“John Fisher to the hundredth. You know me.”

“Do I?” said Rod, not impolitely. He was just dazed.

“Station of the Good Fresh Joey,” said Fisher.

“I haven’t been there,” said Rod, “but I’ve heard of it.”

“You needn’t have,” snapped the angry Fisher. “I met you at your grandfather’s.”

“Oh, yes, Mister and Owner Fisher,” said Rod, not really remembering anything at all, but wondering why the short, red-faced man was so angry with him.

“You don’t know who I am?” said Fisher. “I handle the books and the credits for the government.”

“Wonderful work,” said Rod. “I’m sure it’s complicated. Could I have something to eat?”

The Lord Redlady interrupted: “Would you like French pheasant with Chinesian sauce steeped in the thieves’ wine from Viola Siderea? It would only cost you six thousand tons of refined gold, orbited near Earth, if I ordered it sent to you by special courier.”

For some inexplicable reason the entire room howled with laughter. The men put their glasses down so as not to spill them. Hopper seized the opportunity to refill his own glass. Aunt Doris looked hilarious and secretly proud, as though she herself had laid a diamond egg or done some equal marvel. Only Lavinia, though laughing, managed to look sympathetically at Rod to make sure that he did not feel mocked. The Lord Redlady laughed as loudly as the rest and even the short, angry John Fisher allowed himself a wan smile, while holding out his hand for a refill on his drink. An animal, a little one which looked very much like an extremely small person, lifted up the bottle and filled his glass for him; Rod suspected that it was a “monkey” from Old Old Earth, from the stories he had heard.

Rod didn’t even say, “What’s the joke?” though he realized plainly that he was himself in the middle of it. He just smiled weakly back at them, feeling the hunger grow within him.

“My robot is cooking you an Earth dish. French toast with maple syrup. You could live ten thousand years on this planet and never get it. Rod, don’t you know why we’re laughing? Don’t you know what you’ve done?”

“The Onseck tried to kill me, I think,” said Rod. Lavinia clapped her hand to her mouth, but it was too late.

“So that’s who it was,” said the doctor, Wentworth, with a voice as gigantic as himself.

“But you wouldn’t laugh at me for that—” Rod started to say. Then he stopped himself. An awful thought had come to him. “You mean, it really worked? That stuff with my family’s old computer.”

The laughter broke out again. It was kind laughter, but it was always the laughter of a peasant people, driven by boredom, who greet the unfamiliar with attack or with laughter.

“You did it,” said Hopper. “You’ve brought a billion worlds.”

John Fisher snapped at him, “Let’s not exaggerate. He’s gotten about one point six stroon years. You couldn’t buy any billion worlds for that. In the first place, there aren’t a billion settled worlds, not even a million. In the second place, there aren’t many worlds for sale. I doubt that he could buy thirty or forty.” The little animal, prompted by some imperceptible sign from the Lord Redlady, went out of the room and returned with a tray. The odor from the tray made all the people in the room sniff appreciatively. The food was unfamiliar, but it combined pungency and sweetness. The monkey fitted the tray into an artfully concealed slot at the head of Rod’s couch, took off an imaginary monkey cap, saluted, and went back to his own basket behind the Lord Redlady’s chair.

The Lord Redlady nodded, “Go ahead and eat, boy. It’s on me.”

Rod sat up. His shirt was still blood-caked and he realized that it was almost worn out.

“That’s an odd sight, I must say,” said the huge doctor Wentworth. “There’s the richest man in many worlds, and he hasn’t the price of a new pair of overalls.”

“What’s odd about that? We’ve always charged an import fee of twenty million percent of the orbit price of goods,” snapped angry John Fisher. “Have you ever realized what other people have swung into orbit around our sun, just waiting for us to change our minds so they could sell us half the rubbish in the universe. This planet would be knee-deep in junk if we ever dropped our tariff. I’m surprised at you, doctor, forgetting the fundamental rules of Old North Australia!”

“He’s not complaining,” said Aunt Doris, whom the drink had made loquacious. “He’s just thinking. We all think.”

“Of course we all think. Or daydream. Some of us leave and go off-planet to be rich people on other worlds. A few of us even manage to get back here on severe probation when we realize what the offworlds are like. I’m just saying,” said the doctor, “that Rod’s situation would be very funny to everybody except us Norstrilians. We’re all rich with the stroon imports, but we’ve kept ourselves poor in order to survive.”

“Who’s poor?” snapped the fieldhand Hopper, apparently touched at a sensitive point. “I can match you with megacredits, doc, any time you care to gamble. Or I’ll meet you with throwing knives, if you want them better. I’m as good as the next man!”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” said John Fisher. “Hopper here can argue with anybody on the planet. We’re still equals, we’re still free, we’re not the victims of our own wealth — that’s Norstrilia for you!”

Rod looked up from his food and said, “Mister and Owner Secretary Fisher, you talk awfully well for somebody who is not a freak like me. How do you do it?”

Fisher started looking angry again, though he was not really angry: “Do you think that financial records can be dictated telepathically? I’m spending centuries out of my life, just dictating into my blasted microphone. Yesterday I spent most of the day dictating the mess which you have made of the Commonwealth’s money for the next eight years. And you know what I’m going to do at the next meeting of the Commonwealth Council?”

“What,” said Rod.

“I’m going to move the condemnation of that computer of yours. It’s too good to be in private hands.”

“You can’t do that!” shrieked Aunt Doris, somewhat mellowed by the Earth beverages she was drinking, “it’s MacArthur and McBan family property.”

“You can keep the temple,” said Fisher with a snort, “but no bloody family is going to outguess the whole planet again. Do you know that boy sitting there has four megacredits on Earth at this moment?”

Bill hiccupped, “I got more than that myself.”

Fisher snarled at him, “On Earth? FOE money?”

A silence hit the room.

“FOE money. Four megacredits? He can buy Old Australia and ship it out here to us?” Bill sobered fast.

Said Lavinia mildly, “What’s foe money?”

“Do you know, Mister and Owner McBan?” said Fisher, in a peremptory tone. “You had better know, because you have more of it than any man has ever had before.”

“I don’t want to talk about money,” said Rod. “I want to find out what the Onseck is up to.

“Don’t worry about him!” laughed the Lord Redlady, prancing to his feet and pointing at himself with a dramatic forefinger. “As the representative of Earth, I filed six hundred and eighty-five lawsuits against him simultaneously, in the name of your Earth debtors, who fear that some harm might befall you…”

“Do they really?” said Rod. “Already?”

“Of course not. All they know is your name and the fact that you bought them out. But they would worry if they did know, so as your agent I tied up the Hon. Sec. Houghton Syme with more law cases than this planet has ever seen before.”

The big doctor chuckled, “Dashed clever of you, my Lord and Mister! You know us Norstrilians pretty well, I must say. If we charge a man with murder, we’re so freedom-minded that he has time to commit a few more before being tried for the first one. But civil suits! Hot sheep! He’ll never get out of those, as long as he lives.”