Free Narabedla Ltd by Frederik Pohl

do something about it?” I demanded.
    “Nobody on Narabedla, that’s for sure. Nobody human, anyway, and, believe me, I promise you none of the others care. But look,” he said reasonably, “will you listen while I tell you the score? You’re an extra. We didn’t try to recruit you. We didn’t want you. We’re just stuck with you, and your tryout didn’t impress those guys. As I see it, you’ve got no place here.”
    “That’s fine with me! Send me home.”
    He just shook his head.
     
    In the clear, cool glow of hindsight, I can see that Sam Shipperton wasn’t at all a bad man. He didn’t even look like a villain. What he looked like was any midwestern liquor-store dealer, settling down to a career after having his fling with the counterculture, bothered by some unexpected business worry on his weekend off. His clothes were California casual; he had beige Adidas on his feet, and when he got up to refill his coffee cup I could see the authentic leather label on the hip pocket of his Levi’s. He put the cup down and sat on the edge of his desk, looking at me with wary cordiality. “What they suggested for a second choice,” he said, “was that you be employed administratively. Administratively my ass! Sometimes they’re real stupid back in the home office. I’m the only administration we’ve got here, not counting natives, and there isn’t enough work to keep me busy, really. So—”
    “Hold it a minute,” I ordered. “You’re going a little fast there. If that was the second choice, what was the first?” 
    “Ah, well,” he said, sounding embarrassed, “we can forget that one. It really was not a good idea.”
    “What was it?”
    He looked uncomfortable. “They suggested slow storage.” I blinked at him and he explained. “They slow you down, you know. Just keep you on ice, so to speak—oh, not real ice! You wouldn’t feel a thing, it’s just that if we woke you up five or ten years later you’d only think a couple of hours had gone by.”
    “I don’t like hearing that ‘if’ in there. What do you mean, ‘if’ you woke me up?”
    He said defensively, “Well, that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? What would be the use of waking you up? What would be different in ten years? If we could find something for you to do then, we could find it now.” He looked at me seriously. “But you should remember that slow storage is always an option, Stennis. So don’t screw yourself up trying to do it to us, okay? Because you’re the one that’ll get screwed. Keep in mind that we’re not running some white-slave gang. Narabedla Limited’s a perfectly legitimate import and export business—legitimate by local standards, anyway, and it really doesn’t matter what it is by any others, does it? The Fifteen Peoples get what they want. Narabedla Limited gets what it wants. And the artists get, really, not so tacky a deal at all. There’s money to be made, and there’s fun to be had. You’ll see. Of course, most of the people who come through volunteer for it, you know. They know what they’re getting into—well, they sort of do, anyway; maybe we weren’t all up front with them about the geography, like. They’ve got talents that they can sell here for a better price than at home, they get well paid, there’s no problem—anyway,” he clarified, “after the first shock there isn’t. Maybe right at first they’re pretty pissed off. But when they see what a sweet deal they’ve got— What’s the matter?” he asked irritably, as I cut him off in the middle of his sales pitch.
    I reminded him, “You said I failed the audition.”
    “Oh, yeah.” He thought for a minute, brushing his hair out of his eyes to look at a Patek-Philippe watch on his wrist. “Well,” he said, coming down, “I’ll have to see what I can do about that, won’t I? All right. Get out of here and let me work. I’ll talk to Binnda again. Maybe he’ll have some ideas. Right now you probably ought to get