Wheels Within Wheels Page 2

  Somewhat mollified, Andy nodded and reached over to the player set between them. He held a small box over the top of the set, pressed a button, and a tiny silvery sphere popped out to be magnetically scooped into the box, which then closed with a snap. He rose to his feet.

  “You’ve got resources, Mr. Paxton,” he said, letting his eyes roam over the house and island, “but you’re going to need more than you’ve got if you figure on putting a kink or two into their plans.”

  “What makes you think I want to interfere at all? How do you know this isn’t all just idle curiosity to fill an aging man’s final hours?”

  Tella grinned. “Who’re you trying to con? You mentioned research before. That’s my field. You think I’d snoop around Fed Central for you before checking out who you are, where you’ve been, and how you got there? In your whole life, as far as I can tell, you’ve never done a single thing without an ultimate purpose in mind. And this isn’t just politics for you – you’ve got a personal stake here, but that’s your business. I’m merely warning you: You’re dealing with some pretty powerful characters here. You’re going to need help, Mr. Paxton.”

  Old Pete resumed his supine position on the sand and closed his eyes.

  “I’m well aware of that. But for the time being, let’s see if we can find out exactly what they’re up to.” Without opening his eyes, he waved a hand in Tella’s direction. “Get in touch when you have something.”

  The receding sound of Tella’s footsteps vibrated through the hot sand to the back of Old Pete’s skull as he lay there and considered his options. Things were beginning to come to a head. He would have to start setting the stage for a countermove now or risk being caught off guard when the time for action arrived.

  And that meant he would have to go back to IBA.

  A flood of memories swirled around him. Interstellar Business Advisors… he and Joe Finch had founded the company on a shoestring more than half a century before. Fifty-four years ago to be exact. Hard to believe that much time had passed. Then again, when he considered all they had accomplished in that period, it seemed a wonder they’d had enough time at all.

  IT BEGAN BACK ON EARTH when a very young Peter Paxton received word from Joseph Finch, editor and publisher of Finch House Books, that his manuscript on the theory and practice of business on an interstellar scale had been accepted. Mr. Finch wanted to meet with him personally.

  The meeting still remained fine-etched in his mind: Joe Finch slouching behind his cluttered desk, fixing him now and again with those penetrating eyes, and telling him how his book was going to revolutionize interstellar trade. And imagine! Written by a man who had never even weekended on the moon!

  They spent the afternoon in the office. Joe Finch’s range of interests and knowledge was impressive. He was an omnivore with an insatiable appetite for information. He spoke at length on the fine points of the latest attempts to mine the neutron stars, then switched to an impromptu dissertation on the reasons for the most recent additions to Earth’s list of extinct flora and fauna. He gave a technical explanation of his own experimental techniques in holographic photography and then expounded on his perdurably unorthodox view of Earth’s current fiscal and political situation. And through it all ran an invisible thread of logic that somehow strung everything into a cohesive whole.

  They talked for hours in the office and then went to Finch’s house, where he lived alone except for his giant pet antbear. The rest of the night was spent in the living room, talking and drinking Joe’s horde of natural scotch whiskey until they both passed out in their chairs.

  Never in his life among the teeming homogenized masses of Earth had Pete met such a forceful personality. That night was the beginning of a close friendship. So close that when Joe fled Earth after incurring the wrath of the planet’s chief administrator, Peter went with him. The antbear came along, too.

  They ran to Ragna, rented an office and, rather than publish Pete’s book, decided to put it into practice. Obtaining a business loan on Ragna was no easy matter in those days, but they swung it and announced the opening of Interstellar Business Advisors – a big name on a little door.

  Soon they began advising. A few small-time independent traders with timorous plans for growth or consolidation were the first clients. Pete plugged the type of product, the demographics, the population projections, political vagaries, et cetera, of the sectors in question into his theoretical programs and ran them through a computer. The results were then run through Joe Finch, who processed them with his indefinable combination of intuition and marketing experience, and a strategy was formed.

  Success was slow in coming. The efficacy of an IBA program was never immediately apparent. The final proof was, as ever, in the marketplace, and that took time. But Joe and Pete chose their clients carefully, weeding out the fantasists and quick-credit artists from the serious entrepreneurs. After six or seven standard years, word got around the trade lanes that those two fellows in that little office on Ragna really knew what they were doing.

  The fitful trickle of inquiries soon swelled to a steady stream and IBA began renting more space and hiring ancillary personnel. Each of the partners had found himself a mate by then. Joe became the father of Joseph Finch, Jr., and life was good.

  The company continued to expand, and after two standard decades it held advisory accounts with a large number of the mainstay firms in interstellar trade, many of which would not make a move into a new market without first checking with Joe and Pete. But the accounts the partners liked most were the small, marginal ones that involved innovative products and processes, the speculation jobs that taxed their ingenuity to the limit. The big, prestigious accounts kept them solvent, the speculative ones kept them interested. They charged a flat fee for service to the former and arranged a percentage of the adjusted gross over a variable period of time for the latter.

  Time passed.

  They grew rich. And as news of the Earthside exploits that drove Joe from the mother planet filtered through to the outworlds, he became a celebrity of sorts on Ragna. A psychological malady known as “the horrors” was sweeping across the planets and a few IBA staff members were struck down. Pete’s childless marriage broke up. A man calling himself The Healer appeared out of Tolive saying he could cure the horrors, and apparently he could. IBA contracted the construction of its own office building and began renting space to other businesses.

  They had bizarre experiences, like the time Joe and Pete were almost swindled out of a fortune by an accelerated clone of Occupied Space’s most famous financier. The clone had to be destroyed, of course – the Clone Laws on almost all planets dictated that – which was a shame because they had found him charming.

  They had near tragedy when Joe, Jr., was almost killed by a radiation leak at a construction site shortly after he joined the firm. He was only eighteen at the time and managed to pull through.

  And they had joy with the arrival of Josephine Finch, augmenting Junior and his wife after five years of marriage – a little late by outworld standards, but worth the wait to all concerned.

  Then tragedy struck full force. Joe’s flitter had a power failure while he, his wife, and daughter-in-law were two kilometers in the air.

  Things were thrown into disarray for a while. Joe had been talking of retiring in the next few months when his seventy-fifth year coincided with IBA’s thirty-fifth, but no one had taken that too seriously. Everyone fully expected to see him in his office every morning long after he had officially retired. Now he was gone and IBA would never be the same.

  Everyone, including Pete, looked to Joe’s son to fill the void, but Junior balked. For reasons apparent only to himself, he left Ragna with no particular destination in mind and was never seen or heard from again until his body was found a year later in an alley in a backwater town on Jebinose with a Vanek ceremonial knife in his heart.

  Junior had placed control of his stock with Pete and his death left Pete in complete control of IBA. But
Old Pete – it was at about that time that the “Old” became an integral part of his name – wanted no part of it. He appointed a board of directors with himself as chairman and made it a point not to attend any of the meetings. This went on for a number of years. The directors adapted to the company and kept it going at an adequate pace, although not with the spirit and verve of the original, and became entrenched in the process. Old Pete never noticed.

  He had taken up a new hobby – politico-watching, he called it – which occupied most of his time. His purposes were his own, his methods were the best money could buy. The hobby seemed to satisfy the sense of political mischief he had inherited from Joe.

  The status quo might have remained undisturbed indefinitely had not an attractive and rather hostile nineteen-year-old girl walked into his office one day and demanded control of her father’s stock in IBA. Josephine Finch had come of age.

  Old Pete gave her the stock without hesitation. As Junior’s only descendant, she had a right to it. She went on to request temporary proxy power of his stock and, for his own reasons, he gave it to her.

  And that’s when Josephine Finch began to turn IBA upside down. The outcome was a flurry of resignations from the board of directors and the forced retirement of Old Pete himself.

  Retirement afforded him more time to devote to his politico-watching and now he had stumbled onto something that threatened all of interstellar trade. He didn’t know just what was being planned, but if the Restructurists were talking in units of a half-million Fed credits, it was big… very big. And if it was good for the Restructurists, it was bad for him – bad for IBA, bad for the companies he had counseled over the years, bad for all the freedoms that had made his life so worthwhile.

  Tella was right. This was too big for him. He was going to need help and the only place he could go was IBA. He didn’t relish the thought. There remained quite a residue of ill feeling between Jo and him, all of it on her side. He had been surprised and hurt by the forced retirement, especially after letting her use his stock against the board of directors, but he had not fought it. He had been seriously considering dropping his nominally active role in the company for some time but had never got around to doing anything about it. The forced retirement made up his mind for him and he left quietly for the Kel Sea island he had purchased shortly after Junior’s death.

  No, he bore no ill feelings – the girl reminded him too much of Junior for that – but he wished he could say the same for Jo. He couldn’t understand her. There had been an undercurrent of hostility in all her relations with him, and for no apparent reason.

  Old Pete sighed and rose to his knees, then to his feet. He hated to leave the island. Even more, he hated the thought of facing that fiery little girl again. Because seeing her always brought back memories of Joe, Jr.

  And remembering Junior always made Old Pete a little sad.

  Junior

  THE TWO MEN GAZED at the bustle of the spaceport below them.

  “But where are you going?” the older one asked. He appeared genuinely concerned.

  Joe Finch, Jr., shrugged. “Really haven’t decided yet. Probably into the outer sectors.”

  “But the company–”

  “It’s only for a year, Pete, and I’m sure IBA won’t miss me. If anyone can take care of things, it’s you. I haven’t contributed much since Dad’s death anyway.”

  “But you just can’t drop everything and take off like this,” Paxton protested. “What about Josephine?”

  Junior put his hand on Paxton’s shoulder. They were close – Junior had called him “Uncle Pete” as a kid – and Paxton now and then tended to take on a fatherly attitude, especially since the death of Joe, Sr.

  “Look. Jo’s ten now. I’ve tried to be a mother and a father to her for the three years since the accident. She’s perhaps overly attached to me at this point, but she’ll survive a year without me. I’m thirty-three and I’ve got to get away for a while or I won’t be much of anything to anybody. Especially to me.”

  “I know what’s going on inside that head of yours,” Paxton said gravely, “so don’t take this wrong… but can’t you climb a mountain or something?”

  Junior laughed. “I’ve no desire to be a mountain hanger. I… I just don’t feel part of IBA, that’s all. It’s not my company. It’s yours and Dad’s. I had nothing to do with its founding or growth. It’s just being handed to me.”

  “But the company has a lot of growing to do. You could be a big part of that. In fact, IBA’s future will ultimately depend on you, you know. If you run out on it now, there’s no telling what–”

  “IBA’s present momentum,” Junior interjected, “will easily carry it another decade with little help from anyone. I’ve got no qualms about taking out a year to go somewhere.”

  “And do what?”

  “I dunno… something.” He extended his hand. “Good-by, Pete. I’ll contact you when I get where I’m going.”

  Peter Paxton watched the slouching figure amble off in the direction of one of the shuttle ramps, a man in the shadow of his father, the only son of Joe Finch trying to prove to himself that he was worthy of the title. It was distressing to see him wander off like this, but Paxton had to admire him for having the guts to do it. After all, it was only for a year. Maybe he could find himself in that time, or do something to put him at ease with himself. He wouldn’t be much use around the company in his present state anyway.

  So both men parted convinced that it was for the best and only for a year; neither realized that one would be dead before that year was up.

  JUNIOR DIDN’T KNOW exactly why he picked Jebinose. Maybe he had heard about its minor racial problem once and the memory had lingered in his subconscious, waiting for the opportune moment to push him in the planet’s direction. Maybe he was drawn to situations in flux. Jebinose was in minor flux.

  The planet’s background was a blot on the early history of man’s interstellar colonization. In the old days of the splinter colonies, exploration teams were sent out in all directions to find Earth-class planets. At that time the Earth government was offering a free ride to a suitable planet to any dissident group that desired an opportunity to realize its own idea of a perfect society. The policy served many purposes: it disseminated Terrans in a rough globe of space with Earth holding a vague central position; it allowed humanity to start dehomogenizing itself by cutting divergent parts off from the whole and letting them develop on their own; it took enormous pressure off the Earth bureaucracy – the real reason for the plan’s inception – by forming an exit route for the malcontents and freethinkers on the planet.

  A lot of planets were needed and this put considerable pressure on the exploration teams. Sometimes they became careless. A major criterion for colonizable classification was the absence of an “intelligent” native species. No one was quite sure of just exactly what was meant by “intelligent,” but tool-making was the accepted rule of thumb for dividing the thinkers from the non-thinkers. There were countless long, ponderous discussions on the wisdom of using a single criterion to determine a race’s position on the intellectual scale but those discussions took place on Earth. The actual decisions were left up to the explorer crews; and as far as they were concerned, tool-making was it.

  The Jebinose blunder, however, had nothing to do with interpretation of the rules. The planet was given an “M” classification (Earth-type, suitable for settling) after the most cursory of examinations. The colonists were indeed surprised when they discovered that they were sharing the planet with a tribe of primitive humanoids.

  No one knows too much about the early colonial history of Jebinose. The splinter group that landed there was composed of third-rate syndicalists and was conspicuous only by reason of its particular ineptitude at the task of colonization. But for the Vanek, not a single member would have survived the first winter.

  The Vanek are an alien enigma. They are quiet, humble, peaceful, fatalistic. Few in number, they are intensely devoted t
o a rather vague religion which bids them to welcome all newcomers to the fold. Their civilization had reached an agrarian plateau and they were quite willing to let it remain there.

  Humanoid with blue-gray skin and long, spindly arms, they found it easy to befriend the colonists. It was not long before the Vanek had completely swallowed them up.

  The cross-breeding phenomenon between human and Vanek has yet to be explained. There are many theories but no single one has received general acceptance. No matter… it worked. The Jebinose colony, as in the case of many other splinter colonies, was forgotten until the new Federation tried to order the chaos of the omnidirectional human migration. By the time it was rediscovered, human and Vanek genes had been pooled into a homogeneous mixture.

  Much heated debate ensued. Some argued that since the original colony had been completely absorbed, resettlement would, in effect, be interference with an alien culture. Others argued that the Vanek were now part human and thus had a right to Terran technology… and besides, Jebinose was favorably situated in regard to an emerging trade route that had great potential.

  Jebinose was resettled. The emerging trade route, however, failed to live up to its potential. The planet had an initial spurt of growth in its population as spaceports were constructed and cities grew up around them. Then the population stabilized into a slower, steadier growth pattern and some of the hardier citizens moved to the hinterlands where the Vanek lived and technology was at a low level. Jebinose was typical of many middle level planets: modern cities and relatively primitive outlands; not a backwater planet, but hardly in the thick of interplanetary affairs.

  The Vanek tribes were scattered over the planet, mostly in the agricultural areas. It was through one of these that Junior wandered. He was tall and wiry with a good amount of muscle on a light frame. The unruly sandy hair that covered the tops of his ears and curled at his neck was his mother’s; the long straight nose, blue eyes and sure movements were his father’s. His face was fair, open, likable, ready to accept the universe on its own terms until he found good reason to change it. Although there was no physical abnormality, his shoulders were perpetually hunched; he’d been told all his life to straighten his back but he never did.