Barry said.
“No, let me give you the whole picture,” Stevens said in irritation. “What it amounts to is that nobody, but nobody, can go either up or down an elevator, unless he’s cleared for it. Any visitor has to be checked before he can go up to an apartment. And once he gets into the building proper, he can only go where he’s scheduled to go. He can’t go from one floor to another. There are more than ten thousand spy lenses, computer-checked, in this building. If an outsider comes in the living areas of Shyler-deme, he’s monitored. He goes to the floor and apartment he’s checked through for, and nowhere else. When he leaves that apartment, he leaves the building—or we in Security are immediately informed.”
Bat said slowly, “Then it has to be somebody who lives in Shyler-deme.”
Stevens looked at him. “Even that doesn’t make sense. Even a tenant can’t go somewhere he doesn’t belong. If you live on the thirty-eighth floor, in Tower-Two, you can’t go to the sixty-second floor just for the Dutch of it. You have to have some reason. If you have a friend, or relative, sure, you can have it cleared out. But you can’t simply roam around. Sure, you can go to any of the public floors, like the Swank Room nightclub or the Chink restaurant up at the top of Tower-Two, but you can’t go onto residential floors without checking it out with our Security computer monitors.”
Barry said, “However, the burglaries took place.”
“Yes. But it’s impossible.”
Bat said, “How about the staircases?”
“The doors are locked, except for emergencies, and there hasn’t been one since this building was opened. They’re for extreme emergencies. Who needs staircases any more? We have our own source of power and three different sets of motors. If one set breaks down, another immediately takes over.”
Bat said, “But couldn’t our bad-o have cleared himself to visit some acquaintance on, say, the eighty-second floor and then, afterward, opened the door to the stairs and made it up to the eighty-third floor and pulled his romp?”
Stevens shook his head in exasperation. “No. He can’t open those doors. They can only be opened here in Security. You know that.”
Barry growled, “Whoever’s behind this must be a jazzer.”
Stevens looked at him. “As far as I’m concerned he’s a crazy.”
Bat said, “How do you know the same guy is involved?”
“Because the burglaries duplicate each other.”
Barry said, “What’d the crook get this time?”
“The same as before. Nothing.”
The two other men looked at him questioningly.
He said sourly, “In one apartment he ransacked the whole place but only lifted a small collection of coins.”
“Coins?” Barry said.
“Money. You know, coins. Like they used before the Universal Credit Cards.”
“Oh, of course. What was the collection worth?”
“So little as to be meaningless. In another apartment he took three books. Old books, printed on paper. Once again, practically valueless. And he took a small painting from there, too. And in the third apartment it was some junk jewelry. Nothing valuable.”
Bat said slowly, “Do you have any idea where the loot might be fenced?”
“Fenced?” Stevens said in disgust. “Even if there were any fences any more, it’s not worth being fenced. I keep telling you, whoever this clown is he isn’t stealing anything worth taking.”
They looked at him in frustration.
Barry muttered, “If it gets around that burglars are prowling the deme with us unable to do anything about it, we’ll lose residents like dandruff.” He looked at Stevens unhappily. “How could this guy know which apartments are empty, and then, how could he get in?”
“Both are impossible, so far as I’m concerned.”
Bat said, “How about patrolling the floors?”
Stevens was still disgusted. “With the ten human relations officers I have? Public protection is automated these days, Hardin. Besides we here in the office, ten men have to do for everything, including traffic control down in the car pool and the transport station. And what could a man do that a spy lens can’t? I’ve activated every mini-spy lens in the deme, except in private apartments, of course.”
“Any ideas at all?” Barry said.
Stevens shook his head. “It’s such a ridiculous thing, all six of these burglaries. I get the feeling it isn’t being done by pros but possibly by kids. You know, juvenile delinquents, as they used to call them.”
Barry Ten Eyck ran a weary hand slowly down from his forehead over his mouth. “Could kids get up and down delivery or disposal chutes, enter apartments from inside, rather than coming through the door?”
“Or come in through windows?” Bat Hardin added.
“No,” Stevens said disgustedly. “Not by any method I can think of.” He looked at Bat. “Through windows on the eighty-third floor? They’d have to be human flies. Besides, they’d have to break the windows, and none of them were broken.”
Barry Ten Eyck stood up with a sigh. “Doggonit, it beats me.” He looked at his Vice-Demecrat. “Bat, I’m turning this over to you. Working with Steve, here, of course.”
“Oh, great.”
“Come on back to my office, I’ve got another thing or two.”
Stevens sat looking after them sourly as they left.
As they crossed the corridor, Bat shook his head. “Human Relations officers,” he said. “What a mealy-mouth expression for cop.”
Barry chuckled. “You’re out of the times, Bat. And did you notice it was public protection, instead of law enforcement? We live in an age of gobbledygook, saving face, status symbols, ridiculous titles. How long have plumbers been calling themselves Sanitary Engineers? But I think tops was reached over in England where lavatory cleaners are now called Amenities Attendants.”
The door to the Demecrat’s offices opened before them and they passed through.
“Yeah,” Bat said. “Back before the First World War if you asked a man what class he belonged to, nine times out of ten he’d stare at you and say, ‘I’m a working stiff.’ But I was just reading the other day that back as far as the middle nineteen-forties one of the big polling outfits went around asking what class a person considered himself to belong to, upper, middle or working class. It turned out that eighty-five percent of the American people considered themselves to belong to the middle class.”
They went into Barry’s inner office, Barry saying, “I’ll bet it still applies, even though half the country is on Negative Income Tax, which is actually just relief.”
“It applies all the way up the line,” Bat growled.
