BesidesÄ Well, where was Janet?

Boss had had a contact address or a call code. Not me!

Boss had had an ear in the Winnipeg police HQ. Not me!

Boss had had his own Pinkerton net over the whole planet. Not me!

I could try to phone them from time to time. I would. I could check with ANZAC and the University of Manitoba. I would. I could check that Auckland code and also the biodep of the University of Sydney. I would.

If none of those worked, what more could I do? I could go to Sydney and try to sweet-talk somebody out of Professor Farnese's home address or sabbatical address or whatever. But that would not be cheap and I had suddenly been forced to realize that travel I had taken for granted in the past would now be difficult and perhaps impossible. A trip to New South Wales before semiballistics started to run again would be very expensive. It could be doneÄby tube and by float and by going three-fourths the way around the world .

but it would be neither easy nor cheap.

Perhaps I could sign on as a ship's doxy out of San Francisco for Down Under. That would be cheap and easy... but time-consuming even if I shipped in a Shipstone-powered tanker out of Watsonville. A sail-powered freighter? Well, no.

Maybe I had better hire a Pinkerton in Sydney. What did they charge? Could I afford it?

It took less than thirty-six hours from Boss's death for me to bump my nose into the fact that I had never learned the true value of a gram.

Consider this: Up to then my life had had just three modes of economy:

b) At Christchurch I spent some but not muchÄmainly presents for the family.

c) At the farm, at the next HQ, then still later at Pajaro Sands, I didn't spend any money, hardly. Room and board were in my contract. I did not drink or gamble. If Anita had not been bleeding me, I would have accumulated a tidy sum.

I had led a sheltered life and had never really learned about money.

But I can do simple arithmetic without using a terminal. I had paid in cash my share at Cabana Hyatt. I used my credit card for my fare to the Free State but jotted down the cost. I noted the daily rate at the Dunes and kept track of other costs, whether card or cash or on the hotel bill.

I could see at once that room and board in first-class hotels would very shortly use up every gram I owned even if I spent zero, nit, swabo, nothing, on travel, clothes, luxuries, friends, emergencies. Q.E.D. I must either get a job or ship out on a one-way colonizing trip.

I acquired a horrid suspicion that Boss had been paying me a lot more than I was worth. Oh, I'm a good courier, none betterÄbut what's the going rate on couriers?

I could sign up as a private, then (I was fairly sure) make sergeant

in a hurry. That did not really appeal to me but it might be where I

would wind up. Vanity isn't one of my faults; for most civilian jobs I

am unskilled laborÄI know it.

Something else was pulling me, something else was pushing me. I didn't want to go alone to a strange planet. It scared me. I had lost my Ennzedd family (if indeed I ever had them), Boss had died, and I felt like Chicken Little when the sky was falling, my true friends among my colleagues had gone to the four windsÄexcept these three and they were leaving quicklyÄand I had managed to lose Georges and Janet and Ian.

Even with Las Vegas giddy around me I felt as alone as Robinson Crusoe.

I wanted Janet and Ian and Georges to out-migrate with me. Then I would not be afraid. Then I could smile all the way.

BesidesÄ The Black Death. Plague was coming.

Yes, yes, I had told Boss that my midnight prediction was nonsense. But he had told me that his analytical section had predicted the same thing, in four years instead of three. (Small comfort!)

I was forced to take my own prediction seriously. I must warn Ian and Janet and Georges.

I did not expect to frighten them with itÄI don't think you can scare those three. But I did want to say, "If you won't migrate, at least take my warning seriously to the extent of staying out of big cities. If inoculation becomes available, get it. But heed this warning."

The Industrial Park is on the road to Hoover Dam; the Labor Mart is there. Vegas does not permit APVs inside the city but there are slidewalks everywhere and one runs out to Industrial Park. To go beyond there, to the dam or to Boulder City, there is an APV commuter line. I planned to use it as Shipstone Death Valley leases a stretch of desert between East Las Vegas and Boulder City for a charging station and I wanted to see it to supplement my study.

Could the Shipstone complex be the corporation state behind Red Thursday? I could see no reason for it. But it had to be a power rich enough to blanket the globe and reach all the way out to Ceres in a single night. There were not many such. Could it be a superrich man or group of men? Again, not many possibilities. With Boss dead I probably never would know. I used to slang himÄbut he was the one I turned to when I didn't understand something. I had not known how much I leaned on him until his support was taken away.

The Labor Mart is a large covered mall, with everything from fancy offices of the Wall Street Journal to scouts who have their offices in their hats and never sit down and seldom stop talking. There are signs everywhere and people everywhere and it reminds me of Vicksburg river town but it smells better.

The military and quasi-military free companies cluster together at the east end. Goldie went from one to the other and I went with her. She left her name and a copy of her brag sheet with each one. We had stopped in town to get her brag sheet printed and she had arranged a mail drop with a public secretary, and she had induced

r

me to pay for a mail and telephonic accommodation address, too. "Friday, if we are here more than a day or two, I'm moving out of the Dunes. You noticed the room tariff, did you not? It's a nice place but they sell you the bed all over again each day. I can't afford it. Maybe you can butÄ"

"I can't."

So I established an address of sorts, and sent my brain a memo to tell Gloria Tomosawa. I paid a year's fee in advanceÄand discovered that it gave me an odd feeling of security. It was not even a little grass shack... but it was a base, an address, that would not wash away.

Goldie did not sign up that afternoon but did not seem disappointed. She said to me, "No war going on now, that's all. But peace never lasts more than a month or two. Then they'll start hiring again and my name will be on file. Meanwhile I'll list with the city registry and work substitute jobs. One thing about the bedpan business, Friday; a nurse never starves. The current emergency shortage of nurses has been going on for more than a century and won't let up soon."

The second recruiter she called onÄrepresentative of Royer's Rectifiers, Caesar's Column, and the Grim Reapers, all crack outfits, worldwide reputations-turned to me after Goldie had made her statement. "How about you? Are you an RN, too?"

"No," I said, "I'm a combat courier."

"Not much call for that. Today most outfits use express mail if a terminal won't serve."

I found myself somewhat piquedÄBoss has warned me against that. "I'm elite," I replied. "I go anywhere... and what I carry gets there when the mail is shut down. Such as the late Emergency."

"That's true," said Goldie. "She's not exaggerating."

"There still isn't much call for your talents. Can you do anything else?"

(I should not boast!) "What's your best weapon? I'll duel you with it, either contest rules, or blood. Phone your widow and we'll do it."