Part 8 (1/2)
”The _Times_,” Dad was saying, trying not to sound too proud, ”has a very sharp reportorial staff, Joe.”
”It isn't Interstellar,” Oscar told me, grinning. ”It's Argentine Exotic Organics. You know, everybody thought Joe, here, was getting pretty high-toned, sending his daughter to school on Terra. School wasn't the only thing she went for. We got a letter from her, the last time the Cape Canaveral was in, saying that she'd contacted Argentine Organics and that a man was coming out on the _Peenemunde_, posing as a travel-book author. Well, he's here, now.”
”You'd better keep an eye on him,” I advised. ”If Steve Ravick gets to him, he won't be much use to you.”
”You think Ravick would really harm Murell?” Dad asked.
He thought so, too. He was just trying to comfort himself by pretending he didn't.
”What do you think, Ralph?” Oscar asked him. ”If we get compet.i.tive wax buying, again, seventy-five a pound will be the starting price.
I'm not spending the money till I get it, but I wouldn't be surprised to see wax go to a sol a pound on the loading floor here. And you know what that would mean.”
”Thirty for Steve Ravick,” Dad said. That puzzled Oscar, till I explained that ”thirty” is newsese for ”the end.” ”I guess Walt's right. Ravick would do anything to prevent that.” He thought for a moment. ”Joe, you were using the wrong strategy. You should have let Ravick get that thirty-five centisol price established for the Co-operative, and then had Murell offer seventy-five or something like that.”
”You crazy?” Joe demanded. ”Why, then the Co-op would have been stuck with it.”
”That's right. And as soon as Murell's price was announced, everybody would drop out of the Co-operative and reclaim their wax, even the captains who owe Ravick money. He'd have n.o.body left but a handful of thugs and barflies.”
”But that would smash the Co-operative,” Joe Kivelson objected.
”Listen, Ralph; I've been in the Co-operative all my life, since before Steve Ravick was heard of on this planet. I've worked hard for the Co-operative, and--”
You didn't work hard enough, I thought. You let Steve Ravick take it away from you. Dad told Joe pretty much the same thing:
”You don't have a Co-operative, Joe. Steve Ravick has a racket. The only thing you can do with this organization is smash it, and then rebuild it with Ravick and his gang left out.”
Joe puzzled over that silently. He'd been thinking that it was the same Co-operative his father and Simon MacGregor and the other old hunters had organized, and that getting rid of Ravick was simply a matter of voting him out. He was beginning to see, now, that parliamentary procedure wasn't any weapon against Ravick's force and fraud and intimidation.
”I think Walt has something,” Oscar Fujisawa said. ”As long as Murell's in the hospital at the s.p.a.ceport, he's safe, but as soon as he gets out of Odin Dock & s.h.i.+pyard territory, he's going to be a clay pigeon.”
Tom hadn't been saying anything. Now he cleared his throat.
”On the _Peenemunde_, I was talking about taking Mr. Murell for a trip in the _Javelin_,” he said. ”That was while we were still pretending he'd come here to write a book. Maybe that would be a good idea, anyhow.”
”It's a cinch we can't let him get killed on us,” his father said. ”I doubt if Exotic Organics would send anybody else out, if he was.”
”Here,” Dad said. ”We'll run the story we have on him in the morning edition, and then correct it and apologize to the public for misleading them and explain in the evening edition. And before he goes, we can have him make an audiovisual for the 'cast, telling everybody who he is and announcing the price he's offering. We'll put that on the air. Get enough publicity, and Steve Ravick won't dare do anything to him.”
Publicity, I thought, is the only weapon Dad knows how to use. He thinks it's invincible. Me, I wouldn't bet on what Steve Ravick wouldn't dare do if you gave me a hundred to one. Ravick had been in power too long, and he was drunker on it than Bish Ware ever got on Baldur honey-rum. As an intoxicant, rum is practically a soft drink beside power.
”Well, do you think Ravick's gotten onto Murell yet?” Oscar said. ”We kept that a pretty close secret. Joe and I knew about him, and so did the Mahatma and Nip Spazoni and Corkscrew Finnegan, and that was all.”
”I didn't even tell Tom, here, till the _Peenemunde_ got into radio range,” Joe Kivelson said. ”Then I only told him and Ramon and Abdullah and Abe and Hans Cronje.”
”And Al Devis,” Tom added. ”He came into the conning tower while you were telling the rest of us.”
The communication screen began buzzing, and I went and put it on. It was Bish Ware, calling from a pay booth somewhere.
”I have some early returns,” he said. ”The cops cleared everybody out of Hunters' Hall except the Ravick gang. Then Ravick reconvened the meeting, with n.o.body but his gang. They were very careful to make sure they had enough for a legal quorum under the bylaws, and then they voted to accept the new price of thirty-five centisols a pound.”