The original small gray man agreed. “Yes, that was the main trouble. The Psychlos were both improvident and credit-pinching at the same time. I don’t think they even kept up this planet’s defenses.”
Jonnie could agree with that. He felt he was going to find out something about these fellows now that they were talking. Keep them talking! “Well, just at a guess,” said Jonnie, “what would you say proper defenses for this planet would cost?”
He had started something!
Both small gray men put their heads together. The original one started pulling all sorts of little things out of his pocket, looking into them and finding things. The newer arrival had a large ring on his left finger and at first Jonnie thought he was simply fiddling with it: not so; he was twisting and tapping it with sudden little jerks, and a long thread, so thin as to be nearly invisible, was coiling out of the ring.
They were very intense and their voices murmured and blended together. “. . . thirty space probes . . . maintained carrier wave probe warning beams . . . fifteen space drones, automatic firing at all nonsignal identified craft . . . cost of equipping terrestrial craft with identification beacons . . . two thousand atmosphere beacons . . . 256 Mark 50 combat fighters . . . four hundred fly-away, antipersonnel tanks . . . seven thousand antipersonnel road barricades . . . one hundred city cable defenses with retractable gates . . . fifty heat/color search drones . . . fifty automatic target destroy surface drones. . . .”
They were finished. The newer one snapped off the thread at the ring and tapped it at the end, and with a little pop! the thread expanded into a long sheet of paper like a tape. He gave it a small flick and it landed in front of the original small gray man. He picked it up, scanned the figures on it, and then looked at the end.
“With spare parts and freight,” he said, “it comes to C500,962,878,431 at two parts in eleven annual interest rate, plus an estimated C285,000,006 annual military and maintenance personnel salaries, housing and equipage.”
He tossed the long tape across the table to Jonnie and concluded, “There it is. An efficient and economical planetary defense system. All top-of-the-line merchandise. Good for a hundred years. That’s the sort of thing you should have had! And you can still have it!”
That was C498,960,878,431 more than Earth had! It had made him realize how broke Earth was. Now was the time to find out more about these two. “I surely appreciate your information. If you will excuse me, what are you two gentlemen? Arms salesmen?”
He might as well have dropped a bomb on them, they looked so startled! Then they looked at each other and both of them laughed.
“Oh, I am so sorry,” said the original small gray man. “It is so terribly impolite of us. You see, we are quite well known in our respective areas. And we know so much about you, in fact, know you so well, that it just never occurred to us that we never introduced ourselves!
“I am His Excellency Dries Gloton. And I am very pleased to meet you, Sir Lord Jonnie Tyler.”
Jonnie shook his hand. It was a dry hand, quite rough.
“And this,” said His Excellency, “is Lord Voraz. Lord Voraz, Sir Lord Jonnie Tyler.”
Jonnie shook his dry, rough hand and said, “It is really just Jonnie Tyler, Your Lordship. I have no titles.”
“We choose to doubt that,” said Lord Voraz.
His Excellency said, “Lord Voraz is the Central Director, Chief Executive Officer and Overlord of the Galactic Bank.”
Jonnie blinked but bowed.
Lord Voraz said, “Dries here likes to call himself the chief collections executive but it is a sort of bank joke. He is actually the branch manager of the Galactic Bank for this sector. You might have noticed a time or two that I stepped on his toes accidentally. A branch manager has total authority for his sector and is a bit jealous of his prerogatives.” He laughed, teasing his junior. “Your planet comes in his sector and dealings about it are entirely up to him. He’s the one who has to show a profit for his area. Now I, I am simply here because the emissaries have met. These are very troubled—”
Dries Gloton cut him off sharply. “His Lordship can’t be expected to know all the ins and outs of sector business. He does very well to keep up with universes.”
Lord Voraz laughed again, “Oh, dear, I am really sorry we worried you. Why, we have been looking—”
Dries cut him off again, “We’re just here to help, Sir Lord Jonnie. By the way, would you like to start an account? A personal account?” He was fishing in his pockets for the materials. “We can give you a very low number and absolute confidence assured.”
Suddenly Jonnie realized that he had no money. Not just no money in his pockets. He didn’t have and never had had any money at all. He’d even given the gold coin away. He thought maybe he got pilot pay that was given to Chrissie, but he had never seen it. He steered off apprehensive thoughts of Chrissie quickly. He had better keep his mind on this talk. But he was broke. Penniless.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Perhaps later if I ever get any money to deposit.”
The two gave each other a quick look. But Dries said, “Well, just remember, we’re not enemies of yours.”
“I think you would be very bad to have as enemies,” said Jonnie, still fishing. “That fleet wouldn’t go away until you talked to Snowl.”
“Oh, that!” said Dries Gloton. “The Galactic Bank has lots of services for its customers. What you saw there was just notarial services. They needed a radio notary code trace to attest and verify that it was a valid conference order. He wouldn’t take their word, of course. They trust the bank.”
“Was calling the emissaries here a bank service, too?” said Jonnie.
“Well, no,” began Lord Voraz.
“You could call it so, if you like,” said Dries. “For sometimes such a conference is arranged as a service. It’s in the interest of the Galactic Bank to have civilized planets do business together smoothly.”
Jonnie was not at all satisfied, but he put an easy face on it. “These emissaries do seem to obey you, though. They call you ‘Your Excellency’ and they call Lord Voraz ‘His Worship.’ What do you do if they don’t obey you? You know, not come to the conference or do what you say.”
The thought shocked Lord Voraz. Before Dries Gloton could stop him, he said, “Unthinkable! Why, the bank would call in their loans, shut off their credit. Their economies would shatter. They would go bankrupt. Their whole planet could be sold right out from under them. Oh, they would think several times before—”
Dries finally got his attention and shut him off. “Now, Your Worship,” he said softly, “I know you feel strongly about these matters, but we must remember that this is my sector and things that concern this planet are my worry. Forgive me. I think possibly Sir Lord Jonnie doesn’t really know too much about the Galactic Bank. We haven’t reprinted the information leaflets for ages. Would you like to know more about it, Sir Lord Jonnie?”
Jonnie definitely would. He privately had become very alert about “the whole planet could be sold right out from under them.”
4
Chong-won poured more tea.
“You mustn’t get the impression we are violent people,” said Dries, taking a large swallow from a bowl.
Just powerful and deadly, Jonnie thought.
“Our race is called the ‘Selachee,’” continued Dries. “We are indigenous to the only three habitable planets of the Gredides System. The planets are mostly water—nine surface parts of water to only two parts of land on the average. And we have only banking as our industry.”
He smiled and drank more tea. “We’re ideal bankers. We can eat anything, drink anything, breathe almost any atmosphere, live on almost any gravity. By tribal mores, we worship total honesty and the righteousness of obligation.”
Jonnie thought that was probably true, but he also thought they were not telling all they knew and especially what they intended to do. “Honesty” might not include the whole truth, and there might be some real
clues here as to what was going on. He smiled politely and listened closely.
“We have about five billion inhabitants on each planet,” continued Dries, “and it is quite a busy population. Although mostly devoted to banking, we have, of course, our engineers and specialists and, naturally, lots of mathematicians. Nearly five hundred thousand years ago we developed space flight. That’s about the right figure, isn’t it, Your Worship?”
Lord Voraz was still a bit out of sorts at the idea of planets going back on obligations. But he put a good, professional banking face on it. “Four hundred ninety-seven thousand, four hundred thirty-two years this coming sidereal Day 103 for this universe,” he said.
“Thank you,” said Dries, having gotten His Worship back into the discourse. “And three hundred two thousand years ago—”
“Three hundred two thousand three,” said Lord Voraz.
“Thank you. . . . We ran into the Psychlos! Now, don’t be alarmed. We were not conquered. We didn’t even fight a war. In those days the Psychlos were not as bad as they became about a hundred thousand years later. In that time, they had not begun killing for the love of it—I’m sure I don’t have to go on to you about Psychlos.”
“No indeed!” said Jonnie. This was all going somewhere that was going to wind up as bad news. He could feel it despite their smiles.
“Precisely,” said Dries. “Where was I? Anyway—and this will amuse you—they were not interested in us really, for we did not have any metals to amount to anything. Being mostly water, our planets would have presented formidable mining problems.
“We needed metals and the Psychlos needed some computer technology we had, and so we became a market. This was something brand-new in Psychlo experience. They had a lot to learn about finance and that sort of thing. So we taught them.
“Internally, they were pretty bad off. They breed like . . . what’s some fish of this planet you’d know . . . like herrings! They have always been terrified of founding actual Psychlo colonies for fear they’d rise and revolt against the home planet. They had mobs and unemployment. Heavy, heavy depressions. They were an economic mess.
“So we helped them build markets for metals. With their teleportation shipping arrangements, it was very easy for them to do this. They became prosperous and developed even more ways to mine and we saw to it they were economically stable.
“Then suddenly, from the Psychlo viewpoint, an awful thing happened. It terrified them. That was about two hundred thousand years ago.”
“Two hundred nine thousand, four hundred sixty-two,” corrected Lord Voraz.
“Thank you. Another race stole or invented teleportation!”
“The Boxnards, Universe Six,” said Lord Voraz.
“It is unclear what happened then,” said Dries. “We don’t always have access to military files and we never had access to these, not ever. But I think the Boxnards tried to put teleportation to military use. The Psychlos got there first and the entire seven planets of the Boxnards and every single Boxnard were wiped out. It took the Psychlos years.”
“Three years and sixteen days,” said Lord Voraz.
“They even slaughtered people and races which had been associated with or allied with the Boxnards, for we never afterward found any trace of them.”
“That war,” said Dries, “also seemed to change the Psychlos. For nearly half a century they all but cut contact with other worlds. It was a bad time for us as well. Our economy was wrapped up in their concerns. They also must have engaged in some internal slaughter because the next records we have show their own population to have decreased by six-elevenths.
“It took another century for the Psychlos to become busy again. But they were a very changed people.”
Aha, thought Jonnie. I have the time they began to use those capsules in baby Psychlos’ heads! And why. To protect their teleportation technology and mathematics.
“They had burned all their books,” said Dries. “They had lost any aesthetic arts they had had. You can tell from their dictionaries that the language they had accumulated over the ages ceased to be in full use. They dropped words like compassion or pity and it even seemed they had dropped the term good sense.
“Although we refer to them now as ‘Psychlos,’ that name didn’t come into use until that time. Previously they called themselves after whatever king might chance to be on the imperial throne.
“Anyway, not to bore you, for I see you know something of this, the ensuing centuries were very, very bad for everyone, especially the Psychlos. They built a reputation of being the cruelest, most sadistic oppressors any universe had ever seen.
“But they were in internal trouble. Their population was bursting. They were in economic chaos. They were nine parts in eleven unemployed. The royal house was terrified of revolution and as a matter of fact, experienced, I think, four assassinations of princes—”
“Seven,” said Lord Voraz. “And two queens.”
“Thank you,” continued Dries. “And in total desperation, they came to the Gredides and actually begged the Selachees for help. They wanted money to hire soldiers and buy arms. But our parliament, the Creditable Body, along with every other race in sixteen universes, wanted nothing to do with them and it looked like outright war. But somebody in the Creditable Body—”
“Lord Finister,” said Lord Voraz.
“Thank you. Had the good sense to turn them over to us. We were as big a bank then. The current head of it—”
“Lord Loonger,” said Lord Voraz.
“Thank you. Brought them to the bargaining table and really got them on the signature line! The bank would handle all economic connections they had with other races, handle all transfers of Psychlo funds, handle all peace conferences. And in return every Selachee would be held inviolate, the Selachee planets and the Gredides System were totally hands off, and the Psychlos would furnish teleportation facilities throughout the universes for the bank. They signed, they got their money, they stabilized.”
Lord Voraz spoke up, “The only two times they ever sought to violate those agreements, they went into a nose-dive splash and they hastily reformed at once.”
“So there,” said Dries Gloton, “you have the whole background of the Galactic Bank. We call it ‘Galactic,’ you know, even though it should be ‘Pan-Galactic,’ covering sixteen universes as it does. But ‘Galactic’ makes customers look on it as their galaxy’s bank. More neighborly, don’t you think?”
What Jonnie thought was that he was dealing with an outfit more powerful than the Psychlos. With the galactic organization that could give orders to monsters and be obeyed. He was very alert. There was trouble here somewhere.
“Then possibly,” said Jonnie, “you want to talk with the government here about teleportation service.”
Dries and Lord Voraz looked at each other and then back at Jonnie.
“Not with the government,” said Lord Voraz. “I doubt it owns any of that. Teleportation would be quite another subject and really we aren’t engaged in having a talk to arrange a talk about it just now. You see, there is space travel. It is slow and time consuming, but it does exist.”
Jonnie felt he was not saying everything, but he wouldn’t push that. It evidently wasn’t where the danger lay—for certainly it lay someplace! He could feel it. He sat easily and said, “Maybe it’s about the payment of fees for this conference. They might be much larger than we had anticipated.”
“Oh, heavens, no!” scoffed Dries. And he went to work with a ring he wore. The fingers flew, a thread came out and popped into an expanded tape, and he looked at it. “Negligible. The fees vary for emissaries because their governments vary in size and even pay them differently. But they only add up to about C85,000—it could, of course, be more if they delay. But not much. The bank fee is standard: only C25,000. There is of course the matter of my yacht—”
“The bank,” said Lord Voraz, “pays the space yacht expenses when he uses it on bank business. I think it would be fair, Dries, for
you to charge up all the months you searched—”
Dries cut him off sharply. “The yacht would only be charged from the Batafor planet of Balor—that’s the Galactic Bank branch office for this sector,” he added for Jonnie’s benefit. “It’s a Hawvin planet. They’re not such bad people really. Honest enough individually. So call it C60,000. The total is only around C170,000.”
They had that much, thought Jonnie.
But Dries was hesitating. “We’re not entirely sure yet that you would get this bill. It sort of depends on the outcome of the conference.”
Something here, Jonnie told himself. He was now getting a finger on it.
5
They looked at Jonnie with their heavy-lidded eyes. They were very serious now.
His Excellency Dries Gloton leaned forward. “It’s a question of clear title. The bank would never have anything to do with a clouded title.”
“Never!” said Lord Voraz.
“The whole reputation of the bank, indeed, the racial reputation of the Selachees,” said Dries, “is based on absolute honesty and impeccable legality.”
“Always legal,” said Lord Voraz. “It would be our ruin if we ever did anything illegal. We never bend rules. That’s why uncounted quintillions of people trust us.”
Jonnie was not among those quintillions of people. There was something cold, hard and horrible here. “Perhaps you had better explain further,” said Jonnie. “If I am to arrange a meeting for you, I really have to know the background of what will be taken up.”
Dries leaned back. “Ah, well. That’s true. Where shall I begin? Well, the point of discovery of this planet is a good place.
“The sixteenth universe,” he continued, “was the last one to be discovered, possibly less than twenty thousand years ago. It was never wholly mapped. The Psychlo imperial government introduced probes into it to do further charting but for a very long time they found nothing new.