Part One

  Barry Ten Eyck

  Barry Ten Eyck came briskly into his inner office in fine mood, tossed his briefcase to his old fashioned steel desk and called over to his secretary cum Man Friday, "Miss Cusack, I shall allow exactly four crises this morning. No more."

  Carol Ann Cusack looked down at her notes. She was a tallish brunette with unusually dark blue eyes. She had a strong face, a wide warm mouth, and glossy, quizzical brows, and was well liked by the staff for her quick humor.

  She said, "I have nine. No, ten."

  "Four," he said again, severely. "No more. Turn the others over to Jim and Bat. A good Demecrat must learn to delegate authority. Besides, they need the experience."

  "Mr. Cotswold is on vacation."

  "That's right, he is. Then turn the last six over to Bat Hardin. He has strong, broad shoulders whilst I am failing by the minute."

  "Yes, Mr. Ten Eyck."

  "When are you going to begin calling me Barry, Carol Ann?"

  "When I am no longer your secretary, Mr. Ten Eyck. The Head Chef, Monsieur Daunou, has tendered his resignation again."

  "What! Pete can't do this to me." He glared at her.

  Somehow, in spite of his position as the Demecrat of Shyler-deme, Barry Ten Eyck's glares didn't come off. Not, at least, when he was dealing with his immediate staff. A tall, lanky, easygoing and good-natured type, especially when not under pressure, when he could get as tough as the occasion warranted, he wasn't exactly typical as young Meritcrats went, believing in a highly informal administration.

  "What's the reason this time? Too many complaints about his latest souffle1 creation?"

  Carol Ann shook her head. "I wouldn't know. He seemed to be in some sort of huff."

  Her boss slumped down into his chair. "Good grief, the budget doesn't allow for any pay increases, if that's it. I'll see him later. You don't get a chef like Pierre Daunou just any day in the week. Have you got the computer report on this week's take?"

  Carol Ann said, "That's the next crisis. It's down to four hundred and seventy-five thousand pseudo-dollars."

  He stared at her. "It is? That's not much above our breakeven point."

  "No, sir."

  "What happened—in particular?"

  "That's the next crisis. We lost two hundred and three resident families."

  "And took in how many?"

  "Eighty-three. Some of them, of course, renting from the owners."

  Barry Ten Eyck winced, got up from his desk and looked out the window and over the acres of parks and trees that surrounded the hundred-and-nineteen-story, aluminium-sheathed, twin towers of the apartment building which he managed.

  He muttered, barely audible, "The building is less than ten years old. What gets into people that they can't stay put in an apartment worth some $40,000 that they've been given practically free?"

  Carol Ann said dryly, "They haven't got anything else to do but move around. They get bored."

  He took a breath and turned to her. "What's the current occupancy, Miss Cusack?"

  She flicked a switch, said something into a desk TV phone screen. She looked up and reported, "Four thousand and fifty-two, including Mr. Vanderfeller's penthouse."

  He grunted. "Which is empty most of the time. It'd be our most lucrative occupancy if we had some high-living playboy in there."

  Carol Ann said, "Which brings us to your third crisis."

  He looked at her.

  "Mr. Cyril Vanderfeller is in residence. He wants to see you soonest."

  Barry Ten Eyck groaned. "This is my day. And it started so sun-shiny. What is there about the old rich that they all like to make like Meritcrats? I'll work in a visit to him some time this afternoon."

  "He said soonest."

  "Miss Cusack, I'm the Demecrat of this deme and if I started letting people like old man Vanderfeller order me around it'd soon get to be such a habit on their part, I'd never get any work done. What else is wrong today?"

  "You've used up your four crises."

  "I'm feeling masochistic. Let me have it. Deal me brutal blows."

  She looked at her notes. "There's a petition being circulated by the Gourmet Club. They want a Moroccan restaurant."

  "A Moroccan restaurant. What in the hell is a Moroccan restaurant? What do Moroccans eat?" ' Carol Ann shrugged. "I wouldn't know. Dates?"

  "Ha, ha, Miss Cusack."

  "At any rate, they'll bring up the request at the Deme-Assembly this afternoon."

  "Oh, good grief, is that today?" He thought about it. "A Moroccan restaurant. We have French, Italian, Mexican, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese restaurants,

  besides the four auto-cafeterias. Now they want a Moroccan restaurant. I'll wager there aren't fifty people in Shyler-deme who'd ever eat in it."

  "Yes, sir."

  He sighed plaintively. "I am put upon, Miss Cusack. I suffer needlessly. Dial me a Moroccan cookbook. I'll have to learn something about it."

  He stared unhappily and unseeingly at a far wall while she activated the TV phone library booster and dialed cookbooks and then sub-categories until she got down to Moroccan cookbooks.

  She said, "There are only seven in English."

  "Any one'll do," he said gloomily. He looked down into the booster screen and began idly flipping pages with the button.

  One of her desk screens lit up and spoke. She said to him, "Mr. Hardin."

  He activated one of his phone screens. "Morning, Bat. What spins?"

  The face in his screen was that of Bat Hardin, his Vice-Demecrat and second in command. Hardin was a hard-working type in his late thirties and bore a perpetually worried expression. He had crisp, short hair, a dark complexion and his features were so heavy that he would never have been thought handsome by average contemporary standards. He was a good team man, always available when things got rugged.

  Now he was looking at his chief strangely. "I've just been talking to Stevens. Listen, you'll never believe this. There's been some more burglaries."

  Barry stared at him.

  Bat said doggedly, "Three more. Last night. On the eighty-third floor this time."

  "God dammit!" Barry Ten Eyck came to his feet. "Meet me in Security."

  Bat's face faded even as he said, "Great."

  Barry Ten Eyck said to Carol Ann, "I'll be over in Stevens* office."

  The Security offices were immediately across the corridor from those of the Demecrat. Barry Ten Eyck met Bat Hardin at the door.

  Barry said disgustedly, "Same pattern?'*

  "Evidently." Bat Hardin was a medium sized man with a military carriage. Barry had heard that he had fought in the Asian War and for a time had been a police officer in a mobile town.

  The door identified them and immediately opened.

  Stevens looked up from a phone screen he was scowling into.

  "What in the devil is all this, Stevens?" Barry said.

  Stevens held up his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "Three more burglaries. This time on the eighty-third floor." He was a sour man, tight of face and not exactly unpopular with the rest of the staff; a better description was that he was avoided, at least socially. He was competent at his job and Barry Ten Eyck appreciated having him. Competent men were at a premium, especially these days when you didn't have to work if you didn't want to, because of that confounded Negative Income Tax so many people seemed to take as a free ride from the cradle to the grave.

  Bat said, "The last three were on the sixty-second floor. You said the only way it made sense was for the crook to live on the same floor."

  "That's the only way it does make sense," Stevens said stubbornly. "And even that doesn't make very much sense. This whole thing is impossible."

  Barry drew up a chair. "All right. You're Security. Tell us about it."

  Bat sat down too and held his peace, although he was characteristically chewing away on his under lip.

  Stevens said, "Look. Shyler-deme is a building with five thousand apartments. Given full occupancy, we have some twenty thousand tenants, give or take a few hundred. Okay. Every tenant, man, woman and child, has an I.D. which is identified by our TV computer check. Outsiders to this building can come onto the ground floor and never be checked. But the moment anybody enters an elevator, he's checked through his TV pocket phone I.D. card, or, if it's a child, his electronic tag which he usually wears around his neck. Everybody. If he isn't an inhabitant of this deme, his phone buzzes and the computer check asks for his business."

  "All right, all right, Steve, all this is basic," Barry said.

  "No, let me give you the whole picture," Stevens said in irritation. "What it amounts to is that nobody, but nobody, can go either up or down an elevator, unless he's cleared for it. Any visitor has to be checked before he can go up to an apartment. And once he gets into the building proper, he can only go where he's scheduled to go. He can't go from one floor to another. There are more than ten thousand spy lenses, computer-checked, in this building. If an outsider comes in the living areas of Shyler-deme, he's monitored. He goes to the floor and apartment he's checked through for, and nowhere else. When he leaves that apartment, he leaves the building—or we in Security are immediately informed."

  Bat said slowly, "Then it has to be somebody who lives in Shyler-deme."

  Stevens looked at him. "Even that doesn't make sense. Even a tenant can't go somewhere he doesn't belong. If you live on the thirty-eighth floor, in Tower-Two, you can't go to the sixty-second floor just for the Dutch of it. You have to have some reason. If you have a friend, or relative, sure, you can have it cleared out. But you can't simply roam around. Sure, you can go to any of the public floors, like the Swank Room nightclub or the Chink restaurant up at the top of Tower-Two, but you can't go onto residential floors without checking it out with our Security computer monitors."

  Barry said, "However, the burglaries took place."

  "Yes. But it's impossible."

  Bat said, "How about the staircases?"

  "The doors are locked, except for emergencies, and there hasn't been one since this building was opened. They're for extreme emergencies. Who needs staircases any more? We have our own source of power and three different sets of motors. If one set breaks down, another immediately takes over."

  Bat said, "But couldn't our bad-o have cleared himself to visit some acquaintance on, say, the eighty-second floor and then, afterward, opened the door to the stairs and made it up to the eighty-third floor and pulled his romp?"

  Stevens shook his head in exasperation. "No. He can't open those doors. They can only be opened here in Security. You know that."

  Barry growled, "Whoever's behind this must be a jazzer."

  Stevens looked at him. "As far as I'm concerned he's a crazy."

  Bat said, "How do you know the same guy is involved?"

  "Because the burglaries duplicate each other."

  Barry said, "What'd the crook get this time?"

  "The same as before. Nothing."

  The two other men looked at him questioningly.

  He said sourly, "In one apartment he ransacked the whole place but only lifted a small collection of coins."

  "Coins?" Barry said.

  "Money. You know, coins. Like they used before the Universal Credit Cards."

  "Oh, of course. What was the collection worth?"

  "So little as to be meaningless. In another apartment he took three books. Old books, printed on paper. Once again, practically valueless. And he took a small painting from there, too. And in the third apartment it was some junk jewelry. Nothing valuable."

  Bat said slowly, "Do you have any idea where the loot might be fenced?"

  "Fenced?" Stevens said in disgust. "Even if there were any fences any more, it's not worth being fenced. I keep telling you, whoever this clown is he isn't stealing anything worth taking."

  They looked at him in frustration.

  Barry muttered, "If it gets around that burglars are prowling the deme with us unable to do anything about it, we'll lose residents like dandruff." He looked at Stevens unhappily. "How could this guy know which apartments are empty, and then, how could he get in?"

  "Both are impossible, so far as I'm concerned."

  Bat said, "How about patrolling the floors?"

  Stevens was still disgusted. "With the ten human relations officers I have? Public protection is automated these days, Hardin. Besides we here in the office, ten men have to do for everything, including traffic control down in the car pool and the transport station. And what could a man do that a spy lens can't? I've activated every mini-spy lens in the deme, except in private apartments, of course."

  "Any ideas at all?" Barry said.

  Stevens shook his head. "It's such a ridiculous thing, all six of these burglaries. I get the feeling it isn't being done by pros but possibly by kids. You know, juvenile delinquents, as they used to call them."

  Barry Ten Eyck ran a weary hand slowly down from his forehead over his mouth. "Could kids get up and down delivery or disposal chutes, enter apartments from inside, rather than coming through the door?"

  "Or come in through windows?" Bat Hardin added.

  "No," Stevens said disgustedly. "Not by any method I can think of." He looked at Bat. "Through windows on the eighty-third floor? They'd have to be human flies. Besides, they'd have to break the windows, and none of them were broken."

  Barry Ten Eyck stood up with a sigh. "Doggonit, it beats me." He looked at his Vice-Demecrat. "Bat, I'm turning this over to you. Working with Steve, here, of course."

  "Oh, great."

  "Come on back to my office, I've got another thing or two."

  Stevens sat looking after them sourly as they left.

  As they crossed the corridor, Bat shook his head. "Human Relations officers," he said. "What a mealy-mouth expression for cop."

  Barry chuckled. "You're out of the times, Bat. And did you notice it was public protection, instead of law enforcement? We live in an age of gobbledygook, saving face, status symbols, ridiculous titles. How long have plumbers been calling themselves Sanitary Engineers? But I think tops was reached over in England where lavatory cleaners are now called Amenities Attendants."

  The door to the Demecrat's offices opened before them and they passed through.

  "Yeah," Bat said. "Back before the First World Wjff if you asked a man what class he belonged to, nine times out of ten he'd stare at you and say, 'I'm a working stiff.' But I was just reading the other day that back as far as the middle nineteen-forties one of the big polling outfits went around asking what class a person considered himself to belong to, upper, middle or working class. It turned out that eighty-five percent of the American people considered themselves to belong to the middle class."

  They went into Barry's inner office, Barry saying, "I'll bet it still applies, even though half the country is on Negative Income Tax, which is actually just relief."

  "It applies all the way up the line," Bat growled. "Take the term scientist. It used to have a connotation of a man working in research. Now a guy who's no more of a chemist than to be doing up drugstore prescriptions calls himself a scientist."

  Carol Ann looked up and said to Bat, "Morning, handsome."

  He looked at her in mock criticism. "I won't make nasty cracks at you if you promise not to make 'em at me."

  "Handsome is as handsome does," she told him.

  Bat looked at his superior. "Holy smokes," he said. "The girl's beginning to develop a kindly streak."

  Barry said to his secretary, even as he slumped into his chair, "Get me Larry Brooks, the Demecrat over in Victory-deme."

  When his equal number in one of the other three high-rise demes in the pseudo-city of Phoenecia faded in, his face questioning, Barry said, an air of self-deprecation in his voice, "Look, Larry, don't think I'm around the bend but you haven't been having any burglaries, have you?"

  The Victory-deme manager looked at him wide-eyed. "Burglaries! In this day and age? You think my Security Division is senile?"

  Barry sighed. "All right, all right. You haven't heard any rumors about them in Hilton-deme or Lincoln-deme, have you?"

  "Of course not. Do you mean to tell me you've had a burglary in one of your apartments?"

  "Six of them in the past week," Barry said glumly. "I'll bring it up at our next council meeting."

  "Mayor Levy will want to know about it."

  "I'll have more details by then—I hope," Barry muttered. "See you, Larry."

  The last thing Larry Brooks said before fading out was, "Burglaries, yet."

  Barry Ten Eyck got up and looked at his second in command. "All right, Bat, it's yours. See what you can do. Carol Ann, I'm on my way up to old man Vander-feller to see what's spinning with him. Don't bother me unless you have to."

  "To hear is to obey," Carol Ann said.

  Barry Ten Eyck entered one of the staff express elevators and said, "Hundredth floor."

  A robot voice said, "Yes, Mr. Ten Eyck."

  He bent his knees automatically to accommodate to the acceleration. However, shortly he said, "Stop at the eighty-third floor."

  "Yes, Mr. Ten Eyck."

  At the eighty-third floor the compartment came to a halt and the door opened. He stepped out and looked up and down the corridor. He brought out his pocket TV phone and said, "Mr. Stevens, of Security."

  Steve's sour face faded in.

  Barry said, "Well, did you get a report on this?"

  "On what, Barry?"

  "On the elevator stopping on this floor and my getting out?"

  "What the hell, Barry! You're the Demecrat of this deme."

  "All right. How many others, on the staff or otherwise, can come and go anywhere in the building, at any time?"

  "Why, actually, only Bat Hardin and your Second Vice-Demecrat, Jim Cotswold. Even repairmen are checked out. If you're going to use computers and TV spy lenses in the way of automating security, you've got to go whole hog, Barry. A mouse couldn't move around this building without my knowing about it."

 

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