“I shouldn’t like that,” Hebster admitted, smiling. He thought a moment. “I see the connection you’re trying to establish with the cartoon in The Evening Humanitarian.”
“Mister, I shouldn’t have to. They want your head on the top of a long stick. They want it because you’ve become a symbol of dealing successfully, for your own ends, with these stellar foreigners, or at least their human errand-boys and chambermaids. They figure that maybe they can put a stop to Primey-dealing generally if they put a bloody stop to you. And I tell you this—maybe they are right.”
“What exactly do you propose?” Hebster asked in a low voice.
“That you come in with us. We’ll make an honest man of you—officially. We want you directing our investigation; except that the goal will not be an extra buck but all-important interracial communication and eventual interstellar negotiation.”
The president of Hebster Securities, Inc., gave himself a few minutes on that one. He wanted to work out a careful reply. And he wanted time—above all, he wanted time!
He was so close to a well-integrated and worldwide commercial empire! For ten years, he had been carefully fitting the component industrial kingdoms into place, establishing suzerainty in this production network and squeezing a little more control out of that economic satrapy. He had found delectable tidbits of power in the dissolution of his civilization, endless opportunities for wealth in the shards of his race’s self-esteem. He required a bare twelve months now to consolidate and coordinate. And suddenly—with the open-mouthed shock of a Jim Fiske who had cornered gold on the Exchange only to have the United States Treasury defeat him by releasing enormous quantities from the Government’s own hoard—suddenly, Hebster realized he wasn’t going to have the time. He was too experienced a player not to sense that a new factor was coming into the game, something outside his tables of actuarial figures, his market graphs and cargo loading indices.
His mouth was clogged with the heavy nausea of unexpected defeat. He forced himself to answer:
“I’m flattered. Braganza, I really am flattered. I see that Dempsey has linked us—we stand or fall together. But—I’ve always been a loner. With whatever help I can buy, I take care of myself. I’m not interested in any goal but the extra buck. First and last, I’m a businessman.”
“Oh, stop it!” The dark man took a turn up and down the office angrily. “This is a planet-wide emergency. There are times when you can’t be a businessman.”
“I deny that. I can’t conceive of such a time.”