Robert Heinlein - The Cat Who Walked Through Walls

"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!"

"You can't cheat an honest man. He has to have larceny in his heart in the first place"

CLAUDE WILLIAM DUKENFffiLD 1880-1946