Towers of Utopia, page 21
Sid Cusack was scoffing disbelief. “They’re rich themselves.”
“Like hell they are. Every one of those club officials are collecting Negative Income Tax. Their only source of income beyond that is milking the sucker. They’ve even worked out a method of getting pseudo-dollars transferred to their credit accounts. They’ll get deeply into one of the victims, probably using marked cards or rigged dice, and have him buy one of them an expensive painting or other art object to pay off. Then they flog it at the Swap Shop, or through some dealer in one of the larger cities. Seemingly, no law broken.”
Sid Cusack was irritated but he jiggled the gun. “All right, I listened to what you had to say. Now let’s go.”
Bat said, “Actually, you’re beginning to believe me. Listen, Cusack, all six of those men have lengthy criminal records, run up when they were younger and before the institution of the Universal Credit Card made crime almost impossible. Owyler has two counts of murder against him although he beat the romp both times. Haines has spent two terms in the pen—back in the days when they still had penitentiaries.”
“Let’s go, Hardin. You can tell them about it when you see them.”
“Can’t you see? They figure that Miss Nash and I are the only two persons who know about the whole operation. They have to finish us off. But then, Cusack, there’s one more person who knows and they realize that, too.”
Sid Cusack was scowling. “That’s how much you know about it, Hardin. You and this Nash dame are the only two.”
“And Carol Ann.”
Cusack was staring at him.
Bat said softly, “They’ll have to finish her off too … Sid.”
Cusack was staring at him.
“They’ll probably keep you on their hook for further dirty work. They have you where they want you. But Carol Ann will have to go. If you give them any trouble, you too. They probably have in mind taking us out into the countryside and faking an electro-steamer accident on one of the unautomated mountain backroads. But Carol Ann will have to go because she’ll smell a rat and report to Barry Ten Eyck.”
Sid Cusack had come to his feet while the other talked. Now, wearily, he tossed the gun to the couch. “Okay,” he said. “I couldn’t have done it anyway. If what you say is true, and everything stacks up, then the only thing they can do—if they want to remain in business—is kill you. You’re right.”
Bat Hardin looked into his face for a long moment, then turned to a drawer, opened it and brought forth a Gyro-jet pistol of his own. He threw the magazine and checked it, slugged it back into the gun’s butt with the heel of his hand and jacked a cartridge into the barrel.
He said, “How many of them are there, down in the electro-steamer?”
“Owyler, Haines, Foster, Cantine, Duncan, Horowitz and two muscle boys they use for trouble-shooters—the way they were using me.”
“The whole gang, eh?”
“Not exactly. It comes to me that the clubs in the other demes aren’t really independent. It’s probably a big organization. I don’t know who the top man might be.”
“We’ll find out,” Bat said grimly. He gestured with his head at the gun Cusack had thrown away. “Can you really use that?”
Cusack looked at him in some surprise but said, “I was a member of the pistol team of my regiment.”
“Okay. Pick it up and let’s go. We’re rescuing Pauline Nash.”
Sid Cusack swooped the gun up, jammed it into his shoulder rig. “How about some of the rest of your security men?”
Bat snorted. “I don’t think a single one of them has ever been shot at in his life. Besides, we don’t have time. And, besides, you’ve got to do a bit of redeeming … Sid.”
“Right, Bat,” Sid Cusack said. “Let’s go. They’ll think I’m bringing you in, as instructed.”
Bat Hardin was saying, “So that about winds it up. Haines and Foster were game—and stupid. They shot it out. It was Haines that nicked Sid. Not too bad, though. Owyler and the others had their hands up before we hardly got our shooters out.”
Barry Ten Eyck said to Sid Cusack, who was sitting side by side with an anxious Carol Ann on an office divan, “How bad is that, Sid?”
Sid brushed it aside, albeit a bit ostentatiously. “Like Bat said, just a nick. I’ll have this bandage off in a week.”
Jim Cotswold said, “What about the other demes?”
Bat said, “I turned it all over to Chief of Security Snider and Mayor Levy. They’ll wind it up before the day is through.”
Carol Ann said, “Golly, what’ll happen to this Holly Owyler and the others?”
Bat looked over at her. “It’s a Federal romp. Messing around with getting pseudo-dollars away from people illegally.” He grunted amusement. “We’ve got two or three club members who are willing to testify. Probably ones who had been burned more than usual. But, you know, ninety-nine percent of them are indignant. They can’t bear the idea of the club folding up, crooked or not. You know what one of them said? He said, ‘Hell, I knew it was crooked, but it was the only place I know of where you could gamble.’ ”
Barry Ten Eyck had to laugh. “How compulsive can you get?”
Bat said, in a more serious vein, “Now this is what I suggest. I’m going to take Sid, here, under my wing. Break him in as a basic Human Relations officer. Give him a course of studies, work him in on the job. I’ll make a cop out of him if it kills me—or, more likely, him. If I ever see that shine of eye that indicates trank, I’ll …”
But Barry Ten Eyck was shaking his head.
“ ’Fraid not, Bat,” he said. “It’s not the way it spins.”
All eyes were upon him, all, except Sid Cusack’s, indignant.
Carol Ann said, “But … but, Mr. Ten Eyck … it’s …it’s his chance.”
Barry Ten Eyck didn’t even bother to look at her. He said to Bat Hardin, “You’re no longer our Security Chief, so you won’t be able to sponser Sid Cusack, as such.”
Bat was flabbergasted. “But, Holy Smokes, how come? Listen, I figure I’ve been doing a pretty good job. And the way this deme is going, doubling up as your Vice-Demecrat and your Security Chief helps out on the staff budget.”
“Ummm,” Barry Ten Eyck said. “But the thing is this. I just got a call from Mayor Levy over in Administration. Vanderfeller and Moore are completing a new pseudo-city down in Guatemala. It seems that I speak Spanish. It seems that I’m being transferred from this moth-eaten, crumbling, nine-year-old deme to one of the ultra-new ones down there. It also seems that instead of transferring someone else here, that everybody on the staff is being bounced upward.”
They were goggling him.
“So, Bat, you’re no longer Security Chief. You’re the Demecrat of this rapidly deteriorating building, and the Lord take mercy on your soul. Jim, you’re the new Vice-Demecrat, God help you. Miss Cusack … ah, that is, Mrs. Cusack, you are now among the ranks of the mighty, Second Vice-Demecrat of Shyler-deme.”
“But … but, golly, Mr. Ten Eyck, I don’t even have a degree for…”
He grinned at her. “They’re waiving that, temporarily. Good deme management is in short supply. And you’ve been recommended from hell and gone. You’ll have to study after hours—if there are any after hours, I was never able to find any.”
He looked at Sid Cusack who had been stricken dumb by the last ten minutes’ developments.
“I assume the job on security is still open. Bat Hardin’s boss now. You’ll be starting in at the bottom of the totem pole, and your wife’s pretty near the top. It’ll take guts to be able to accept that, but it should give you incentive to work and to study.”
Barry Ten Eyck got up, yawning mightily.
“It’s been a busy day, folks. I suggest we all knock off, nobody telling nobody where we’re going, and adjourn to the Swank Room, up on the highest level and get smashed, smashed, smashed …”
Four voices said, simultaneously, “I second the motion.”
Mack Reynolds, Towers of Utopia
