Starman's Quest

Chapter Six

“I GUESS I owe you thanks,” Alan said. “If they had hauled me off I’d be in real trouble.”

Hawkes nodded. “They’re very quick to lock people up when they don’t have work cards. But police salaries are notoriously low. A five-credit bill slipped to the right man at the right time can work wonders.”

“Five credits, was it? Here—”

Alan started to fumble in his pocket, but Hawkes checked him with a wave of his hand. “Never mind. I’ll write it off to profit and loss. What’s your name, spacer, and what brings you to York City?”

“I’m Alan Donnell, of the starship Valhalla. I’m an Unspecialized Crewman. I came over from the Enclave to look for my brother.”

Hawkes’ lean face assumed an expression of deep interest. “He’s a starman too?”

“He—was.”

“Was?”

“He jumped ship last time we were here. That was nine years ago Earthtime. I’d like to find him, though. Even though he’s so much older now.”

“How old is he now?”

“Twenty-six. I’m seventeen. We used to be twins, you see. But the Contraction—you understand about the Contraction, don’t you?”

Hawkes nodded thoughtfully, eyes half-closed. “Mmm—yes, I follow you. While you made your last space jump he grew old on Earth. And you want to find him and put him back on your ship, is that it?”

“That’s right. Or at least talk to him and find out if he’s all right where he is. But I don’t know where to start looking. This city is so big—and there are so many other cities all over Earth—”

Hawkes shook his head. “You’ve come to the right one. The Central Directory Matrix is here. You’ll be able to find out where he’s registered by the code number on his work card. Unless,” Hawkes said speculatively, “he doesn’t have a work card. Then you’re in trouble.”

“Isn’t everyone supposed to have a work card?”

“I don’t,” Hawkes said.

“But—”

“You need a work card to hold a job. But to get a job, you have to pass guild exams. And in order to take the exams you have to find a sponsor who’s already in the guild. But you have to post bond for your sponsor, too—five thousand credits. And unless you have the work card and have been working, you don’t have the five thousand, so you can’t post bond and get a work card. See? Round and round.”

Alan’s head swam. “Is that what they meant when they said I was unrotational?”

“No, that’s something else. I’ll get to that in a second. But you see the work setup? The guilds are virtually hereditary, even the fruit venders’ guild. It’s next to impossible for a newcomer to crack into a guild—and it’s pretty tough for a man in one guild to move up a notch. You see, Earth’s a terribly overcrowded planet—and the only way to avoid cutthroat job competition is to make sure it’s tough to get a job. It’s rough on a starman trying to bull his way into the system.”

“You mean Steve may not have gotten a work card? In that case how will I be able to find him?”

“It’s harder,” Hawkes said. “But there’s also a registry of Free Status men—men without cards. He isn’t required to register there, but if he did you’d be able to track him down eventually. If he didn’t, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. You just can’t find a man on Earth if he doesn’t want to be found.”

“Free Status? Isn’t that what the policeman said—”

“I was in?” Hawkes nodded. “Sure, I’m Free Status. Out of choice, though, not necessity. But that doesn’t matter much right now. Let’s go over to the Central Directory Matrix Building and see if we can find any trail for your brother.”

They rose. Alan saw that Hawkes was tall, like himself; he walked with easygoing grace. Questioningly Alan twitched his shoulder-blade in a signal that meant, What do you think of this guy, Rat?

Stick with him, Rat signalled back. He sounds okay.

The streets seemed a great deal less terrifying now that Alan had a companion, someone who knew his way around. He didn’t have the feeling that all eyes were on him, any more; he was just one of the crowd. It was good to have Hawkes at his side, even if he didn’t fully trust the older man.

“The Directory Building’s way across town,” Hawkes said. “We can’t walk it. Undertube or Overshoot?”

“What?”

“I said, do you want to take the Undertube or the Overshoot? Or doesn’t it matter to you what kind of transportation we take?”

Alan shrugged. “One’s as good as any other.”

Hawkes fished a coin out of his pocket and tossed it up. “Heads for Overshoot,” he said, and caught the coin on the back of his left hand. He peered at it. “Heads it is. We take the Overshoot. This way.”

They ducked into the lobby of the nearest building and took the elevator to the top floor. Hawkes stopped a man in a blue uniform and said, “Where’s the nearest Shoot pickup?”

“Take the North Corridor bridge across to the next building. The pickup’s there.”

“Right.”

Hawkes led the way down the corridor, up a staircase, and through a door. With sudden alarm Alan found himself on one of the bridges linking the skyscrapers. The bridge was no more than a ribbon of plastic with handholds at each side; it swayed gently in the breeze.

“You better not look down,” Hawkes said. “It’s fifty stories to the bottom.”

Alan kept his eyes stiffly forward. There was a good-sized crowd gathered on the top of the adjoining building, and he saw a metal platform of some kind.

A vender came up to them. Alan thought he might be selling tickets, but instead he held forth a tray of soft drinks. Hawkes bought one; Alan started to say he didn’t want one when he felt a sharp kick in his ankle, and he hurriedly changed his mind and produced a coin.

When the vender was gone, Hawkes said, “Remind me to explain rotation to you when we get aboard the Shoot. And here it comes now.”

Alan turned and saw a silvery torpedo come whistling through the air and settle in the landing-rack of the platform; it looked like a jet-powered vessel of some kind. A line formed, and Hawkes stuffed a ticket into Alan’s hand.

“I have a month’s supply of them,” he explained. “It’s cheaper that way.”

They found a pair of seats together and strapped themselves in. With a roar and a hiss the Overshoot blasted away from the landing platform, and almost immediately came to rest on another building some distance away.

“We’ve just travelled about half a mile,” Hawkes said. “This ship really moves.”

A jet-propelled omnibus that travelled over the roofs of the buildings, Alan thought. Clever. He said, “Isn’t there any public surface transportation in the city?”

“Nope. It was all banned about fifty years ago, on account of the congestion. Taxis and everything. You can still use a private car in some parts of the city, of course, but the only people who own them are those who like to impress their neighbors. Most of us take the Undertube or the Overshoot to get around.”

The Shoot blasted off from its third stop and picked up passengers at its fourth. Alan glanced up front and saw the pilot peering over an elaborate radar setup.

“Westbound Shoots travel a hundred feet over the roof-tops, eastbound ones two hundred. There hasn’t been a major accident in years. But about this rotation—that’s part of our new economic plan.”

“Which is?”

“Keep the money moving! Saving’s discouraged. Spending’s the thing now. The guilds are really pushing it. Instead of buying one piece of fruit from a vender, buy two. Spend, spend, spend! It’s a little tough on the people in Free Status—we don’t offer anything for sale, so we don’t benefit much—but we don’t amount to one per cent of the population, so who cares about us?”

“You mean it’s sort of subversive not to spend money, is that it?” Alan asked.

Hawkes nodded. “You get in trouble if you’re too openly penny-pinching. Keep the credits flowing; that’s the way to be popular around here.”

That had been his original mistake, Alan thought. He saw he had a lot to learn about this strange, unfriendly world if he were going to stay here long. He wondered if anyone had missed him back at the Enclave, yet. Maybe it won’t take too long to find Steve, he thought. I should have left a note for Dad explaining I’d be back. But—

“Here we are,” Hawkes said, nudging him. The door in the Overshoot’s side opened and they got out quickly. They were on another rooftop.

Ten minutes later they stood outside an immense building whose walls were sleek slabs of green pellucite, shining with a radiant inner warmth of their own. The building must have been a hundred stories high, or more. It terminated in a burnished spire.

“This is it,” Hawkes said. “The Central Directory Building. We’ll try the Standard Matrix first.”

A little dizzy, Alan followed without discussing the matter. Hawkes led him through a vast lobby big enough to hide the Valhalla in, past throngs of Earthers, into a huge hall lined on all sides by computer banks.

“Let’s take this booth here,” Hawkes suggested. They stepped into it; the door clicked shut automatically behind them. There was a row of blank forms in a metal rack against the inside of the door.

Hawkes pulled one out. Alan looked at it. It said, CENTRAL DIRECTORY MATRIX INFORMATION REQUISITION 1067432. STANDARD SERIES.

Hawkes took a pen from the rack. “We have to fill this out. What’s your brother’s full name?”

“Steve Donnell.” He spelled it.

“Year of birth?”

Alan paused. “3576,” he said finally.

Hawkes frowned, but wrote it down that way.

“Work card number—well, we don’t know that. And they want five or six other numbers too. We’ll just have to skip them. Better give me a full physical description as of the last time you saw him.”

Alan thought a moment. “He looked pretty much like me. Height 73 inches, weight 172 or so, reddish-blonde hair, and so on.”

“Don’t you have a gene-record?”

Blankly, Alan said, “A what?”

Hawkes scowled. “I forgot—I keep forgetting you’re a spacer. Well, if he’s not using his own name any more it may make things really tough. Gene-records make absolute identification possible. But if you don’t have one—”

Whistling tunelessly, Hawkes filled out the rest of the form. When it came to REASON FOR APPLICATION, he wrote in, Tracing of missing relative .

“That just about covers it,” he said finally. “It’s a pretty lame application, but if we’re lucky we may find him.” He rolled the form up, shoved it into a gray metal tube, and dropped it in a slot in the wall.

“What happens now?” Alan asked.

“Now we wait. The application goes downstairs and the big computer goes to work on it. First thing they’ll do is kick aside all the cards of men named Steve Donnell. Then they’ll check them all against the physical description I supplied. Soon as they find a man who fits the bill, they’ll ’stat his card and send it up here to us. We copy down the televector number and have them trace him down.”

“The what number?”

“You’ll see,” Hawkes said, grinning. “It’s a good system. Just wait.”

They waited. One minute, two, three.

“I hope I’m not keeping you from something important,” Alan said, breaking a long uncomfortable silence. “It’s really good of you to take all this time, but I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you if—”

“If I didn’t want to help you,” Hawkes said sharply, “I wouldn’t be doing it. I’m Free Status, you know. That means I don’t have any boss except me. Max Hawkes, Esquire. It’s one of the few compensations I have for the otherwise lousy deal life handed me. So if I choose to waste an hour or two helping you find your brother, don’t worry yourself about it.”

A bell rang, once, and a gentle red light glowed over the slot. Hawkes reached in and scooped out the container that sat there.

Inside he found a rolled-up slip of paper. He pulled it out and read the message typed on it several times, pursing his lips.

“Well? Did they find him?”

“Read it for yourself,” Hawkes said. He pushed the sheet over to Alan.

It said, in crisp capital letters, A SEARCH OF THE FILES REVEALS THAT NO WORK CARD HAS BEEN ISSUED ON EARTH IN THE PAST TEN YEARS TO STEVE DONNELL, MALE, WITH THE REQUIRED PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS.

Alan’s face fell. He tossed the slip to the table and said, “Well? What do we do now?”

“Now,” Hawkes said, “we go upstairs to the cubbyhole where they keep the Free Status people registered. We go through the same business there. I didn’t really expect to find your brother here, but it was worth a look. It’s next to impossible for a ship-jumping starman to buy his way into a guild and get a work card.”

“Suppose he’s not registered with the Free Status people?”

Hawkes smiled patiently. “Then, my dear friend, you go back to your ship with your mission incomplete. If he’s not listed upstairs, there’s no way on Earth you could possibly find him.”