[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
remarkable. If you got it for eighty thousand, you got a real bargain."
I shrugged. I'd paid almost three times that much, illegal cash. "That's what
it was appraised at, way back when. You know Earth. Of course, I paid more, in
order to hang on to it through the Stileman shakedown."
" 'Away back when,' yes; twenty years." He set the diamond exactly halfway
between us. "I sent a holo to the International Diamond Registry in Antwerp.
The last owner of record was a Stileman, Russell
Coville. He happens to be in Novy, out at 127 Johanna. I wouldn't live there
on a bet. It goes around once each forty minutes, your own shadow makes you
dizzy."
"You talked to him?" Good old Russell.
"He says he sold it to Dallas Barr."
Quickly: "That's who I bought it from. You can understand why I don't want to
sell it on Earth."
"Oh yes." He leaned back. "I took the liberty of assuming that was the case,
and that's what I told Mr.
Coville." I nodded, not trusting myself to say anything. "If you were
Dallas Barr, it wouldn't do me that much good. The million pounds, the
Stileman Treatment. I've been off Earth for too long, haven't kept up with my
exercise. Couldn't handle gravity. My heart would stop before the shuttle did.
"I stay here, I've got twenty years, thirty, maybe more. Maybe a lot more. You
hear things; things are happening."
"That's good."
"You've got several alternatives. Antwerp says on Earth you might get $175,000
for this. That's 160,000
rubles minus some change. If you were to offer it for, say, one-forty, you'd
have a dozen people lining up. You'd probably get the one-sixty if you held
out."
"That's good to know."
"But you'd probably be kidnapped or dead the next day. The connection with
Dallas Barr would not stay secret, and there are some desperate people here,
predators."
"The other alternatives?"
"You could have the stone broken up. My friend could have it done
confidentially; this is not something
file:///H|/eMule/Incoming/Haldeman,%20Joe%20-%20Buying%20Time(1989)[v1].htm
(135 of 219)15-8-2005 0:24:35
BUYING TIME - Joe Haldeman outside his experience. You would have four largish
stones and some gravel, assuming no accidents:
aggregate value perhaps 60,000 rubles."
"That might be best."
"
Or
or you could just leave it with me. In lieu of a damage deposit. If
everything blows over, you get the diamond back, you haven't lost a kopek. If
someone mistakenly kills you, thinking you are Dallas
Barr, or kidnaps you & the stone wouldn't be worth anything to you anyhow.
Page 99
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Would it?"
"Aren't you taking an awful chance? What if I
were
Dallas Barr? Sitting across from you with a crowdpleaser on my belt. A
dangerous psychotic murderer."
He didn't say anything for a moment, and when he spoke, there was a quaver of
tension in his voice. "So all of life is a gamble. You would live longer if
you hid under the bed and never came out. But I've never hidden & and I don't
believe everything I read in the papers." He sat forward. "What I believe is
the things I read between the lines. Who owns this paper? Who wants you to
think what?"
Maria cleared her throat. "I think we have to trust him."
He nodded to her and looked back at me. "I told you I'm in this business fifty
years, real estate. Before that, would you believe it? I was a social worker.
New York, what was left of it."
"Bad times, fifty years ago."
"Good times for a boy who wants to change the world. A lot of the world needed
changing."
"Still does."
"More worlds now. Ten years I beat my head against the wall. Against the
system. I was an old man at thirty." He smiled. "And a young man at sixty,
when I sold everything and came out here. But by then
I'd learned: nobody changes the system. Not unless you're a Hitler or a
Khomeini. And even then, the system eats you. You change it, but you don't
change it into what you wanted." He looked at Maria again, intently. "I'm not
old compared to you two. But it trust, gospoda; that's the one thing I
learned is in eighty years. The system does whatever history makes it do, and
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]