The Pirates of Ersatz Part 25

"As soon as my ship's loaded," Hoddan told the clerk, "I'll want to get them out of jail."

The clerk nodded. He brought salesmen of agricultural machinery.

Representatives of microfilm libraries. Manufacturers of generators, vision-tape instructors and allied lines. Hoddan bought, painstakingly.

Delivery was promised for the next day.

"Now," said the clerk, "about the investments you wish to make with the balance?"

"I'll want a reasonable sum in cash," said Hoddan reflectively. "But....

well ... I've been told that insurance is a fine, conservative business.

As I understand it, most insurance organizations are divided into divisions which are separately incorporated. There will be a life-insurance division, a casualty division, and so on. Is that right?

And one may invest in any of them separately?"

The clerk said impa.s.sively:

"I was given to understand, sir, that you are interested in risk-insurance. Perhaps especially risk-insurance covering piracy. I was given quotations on the risk-insurance divisions of all Krim companies.

Of course those are not very active stocks, but if there were a rumor of a pirate ship acting in this part of the galaxy, one might antic.i.p.ate--"

"I do," said Hoddan. "Let's see. ... My cargo brought so much....

Hm-m-m.... My purchases will come to so much. Hm-m-m.... My legal fees, of course.... I mentioned a sum in cash. Yes. This will be the balance, more or less, which you will put in the stocks you've named, but since I antic.i.p.ate activity in them. I'll want to leave some special instructions."

He gave a detailed, thoughtful account of what he antic.i.p.ated might be found in news reports of later dates. The clerk noted it all down, impa.s.sively. Hoddan added instructions.

"Yes, sir," said the clerk without intonation when he was through. "If you will come to the office in the morning, sir, the papers will be drawn up and matters can be concluded. Your new cargo can hardly be delivered before then, and if I may say so, sir, your crew won't be ready. I'd estimate two hours of festivity for each man, and fourteen hours for recovery."

"Thank you," said Hoddan. "I'll see you in the morning."

He sealed up the ship when the lawyer's clerk departed. Then he felt lonely. He was the only living thing in the ship. His footsteps echoed hollowly. There was n.o.body to speak to. Not even anybody to threaten.

He'd done a lot of threatening lately.

He went forlornly to the cabin once occupied by the liner's former skipper. His loneliness increased. He began to feel those daunting self-doubts such as plague the most unselfish and conscientious people.

His actions to date, of course, did not trouble him. Today's actions were the ones which bothered his conscience. He felt that they were not quite adequate. The balance left in the lawyer's hands would not be nearly enough to cover a certain deficit which in justice he felt himself bound to make up. It had been his thought to make this enterprise self-liquidating--everybody concerned making a profit, including the owners of the ship and cargo he had pirated. But he wasn't sure.

He reflected that his grandfather would not have been disturbed about such a matter. That elderly pirate would have felt wholly at ease. It was his conviction that piracy was an essential part of the working of the galaxy's economic system. Hoddan, indeed, could remember him saying precisely, snipping off the ends of his words as he spoke:

"I tell y', piracy's what keeps the galaxy's business thriving!

Everybody knows business suffers when retail trade slacks down. It backs up the movement of inventories. They get too big. That backs up orders to the factories. They lay off men. And when men are laid off they don't have money to spend, so retail trade slacks off some more, and that backs up inventories some more, and that backs up orders to factories and makes unemployment and hurts retail trade again. It's a feed-back.

See?" It was Hoddan's grandfather's custom, at this point, to stare shrewdly at each of his listeners in turn.

"But suppose somebody pirates a ship? The owners don't lose. It's insured. They order another ship built right away. Men get hired to build it and they're paid money to spend in retail trade and that moves inventories and industry picks up. More'n that, more people insure against piracy. Insurance companies hire more clerks and bookkeepers.

They get more money for retail trade and to move inventories and keep factories going and get more people hired.... Y'see? It's piracy that keeps business in this galaxy goin'!"

Hoddan had known doubts about this, but it could not be entirely wrong.

He'd put a good part of the proceeds of his piracy in risk-insurance stocks, and he counted on them to make all his actions as benevolent to everybody concerned as his intentions had been, and were. But it might not be true enough. It might be less than ... well ... sufficiently true in a particular instance. And therefore--

Then he saw how things could be worked out so that there could be no doubt. He began to work out the details. He drifted off to sleep in the act of composing a letter in his head to his grandfather on the pirate planet Zan.

When morning came on Krim, catawheel trucks came bringing gigantic agricultural machines of a sort that would normally never be shipped by s.p.a.ce freight. There came generators and turbines and tanks of plastic, and vision-tape instructors and great boxes full of tape for them. There were machine tools and cutting tips--these last in vast quant.i.ty--and very many items that the emigrants of Colin probably would not expect, and might not even recognize. The cargo holds of the liner filled.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

He went to the office of his attorneys. He read and signed papers, in an atmosphere of great dignity and ethical purpose. The lawyer's clerk attended him to the police office, where seven dreary Darthians with oversized hangovers tried dismally to cheer themselves by memories of how they got that way. He got them out and to the ship. The lawyer's clerk produced a rather weighty if small box with an air of extreme solemnity.

"The currency you wanted, sir."

"Thank you," said Hoddan. "That's the last of our business?"

"Yes, sir," said the clerk. He hesitated, and for the first time showed a trace of human curiosity. "Could I ask a question, sir, about piracy?"

"Why not?" asked Hoddan. "Go ahead."

"When you ... ah ... captured this ship, sir," said the clerk hopefully, "did you ... ah ... shoot the men and keep the women?"

Hoddan sighed.

"Much," he said regretfully, "as I hate to spoil an enlivening theory--no. These are modern days. Efficiency has invaded even the pirate business. I used my crew for floor-scrubbing and cookery."

He closed the ship port gently and went up to the control room to call the landing grid operators. In minutes the captured liner, loaded down again, lifted toward the stars.

And all the journey back to Darth was as anticlimactic as that. There was no trouble finding the s.p.a.ce yacht in its remote orbit. Hoddan sent out an unlocking signal, and a keyed transmitter began to send a signal on which to home. When the liner nudged alongside it, Hoddan's last contrivance operated and the yacht clung fast to the larger ship's hull.

There were four days in overdrive. There were three or four pauses for position-finding. The stop-over on Krim had cost some delay, but Hoddan arrived back at a positive sight of Darth's sun within a day or so of standard s.p.a.ce drive direct from Walden. Then there was little or no time lost in getting into orbit with the junk yard s.p.a.ce fleet of the emigrants. Shortly thereafter he called the leader's ship with only mild worries about possible disasters that might have happened while he was away.

"Calling the leader's ship," he said crisply. "Calling the leader's ship! This is Bron Hoddan, reporting back from Walden with a ship and machinery contributed for your use!"

The harsh voice of the bearded old leader of the emigrants seemed somehow broken when he replied. He called down blessings on Hoddan, who could use them. Then there was the matter of getting emigrants on board the new ship. They didn't know how to use the boat-blister lifeboat tubes. Hoddan had to demonstrate. But shortly after there were twenty, thirty, fifty of the folk from Colin, feverishly searching the ship and incredulously reporting what they found.

"It's impossible!" said the old man. "It's impossible!"

"I wouldn't say that," said Hoddan. "It's unlikely, but it's happened.

I'm only afraid it's not enough."

"It is ... many times what we hoped," said the old man humbly. "Only--"

He stopped. "We are more grateful than we can say."

Hoddan took a deep breath.

"I'd like to take my crew back home," he explained. "And come back and ... well ... perhaps I can be useful explaining things. And I'd like to ask a great favor of you ... for my own work."

"But naturally," said the old man. "Of course. We will await your return. Naturally! And ... perhaps we can ... we can arrange something--"

Hoddan was relieved. There did seem a slightly strange limitation to the happiness of the emigrants. They were pa.s.sionately rejoiceful over the agricultural machinery. But they seemed rather dutifully than truly happy over the microfilm library. The vision-tape instructors were the objects of polite comment only. Hoddan felt a vague discomfort. There seemed to be a sort of secret desperation in the atmosphere, which they would not admit or mention. But he was coming back. Of course.

He brought the s.p.a.ceboat over to the new liner. He hooked onto a lifeboat blister and his seven Darthians crawled through the lifeboat tube. Hoddan pulled away quickly before somebody thought to ask why there were no lifeboats in the places so plainly made for them.

He headed downward when the landmarks on Darth's surface told him that Don Loris' castle would shortly come over the horizon. He was just touching atmosphere when it did. The boat's rocket-tanks had been refilled, and he burned fuel recklessly to make a dramatic landing within a hundred yards of the battlements where Fani had once thoughtfully had a coil of rope ready for him.