The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

VI

"Don't lock the barn after it is stolen."

HARTLEY M. BALDWIN

It is difficult to punch a man in the nose through a terminal. Even if one does not intend to use such direct persuasion, discussion via computer terminal can be less than satisfactory. With the flick of a key your opponent can shut you off or turn you over to a subordinate. But if you are physically present in his office, you can counter his most reasonable arguments simply by being more stupidly stubborn than he is. Just sit tight and say no. Or say nothing. You can face him with the necessity of either assenting to your (oh so reasonable) demands or having you thrown out bodily.

The latter probably will not fit his public persona. For these reasons I decided to skip calling Mr. Middlegaff, or anyone at the housing office, and went directly to the Manager's office, in person. I had no hope of influencing Mr. Middlegaff, who clearly had had a policy handed to him, which he was now carrying out with bureaucratic indifference ("Have

(A Nice Day" indeed!). I had little hope of getting satisfaction from the Manager-but, at least, if the Manager turned roe down, I would not have to waste time going higher. The Golden Rule, being a privately-owned company not chartered by any sovereign state (i.e., being itself sovereign) had no authority higher than the Manager-God Almighty Himself was not even a minority partner.

Decisions by the Managing Partner might be utterly arbitrary ... but they were utterly final. There was no possibility of years of litigation, no way a higher court could reverse his decision. The "Law's Delays" that so blemished the workings of "justice" in democratic states down dirtside could not exist here. I recalled only a few capital cases in the five years I had lived here... but in each case the Manager had sat as magistrate, then the condemned had been spaced that same day.

In such a system the question of miscarriage of justice becomes moot.

Add to that the fact that the profession of law, like the profession of prostitution, is neither licensed nor forbidden and the result is a judicial system having little resemblance to the crazy ziggurat of precedent and tradition that passes for "justice" dirtside. Justice in the Golden Rule might be astigmatic if not totally blind; it could not be slow.

We left Bill in the outer foyer of the Manager's offices, with our baggage-my duffel bag and bundle, Gwen's cases, the bonsai maple (watered before we left Gwen's compartment)- with instructions to Bill to sit on the duffel bag, guard the bonsai with his life (Gwen's phrasing), and watch the rest. We went inside.

There we each, separately, left our names at the reception desk, then found seats. Gwen opened her purse, got out a Casio game board. "What'll it be, dear? Chess, cribbage, backgammon, go, or what?"

"You're expecting a long wait?"

"Yes, I am, sir. Unless we build a fire under the mule."

"I think you're right. Any ideas about how to build that fire? Without setting fire to the wagon, I mean. Oh, what the devil!-go ahead and set fire to the wagon. But how?"

"We could use a variation on the old standard: 'My husband knows all.' Or 'Your wife has found out.' But our variation would have to be quite novel, as the basic ploy has long white whiskers." She added, "Or I can go into labor pains. That is always good for attention."

"But you don't look pregnant."

"Want to bet? So far no one has taken a good look at me. Just give me five minutes alone in that ladies' lounge across there and you'll be certain I'm nine months gone. Richard, this ploy I learned years ago when I was a claims investigator for an insurance company. It will always get one inside, anywhere."

"You tempt me," I admitted, "as it would be such fun to watch you work it. But the ploy we use not only has to get us inside, but also must keep us inside under circumstances in which the bloke will listen to our arguments."

"Dr. Ames."

"Yes, Mrs. Ames?"

"The Manager isn't going to listen to our arguments."

"Please amplify."

"I applauded your decision to go straight to the top because I saw that it would save time and tears to get all the bad news at once. We have leprosy; what has already been done to us makes that clear. The Manager intends not merely to force us to move; he means to kick us right out of Golden Rule. I don't know why but we don't have to know why-it simply is so. Realizing that, I am relaxed to it. Once you realize it, too, dear man, we can make plans. To go dirtside, or to Luna, or to Promised Land, Ell-Four, Ceres, Mars-wherever you wish, beloved. 'Whither thou goest-'"

'To Luna."

"Sir?"

"For now, at least. Luna Free State isn't bad. Currently it is moving from anarchy to bureaucracy but it is not yet completely musclebound. It still has quite a lot of freedom for people who know how to deal with it pragmatically. And there is still elbow room on Luna. And in Luna. Yes, Gwen, we must leave; I suspected it earlier and know it now. Save for one thing, we could go straight to the spaceport. I still want to see the Manager. Damn it, I want to hear it from his own lying lips! Then with a clear conscience I can turn on the poison."

"You intend to poison him, dear?"

"A figure of speech. I plan to place him on my list, then quick Karma will do him in."

"Oh. Perhaps I can think of a way to help it along."

"Not necessary. Once on the list, they never last long."

"But I would enjoy it. 'Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.' But the Revised Version reads: 'Vengeance is Gwen's... then Mine only if Gwen leaves Me any.'"

I clucked at her. "Who was saying that I should not take me law into my own hands?"

"But I was talking about you, sir; I didn't say a word about me. I delight in making quick Karma even quicker-it's my pet hobby."

"My darling, you are a nasty little giri, I am happy to say. Going to kill him with hives? Or with hangnails? Maybe hiccups?"

"I'm thinking of keeping him awake till he dies. Lack of sleep is worse than anything you listed, dear, if pushed far enough. The victim's judgment goes to pieces long before he stops breathing. He hallucinates. Including all his worst phobias. He dies in his own private hell and never escapes from it."

"Gwen, you sound as if you had used this method."

Gwen did not comment.

I shrugged. "Whatever you decide, let me know how I can help."

"I will, sir. Mmm, I think highly of drowning in caterpillars. But I don't know how to get that many caterpillars other than by having them shipped up from Earth. Except- Well, one can always arrange for them through the insomnia method. Toward the end you can cause the condemned to create his own caterpillars just by suggesting it to him." She shivered. "Schrecklich! But I won't use rats, Richard. Never rats. Not even imaginary rats."

"My sweet and gentle bride, I'm glad to know you draw the line at something."

"Certainly I do! Beloved, you startled me with the notion that bad manners could be judged a hanging offense. My own concern is for evil, rather than for bad manners. I think evil deeds should never go unpunished. God's arrangements for punishing evil are too slow to suit me; I want it done now. Take hijacking. Hijackers should be hanged on the spot as soon as they are caught. An arsonist should be burned at the stake on the site of the fire he started, if possible before its ashes grow cold. A rapist should be killed by-"

I did not leam then what complex way of dying Gwen favored for rapists because a polite bureaucrat (male, gray, dandruffy, built-in risus) stopped in front of us and said, "Dr. Ames?"

"I am Dr. Ames."

"I am Mungerson Fitts, Assistant Deputy Administrator for Superrogatory Statistics. I'm helping out. I'm sure you understand how terribly busy the Manager's office is just now with the new addition being brought up to spin-all the temporary relocations that have to be made and all the disruptions to routine that have to be accommodated before we can all settle down in a larger and greatly improved Golden Rule." He gave me a winning smile. "I understand you want to see the Manager."

"That's right."

"Excellent. Because of the present emergency I am helping here in order to maintain the proud quality of Golden Rule service to our guests during alterations. I have been fully empowered to act for the Manager; you can think of me as his alter ego... because to all intents and purposes I am the Manager. This little lady-she is with you?"

"Yes."

"Honored, ma'am. Delighted. Now, friends, if you will please come with me-"

"No."

"Excuse me?"

"I want to see the Manager."

"But I explained to you-"

"I'll wait."

"I don't think you understood me. Please come with-"

"No."

(At this point Fitts should have grabbed me with a come-along and tossed me out on my arse. Not that it is easy to do mis to me; I trained with the Dorsai. But that is what he should have done. However, he was inhibited by custom, habit, and policy.)

Fitts paused and looked baffled. "Uh- But you must, you know."

"No, I don't know."

"I'm trying to tell you-"

"I want to see the Manager. Did he tell you what to do about Senator Cantor?"

"Senator Cantor? Let me see, he's the Senator from, uh, from..."

"If you don't know who he is, how do you know what to do about him?"

"Uh, if you will just wait a moment while I consult."

"You had better take us along-since you don't seem to be 'fully empowered' on this critical issue."

"Uh... please wait here."

I stood up. "No, I had better get back. The Senator may be looking for me. Please tell the Manager that I'm sorry I could not arrange it." I turned to Gwen. "Come, Madam. Let's not keep him waiting." (I wondered if Mungerson would notice that "him" was a pronoun without a referent.)

Gwen stood up, took my arm. Fitts said hastily, "Please, friends, don't leave! Uh, come with me." He herded us to an unmarked door. "Wait just one moment, please!"

He was gone more than a moment but nevertheless only a short time. He returned with his face wreathed with smiles (I think that is the expression). "Right this way, please!" He took us through the unmarked door, down a short passage, and into the Manager's inner office.

The Manager looked up from his desk and inspected us, not with the familiar, fatherly expression of the too-frequent "Word from the Manager" announcements that come over every terminal. On the contrary Mr. Sethos looked as if he had found something nasty in his porridge.

I ignored his chilly demeanor. Instead I stood just inside the door, Gwen still on my arm, and waited. I once lived with a fussy cat (is there another sort?) who, when faced with an offering of food not perfectly to his taste, would stand still and, with dignified restraint, look offended-a remarkable bit of acting for one whose face was completely covered with ftir;

however, he did it mostly by body language. I now did this to Mr. Sethos, primarily by thinking about that cat. I stood... and waited.

He stared at us... and at last stood up, bowed slightly and said, "Madam... will you please be seated?"

Whereupon we both sat down. Round one to us, on points. I could not have done it without Gwen. But I did have her help and once I got my butt into his chair he was not going to get it out-until I got what I wanted.

I sat still, kept quiet, and waited.

When Mr. Sethos's blood pressure reached triggering level, he said, "Well? You've managed to bull your way into my office. What's this nonsense about Senator Cantor?"

"I expect you to tell me. Have you assigned Senator Cantor to my wife's compartment?"

"Eh? Don't be ridiculous. Mistress Novak has a one-room efficiency compartment, the smallest size in first class. The Senator from Standard Oil, if he came here, would be in a deluxe suite. Of course."

"Mine, perhaps? Is that why you evicted me? For the Senator?"

"What? Don't put words in my mouth; the Senator isn't aboard. We've been forced to ask a number of our guests to shift around, you among them. The new section, you know. Before it can we welded on, all compartments and spaces adjacent to ring one-thirty must be evacuated. So we have to double up temporarily to make room for our displaced guests. Your compartment will have three families in it, as I recall. For a short while, that is."

"I see. Then it was just an oversight that I was not told where to move?"

"Oh, I'm sure you were told."

"I surely was not. Will you please tell me my new address?"

"Doctor, do you expect me to carry housing assignments in my head? Go wait outside and someone will look it up and tell-you."

I ignored his suggestion/order. "Yes, I do think you carry them in your head."

He snorted. "There are more than one hundred eighty thousand people in this habitat. I have assistants and computers for such details."

"I'm sure you do. But you have given me strong reason to think that you do have such details in your head... when they interest you. I'll give an example. My wife was not introduced to you. Mungerson Fitts did not know her name, so he could not have told you. But you knew without being told. You knew her name and what compartment she lived in. Did live in, I mean, until you had her locked out. Is that how you apply the Golden Rule, Mr. Sethos? By kicking out your guests without even the courtesy of warning them ahead of time?"

"Doctor, are you trying to pick a fight?"

"No, I'm trying to find out why you have been hassling us. Bullying us. Persecuting us. You and I both know that it has nothing to do with the temporary dislocations caused by bringing the new section up to spin and welded on; that's certain ... because the new section has been building for over three years and you've known for at least a year the date you were going to bring it up to spin... yet you had me kicked out of my compartment with less than thirty minutes' warning. My wife you treated even worse; you simply locked her out, no warning at all. Sethos, you aren't just moving us around to allow for attaching the new section. If that were true, we would have been told at least a month ago, along with temporary reassignments and with dates for moving into new permanent quarters. No, you're rousting us right out of Golden Rule habitat ... and I want to know why!"

"Get out of my office- I'll have someone take you by the hand and lead you to your new-temporary-quarters."

"Not necessary. Just tell me the coordinates and the compartment number. I'll wait here while you look them up."

"By God, I believe you want to be kicked off Golden Rule!"

"No, I've been quite comfortable here. I'll be happy to stay ... if you will tell me where we are to sleep tonight... and give us our new permanent assignment-where we'll be living once the new section is welded on and pressurized, I mean. We need a three-room suite, to replace the two-roomer I had and the one-room compartment Mrs. Ames had. Two terminals. One for each of us, just as before. And low gravity. Four-tenths gee by preference, but not more than half a gravity."

"Would you like an egg in your beer? Why do you need two terminals? That requires additional wiring."

"So it does and I'll pay for it. Because I'm a writer. I'll use one as a wordprocessor and for library reference work. Mrs. Ames needs the other for household routine."

"Oho! You plan to use residential space for business purposes. That calls for commercial rates. Not residential rate."

"What does that come to?"

"It will have to be calculated. There is a costing factor for each type of commercial use. Retail stores, restaurants, banks, and the like cost approximately three times as much per cubic meter as does residential space. Factory space does not cost as much as retail space but may have surcharges for hazards and so forth. Warehousing is only slightly more than residential. Offhand I think you will have to pay office space rates-that's a factor of three point five-but I'll have to take it up with the chief accountant."

"Mr. Manager, do I understand you correctly? Are you planning to charge us three and half times as much as our combined rents were together?"

"Approximately. It might be as low as three times."

"Well, well. I haven't concealed the fact that I'm a writer, it says so on my passport and I'm listed that way in your directory, all the past five years. Tell me why it suddenly makes a difference to you whether I use my terminal to write letters home... or to write stories?"

Sethos gave what could have been construed as a laugh. "Doctor, Golden Rule is a business enterprise undertaken for profit. I manage it for my partners to that end. No one has to live here, no one has to do business here. What I charge people to live here, or to do business here, is controlled solely by maximizing profit to the partnership, as guided by my best judgment to that end. If you don't like it, you can take your business elsewhere."

I was just about to shift the basis for discussion (I can see when I'm outgunned) when Gwen spoke up. "Mr. Sethos?"

"Eh? Yes, Mistress Novak? Mrs. Ames."

"Did you get your start pimping for your sisters?"

Sethos turned a delicate shade of eggplant. He finally got control of himself well enough to say, "Mrs. Ames, are you being intentionally insulting?"

"That's obvious, isn't it? I don't know that you have sisters; it just seems like the sort of enterprise that would appeal to you. You have injured us for no reason whatever. We come to you, asking for redress of grievance; you answer us with evasions, outright lies, irrelevant issues... and a fresh extortion. You justify this new outrage with a plonking sermon on free enterprise. Just what price did you usually charge for your sisters? And how much did you keep as your commission? Half? Or more than half?"

"Madam, I must ask you to leave my office... and this habitat. You are not the sort we want living here."

"I am delighted to leave," Gwen answered, not stirring, "just as quickly as you settle my account. And my husband's account."

"Get... OUT!"

Gwen put out her hand, palm up. "Cash first, you bald-faced swindler. The balance of our accounts plus the fare-home deposits we each made when we got here. If we leave this room without collecting, there's not a prayer that you will ever pay what you owe us. Pay up and we leave. The first shuttle down to Luna. But pay up and right now! Or you'll have to space me to shut me up. If you call in your goons, you flannel mouth, I'll scream this place down. Want a sample?" Gwen tilted her head back, cut loose with a scream that made my teeth ache.

Sethos, too, apparently-I saw him flinch.

He stared at her a long moment, then touched some control on his desk. "Ignatius. Close the accounts of Dr. Richard Ames and of Mistress Gwendolyn Novak, uh"-with only a momentary hesitation he correctly stated my compartment number and that of Gwen-"and deliver them to my office at once. With cash to pay them off. With receipts to chop and print. No checks. What? You listen to me. If it takes longer than ten minutes we'll hold a full-scale inspection of your department ... see who has to be fired, who merely has to be demoted." He switched off, did not look at us.

Gwen got out her little gameboard, set it for tic-tac-toe, which suited me, it being about the intellectual level I felt able to cope with then. She beat me four straight games, even though twice I had the first move. But my head was still aching from her supersonic scream.

I had not kept track of the exact time but it must have been about ten minutes later that a man came in with our accounts. Sethos glanced at them, passed them over to us. Mine appeared to be accurate; I was about to sign the receipt when Gwen spoke up. "What about interest on the money I had to deposit?"

"Eh? What are you talking about?"

"My fare back dirtside. I had to deposit it in cash, no lOUs accepted. Your bank here charges nine percent on private loans, so it ought to be paying at least savings account rates on impounded money. Although time-deposit rates would be more reasonable. I've been here more than a year, so... let me see-" Gwen took out the pocket calculator we had been using for tic-tac-toe. "You owe me eight hundred seventy-one and-call it even crowns-eight hundred and seventy-one crowns in interest. In Swiss gold that comes to-"

"We pay in crowns, not Swiss money."

"All right, you owe it to me in crowns."

"And we don't pay interest on return ticket money; it is simply held in escrow."

I was suddenly alert. "You don't, eh? Dear, may I borrow that widget? Let's see-a hundred and eighty thousand people... and one-way tourist fare to Maui on PanAm or Qantas is-"

"Seventy-two hundred," Gwen answered, "except weekends and holidays."

"So." I punched it in. "Hmm, well over a billion crowns! One two nine six followed by six zeroes. How interesting! How enlightening. Sethos old boy, you may be skimming off over a hundred million a year, tax free, simply by placing all this money you are holding for us suckers in Luna City money funds. But I don't think you use it that way-or not all of it. I think you run your whole enterprise using other people's money... without their knowledge or consent. Right?"

The flunky (Ignatius?) who had fetched our accounts was listening with intent interest.

Sethos growled. "Sign those receipts and get out."

"Oh, I shall!"

"But pay us our interest," Gwen added.

I shook my head. "No, Gwen. Anywhere but here we could sue him. Here he is both the law and the judge. But I don't mind, Mr. Manager, as you have given me a wonderful, salable idea for an article-Reader's Digest, probably, or Fortune. Uh, I'll title it 'Pie in the Sky, or How to Get Rich on Other People's Money: The Economics of Privately-Owned Space Habitats.' A hundred million a year swindled out of the public in Golden Rule habitat alone. Something along that line."

"You publish that and I'll sue you for everything you own!"