John Brunner (2 page)

Executive
S
huster
was a vain man of early
middle age. It was obvious he was vain—his expensive clothes were meant to look
expensive, his fastidiously arranged office was a frame for him, and his manner
as he looked her over implied that he hoped she would instantly fall on her
knees.

Kynance
did nothing of the sort. Right now she had
room in her head for precisely one thought, and she uttered it.

"You're offering a
job. What is it?"

Shuster
looked her over a second time, shrugged, and put on a practiced artificial
smile. "I must say that it's seldom I have the pleasure of interviewing
such an attractive candidate for one of our posts—"

"What's the job?"

Shuster
blinked. He retreated to Position Two: superior
knowledgeability
.
"I can tell by your accent you're not
Nef-ertitian
—oh,
do sit down, won't you? And would you care for a drink?"

Kynance
stayed put. Not that she cared what the job
was —she'd have accepted the chance to be junior dish washer on an interstellar
tramp providing the contract carried the standard repatriation clause. That
was the bait which had brought her into this room—not the prospect of getting
on the inside of the
Zygra
Company itself. She would
have traded every pelt in the galaxy for a berth on a ship bound for home.

The
repatriation clause was one of the few attempts made by Earth's current
government to impose a decree on the unruly
outworlds
,
and the only attempt to have succeeded. Following the Dictatrix period,
everyone in the galaxy was shy of absolute decrees. But there was enough
mobility among the
outworlds
themselves to generate
support for the concept of compulsory repatriation, so even the greediest
entrepreneurs had had to succumb and write in the clause.

It stated simply that if the place of work
was on another planet than the world where the laborer was engaged, compliance
with the conditions of employment entitled the employee to repatriation at the
expense of the company . . . whether or not the planet of origin was the one
where the worker had been hired.

Prior
to this, some of the less scrupulous companies had forcibly colonized
profitable
outworlds
by methods even less polite than
the
Dictatrix's
: luring workers into their net with
temptingly high salaries, then, abandoning them light-years from any place
where they could spend their earnings.

To
Kynance
,
this was salvation—if she got the job.

"I
would not care for a drink," she said. "All I want is
a
plain answer."

Sinister
retreated to Position Umpteen, sighed, and gestured at his
desketary
.
"The contract is a very long and detailed one," he murmured with a
last attempt at regaining lost ground. "I do think you should sit down
while we discuss it."

With
the mobile bulk of the
desketary
to help him, he
outnumbered
Kynance
. She was forced to accept a seat
on
a
two-thin-person lounge along the window wall,
where Shuster joined her. He then maneuvered the
desketary
so that she couldn't run away across the room, and rubbed his shoulder against
hers.

When
he gets to the knee-mauling stage,
Kynance
promised herself,
I'll—I'll think about it.

She was that desperate, and
hadn't realized it before.

"The
post," Shuster was saying urbanely, "isn't such a demanding one
really. It's a shame, in fact, that so lovely
a
girl-"

"Executive,
unless you're stupid you've already figured out what interests me about the
job,"
Kynance
snapped.

"The repatriation clause?
Oh, it's there, in full." Shuster
smiled and moved a little closer. "Though strictly in confidence—"

"If
you don't give girls straight answers,"
Kynance
purred with malice, "don't you expect them to misunderstand you?"

The trap worked fine. Shuster diminished the
pressure of his shoulder against hers by at least ten per cent and spoke in a
voice as mechanical as a
desketary's
.

"Supervisor
of
Zygra
for a term of one year at a salary of a
hundred thousand credits."

Supervisor
of
Zygra
—?

There
was a long silence. At last
Kynance
said in a thin
voice, "You can't possibly mean the
planet
Zygra
?
You must mean a farm, or a plantation, or—or something!"

Shuster
curled his lips into a pleased grin. "Of course, coming as you do from
Ge
, you wouldn't know much about
zygra
pelt production, would you? So—"

"Your
announcement said no experience was necessary. And I'm from Earth, not
Ge
."

She
bit her tongue, fractionally too late, seeing in imagination her chance of the
post vanishing into vacuum. With repatriation involved, logically the
Zygra
Company would prefer to hire someone from Nefertiti,
where it had its registered headquarters, or from some nearer world than Earth
at least—some world convenient for its own ships. For the sake of a gibe at this
horrible stranger she had sacrificed . . .

But what was he saying?

Unperturbed,
Shuster was continuing in the same tone. "But you must have spent some
time on
Ge
, at least? I could have sworn I detected
it in your accent. Well, let's set the record straight, shall we? Central
Computing, please," he added to the
desketary
.
"Category application for employment, subcategory supervisor
of
Zygra
, candidate Foy,
Kynance
,
new reference number."

He
sat back, contriving to restore the pressure on her. "By the way, I did
mean supervisor of the
planet
Zygra
," he concluded, and enjoyed the impact
of the words.

That
definitely settled the matter,
Kynance
decided bitterly.
For the task of supervising the unique, jealously guarded home of the pelts,
they would never pick-Hang on, though! Why was the job described in these terms
anyway? The demand for pelts implied a massive installation at the point of
origin—a staff of hundreds, more likely thousands—breeding, training,
a
million-and-one subsidiary
tasks
....

She
frowned and rubbed her forehead in a frantic attempt to remember what little
she had ever known about the production of
Zygra
pelts. Something about the planet being unfit for colonization . . . ?

"How
are
the things raised?" she asked, surrendering.

"Hmmm?
Oh!" Shuster leaned confidentially close. "The term 'pelt' is
a misnomer, and it's no breach of company secrecy to say so nowadays, although
when they were first being imported to civilized worlds the admission would
have been an automatic breach of an employee's contract, since it was thought
advisable to mislead purchasers and possible rivals by making them think it was
the skin of an animal. Actually, the pelts are entire
lifeforms
in themselves, and insofar as they're related to anything we know they're a
kind of moss. So I suppose 'plantation' is as good a term as any for the place
where they grow!" He laughed and jabbed her in the ribs.

"—
Though
it's
impossible to grow anything else there, I tell you frankly.
Zygra
is a sort of . . . how
how
shall I describe
it?"

"You've been there yourself?"
Kynance
suggested, trying to wriggle away and finding her
progress firmly blocked by the end of the narrow lounge.

"Naturally
I've been there," Shuster said loftily. "In actual fact, the
supervisor of
Zygra
is responsible to me, so one of
the duties which I undertake is ensuring that the terms of the contract are
strictly adhered to. Of course this involves direct inspection and . . ."

He
ran on at some length, to make sure she didn't miss the point. In essence, he
was saying:
It
pays to be nice to me.

"You were telling me
about
Zygra
," she murmured finally.

"Oh
yes! A sort of vegetable stew is as near as one can come to describing it, I
think. Marshland, a few patches of open water, much smaller than oceans on
planets which have satellites, and—plants. I believe the parasitism extends to
the fourteenth degree; in other words, there are some
highlyevolved
forms, including the pelts, which can't absorb nutriment until it's been
processed by an ecological chain fourteen units long. They remain plants
rather than animals, you understand."

Dim
facts were beginning to seep up from
Kynance's
memory—not dim merely because she had never studied the subject seriously, but
also because as a matter of policy the
Zygra
Company
shrouded its operations in mystery. Not even the Dictatrix had dared to monkey
with so powerful and wealthy an organization.

Come to think of it, it was a wonder that
they'd agreed to repatriation clauses.
They,
and they
alone, might have managed to stand up against the general trend.

A
little faintly, she said, "Look, I'm sorry if I'm being silly, but the
impression I get is that this job involves being the only person on
Zygra
."

"That
is correct." He eyed her calculatingly. "So if you wish to reconsider
the application I'll find it perfectly understandable. To be alone on a
strange planet is bad enough when there are millions of people there already,
as I'm sure you've found out. So why don't I take you around a bit and introduce
you to some of my friends, get you over the worst of it? Believe
me,
I know how difficult it is to—"

"Repatriation
clause,"
Kynance
muttered between clenched
teeth, too faintly for Shuster to hear her. He was edging even closer now, a
feat she would have thought impossible. Aloud and with a flashing smile, she
said, "Then how is the—the plantation run?"

"Automated,"
Shuster sighed. "The most complete and elaborate system of automation, and
I may add the most thoroughly defended against interference, in the entire
galaxy. The supervisor's post pretty much of a sinecure."

She
turned it over in her mind.
A
sinecure for which the all-powerful
Zygra
Company pays this vast salary?
There must be a catch, but I'm damned if I
can see what— Oh, this matter of being the only person on the planet!

"Let me get this completely right,"
she said. "The supervisor is alone on the planet?"

"The supervisor of
Zygra
,"
Shuster said patiently, "is the only employee of the
Zygra
Company whose place of employment is on
Zygra
itself."

"Claim-jumping,"
Kynance
said.

"What?"

"Claim-jumping.
Automated equipment in operation doesn't constitute possession of an
astral body: Government and People of the United States versus Government and
People of the Soviet Union, International Court of Justice, 1971. You have to
maintain at least the fiction of human habitation, or anybody else could step
in and occupy
Zygra
."

Shuster, she was delighted to see, blanched.
He said, "You— you've studied law?"

"Of
course."

"Well,
then
..."
Shuster rubbed his
chin and withdrew
a
few millimeters.

You
look as if you've forgotten something,
buster. And you have: you
shotdd
have exploited this
perfect opportunity to find out all about me.

Absolutely correct.
Shuster's next step was to reach for the
controls of the
desketary
.

"There
is the slight additional point to consider, isn't there?" he muttered.
"I mean, not only whether the job suits you, but whether you suit the job.
Uh—Central Computing!"

"Waiting," said
the
desketary
rather sullenly.

"Applicant
Foy,
Kynance
. Personal and career details follow."

"I
am twenty-five years old,"
Kynance
began
clearly, and went ahead from there, visualizing a standard application form in
her mind's eye. Halfway through her college courses the idea struck her that
Shuster was getting nervous; she went on with as much detail as she could
muster, hoping she was on the right track, and found she was when the
desketary
finally started to ring an interruption bell.

"Further
information superfluous," the mechanical voice grunted.

"Shut
up!" Shuster rapped, but the machine finished what it had to say anyhow.

"Applicant's qualifications*'greatly in
excess of stipulated minimum!"

There
must be a catch in it. Must be, must be! Maybe it's in the contract itself.

It was Shuster's turn to detect worry. He
recovered fast from his annoyance at what the
desketary
had revealed—or rather, the company's economically-minded computers, determined
not to waste time on questions to which the answer was known.

"That's
fine, then, isn't it?" he said. "So—but I see you're not happy."

"Show
me the contract, please,"
Kynance
said, and
waited for the
desketary
to issue a copy of it.