same as before. Nothing.”
The two other men looked at him questioningly.
He said sourly, “In one apartment he ransacked the whole place but only lifted a small collection of coins.”
“Coins?” Barry said.
“Money. You know, coins. Like they used before the Universal Credit Cards.”
“Oh, of course. What was the collection worth?”
“So little as to be meaningless. In another apartment he took three books. Old books, printed on paper. Once again, practically valueless. And he took a small painting from there, too. And in the third apartment it was some junk jewelry. Nothing valuable.”
Bat said slowly, “Do you have any idea where the loot might be fenced?”
“Fenced?” Stevens said in disgust. “Even if there were any fences any more, it’s not worth being fenced. I keep telling you, whoever this clown is he isn’t stealing anything worth taking.”
They looked at him in frustration.
Barry muttered, “If it gets around that burglars are prowling the deme with us unable to do anything about it, we’ll lose residents like dandruff.” He looked at Stevens unhappily. “How could this guy know which apartments are empty, and then, how could he get in?”
“Both are impossible, so far as I’m concerned.”
Bat said, “How about patrolling the floors?”
Stevens was still disgusted. “With the ten human relations officers I have? Public protection is automated these days, Hardin. Besides we here in the office, ten men have to do for everything, including traffic control down in the car pool and the transport station. And what could a man do that a spy lens can’t? I’ve activated every mini-spy lens in the deme, except in private apartments, of course.”
“Any ideas at all?” Barry said.
Stevens shook his head. “It’s such a ridiculous thing, all six of these burglaries. I get the feeling it isn’t being done by pros but possibly by kids. You know, juvenile delinquents, as they used to call them.”
Barry Ten Eyck ran a weary hand slowly down from his forehead over his mouth. “Could kids get up and down delivery or disposal chutes, enter apartments from inside, rather than coming through the door?”
“Or come in through windows?” Bat Hardin added.
“No,” Stevens said disgustedly. “Not by any method I can think of.” He looked at Bat. “Through windows on the eighty-third floor? They’d have to be human flies. Besides, they’d have to break the windows, and none of them were broken.”
Barry Ten Eyck stood up with a sigh. “Doggonit, it beats me.” He looked at his Vice-Demecrat. “Bat, I’m turning this over to you. Working with Steve, here, of course.”
“Oh, great.”
“Come on back to my office, I’ve got another thing or two.”
Stevens sat looking after them sourly as they left.
As they crossed the corridor, Bat shook his head. “Human Relations officers,” he said. “What a mealy-mouth expression for cop.”
Barry chuckled. “You’re out of the times, Bat. And did you notice it was public protection, instead of law enforcement? We live in an age of gobbledygook, saving face, status symbols, ridiculous titles. How long have plumbers been calling themselves Sanitary Engineers? But I think tops was reached over in England where lavatory cleaners are now called Amenities Attendants.”
The door to the Demecrat’s offices opened before them and they passed through.
“Yeah,” Bat said. “Back before the First World War if you asked a man what class he belonged to, nine times out of ten he’d stare at you and say, ‘I’m a working stiff.’ But I was just reading the other day that back as far as the middle nineteen-forties one of the big polling outfits went around asking what class a person considered himself to belong to, upper, middle or working class. It turned out that eighty-five percent of the American people considered themselves to belong to the middle class.”
They went into Barry’s inner office, Barry saying, “I’ll bet it still applies, even though half the country is on Negative Income Tax, which is actually just relief.”
“It applies all the way up the line,” Bat growled. “Take the term scientist. It used to have a connotation of a man working in research. Now a guy who’s no more of a chemist than to be doing up drugstore prescriptions calls himself a scientist.”
Carol Ann looked up and said to Bat, “Morning, handsome.”
He looked at her in mock criticism. “I won’t make nasty cracks at you if you promise not to make ’em at me.”
“Handsome is as handsome does,” she told him.
Bat looked at his superior. “Holy smokes,” he said. “The girl’s beginning to develop a kindly streak.”
Barry said to his secretary, even as he slumped into his chair, “Get me Larry Brooks, the Demecrat over in Victory-deme.”
When his equal number in one of the other three high-rise demes in the pseudo-city of Phoenecia faded in, his face questioning, Barry said, an air of self-deprecation in his voice, “Look, Larry, don’t think I’m around the bend but you haven’t been having any burglaries, have you?”
The Victory-deme manager looked at him wide-eyed. “Burglaries! In this day and age? You think my Security Division is senile?”
Barry sighed. “All right, all right. You haven’t heard any rumors about them in Hilton-deme or Lincoln-deme, have you?”
“Of course not. Do you mean to tell me you’ve had a burglary in one of your apartments?”
“Six of them in the past week,” Barry said glumly. “I’ll bring it up at our next council meeting.”
“Mayor Levy will want to know about it.”
“I’ll have more details by then—I hope,” Barry muttered. “See you, Larry.”
The last thing Larry Brooks said before fading out was, “Burglaries, yet.”
Barry Ten Eyck got up and looked at his second in command. “All right, Bat, it’s yours. See what you can do. Carol Ann, I’m on my way up to old man Vander-feller to see what’s spinning with him. Don’t bother me unless you have to.”
“To hear is to obey,” Carol Ann said.
Barry Ten Eyck entered one of the staff express elevators and said, “Hundredth floor.”
A robot voice said, “Yes, Mr. Ten Eyck.”
He bent his knees automatically to accommodate to the acceleration. However, shortly he said, “Stop at the eighty-third floor.”
“Yes, Mr. Ten Eyck.”
At the eighty-third floor the compartment came to a halt and the door opened. He stepped out and looked up and down the corridor. He brought out his pocket TV phone and said, “Mr. Stevens, of Security.”
Steve’s sour face faded in.
Barry said, “Well, did you get a report on this?”
“On what, Barry?”
“On the elevator stopping on this floor and my getting out?”
“What the hell, Barry! You’re the Demecrat of this deme.”
“All right. How many others, on the staff or otherwise, can come and go anywhere in the building, at any time?”
“Why, actually, only Bat Hardin and your Second Vice-Demecrat, Jim Cotswold. Even repairmen are checked out. If you’re going to use computers and TV spy lenses