Ubik

The concealed microspeaker in his left ear buzzed and he beard the faint, measured voice of Nina Freede, audible to him alone. "Miss Wirt represents Stanton Mick. She is his confidential assistant. There is no one named Shepard Howard. The project under discussion exists primarily on Luna; it has to do with Techprise, Mick's research facilities, the controlling stock of which Miss Wirt keeps in her name. She does not know any technical details; no scientific evaluations or memos or progress reports are ever made available to her by Mr. Mick, and she resents this enormously. From Mick's staff, however, she has picked up a general idea of the nature of the project. Assuming that her secondhand knowledge is accurate, the Lunar project involves a radical, new, low-cost interstellar drive system, approaching the velocity of light, which could be leased to every moderately affluent political or ethnological group. Mick's idea seems to be that the drive system will make colonization feasible on a mass basic understructure. And hence no longer a monopoly of specific governments."

Nina Freede clicked off, and Runciter leaned back in his leather and walnut swivel chair to ponder.

"What are you thinking?" Miss Wirt asked brightly.

"I'm wondering," Runciter said, "if you can afford our services. Since I have no test data to go on, I can only estimate how many inertials you'll need... but it may run as high as forty." He said this knowing that Stanton Mick could afford - or could figure out how to get someone else to underwrite - an unlimited number of inertials.

"'Forty,'" Miss Wirt echoed. "Hmm. That is quite a few."

"The more we make use of, the sooner we can get the job done. Since you're in a hurry, we'll move them all in at one time. If you are authorized to sign a work contract in the name of your employer" - he pointed a steady, unyielding finger at her; she did not blink - "and you can come up with a retainer now, we could probably accomplish this within seventy-two hours." He eyed her then, waiting.

The microspeaker in his ear rasped, "As owner of Techprise she is fully bonded. She can legally obligate her firm up to and including its total worth. Right now she is calculating how much this would be, if converted on today's market." A pause. "Several billion poscreds, she has decided. But she doesn't want to do this; she doesn't like the idea of committing herself to both a contract and retainer. She would prefer to have Mick's attorneys do that, even if it means several days' delay."

But they're in a hurry, Runciter reflected. Or so they say. The microspeaker said, "She has an intuition that you know - or have guessed - whom she represents. And she's afraid you'll up your fee accordingly. Mick knows his reputation. He considers himself the world's greatest mark. So he negotiates in this manner: through someone or some firm as a front. On the other hand, they want as many inertials as they can get. And they're resigned to that being enormously expensive."

"Forty inertials," Runciter said idly; he scratched with his pen at a small sheet of blank paper, on his desk for just such purposes. "Let's see. Six times fifty times three. Times forty."

Miss Wirt, still smiling her glazed, happy smile, waited with visible tension.

"I wonder," he murmured, "who paid Hollis to put his employees in the middle of your project."

"That doesn't really matter, does it?" Miss Wirt said. "What matters is that they're there."

Runciter said, "Sometimes one never finds out. But as you say - it's the same as when ants find their way into your kitchen. You don't ask why they're there; you just begin the job of getting them back out." He had arrived at a cost figure.

It was enormous.

"I'll - have to think it over," Miss Wirt said, she raised her eyes from the shocking sight of his estimate and half rose to her feet. "Is there somewhere, an office, where I can be alone? And possibly phone Mr. Howard?"

Runciter, also rising, said, "It's rare for any prudence organization to have that many inertials available at one time. If you wait, the situation will change. So if you want them you'd better act."

"And you think it would really take that many inertials?"