“Well, Captain, as you style yourself,” said Luang, “what do you suggest we do with you?”
Flandry regarded her closely, wishing the local costume weren’t quite so brief. Dammit, his life depended on cool thinking. “You might try listening to me,” he said.
“I am. Though anyone who breaks in on my rest as you did—”
“I couldn’t help that!”
“Oh, the trouble you caused isn’t held against you.” Luang raised her feet to the dresser top, hugged her legs and watched him across rounded knees. “On the contrary, I haven’t had so much fun since One-Eyed Rawi went amok down on Joy Canal. How those fat frumps squealed-and dove into the water in all their finery!” Malice faded and she sighed. “It ended unhappily, though, when poor old Rawi must needs be killed. I hope this adventure doesn’t end likewise.”
“I hope so too,” Flandry agreed. “Let’s work together very hard to prevent any such outcome.”
Kemul, who was hunkered on the floor, snapped his fingers. “Ah! Kemul understands!”
She smiled. “What do you mean?”
“About his clothes and other valuables. They would be noticed, Luang, and Biocontrol would ask questions, and might even trace them back to us. And if it turned out we had failed to give Biocontrol this man they were hunting, it would be the cage for both of us.”
“Congratulations,” said Flandry.
“Best we surrender him at once.” Kemul shifted uneasily on his haunches. “There might even be a reward.”
“We shall see.” Luang inhaled thoughtfully-and, to the Terran, most distractingly. “Of course,” she mused, “I had best go back to my other place soon. The Guard Corps must be swarming all over it. They’ll establish my identity from fingerprints.” She looked at Flandry through drooping lashes. “I could tell them that when you broke in, I was frightened and escaped through the trap and don’t know anything about the affair.”
He leaned against the wall near the window. It was very dark outside. “But I have to make it worth your while to take the risk they won’t believe you, eh?” he said.
She made a face. “Poo! That’s no risk. Whoever heard of a Guard able to think past the end of his own snout? The real danger would come later, in keeping you hidden, outworld man. Swamp Town is full of eyes. It would be expensive, too.”
“Let’s discuss the matter.” Flandry took another puff of his cigarette. It wasn’t so bad the second time; probably his taste buds were stunned. “Let’s get acquainted, at least. I’ve told you I’m an Imperial officer, and explained a little of what and where the Empire is nowadays. So let me learn something about your own planet. Check my deductions against the facts for me, will you?
“Biocontrol manufactures the antitoxin pills and distributes them through local centers, right?” She nodded. “Every citizen gets one, every thirty days, and has to swallow it there on the spot.” Again she nodded. “Obviously, even infants must have a ration in their milk. So every person on this world can be fingerprinted at birth. The prints are kept in a central file, and automatically checked every time anyone comes in for his pill. Thus no one gets more than his ration. And anyone in trouble with the law had better surrender very meekly to the Guards… or he won’t get the next dose.” This time her nod included a faint, derisive smile.
“No system ever worked so well that there wasn’t some equivalent of an underworld,” Flandry continued. “When the authorities began to get nasty, I struck out for the slums, where I figured your criminal class must center. Evidently I was right about that. What I don’t yet know, though, is why as much freedom as this is allowed. Kemul, for example, seems to be a full-time bandit; and you, m’lady, appear to be a, ahem, private entrepreneur. The government could control your people more tightly than it does.”
Kemul laughed, a gusty noise overriding that mumble and tinkle which seeped through the floorboards. “What does Biocontrol care?” he said. “You pay for your medicine. You pay plenty, each time. Oh, they make some allowance for hardship cases, where such can be proven, but that puts you right under the Guards’ nosy eye, Or a slave owner gets a reduction on the pills he buys for his folk. Bah! Kemul would rather slash his own belly like a free man. So he pays full price. Most people do. So Biocontrol gets its money. How that money is earned in the first place, Biocontrol doesn’t care.”
“Ah.” Flandry stroked his mustache. “A single tax system.”
The socio-economics of it became obvious enough now. If every person, with insignificant exceptions, had to pay the same price for life every two weeks, certain classes were placed at a severe disadvantage. Men with large families, for example: they’d tend to put the kids to work as young as possible, to help meet the bills. This would mean an ill-educated younger generation, still less able to maintain its place on the economic ladder. Poor people generally would suffer; any run of hard luck would land them in the grip of the loan sharks for life. The incentive toward crime was enormous, especially when there was no real policing.
Over lifetimes, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. At last a small class of billionaires-merchants, big manufacturers and landholders-lorded it over a beaten-down peasantry and a turbulent city proletariat. These distinctions became hereditary, simply because no one ever got far enough ahead to rise above his father’s status… If there had been contact with other planets, the necessities of interstellar competition would have forced Unan Besar into a more efficient pattern. But except for the occasional unimportant visit of a strictly segregated Betelgeusean trader, Unan Besar had been isolated these past three centuries.
Flandry realized he was oversimplifying. A planet is a world, as big and diverse as ever Terra was. There had to be more than one social structure, and within any sub-culture there must be individuals who didn’t fit the pattern. Luang, for instance; he didn’t know quite what to make of her. But no matter for now. He was in Kompong Timur, where life was approximately as he had deduced.
“I take it, then, that failure to respect Biocontrol personnel is the only serious crime here,” he said.
“Not quite.” Kemul’s fist clenched. “Biocontrol is chummy with the rich. Burgle a rich man’s house and see what happens. Ten years in the quarries, if you’re lucky. Enslavement, more likely.”
“Only if you are caught,” purred Luang. “I remember once-But that was then.”
“I see why Guards don’t bother carrying firearms,” said Flandry.
“They do in this section of town.” Kemul looked still grimmer. “And they go in teams. And still they’re apt to end up floating in the canal, with none to say who did it to them. So many people might, you see. Not so much for the money they have. But might be a husband, after some rich boy come slumming saw his wife and ordered her aboard his boat Or a palace servant, whipped once too often. Or a sometime engineer, what lost his post and sank down to our level, because he’d not wink at a defective load of cement. Cases like that”
“He speaks of people he knows,” said Luang. “He hasn’t imagination enough to invent examples.” Her tone remained bantering.
“But most times,” Kemul finished doggedly, “the guards don’t come into Swamp Town. No reason for it We buy our pills and stay out of the palace section. What we do to each other, nobody cares.”
“Have you never thought of-” Flandry groped in his Pulaoic vocabulary, but couldn’t find any word for revolution. “You commoners and paupers outnumber the ruling class. You have weapons, here and there. You could take over, you know.”