Easly paused to blow some smoke rings, then he turned to Jo. “That’s when he decided to kill her.”
She yawned. “’Sabout time.”
“His plan was very tight, very simple, and very workable. He borrowed a gambling buddy’s flitter, made a copy of the by-pass key. Knorran flitters use a thumbprint for ignition, but everyone keeps a by-pass key in case someone else has to drive it. He arranged to have this buddy meet him in the city for a night at the tables. At one point during the evening, he intended to excuse himself from the room, run for the casino roof, and roar off in his friend’s flitter. With his running lights out, he’d land in the dark backyard of his home, go inside, kill Marcy, grab some valuables, then race back to the casino. He’d have an alibi: he was at the casino all night; the roof attendant would truthfully say that the Jackson flitter never left its dock; and the crime was obviously a, robbery-homicide.
“Not a perfect plan, but as I said: tight, simple, workable.”
“But it obviously didn’t work,” Jo said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be telling me all about it.”
“Right. But it almost worked. He came in the house and grabbed a vibe-knife from the kitchen and called for Marcy. She was on the upper level and asked him why he was home so early. As he rode the float-chute up, he said he got bored with the games and decided to come home. She was wearing only a filmy robe and her back was to him as he walked into the bedroom. Without hesitation, he spun her around and plunged the vibe-knife into the middle of her chest. Its oscillating edges sliced through cloth, skin, bone, cartilage and heart muscle without the slightest difficulty; and Marcy Jackson, nee Blake, died with a strangled, gurgling sound.
“It was probably just then that Eddy noted an odor in the room; and his olfactory sense was probably just about to label it for him when he heard a voice behind him.
“‘You killed her!’ it said in a shocked whisper.
“Eddy spun around to see the rookie cop – the one he had tipped to keep an eye on the place – emerging from behind a drape. He was half-dressed; there was a half-smoked cigar in his left hand, and a blaster pistol in his right. The last thing Eddy saw before he died was a searing white light at the tip of the blaster barrel.”
“Cute,” Jo said in an unenthusiastic tone. “But hardly original. Especially that part about hiding behind the drape.”
“Where would you have hidden in his place?”
Jo shrugged. “Whatever happened to this rookie?”
“He got in a lot of trouble. At first he tried to tell his superiors that he’d heard Marcy scream and went in to investigate, but soon the history of his detours into the Jackson home whenever Eddy was out and things on the beat got slow came to light, and he finally told the whole story.”
Jo suddenly became interested in the rookie. She sat up and faced Easly. “What’d they do to this cigar-smoking character?”
“Oh, not much. A trial would have been an embarrassment to the force; and, they rationalized, even though he shouldn’t have been in the Jackson home at all, he was on duty at the time he blasted the murderer. The conundrum was finally resolved when it was decided that the best thing the rookie could do was resign from the force and set up future residence on a planet other than Knorr. Which is just what he did.”
“Tell me something,” Jo said. “Why is it you named only two of the characters in the triangle? Why does the rookie remain nameless?”
“His name isn’t important, just the fact that he was a young, inexperienced rookie who foolishly allowed himself to get involved in a compromising situation.”
“How come you know so much about him?”
Easly puffed on his cigar: “Professional interest.”
“And where is this rookie now?”
“Speaking of professional interest,” Easly said with a quick cough, simultaneously shifting his body position and the subject of conversation, “how’re you getting along with Old Pete?”
“Why do you ask?”
“You don’t trust him – I can tell.”
“You’re right. And as days go by, I trust him less and less. Remember that autopsy report on my father I told you about – the one with the blank area?”
Easly nodded. “Sure.”
“Well, I contacted the Jebinose Bureau of Records and their copy is incomplete, too.”
“Maybe it’s just a clerical error. Things like that do happen, you know. There wasn’t anything of consequence missing, right?”
“No. Just the analysis of the urogenital system. But I checked the company records and found vouchers for Old Pete’s trip to Jebinose after the murder. He was there about the time the report was filed. And when he tells me he can’t explain that blank area, I don’t believe him. I have this feeling he’s hiding something.”
Easly chewed on the end of his cigar for a moment, then: “Tell you what, since you got nowhere with Haas, why don’t I send someone to Jebinose to investigate deBloise’s background. And while he’s there he can check into this autopsy report.”
Jo bolted upright in the bed. “Jebinose? What has deBloise got to do with Jebinose?”
“It’s his homeworld.”
“Jebinose?” She pressed her palms against her temples. “I knew he represented that sector, but I never realized that was his homeworld!”
“I thought everybody knew that.”
“I’ve never had much interest in where politicos come from, who they are, or what games they play.” She lowered her hands and turned narrowed eyes upon Easly. “Until now. Larry, I want you to go to Jebinose yourself. Dig into deBloise’s past for whatever you can find. And while you’re there, dig up whatever you can on the death of one Joseph Finch, Jr.”
Josephine Finch had just become personally involved in Old Pete’s conspiracy theory.
Jo
JO SAT BEHIND HER DESK and thought about rats. Or tried to. She had just completed a short meeting with Sam Orzechowski, the man with the trained space rats, and had informed him that she’d only found partial backing for him. He’d seemed disappointed but was willing to keep on waiting. He had no choice, really: IBA was the first company to take him seriously since he had come up with his rat control method years ago. But Jo felt she should have been able to do more for him by now… if only this warp gate affair would get out of her mind and let her get back to work.
She expected Old Pete momentarily. He’d said he wanted to see her – something about planning the next step. He was so persistent on deBloise. She had tried to drop the subject and let it go as a foolish gamble on the politician’s part, but Old Pete wouldn’t let her. And even if he had, the problem would have stayed with her.
It was that damn recording from the Restructurists’ conference room. It raised too many questions that wouldn’t let the problem go away. Besides… deBloise was from Jebinose.
Old Pete strolled in. “What’s new?” he asked, sliding into a chair. He always said that, even if he’d seen you only a few hours before. It was his way of saying hello.
“Nothing,” she said. That incomplete autopsy report still bothered her.
“I was afraid you’d say that. Looks like we don’t know much more now than we did at the start.”
“Not true,” Jo replied. “We now know who Haas is and we know that he’s developed something that will eventually revolutionize interstellar travel. We also know that Elson deBloise and the Restructurist inner circle have placed a huge sum behind Haas and the warp gate.”
Old Pete’s smile was grim. “And we can be certain that the motives behind their actions are purely political. In my years of study of deBloise’s life, I’ve yet to find any action on his part that was not designed to further his career and increase his political power. His mind is homed in on one goal and he allows nothing to sway him from pursuit of it. Nothing!”
“That leaves us with the obvious conclusion that there’s a political plot connected with the Haas warp gate.”
“Which is right back where we started,
” he grunted.
“But the way they’re going about it, they must know that the gate will be driven off the market before Haas can perfect the improvements that will make it economically viable.”
“And if Haas means what he says – and I believe he’s absolutely sincere about withdrawing the gate permanently from the market if it fails commercially – we’ll have lost the greatest boon to interstellar travel since the original warp field was developed back on old Earth.”
Jo leaned forward and rested her chin on folded hands. “You know, I have this horrible suspicion that they want the gate to be a commercial failure, that they know Haas will withdraw it from the market then, and it will be lost to us until the patents run out or somebody else figures out a different way to get the same result.”
“I can’t see the sense in that at all.”
“Why else would they be encouraging Haas to rush the gate to market?”
“Don’t know. Maybe there is something to that remark about military contracts. Maybe deBloise has cooked up something with one or two of the higher-ups in the Fed Defense Force.”
“A military coup?”
“No.” Old Pete sighed. “That’s patently ridiculous, I know. But the military could be involved just the same.”
Jo shook her head slowly, confidently. “The military’s not involved.”
“I suppose you’re right,” he admitted. “The gate could be of tremendous value in a war, but there is no war. I mean, who’re we going to fight? The Tarks?”
“You never know.” Her tone was serious.
“Don’t be silly, Jo,” he laughed. “We may not be on the best terms with the Tarks – as a matter of fact, we’ve never been on good terms with those scoundrels – but there’s no such thing as a war in sight, despite the wails of the more panicky members of the Fed Assembly. And don’t go thinking of the Tarks as a potential market for the gate, either. They’ll buy one as a model, then pirate the design and build their own. The Tarks are a blind alley, I’m afraid.”
“Perhaps you’re right. Anyway, on the deBloise end, I sent Larry to Jebinose to do some direct investigation on him. And while he’s there, I told him to look into my father’s death.”
She watched Old Pete’s face closely for a reaction. She saw surprise and… was it fear?
“Why Jebinose?” he said, the words coming in a rush. “I thought you’d send him to Fed Central. That’s where all deBloise’s machinations take place.”
“Maybe he’s more careless at home.”
Old Pete suddenly seemed anxious to leave the room. “Let me know the very instant he turns up anything.”
“Oh, you can count on that,” Jo replied in a low voice as the door closed behind him. She’d never seen Old Pete so upset. What secret lay dormant on Jebinose that he feared disturbing?
Never mind that now. Larry would find out. Right now another part of her brain was screaming for attention. Something Old Pete had said before had closed a circuit… something about a war with the Tarks when they were talking about Haas and his –
She leaped to her feet and began to pace the floor. She knew deBloise’s plan. All the pieces that hadn’t seemed to fit had suddenly fallen together. And the Tarks were the key. Old Pete’s reference to them had brought a vast conspiratorial vista into sharp focus and Jo was struck by the genius and delicacy and deviousness of what she saw. She was terrified, too.
The entire interstellar free market was threatened.
She pressed a stud on her desktop. “Find Bill Grange – tell him to drop whatever he’s doing and get up to my office immediately!”
The market. To some people it was the place where stocks and bonds were traded; to others it was the local food store. But these formed only a minuscule part of the market. For the market was life itself, and the free market was free life, the active expression of volitional existence. It was billions of billions of daily transactions: the purchase of a loaf of bread, the selling of an asteroid mining firm along with all its equipment and planetoid leases; every interaction and transaction – be it social, moral, or monetary-between every sentient being in Occupied Space added to its endless flux and flow.
The free market was neither good nor evil, selfish nor generous, moral nor immoral. It was the place where rational minds met for a free exchange of goods, services, ideas. It played no favorites and bore no grudges. It had its own ecology, regulated by the inexorable laws of supply and demand, which were in turn determined by the day-to-day activities of every intelligent creature who interacted with another intelligent creature. If demand for a species of product or service dried up, that species became extinct. When new demands arose, new species sprung into being to satisfy them.
The market’s urge toward a balanced ecology was indomitable. It could be warped, skewed, stretched, contracted, puffed up, and deflated by those who wanted to control it, and thereby control its participants; but not for too long. It always sought and found its own level. And if manipulators – invariably governmental – prevented it from finding its true level for too long, a great mass of people suffered when it finally burst through the dams erected against it.
LaNague had taught the outworlds that bitter lesson. But three hundred years had passed since then and it was quite possible that history was ready to set the stage for a repeat performance. The Restructurists were fortunate to have a remarkable man such as Elson deBloise at their head in their drive for control of the Federation and, from there, control of the market.
But the market had Josephine Finch. The market was inviolate as far as she was concerned. It was an integral part of human existence, especially Jo’s existence. Her professional life was spent in taking the pulse and prognosticating the course of the market and she would do her best to see that no one meddled with it.
Right now, the only way she could see to put a stop to deBloise was to cripple Star Ways, the biggest interstellar conglomerate in Occupied Space. Hardly a realistic option, but it was all she had.
Bill Grange was IBA’s resident expert on Star Ways and his knowledge would be a critical factor in Jo’s plan. Of course, it would save her an intolerably large amount of time and effort if she could go up to someone in charge of Star Ways and tell him that a monstrous political plot was afoot and that his company was going to be used as a scapegoat. But you couldn’t do that with a conglomerate, you couldn’t deal person-to-person with it. So Jo would have to induce co-operation from Star Ways; she’d have to jab at it, stab at it, slice away at its appendages until it was forced to do her bidding. And she’d relish every minute of it.
For there was no love lost between Josephine Finch and the interstellar conglomerates. They disturbed her sense of fair play. It was not that they broke any of the rules of the free market – they sold to those who wanted to buy and bought from those who wished to sell. But there was something about them that… offended her.
The conglomerates were faceless monoliths. Nobody seemed to be in charge. There were boards of directors and committees all composed of people; they hired and directed the work of other people; products were turned out which were sold to still other people. Human beings were intimately involved in every function of the conglomerates, yet the final result was a structure devoid of all human qualities. It became a blind, impersonal leviathan lumbering through the market, obliterating anything that got in its way – not through technical skill or marketing expertise, but through sheer size.
And it was not size itself that Jo found offensive, although that was part of the problem. Despite the fact that people made all the decisions for them, their huge size prevented their humanity from showing through. Smaller companies each seemed to have their own personality. Conglomerates strode through the market, the testing ground for all human endeavor, like giant automatons.
Yes, they were huge, and their size and diversification inured them and insulated them from immediate changes in the market. But no insulation is perfect. The conglomerates were not invincible. If
a subsidiary company was ailing, there was a great financial pool from which it could draw. But there were limits to any pool. And if more than one subsidiary were in trouble…
Leviathan could be wounded and caused to retreat if attacked at multiple vulnerable sites.
Jo only hoped that Star Ways had a few vulnerable sites.
The door opened and Bill Grange walked through. He was tall, gaunt, graying, fifty-four years old – he liked to say that he and IBA had been born the same year. He had been with the firm nearly a decade when Joe, Sr., died and had stayed on through all the turmoil that followed. He had been neither for nor against Josephine when she took over IBA; all he wanted was someone in charge who could get the company going again. If she could do it, he was all for her. If she loused it up, he’d walk. As it stood now, there wasn’t much he wouldn’t do for Josephine Finch.
“Something wrong, Jo? The message sounded urgent.”
“I need some information on Star Ways,” she said, taking her place behind the desk again, “and I need it now.”
Grange visibly relaxed at this statement and took a seat. He probably knew more about Star Ways than many of its board members. He knew it from dealing with it on a daily basis in the current market, and he knew it from a historical perspective. The conglomerate was centuries old, born in a small company on old Earth celled Helene Technical, which happened to develop the first commercial interstellar warp unit. The old name was quickly scrapped for the more picturesque Star Ways, and the new company severed its ties with Earth, relocating on the planet Tarvodet – a tiny world but one that afforded mammoth tax advantages.
It became a huge, successful corporation. Through imaginative marketing, tricky financial maneuvers, and the old tried-and-true business practice of hiring the best and making it worth their while to stay on, SW moved into other fields, buying up subsidiary companies and becoming the first interstellar conglomerate. Other conglomerates had developed since, but Star Ways Corporation was still the largest.