Gladiator-At-Law

Chapter Twenty-Six

They celebrated that night in Belly Rave—there seemed no more fitting place. It was quiet but prideful. They had won, all of them together. And they all of them owned the biggest concentration of power the world Lad ever seen. Even now, they didn't know the full extent of their holdings. Mundin and Norvie had made a laborious computation of their G.M.L. holdings—nearly seventy per cent. All of their own stock back, and probably Coett's and Nelson's and enough more to mean that they had dipped into the Green, Charlesworth reserves. But, wherever it came from, enough.

Enough to make the Lavin House—no longer the G.M.L. Home—what Lavin had meant it to be.

"Belt Transport Common B," sang out Hubble, "two hundred fifty shares." Don Lavin scouted through his lists, made a mark, called:

"Check."

Hubble carefully laid away the voucher and picked up another. "National Nonferrous—hey, that's Nelson! National Nonferrous, fifteen hundred shares." He scratched his head. "Did I buy those? Well, no matter. Tioga Point Kewpie Corporation—wait a minute." He stared at the Exchange's voucher. "Anybody here ever hear of a Tioga Point Kewpie Corporation? We seem to have picked up a controlling interest. Got Poore's around, Mundin?" Nobody had ever heard of it. Hubble shrugged, made a paper plane of the voucher and sailed it to Lana. "Here, kid. Looks like a doll factory. Yours."

Lana looked startled, then belligerent, then lost. She picked up the voucher and stared at it. "Dolls," she said, wonderingly.

Hubble threw the rest of the vouchers in his briefcase and slapped Don Lavin on the shoulder. "Hell with it. We'll finish tomorrow. It isn't exactly a balanced portfolio but—" his face was oddly young and eager when he smiled "—we put it together in kind of a hurry. Anyway, it looks like we own a little bit of everything."

"We'll need it," said Norma, nestled against Mundin's arm. "Those old monsters in their glass bottles. . . ."

Mundin patted her hand. "I don't know," he said, after a moment. "They're as good as dead, you know. They didn't have anything to live for but power, and when we broke the market we took that away from them. We—"

He stopped. The house shivered and sang. A white flash of light sprang up outside, turned orange and faded away.

"What's that?" demanded Norvie Bligh, a protective arm around his wife.

No one knew; and they all ran up to the battered second floor, where there was a window with glass—where there used to be a window with glass, they found. The glass was in shards across the floor.

Across the slaggy bay, luminous even in the evening light, where Old New York had stood and rotted—a mushroom-shaped cloud.

"Green, Charlesworth," mused Norvell. "I guess you weren't the only one who realized they were as good as dead, Charles."

They stood there for a long moment, watching the cloud drift out to sea, an insubstantial monument to the suicide of the Struldbrugs, but the only monument they would ever have. . . .

"We'd better get below," said Mundin. "We've got cleaning up to do."