The unemployment rate grew to ninety percent. The available jobs on Earth called for no special skills — so who would get them?
Naturally, those with well-placed friends and relatives. There had been a wonderful blossoming of nepotism, unmatched within the previous thousand years. Many positions called for prospective employees to possess a “stable base of operations and adequate working materials.” With living accommodations and family possessions passed on across the generations, the advantage lay always with those from the old families.
Meanwhile, away from Earth there was a real need for people. The solar system was ripe for development. It offered an environment that was demanding, dangerous, and full of unbounded opportunities. And it had a nasty habit of cancelling any man-made advantage derived from birth, wealth, or spurious academic “qualifications.” Cancelling permanently.
The rich and the royal were not without their own shrewdness. After a quick look at space, they stayed home on Earth, the one place in the system where their safety, superiority, and status were all assured. It was the low-born, seeing no upward mobility on Earth, who took the big leap — outward.
The result was too effective to be the work of human planners. The tough, desperate commoners fought their way to space, generation after generation. The introduction of the Mattin Link quadrupled the rate of exodus, and the society that was left on Earth became more and more titled and self-conscious. Well-protected from material want and free from external pressures, it naturally developed an ever-increasing disdain for the emigrants — “vulgar commoners” spreading their low-born and classless fecundity through the solar system and out to the stars. Earth was the place to be for the aristocrats. The only place to be, on the Big Marble itself. Where else could anyone live who despised crudity, esteemed breeding and culture, and demanded a certain sophistication of life-style?
King Bester was a king, a genuine monarch who traced his line across thirty-two generations to the House of Saxe-Coburg. He was one of seventeen thousand royals reigning on and under Earth’s surface. He regarded Tatty Snipes, Princess Tatiana Sinai-Peres of the Cabot-Kasnoggi’s, as rather an upstart. She had only six centuries and twenty-two generations in her lineage. He did not say it, of course, in her presence — Tatty would have knocked the side of his royal head in with one blow of her carefully-manicured and aristocratic fist. But he certainly thought it.
And King Bester, like Tatty, was nobody’s fool. He realized very well that the real power had moved away from Earth. The Quarantine operated by Solar Security applied only to people moving outward from Earth. Bester could sense the brawling, raw strength that lay in people like Luther Brachis. It ran right through the off-planet culture, and he was afraid of it. Far better to stay home, operate within the familiar rituals of the Big Marble, and take a little when the opportunity came from visitors like Mondrian and his colleagues. Those visitors were far more numerous than System government liked to admit, and they came down to Earth for reasons rarely shown on any travel permits.
So Bester quietly tagged along with Princess Tatiana and the three visitors. He hung at the back of the group, listened carefully while Mondrian explained to Tatty the reason for the trip to Earth, and looked for his working edge.
He had never heard of the Morgan Constructs and the disaster on Cobweb Station until Esro Mondrian described it. He was not much interested. His reward lay in examining Mondrian, Brachis, and Flammarion, and learning in which category of pleasure-seeking their interests might lie.
There was sure to be one. Bester had his own ideas of Earth visitors. No matter what they might say, or how the official agenda read, there was always another angle. And that was where the profit lay.
Brachis should not be difficult. Big, powerfully-built, lusty, still in early middle age, he could be offered things undreamed of through most of the solar system. Flammarion would be even easier. He already had the poached-egg look to his eyes that told of a habitual use of alcohol. One good shot of Paradox, and Flammarion wouldn’t be looking elsewhere for entertainment while he was on Earth. Withdrawal symptoms after he left? That was not King Bester’s problem.
The big question mark was Mondrian. He had scared Bester the moment they met, when he had fixed him with those cold, dark eyes.
But on the other hand, Mondrian wasn’t a good prospect, anyway. He was clearly no stranger to Earth, and he had probably found a way to gratify his own needs long ago. From the way she looked at him, Tatty Snipes had in the past helped to serve them.
When they reached Tatty’s underground apartment, Bester stopped any pretense of listening to Mondrian. He quietly helped himself to the free food and drink — Princess Tatiana had decidedly royal tastes — and moved a little closer to Kubo Flammarion. The scruffy man’s pleasures could probably be guessed, but they had to be confirmed before his pockets could be emptied.
“Ever see a public beheading, Captain?” And, as Flammarion’s eyes widened, “I mean with full staging — steel axe, real wooden block, hooded executioner. We use a top-quality simulacrum under the chopper, you’d never know the difference — the spurt from the neck is exactly like real blood.”
“Bleagh!” Flammarion glared at him in disgust. He shook his head, and laid down the slice of underdone beef that he was holding. “What you doing, trying to make me throw up or something?”
“Not for you? How about him, then?” King Bester nodded to Mondrian, still deep in conversation with Princess Tatiana. “Think he might be interested?”
Kubo Flammarion scratched his head. “The Commander? Nah. To get him hooked, you’d have to have a real victim and real blood.” He pointedly took a couple of steps away from Bester.
The King turned to Luther Brachis. “How about you? like to know more about some of our entertainments — I mean the Big Marble specials, the ones you’ll never see in the catalogs. How would you like one of those?” Brachis smiled at him pleasantly. “And how would you like a big fistful of knuckles” — he spoke in poorly pronounced out quite passable Earth-argot — “right up your royal nose?”
King Bester decided that his glass needed refilling at the sideboard across the room.
“I didn’t know you spoke their lingo, too,” said Kubo Flammarion admiringly, watching Bester’s rapid departure.
“It’s good to have a few things about you that most people don’t know.” Brachis turned, so that no one but Flammarion could see his lips. “There’s things about your boss that you don’t know, too. Remember that. I don’t give away information — but I’m always willing to trade.”
Chapter 5
Tatty shook her head as soon as Mondrian explained what he was looking for.
“Not here, or in any of the areas where I have clout. There’s a local ordinance forbidding the off-Earth sale of anyone with more than four degrees of consanguinity with my imperial clan — and that means everybody. They all claim relationship, even when they don’t really have it.”
“Any ideas, then?”
“You might try over in BigSyd, or maybe Tearun. I don’t know the dealers there, though. And Ree-o-dee would be a cert, except you need to pay off so many people it gets out of control. Better if we could find somebody locally.”
“How about Bozzie?” King Bester had given up any pretense that he was not eavesdropping. “He’s top bod for that line of business. And he’s nearby, sort of.
“Could be worth a shot. I don’t know what he has, though.” Tatty turned to Mondrian. “We’ll have to find him first — but he’ll be somewhere in the Gallimaufries, so it shouldn’t be too hard.”