometimes get a hand-me-down.”
“Hand-me-down? Dealer?”
“Take my job as an example, son. A woman named Hailey Williams has a job in a hospital, running a machine that analyzes blood, a chromatography machine. She works six nights a week, for 12,000K a week. She gets tired of working, so she contacts a dealer and lets him know that her job is available.
“Some time before this, I’d given the dealer his initial fee of 50,000K to get on his list. He comes by and describes the job to me and I say fine, I’ll take it. He knew I would and already has fake identification and a uniform. He distributes small bribes to the various supervisors who might know Miss Williams by sight.
“Miss Williams shows me how to run the machine and quits. She still gets the weekly 12,000K credited to her account, but she pays me half. I pay the dealer ten percent and wind up with’ 5400K per week. This, added to the nine grand I get monthly from your father’s pension, makes me quite comfortable.
“Then it gets complicated. Finding myself with plenty of money and too little time, I contact the dealer again, offering to sublet half my job. The next day a girl shows up who also has ‘Hailey Williams’ identification. I show her how to run the machine, and she takes over Monday-Wednesday-Friday. Half of my real salary is 2700K, so she gets half that, 1350K, and pays the dealer 135.”
She got a pad and a stylus and did some figuring. “So the real Hailey Williams gets 6000K weekly for doing nothing. I work three days a week for 4050K. My assistant works three days for 1115K. The dealer gets 100,000K in fees and 735K per week. Lopsided, isn’t it?”
“Hmm … I’ll say. Quite illegal, too, I suppose.”
“For the dealer. Everybody else might lose their job and have to start over, if the Employment Board finds out. But the dealer gets brainwiped.”
“Guess I better find a dealer, while I can still afford the fifty-grand bite.” Actually, I still had over three million, but planned to run through most of it in a short time. Hell, I’d earned it.
I was getting ready to go the next morning when Mother came in with a shoebox. Inside, there was a small pistol in a clip-on holster.
“This belonged to your father,” she explained. “Better wear it if you’re planning to go downtown without a bodyguard.”
It was a gunpowder pistol with ridiculously thin bullets. I hefted it in my hand. “Did Dad ever use it?”
“Several times … just to scare away riders and hitters, though. He never actually shot anybody.”
“You’re probably right that I need a gun,” I said, putting. it back. “But I’d have to have something with more heft to it. Can I buy one legally?”
“Sure, there’s a gun store down in the Mall. As long as you don’t have a police record, you can buy anything that suits you.” Good; I’d get a little pocket laser. I could hardly hit the wall with a gunpowder pistol.
“But … William, I’d feel a lot better if you’d hire a bodyguard, at least until you know your way around.” We’d gone all around that last night. Being an official Trained Killer, I thought I was tougher than any clown I might hire for the job.
“I’ll check into it, Mother. Don’t worry — I’m not even going downtown today, just into Hyattsville.”
“That’s just as bad.”
When the elevator came, it was already occupied. He looked at me blandly as I got in, a man a little older than me, clean-shaven and well dressed. He stepped back to let me at the row of buttons. I punched 47 and then, realizing his motive might not have been politeness, turned to see him struggling to get at a metal pipe stuck in his waistband. It had been hidden by his cape.
“Come on, fella,” I said, reaching for a nonexistent weapon. “You wanna get caulked?”
He had the pipe free but let it hang loosely at his side. “Caulked?”
“Killed. Army term.” I took one step toward him, trying to remember. Kick just under the knee, then either groin or kidney. I decided on the groin.
“No.” He put the pipe back in his waistband. “I don’t want to get ‘caulked.’ ” The door opened at 47 and I backed out.
The gun shop was all bright white plastic and gleamy black metal. A little bald man bobbed over to wait on me. He had a pistol in a shoulder rig.
“And a fine morning to you, sir,” he said and giggled. “What will it be today?”
“Lightweight pocket laser,” I said. “Carbon dioxide.”
He looked at me quizzically and then brightened. “Coming right up, sir.” Giggle. “Special today, I throw in a handful of tachyon grenades.”
“Fine.” They’d be handy.
He looked at me expectantly. “So? What’s the popper?”
“Huh?”
“The punch, man; you set me up, now knock me down. Laser.” He giggled.
I was beginning to understand. “You mean I can’t buy a laser.”
“Of course not, sweetie,” he said and sobered. “You didn’t know that?”
“I’ve been out of the country for a long time.”
“The world, you mean. You’ve been out of the world a long time.” He put his left hand on a chubby hip in a gesture that incidentally made his gun easier to get. He scratched the center of his chest.
I stood very still. “That’s right. I just got out of the Force.”
His jaw dropped. “Hey, no bully-bull? You been out shootin’ ’em up, out in space?”
“That’s right.”
“Hey, all that crap about you not gettin’ older, there’s nothin’ to that, is there?”
“Oh, it’s true. I was born in 1975.”
“Well, god … damn. You’re almost as old as I am.” He giggled. “I thought that was just something the government made up.”
“Anyhow … you say I can’t buy a laser—”
“Oh, no. No no no. I run a legal shop here.”