50 in 50

"Have you forgotten? I stole it when I was fifteen and ran up all those frightening bills. Be right back."

"Excuse me for asking," Cormac said, his eyes never moving as she walked by in front of him, all brown flesh and female. A strange reaction, any American male would have watched her, a visual compliment. "With the university closed, where do you teach now?"

"I don't. Retraining for new skills is a requirement these days. You do it two, three times in a lifetime as jobs are eliminated and new ones take their place. Right now I'm a metal dealer."

I caught him looking about and he stopped, embarrassed. "A good business. You keep it behind the house?"

He was even more embarrassed when I laughed: I couldn't help myself. I had a vision of myself cruising the roads in a broken-down truck heaped high with junk.

"I do all my work at the terminal. Wrote my own programs. I keep track of every importer, smelter, and breaker in the country. My computer accesses theirs at local closing time every day and copies their inventory. I know to the gram where every rare metal is at any time. Manufacturers phone in requests, and I arrange for shipments, bill them, and pass on payment minus my commission. I have everything so automated it could almost run itself. Most businesses work that way. It makes life easier."

"You couldn't do that in Ireland. We have only two phones in Arklow and one is at the Gardai barracks. But still — you can't build ships or farm by phone."

"Yes you can. Our farms are fully automated so that less than two percent of the population are farmers. As to ships — here, I'll show you."

I turned on the daylight screen, punched the library menu, then found a shipbuilding film. Cormac gaped at the automated assembly — not a man in sight — as the great plates were moved into place and welded together.

"Not quite the way we build them," he finally said. Kriket came out of the house at this moment and heard him.

"How well do you know your boat business?" she asked.

"Well enough. Built enough of them."

"I hope so, because I just got you a contract. I work on programming for the network. I checked the archives and we have nothing on hand-building a wooden craft. We'll supply tools and wood, pay an advance and commission against points on residuals…"

"Kriket — I haven't the slightest idea what you are talking about."

I interrupted before she could speak again.

"You're being offered a job, Cormac. If you build a small boat from scratch, they'll make a film of it and pay you a lot of money. What do you think?"

"I think that it is madness — and I'll do it! Then I can pay you back, Bil, for your hospitality, which is greater than that of your government. Do they really not have funds to feed a shipwrecked mariner?"

"This is a cash-and-carry economy. You pay for what you get. And now you can pay, so there is no problem."

Not for him, but for me and those listening ears. There was enough about economics on the tapes for one day.

Kriket's network did not waste time. Next day a skyhook dropped a prefab studio behind the house, fully equipped to Cormac's specifications. The automated cameras, controlled from the studio, tracked him as he tightened the first piece of wood into the vise.

"She's going to be klinker-built, mast forward, a ten-footer," Cormac explained into the mike that hovered above his head.

"What is a footer?" the director asked, his voice coming over the speaker in the ceiling.

"Not footer, feet. Ten feet in length she'll be."

"How many feet in a meter?"

The pager in my watch buzzed and I went to the nearest phone. The screen was dark, which meant something very official, since only the government can legally blank a screen.

"This phone is not secure. Go to one inside the house," the voice ordered. I went to my study, closed the door, and activated the phone there. The speaker was heavyset and grim, as official as his voice.

"I am Gregory, your case officer. I have been through yesterday's tapes, and the suspect is very subversive."

"Really? I thought everything he said was a matter of public record."

"It is not. Subversive statements were made about England. This evening you will lead the conversation to other European states. In particular Bohemia, Napoli, and Georgia. Do you understand?"

"Do I understand that I am now an unpaid police informer?"

He looked at me in cold silence, and I had the feeling that I had gone too far.

"No," he finally said. "You are not unpaid. You are on active duty with the Coast Guard and will receive your salary in addition to your normal income. Will you do this — or will I make a permanent record of your remark about a police informer?"

I knew I was getting a second chance. The permanent record was already made, but attention would not be drawn to it if I cooperated.

"You will have to excuse me. I spoke hastily, without thinking. I will, of course, cooperate with the authorities."