Riders of the Purple Wage Read online

  At last, harshly, Gnatcatcher said, “What do you mean. Mr. Agrafan and Mr. Netter can’t come here? Since when can any taxpayer refuse to come here?”

  Smith, the boldest of the agents, said, “Well, chief, it’s this way. Agrafan and Netter have notarized statements by three doctors that health reasons confine them to their house. So, like it or not, we have to go to them. Only…”

  “Only what?” Gnatcatcher growled.

  “Only…we can’t go to them for the same reason they can’t come to us. The doctors say that the allergies and poor immunity-protection systems of the two require them to live practically in quarantine. They’re like those babies that live in isolation bubbles.”

  The three agents could not interpret their boss’s peculiar expression. That was because he had not used that particular interplay of facial muscles since becoming district director. It portrayed frustration.

  “Okay, okay. So we can’t, for the time being, anyway, get them in here to sweat them or go to them for brow-beating. What about their lawyers? They don’t have any excuse not to come here to represent their clients.”

  “The firm of Reynard, Wolfgang, Mustela, and Scarab has been very cooperative,” Brown, the second agent, said. “After we got a court order to seize their tapes.”

  “I know that,” Gnatcatcher said impatiently. “You dummies never catch on that all my questions are rhetorical.”

  “Sorry, boss,” Smith, Brown, and Jones said in unison.

  “So what have our auditors found?”

  The three were silent. Finally, Gnatcatcher barked, “What’s the matter? You don’t know!”

  “We thought the question was rhetorical,” Smith said.

  “I’ll tell you when they’re rhetorical. So, what have they dug up?”

  “A can of worms,” Smith said. “The tape records look okay on the surface, and they are. I mean, they’re not doctored. But still waters run deep. Some of the tapes, most of them, in fact, have codes, references to other companies and record tapes. We had to get a second court order to force the lawyers to explain their meaning.”

  Smith stopped talking and licked his lips. His eyes were glazed.

  “Well?” Gnatcatcher said.

  “We uncovered a pyramid of real corporations and dummy corporations, a maze of interlocking financial structures that was so complex that even the computer had to shut down and cool off for a while. Our auditors got dizzy; one of them went to bed with chronic vertigo. But we`ve uncovered what looks to me like a conspiracy to end all conspiracies, a super-super-conglomerate. The Justice Department is going to have a ball with antitrust suits. If we tell them about this. Personally, I think we should. Anyway, those two hypochondriacs, Agrafan and Netter, if they are only hypochondriacs and not something sinister, make Howard Hughes look like an inept extrovert. They’re at the apex of the pyramid and the end of the maze. They own…”

  Smith licked his lips again. Gnatcatcher said, “Well?”

  “Interlocking global conglomerates and several Third World nations worth…ah…worth…”

  “Spill it, man! Get it out!”

  Smith’s voice squeaked.

  “Three trillion dollars!”

  “That Walt Whitman knew what the universe was all about,” Agrafan said. “Listen.

  I celebrate myself and sing myself.

  And what I assume you shall assume.

  For every atom belonging to me as good as belongs to you.

  How about that? An ignorant Earth-person sees intuitively that all is connected. The atoms of Earth’s flesh ring from the impact of a meteor falling into Uranus. A temple bell tolls in India, and an entity on Arcturus IV wonders where that vagrant but novel and illuminating thought comes from. Wonderful! Yet, he was an oxygen breather!”

  “It’s not that simple.” Netter said.

  They were in the subterranean room beneath the mansion which the local natives had built long ago for them without understanding why or for whom. The locals had been satisfied with the pay, and, if they were curious about it, they had not pursued their nosiness. Nor had the house servants ever tried to find out why their employers never revealed themselves but always gave orders through the telephone. They had been happy with the extremely high pay, though those hired in the beginning had not known that the money was counterfeit. Later, the two agents of UFO, the Uranian Field Operation, had made real money from their investments with the fake.

  The house had been built in A.D. 1900 in a suburb of Detroit. Operating from within it, making contact with their servants by telephone and with their business managers by phone and messengers, the two had worked hard for twenty-nine years. It was they who purposely brought about the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. Unfortunately, the Uranian science-art of calculating trillions of physical factors and trillions of mental vectors had not been as well developed then as it was in the early part of the twenty-first century. The effect of the depression had not been quite what they had calculated. The depression had brought about World War II and, thus, a great step forward in the development and use of rockets. This, in turn, had accelerated and intensified the drive of Earth people to conquer space. Agrafan and Netter would have done better if they had kept Earth’s economy prosperous.

  Since World War II, the two agents, collaborating with their Uranian colleagues via atomic-impingement waves, had brought event influencing and calculating to a higher level. Or so they hoped. This time, they would certainly set back space exploration for a long time and, hence, destruction of Uranian higher life-forms.

  World War II had also caused the invention of the atom bomb much sooner than anticipated. Agrafan and Netter could have started nuclear warfare any time in the last fifty years. They had twelve different ways to bring this about. The danger to Uranus would have been removed forever. That it would also have caused their deaths did not bother Agrafan and Netter. They were willing to sacrifice themselves.

  But, though so unhuman-looking and lacking much of the physical and emotional warmth of humans, the Uranians were moral. It was not right to destroy the entire life of Earth just to keep themselves from a possible extermination. All things connected, impinged, and transmitted. The ethical mathematics of the universe made such a deed not only a cardinal sin but an ordinal one.

  No. The extinction of Earth people was not the way out. The Uranians must just delay the space projects for a long, long time. Above all, they must halt the exploration around Uranus. And this must be done soon. Calculations of all verifiable data showed that the optimum time to complete this phase of their operation was three weeks from now. That delay might mean, probably would, the deaths of the strong-looking but fragile babies orbiting Uranus in the epsilon ring. The estimate was a loss of four hundred—if the Herschel crew continued pulling in the babies. They probably would. And they would know enough now to trickle-dìscharge the field on the babies before collecting them. Even so, four hundred babies would die, but that loss would not mean a serious break in the chain of Uranian reproduction and growth.

  However, the crew might notice, probably would, the occasional ascent of fiery-tailed egg clusters from the green clouds into space and toward the epsilon ring. The Herschel might locate and take some of these into the bay. If they did, their examination of the eggs, which looked like small, rough rocks, might—probably would—reveal the embryonic life-forms within them.

  Then there would be no stopping the scientists. They would probe the atmosphere of the planet with radar and laser, and the two forms of the adult Uranian, the flying colonies, would be known. What then?

  The Uranians’ observation at long distance of Earth and the reports of their two agents on Earth had convinced them that war was a deeply established terrestrial cultural trait. It would be a long, long time before the Earth people shucked that trait. The Uranians were willing to wait for that, but until then they wanted to keep Earth people far, far away from them.

  Hence, the Uranian Field Operation.


  Just now, Agrafan and Netter went watching a TV screen which displayed in infrared. This was connected to a conventional set in another part of the house, the warm part inhabited by the staff of servants and the butler, Goll. Agrafan’s remark about Walt Whitman had been evoked by the name of a character, Lance Whitman, in the soap opera Dinah Stye. All things connect, impinge, and transmit. One thing leads to another, and then the whole universe is moving.

  Another show, The Signs of the Times, had followed the soap opera. Rod de Massas, the host, was saying: “The wave of Aquarius started in 1998. Aquarius, as we know, is the sign of dreams and aspirations of betterment and ideals. So far, there seems to have been little of this because of the worldwide wars, revolutions, and violent agitation for social, political, and economic reform. These, however, have been motivated by idealism, the fierce desire to make changes for the better.

  “Also, as I predicted in 1998—the stars never lie—the first fourteen years of Aquarius were still influenced by Capricorn. But that pernicious influence is a dying wave. The age of Aquarius is beginning to bloom. It will flourish as it never has before, will be far stronger now than at any time in the past. The world will begin its march toward Utopia. The Neptune factor will have ebbed to silence, and the times will be controlled by the ruler of Aquarius, the planet Uranus.”

  “Half-right, half-wrong,” Netter said.

  “Mostly wrong, but he should be honored for the tiny fraction of right,” Agrafan said.

  Even in “empty” space, particles and radiation impinged on each other, resonated, bumped, and penetrated. The universe was crammed with shocks, small and big; everything affected everything else. Some things were, from the sentient viewpoint, more influential than others. Size, location, distance, and velocity of inanimate things and animate beings determined what was most influential. There were also the factors of weak and strong linkage and of intent.

  Intent, of course, was possible only for animate beings, except the star Sirius and a rather far-off galaxy.

  The Uranians knew that the total interconnectedness of all matter was a fact. But it was and probably always would be impossible to know the size, location, and velocity of every bit of matter in the universe. The data they could get about the solar system was a mere microfraction of what was needed for even gross influencing. Nevertheless, on Earth, the two agents had had considerable success in predicting and influencing on a rather gross level. It was, however, their ignorance on a fine-grain level that now threatened their plans. They did not know that Gnatcatcher had been suffering for a long time from a duodenal ulcer.

  They could not be blamed for this. Gnatcatcher had not told anybody about it because he was obsessed with his power as district IRS director. If he went to the hospital for tests and probably, for surgery, his assistant would take over his directorship. Gnatcatcher would be powerless for a long time. And who knew what machinations his assistant might resort to in order to oust his boss?

  The increasing pain from the ulcer was, however, making him behave less cautiously than he should, not to mention less legally. The news about the secret global business empire of Agrafan and Netter and the suspicion that they might be—must be—cheating the IRS made his ulcer flare up like a sunspot and his anger explode like a nova.

  “Get everybody and every machine on this! Drop everything else! Twelve-hour shifts! We won’t stop until we’ve accounted for every penny they owe us!”

  Agent Brown was tactful enough not to point out that there was no evidence whatsoever at this time that Agrafan and Netter had cheated Uncle Sam. Agent Smith also said nothing to his boss, but, an hour later, he phoned Goll, the butler. Smith told Goll all that had happened and was likely to happen. Gull thanked him and said that $200,000 in cash would arrive at Smith’s mailbox tomorrow. Goll then phoned his employers.

  “Gnatcatcher will be getting a court order to tap our phone lines,” Netter said.

  “How long before the taps are installed?”

  “Within an hour.”

  Netter cut off the phone and spoke to his partner. “Some vital data is missing from our prognosticator. We have to revise our plans. Quickly.”

  Agrafan said, “I’m not sure that if we start Operation Trapdoor now, it’ll be successful.”

  “There’s nothing else we can do. Also, Gnatcatcher is acting irrationally. He insists on speaking to us. Not just through the phone but face to face on the screen. He won’t take no for an answer. We…”

  Agrafan answered the phone. He listened for a moment, then said. “Thank you, Goll.” To Netter, he said, “Goll just got a call from Gnatcatcher himself. Gnatcatcher says that we must talk to him face to face. He has to see us, even if only through the screen.”

  “Why is he so adamant about visual contact?”

  “Goll said that he thinks that Gnatcatcher suspects that we two don’t exist. Or perhaps he suspects that someone or some group has murdered us and is posing as us. Goll calls it the Howard Hughes syndrome.”

  Netter sighed from a ventral tube and flapped his wings and wiggled his antennae. “Very well. Have Goll put us through to Gnatcatcher.”

  “No, first we pull the lever,” Agrafan said. “One call to our chief representative in Wall Street, and it’s done.”

  That having been accomplished, Agrafan made the arrangements for the video meeting. A minute later, Gnatcatcher’s face, now a near-purple, though it just looked dark on the infrared screen, appeared. But, on seeing what he thought was the two (actually, he was seeing a video simulation), his jaw dropped, his eyes bugged, and the purple changed to gray. Then the screen went blank.

  “A very strange and unexpected reaction.” Netter said. “What could have caused him to cut us off?”

  Agrafan said, “Obviously, we lack some data.”

  They had been watching TV ever since the first sets had been sold. Their favorites were old movie films, and they especially liked the antics of two film comedians who had made all their pictures before TV had become a mundane reality. Agrafan and Netter saw a parallel between their own early bumblings and mistakes on Earth and those of the two comedians. Because of their empathizing, they had used the two comedians as models for the simulations. Until now, however, they had not been forced to use these. All contacts with the world outside their room had been by phone.

  How were they to know that Gnatcatcher, when be was a child and still undehumanized by forty years of IRS employment, had often seen and loved the ancient tapes of two Hollywood comics?

  Brown, Smith, and Jones, burdened with fifty pounds of computer printouts, had just entered Gnatcatcher’s office. Though the paper contained only a small fraction of the enormousness of what must be a communist plot, the three carried in their heads the summary of the terrifying and mind-spinning situation.

  They were pale and tottery when they came through the door. Seeing Gnatcatcher’s corpselike skin and wild eyes, they became even whiter and weaker. “What’s the matter, boss?” they said in unison.

  “Laurel and Hardy!” Gnatcatcher screamed.

  “What?” the three said, again in unison.

  Gnatcatcher did not explain. He roared. “Get me the White House! And get another court order! We’re invading the house!”

  “The While House, sit?” Smith said faintly.

  “No, you imbecile! The house of Agrafan and Netter! Have our men armed, ready to shoot at the first sign of resistance! Can you get hold of bazookas?”

  Smith said. “Yes, sir,” and he staggered out to transmit the orders. First, though, he phoned Goll. The butler thanked him and said that another $200,000 would be in Smith’s mailbox by tomorrow.

  It was left to Brown to explain the situation to Gnatcatcher. Stammering slightly, swallowing saliva that was not there, he said, “I’ve never heard of or encountered such a case before, sir. It’s absolutely unprecedented. I talked to their lawyers just before I came in; they explained the whole amazing business. They said that Agrafan and Netter are real pa
triots. They’ve been paying far more income tax, their businesses have, I mean, than they were required to pay. They—” He stopped.

  “So what?” Gnatcatcher snarled. “We gave them the proper refund, didn’t we? Nobody can say we’re not honest. We always refund if we find we have to!”

  “Well, it’s this way, sir. Since 1952, every property they own has paid twice what they should have paid!”

  “How in hell could they do that? Why didn’t we catch it?”

  Brown said, “Uh…their companies have been keeping two sets of books!”

  Gnatcatcher’s face was speeding toward purple again.

  “That’s illegal! We got them now!”

  “No, sir, it’s not illegal to pay Uncle Sam twice what you should. The records we’ve seen showed one set of profits on which they paid taxes double what we should have gotten. Their other records, the ones we hadn’t seen until now, showed the true profits, the smaller ones.”

  “I don’t believe this!” Gnatcatcher screamed. Then, calming a little, “So what? They’ve just made a big donation to the Treasury, that’s all!”

  Very quietly, Brown said. “You forget what I said, sir. About the refund. They’re calling in the chips. They want every cent of their overpayment. There’s no time limit on it, sir, like there used to be. The good news is that they’re not asking for interest earned on the overpayment, though I don’t think it would do them any good to ask.”

  “That’s fraud, collusion, and God knows what other hideous crimes against the state!” Gnatcatcher bellowed. “They can’t get away with it! We’ll take them to court! They’ll get bounced so quick—no way is—” He paused, struggled for breath, clutched his stomach, then said, “What is the total sum of this alleged overpayment?”