Reluctantly, the door eased back; Bailey slipped through into an odor of nesting mice. By the light coming through from a back hall he saw a clutter of ancient furniture, a battered computer console. Then a meaty hand had caught his tunic-front, slammed him back against the wall. A six-inch knife blade glinted in the fist held under his nose.
“I could cut your heart out,” a garlic-laden voice growled in his face.
“Sure you could,” Bailey said impatiently. “But why take a wipe for nothing?”
“Who told you about me?”
“Look, I just arrived an hour ago. The first drifter I met led me here. Everybody must know this place.”
“Bugs send you here?” The hand shook him, rattling his head against the wall.
“For what? The Greenies know all about you. You must have paid bite money, otherwise you wouldn’t be operating.”
The knife touched Bailey’s throat. “You take some chances, Clyde.”
“Put the knife away. You need me—and I need money.”
“I need you why?”
“Your biggest problem is transmitting bets and pay-off information. You can’t use Pubcom or two-way. I’ve got a good memory and I like to walk. For a hundred a week in hard tokens I’ll cover all of Mat’n for you.”
The silence lengthened. The knife moved away; the grip on Bailey’s blouse slackened slightly.
“Bugs got something on you?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Why you need money?”
“To buy new papers—and other things.”
“You got no cards?”
“Not even an ID.”
“How do I know you’re not dogging for the Bugs?”
“Get some sense. What would I get out of that?”
The man made a guttural noise and stepped back. “Tell it, Clyde. All of it.”
Bailey told. When he finished, the swarthy man rubbed his chin with a sound like a wood rasp cutting pine.
“How’d you do it? Bust out, I mean?”
“I don’t know. The girl found me in an alley mumbling about a pain in my chest. My wrists were a little raw, as if I’d forced the straps. After all, it isn’t as if they expected anybody to try to leave.”
The dark man grunted. “You’re scrambled,” he said. “But there could be something in it at that. OK, you’re on, Jack. Fifty a week—and you sleep in the back.”
“Seventy-five—and I eat here, too.”
“Push your luck, don’t you? All right. But don’t expect no lux rations.”
“Just so I eat,” Bailey said. “I’ll need my strength for what I’ve got to do.”
4
The dog-eared, seam-cracked maps of the city which Bailey’s employer supplied dated from a time when the streets had been open to the sky, when unfiltered sunlight had fallen on still-new pavements and facades. Two centuries had passed since those wholesome, innocent days, but the charts still reflected faithfully each twist and angle of the maze of streets and alleys. Each night, he quartered the city, north to south, river wall to river wall. In the motley costume which Aroon had given him, he passed unremarked in the crowds.
Off-duty, he undertook the cleaning of Aroon’s rubbish-filled rooms. After feeding the accumulated debris of decades into a municipal disposer half a block from the house, he set about sweeping, scrubbing, polishing the plastron floor and walls until their original colors emerged from under the crusts of age. After that, he procured pen and paper, spent hours absorbed in calculations. Aroon watched, grunted, and left him to his own devices.
“You’re a funny guy, Bailey,” he said after a month of near-silent observation. “I got to admit at first I didn’t know about you. But you had plenty chances to angle, and passed ’em. You’re smart, and a hard worker. You never spend a chit. You work, you eat, you sleep, and you scribble numbers. I got no complaint—but what you after, Bailey? You’re a hounded guy if I ever see one.”
Bailey studied the older man’s face. “You and I are going to make some money, Gus,” he said.
Aroon looked startled. His thick eyebrows crawled up his furrowed forehead.
“How much do you make a week, booking the ‘stats?” Bailey put the question boldly.
Aroon frowned. “Hell, you know: Three, four hundred after expenses—if I’m lucky.”
“How much do the big boys make? The books?”
“Plenty!” Gus barked. “But—wait a minute, kid. You ain’t getting ideas—”
“They don’t rely on luck,” Bailey said. “They know. Figure it out for yourself. The play is based on the midnight census read-outs. But the figures for production, consumption, the growth indices and vital statistics—they all vary in accordance with known curves.”
“Not to me, they ain’t known. Listen, Bailey, don’t start talking chisel to me—”
Bailey shook his head. “Nothing like that. But we do all the work. Why pass all the profits along to them?” He pointed with his head in the general direction of the booker’s present temporary HQ in a defunct hotel half a mile south.
“You slipped your clutch? That’s murder—”
“We won’t cut corners on anybody. But tonight we’re going to roll our own book.”
Aroon’s mouth hung open.
“I’ve worked out the major cycles, and enough minor ones to show a profit. It wasn’t too hard. I minored in statan, back in my kid days.”
“Wise up, kid,” Aroon growled. “What do I use for capital?”
“We’ll start out small. We won’t need much: just a little cash money to cover margins. I’ve got three hundred to contribute. I’d estimate another seventeen hundred ought to do it.”
Aroon’s tongue touched his lips. “This is nuts. I’m a drop man, not a book—”
“So now you’re a book. You’ve already got the work list, your steady customers. We’ll just direct a few lays into our private bank, on these lines.” Bailey passed a sheet of paper across; it was filled with columns of figures.
“I can’t take no chance like this,” Gus breathed. “What if I can’t cover? What if—”
“What have you got to lose, Gus? This?” Bailey glanced around the room. “You could have a Class Three flat, wear issue ‘alls, eat at the commess—if you went up there.” He glanced ceilingward. “You picked Preke country instead. Why? So you could lock into another system—a worse one?”
“I got enough,” Gus said hoarsely. “I get along.”
“Just once,” Bailey said. “Take a chance. Take it, or face the fact that you spend the rest of your life in a one-way dead end.”
Gus swallowed hard. “You really think . . . ?”
“I think it’s a chance. A good chance.”
For long seconds, Aroon stared into Bailey’s face. Then he hit the table with his fist. He swore. He got to his feet, a big, burly man with sweat on his face.
“I’m in, Bailey,” he croaked. “Them guys ain’t no better than me and you. And if a man can’t ride a hunch once in his life, what’s he got anyway, right?”
“Right,” Bailey said. “Now better get some cash ready. It’s going to be a busy night.”
5
For the first three hours, it was touch and go. They paid off heavily on the twenty-one hours read-out, showed a modest recoup on the twenty-two, cut deeply into their tiny reserve at twenty-three.
“We ain’t hacking it, kid,” Aroon muttered, wiping at his bald forehead with a yard-square handkerchief. “At this rate we go under on the next read.”
“Here’s a revised line,” Bailey said. “One of the intermediate composites is cresting. That’s what threw me off.”
“If we pull out now, we can pay off and call it square.”
“Play along one more hour, Gus.”
“We’ll be in too deep! We can’t cover!”
“Ride it anyway. Maybe we can.”
“I’m nuts,” Gus said. “But OK, one more pass.”
On the midnight reading, the pot showed a profit of three hundred and thirty-one Q’s. Aroon proposed getting out then, but half-heartedly. At one hundred, the stake more than doubled. At two, in spite of a sharp wobble in the GNP curve, they held their own. At three, a spurt sent them over the two thousand mark. By dawn, the firm of Aroon and Bailey had a net worth of forty-one hundred and sixty-one credit units, all in hard tokens.
“I got to hand it to you, Bailey,” Aroon said in wonderment, spreading the bright-colored plastic chips on the table with a large, hairy hand. “A month’s take—in one night!”
This is a drop in the bucket, Gus,” Bailey said. “I just wanted to be sure my formulas worked. Now we really start operating.”
Gus looked wary. “What’s that mean, more trouble?”
“I’ve been keeping my eyes open since I’ve been here in Four Quarters. It’s a pretty strange place, when you stop to think about it: a whole sub-culture, living outside the law, a refuge for criminals and misfits. Why do the Greenies tolerate it? Why don’t they stage a raid, clean out the Prekes once and for all, put an end to the lawbreakers and the rackets? They could do it any day they wanted to.”