The Pursuit of the Pankera: A Parallel Novel About Parallel Universes by Robert A. Heinlein

Author:Robert A. Heinlein [Heinlein, Robert A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CAEZIK SF & Fantasy
Published: 2020-03-23T16:00:00+00:00

So things were shaping up and I had time that morning to look over those brochures and price schedules from American Express and Thomas Cook. The American Express charge by the day for an English-speaking courier had surprised me. Apparently, Cart had grossly underestimated what a tourist courier was paid—but there was no reason why Cart should know; a reigning prince would never be a tourist in his own capital. True, he might have guests who would need guides and guards … but they would come from his own household.

I checked Thomas Cook’s tariff schedule: non-English-speaking courier, 22 tanpi—but an English-speaking one cost 28 tanpi more, or 50 tanpi, the same price quoted by their competitor. On checking other items, I found mild variations: If one charged a few tanpi more for a tour, the other charged a bit higher for some other tour—it balanced out. I smelled a “gentlemen’s agreement” and wondered how the much-abused word “gentleman” was ever assigned to price-fixing conniving ….

I tried to guess what couriers were paid. An applied overhead of one hundred percent seemed possible. I did not know what taxes they paid, what office expenses they had, what “squeeze” might be customary—but one hundred percent overhead was a good working figure until I knew more. In that case, both Tommy and Kach should earn about twenty-five tanpi ($25 Earth-Ten) in wages per day—possibly more for Tommy (better English and a straw boss at times), possibly less for Kach. Were they on salary, or were they called as needed?—it could make a difference. Overtime? Again, I did not know—I simply knew that they had worked to around the middle of the night the day we met them. And they supplied their own thoats. No clue about that in tariffs. But “excursions by thoatback” appeared in each agency’s offerings … and those excursions were far more expensive than any in Greater or Lesser Helium.

I did not know enough about the economy here to have opinions—analogies from another planet ten universes away could only mislead me. Wait a half, old son—get your data first.

The brochures were as glowing as I expected—I have yet to see one for a tourist trip that was not. Sometimes they are truthful; there is no way to exaggerate the Taj Mahal, or Glacier Bay, or the glow worm caves in New Zealand. And Helium was indeed a city of wondrous beauty and beautiful wonders.

But I found myself feeling itchy at our Red hosts being described as “barbarians” and the green giants as “savages.” Tawm Takus was no savage; he was a gentleman of meticulous honor and fine courtesy. Kach Kachkan had a less civilized background … but the way he had lifted himself by his bootstraps was utterly admirable. Kach had not been “born a gentleman”—he simply was a gentleman, “sans peur et sans reproche.”

As for “bloodthirsty hordes,” Earth-Zero humans have a history as “bloodthirsty” as that of the green giants, and its last century had not been one whit better than earlier ones—worse, if anything.

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