I run through my resumé in my head while it sips the highball and spins on my swivel chair, grinning all the while. Ex SFPD, half decent war, functioning PI? Nothing there to attract the attention of the White House, never mind my visitor. The skills I bring to the table are few. I make a decent omelette; I can find a lost dog or a missing kid. I can tell you if your wife is having an affair, if you’re too fat-headed to work that out for yourself; or your husband is paying too much attention to his secretary, whether she wants it or not. They’re not unique skills. In the Tenderloin they’re not even rare. You’d have a harder time finding a decent cook than a licensed PI.
“For my skills?”
“Skills?” It says, voice light. “No. For your absolute averageness.”
It ticks off my charms. Human, white, male, middle-aged, divorced once, unimpressive job record, near alcoholic, too sick of both political parties to bother to vote, no kids, my ex wife returns my letters unopened… I’ve been chosen, it tells me, because I’m paradigmatic of my planet’s dominant culture◦– that is, early Fifties America◦– to such an extent I’ll probably want to ask what “paradigmatic” means and waste time picking over the answer. “Instead,” it says. “We should get on.”
“With what?”
“With this irresistible offer of mine.”
I sit back in the chair usually used by my clients. Weeping widows, unhappy mobsters, crooked insurance agents, you know the types. I’m doing my best to look like someone used to cutting deals with dog-headed negotiators. I’d light a cigar, but it’s already said, almost apologetically, that it really hates smoke. A side effect of the dog stuff. And I haven’t reached a point where I want to light up simply to be rude. “The floor’s all yours,” I say.
“You’re in debt.”
Yeah, I know that. I owe seven weeks rent on this office. Some months it’s a struggle to make the mortgage on my apartment. If I don’t renew my paperwork soon the grace period is going to run out and I won’t be licensed as a PI much longer. “You’re offering help to clear my debts?”
The Cynocephali sighs and I almost light that cigar after all.
“Not your debts. Your world’s. Our articles of agreement allow us to collect now but we’re willing to help you restructure.” He sounds like a fancy loan shark, the kind you find on Wall Street in suits and big cars. “We think you’ll like our terms.”
“Low initial interest, rising later? A little more cash to sweeten the deal?”
“No more cash,” it says, looking shocked. “You’ve had that.”
“When did we have it?” I’m getting a little cross. “You’d think we’d have noticed if we’d been borrowing from dog-headed people.”
He spun his chair, sat back and steepled his fingers. I notice he has very long nails. “When I say you,” he says. “I mean Earth.”
“Who had it?” I demand. “The Soviets?”
It looks slightly shifty for a moment. As if we’ve reached small print it’s been hoping I wouldn’t read on the back of whatever imaginary bit of paper we’re arguing about. “When I say Earth, I mean this planet, just… Not you people living on it right now.”
“So this is an old debt?”
“Oh no,” it says, “the loan hasn’t been made. Won’t be for millennia. The borrowers have just chosen an inverse interest model for financing. We’d be quite within our rights to simply collect, you know. We’re trying to help.”
“Inverse interest model?”
“You, Tito Cravelli, have a mortgage?” It looks pleased with itself for having remembered the word, or perhaps for coming up with a primitive analogy I might actually understand. “If I’ve got this right, you borrowed money, bought somewhere near here to live and will pay back the bank a much bigger amount? Now, suppose your great grandfather bought where you live for you. It would cost him much less, right? Even less if his great grandfather did it. Now imagine his great grandfather settled the debt in advance. Practically nothing.”
“To me,” I say. “To him it’s probably still a lot.”
“Well, there is that. The point is, a debt is being created and must be paid.” It’s obviously decided the time’s come to get tough.
“What do you believe we owe you?”
The Secret Service agent with a bulge bigger than me under his arm who delivered my visitor, and popped ahead to check my office was safe, had suggested I be polite and assume my visitor was serious. Very serious. When I asked what that meant he said it was, need to know◦– and I didn’t.
But then he doesn’t know what this is about. And nor do I, but I’m about to find out and for a while… Well, until my visitor goes and the Secret Service come flooding back I’ll be the only person in the world to does.
“You borrowed an extra hundred thousand years.” It shrugs. “I know, seems like nothing, but you were time critical. That extra hundred got you out of a fix and let you reclaim the tens of millions you were about to lose. So it was a good deal, really. Now we’re here to collect.”
“How can we pay you back a hundred thousand years?”
“We don’t want years,” it says. “We have a surfit of years. You can’t get rid of years for love or money. We want your moon.”
I gape at him. I’ve handled most things, from happy undertakers to honest cops, and it’s a long time since someone threw me this kind of curve ball. But for a moment I feel the room swim around me and then settle. Cars growl in the distance. The Venetian blinds are down and still dusty, my filing cabinet is still scuffed, the gash bin is still black round the inside where I tossed in a cigar and built myself an accidental bonfire. It even still smells like my office. Still, somehow, it seems to me the world’s changed.
“They offered the Moon as collateral?”
The Cynocephali nods. “You’ll cope. It will mean an end to tides. A few changes to the ocean currents. Maybe some new weather patterns…” It hesitates, then says what it was intending to say. “Obviously, the moon produces an equatorial bulge in your oceans. You’ll find water distributes to higher latitudes.” He sees my face, sighs. “Your coastline’s going to change.”
“How badly?”
“Badly’s a loaded word. You’ll need to redraw a few maps. We haven’t modelled this in detail but I can give you a general idea.” He pulls a slab-like device from its pocket and dances its claws across the top, before turning the slab towards me. Africa’s bigger, the western edge of Europe’s mostly islands, Japan seems to have largely disappeared. “Your night sky will be darker,” it adds. “Probably take you a while to grow used to that. And there’s that whole spin thing. Your days will probably get shorter as the earth’s rotation speeds up.”
“What’s the alternative?”
It looks at me.
“You said you had an offer I’d find irresistible. There’s nothing irresistible about losing the moon. So you must have something else in mind.”
“Well,” it says, stretching the word. “We could always fold your debt into a new one with a payment plan that works for you.” Outside, a police siren howls several streets away and I wonder if it has anything to do with this meeting. The Tenderloin’s a place the SFPD try to avoid unless they have no choice. Inside my office, the overhead fan clicks away in a language only it can understand. I have Jim Beam in my bottom drawer. A humidor that once belonged to a Mexican gangster on my desk. I desperately want a cigar or a shot, preferably both, but the thing’s waiting for my reaction.