The Freelancer, Robert Zacks [web based ebook reader .TXT] 📗

"You may not have to, pal. I may be right beside you in the next shipment. My wife is ready to certify me for non-support. If I don't clean up a nice fat commission by tonight, blooey, it's the mines for me, too."

The Unassigned Citizen started to form the words Good luck! when Jeb hastily interrupted, "That's on Copyright. Take it easy."

"Uh ... my heart goes beside yours," said the man, choosing his words carefully. "My sympathy has arms, one of which is around your mighty shoulders. I say to you farewell."

"Wonderful!" exclaimed Jeb. He pumped the other's hand. "I like the way you put that. It's new. It has a freshness."

They smiled at each other. Then the oval building that housed The SuperMonitex Feeder came into view and Jeb waved good-by and swung out of the commuter stream in the regulation spiral under the cold eyes of a golden-clad traffic cop. Jeb landed on the balcony ledge outside the ninetieth-level corridor and walked in, finally entering a huge room in the center of which was a circular wall with plug outlets and sets of dials and screens at intervals all the way around.

Jeb greeted a few of his co-workers, but didn't pause to gossip. He wasn't in a gay mood this morning, as were many of them who were gleefully recounting some of the slick violations they'd picked up. Jeb went to the circular wall and plugged his Monitex into a receptacle. He punched a button marked New Copyrights and waited for the humming to stop indicating that his Monitex had been fed all the latest phrases added to the huge group protected by law.

With his Monitex coded up to date, its memory bank fattened, Jeb went to the supply room to requisition a hollowed-out air pollution meter to conceal his Monitex. A hand tapped his shoulder.

"Hi, there," said Monitor Platt, a lean-faced, smirking man Jeb disliked. "I just came off night shift. Had a big evening."

"Yeah?" asked Jeb, his skin crawling. Monitor Platt specialized in copyright violations in the area of lakes and parks where lovers murmured words they soon found out were not at all new and quite expensive.

Monitor Platt chuckled. "Been cleaning up on a new copyright just registered. The good old wolf whistle. One hundred credits fee."

Even Jeb was startled. "But that's not a phrase."

"No, but it's a 'shopworn, overused and wearisome truism,' so they slipped it through."

"Golly, next thing you know, they'll be copyrighting a deep sigh or the smacking sound of a kiss."

Monitor Platt laughed in appreciation. Then, as Jeb frowned and attended to fitting his detector into the shell of the air pollution meter, Monitor Platt regaled him with the violations that had poured credits into his pockets.

"Got a cute dame, nice curves, getting a good hugging under the moon near the lake. She says timidly to this sap, 'It's the first time I've ever been kissed, honestly.' Bong! Fifty credits for the expense account. And another one I picked up in a canoe parked on the bank. This guy says soulfully, 'I'm not the marrying kind, but....' He never gets a chance to finish. Bong! Thirty credits. I sure cleaned up today. If I were you, I'd head straight for the snuggle spots. A whole raft of corny love lines have been blanketed in, you know, and nobody's alerted."

"Uh, well," muttered Jeb, who didn't want any enemies and so didn't express his feelings about making a living from such a source, "I already have my schedule figured out, but I'll keep it in mind."

"Where you headed for?"

Monitor Jeb was relieved when the big bell sounded, its brassy reverberations warning Monitors to quit gabbing and get out into the field to scoop up violations and revenue for the corporation. The paunchy office manager, seated up on a small balcony overlooking the giant hall, saw that the signal was, as usual, being ignored. Indignantly he punched a button on the board facing him and a repulsive odor filled the air which had the Monitors hastily seizing their equipment and leaving the building.

Jeb gladly took off into the windy canyons between the skyscrapers. Instead of ascending, he plummeted down forty stories and drifted along, his nostrils twitching with the bad air at this height. Fleetingly, he had the grumbling thought that, with present-day technology, there was no excuse at all for polluted atmosphere.

Oh, well, he thought, one of these days, somebody public-minded will do something about it. Right now, I've got to make enough to stop Laurie from certifying me.

He felt a sudden chill as he recalled his wife's threat. Quickly he sought out the first location he'd mapped out for some easy revenue, the personnel office of the Air Pollution Control Corp. Jeb switched off anti-gravity and heavily walked through the corridor, stepped inside the deep-rugged, gray and green office and joined the small nervous group of inspectors waiting for interviews.

Jeb, in his air pollution uniform, was as acceptable as a long-used piece of furniture. Unnoticed, he sat on one of the hard benches with the others. They stared and listened to the interview being conducted by the genial, balding man behind the open partition ten feet away. The air pollution inspector facing him was tense, pale and overanxious.

"Yes, indeed, you do have a good record," the personnel man was saying approvingly. "No absences in five years, no latenesses. Very good indeed."

"Then," said the air pollution inspector eagerly, "I'll be upgraded? I'll get that promotion promised two years ago?"

The personnel man cleared his throat, but his smile remained radiant. "Just as soon as business picks up, we'll give you a promotion and raise in pay...."

Bong!

A roar of mirth arose from the waiting air pollution men as Monitor Jeb nervously pulled his Monitex from its concealing pollution meter shell and read the violation off to the enraged personnel man. A fifty credit fee for use of the copyrighted verbal phrase Just as soon as business picks up, we'll give you a promotion and raise in pay.

As Jeb escaped the wrath of his victim, one of the men snickering nearby muttered, "Hah! He'll have to rack his tiny brain for a new way of stalling us from now on."

In the next three hours, Jeb drove himself hard. He picked up a twenty credit fee when a doorman outside a Teletheatre had bonged the Monitex with "Plenty of seats inside!" He scooped up another violation in a bar when a bleary-eyed man with veins showing in his nose murmured to the bartender, "Well, I'll have just one more." He wandered to the telephone booths and waited for one of the standby violations to fall into his pocket; sure enough, a handsome, dark-eyed fellow murmured into the mouthpiece, "I'll be working late tonight again, honey; sorry."

The time passed too swiftly and when Jeb paused to get a bite of food, he saw, dismayed, that even though he was having a pretty good day, it was far from the killing he'd promised Laurie. Ten and twenty credit violations didn't make a man rich.

What I need is one of the really big ones, thought Jeb desperately.

With fumbling fingers, he pressed out a core number on the Monitex.

It glowed blue.

The voice droned, "Information!"

Jeb asked eagerly, "What have we got with fees of a thousand credits and higher?"

A moment hummed by. Then the voice announced that a large batch of political "corn" had been copyrighted in view of the current election campaign. Jeb listened with mounting excitement to some of them: If I am elected, taxes will be reduced.... As I look upon the intelligent faces in my audience.... I am reminded of a story.... What a lovely child, Madam.... A helicopter on every roof....

Jeb shut it off, perspiration breaking out on his face. It was a uranium mine! Jeb's mind reeled at the astonishing fee set for these copyright violations. A thousand credits per use. The party in power was really out to fight off the opposing Traditionalist Party with every possible trick, with the result that Jeb could make the biggest cleanup of his life.

That is, if he got away alive.

Full of foreboding, Jeb floated up toward the meeting rooms of the local Traditionalist Headquarters, which were on the fiftieth level of a nearby skyscraper. His terrified adrenal glands kicked his heart into a frenzy. The boys who ran the local club were no patsies. Many an argumentative citizen had been found floating in the rarified stratosphere, frozen stiff, with his anti-gravity belt turned on full and his hands bound so he could not stop the upward climb.

Monitor Jeb nervously drifted into the corridor opening and restored gravity. He sneaked past the open door, getting a quick glimpse of a hall filled with citizens listening to a red-faced, stoutish man on a platform.

Jeb frantically searched for and, with throat-catching relief, found the back entrance to the big hall. It led to a dusty area of scaffolding and discarded, rusting tools. Now Jeb was crawling down an incline leading under the platform and found the small, railed-off area which once had housed a hidden prompter for musical entertainments.

Panting, Jeb squatted in the dark, hearing the booming voice just above him, only slightly muffled. As Jeb shoved the Monitex up against the crack in the boards over him, the speaker's voice came to him strongly, "Now, fellers, you're all precinct captains and it's a helluva empty title to have when your party is outa power. But if we get back on the gravy train—well, need I say more?"

A muffled roar from the audience made Jeb crouch worriedly.

"Now we're gonna take this election, see? I want all you loyal party workers...."

Bong!

Howls of rage shook the walls and reverberated through to Jeb as the political hacks recognized the sound and understood that somewhere a Monitex had automatically recorded the voice vibration pattern of the speaker in a Verbal Copyright violation.

"Kill the dirty spy!" screamed the speaker.

Bong! went the Monitex.

"Lynch him!"

In three minutes of unguarded outrage, Jeb had recorded ten thousand credits in violations which the speakers never could escape because, like fingerprints, all voice patterns were registered by the government.

Jeb turned to the exit behind him and crawled painfully for twenty feet, then got up and began running. He ran straight into a brawny body at the turn of the corridor. The next thing he knew, he was on his back and ruthless hands were banging his head against the floor.

The siren of a golden-clad policeman cut the air and magically the hands fell away, leaving Jeb sprawling and groggy.

After a moment, he was able to focus his eyes. The policeman stared down at him, fists authoritatively on his hips.

"Well, I came just in time, eh?" said the cop. "Saved your neck."

Bong! went the Monitex.

Jeb said hastily, "It's all right, Officer. It's on the house."

"It had damn well better be," growled the policeman. "If you know what's good for you—"

Bong! went the Monitex.

"Go on, get outa here before I run ya in," yelled the officer.

Bong! went the Monitex.

"Have a good time, dear," Jeb called after Laurie as she happily took off into space from their level, clutching her purse, which was jammed with enough credits to keep her brimful of fun for two whole months at the Pleasure Palace.

"Don't you worry about that," said Laurie over her shoulder.

Jeb went back to his apartment. He stretched out on the couch, contentment welling up in him. He opened the footstool nearby and, within its archaic shape, slid open the cunningly concealed refrigerator. He took out a plastic cone of beer.

"A-ah!" sighed Jeb. How wonderful to be alone, free of Laurie's nagging for two whole months! A superb reward for his hard work. How clever of the government to have passed such a regulation!

After a while, like wax melting, his grin drooped away. It certainly was quiet, wasn't it?

Within half an hour, he was wild and didn't know why. Jittering, he dialed his televisor and the man from Marriage Relations appeared on the screen. He glared at Jeb and cautiously looked around for the Monitex until he spotted it.

"Shut that thing off or no advice," snapped the man.

"It's off! Look, I don't know what's bothering me. Can I have special permission to join my wife on her vacation? Or get her back here?"

"Afraid not," said the man. "The principle of working so one's wife can have a vacation has been established through the centuries; the government merely put it into law. And as for joining her or getting her back here—that's against the law."

"But that's unfair!" yelled Jeb.

"Oh?" The man smiled. "So! I'm glad to see how happy, how perfect is the marriage we arranged for you." He rubbed his hands in delight. "She's just barely gone and already you miss her. Wonderful."

"Wonderful? I'm suffering!"

The man from