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 getup 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.”
Girard-Perregaux said mildly, “Isn’t that an exaggeration, Lofting?”
“No, by Zoroaster, it is not! Take the Egyptians. Their greatest monuments, such as the pyramids, were constructed in the earlier dynasties. Khufu, or Cheops, built the largest at Gizeh. He was the founder of the 4th Dynasty, about the year 2900 BC. Twenty-five dynasties later, and nearly three thousand years, there was no greatly discernable change in the Egyptian culture.”
Girard-Perregaux egged him on gently. “The sole example of your theory I can think of, offhand.”
“Not at all!” Gubelin glared. “The Mayans are a more recent proof. Their culture goes back to at least 500 BC. At that time their glyph-writing was already widespread and their cities, eventually to number in the hundreds, being built. By the time of Christ they had reached their peak. And they remained there until the coming of the Spaniards, neither gaining nor losing, in terms of evolution of society.”
His colleague sighed. “And your point, Lofting?”
“Isn’t it blisteringly obvious?” the other demanded. “We’re in danger of reaching a similar static condition here and now. The
