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Read Ebook: The Freelancer by Zacks Robert Ashman William Illustrator
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Ebook has 68 lines and 5575 words, and 2 pages
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."
"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.
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.
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.
"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!
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."
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.
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?"
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.
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.
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