“Civil disorder,” Metep said, nodding knowingly, almost thankfully. Riots he could understand, cope with. But all this economics talk…
“You expect major disturbances?”
“I expect disturbances-just how major they'll be depends on what we do in the next few weeks. I want to try to defuse any riots before they start; but once they start, I want plenty of manpower at our disposal.” He turned to Metep. “We'll need an executive order from you, Jek, ordering withdrawal of all Imperial garrisons from all the other out-worlds. We can't afford to keep them supplied out there anyway, and I want them all gathered tight around us if things get nasty.”
There was a chorus of agreement from all present.
Haworth glanced up and down the table. “It's going to be a long, hot summer, gentlemen. Let's try to hold things together until one of the probe ships makes contact with the aliens in the Perseus arm. That could be our only hope.”
“Any word yet?” Metep said.
“None.”
“What if we never hear anything from them?” Cumberland asked. “What if they never come back?”
“That could be useful, too.”
“FIFTY MARKS FOR A LOAF of bread? That's outrageous!”
“Wait until tomorrow if you think fifty's too much,” the man said laconically. He stood with his back against a blank synthestone wall, a hand blaster at his hip, his wares-unwrapped loaves of bread-spread on a folding table before him. “Probably be fifty-five by then.”
Salli Stafford felt utterly helpless, and frightened. No one had heard from Vin or any of the other probe pilots; no one at Project Perseus knew when they were coming back. Or if they were coming back. She was alone in Primus City and could daily see signs of decay: lengthening, widening cracks in its social foundations. She needed Vin around to tell her that everything would be all right, that he would protect her.
She needed money, too. She had read in one of The Robin Hood Readers that came out just after the bottom had dropped out of the mark that she should immediately pull all her money out of the bank and spend every bit of it. She didn't hesitate. Vin had grown to have unwavering faith in whoever was behind those flyers, and Salli had finally come around to believing in him, too. Especially after that long wait in their old back yard, when she had laughed at Vin's almost childish faith, and then the money had come down. She wasn't going to waste time laughing this time; she was down at the bank first thing the next morning, withdrawing everything that was left from Vin's advance for joining the probe fleet.
That had been a month ago, and it was the smartest thing she had ever done in her life. Within the first three days after the crash of the Imperial mark, fully half the banks in Primus had closed. They didn't fail-the Imperium prevented that by seeing to it that every depositor was paid the full amount of his or her account in nice, freshly minted paper marks-they simply ran out of depositors.
Salli followed up her foresight with shortsightedness that now seemed incredibly stupid. Instead of spending the entire ten thousand marks she had withdrawn on commodities, as The Robin Hood Reader had suggested, she waffled and spent only half. The rest she hid in the apartment. She now saw the error of that-prices had risen anywhere between 1,000 and 2,000 per cent in the intervening weeks. Steri-packed vegetables and staples she could have picked up for five marks then-and she had considered that exorbitant-were now going for fifty or sixty, with people thankful they could find them. It was crazy! The four thousand marks she had hidden away then would have bought her fifty thousand marks’ worth of food at today's prices. She cursed herself for not following Robin Hood's advice to the letter. Everyone in Primus now knew from personal experience what he had said back then. Nobody held onto cash any more; it was spent as soon as it was in hand. The only things worth less were Food Vouchers…retailers laughed when you brought them in.
Salli was afraid. What was going to happen when her money ran out? She had called Project Perseus but they had said they could not release Vin's second fifteen thousand until he had returned. She shrugged as she stood there on the street. What was fifteen thousand any more? Nothing!
“You gonna buy, lady?” the man asked, his eyes constantly shifting up and down the street. His legs straddled a large box of currency and he mentally took the measure of every passerby.
“Will you take anything else?”
His eyes narrowed. “Gold, silver, platinum if you've got any. I can let you take it out in trade or I can give you a good bundle of marks depending on what you've got.”
“I-don't have any.” She didn't know what had made her ask. She didn't really want bread. It was being made out in the hinterlands on isolated farms and there were no preservatives being used because there were none to be had. Bread like that went stale too fast to be worth fifty marks to a woman living alone.
He looked her up and down, his gaze seeming to penetrate her clothing. “Don't bother to offer me anything else you've got,” he sneered. “I've got more offers for that every day than I could handle in a lifetime.”
Tears sprang into Salli's eyes as she felt her face redden. “I didn't mean that!”
“Then why did you ask?”
Salli couldn't answer. She had been thinking about the future-the near future, when her money ran out. How was she to get by then? Her employer had told her he couldn't give her a raise, that his business had fallen off to the point where he might have to close up shop and go home.
As she turned away, the man called after her. “Hey, look, I'm sorry, but I've got a family of my own to feed. I've got to fly out and pick this up on my own. The freight unions aren't running till they get more money, you know that.”
Salli knew all that. The vid was full of it-bad news and more bad news. Shipping of goods was at a standstill. Employers were unable to raise wages quickly enough to keep their employees at subsistence level. Salli glanced back over her shoulder and saw that the bread seller had already forgotten her, and was now busy dickering with a man holding up a handful of fresh vegetables.
What was she going to do? Nothing in her life had prepared her for anything like this-she was slowly coming to the realization that her life had prepared her for little more than child rearing. No skill beyond rudimentary mathematics was required of her in the part-time job she was barely holding onto; she could be replaced in minutes. All her childhood had been spent learning to be dependent on men-her father, her brothers, and then Vin. Which was fine until now, when everything was falling apart, and her father and brothers were on the other side of the planet with no way to get to her or she to them. She was suddenly on her own, scared to death, and helpless.
Why am I like this? she thought, then snorted cynically. Why is the world like this? Why isn't Vin's money worth anything?
Vin-the name conjured up a vision of her husband's earnest face, and the worry lines that seemed to have become a part of his features over the past few years. She had never understood what had been plaguing him all this time. He had always acted as a buffer between her and the real world, taking the blows, absorbing them, and allowing only a few vibrations to disturb her. Now he was gone, and so was her insulation. And now she knew first hand the malaise of impotency that had so afflicted his psyche. She felt trapped in a world she had not made. On the surface it was physically similar, but everything had changed. Neither she nor anyone in the street around her had any control over what was happening to them Powerless, all of them.