Jim Baen's Universe Volume 1 Number 5

by Eric Flint

  There was more silence, even less comfortable than before. Finally, it was Lespoint himself who broke it, by smiling, clasping his hands together, and saying, "You still haven't told me what you want. I don't get many visitors these days, especially strangers. What exactly are you hoping for?"

  "The director's address," Pete said, coming right to the point. "And if possible, a letter of introduction."

  Lespoint's smile faded, then returned, then faded again. The words seemed to make him sad. "Going to plead your case, eh? Avoid a pyrrhic legal battle? Good for you. It's a personal failing, I'm sure, but I've always admired empty gestures, and the solid people who make them."

  * * *

  The director's headquarters—really the center of power for the entire directory—were in an unassuming brick building in a suburb somewhere. The sign on the front said: LEGAL OFFICE, INDEMNITIES, PROFESSIONAL SERVICES. And then, in smaller letters: not a customer service location.

  Nevertheless, Pete and Muffy barged in first thing the next morning. Or tried to, anyway.

  "This is a closed facility," the front door told them, refusing to open.

  Muffy answered with their names and titles, saying, "We're here to submit a mediation request."

  "Slip it through the mail slot," said the door.

  To her credit, Muffy didn't waste anger on a mere device. Instead, she told it, "The Directory Rolodex instructed me to submit the request in person. Shall I read you the legal definition of that term?"

  "I'm not equipped to understand it, miss."

  "Then get me someone who is." She followed up the command with some old-fashioned knocking.

  Half a minute later, a latch clicked open, and a security guard peered out. "Can I help you?" he asked, sounding nonplussed. Which definitely said something about the number of visitors they got around here.

  "I'm Muffietta Litting Von Mausland, paralegal aide to Counselor Pyotr Rao CompService of Cheese Information Center. We're here by invitation of the Directory Rolodex; a major infringement is in progress."

  "Uh," said the guard.

  "Don't just stand there," Muffy told him. "Let the counselor in. Or do we need to call in a process server?"

  "You can't serve the director's staff," said the guard.

  "No?" said Muffy, glancing back at Pete with glittering trademarked eyes. "I think the courts might have something to say about that. Listen, I can feel the counselor's blood pressure rising from here. If you piss him off, the director's going to hear about it, and if you really piss him off, you may find yourself on the receiving end of a willful obstruction suit."

  "Are you threatening me, miss?" Again, the guard sounded more surprised than angry.

  Muffy snorted. "What do you do here all day? Yes, I'm threatening you. Or if you prefer, I'm helping you understand the consequences of the dire choice you're making. Now, are you going to open this door?"

  "Uh. I suppose I . . . Sorry."

  Once they were inside, the director's paralegal tried to pull a similar number on them, but was foiled nearly as fast. In the end, Muffy jammed the papers down the front of the woman's blouse, saying, "Will you acknowledge these as served, or do I need to snap a picture? We'll take an appointment today, if you please. Unless you can prove the director isn't here, or his calendar is full, you're pretty much obligated by the invitation of your Rolodex." Her eyes narrowed. "You do realize that if you waste enough of our time, the counselor can sue for triple damages?"

  "You're laying it on too thick," Pete whispered in her ear, discovering in the process just how wonderful her perfume smelled.

  But instead of quieting, she turned and clutched her chest in apparent anguish, "No! Counselor, please! Don't fire me. It's her fault, honestly!"

  Finally, the director himself came out of his office with a legal pad in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. "What's all the ruckus out here?" he wanted to know.

  He was younger than Lespoint, but dressed older: a blue-and-white button-down shirt, with red suspenders holding up gray flannel trousers. His shoes were mirror black, like pools of liquid tar, and his necktie was so red that it actually hurt Pete's eyes.

  At the sight of him, Muffy dropped her gaze and fell silent, dutifully yielding the floor to Pete.

  "I'm, uh, from Cheese Information Center," he said uncertainly. Then, in a stronger voice, "That is, I'm Pyotr Rao CompService, and my father has sent me here to request your intercession on the matter of an infringement."

  The director blinked. He blinked again. He blinked a third time. "Are you serious?" he finally asked.

  "Yes, sir," answered Pete. "Chaos Home has filed a motion laying claim to the cheese recipes at the very foundation of our IP portfolio. They can't win, sir, but the litigation could be very costly for all of us."

  The director gave Pete a hard look. "And?"

  "And I was hoping—that is, the portfolio marklords were hoping—that you could broker an out-of-court settlement."

  At that, the director set his pad down on the paralegal's desk, then cracked the seal on his water bottle and raised it to his lips. "Son," he said, when he'd made the noises people make after taking a big drink of water, "do you suppose I was aware of this before you came in here? A major infringement happens in my directory, and I haven't heard about it? Get real."

  He took another drink, and added, "If I wanted to do anything about it, I'd've done it already, don't you think?"

  "But sir," Pete tried, his hopes flagging but not yet extinguished, "a lot of dollars will be lost. Mostly by innocent subscribers."

  "The stupid and the weak," the director said, shrugging. "To maximize profits across the board, we need strong management. Cunning management. If you can lose your IP, you deserve to. If you can take someone else's, well . . . The world is a hard, cold place, and litigation does favor the capable. Doesn't it?"

  "Yes, sir. It does." Pete tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice. He'd ignored a lot of warnings in coming here, but this reality was still hard to swallow. There was, of course, no help to be had here, or even sympathy, and the litigations of the world were constant for one simple reason: because they were meant to be. Costly to the subscribers, yes, and even the marklords, but for this man, Barry Pondu Cleaning Products, it paid dividends. And that was the bottom line.

  Even so, Pete couldn't help saying, for the sake of his own personal dignity, "You're wrong about management, though. I've seen great litigators who couldn't supervise their way out of a paper jam. I've seen bean-counting geniuses who never won a court case in their lives." Most of his teachers, for example. For good measure, he added, "Brute force will eventually fail, sir, unless people are actually on your side, deep down in their hearts. That's the whole point of probity: to make more friends than enemies. Ultimately, that's the best business decision any of us can make."

  And if ever a speech fell on deaf ears, surely that was the one. The director's face betrayed only amusement, and not much of that.

  Well, then. Pete had nothing left to say.

  Muffy did, apparently. She waved another thin stack of documents, saying, "Sir, we've got parking to validate and expense reports to submit. That's not your problem, obviously, but as invitees we're entitled to one signature, to prove we were physically here."

  She handed him a slip of paper which he looked over impatiently. Then a smirk broke out across his face. He glanced up at Pete for a moment, then at Muffy. Finally, he clicked open a pen and signed, with his legal pad underneath to keep from marking up the desk. He handed the slip back.

  Just like that, businesslike, Pete's hopes collapsed. But just when he thought it couldn't get any worse, the director put a warm hand on his shoulder, and said, "For what it's worth, CompService, you seem like a capable young man. Anthony Walking Chaos had better watch his backside."

  Did he think he was being supportive? Hedging his bets? Backing both sides to guarantee he was backing a winner? In any case, the director's smile was a terrible thing to behold.
Heedless of protocol, Pete shrugged off the hand, turned his back, and slammed the hell out of there.

  * * *

  "Well," said Pete, sitting on the curb outside the building, "I guess that's that. We're headed off to court."

  "Yup," Muffy agreed, lowering herself beside him. But she seemed a lot less mopey than she ought to be.

  He looked at her sidelong. "Why so cheerful? We lost. All our efforts in vain."

  "Due diligence is never wasted," she countered. "And neither is ethical conduct. You made some good points in there."

  "Yeah. Fat lot of good it did."

  He picked at flattened, blackened chewing gum on the sidewalk.

  "Well," she said, "do you actually believe what you said?"

  "I . . ." Did he? Hyah, of course he did. "Sure."

  "Well, then, we ride to war with a clean conscience."

  "Clean?" he gaped. "The collateral damage will be ruinous."

  "For some," she agreed. "But our side is all volunteers, right? No innocent ink to spill. Given that, deciding where the damage falls is just a matter of choosing your enemies wisely."

  "You don't mean . . ."

  She smirked. "Don't I?"

  "But his resources . . ."

  "Are worth squat in the face of real probity."

  Here Pete rolled his eyes. "You mean stupidity. Following the rules—especially the unwritten ones—puts a man at huge disadvantage against an improbate enemy."

  She put a hand on his shoulder, in a gesture wholly, completely, and utterly unlike the director's. "Sadly, that's true. Game theory confirms it. And you do what's right anyway, which makes you the boldest counselor I've ever known. But understand, Poot: that only applies at the individual level. When whole groups compete, the willingness to sacrifice becomes a huge survival advantage. Your people will back you up. Hell, complete strangers will back you on reputation scores alone. Your enemies would bankrupt for an advantage like that, and that's exactly why they'll never have it. Or even know it exists. When the ruling gets rough, their allies will desert them one by one. And good riddance."

  Pete, looking down at the road surface, took some time to wrap his head around all that. Did she mean it? Was she right? There was a scary-smart edge to her words.

  "So," he said, "we file a full-up class-action suit against . . . the director?"

  "None other. If he wants litigation, I say we give it to him."

  Legally speaking, anyone had the right to sue anyone; the question was whether you could win. Or make your opponent spend more than he cared to. Or make the whole thing such a bother that people would simply pay you to go away. None of those things were true if you took on an opponent clearly richer and better connected than you were. It was madness. And yet . . .

  If the director's true colors were flown high for all to see, if he could be cornered and subpoenaed and cross-examined under polygraph, his reputation scores would plummet. Could his subscriber revenues fail to follow? Could the probitous marklords—and their loyal subscribers—fail to profit from the upheaval? Through Muffy, Pete could see a shadow network all around him, hidden strengths and weaknesses waiting to be unmasked.

  "Society's a consensual hallucination," Muffy said. "A set of rules we all agree—however grudgingly—to live by. But if the people stop believing it—if even ten percent of the people wake up one day with a different idea in their heads and the courage to sue for it—the whole thing collapses. The art of tyranny is to keep it under five percent on any given day. The art of revolution is to nudge it up, just a little."

  "Gawd," he said. "Jeez. That's . . . that's . . ." Brilliant.

  With barely a moment to reflect, he seized her cheeks in his palms and gazed hard into her trademarked eyes. "Marry me, Muffy. Please."

  "Oh, Poot," she said, holding up a document with his signature on it. And the director's. And the paralegal's, and even the security guard's, in a space marked WITNESS. "I just did. Gawd, man, didn't Moms teach you to read the forms before you sign?"

  Her grin was wide and beautiful, inviting him to join in the joke, but whatever she intended, whatever she expected, the words hit him like a summons. Tricked again, eh? By the one person he'd thought he could trust?

  He stiffened. "Ah. Nice."

  "We can annul it," she said, backpedaling. Flickers of guilt and hurt and disappointment played across her features, but mostly she just looked calm. "I wouldn't bind you with a trick. Probity forbids it! But it'll smooth things over with your parents. Sorry, Moms, I was snared by webs of womanly deceit, wink wink. She'll understand. She'll approve. She'll bring your father around, if necessary."

  "Ah," he said, grasping her meaning. More strengths and weaknesses exposed. There was more to the world than he'd yet perceived.

  Still, it rankled, coming as it did on the heels of the director's rebuke. Or did Pete have it wrong? Was this the counterpunch, the first victory of truth and justice over mere law, and merer custom? If two people loved each other, shouldn't the world be bent and twisted until their lips could finally touch?

  "Well," he said, thawing, "clearly I can't afford you as an enemy."

  "Neither can they," she said with a laugh, nodding sideways at the director's front door. And then, with a kiss to seal the deal, they were off.

  Was there ever a grander wedding, a more perfect marriage? The inky reformatting of the United Directory of Properties—the Backup Revolution, as some have called it—followed shortly thereafter, and the great irony, little appreciated by history, is that it began right there on the director's front step. From there, of course, the story of Marklord Pete and Marklady Muffy passes into history and legend, and the rest of it is so beloved that this magazine can't afford to print it. However, fair use does permit us to note—if only in passing—that the two of them lived happily ever after.

  * * *

  Wil McCarthy is the author of several novels and short stories.

  To see this author's work sold by Amazon, click here.

  FANTASY STORIES

  The Spiral Road

  Written by Louise Marley

  Illustrated by Karl Nordman

  Alhasa

  Gray smoke curled from the beaten copper censer and rippled gently up to the high ceiling, filling the sanctuary with the spicy smell of pursil smoke. It made Romas's nose tingle.

  Angkar Rinposh, the blind lama, sat crosslegged beside the censer. He bent over the glowing coals to breathe the smoke, and his dark face shone with reflected light. Novices knelt around him, crimson cowls thrown back, shaven heads bent, topknots pointed at heaven. They hummed in perfect unison. Romas supposed each singer must occasionally stop to breathe, but he heard no interruption. Sound flowed around him, deep and monotonal, resonating against the stone walls and vibrating in his bones.

  Romas fingered his own long braid, and shifted his feet. He felt overlarge and out of place, but a little giddy with pursil smoke. Pursil was Alhasa's treasure and its pride. It grew only on their high plateau, with its cool salt air and unobstructed light. Suspensions of pursil leaf healed wounds, defeated infections, eased pain. And to Angkar Rinposh, its smoke brought visions.

  Romas straightened, tossing his braid back over his shoulder. He must not be tempted by the chant, nor besotted by the smoke. The crimson cowl was not for him. Romas had devoted his life to Alhasa as a courier. He wore a brown dolman over black leggings, thick-soled sandals laced to the knee. He carried no dagger. It was the pride and the sacrifice of couriers that they went unarmed, so that no one would question their purpose. They carried messages, letters, sometimes goods. To be a courier meant to be both strong and patient and swift. Romas folded his arms, and dropped his chin. Patience, of course, was the hardest of all.

  At last Angkar Rinposh lifted his head, and rubbed his sightless eyes as if he were waking from sleep. When he raised one bony dark hand the humming faded and ceased, one voice at a time. When there was silence, the lama dropped his hand, and then extended it, palm up. One of the novices
hurried to help him to his feet.

  Angkar Rinposh, leaning on the arm of the young monk, hobbled across the sanctuary to stand before Romas. He was bent and frail, and could weigh not half as much as Romas, but his blind gaze was commanding.

  Romas pressed his hands together before his chest, and bent his head. "Holiness," he said quietly. "Do you have a message for the Chamber?"

  "I do." Angkar's voice was as thin and high as the wind over the cliffs. "But I sorrow to say it." He gestured to the door of the sanctuary, and began to hobble toward it. The novice walked with him, but Angkar Rinposh led the way as surely as any seeing man. Romas followed down the long aisle and out, coming to stand beside Angkar on the steps of the sanctuary, to look down over the terraced city.