Sitting in the Kudos Room with the most beautiful girl to whom he had
ever talked, Si could be nonchalant about the subject. "Old Gubelin
keeps that angle mostly hushed up and out of the magazine and newspaper
articles. Says there's enough adverse publicity about space exploration
already. But at this stage of the game when the whole ship's crammed
tight with this automatic scientific apparatus and all, there's
precious little room in the conning tower and you're the only man
aboard. The Doc says later on when ships are bigger and there's a whole
flock of people aboard, there won't be any such thing as space cafard,
but...." Of a sudden the right side of Si Pond's mouth began to tic
and he hurriedly took up his drink and knocked it back.
He cleared his throat. "Let's talk about some other angle. Look, how
about something to eat, Natalie? I'm celebrating my retirement, like.
You know, out on the town. If you're free...."
She put the tip of a finger to her lips, looking for the moment like a
small girl rather than an ultra-sophisticate. "Supposedly, I have an
appointment," she said hesitantly.
* * * * *
When the mists rolled out in the morning--if it was still morning--it
was to the tune of an insistent hotel chime. Si rolled over on his back
and growled, "_Zo-ro-as-ter_, cut that out. What do you want?"
The hotel communicator said softly, "Checking-out time, sir, is at two
o'clock."
Si groaned. He couldn't place the last of the evening at all. He didn't
remember coming back to the hotel. He couldn't recall where he had
separated from, what was her name ... Natalie.
He vaguely recalled having some absinthe in some fancy club she had
taken him to. What was the gag she'd made? Absinthe makes the heart
grow fonder. And then the club where they had the gambling machines.
And the mists had rolled in on him. Mountains of the Moon! but that
girl could drink. He simply wasn't that used to the stuff. You don't
drink in Space School and you most certainly don't drink when in space.
His binges had been few and far between.
He said now, "I don't plan on checking out today. Don't bother me." He
turned to his pillow.
The hotel communicator said quietly, "Sorry, sir, but your credit
balance does not show sufficient to pay your bill for another day."
Si Pond shot up, upright in bed, suddenly cold sober.
His eyes darted about the room, as though he was seeing it for
the first time. His clothes, he noted, were thrown over a chair
haphazardly. He made his way to them, his face empty, and fished about
for his credit card, finding it in a side pocket. He wavered to the
teevee-phone and thrust the card against the screen. He demanded, his
voice as empty as his expression, "Balance check, please."
In less than a minute the robot-voice told him: "Ten shares of
Inalienable Basic. Current cash credit, forty-two dollars and thirty
cents." The screen went dead.
He sank back into the chair which held his clothes, paying no attention
to them. It couldn't be right. Only yesterday, he'd had twelve shares
of Variable Basic, immediately convertible into more than fifty
thousand dollars, had he so wished to convert rather than collect
dividends indefinitely. Not only had he the twelve shares of Variable
Basic, but more than a thousand dollars to his credit.
He banged his fist against his mouth. Conceivably, he might have
gone through his thousand dollars. It was possible, though hardly
believable. The places he'd gone to with that girl in the Chinese
get-up were probably the most expensive in Greater Metropolis. But,
however expensive, he couldn't possibly have spent fifty thousand
dollars! Not possibly.
He came to his feet again to head for the teevee screen and demand
an audit of the past twenty-four hours from Central Statistics.
That'd show it up. Every penny expended. Something was crazy here.
Someway that girl had pulled a fast one. She didn't seem the type. But
something had happened to his twelve shares of Variable Basic, and
he wasn't standing for it. It was his security, his defense against
slipping back into the ranks of the cloddies, the poor demi-buttocked
ranks of the average man, the desperately dull life of those who
subsisted on the bounty of the Ultrawelfare State and the proceeds of
ten shares of Inalienable Basic.
He dialed Statistics and placed his card against the screen. His
voice was strained now. "An audit of all expenditures for the past
twenty-four hours."
Then he sat and watched.
His vacuum-tube trip to Manhattan was the first item. Two dollars and
fifty cents. Next was his hotel suite. Fifty dollars. Well, he had
known it was going to be expensive. A Slivovitz Sour at the Kudos Room,
he found, went for three dollars a throw, and the Far out Coolers
Natalie drank, four dollars. Absinthe was worse still, going for ten
dollars a drink.
He was impatient. All this didn't account for anything like a thousand
dollars, not to speak of fifty thousand.
The audit threw an item he didn't understand. A one dollar credit. And
then, immediately afterward, a hundred dollar credit. Si scowled.
And then slowly reached out and flicked the set off. For it had all
come back to him.
At first he had won. Won so that the other players had crowded around
him, watching. Five thousand, ten thousand. Natalie had been jubilant.
The others had cheered him on. He'd bet progressively higher, smaller
wagers becoming meaningless and thousands being involved on single
bets. A five thousand bet on odd had lost, and then another. The
kibitzers had gone silent. When he had attempted to place another
five thousand bet, the teevee screen robot voice had informed him
dispassionately that his current cash credit balance was insufficient
to cover that amount.
Yes. He could remember now. He had needed no time to decide, had simply
snapped, "Sell one share of Variable Basic at current market value."
The other eleven shares had taken the route of the first.
When it was finally all gone and he had looked around, it was to find
that Natalie Paskov was gone as well.
* * * * *
Academician Lofting Gubelin, seated in his office, was being
pontifical. His old friend Hans Girard-Perregaux had enough other
things on his mind to let him get away with it, only half following the
monologue.
"I submit," Gubelin orated, "that there is evolution in society. But
it is by fits and starts, and by no means a constant thing. Whole
civilizations can go dormant, so far as progress is concerned, for
millennia at a time."