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The Cartels Jungle
by
“No, but I suppose–I suppose he’d remain in control of the operator of the transmitter.”
She nodded. “He’d become a perfectly adjusted specimen with a zero-zero index, but–he’d also become a human robot with no will of his own.”
“But Ann wouldn’t–“
“Not Ann, Captain. Not the girl you’ve waited so long to marry. All she wants is a clinic of her own so that she can help the maladjusted. But don’t forget–she holds a priceless patent. Keep your blaster, my friend. I’ve an idea you may need it.”
He gripped her wrist. “You know something about this?”
“I know the world we live in–nothing more.”
“But you’re guessing–“
“Later, Captain, after you start putting some facts together on your own.” She pulled away from him. “If you want to find me again–and I think you will–look for me in Number thirty-four on the amusement level. Ask for Dawn.”
Suddenly, for no reason that he could explain, he had for her a great sympathy. She was no ordinary woman. Her discernment was extraordinary, and she possessed, in addition, a strangely elusive charm.
They rode the lift as it moved up through the city level in its transparent, fairy-world shaft. Dawn got out first, at the mid-city walk-way where the cheapest shops and the gaudiest entertainment houses were crammed together. Dazzling in the glare of colored lights, the mid-city never slept. It was always thronged. It was the only area of the heartland–except for the top level casinos–open to every citizen without restriction.
On the levels immediately above it were the specialty shops, dealing in luxuries for the suburbanites who had fought, schemed and bribed their way out of the minimum housing. Higher still was the sector given over to the less expensive commercial hotels.
The upper levels were occupied by cartel executive offices and at the top, high enough to escape the smog and feel the warmth of the sun, were the fabulous casino resorts, the mansions built by the family dynasts who controlled the cartels, and the modest, limestone building housing the mockery which passed as government.
IV
Captain Hunter left the lift at Level Nineteen. An automatic entry probe accepted his blue-tinted executive card, and he walked the short distance to the hotel which specialized in catering to spacemen. It was traditionally neutral ground, where the mercenaries of Consolidated or United Research met as friends, although a week before they might have been firing radiation fire at each other in the outer reaches of space. The frontier conflict was a business to the spaceman. Hunter was too well-adjusted to become emotionally involved in it himself.
The spacemen called their hotel the Roost, a contraction lifted from the public micropic code. The full name was the Roosevelt, lettered on the entry. The hotel was popularly supposed to have been built close to the site of a twentieth century Los Angeles hotel of the same name, destroyed in the last convulsive war that had shattered the earth.
By micropic Hunter had made his customary reservation. His room was high in an upper floor overlooking Level Twenty-three. Through the visipanel he could see the walk-ways thronged by the various classifications of executives who worked in the central offices of the cartels–lawyers, engineers, administrators, directors, astrogeographers, designers, statisticians, researchers.
Somewhere in the crowd, perhaps, were the two men who ruled the cartels and directed the struggle for the Galactic empire. Glenn Farren of Consolidated Solar and Werner von Rausch of United Researchers. Max Hunter had never seen either of the men or any of their dynastic families. He knew little about them. Their pictures were never published.
Yet Farren and Von Rausch held in their hands more despotic power, more real wealth and military might, than any ancient Khan or Caesar had ever dreamed of.
Did they now want Ann Saymer’s patent? The answer, Hunter realized, was obvious. With Ann’s Exorciser, they could enslave the centers of civilization as they had enslaved the frontier. In itself that was a minor factor, already accomplished by man’s acceptance of the jungle ethics of the cartels. Far more important, if one of the cartels controlled the patent, it had a weapon that would ultimately destroy the other.