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The Cartels Jungle
by
The rest became the labor force of Sector West, enrolled in Eric Young’s union and crowded into the minimum housing. The teeming millions left in the hinterland were a plodding, uninspired mass content with trivialities. They felt neither ambition nor frustration. While the number of the mentally ill continued to multiply in Sector West, only a fraction of the hinterland population suffered the mental decay.
Hunter fervently hoped United had taken Ann to one of the other sectors. Rescue would be easy. An experienced spaceman could out-talk, out-maneuver, and out-fight an entire hinterland battalion.
Max Hunter took an autojet from the Roost to Mrs. Ames’ residential apartment. Conservation of his capital no longer counted, but time did. If United had Ann’s patent, Ann herself was expendable. Hunter had to make his move to save her before they knew what he was up to. It would be a difficult deal to pull off in the capital city, where operatives of both cartels swarmed everywhere.
He left his blaster in his hotel room, to avoid an interrogation at any other metro-entry. Mrs. Ames’ apartment residence was one place in the city where he had no need to go armed.
Just outside center-city a single street of twentieth century houses, sheltered by the Palos Verdes Hills, had survived the devastation of the last war. In the beginning the street had been preserved as a museum piece while the cartel city had grown up around it. But with each passing generation, popular interest had waned. Eventually the houses had been sold.
One was now operated by a religious cult. Two were enormously profitable party houses, where clients masqueraded in the amusing twentieth century costumes and passed a few short hours living with the quaint inconveniences of the past. The game had become so attractive that reservations were booked months in advance. The fourth relic remained unsold, slowly falling into ruin. The fifth belonged to Mrs. Ames.
To satisfy a whim–originally it was no more than that, Mrs. Ames had assured Hunter many times–she had asked her husband to buy it for her some fifty years ago. After a space-liner accident left her a widow at thirty-five, she had moved into the house as a means of psychologically withdrawing from her grief.
She never left it again. She found the old house an island in time, a magic escape from the chaos of her world.
She took in four residents because she needed their credits to augment the income from her husband’s estate, and the house was then officially listed as an apartment. Chance worked her a miracle–or perhaps the house did possess a magic of its own–for the residents were as charmed by its inconveniences as Mrs. Ames had been. Ann wouldn’t consider living anywhere else, although the house was more than a mile from her university. Even Hunter felt the indefinable spell, when he was in from a flight and went to see Ann.
It was a house that invited relaxation. It was a house where time seemed to be stated in a value that could not be measured with credits. It was a house that whispered, “I saw one world fall into dust; yours is no more eternal”–and, for a moment, that whisper made the cartel-jungle meaningless.
V
Hunter left his autojet on the parking flat behind the house. He fed enough coins in the meter to hold the car for twenty-four hours. He didn’t know how fast he’d want an autojet after he talked to Mrs. Ames, but he didn’t want a chance passer-by to pick up his car if the charter expired.
It was necessary for him to ring a bell manually, by means of a metal button fixed to the wooden frame of the front door. No scanner announced his arrival, nor did any soundless auto-door respond to a beam transmitted from within the house. After a time Hunter heard footsteps. A strange woman–probably a new resident who had taken Ann’s place–opened the door.