Читать книгу Towers of Utopia - Mack Reynolds - Страница 5

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 soufflé 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 War 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.”

Barry Ten Eyck sighed. He said, “All right, Steve,” and deactivated his phone and returned it to his pocket. He got back into the elevator compartment and ordered the hundredth floor again.

At the hundredth floor he switched over to Cyril Vanderfeller’s private penthouse elevator, saying, “Penthouse, please.”

“Yes, Mr. Ten Eyck,” the elevator said.

At the entrada, the building manager was met by the Vanderfeller butler, who had obviously been forewarned as soon as the elevator had started up to this rarified ultra in swank housing. He was dressed in black, with anachronistic tails on his coat, and wore that expression of an undertaker so common to the butler trade.

He said, in seeming deep gloom, “Good morning, Mr. Ten Eyck.”

Barry said, “Good morning, Jenson. I believe Mr. Vanderfeller is expecting me.”

However, he had to go through more routine than that.

Jenson said, “Yes, sir, I shall take you to Mr. Abernathy.”

“The appointment was with Mr. Vanderfeller.”

But the other evidently didn’t hear him. He led the way to the office of the private secretary of the scion of the Vanderfeller family.

One of the scions, Barry Ten Eyck thought, as he followed. One of many. He had read somewhere that there were some two hundred and thirty of the family now, each sporting fortunes probably of magnitudes inconceivable to such as Barry Ten Eyck. Information about the Vanderfellers seldom got into the mass media. They were hardly interested in publicity; to the contrary, it was said that such old rich as the Vanderfellers paid out millions of pseudo-dollars a year to keep their names from public appearance. Vaguely, Barry knew that the original Amis Vanderfeller had made his pile during the Civil War, a bit on the shady side, though not illegally. It seemed as though he had been sharp enough to scrape up a thousand-dollars or so and to take an option on a warehouse full of condemned military rifles. When the conflict started, even condemned rifles were in demand and he unloaded them on a grateful Confederate government at an astronomical profit. This had been put immediately into cotton and shipped over to England before the Federal blockade was strong enough to prevent speedy blockade runners from getting through.

That had been half a dozen generations ago. The development of the railroads from coast to coast and the advents of World Wars One and Two hadn’t hurt the family fortunes any. By the third generation, the brighter descendents had pooled their interests and gotten the family monies into trusts and foundations where they would be largely safe from governmental tax depreciations. And also safe from stupid speculations on the part of the less brilliant of the clan—of which it was rumored there was a sizable number.

Currently, the family was in a score of enterprises. Cyril Vanderfeller himself, who in Barry’s opinion had delusions of grandeur about his abilities, devoted most of his efforts to international construction projects, largely hotels and apartment buildings such as Shyler-deme, and to mobile town sites. It was said that he had an apartment in every building owned by Vanderfeller and Moore Constructions, one of the top two hundred cosmocorps in existence.

The butler murmured into the identity screen on the door to secretary Abernathy’s office and they waited for several minutes until it opened.

Barry Ten Eyck took a short, weary breath. Undoubtedly, Abernathy was in the process of impressing him by the need for him to wait. Very well; he was as impressed as he was going to get.

The door finally opened into an ultra-efficient looking office, though not overly large, considering the extent of the penthouse. David Abernathy looked up from a TV phone screen on his desk and came to his feet to shake hands.

“Morning, Ten Eyck,” he said. His handshake was exactly right. So was David Abernathy exactly right. Exactly, down to the last fold in his Byronic revival cravat.

Barry shook and said, “Good morning, Abernathy.” Was there the faintest of frowns present, in view of the fact that he hadn’t mistered the flunky? The hell with it.

Barry said, “Miss Cusack tells me that Mr. Vanderfeller wanted me to drop by.”

“Yes, that is correct,” the other said stiffly, reseating himself. “He told me to summon you.”

Summon him, yet. Barry Ten Eyck was not directly under the authority of Cyril Vanderfeller, although Vanderfeller and Moore Construction owned the Shyler-deme complex. However, nobody with good sense and desire for advancement earned the enmity of a Vanderfeller.

“Let’s go,” Barry said. Damn it, was this going to take all day? He had plenty to do.

Abernathy ignored that and turned to a desk phone screen into which he spoke softly. Finally, he stood. “Mr. Vanderfeller is in his escape-sanctum,” he said loftily, and then led the way.

Barry had been through this before on several occasions, but the rigmarole didn’t improve with age.

They finally stood before a huge double door. There was no identity screen evident upon it, but undoubtedly a micro-spy lens was somewhere located in the hand engraved woodwork. The door looked as though it had once graced the home of some medieval Florentine but to Barry Ten Eyck’s jaundiced eye it was as out of place in this ultra-modern decor as a walrus in a goldfish bowl.

The door smoothed open and they stepped through into what would seem a quarter acre of Victorian-era library. From past experience, Barry knew the books were real, largely first editions or other rarities, and largely not only unread but uncut.

Cyril Vanderfeller, somewhere in his late fifties, stood by one monstrous window looking out over the extent of Phoenecia, the three other demes rearing to approximately the same hundred and ten floors boasted by Schyler-deme. The term deme had been taken from the old Greek, the unit which made up the city of Athens as reconstituted by Solon. They were set in almost an exact square, roughly a square mile of wooded and grassed areas about each and with another approximate square mile of Common land and buildings in the middle. There was an excellent view of the golf course from here, Barry knew.

Cyril Vanderfeller turned. He affected a “hail fellow well met” air, dressed with great informality and kept his face and form appearing, at least, in the best of health.

“Barry!” he said in warmth. “Long time, no see, my good fellow.” He advanced with his hand out.

Barry shook and said, “Good morning, Mr. Vanderfeller.”

The older man took his place behind an ornate wooden desk, barren of course of any phone screens in view of the fact that this was an escape-sanctum. He had gestured to a nearby straight chair although the room was amply provided with comfort chairs. The secretary remained standing and kept his trap shut in the presence.

Vanderfeller put the tips of his fingers together, leaned his elbows on the desk, very businesslike. “My time, of course, is limited, Barry, so I’ll come immediately to the point.”

“Yes, sir.” Barry’s own time, evidently, was meaningless compared to that of the tycoon. Well, maybe the other was right. He probably could have bought or sold all the pseudo-city of Phoenecia out of petty cash.

“My boy, I’m on an informal tour of our demes in my capacity as a member of the board. Sort of a quick check-up, you understand. I’ll be here only a day or two. However, Abernathy and I have been checking out your administration of Shyler-deme. I was somewhat surprised to note that income from all sources has dropped below the half million a week level.”

Barry Ten Eyck nodded. “Yes, sir. For the first time last week.”

“Why?”

“Occupancy has fallen off, sir. At present four thousand and fifty-two apartments, ranging from mini-apartments to duplexes with as many as twenty rooms, are occupied, but that is barely enough to make our breakeven point through our maintenance fees and our sales and services to them.”

Vanderfeller looked at him severely. “My dear boy, when this deme was opened, approximately eight and a half years ago, every apartment was speedily taken. In fact, some of the residents had been waiting for six months or more to move in. Do you mean to tell me that nearly a fifth of them have tired of their homes—their own homes—and simply moved out?”

Barry said unhappily, “It’s not a unique phenomenon, Mr. Vanderfeller, as you must know. Most of the empty apartments are owned by people on NIT, and there’s a high level of ne’r-do-wells and weirds among those whose only source of income is Negative Income Tax.”

Vanderfeller maintained his severe expression.

Barry recrossed his long legs. “Sir, as you know, when the Asian War ended, several things came to a head. There was a danger of economic collapse, since, if we admitted it or not, the economy since the Hitler War had largely been based on war or the threat of war. By that time we were spending more than a hundred billion a year directly or indirectly on the military. You couldn’t simply pull that big a prop out from under without substituting another one. At the same time automation, the computer economy, hit with a vengeance. All of a sudden there was precious little need for employees in the primary labor fields.”

“Yes, yes,” Vanderfeller said impatiently.

Barry went on doggedly. “That’s where Negative Income Tax came in. Oh, they had other names for it, such as Guaranteed Annual Wage or even Incentive Income Supplement, but what it actually amounted to was a dole and it wasn’t all philanthropic. It kept consumer buying up and the economy needed that badly. But NIT wasn’t enough to keep the economy booming. Something was needed to take the place of war industries. Mass construction was the answer and it fit in with other problems, such as the falling apart of the cities, air and water pollution, slums and ghettos and so forth. So the government embarked on the biggest home construction and highway development—most of it underground—in history. Every person was guaranteed a residence, be it a house, an apartment, or a mobile home. Every citizen now has a right, once in his life, to obtain a home. The government ponies up the entire amount and then, over a period of thirty years, deducts it from the citizen’s credit balance automatically through the National Bank computers.”

“Of course, of course,” the older man said testily. “A corporation such as Vanderfeller and Moore is granted an appropriate sum to build a deme such as Shyler-deme, some five thousand apartments of varying size. The price will range anywhere from one to two hundred million. The average apartment sells for forty thousand, thus paying for the building, eventually. The complex remains in the hands of the corporation and the profit is made by selling commodities and services to the tenants who are what amounts to a captive pool of customers. They buy almost all of their food, their clothing and their other necessities through the ultra-markets in the underground areas of the deme. They rent their electro-steamers from our car pool, they pay for their entertainments such as theatres, sport spectacles, nightclubs, auto-bars, swimming pools. They have literally scores of ways provided for spending their income, be it government NIT, or earned salaries, or dividend income. But what has all this got to do with the drop off in tenancy, my boy?”

Barry said, “Sir, they simply don’t care enough about their apartments to give a damn, if the urge hits them to move. You seldom appreciate something you haven’t put anything of yourself into. Theoretically these people own their apartments and are paying for them, but in actuality they never see the money and most of them haven’t worked for it. It’s simply deducted from their usual monthly checks.

“All right. The population of the country now is roughly three hundred million. Most of them live in pseudo-cities such as Phoenecia and in demes, the units of the pseudo-cities. A deme such as we’re in now will hold twenty thousand people. They prefer demes because of all the facilities available. Those who don’t like this anthill type of life often get mobile homes—they used to call them trailers—and join one of the mobile towns. Comparatively few, these days, like individual homes but some do, and build off by themselves or in small communities.

“But the thing is, these people get restless and kind of go through fads of where to live. When Phoenecia was built the fad was for living in the mountains. There was a lot of talk about the benefits of the altitude, the scenery, the clear air and so forth. There was no trouble at all in filling the apartments. But in a couple of years, living on the sea became all the rage and, currently, living out in the desert areas such as Arizona and Utah. And Mexico and Central America are beginning to draw people.”

Vanderfeller said in indignation, “But to simply abandon their homes?”

And be lost as customers to Vanderfeller and Moore? Barry added silently.

Aloud, he said, “They don’t always abandon them. Last week we lost two hundred and three resident families, or singles, but gained eighty-three. Sometimes they rent their places. Sometimes they sell their equities, usually precious little, to each other. If somebody here in the mountains can locate another family, say on the seashore, who wants to swap apartments, they make a deal. Of course, both continue to have the same sum deducted from their credit balance. The government continues to collect whether they leave or not.”

“But from what you say,” the tycoon said aggressively, “some simply leave without finding a new tenant.”

“That’s right. They go off and possibly buy a new apartment somewhere else, this time in the wife’s name. If they move again, they can get still another in the name of one of the kids, if they have children over eighteen.”

“What can you do about it, Ten Eyck?” the older man snapped. “You’re the Demecrat of Shyler-deme. It’s up to you to prevent the building’s income from simply melting away.”

“I’ll do what I can, sir. Obviously, we’re working on it. One thing we might do—other Demecrats have—is lower the maintenance charge. That’d make remaining here more desirable.”

Vanderfeller glared at him. “Lower the maintenance rate!”

“Yes, sir. As you know, theoretically the tenants own their own apartments; but they have to pay us a monthly maintenance fee. It averages about a hundred dollars.”

The older man was indignant. “Our income is low enough, young man. We take in some four hundred thousand dollars a month toward expenses from this source. Every bit you cut is a drain on profits.”

“Yes, sir, but it’s one way of keeping tenants. Other demes are doing it, which is one of the reasons our people move to them. For a family on NIT to pay only fifty a month maintenance, instead of a hundred, means another fifty pseudo-dollars in their credit balance.”

“What else causes them to move?” Vanderfeller demanded.

“They like new buildings, with new gadgets, new improvements, or supposed improvements. I scanned some ads the other day. New demes have Tri-Di screens that occupy one whole wall of the apartment. The figures are projected life size. That’s a big pull. Another new development is an auto-bar that has a list of two hundred drinks available. You can do a lot of fancy guzzling with a device like that in your apartment. The ones we supply as standard equipment can be rigged only for ten different drinks of your choice. One thing we might do is upgrade our bar services.”

“Bring it up with Central Management,” Vanderfeller muttered. “But it sounds expensive.”

Barry shrugged. “Any renovations of that magnitude usually are. All five thousand of our apartments would be involved.”

Vanderfeller stood, by way of preliminaries to dismissal, and made an effort to regain his jovial air of good fellowship.

He said, “Well, Barry, my boy, it’s your problem. But we of the board of directors will be expecting upbeat reports from Phoenecia in the near future.”

Barry stood, too, and repressed a sigh. “We’ll do what we can, sir,” he said. From the side of his eyes he could see Abernathy, out of view of his superior, make a face of disbelief.

The bastard.

He took the penthouse elevator down to the hundredth floor and there switched to the general elevator banks of this tower. He dropped down to the fifth basement level and made his way in the direction of the kitchen offices of the Restaurant Division.

Doors opened before him as he progressed. He spoke a word here, a word there to the technicians he encountered. Barry Ten Eyck made a point not only of knowing every member of his deme’s staff but knowing them intimately enough to be up on problems, family matters, health and welfare. It paid off.

He said, in passing, “Hi, Chuck, how’s Doris?”

“She’s better. If she’d just lay off that candy.”

He called to another, “How was the vacation, Slim?”

“Tiring. I’m glad to be back.”

The door of his Head Chef’s private office smoothed open before him, and he entered.

Pierre Daunou was standing looking at a large control screen. He grumbled, “Triple deck-aire sandwiches,” before turning to see who his visitor might be.

Barry Ten Eyck said, “Hi, Pete.”

Pierre Daunou would never fail for employment. Were there ever a surplus of first rate chefs, he could always get a job in Tri-Di shows as a stereotype chef. He was roly-poly, apple cheeked, small of mouth and with a tiny French mustache of yesteryear. Ludicrously, in this ultra-modern atmosphere, he even wore a white apron and a tall chef’s white hat.

“Bon soir, Barry,” he said. And then, meaninglessly, he snorted, “Triple deck-aire sandwiches.” He made a Gallic gesture of disgust.

Barry sank into a chair across from his head of the deme’s Restaurant Division. He said. “What about triple decker sandwiches?”

The chef plopped himself down into his own swivel chair behind his littered, phone screen desk. He flicked up a hand. “Five years I spend attending the Cordon Bleu in Paris. Ten years I spend here and there as an apprentice and then as an assistant chef. Fifteen years of study. And now what do I do?”

“You’re the best chef in Phoenecia,” Barry said soothingly.

“I am the best chef for five hundred kilometers around!” the other said in quick contradiction. “And what do I do? I design triple deck-aire sandwiches for idiots without palates!” He flicked his plump hand in the direction of the control screen he had been consulting when his superior had entered.

“Hamburgers, hot dogs, fried steak, fried chicken, triple deck-aire sandwiches, french fried potatoes, ice cream. Do you realize, Monsieur Ten Eyck, that those seven items compose half of all orders filled by this department?”

Barry chuckled. “I’m surprised it isn’t even higher.”

The Head Chef slapped a palm down on the desk. “For the sake of those who do not want to eat in their own apartments and have their food sent up directly to the auto-tables in their dining coves, we have here in Shyler-deme four auto-cafeterias and six other restaurants. Monsieur Ten Eyck, we even have an alleged French restaurant, designed by I, myself. At great trouble I reproduced the interior of Le Chalut, a superlative little two-star restaurant in which I was once employed in Provence. Outdoing even myself, I created masterpieces of cuisine such as Rognon de veau flambé and Lamproie bordelaise. And what do they order when they are graced to enter my French restaurant?”

Barry was looking at him apologetically. He cleared his throat.

“Hamburgers! French fries! Triple deck-aire sandwiches!”

Barry said soothingly, “Some of us appreciate your efforts, Pete.”

The chef gave his flick of a hand gesture of disgust. “A handful!”

Barry said, “Ah, Pete, Miss Cusack tells me you’re a bit dissatisfied again.”

“A big dissatisfied!” the other snorted. “Ha! I tell you Monsieur Ten Eyck, this time I am through. What is the use of my years at the Cordon Bleu, the greatest school of haute cuisine the world has ever seen, if I wind up here in this shining automated kitchen equipment mass producing triple deck-aire sandwiches for clods? No. I have made savings. I shall return to Common Europe and open a tiny boite in Italy, Switzerland, possibly France itself and I shall be appreciated, Monsieur Ten Eyck. Gourmets will come from a thousand kilometers about to dine well on the products of the kitchen of Pierre Daunou! Never again will I even think of the words triple deck-aire sandwich!”

Barry Ten Eyck sighed. “I wish you’d think it over, Pete. As you know, I consider you the best man on my staff. The Restaurant Division goes like clockwork. I’d hate to see you leave.”

The other puffed out his cheeks, only slightly mollified. “You have my notice Monsieur Ten Eyck. In two weeks, Pierre Daunou will leave in search of employment where his arts are appreciated.”

Barry stood. “Well, as I said, I’ll hate to see you go. I hope you’ll change your mind.” He turned to leave, then turned back. “Oh, Pete. Do you know anything about Moroccan cooking?”

“Moroccan cooking? I know everything about Moroccan cooking. I once worked at the 1001 Nights restaurant in Tangier. But there is very little to know. The number of dishes is limited, though at the best some are superlative. Ha! Treed. One takes three plump pigeons, eh? One takes salt, two teaspoons. One takes saffron, a pinch, ginger a teaspoon, pepper, the same. One takes a chopped tablespoon of chervil, the same of parsley. One takes three pieces of cinnamon bark and three large onions, in large pieces. One takes five hundred grammes of olive oil and 800 grammes of flour.”

Barry had raised a hand to head the other off, but it was too late.

“One puts into the pot the pigeons, the salt, saffron, ginger, pepper, chervil, parsley, cinnamon, onions and the olive oil and makes it to boil. Of the flour one makes very thin pastry sheets about eight inches across. Thin, thin, as thin as strudle pastry. You know strudle pastry? Ha! One puts about thirty of these sheets of pastry on a plate, one over the other, making a circle about eighteen inches across. When the pigeons are cooked, one removes the cinnamon and puts them with the onion onto the pastry. All is covered with ten or twelve more sheets of pastry. Over this one pours a very little liquid from the cooking pot. And thus it is ready to serve.”

“Sounds wonderful,” Barry said.

“Wonderful? Ha! Treed is the oldest of all Arabian dishes, mon ami. It is said that when the Prophet Mohammed was asked what he liked best in the world, he answered that he loved his wife above everything but after her he liked treed. But why do you ask of Moroccan cuisine?”

Barry shrugged. “The members of the Gourmet Club want a Moroccan restaurant. I understand that a couple of them just got back from a vacation to Marrakech, or somewhere in Morocco, and are evidently all keyed up about a Moroccan restaurant in Shyler-deme.”

“Ha! The Gourmet Club,” the Head Chef snorted. “About thirty-five members. If there were thirty-five hundred perhaps I would remain, for their sakes.”

Back in his own office, Barry Ten Eyck slumped down into his chair and eyed the busy Carol Ann Cusack speculatively.

He said finally, “Miss Cusack, what do you say we retire from stooging for the cosmocorps of Vanderfeller and Moore, buy ourselves a small mobile home, start collecting NIT and take off for Costa Rica? We’ll get out from under before they fire us for incompetence.”

She didn’t look up. “No, thank you, Mr. Ten Eyck,” she said.

“Well, why not? Half of the rest of the country doesn’t work. Why should we?”

“Because living on Negative Income Tax is somewhat short of the good life.”

“Oh, I don’t know. If you live in a swanky apartment in a deme, NIT doesn’t go very far. But I’ve been hearing about Costa Rica. You can do very neatly there on two sets of Negative Income Tax. What do you say we give it a try?”

“I don’t think my husband, Sid, would approve, Mr. Ten Eyck.”

“Oh, your husband, your husband; every time I propose to you, you bring in your husband.”

“Was it a proposal this time? It sounded more like a proposition. Did you see Mr. Vanderfeller?”

“Can’t you tell? Why’d you think I wanted to run off to Costa Rica?”

“I thought it was my fair young body. Did you see Mr. Daunou?”

He nodded wearily.

“What’s wrong with our temperamental chef this time?”

“He hates to see clods eating triple deck-aire sandwiches. He wants to cook treed instead.”

“Cook treed? I thought that was something you did to a coon.”

“Please, Miss Cusack, leave us not be facetious. Treed was the Prophet’s favorite dish—next to his wife.”

“It’s Mrs. Cusack, I keep telling you.”

“I like to keep up the illusion I’ve got a young, beautiful, voluptuous girl as a secretary, rather than an old, beaten-up, married broad.”

Carol Ann sighed and said, “While you were out, Mr. Wonder, down in Transportation, called.”

“What’d Dick want?”

“Another seventy-five seater electro-steamer.”

“Oh, wizard, with our budget melting away by the minute. Why?”

“He thinks it would make a profit. We’ve got enough residents now working over at the Dodge-Myers Complex on all four shifts to make it worth while running a bus service.”

“Oh? We have?” Barry thought about it. “How far is the Dodge-Myers set-up, Miss Cusack?”

“A hundred and seventy-five kilometers. According to Mr. Wonder, the Shyler-deme employees there would save fifteen or twenty minutes time a day, if they had their own bus running back and forth for each shift.”

“Well, it’s worth looking into. Have you ever seen the Dodge-Myers Complex, Miss Cusack?”

“I applied for a job there, just before taking this one. It’s tucked away, up in the hills, and most of the buildings are underground. One of the most modern industrial complexes in this vicinity. No smoke, no industrial mess, the nearest homes at least five miles away. All in the newest tradition.”

“So it’s to be assumed that our people will continue to work there. I’ll take it up with Dick Wonder later. Has Bat come up with anything on the burglaries?”

“Not that I know of, Mr. Ten Eyck. I haven’t seen Mr. Hardin since he was in here with you earlier.” She turned to answer one of her phone screens. “Here’s Mr. Hardin now.”

Barry activated one of his own screens. “Hi, Bat. What spins?”

Bat Hardin’s face was registering shock. “Barry,” he said, “listen. The burglar’s been at it again.”

“This soon! And in broad daylight? Same as before?”

Bat Hardin said strangely, “Not exactly. This time he didn’t do so well in selecting an empty apartment. He was jumped by the resident, evidently, while prowling the place. It was Lawrence McCaw’s mini-apartment on the fiftieth floor.”

“Good grief, what happened?”

“The burglar killed him.”

Barry Ten Eyck winced. “Oh, Lord,” he said. He shook his head and began to come to his feet. “What tower?”

“Tower-Two,” Bat said. “You coming up, Barry?”

“I’ll be right there.”

Half way to the door he called back to Carol Ann, “Get Mayor Levy and the Security Chief over at Administration. Tell them … well, tell them what happened. You know as much about it as I do.”

He hurried out into the corridor and to the elevator banks. The fiftieth floor, in Tower-Two. Devoted entirely to mini-apartments. You would think a prowler would be more ambitious. Damn few who lived in mini-apartments had anything worth stealing. But that was the big mystery, wasn’t it? This burglar didn’t seem to steal anything worth stealing. Barry wondered if the man was some sort of kleptomaniac.

Two of Stevens’ human relations officers were posted outside Apartment 508. Barry nodded to them wordlessly and hustled on through.

The tiny apartment was jam-packed with Bat Hardin, Stevens, Doctor Bert McCoy, of the Shyler-deme hospital, one more of Stevens’ men and, sprawled on the floor and now covered with a bedsheet, what was obviously the remains of the late occupant of the apartment.

Barry stared down at the corpse. He said, “He’s dead, Doc?”

“Very. Several knife wounds in the abdomen and up into the heart region. You wish to see him?”

“Good grief, no.” Barry looked around at them. “Did any of you know him? What did you say his name was, Bat?”

“Lawrence McCaw. No, I didn’t know him. With anywhere from fifteen to twenty thousand people in Shyler-deme at any given time, you never get to know more than a fraction.”

The doctor, an efficient, straight-standing type, shook his head, as did the Security officer.

Stevens, who was staring down at the sheet covered figure glumly, said, “I knew him slightly. He was more or less a recluse. Almost an escapist. You seldom saw him in the public rooms.”

“Who found him?”

Stevens stirred. “I did. Pure luck, actually. Almost intuitive, I guess you’d say. I had a strange feeling that our burglar friend was on the prowl again and I was checking the spy lenses. Just on an off chance, I activated several of the apartment lenses on this floor.”

Barry Ten Eyck’s eyebrows went up.

“I know, I know,” Stevens said sourly. “It’s supposedly illegal for anyone save proper government authority to invade the privacy of a home. But you know what the situation was. At any rate, I gave a quick check-out on several apartments. The fourth one I tried, I saw McCaw, there, sprawled on the floor. I made a beeline up here. His door was partially open. And there he was.”

Barry looked at the Security officer. “Go on out and tell those two guards not to let anyone in here and above all not to tell anyone what’s happened.”

“Yes, sir.” The man left.

Bat Hardin said, “You notify Levy and Ben Snider?”

“I had Carol Ann do it. I imagine they’ll be over shortly.” Barry rubbed his hand down over his face and muttered, “We’ve got to keep this bottled up long enough to find whoever did it. We’ve got to, or residents will be moving out of this building like rats. Burglaries and murders!”

One of the guards stuck his head in the door. “Here comes Mayor Levy and Chief Snider.”

The doctor had been putting equipment back into his bag. He said, “One thing before I leave. If I have the story correctly, supposedly the apartment was being burglarized when the occupant here, McCaw, interrupted the thief. However, if so, the wounds were strangely located. By them and the position of the corpse, I would have said the opposite situation applied.”

Barry scowled at him.

The doctor said, almost defensively, “It would appear, rather, that the victim was the one surprised. Perhaps I am wrong.”

Barry looked at Stevens. “Steve, how do you know this was one of the burglar’s jobs?”

“Same pattern,” Stevens growled. “Two other apartments on the floor have been prowled. And look at this place. It’s been ransacked.”

Mayor Emmanuel Levy came bustling in, closely followed by his Chief of Security of Phoenecia, Ben Snider. Both were heavy-set though energetic men.

“What in the world is going on here? A killing! We haven’t had a killing in six months and that was more of an accident than …” Levy began.

His eyes fell on the covered body and he sucked in air.

Later, when they had talked it out from every angle, and the whole thing had been turned over to Security routine, Barry Ten Eyck had the mayor for lunch in Le Chalut, Shyler-deme’s French restaurant. It was, as Head Chef Daunou had described it, a perfect replica of a Provence restaurant, complete to placards on the walls advertising Pernod, various cheeses of Avignon, Carcassonne and Les Baux, the wines of Côtes de Provence.

Levy, whose short, wide figure indicated he was far from immune to good food, looked about appreciatively and said, “I don’t believe I’ve been in here before, Barry.”

Barry Ten Eyck said, “The chef just finished it a couple of months ago. It was his pride and joy.”

“Was?”

Barry said, “He’s leaving me. Fed up with automated cooking.”

“How long have you had him?”

“Oh, he’s been here a couple of years. Almost as long as I have.”

“Let him go, my boy.”

Barry looked at him. “He’s the best chef in Phoenecia.”

The mayor nodded. “And if he’s been here two years, he’s already set up the plant so that he’s redundant. I assume you have a restaurant staff of some twenty persons. I’ll wager that at least half of them could take over your Head Chef’s job and would, besides, take only half the pay he receives. You know that much about deme management, Barry. Once a kitchen is set up there’s precious little to change.”

“That was Pete’s complaint,” Barry said. “He isn’t able to practice his trade—his art, as he sees it. The kitchen is programmed for the dishes our residents want and he can’t introduce anything … Say, that reminds me. Pardon me for a moment.”

He brought his pocket phone out, activated it and said, “Chef Daunou, please.”

When Pierre Daunou’s petulant face faded in, Barry said, “Pete, I’m here with Mayor Levy in Le Chalut for lunch. What was that dish you were telling me about? The special one you created.”

It was all but pathetic to see the beam come over the roly-poly man’s face. “Perhaps the Rognon de veau flambé?”

“Yeah, thanks, Pete, that was it. Is it on the menu, today?”

“Monsieur Ten Eyck, it is always on the menu, and always perfect. That is one thing for which admittedly one must give the automated kitchen credit. Once a perfect dish is created, it never fails to produce it, over and over again, in perfection. Ah, Monsieur Ten Eyck …”

“Yes?”

“With my compliments, will the mayor and you have a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape to accompany the veal?”

“With greatest pleasure, Pete.”

Still beaming, the chef’s face faded.

“Poor bastard,” Barry muttered.

The mayor took up where he had left off. “Larry Brooks, over at the Victory-deme, had the same difficulty. That is, overly temperamental personnel in the Restaurant Division. The Head Chef was a Hungarian, his second a Bavarian. While they were setting up the operation they didn’t do so badly, kept themselves busy, but once the basic programming was accomplished it was one headache after another. Continual bickering. One wanted to cook everything with paprika, the other sauerkraut, or some such. Larry eventually let them both go just this week. No trouble at all. Everything as smooth as butter. No, I tell you, Ten Eyck, let this chef of yours go. You’ll never miss him.”

Shortly, the center of the table sank, to return with their dishes. The bottle of wine was there, and a single rose in a vase. Barry suspected that Pierre had given his personal attention to their order, which was on the far-out side in this day of automation; one no longer expected personal attention in a restaurant.

“I say,” Levy said, after exactly one forkful of the veal.

“Ummm.” Barry poured wine. “Are you sure I ought to let this chef go?”

Emmanuel Levy laughed. “No, not sure at all.”

They ate in silence for a moment.

Finally, Phoenecia’s mayor looked up, slightly quizzical. “I hear from Abernathy, Cyril Vanderfeller’s man, that you’ve been having an inordinate number of vacancies.”

“Yeah,” Barry said. “And these burglaries and the killing aren’t going to help any. Everything seems to be happening to me. Everything. If I woke up tomorrow pregnant, I wouldn’t be overly surprised.”

Levy chuckled dutifully. He said, “It was that silly Gallagher’s fault.”

“Gallagher? The Demecrat who preceded me?”

“Ummm. Let go for incompetence. When Shyler-deme opened he wanted to fill up the apartments overnight, evidently as an indication of what a fireball he was. He gave Shyler-deme no theme. And these days, if you want to keep your people, you need a theme.”

“Theme?” Barry said. Mayor Levy was, of course, a former Demecrat himself. You didn’t become the mayor of a pseudo-city without long years of managing a deme yourself. And there were a lot of things you learned on the job that they never taught you in the colleges devoted to deme and pseudo-city management.

“Yes, of course. You decide, perhaps, to specialize on elderly, retired folk. You set up your public rooms, your parks, even your restaurants and bars, to cater to their needs. Shuffleboard, rather than tennis courts, chess tournaments, extensive card rooms, bingo rooms. Your hospital is staffed with specialists in the diseases of the older elements. You screen families with noisy children, and refuse to sell them apartments. Or, perhaps, your theme is young marrieds with children. You go in big for nurseries and playgrounds, that sort of thing. Or, particularly if your deme has a goodly percentage of mini-apartments, you go in for young singles, perhaps of the swinger variety, as we used to call them when I was a boy. Lots of dances, lots of sports, plenty of nightclubs, entertainment, entertainment, entertainment.”

“I’m afraid it’s a little too late for me to switch to one of these themes,” Barry said unhappily.

“Yes. That’s where Gallagher fell short. If you’re going to have a theme for populating your deme, you must decide upon it before selling the apartments. He let in anyone and everyone. Old, young, singles, couples, even, so I understand, a sizable number of both escapists and weirds.”

“How right can you get?” Barry growled. “I spend half my time fielding complaints about the services and public rooms. The young married people want one thing, the oldsters another, the singles still others. Today, one group sent around a petition demanding one of the public rooms be converted into a Moroccan restaurant. A Moroccan restaurant, yet. Shyler-deme needs a Moroccan restaurant like it needs a collective hole in the head.”

He finished the wine and looked at the glass in approval. “I wonder where old Pete got this?”

Levy said, “You can still get decent wine if you’re willing to pay for it. Here in the United States they’ve abolished the use of grapes and cereals for beverages but the Common Europe people haven’t. They even still make beer over there out of grain.”

“I didn’t know that,” Barry said. “How can they afford it?”

The mayor said dryly, “I suppose they figure that man doth not live by bread alone. You could no more get a Frenchman to give up his wine than you could a German his beer.”

“Well, that’s all very good. But we make our beverages synthetically and …”

“And they taste like it,” Levy grumbled finishing his own last sip of wine appreciatively.

Barry’s pocket phone buzzed and he brought it forth. He had it set for Priority Two, cutting off all calls except those of a very few persons. It must be something important. Bat Hardin’s face faded in, characteristically worried, his lower lip taking a beating from his teeth.

“What spins?” Barry said.

“Listen, could you come on down to your office?”

“I’m having lunch with the mayor,” Barry protested.

Bat said urgently, “I think I’ve got something, Barry. About you know what.”

“Oh, oh.” Barry took up his napkin and tossed it to the table. He said to Bat, “Coming,” and deactivated the phone. He looked at Levy. “Must be some kind of a break in the murder.”

“You go right ahead, my boy. I’m going to try some of this excellent cheese your chef was kind enough to send up. The man seems quite a gem.”

Bat Hardin was seated in Barry’s inner office. As Barry entered he was saying to Carol Ann Cusack, “Where’s Jim Cotswold?”

Carol Ann said, “Why, Mr. Cotswold is on vacation.”

Barry said, “What’s up, Bat?”

“Just a minute. I want to check up on something.” Bat looked at the secretary. “Yes, but where? I assume he left you his itinerary.”

“Why, he’s in Mozambique. You know Mr. Cotswold and that Poloroid-Leica of his. He wanted to get shots of animal life in nature.”

“Get him for me, will you Carol Ann?”

Looking somewhat mystified, she dialed. Bat Hardin sat down in the chair behind Barry Ten Eyck’s steel desk.

“Put it on this screen, please,” he said.

Barry said, “What’s going on? Why do you want to bother Jim?”

Jim Cotswold’s angular face and upper body faded in. He was wearing a bush jacket with half a dozen pockets. Around his neck was slung a recent-design camera with a monstrously long snouted lens. He was obviously surprised. And obviously talking into his pocket phone.

“Hey,” he said. “What’s the big idea? I was just about to get a shot of a real lion. I mean a real one, right out here parading around in the bush.”

Bat said, “Sorry. It’s important, Jim. Let’s take a look at it.”

“At what?”

“The lion.”

Mystified, the Second Vice-Demecrat of Shyler-deme redirected his pocket TV phone screen. In the faint distance, Bat and Barry, who was now looking over Bat’s shoulder, could see an African bush scene and, yes, slinking through the background was a male lion.

Jim’s voice said, “Satisfied? Now, damn it, you let him get away before I could get my shots.”

Bat said, “How far are you from the nearest town with a jetport, Jim?”

“A good three days by truck, dammit. What the devil do you clowns want?”

“Nothing more,” Bat told him. “Sorry to bother you. Good hunting.” He flicked off the set and turned back to Barry.

Barry said, “What in the devil’s up?”

“He’s in Mozambique, all right. And way the hell and gone out in the boondocks.” Bat Hardin fished into a pocket and came forth with what at first seemed a chunk of melted copper. He handed it over to his superior.

Barry scowled down at it. Finally, he made out some lettering. “Why, it’s a coin. A copper coin.” He looked up at the other who was again gnawing away at his lip and scowling. “So what? Where’d you get it?”

“Harrison, down in Disposal found it, by accident, in one of the incinerators.”

“Well, what of it?”

“So I checked it out with that resident who had the coin collection stolen.”

Barry looked at him. Bat nodded.

Barry demanded, “You mean this is one of the stolen coins and it was found in an incinerator?”

Bat nodded again. He said, “Come on, Barry. Let’s go over and see Stevens.”

They entered the office of Shyler-deme’s Security Chief, and Stevens looked up from his desk. Bat tossed the half melted copper coin before him and reversed a chair and sat straddled on it, his arms on the back. Barry remained standing for the present.

Stevens took up the coin and scowled at it. “What’s this?”

“Part of the coin collection that was stolen yesterday,” Bat said.

“Oh? I’ll be darned. Where’d you get it, Hardin?”

“Pure luck. Harrison, down on the incinerators, fished it out.”

Stevens grunted sourly. “Well, I don’t see what good it does us. Our killer evidently ditched his loot to avoid any evidence.”

Bat shook his head. “I’ve got a different theory.”

Both Barry and Stevens were staring at him. Bat said, “He never stole the stuff.”

Barry sputtered, “Are you completely around the bend?”

Bat Hardin shook his head doggedly. “The whole thing’s been crazy and it was meant to look crazy. All this supposed stealing of things not worth stealing. As though some nut were at work. It’s been one long misdirection and a very cute idea. Too damn cute. But our supposed burglar has been going into apartments, messing them up a bit to make them look as though they were completely ransacked, and then he’d toss a few items into the disposal chute and leave. He wouldn’t be carrying a thing, in case somebody came up on him unexpectedly. He was always clean of any loot.”

Stevens was scowling disbelief. “But why, for Christ’s sake?”

Bat bit his lower lip nervously. “That’s what I had trouble figuring out. But there’s only one answer, so far as I can see. Like I said, it was misdirection. He wanted to kill poor Lawrence McCaw for some reason I don’t know as yet. He must have figured out that if he just did the job, straight off, an investigation would follow. A thorough investigation. And such an investigation would reveal the fact that he had motive for killing McCaw. However, if he gobbledygooked up the whole thing and made it look like the killing was unpremeditated, that a sneak thief had been caught robbing the McCaw apartment and had killed its occupant, then nobody would look in his direction.”

“Oh, Bat, this is pretty farfetched,” Barry protested.

Bat looked at him. “It’s the only thing that makes sense, Barry.”

Barry said, “Look, you’ve explained absolutely nothing about how he got into the building. How he got from one floor to another without detection. How he knew the apartments he entered were empty. How he got into them. Good grief, Bat.”

Bat was eyeing him levelly. “Why do you think I phoned Jim Cotswold?”

Barry blinked at him.

Bat said patiently, “Supposedly, you and I and Jim are the only three persons who can make their way around Shyler-deme, any place at all, without having to check it out with Security. Well, that narrows it down to just you and me. Jim’s in the African bush.”

Barry stared at him. “What the hell do you mean?”

Bat turned his eyes to Stevens, who had been looking sourly at him. Bat said, “The thing is, we aren’t the only three deme officials that can go anywhere at any time. There’s one more. Our Chief of Security. In fact, he can do it much better than we can. He can also check apartments through his spy lenses to see if they are empty, before he pretends to burglarize one. He also has the means to open any door to any apartment.”

“You’re crazy as a coot!” Stevens blurted.

“He also admitted, when we were up in McCaw’s room, that he knew the man slightly. That was a smart bit of business. If he had denied knowing him at all and somebody had stumbled on the fact that he did, the fat would have been in the fire.”

Bat Hardin shook his heavy head. “No, Barry. We’ll have to dig it out, but will eventually find that our boy, here, had a very good reason to kill Lawrence McCaw. And he had a better opportunity than anyone else in this deme. He’s our man.”

Barry began to say, in bewilderment, “I can’t …”

But Stevens, his lips thinned back, had scooped a Gyro-jet pistol from a desk drawer. He snapped, “I’m getting out of here and I don’t want anybody to try and stop me.” He was on his feet.

“Nobody’ll try to stop you,” Bat said reasonably.

Stevens backed around to the door, keeping the gun at the ready. He got to the door, through it, slammed it behind him.

Bat shook his head and went over to the desk and to the phone screen. He activated it and said, “Carol Ann? Get me Chief Ben Snider, over at Administration, will you?”

Barry, still flabbergasted, couldn’t see his secretary from where he stood, but he could hear her voice. “Coming up, Mr. Hardin, and if Mr. Ten Ecyk is there will you remind him we’re due in the Auditorium in ten minutes for the monthly Deme-Assembly.”

On the way over to the deme Auditorium, Carol Ann chattered at him excitedly.

Barry said, “It’s not important. He can’t get very far. A man on the lam doesn’t make much sense these days. He can’t use the ultra-highways without using his TV phone-Credit Card to rent an electro-steamer. If he does use it, they have him. He can’t buy anything without it, including food or shelter. He can’t even have it on his person or the police will get a fix on him and track him down, no matter where he is. And you simply can’t live in the world as it is without a credit card, Miss Cusack.”

“Golly,” she said, the expression incongruous from her lips.

Barry Ten Eyck said, as they approached the door of the Auditorium, “I’d like to cut this as short as possible today.”

She looked at her notes. “There doesn’t seem to be much besides this petition for the Moroccan restaurant. Well, except some of the older residents want to begin heating the swimming pools already this year. And we have a letter here from the occupant of Apartment 84, eightieth floor, Tower-Two, suggesting that at least one elevator be designed to have less acceleration.”

He looked at her from the side of his eyes. “Why? We’ve had beefs before from those upper-floor people wanting more speed, not less.”

“He’s elderly and afraid of falling and claims that there are enough others in his age group to support the request.”

“He might have something, at that. It’s all we need, some of the oldsters breaking their legs in our high speed elevators.”

The Auditorium doors were open. Barry and Carol Ann made their way down to the rostrum. As usual, there were about a thousand persons present. Ten to fifteen thousand potential voters in Shyler-deme, and only this percentage bothered to turn up to debate and vote upon their own affairs.

Barry Ten Eyck took his place, Carol Ann to one side, and banged with his gavel. He hurried through the preliminaries, waived reading of the minutes of the previous session and got to the several subjects for the day’s discussion.

There was little talk over the heating of the swimming pool and the slower elevator and both motions passed. Barry refrained from ruling against them.

He looked at Carol Ann and she said, “The petition for a Moroccan restaurant.”

Barry looked up at the thousand-odd residents of the building he managed. “Ah, yes. Any discussion?”

Down in the front row, someone began waving frantically.

Barry Ten Eyck recognized the president of the Gourmet Club, one of perhaps forty clubs that had been organized in Shyler-deme. The man’s name was Samuelson, Fred or Frank, or something like that. An aggressive little type who attended all Deme-Assemblies and almost invariably spoke on every subject debated. He was thinner and more intense than you would have expected a gourmet to be.

Barry said, “Mr. Samuelson?”

Mr. Samuelson was belligerent.

He waggled his head and said, “I know how you people think and how you figure. A deme is run like a dictatorship. Sure, supposedly us residents have a big say in the way the public facilities are run, but actually you managers can overrule anything. But all I’ve got to say is this. Us residents have our rights and we’ve got our needs. And we members of the Gourmet Club say we ought to have more selection when we go out to dine. We spend our pseudo-dollars and we ought to get what we want.”

“Of course,” Barry nodded.

But the other was still belligerent. “We got more than fifteen hundred signatures on this petition …”

Barry Ten Eyck knew the way of petitions. Lord knows, he saw enough of them. Anybody with a little push could get another resident to sign a petition for just about anything. Homes for homeless pigeons, or whatever. He could hear Carol Ann Cusack, next to him, sigh.

“… We got more than fifteen hundred signatures and we want to see this through. Now we know that as Demecrat you can overrule any project we residents vote for, but we also know that at any time we can vote for your dismissal and the owners of Shyler-deme have to remove you and put up for our approval a new Demecrat. And I warn you now, Mr. Ten Eyck, that if you overrule this petition, the Gourmet Club is going to start a campaign for your removal …”

Barry held up a restraining hand. “Mr. Samuelson …”

“I’ve got a right to have my say!”

Barry said, “Of course you have, but I don’t think that you want to talk just for the sake of talking.”

Samuelson, taken aback, shut up abruptly.

Barry said, “I’ve already decided to honor your request. The Moroccan restaurant will be opened. You will be pleased to know that our Head Chef, Monsieur Daunou, is well acquainted with Moroccan cuisine.”

Samuelson was flabbergasted.

Barry Ten Eyck came to his feet. “You will also be interested to know, I am sure, that I am taking measures to open a Hungarian and a German—that is, Bavarian—restaurant. And I urge you members of the Gourmet Club to inform your various publications to which you subscribe, and your friends among gourmets, that Shyler-deme is also embarking on a program that will involve Russian restaurants, Swedish, Danish, Greek, Turkish and Vegetarian Hindu. And we are open to other suggestions from our residents. In short, ladies and gentlemen, in the future, Shyler-deme will have as its theme, gourmet attributes, not only in our restaurants but in foods and wines in our ultra-market and available through the automated public kitchens.”

He looked at Carol Ann, who was a bit on the wide-eyed side. “If that is all, Miss Cusack?”

She nodded.

He rapped the gavel. “The Deme-Assembly is adjourned.”

On the way to the door, he said to her, “I want you to get in touch soonest with the two chefs that they let go at Victory-deme the other day, a Hungarian and a Bavarian. Sign them up. Also, I want to place some ads in the publications devoted to swapping apartments. The general idea is that Shyler-deme is now the most food-conscious deme in the United States and that we invite gourmets to take residence. Also I want you to get in touch with every one of our former residents who have moved. Let them know that we are interested in helping them expedite selling their equity in their apartments so that new tenants can move in.”

Carol Ann groaned at the prospect of that amount of work. She said, “You haven’t any other brain children, have you?”

“Just one more item, Miss Cusack,” he said severely.

“Mrs. Cusack,” she said. “Yes, Mr. Ten Eyck?”

“In the morning, when I come in, I want no more than four crises.”