“What are you pulling?” Buncey looked uneasy. “There’s not a bundle under the floor that could roll a full book.”
“Not until now,” Bailey said. “The syndicate changes that.”
“Syndicate?”
“That’s right. Every operator in Mat’n is with us.”
“You’re lying,” Buncey snapped. “No two Preke grifters could work together for longer than it takes to mug a zek on a string lay!” He brought the gun up with a sure motion. “I’m calling your bet, little man—”
He stiffened at a sound from the hall leading to the back room. A tall, lean man appeared, glancing casually about. He nodded at Aroon, ignoring the gunmen.
“I liked the night’s play,” Farb said easily. “I’m plowing my cut back in. So are the rest of us.” He dropped a stack of fully charged cash cards on the table. Only then did he turn a look on the man called Buncey. “You can go now,” he said. “Better put the iron away. We don’t want any killing.”
Buncey slowly pocketed his gun. “You Prekes are serious,” he said. “You think you can buck topside . . .”
“We know we can—as long as we don’t get too greedy,” Bailey said. “Try to strong-arm us, and the whole racket blows sky-high. Concede us our ten percent of the action and nobody gets hurt.”
“I’ll pass the word. If you’re bagging air, better look for a hole—a deep one. These things can be checked.”
“Check all you want,” Farb said. “We like the idea of a little home industry. We’re behind it all the way.”
After the three had left, Gus slumped into a rump-sprung chair with a guttural sigh.
“Bailey, you walked the thin edge just now. How’d you know they wouldn’t call you?”
“They’re gamblers,” Bailey said. “The percentages were against it.” He looked at Farb. “You mean what you said?”
Farb nodded, the glint of honest greed in his eyes. “I don’t know where you came from, Bailey, or why: but you worked a play that I wouldn’t have given a filed chit for twelve hours ago. Keep it up; you’ll have all the weight you want behind you.”
7
Three months later, Bailey told Aroon he was leaving.
“The operation’s all yours, Gus. I’ve got what I need. It’s time to move on.”
“I can’t figure you, kid,” the older man said, shaking his heavy head. “You take chances that no other guy would touch with a chip-rake—and when they pay off, you bow out. Why not stay on? On your split you could live like a king—
“Sure I could, here. But there are things that need doing that take more than a fat credit balance. I need a tag, to start with. Can you fix it?”
Gus grunted. “It’ll cost you a slice of that pile you’ve been sitting on.”
“That’s what it’s for.”
“Class Three Yellow about right?”
Bailey shook his head. “Class One Blue.”
“Are you outa your mind, Bailey?” Aroon yelled. “You can’t bluff your way Topside!”
“Why not? I bluffed my way into Preke territory.”
“Your roll won’t carry you a week up there.”
“All I need is the price of admission.”
“Face it, Bailey. There’s more to it than the loot. You don’t look like a Cruster, you don’t act like one. How could you? Those babies have all the best from the day they’re born, the best food, the best education, the best training! They have their own way of walking and talking, sniffing flowers, making up to a frill! They’ve got class where it shows, and they can back it up! You can’t fake it!”
“Who said anything about faking it, Gus? You must know the name of a reliable tapelegger.”
“A print man?” Aroon’s voice had automatically dropped to a whisper. “Bailey, that ain’t demi-chit stuff. Touch a wrong strip and it’s a wiping rap!”
“If I’m caught.”
“And anyway—a good tech line is worth a fortune! You couldn’t touch even a Class Two tape job for under a quarter million.”
“I don’t want a tech education,” Bailey said. “I want a background cultural fill-in—the kind they give a Cruster after a brain injury or wipe therapy.”
“I guess there’s no need my asking why you want to load your skull with fancy stuff you’ll never use, that’ll never buy you a night’s flop?” Gus said hoarsely.
“Nope. Can you put me on to a right man?”
“If that’s the way you want it.”
“It’s the way it’s got to be for where I’ve got to go.”
Aroon nodded heavily. “I owe you that much—and a lot more. You shook this whole lousy setup to bedrock, something that needed doing for a long time.” He rose. “Come on. I’ll take you there.”
“I’ll go alone, Gus. Just give me the name and address, and I’m on my way.”
“You don’t waste much time, do you, kid?”
“I don’t have much time to waste.”
“What is it you got to do that’s eating at you?”
Bailey frowned. “I don’t know. I just know the time is short for me to do it.”
8
It was a narrow, high-ceilinged room, walled with faded rose and gold paper, furnished with glossy dark antiques perched around the edge of a carpet from which the floral pattern was almost worn away. An elaborate chandelier fitted with ancient flame-shaped incandescent bulbs hung from a black iron chain. Tarnished gilt lettering winked from the cracked leather spines of books in a glass-fronted case. The man who surveyed Bailey from the depths of a curve-legged wing chair was lean, withered, with a face like a fallen soufflé. Only his eyes moved, assessing his customer.
“Do you have any idea what it is you’re asking?” he inquired in a voice like dry leaves stirred by the wind. “Do you imagine that by absorbing from an illegally transcribed cephalotape the background appropriate to a gentleman of birth and breeding, that you will be magically transformed from your present lowly state?”
“Can you supply what I want, or can’t you?” Bailey said patiently.
“I can supply a full Class One socio-cultural matrix, yes,” the old man snapped. “As to providing a magical entrée into high places—”
“If what you’ve got to offer won’t fill the bill, I’ll be on my way.” Bailey got to his feet. The old man rose quickly, stood stoop-backed, eyeing him.
“Why aren’t you content to absorb a useful skill, a practical knowledge of a saleable trade? Why these grandiose aspirations to a place you can never fill?”
“That’s my business,” Bailey said. “Yes or no?”
The old man’s puckered face tightened. “You’re a fool,” he said. “Come with me.”
9
In a back room, Bailey took a seat in a worn leather-covered reclining chair; the tapelegger clucked and muttered to himself as he attached the electrodes to Bailey’s skull, referring frequently to the dials on the wheeled cart beside him. As he pressed buttons, Bailey felt the stirrings and tinglings of the neuro-electric currents induced within his brain by the teaching machine.
“Make no mistake,” the old man told him. “The material you’ll receive here will be in no way inferior to that offered in the most exclusive universities. My prints were coded direct from the masters filed at HEW Central. Once assimilated, a bootleg education is objectively indistinguishable from any other.”
“I’m counting on it,” Bailey said. “That’s why I’m paying you fifty M.”
“A tiny fraction of the value of what is encoded here.” The ‘legger weighed the reel on his palm. “The essence of a lifetime of cultured ease. This particular Trace was made by Aldig Parn, Blue One, the critic and collector. You’ll have a fabulous grounding in the arts. Parn was also a Distinguished Master at the game called Reprise. You’ll get it all—and much, much more. It’s not been edited, you see. It’s all as it came from his brain, even to personal tastes and mannerisms, all those subtleties and nuances of culture which we cut from authorized tapes.”
“If it’s as good as that, why sell at all? Why not use it yourself?”
“Why?” the print man snapped. “So that I could become even more acutely aware of the horrors of life in a petrified society? I’ve too much education already. One day I’ll present myself at Unicen for voluntary wipe and begin again as a pink tag crude-labor gangman. The solace of nepenthe.”
“That’s not much of a sales talk,” Bailey said.
“I’m not urging you to buy. I’d recommend a limited tech indoc, sufficient to guarantee you a yellow tag.”
“Never mind; I won’t hold you responsible. Just be sure you watch those meters. I don’t want a burned cortex for my trouble.”
10
Bailey had had headaches before, but nothing like this.
“You’ll live,” the ‘legger said briskly. “It was you who insisted on haste. You took it surprisingly well. Your metabolic index never dropped below .8. Rest for a few days, avoid any creative mental activity, problem solving. I don’t want any blankages to mar the imprint.”