Michaelmas by Algis Budrys Read Free Book Online

subtle interval recon-structions, among the newer modern buildings that were so much more efficient and economical to erect from scratch.
    "The escape capsule wreckage has not been reported as yet," Domino said. "There have only been a few daylight hours for the helicopters to be out. In any case, we can expect it to be under a considerable accumulation of snow, and not indicative of anything of value to us. If Limberg can produce a genuine Norwood, he can produce genuine wreckage."
    "Quite so," Michaelmas said. "I don't expect it to tell us anything. But it would be nice if I were the first newsman to report it."
    "I am on all local communications channels," Domino said tartly, "and am also making the requisite computations. I have been doing that since before arranging your hotel reservations."
    "Didn't mean to question your professional competence," Michaelmas said. He chuckled aloud, and the cab driver said:
    " Ja, mein Herr, it is a day to feel young again." He winked into the rear-view mirror. It was a moment before Michael-mas realized they had been driving by an academy for young ladies in blue jumpers and white wool blouses, and in their later teens. Michaelmas obligingly turned in his seat and peered back through the rear window at sun-browned legs in football-striped calf socks scampering two by two up the old white steps to class. But to be young again would have been an unbearable price.
    The suite in the Excelsior spoke of matured grace and cultivated taste. Michaelmas looked around approvingly as the captain supervised the bustling of the boys with his luggage and the plod of the grey old chambermaid with his towels. When they were all done and he was sated with wandering from room to room through open doorways, he found the most comfortable drawing-room chair and sank into it. Putting his feet on an ottoman, he called down-stairs for coffee and pastry. He had about fifteen minutes before his crew director was due. He said to Domino: "All right, I suppose there are certain things we have to take care of before we get back to the main schedule."
    "Yes," Domino said unflinchingly.
    "All right, let's get to it."
    "President Fefre."
    Michaelmas grinned. "What's he done now?" Fefre was chief of state in one of the small African nations. He was a Harvard graduate in economics, had a knife scar running from his right temple to the left side of his jaw, and had turned Moslem for the purpose of maintaining a number of wives in the capital palace. He sold radium, refined in a Chinese-built plant, to anyone who would pay for it, running it out to the airport in little British trucks over roads built with American money. He had cut taxes back to zero, closed all but one newspaper, and last month had imprisoned the seventy-two-year-old head of his air force as a revolutionary.
    Domino said : "The Victorious Soviet People's Engineer-ing Team has won the contract to design and build the hydro-electric dam at the foot of Lake Egendi, despite being markedly underbid by General Dynamics. A hun-dred thousand roubles in gold has been deposited to Fefre's pseudonymous account in the Uruguayan Peasant Union Bank. It would be no problem to arrange a clerical error that would bring all this to light."
    Michaelmas chuckled. "No, no, let him go. The bank needs the working capital and, besides, I like his style. Anything else?"
    "The source of funds for the Turkish Greatness Party is the United Arab Republic."
    "Imagine that. You sure?"
    "Quite. The Turkish National Bank has recently gone into fully computerized operation, with connections of course to London, Paris, Rome, Cairo, Tel Aviv, New Delhi, and so forth. The Continental Bank and Trust Company of Chicago is in correspondence with all those, as part of the international major monetary exchange body, and is also the major and almost sole stockholder in the State Bank and trust Company of Wilmette, Illinois, where I have one of my earliest links. When Turkey joined that network I