Demon princes 01 05 the.., p.24
Demon Princes 01-05 The Star Ki, page 24
“A hundred million SVU.”
Gersen, startled, had nothing to say. Audmar smiled grimly. “Not that my little Daro and Wix aren’t worth as much and a great deal more.”
“You could pay this much?”
“If I chose. Money is no problem.” Audmar turned back toward the pad and the quill pen, Gersen sensed that his patience was wearing thin “In this last month,” said Gersen, “Kokor Hekkus has kidnapped at least twenty persons, perhaps more. This was the last reckoning made by the IPCC before I left Avente. The victims are all people of great wealth and power.”
“Kokor Hekkus becomes rash,” said Audmar indifferently.
“Exactly. What are his purposes? Why, suddenly, does he need such vast sums of money?”
Audmar’s interest was aroused. Then, sensing the direction of the argument, he darted Gersen a sudden sharp glance.
Gersen said, “Kokor Hekkus seems to have some large project in mind. I don’t think he plans to retire.”
“Not after two hundred and eighty-two years.”
It occurred to Gersen that Audmar knew rather more concerning Kokor Hekkus than he pretended “It seems that Kokor Hekkus has expenses of two billion SVU—assuming that all the ransoms run as high as the one assessed against you. Why does he need the money? Is he building a fleet of warships? Is he reconstructing a planet? Is he founding a university?”
Audmar heaved a deep wistful sigh “You believe he has some large and possibly dystrophic end in view?”
“Why else would he suddenly require so much money?”
Audmar frowned, shook his head fretfully “It would be a shame to thwart Kokor Hekkus. But from my point of view, and also Institute policy ...” His voice dwindled to nothing.
“They are at Interchange?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps you are unfamiliar with Interchange procedure. First travel time is calculated, to which fifteen days is added; during this period only the so-called party of primary interest may rescind the fee. After this time elapses, anyone who wishes may do so. If I had a hundred million SVU, I could do so.”
Audmar studied him a moment. “Why should you wish to do so?”
“I want to know why Kokor Hekkus needs so much money. I want to learn many things about Kokor Hekkus.”
“Your motives, I take it, are not dispassionate curiosity?”
“My motives are beside the point. What I can do is this. If I were to come into possession of a hundred million SVU, plus my expenses, I would proceed to Interchange and, as a free agent, take custody of your children. Incidentally, how old are they?”
“Daro is nine, Wix is seven.”
“Meanwhile I would try to ascertain Kokor Hekkus’ motives, his goals, and his current whereabouts.”
“And then?”
“After learning as much as possible, I would bring you your children and if you were interested, report to you what I had learned.”
Audmar’s face was utterly expressionless. “What is your current address?”
“I am at the Hotel Credenze, in Avente.”
Audmar rose to his feet. “Very well. You are an Eleventh. You know what must be done. Find why Kokor Hekkus needs this large sum of money. He is an inventive and imaginative man—a constant source of wonder. The Institute finds him remarkable and regards certain by-products of his evil rewarding. I can say no more.”
Gersen left the room without further ado. In the quiet main hall, he found the woman who had admitted him. She turned him a glance of searching inquiry. Gersen asked, “You are the mother of the children?”
She made no direct answer. “Are they—are they well?”
“I would think so. Will you give me photographs?”
She went to a shelf. The boy was smiling, the girl was grave.
The woman could not trust herself to speak aloud, and so spoke in a half-whisper. “What will happen to them?”
Gersen suddenly realized that she took him to be a representative of the kidnappers. How did one disclaim such an imputation before it had been spoken? He said awkwardly, “I know very little of the matter; that is, I’m not personally involved. But I hope that somehow ....” The only words he could think of were either meaningless or overly explicit.
She went on. “I know how it is, that we must detach ourselves .... But it seems hardly fair to the little ones. If there were something I could do ...”
“I don’t like to raise your hopes,” said Gersen, “but perhaps your children will be returned.”
She said simply, “I will be grateful.”
Gersen went from the cool dim house, out into the sudden blaze of the garden. The afternoon was quiet; when he started the old slide-car, the rumble of the engine seemed intrusively loud. Gersen was glad to put the house of Duschane Audmar behind him. For all its magnificent prospect, for all the charm of its design, it was a house of silence and sternly repressed emotion, where anger and grief must be borne in secret. “Which is why I never went into Twelfth,” Gersen told himself.
Three days later, a package was delivered to Gersen at the Credenze Hotel. Opening it he found within eighteen packets of fresh Bank of Rigel notes, totaling one hundred and one million SVU. Gersen tested them with his fake-meter: all were genuine.
Gersen immediately checked out of his hotel, rode by subway to the spaceport, where his battered old 9B Locator awaited him. An hour later, he had departed Rigel and was in space.
4
From The Moral Essence of Civilization, by Calvin V. Calvert:
In a sense the explosion of man across the galaxy must be considered a regression of civilization. On Earth, after many thousand years of effort, men had developed a consensus as to what constituted good and evil. When men departed Earth, they left behind this consensus as well ....
From Human Institutions, by Prade (Textbook, tenth and eleventh grades):
Interchange is another of the strange accommodations necessary to the functioning of what we have termed “the total mechanism.” It is a fact that kidnapping for ransom is a common crime, owing to the ease by which escape via spaceship can be effected. In the past, the system for paying ransom often broke down, owing to the hatreds and suspicions inevitably generated, and many boys and girls were never returned to their homes. Hence the necessity for Interchange, which is to be found on Sasani, a planet in the near Beyond, and functions as a broker between kidnapper and those paying ransom. Interchange guarantees good faith in the transaction. The kidnapper receives his money minus the Interchange fee; the victim is restored safely to his home .... Interchange is officially denounced but practically tolerated; since it is believed that conditions would be far worse in its absence. Occasionally certain groups discuss the feasibility of commissioning the IPCC to stage a raid upon Interchange; somehow nothing ever comes of it.
Interchange was a cluster of buildings at the base of a rocky hillock in the Da’ar-Rizm, a desert of the planet Sasani, Aquila GB 1201; IV, to use the geocentric nomenclature still favored by the Star Directory. At one time in the far past, an intelligent race had peopled at least the two north continents of Sasani, for here were to be found the crumble of monumental castles and keeps.
Private spacecraft were banned from the Da’ar-Rizm, and a ring of cannon emplacement enforced the structure. Persons employing the facilities of Interchange were required to land at Nichae on the shore of the shallow Calopsid Sea, board an airship for Sul Arsam—no more than a station in the desert—then ride a jolting surface car across twenty miles of desert to Interchange.
When Gersen arrived at Sul Arsam, a cold drizzle was dampening the desert soil, and even as he walked from airstrip to depot, vivid patches of lichen appeared. Halfway along the path, a small humming object struck his cheek and immediately set to work tearing at his skin. Gersen cursed, slapped, brushed it away. He noticed his fellow-passengers similarly engaged, and also discerned a sly smile on the face of the depot attendant, who wore what appeared to be an ultra-sonic bug-repeller.
With five other passengers, Gersen waited in the depot: no more than a long shed with screened sides. The drizzle became a brief drenching downpour, then halted and suddenly sunlight struck down at the desert, raising wisps of vapor. The lichen erupted spores in little pink spurts.
The shuttle-bus appeared, a lumbering crude contraption on four big wheels. It parked an almost purposefully inconvenient two hundred feet from the depot; flapping hands and running to avoid the insects, Gersen and the other five took themselves aboard.
For half an hour, the bus bumped and jerked across the barrens; then in the distance appeared Interchange: low concrete structures around a tumble of crumbling red sandstone. A grove of feathery yellow, brown, and red trees covered the top of the hill, where three or four cottages were visible.
The bus rumbled into a compound, halted; the passengers alighted and were directed by yellow arrows into a reception room.
Behind a counter, making entries in a manual, sat a small sallow clerk with white hair carefully waxed up around a gray skull-cap, the front of which displayed the Interchange emblem: a pair of clasped hands. Waving the group to seats, he continued with his work. Finally, closing the manual with a snap, he looked up, pointed a finger.
“You, sir. I will attend to you, if you will come forward.”
The individual selected was a saturnine black-haired man wearing the tight black jacket and white breeches of Bernal. The clerk brought forward a form: “Your name?”
“Rank Olguin 92, File Mettier 6.”
“You wish to redeem whom?”
“Rank Sett 44, File Mettier 7.”
“The fee to be rescinded?”
“Twelve thousand five hundred SVU.”
“You are agent, principal, or noncommitted?”
“I am agent.”
“Very well. Produce the fee, if you please.”
The money was brought forward; the clerk counted it with great care, passed it through the slot of a fake-meter, and so convinced himself of its authenticity. He wrote a receipt, requested a counter-receipt, which the Bernalese refused to supply until the redeemed individual was brought before him. The clerk sat back at this display of waywardness, inspected the Bernalese narrowly. “You fail to comprehend, sir. The watchword at Interchange is integrity. The fact that I allow you to produce your money is sufficient guarantee that the guest whose fee you are rescinding is at hand, and in good condition. By your hesitancy and suspicion, you not only asperse our reputation but also tarnish the luster of your own quality.”
The Bernalese shrugged, unimpressed by the clerk’s peroration. Nevertheless he signed the counter-receipt. The clerk nodded stiffly, touched a button, and an attendant in a red jacket came to conduct the Bernalese to a waiting room.
The clerk shook his head disparagingly, pointed arbitrarily at another of the visitors: this a stocky scowling man with dark-buff skin-tone, wearing the more or less standardized spaceman’s garb, such as Gersen’s own, which gave no clue as to his place of origin.
The clerk was not impressed by his truculent mien. “Name?”
“None of your affair.”
The clerk once again leaned back in his chair. “Eh now? What’s this? I require your name, sir.”
“Call me Mr. Inconnu.”
The clerk glared. “This organization operates without guile or circumvention and appreciates a similar attitude in our business associates. Very well, then, Mr. ‘Inconnu.’” With a flourish the clerk wrote. “Who is the guest whose fees you are rescinding?”
“I’m ransoming a prisoner!” roared the stocky man. “Here’s your cursed loot, let’s have my nephew back!”
The clerk pursed his lips in prim disapproval. “I will expedite this affair, because such is our policy. Your nephew is who?”
“Cader, Lord Satterbus. Bring him forth and be quick about it.”
The clerk half-lowered his eyelids, summoned an attendant. “Lord Satterbus, Suite 14, for this gentleman, please.” He made an airy flourish, as if dispelling a bad odor, and pointed. “You, sir. I will deal with you next.”
The third man was slender and diffident; he wore satin-green skin-tone, the embroidered jacket, the ruffled gaiters currently fashionable at Mountain Wilds on Image, one of the Concourse planets. He wanted to conduct his business in a confidential fashion, for he leaned over the clerk and spoke in a low-pitched mutter—a mannerism the clerk would have none of. Drawing himself back, he exclaimed, “Won’t you speak up, sir, I can hardly hear what you say.”
The man’s diffidence was of no great durability. He lost his temper. “There is no reason why this discreditable dealing must be so public! You should provide booths for those of us with sensibility!”
“Now then, sir,” declared the clerk, “you mistake us. You must not expect to slink in here as if you were visiting a brothel. Our service is of the highest respectability. We act as an escrow institution, completely impartial, representing all interests, in trust and probity. So now, sir, speak your business openly.”
The man flushed, his skin-toning becoming a muddy gray. “In that case, since you are so open and sincere, tell me this: who owns this business? Who gets the profits?”
“This subject is not at all relevant to our present business,” responded the clerk.
“Neither is my name and address. Come now, speak up, since you brim with so much veracity!”
“It is ample to know that this is a corporate body, owned and managed by several groups.”
“Bah!”
Eventually the man paid his money and was taken away. Gersen was selected next. He gave his name, declared himself uncommitted: in other words, an independent entrepreneur who might choose to “rescind the fee”—the usage seemed a special euphemism of Interchange—of a guest who had outstayed the fifteen-day period of prime redemption, presumably in order to ask a high ransom and thus turn a profit. The clerk nodded curtly. “These are our current ‘availables.’” He gave Gersen a sheet listing several dozen names with the corresponding rescission fees. Gersen ran his eye down the list. Near the top he saw:
Audmar, Daro; 9, male Wix; 7, female.
Rescission: SVU 100,000,000.
A few spaces below he found:
Cromarty, Bella; 15, female.
Rescission: SVU 100,000,000.
and further:
Darbassin, Oleg; 4, male.
Rescission: SVU 100,000,000.
and then:
Eperje-Tokay, Alusz Iphigenia; 20, female.
Rescission: SVU 10,000,000,000.
Gersen read the figures, blinked. A typographical error? Ten billion SVU? An unheard-of ransom, an impossible sum! A hundred million was unprecedented, though here on this list—he glanced down—were seven or eight guests with fees established at SVU 100,000,000. An enormous amount of money but still only a hundredth of ten billion. Something very strange here. Who could be expected to pay ten billion SVU? It was a figure beyond the budgets of most planets, let alone individuals. Gersen inspected the list further. After the eight guests valued at SVU 100,000,000, there was only one other valued at more than SVU 100,000. This was:
Patch, Myron; 56, male.
Rescission: SVU 427,685.
The clerk who, while Gersen consulted the list, had busied himself with another customer, now returned. “Do any of our ‘availables’ meet your immediate needs?”
“Naturally I want to make a personal inspection,” said Gersen, “but from sheer curiosity, is the figure ‘SVU 10,000,000,000’ correct, or is it a misprint?”
“It is correct, sir. At Interchange we dare make no mistakes.”
“If I may ask, who sponsors this young lady? On whose behalf do you act?”
The clerk bridled. “As you must know, unless specifically authorized to do so, we must reserve this information.”
“I see. Well, what about the Audmar item for a hundred million, the Cromarty, the Darbassin, the Floy, the Helariope, and the others? Who sponsors them?”
“We have not been authorized to release this information.” Gersen nodded. “Very well. I’ll take a look around.”
“One more matter, sir. In connection with the Eperje-Tokay item, we cannot allow mere gratification of curiosity. Before you may even inspect this ‘available,’ you must make a deposit of ten thousand SVU, said sum to apply to the rescission fee.”
“I’m not interested to that extent,” said Gersen. “As you wish.” The clerk summoned an attendant, who led Gersen from the reception room, along a corridor that presently opened into a courtyard. Here the attendant paused. “Which items in particular would you like to inspect?”
Gersen considered the man. From his flat intonations he was an Earthman, or possibly native to one of the worlds Beyond. He was about Gersen’s own age, or perhaps younger, with hulking stooped shoulders, an affable, heavy-featured face toned pale yellow. A cap with the Interchange emblem sat on top a luxuriant crop of wavy yellow hair that swooped behind the ears and hack in a drake’s tail.
Gersen said in a thoughtful voice, “As you know, I’m uncommitted.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I have a few SVU to invest where it will do the most good. You must know what I mean.”
The attendant was not quite sure; still he nodded sagely.
“You can help me considerably,” said Gersen. “I’m sure you know more concerning the individual items than you tell the usual customer. If you direct me along the road to profit, then it is only fair that I share with you.”
The attendant was clearly intrigued by the direction of Gersen’s thinking. “This all seems eminently sensible—provided of course that company rules are observed. These are strict, and the penalties are correspondingly rigorous.”
“There is no question of anything not completely aboveboard.” Gersen brought forth a pair of hundred-SVU notes. “There will be several more, depending on how much information you can provide.”
“I can talk for hours; many strange events have occurred at Interchange. But let us proceed. If I understand you rightly, you wish to inspect each of the guests who are currently available?”
