Paper or Plastic
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Aaron, nodded agreement, aware something had snuck past him.
"Young Hyman, would you come here a moment?" Josh asked with odd formality.
"Yes sir," he said surprised and made one last trip around the table.
"This is your first diamond deal?" He asked very specifically.
"Yes sir, it’s the first I’ve really done that was business," he admitted.
"Well, here is something for a keepsake, a specimen for you. This isn’t part of the package, it’s a personal gift to you and I hope you’ll take it as a token of our friendship." He brought his hand up and the golf ball size stone Roger had waved off and given him in Martee’s spaceship was in his palm. Easily a hundred carats and white as ice. Roger noted Hy's father was absorbed in the scene too and hoped he'd remember it instead of the discussion of origins.
Hy’s serious expression changed to a goofy kid's face in the time it took him to smile and he wasted no time taking the gift.
"Thank you," he said quickly. "That’s very nice," he said rolling the rock around inspecting it already.
"A sweetener!" Aaron exclaimed. "A sweetener on his very first trade and he didn’t even have to ask for it. His brothers are going to die," the old man predicted.
Chapter 22
"That was as obvious a bribe as I’ve ever seen," Roger accused Josh, when they were back in their car. Ono really perked up at this exchange.
"Now Roger, how is it a bribe, when the kid vowed that he was already determined to keep our secrets? I just gave him another reason to like us enough to keep thinking that way. I trust that kid to treat us honorably, better than I trust my mortgage company not to screw me and sell my house out from under me, even if I hadn’t given him a little present."
"No doubt at all he has us basically figured out. Is it normal for children that age to know about isotopic ratios and carry miniaturized custom electronics around in their shirt pocket?" Martee asked.
"It is if you are a geek," Josh assured her. "He reminds me so much of me when I was that age, it scares me," he admitted. "I’m glad he has his cousin to pal around with, being a geek can be lonely."
"But his cousin Gil looked to be nineteen or twenty," Roger protested. "Usually kids that far apart won’t put up with each other socially. They resent it if their parents force them together."
"Sure – if they have friends their own age, but geeks are usually socially isolated. Geekdom can transcend those barriers if they don’t have other friends their own age.
"When we came in, why didn’t you just go ahead and speak Hebrew with the techie checking out the diamonds? You gave him one word and made him work for that."
"Because I thought he was playing stupid and trying to draw me out to see how I’d handle technical chatter in Hebrew. Did you notice his English got real smooth, when he figured out what the diamonds were? They rattled him. If his English was bad it should have gotten worse when he was shaken, not better. He could tell a great deal about my technical background and try to gauge if I was a native speaker, if I’d let him. I didn’t feel like giving them that much for free today."
"It’s too early to go out to dinner," Josh changed the subject. "What do you want to do right now?"
"Why don’t you call our hotel front desk and ask if they have any messages?" Rog asked. "If you have anything from Mr. Green it’s probably saying they cleared the funds for our last batch and you can ask if we could drop off another box. We’re not that far from the lock box place and we can use the time productively."
"Let’s just check the accounts," Josh suggested, pulling his phone out. If the funds are in there, it doesn’t matter much what he wants to say about it." After thumbing a few keys he let out a low whistle. "We have to check the numbers, but if he gave us each half – it looks like we got a small premium on spot, instead of a discount. I wonder how he could afford to do that?"
"I don’t know. But that’s what I’m seeing too," he agreed, squinting at the tiny screen. "Let’s not argue with the man."
"Hyman would approve," Martee joked. She seemed to have found an easy affinity for the young gentleman. "What the heck – let’s take them two boxes if they are treating us so well."
The storage place they stopped, was the one where you could pull inside. That was good because Ono was the only one of them armed, not counting Josh’s cane he’d left in the car.
When they got back in Roger asked them to wait a second. "I’ve been thinking. We’re putting too much money in just a couple accounts. Is there a New York branch of an Israeli bank here where we could open an account?"
Josh did a search on his phone. "The Discount Bank. Which is closer?" he asked the driver, "511 Fifth, or 1350 Broadway?"
"Fifth," the driver answered, "about half way back to your hotel. It’s only six blocks or so."
"I’ll do this too," Josh agreed.
"OK, drop Josh and I off and just orbit around a few blocks, until I call Ono on the phone. We shouldn’t be long."
Inside, Josh asked, "Want to hit one desk together, or go separately?"
"If we separate, one will take longer for sure. Let’s hit one together."
The walked along, until there was a desk with a plaque that said account manager, under the ladies name.
"Ma’am, my friend and I’d like to open accounts. We’re on our way to an appointment, but is it possible to open an account in a half hour or so?"
"That depends on how fast you can write," she said amused. "What sort of an account and how do you intend to fund it?"
"Well, I won’t be writing a bunch of checks. Really, I only expect a few transactions a month, mostly deposits right now, but I’d like to be able to call up and have international wire transfers done for me."
"If you expect more than six transactions a month, our better checking account still gives you some interest on your money," she said sliding forms in front of both of them. "If you can limit your transactions to six a month, our Money Market account gives much better interest, depending on your balance. How are you funding it?"
"I’ll do an ACH transfer," Roger assured her. "I can do it on my phone, although a computer is easier."
"What will your initial deposit be, sir? I’ll write in down here."
"Make it six million," Rog said, scribbling not looking up.
"Six million dollars?" she asked.
"Yeah, oh… I guess I could keep an account in Euros or something couldn’t I? No time today," he explained. "I’ll look into that later. How much you putting in, Josh?"
"Six works for me too," he agreed.
"No, what I mean is, if you are depositing that sort of money, you gentlemen should be a private banking customers. Let me get a private banking rep and she’ll take you in a private room and offer you refreshment and take time to explain all the consequences of any transaction."
"Does a private banking customer get better rates, or any real different services?"
"Certainly. You will get a much better rate of interest on your money and we can do tie-ins to other services like brokerage and insurance, that are cheaper and easier than buying the services separately. We just can’t accept a personal account carrying many millions of dollars, because the bank is not structured to be able to pay out that much without some notice. We’d have to keep such a huge reserve against demand, that we couldn’t be using the funds efficiently."
"I can understand that, but I’d like a sizable chunk, a million say, available for quick transfer and then the rest we can tie up like you are talking about. We anticipate another deposit of ten million or so within the next week."
"You can negotiate all that with your private banking rep. It’s all negotiable. Don’t let any corporate nebekh try to act pompous and say there is any standard account, or a bunch of rules. When you are depositing millions they can customize it to fit your needs. It’s just going to cost a bit more, for a service like holding a huge chunk of cash ready for you."
"That’s not going to happen today in
a half-hour is it?"
"No sir, but you are from out of town, right?"
"Yes, we’re visiting."
"If you just tell me where you are staying, we can send a private banking rep to meet with you later, when it’s convenient. I’m sure your hotel has conference rooms available. If you aren’t sure when you are getting in from dinner and whatever, I can send a rep to simply wait in the lobby until you come home."
Josh and Roger looked at each other, picturing that.
"You know Rog; this private banking thing might not be too bad at all."
They settled on after dinner – sevenish.
"What’s a nebekh?" Rog asked as they walked out.
"Best I can translate it is a nothing, I mean a real hollowed out personality, way beyond just being shallow and dead inside."
"That’s Hebrew?"
"That’s Yiddish. This is New York City. A Presbyterian stockbroker, or a Rastafarian newspaper dealer, would know what she meant here."
* * *
Roger called ahead to the metals dealer in the car. "Mr. Green – it’s kind of late in the day, but we’re close by. Can we drop off some more of the same stuff?"
He was being vague on the phone, even though the chances of an intercept were slight. "We have it in the trunk and it’s making the rear-end sag. We didn’t rent an armored car again, sorry. You can write up the same basic agreement and we’ll be happy with that." After a pause he said, "Yeah, but we have two of them today if that’s OK. We can go to your back door, if you don’t want us dragging them through your office."
Rog folded his phone up. "He says go around the block and the kid Gil will be standing out with someone and we should back in where they show us."
There was a man-sized door open, with Gil watching and a uniformed guard with a holstered sidearm. When they came into sight he spoke in a small radio or a phone and one of those steel roll-up doors started opening. The business went fast and nobody tried to get them to come in the office and settle in. In fact they signed the receipt on the fender of the car.
"We gave you an exceptional rate on the first batch," Green explained, "because it was laboratory grade purity. In fact it’s so pure, we could not quantify how pure, with our own testing here. But in any case pure enough to sell at a premium for ultra pure scientific stock. We set aside a quantity for that, but it’s a very limited market, so we have to mix the rest with our usual stock and sell it as common monetary grade metal."
"I’m sure you’ll treat us as well as is reasonable," Rog waved away any problem. "We’re happy dealing with you and we met your relation Aaron Schumacher today. He seemed a fine fellow to do business with too."
Josh standing well back, as was Gil, saw him reach in his suit and do something in his shirt pocket. He sidled over and said in a casual, low voice. "It’s just the cane today," and tapped it on the floor for emphasis. "If you've got enough scale for size it should show something."
His eyes got bigger for just a second and then he was in control again. "How did you know?" he asked, not embarrassed, but very interested.
"It’s not a completely passive scan," he told him. "Nice work, but keep refining it," he encouraged him. The kid just nodded.
That will keep him busy a few days, Josh thought amused, as Roger wrapped it up and got everyone back in the car. It couldn’t be a lie, because you can’t measure any system without altering it. There was no reason to let the kids think they can always slick one past the old boys.
When they finished up and pulled out it was late enough to start thinking about supper, but everybody was so tired they called ahead to make sure Steve Coontz hadn’t eaten and told him to call room service up for all of them.
* * *
After supper, back down the hall in their room, Josh was looking at his computer, when Roger approached to take him down to the banker.
"What you checking out buddy?" The material was obviously technical.
"Some of this is results of the tests I had done in Seattle, on the parts out of the door opener and gun. Nothing there is surprising. This is a photomicrograph of a cast I took on the face of the space drive. I made sure there was a monomolecular coat of very light oil on a small spot and pressed a spot of resin on it, that is used for filling and reproducing very fine surface detail. You can cast a negative surface of something like a fly’s eye and then study it."
"Finding some clues how it works?"
"The disturbing thing is how simple it is. I have this terrible suspicion I don’t want to tell Martee yet, but I think what passes for a government there is running a huge scam on them."
"No!" Roger objected in mock, theatrical horror. "I’m glad we don’t have governments like that here."
"Sarcasm ill becomes you. But this is a pretty big scam, even on the scale we are used to. As far as I can see, the huge nano-gap piece they use to make their starship drive, could just as easily be replaced with an array of maybe a thousand little devices like so big," he illustrated making a circle with his index finger and thumb.
"So why would they do that and make it harder and more expensive to make the ships?" Rog objected.
"Because it serves their political agenda. They’re into extreme conservation and recycling. They ask the population to eat and use as little as they can, as a matter of principle. From what Martee says they have pioneer worlds where they have been there thousands of years and are still bottled up in one city."
They don’t want to build hundreds of thousands of cheap ships, to unleash a flood of emigrant population they can’t control. They’d have people going off to worlds they didn’t even know about. And off on their own, people would lose the tight control and direction to regulate the birth rate and practice their brand of conservation. Who knows what they would find when anyone finally caught up and found one of these worlds after a few generations on their own? Imagine if Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth, were the political party in power."
"Yeah, they could be as crazy as us," Rog observed. "But if this is true, it should be tough to keep somebody from discovering it just like you are."
"It would be hard to keep secret here, where I can send off samples to test and buy whatever I need openly. In the total controlled environment they have, the people who know could be a literal handful. I suspect they don’t have independent testing labs that will work for just anyone. Any lab will be part of one of the big companies and tightly regulated. You can bet they don’t have college courses on starship propulsion," he said, getting a thoughtful look.
"They probably recruit technicians from related trades and keep them isolated from the population. The ones who actually fabricate the drive core, I’m guessing could be as few as six people on a world. Probably fewer people than for example, we have in this country, trained to assemble atomic bombs."
"So if you made a drive the way you are talking about, could you make a bigger ship like they claim is so hard to do?" Rog asked.
"Sure that wouldn’t be any… Oh, my God…"
"What? What’s wrong? You should see your face."
"If you can make big ships this way you can make tiny ships too. I’ll have to confirm it but I’m pretty sure."
"So what? The ones like Martee’s are already too small. What good would a really little one be? Maybe something drone-like to run messages back and forth if you could make them robotic?"
"When these ships warp space, they’re not like what you read in some science fiction novel, off in some ‘hyperspace’, outside our universe. Now I don’t understand yet what happens when you suck energy out of a hunk of space and how exactly it displaces the ship. But I really suspect I don’t want to get in the way. I'm sure it doesn't disappear at A and reappear at B, without going in between."
"I’m thinking that if you made a small drive unit, it must make a dandy kinetic energy missile all by itself, with no warhead needed. I sure don’t want to be in another ship that gets in the way and I’m not even sure what happens if you point one at a pla
netary surface and let her rip."
They just sat and looked at each other for awhile thinking.
"Martee said once that with science, if you fight everybody dies," Rog said.
"I wonder if she meant that as historical fact, not opinion?"
"No wonder they don’t want a lot of ships. If a nut bar decides to jump one into a planet, how much damage will it do?" Josh asked. After serving in the Protectorate, neither had any illusions a suicide warrior would be hard to recruit. The jihadists had cleaned a lot of the schizophrenic gene pool out of their populations, by recruiting obviously unbalanced individuals. But sadly they didn't seem to be running out yet.
"I’d say they must know and have decided the damage a ship the size of Martee’s makes, is as much risk as they will accept." Roger speculated. That’s why they don’t want some monster the size of an aircraft carrier, that could wipe a continent, or even a world, if it crashes at speed."
"I’m really looking forward to finding out how bad that is," Josh said, "because how big a boom they will risk in order to have a certain minimum access to space, will tell me a lot about how these people think."
"Maybe they’re smarter than we’re giving them credit," Rog ventured.
"I don’t want to say anything to Martee until we’re certain."
"Works for me," Rog agreed. "Let’s go move some money."
Haim sighed and hit
All this extra work meant he had missed supper with his wife, again. She had understood – as usual. Their last post had been Sweden and they both missed it already. She had been allowed to work in Sweden and as an artist had found not only outlets in the local galleries for her work, but was able to do a series of workshops, offering advanced instruction at the local university.