Expert Assistance

  “Yes.”

  “Odin, want to analyze this?”

  “The system would seem to be effective in preventing locals or off-worlders from stealing any pieces of mineral. The operation on Antioch Two is fairly standard. I must confess that I am surprised that no shipper would inspect the plant or the storage units.”

  “If they opened the units at their destination and didn’t find gold, or silver, or whatever,” Jake said, “they’d notice, and start flaming everyone.” Jake frowned for an instant to think. “It almost sounds like this is an off-book arrangement.”

  “You could be correct.”

  “’Off-book,’ Jake?” Daniel asked. “What does that mean?”

  “It means that whoever is picking up your minerals is doing something they’re not supposed to. That’s something else we’ll look into down the road. One last question, and I’ll let you go. I assume that you there aren’t worked till you die.”

  “No. When a couple reaches retirement age, they get a reception on a Sunday, and then they’re gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Gone. Sent off-world, I guess.”

  “What if the husband is a few years older than his wife?”

  “Doesn’t happen, at least not to most of us.”

  “You see,” Clarissa said, “no one is allowed to have children without permission from the top. Permission tends to be granted in groups. Three couples one month, four the next, three after that. Workers are only allowed two children, unless one gets conceived on one of those ‘worker of the year’ trips. All the workers are around the same age, give or take five years.”

  “There is a steady population,” Odin remarked. “Therefore, it would be a simple task to plan for the population’s needs. Variables are reduced, leading to efficiencies in supply ordering and overall planning.”

  “Not exactly a free population,” Jake commented.

  “No.”

  “Now do you see why we’re so unhappy?” Clarissa asked.

  “I can sympathize,” Jake told her, “but there might be more reasons to overthrow Maxis than the mere ideal of liberty.”

  “Mere?”

  “There is a bigger picture here, Clarissa. Give us some time to do some digging. Until our next conversation, keep your eyes open and your mouths shut. I won’t be able to help you for a couple months yet. Don’t get into trouble before then.”

  “We won’t.”

  “Good. I’ll try to get back to you next week.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Sure.” The screen went dark. “Odin, I think you should chase down this retirement question first. Let’s find out what happens when you get too old to work for Maxis.”

  “Very well. Any reason why that should be a priority?”

  “I want to know well ahead of time if I’m going to have run through the dome screaming, ‘Soylent Green is made from people!’”

  “I assume to perfect your less-than-stellar impression. By the way, Jake, I believe that Evvie’s concert is just about over.”

  “Just in time.”

  Five

  Secrets To Spare

  Jake walked to the teleport room, still thinking about Antioch Two. Suddenly he caught himself. Why was he going to the teleport to meet Evvie? There didn’t seem to be any real reason to do so. It wasn’t like they were pals, and they’d talk about their days. Evvie certainly couldn’t get lost from there to her room. The only explanation that he could come up with was that it was his job to look after her for the duration of the tour. If this meant meeting her when she teleported up, so be it.

  He walked into the room and down behind the teleport control console. He tapped a few keypads then said, “Evvie, ready to teleport?”

  “Uh, hold it a bit.” Several seconds passed. “Okay, I’m ready.”

  “Teleporting, now.”

  Jake tapped the main control. One of the three teleport pads began to glow green. A ghostly green light appeared over it for two seconds. When the glowing stopped, there was no Evvie. Lying on the pad was her teleport bracelet.

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” Jake sighed. “Odin, Evvie took off her bracelet. Can you lock in on her?”

  “Her last position had her with several other humans.”

  “Stand by to teleport me down.”

  “I do not think that would be wise, Jake.”

  “Why?”

  “My sensors tell me that she’s just stepped into a hovercar with several others.”

  “Oh, this is terrific. If we don’t find her and get her back, we could be in a lot of trouble. Home in on that vehicle. See where it goes.”

  “I shall try.”

  Jake waited at the console. Now she’s gone and done it, he thought. This is exactly the “unauthorized access” I agreed to prevent her from getting involved with. Is she trying to get me in trouble? Is she trying to get me fired? Or is she just too dumb to know what kind of a fix this puts me in?

  Has to be the last. She’s not smart enough to plan something like this out.

  Wait a sec. “Odin, find out if she’s still carrying her messager.”

  “I believe so. Yes, she is. Shall I contact her? I should say that such a signal probably won’t be ideal for teleport.”

  “It’s not that. I’ve got an idea about how to get that bracelet back on her, and her back on this ship. Let me know where she stops.”

  ***

  Evvie never really liked the sound her Perc personal communicator made when a message came in. She tried to program in better sounds, like one of her hits, or the theme to Captain Sandy. Unfortunately her efforts resulted in her managing to turn the alert chime into a loud and thoroughly uncool whine. She was able to switch from alert sound to silent vibration. Actually, the motion was fun. It almost always got attention, and occasionally even felt good.

  She hadn’t been expecting a call while she was out. Jake couldn’t find her, not without that bracelet, which of course went with nothing. Sensors couldn’t pick her out of the crowd at the club, and she was dancing too much.

  “Hey, your Perc,” one of her friends said, “it’s dancing!”

  “Lemme check it.”

  Evvie took it out of her blouse pocket. She tapped a key, and the tiny screen lit up. “Relay message, audio, from your mother,” the screen read. “Accept or decline?”

  “It’s Mom,” she told her friends.

  “You better take it.”

  “It’s a voice call.”

  “Ew.” The other girl pointed away from the dance floor to a pair of doors. “Take it in there.”

  “Oh, spiff!” Evvie knew the bathrooms wouldn’t entirely drown out the noise of the club. But it would muffle it enough to make it seem like she was just listening to loud music.

  She began to drag her friends along, then stopped. “Oh, wait! If Mom hears you guys, I’m busted for sure.”

  “We’ll stay out here.”

  “Watch the door for me.”

  “Sure!”

  Evvie jogged to the women’s bathroom. Once inside she looked around to make certain no one else was inside. Luckily no one was. She relaxed. Her friends would keep other girls out. Now she could take the call without worrying about her mother finding out. She pressed “Accept” on the screen and prepared to explain why she hadn’t been able to talk immediately.

  A second later the air behind her glowed green. She turned just in time to see Jake materialize in the room. She was almost certain the smile on his face had appeared before the rest of him did.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Bringing you back.” He snapped a teleport bracelet onto her right wrist and tapped a red button on it. “Odin, now.” A moment later they were aboard Jake’s ship. An instant after that Jake took the bracelet off her wrist.

  “Hey, I was having fun!”

  “Unauthorized fun,” he replied.

  “So?”

  “So? So I signed a contract that prevents me from allowing you to have any cont
act that your mother and your agent don’t approve of. If they didn’t okay your clubbing, I have no choice but to bring you back here.”

  “They don’t want me to club with my friends.”

  “Take it up with them.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, maybe I will.”

  Jake smiled again. “Oh, please do so.”

  “Huh?”

  “Go ahead and tell them what happened. If they don’t find out from checking the local news. Either way, I can say that I had no idea you would do this. But I do have a way to prevent it from happening again.”

  Jake pulled a tiny wafer from his shirt pocket and held it in front of her face. “Know what this is?”

  Something in Evvie told her to be more suspicious and less stubborn. “No. What is it?”

  “It’s a subcutaneous tracker.”

  “What’s that?”

  “An implant locator chip.”

  Evvie sucked in a breath. “Implant?”

  One of her earliest memories, and the first time she felt real fear, was when she was a preschooler and had to go to a dentist. One of her baby teeth had not come in properly, and her parents took her to the dentist for oral surgery. Up to that day she had never seen anything so terrifying as the instruments the dentist had arrayed next to her for the surgery. If that wasn’t enough, she remembered waking up during the operation and seeing a masked man sticking something into her mouth.

  Ever since that day Evvie had a deep and abiding fear of anything artificial being put into her body. She zealously cared for her teeth after someone mentioned that if a cavity got too big a filling would be put in. She insisted on strong anesthesia whenever she was operated on, which fortunately had only occurred once so far. As a young teenager and aspiring star, she prayed night and day for a decent cup size to avoid breast implants. She was even more thankful that piercings had gone out of style before she’d started on her music career.

  So it was with a great deal of trepidation that she looked at the chip Jake held in front of her. “You’d stick that, into me?”

  “If I can’t trust you not to pull another stunt like this.” He seemed oblivious to her horror. “So promise me that you’ll confess to your mother and Sid, and let me off the hook.”

  “And you won’t let anyone stick that thing in me?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a deal.” Still angry, but too concerned to continue the fight, Evvie took off the bracelet. “I’m tired. I’m going to bed. I’ll make those calls in the morning.” She elbowed past him and walked directly to her room.

  It took her longer than usual to get to sleep that night.

  ***

  A week later Evvie was again out and about, this time on a date with a popular young actor. Unlike her previous foray, the date was authorized by her mother and her agent. The night had been arranged, a schedule was in place, and nothing bad was to happen to the music star.

  Which was why Evvie asked Jake for his help this time around. “Could you help me bail part-way through?”

  “Why? It’s not like you’ve been on lots of dates so far. And I take this guy has quite a bit going for him; handsome, rich, popular,...young.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t you follow the news?”

  “Yes.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. If you did, you’d know that Mark is a complete doze. He’s totally bought into the ‘play nice’ act. He takes his dates to blah restaurants, never goes to clubs, listens to music from the last century.”

  “And plans to abstain from sex until marriage.” Jake folded his arms across his chest. “Why, Evvie, I didn’t know you were such a bad girl at heart.”

  She glanced at the floor. “That has nothing to do with it.”

  “I’m not entirely convinced, for some strange reason.”

  She looked up at him. “Jake, please, you gotta help me out, this one time. Mark is so L-7 it’s almost unhuman.”

  “No, and the word is ‘inhuman.’”

  She frowned for a moment. “You’re always complaining about me being shallow, right? Well, I’ve heard that Mark is even more shallow than me.”

  “Who told you this?”

  “A famous young actress who went out with him a few times. She told me all he ever wanted to talk about was his latest job, and the last personal growth book he read.”

  “This opinion comes from an actress? What, she wasn’t happy he was talking about her?”

  “Well, yeah. I mean, he’s an actor, and he didn’t have a clue as to what she was in at the time. And that every third sentence of his was some self-help expression. And that every time she tried to bring up something current, he’d ignore her and go back to whatever he was talking about.” She pointed to him. “You shouldn’t want me to go out with him. I mean, if I’m shallow, he’s...he’s...”

  “Almost nonexistent?”

  “Yes! That’s it! He barely exists.”

  Jake sighed. “All right. There will no sneaking off, promise?”

  “I promise. All I want you to do is pull me out when I call you.”

  “I’m not going to teleport you out of a restaurant, or any other crowded place. At least not without any warning. It’s bad manners.”

  “Don’t worry. After we eat, I’ll pretend like I’m sick. I’ll go away and call you. I’ll go back, tell him I’m feeling bad, and call it a night. You beam me up, and that’s that.”

  He looked at her for a moment. “If I get flagged on this play, you’re going to take the blame, Evvie.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen. Mom never bugs me about stomach aches.”

  “What do I get in return?”

  “I’ll... I’ll think of something. Something nice. I promise I’ll do something for you, or get you something. Please?”

  Jake sighed. “Okay. This is the only time you ask me for a favor like this, Evvie. Understood?”

  “Got it. Thanks!” Evvie dashed back to her room to get ready for the date.

  ***

  Jake had been reluctant to agree to her suggestion. He wanted to use the opportunity to get back in touch with the Rosens. The conversations didn’t go on for all that long, but this time he had some information for them. It was complicated, and might take some time to explain.

  Oh, well, he thought, I’ll just have to call as soon as Evvie leaves.

  Unfortunately his idea went awry. The Rosens didn’t respond to his first attempt to contact them, nor to other attempts made every fifteen minutes. Finally, after an hour of trying, he was able to get through to them. His first question was why it had taken so long for them to respond.

  “We only just got in,” Daniel said. He appeared winded.

  “What’s happened?”

  “One of the mine conveyors broke down. Lots of people were called in to help move minerals, or fix the conveyor.”

  “Anyone hurt?”

  “No, everyone’s fine. But it looks like we’re going to have to have a new conveyor shipped in soon.”

  “Okay. Well, I don’t have much time, so pay attention. You remember last time we talked about what happens to your people when they retire? Well, Odin and I did some digging and calling around. It seems that your retirees are sent off-world, specifically to the ‘Shady Glade’ complex on Magnolia.”

  “What’s this complex?” Clarissa asked.

  “The accepted term is ‘golden years living center.’ A retirement community, basically.”

  “So why not tell us that?”

  Jake smiled. “This is part where you have to pay attention. Now, interstellar law requires employers to set aside part of an employee’s income for a retirement plan. It’s called a ‘pension,’ if you’ve never heard of the concept. Furthermore, employers are forbidden to maintain contracts with other employers that don’t adhere to interstellar pension law.”

  “That second part doesn’t make sense.”

  “Sorry. What I meant was ‘corporate employers.’ A large corporation can make contracts wit
h a smaller firm that, for one reason or another, can’t set up some sort of retirement plans. But if a business has the resources, isn’t a temporary colonial employer, or has some other exemption, it has to set up these pension plans.”

  “Maxis hasn’t set up any for us?”

  “No. If that was true, one, you’d all work till you die. Two, he couldn’t sell minerals on the open market or contract with shippers to get off your planet.”

  “So what’s the problem, Jake?” Daniel asked.

  “I’m getting there. Now, not everyone can save enough for retirement. Some people never get to save anything. This has been true for a couple of centuries. As a result, governments set up assistance programs so that retirees don’t end up starving to death, or dying from preventable diseases, or anything else that might keep them from living a normal life.

  “Now, Maxis is supposed to pay for your retirement. But he ships people to Magnolia, lists the creds set aside as ‘severance,’ and pays them into accounts in the workers’ names on Magnolia. Shady Glade gets the retirees, tells the authorities that they don’t have any retirement plans, so the government sends the creds into those accounts in the workers’ names.”

  “And who gets those creds?”

  “Maxis and the owners of Shady Glade split the income. You see, your people never retire; they get fired, as least as far as the files are concerned. Shady Glade isn’t getting retirees with pension plans; they’re getting indigents with not a credit to their names.”

  “So how do these people live once they get there?”

  “Fine. Everything’s provided for, medical care, food, recreation, even calls back home to the relatives.”

  “How does this Shady Glade pay for that?”

  “Apparently, residents of Shady Glade live incredibly long lives.”

  “Really?”

  Jake sighed. “Unrealistically long lives, Daniel. In at least one case we found, years after a death certificate was logged with the local coroner’s office.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  “Right. Maxis and Shady Glade’s owners are making a little profit on their deal. This, combined with a few other bits of data, are making me wonder how many other accounts are being padded.”

  Daniel suddenly sat a little straighter and his eyes widened. Jake guessed that an idea had just come to him. “Now that we know this, can’t we just call in the Earth government to help us?”

  “A nice thought,” Jake said with total sincerity. Good of you to start using your brain, he thought with much less sincerity. “One problem with that.” Two if you count my loss of potential income. “A government investigation is going to take time. Subjects would have to advised of their rights. Disclosures could be leaked. It’s possible that as soon as something gets going, Maxis and anyone else involved off your world will disappear before any arrests can be made. Maybe that puts you in charge, but more likely its puts someone else in who will run your planet like Maxis does now, except that the replacement won’t be tied to all these schemes.”