Carol Ann looked up and said to Bat, “Morning, handsome.”
He looked at her in mock criticism. “I won’t make nasty cracks at you if you promise not to make ’em at me.”
“Handsome is as handsome does,” she told him.
Bat looked at his superior. “Holy smokes,” he said. “The girl’s beginning to develop a kindly streak.”
Barry said to his secretary, even as he slumped into his chair, “Get me Larry Brooks, the Demecrat over in Victory-deme.”
When his equal number in one of the other three high-rise demes in the pseudo-city of Phoenecia faded in, his face questioning, Barry said, an air of self-deprecation in his voice, “Look, Larry, don’t think I’m around the bend but you haven’t been having any burglaries, have you?”
The Victory-deme manager looked at him wide-eyed. “Burglaries! In this day and age? You think my Security Division is senile?”
Barry sighed. “All right, all right. You haven’t heard any rumors about them in Hilton-deme or Lincoln-deme, have you?”
“Of course not. Do you mean to tell me you’ve had a burglary in one of your apartments?”
“Six of them in the past week,” Barry said glumly. “I’ll bring it up at our next council meeting.”
“Mayor Levy will want to know about it.”
“I’ll have more details by then—I hope,” Barry muttered. “See you, Larry.”
The last thing Larry Brooks said before fading out was, “Burglaries, yet.”
Barry Ten Eyck got up and looked at his second in command. “All right, Bat, it’s yours. See what you can do. Carol Ann, I’m on my way up to old man Vander-feller to see what’s spinning with him. Don’t bother me unless you have to.”
“To hear is to obey,” Carol Ann said.
Barry Ten Eyck entered one of the staff express elevators and said, “Hundredth floor.”
A robot voice said, “Yes, Mr. Ten Eyck.”
He bent his knees automatically to accommodate to the acceleration. However, shortly he said, “Stop at the eighty-third floor.”
“Yes, Mr. Ten Eyck.”
At the eighty-third floor the compartment came to a halt and the door opened. He stepped out and looked up and down the corridor. He brought out his pocket TV phone and said, “Mr. Stevens, of Security.”
Steve’s sour face faded in.
Barry said, “Well, did you get a report on this?”
“On what, Barry?”
“On the elevator stopping on this floor and my getting out?”
“What the hell, Barry! You’re the Demecrat of this deme.”
“All right. How many others, on the staff or otherwise, can come and go anywhere in the building, at any time?”
“Why, actually, only Bat Hardin and your Second Vice-Demecrat, Jim Cotswold. Even repairmen are checked out. If you’re going to use computers and TV spy lenses in the way of automating security, you’ve got to go whole hog, Barry. A mouse couldn’t move around this building without my knowing about it.”
Barry Ten Eyck sighed. He said, “All right, Steve,” and deactivated his phone and returned it to his pocket. He got back into the elevator compartment and ordered the hundredth floor again.
At the hundredth floor he switched over to Cyril Vanderfeller’s private penthouse elevator, saying, “Penthouse, please.”
“Yes, Mr. Ten Eyck,” the elevator said.
At the entrada, the building manager was met by the Vanderfeller butler, who had obviously been forewarned as soon as the elevator had started up to this rarified ultra in swank housing. He was dressed in black, with anachronistic tails on his coat, and wore that expression of an undertaker so common to the butler trade.
He said, in seeming deep gloom, “Good morning, Mr. Ten Eyck.”
Barry said, “Good morning, Jenson. I believe Mr. Vanderfeller is expecting me.”
However, he had to go through more routine than that.
Jenson said, “Yes, sir, I shall take you to Mr. Abernathy.”
“The appointment was with Mr. Vanderfeller.”
But the other evidently didn’t hear him. He led the way to the office of the private secretary of the scion of the Vanderfeller family.
One of the scions, Barry Ten Eyck thought, as he followed. One of many. He had read somewhere that there were some two hundred and thirty of the family now, each sporting fortunes probably of magnitudes inconceivable to such as Barry Ten Eyck. Information about the Vanderfellers seldom got into the mass media. They were hardly interested in publicity; to the contrary, it was said that such old rich as the Vanderfellers paid out millions of pseudo-dollars a year to keep their names from public appearance. Vaguely, Barry knew that the original Amis Vanderfeller had made his pile during the Civil War, a bit on the shady side, though not illegally. It seemed as though he had been sharp enough to scrape up a thousand-dollars or so and to take an option on a warehouse full of condemned military rifles. When the conflict started, even condemned rifles were in demand and he unloaded them on a grateful Confederate government at an astronomical profit. This had been put immediately into cotton and shipped over to England before the Federal blockade was strong enough to prevent speedy blockade runners from getting through.
That had been half a dozen generations ago. The development of the railroads from coast to coast and the advents of World Wars One and Two hadn’t hurt the family fortunes any. By the third generation, the brighter descendents had pooled their interests and gotten the family monies into trusts and foundations where they would be largely safe from governmental tax depreciations. And also safe from stupid speculations on the part of the less brilliant of the clan—of which it was rumored there was a sizable number.
Currently, the family was in a score of enterprises. Cyril Vanderfeller himself, who in Barry’s opinion had delusions of grandeur about his abilities, devoted most of his efforts to international construction projects, largely hotels and apartment buildings such as Shyler-deme, and to mobile town sites. It was said that he had an apartment in every building owned by Vanderfeller and Moore Constructions, one of the top two hundred cosmocorps in existence.
The butler murmured into the identity screen on the door to secretary Abernathy’s office and they waited for several minutes until it opened.
Barry Ten Eyck took a short, weary breath. Undoubtedly, Abernathy was in the process of impressing him by the need for him to wait. Very well; he was as impressed as he was going to get.
The door finally opened into an ultra-efficient looking office, though not overly large, considering the extent of the penthouse. David Abernathy looked up from a TV phone screen on his desk and came to his feet to shake hands.
“Morning,
