He shook his head sadly. 'I’m sorry, but no. We’re stable
now; Rallax will never warp again. But she’s still dying. Every forest, every
mountain, every living thing. The gravity is still increasing exponentially.
Notice how heavy you feel?'
'What? I thought the automatic repair systems–'
'Too late for that, I’m afraid.'
'Then what’s the point? What have we really done?'
'What we’ve done, Unstoffe, is give everyone some time to
escape. You Bobs can contact the other parts of Rallax now. Tell whoever will
listen to climb up until they reach the parking bays. We’re back in your own
time and I’m sure a rescue fleet is on its way.'
Garron, who’d been quietly accessing a small monitor,
cleared his throat.
'What is it, Garron?'
'Actually, Doctor, all is not lost. Opportunities arise in
unusual times, I always say. For example, have a look at this. A little bit of
contemporary salvage law...'
The Doctor studied the screen and shook his head.
'Garron, I see what you mean but Rallax is dying within
days. What do you intend to accomplish with this?'
I couldn’t see what they were looking at and Garron winked
when he saw my interest. He addressed the assembled Bobs. I studied the screen
and felt hope.
'Are you aware, my plastic friends, that by the laws of this
century you are all, part and parcel, now the property of the Graff Vynda-K?
Oh, don’t try to deny your identity, man, you didn’t earlier and they all heard
you. Bobs! This is the man responsible for exacerbating your already
significant woes!
'Tell me, are you willing to serve him?'
The Bobs chorused, ‘No!'
'You’d rather kill him, wouldn’t you?'
The response was less than unanimous, but the majority
carried the day.
'Well, then. If I told you I could free you all from his
odious employ, would you be willing to let the Graff live?'
As the Bobs silently debated, Garron spoke to Yaka. 'You are
well and truly finished unless you agree to the proposal I am about to make.'
Yaka watched the Bobs. 'What do you want me to do?' he
weakly asked.
'You need to put your hand right there and say “transfer
ownership”. Do that, and we’ll save you from the Bobs. You can go back below
and be Tsar. Best deal you’re going to get all day.'
'Make them swear an oath.'
'Bobs,' cried Garron, 'do you swear to leave this man, the
Graff Vynda-K, unmolested?'
They swore.
Sighing, diminished, Yaka did it.
Time stood still.
Garron stood at the plinth, dithering. He looked at me, a
single drop of sweat running down his face. Slowly he raised his hand, held it
before the registry...
'And then he placed the hand of Bob What A Deal on the
plinth! Yes, we know!'
The Chief Executive of the Parallax Corporation was livid.
'Honestly, do you have any idea what you’ve done?'
Garron and Unstoffe grinned at each other. 'Yes, we know,'
said Garron. 'We passed the ownership of a legally salvaged vessel to a
deserving entity.'
'But you could have claimed it for yourself!'
'Oh, that would be far too much work. I’m content to collect
a small consultation fee.'
'Besides, those little Bobs kept your precious Rallax
together as best they could for over seven hundred years,' said Unstoffe, 'No
one deserves it more than they.'
'But they aren’t sentient! They’re only Bobs! They can’t own
property! They are property!'
'That’s where you’re wrong. The report from Branbridge was
released this afternoon. You haven’t seen it? The Bots have been declared
sentient. Long-term cosmic ray exposure, you know.'
'Those damned sociologists.' muttered the Chief Executive’s
counsel.
'I wouldn’t be too hard on them,' said Unstoffe, 'besides,
it’s like the Doctor said; the sociologists can’t wait to get their teams into
Rallax. If you agree to buy, you’ll make a fortune from them alone, not to
mention the millions you’ll make from scavenging that dwarf alloy.'
'About that alloy,' said the chief engineer, 'it’s all still
there in the centre, correct? Inside that tesseract device?'
'And safely enclosed in the void space, yes. It’s far to
dense and heavy to transmat directly, so at my suggestion,' said Garron, 'the
Doctor rigged the transmat and built a remote control. It was tricky work, but
he managed it. We transmitted the tesseract, opened it at the centre and now
the dangerous alloy is safely cut off from the rest of Rallax.'
'Inside the tesseract, where its gravitational pull can do
no further harm?' asked the chief engineer.
'Of course,' said Garron, 'and it’s yours for the taking,
though I wouldn’t want to wait too long before you extract it. You can keep the
tesseract, by the way. My loss is part of the settlement. Those olives with the
tiny transmitters were irreplaceable.'
'Transmitters! That’s how you knew...'
'Yes. We heard the princess and Yaka hatch their plan.'
'But she was terribly conflicted,' added Unstoffe.
'But that’s not important, gentlemen. Yes, it will be
costly, but this is your only sensible move,' said Garron.
'Face it, despite the repair bills, the class-action
lawsuits, the disavowal from the Historian’s Guild and the fines from Empire
Standards and Practices, you’re still going to come out ahead. All you have to
do is accept Bob’s price, agree to an equal partnership and you’ll all be set
for life,' said Unstoffe.
'Refuse,' added Garron, 'and instead of magnanimous heroes
you will be abhorred as base villains. By my projections, you will be bankrupt
in a year. I repeat –accepting Bob’s offer is your only sensible alternative.'
The chief executive frowned. 'You will excuse us while we
discuss your offer.'
'Of course,' said Garron.
As the most powerful executives on Earth conferred in
private, Garron & Unstoffe shared a smile. The Chief executive and his
cronies returned to the table.
'Let me ask you something. That Doctor, where is he?'
'No idea. As soon as he’d retrieved his ship he transferred
the d retrieved his ship he transferred the tesseract to center d retrieved his
ship he transferred the tesseract to the centre of the planet. He visited the
shop, muttered something about chickens and then he and the Tardis just faded
away.'
'And you? What do you get out of this? Will you have a role
in Bob What A Day’s organisation?'
'No, sir,' said Unstoffe, 'we’re just his realtors.'
Garron & Unstoffe walked back to their ship. It was too
nice a day for a taxi. Great towers reached the sky around them but they were
not awed in the least.
'How did it go?' asked the Princess, 'Did they agree to it?'
'Well, my dear, they said we’ll know tomorrow, but they’re
just stalling. They’re trapped and they know it. If they relinquish their
responsibility for the disaster of the century their stock will plummet. It
will be the end for them. But if they are seen helping the poor, simple Bobs,
they will be able to spin public opinion their way. Not to mention the profit
from selling off that alloy. Yes, they’re going to pay.”Garron looked well
pleased.
'Sir,' said Spidrick, who was painting ‘Connie 2’on their
cruiser, 'the port authority was around again.'
'Fear not, though,' said the chief, 'I saw them off.'
'Oh, I hope you didn’t hurt anyone too badly. Was it the
licensing again? Those confounded bureaucrats! Is it our fault that we haven’t
renewed for 200,000 years?'
'Actually, according to my research we don’t even exist,'
said Connie.
'Yes,' said Garron thoughtfully, 'And by this time tomorrow
we’ll be reasonably well-off.' He gazed at the towers across the water and the
stars emerging overhead. They had a lot to learn, but not as much as he’d
feared. Empires, fortunes, technologies and cultures had risen and fallen many
times but seemed to always settle on nearly the same level. These people
weren’t all that advanced from those of his time.
'About that,' he said. 'Has anyone considered what an
advantage non-existence could be to a small band of enterprising businessmen?'
Then Garron turned and raised a speculative eyebrow at the
apprentice, the princess, the soldier and the noble savage.
Unstoffe chuckled softly.
'Is it safe to assume, sir, that we haven’t retired?'
written by
AL DICKERSON
copyright 2014
artwork by
COLIN JOHN
copyright 2014