Watchers of the Dark. Lloyd Biggle jr.
it from a despised foreigner. Now there was no chance at all. He could never reach a jramp safely.
He took a step toward the door, head bent under the bitter burden of a near-success that had ended in total failure. Suddenly he whirled. “Cown! You send the order!”
Cown stared at him.
“I’ll pay, of course. It’s already coded for my solvency credential. They’ll accept it from you. They might even send it.” He added softly, “It’s the last thing I’ll ever ask of you. I pledge that.”
Cown’s rooty fingers closed on the message strip. He gazed at it dazedly. Behind the tinted hood his face was an expressionless mask of scaly tissue. From somewhere in the circular room came the steady drip, drip, drip of the clepsydra. Biag-n shuddered. He needed no reminder that the fast-moving Quarmer time was running out on him.
Without a word Cown turned and strode toward the door. Biag-n drifted back into the shadows, away from the open doorway and the menace of prying eyes. He counted the clepsydra’s drips and cursed this primitive world where one could not dispatch a message, or travel from one place to another, without walking to the nearest jramp.
The dusk hardened quickly and became night. The mobs were close by, now, and full-throated. Natives were stirring in the neighboring domes.
Finally Cown returned. “You sent it?” Biag-n demanded. “Was it accepted? Was it really transmitted?”
“Of course,” Cown said tonelessly. “I waited for a confirmation. That was what took so long. It also cost you extra.”
“May you prosper,” Biag-n murmured, with a sweeping genuflection. He clutched his sample case and darted into the night. The one way he could show his gratitude was to leave immediately.
Cown’s door crashed shut behind him, and he hunched his shoulders against hostile stares from the neighboring domes as he stumbled off through the thick darkness. He could hear the mobs yapping on all sides of him, and the polished tips of the cupolas dimly reflected the flicker of fires that burned beyond the horizon. More warehouses had been touched off; one was an oil storage, and suddenly it exploded long tongues of flame into the night sky.
None of it mattered now. His message had been transmitted. He could begin his wearisome trek home with a light step, humming triumphantly to himself.
He knew that he would never get there, but he had nowhere else to go.
* * * *
In its first month of operation the Universal Transmitting Company killed the commercial airlines. Railroads and bus companies lasted longer, but both were doomed. Subways were doomed. A few taxicabs still prowled the streets of New York City in search of those rare individuals who were unwilling to walk a block to a trans-local; but an overwhelming majority of travelers, whether their destinations were the other side of Manhattan or the other side of the planet, preferred the step through a transmitter frame to a tedious and in varying degrees dangerous ride on plane, ship, train, bus, subway, or taxi.
Jan Darzek’s fortunate investment in Universal Transmitting Company stock ruined his private detective business by making him independently wealthy. His reaction to affluence was the one long-practiced by doctors, lawyers, and other professional men: he raised his prices. A stampede of customers followed. They seemed to think that a man who charged so exorbitantly must be very good—which of course he was—but he found to his chagrin that the clients who could afford his new fees were no more likely to have really interesting problems than those who could not.
He learned something about the detective business that had not been apparent to him while he was earning his living at it. Very few jobs held out much promise at the beginning. The obstruse complications that so delighted him rarely became evident until he had methodically cleared away dead wood and underbrush and probed the problem’s root system. He had to accept ten cases to find one that genuinely interested him; and the tediousness of laboring through nine routine cases he did not care about, for fees that he did not need, destroyed his savor of that exceptional tenth.
He loved his work too much to retire, but he found it impossible to keep occupied with the sort of work he loved. He planned exotic vacations to escape the boredom of unwanted cases, and his vacations were invariably ruined by his impatience to get back to his office in quest of the elusive exception.
He was just beginning to realize that he was an unhappy man.
But Tahiti, now. He wondered how he had managed to overlook Tahiti.
Returning from an extended lunch hour during which he had devised three new ways to say no to prospective clients, he jerked open the door of his office and halted dumbfounded. Miss Schlupe, looking flustered for the first time since he’d known her, leaped from her rocking chair with fluttering hands.
“I told the man there was some mistake,” she wailed. “But he insisted—”
“What—in—the—world—is—this?” Darzek demanded weakly.
Cardboard cartons filled the office, each of them new and neatly taped shut. A narrow alley had been left leading to Darzek’s private office. He opened that door and saw more cartons.
“Your name is on every box,” Miss Schlupe said defensively. She fluttered his hands again. “What could they be?”
“I don’t know. Time bombs, perhaps, though one would think that a dozen or two would satisfy the most bloodthirsty intent. Whatever it is, there must be a couple of hundred of them. Which of my current enemies has no sense of moderation?”
“Are you sure you didn’t order something for your trip, and hit the wrong number on your typewriter?”
“It takes more than a typing error to produce a deluge like this one. Anyway, I haven’t ordered anything. Go down and have your lunch while I open one.”
“Nonsense!”
“Miss Schlupe!” Darzek said sternly. “Your loyalty is not in question here—just your common sense. Go!”
“Nonsense!” She stood on tiptoe to joggle a carton from the top of a pile, caught it deftly, and placed it on her desk. “Open it. It isn’t heavy enough to be a very big bomb.”
“Then we’ll die together, in a small way,” Darzek said cheerfully. He slit the tape with his penknife, peered inside, closed the flap.
“You didn’t even let me see,” Miss Schlupe complained. “What is it?”
“Money.”
“Money? You mean all of these boxes—but that’s ridiculous!”
“It’s more than that. It’s outrageous.” He handed her the penknife. “Try one yourself.”
She lifted down another box and slit the tape. “Money!” she whispered. “Wait’ll Internal Revenue hears about this!”
“I don’t suppose there’s a return address.”
“I don’t see any.”
“Pity. Then I can’t send it back. Do we know anyone who has a room-size vault?”
“Aren’t you going to count it?”
Darzek perched frowning on the edge of her desk. “It would take hours. Anyway, I know how much it is. It’s a million dollars. Did you see the truck that delivered it?”
She shook her head.
“Pity. If you’d gotten the license number—”
“You never left any instructions about getting license numbers.”
“I never thought the occasion would arise. From now on, let’s make it standard procedure. Any time a million dollars is delivered here, get the license number.”
“Have you any idea at all who sent it?” she asked.
“Certainly. Mr. Smith sent it. I knew as soon as I saw him that he was