Clifford D. Simak - Aliens for Neighbors 03 - Carbon Copy

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Cifford D Simak

The man who came into Homer Jackson's office was wearing his left shoe on his fight foot and his right

shoe on his left.

He gave Homer quite a start.

The man was tall and had a gangling look about him~ but he was smartly dressed--except for his

shoes. And his shoes were all fight, too; it was just the way he wore them.

"Am I addressing Mr. Homer Jackson ?" he asked with a formality to which Homer was entirely

unaccustomed.

"That's me," said Homer.

He squirmed a bit uncomfortably in his chair. He hoped this wasn't one of Gabby Wilson's jokes.

Gabby had an office just down the hall and loved to pester

Homer plenty. When Gabby cooked up a joke, he did a massive job on it; he left out not a single

detail. And some of

Gabby's jokes got pretty rough.

But the man seemed to be dead serious and perhaps a little anxious.

"Mr. Homer Jackson, the suburban realtor ?" he persisted.

'~rhat's right," said Homer.

"Specializing in lake properties and country acreages ?"

'Tin your man." Homer began to feel uncomfortable. This man was spreading it on a trifle thick and

Homer thought he could see Oabby's hand in it.

'Td like to talk with you. I have a matter of small business."

"Fire away," said Homer, motioning toward a chair.

The man sat down carefuUy, bolt upright in the chair.

"My name is Oscar Steen," he said. "We're buildin~ development on what is known as the Saunders

place. We c it Happy Acres."

Homer nodded. "I'm acquainted with the place. It's the 1 good holding on the lake. You were

fortunate to get it."

"Thank you, Mr. Jackson. We think that it is nice."

"How are you getting on ?"

"We have just finished it. But now comes the most import part. We must get people onto the

property."

"Well," said Homer, "things are a little tough right m

Money has tightened up and the interest rates are higher

Washington is no help and besides that .... "

"We wondered if you'd be interested in handling it

US."

Homer choked a little, but recovered quickly. "Well, nov don't know. Those houses may be hard to

sell. You'd have get a solid figure for them and the prices will run high. T stone wall you put around the

place and those fancy gates all, I would suspect you have high-class houses. You have g and made it into

an exclusive section. There'll be only a ceil class of buyer who might be interested."

"Mr. Jackson," said Steen, "we have a new approach. won't have to sell them. We're only leasing

them."

"Renting them, you mean."

"No, sir, leasing them."

"Well, it all comes out to the same thing in the end. Yo have to get a lot for them." "Five thousand."

"Five thousand is an awful lot of money. At least, out bei is. Five thousand a year comes to over four

hundred a mo and .... "

"Not for a year," corrected Steen. "For ninety-nine."

"For what !"

"Ninety-nine. We're leasing at five thousand dollars ninety-nine full years."

"But, man, you can't do that! Why, that's absolutely crazy!

Taxes would eat up .... "

"We're not so interested in making money on the houses as we are in creating business for our

shopping centre."

"You mean you have a shopping centre in there, too ?"

Steen allowed himseff a smile. "Mr. Jackson, we obtain the property and then we build the wall to

have some privacy so there can be no snoopers."

"Yes, I know," said Homer. "It's smart to do it that way.

Good publicity. Whets the public's interest. Gives you a chance to have a big unveiling. But that

twelve-foot wall .... "

"Fourteen, Mr. Jackson."

"All right, then, fourteen. And it's built of solid stone. I know--I watched them put it up. And no one

builds walls of solid stone any more. They just use stone facing. The way you built that wall set you back

a hunk .... "

"Mr. Jackson, please. We know what we are doing. In this shopping centre, we sell everything from

peanuts to Cadillacs.

But we need customers. So we build houses for our customers.

We desire to create a good stable population of rather weU-to-do families."

Jumping to his feet in exasperation, Homer paced up and down the office.

"But, Mr. Steen, you can't possibly build up enough business at your shopping centre by relying solely

on the people in your development. For instance, how many houses have you ?"

"Fifty."

"Fifty families are a mere drop in the bucket for a shopping centre. Even if every one of those fifty

families bought all their needs from you--and you can't be sure they will--but if they did, you'd still have

little volume. And you won't pick up any outside trade--not behind that wall, you won't."

He stopped his pacing and went back to his chair.

"I don't know why I'm upset about it," he told Steen. "It's no skin off my nose. Yes, rH handle the

development, but I can't handle leasing at my usual five per cent."

"Oh, I forgot to tell you," said Steen. "You keep the entire five thousand."

Homer gasped like a fish hauled suddenly from water.

"On one condition," added Steen. "One has to be so careful.

We have a bank, you see. Part of the shopping centre service."

"A bank," Homer said feebly.

"Chartered under the state banking regulations."

"And what has a bank to do with me ?"

"You'll take ten per cent," said Steen. "The rest will be credited to your account in the Happy Acres

Bank. Every time you lease a unit, you get five hundred cash; forty-five hundred goes into your bank

account."

"I don't quite see .... "

"There are advantages."

"Yes, I know," Homer said. "It builds up your business.

You're out to make that shopping centre go."

"That might be one factor. Another is that we can't have you getting rich in front of all your friends and

neighbours. There'd be too much talk about it and we don't want that kind of publicity. And there are tax

advantages as well." "Tax advantages ?"

"Mr. Jackson, if you lease all fifty houses, you will have earned a quarter million dollars. Have you

figured what the income tax might be on a quarter million dollars ?' "It would be quite a lot."

"It would be a crying shame," said Steen. "The bank could be a help."

"I don't quite see how."

"You leave that to us. Leave everything to us. You just lease the houses."

"Mr. Steen, rye been an honest man for years in an occupation where there's opportunity .... "

"Honesty, Mr. Jackson. Of course we know you're honest.

That's why we came to you. Have you got your car here ?"

"It's parked outside."

"Fine. Mine is at the station getting serviced. Let's drive out

and look the houses over."

The houses were all that anyone could wish. They were planned with practical imagination and built

with loving care.

There was, Homer admitted to himself, more honest workman ship in them than he had seen for many

years in this era of mass-production building. They had that quiet sense of quality material, of prideful

craftsmanship, of solidity, .of dignity and tradition that was seldom found any more.

They were well located, all fifty of them, in the wooded hills that stretched back from the lake, and the

contractor had not indulged in the ruthless slashing out of trees. Set in natural surroundings with decent

amounts of space around them, they stood, each one of them, in comparative privacy.

In the spring, there would be wild flowers, and in the autumn, the woods would flame with colour and

there would be birds and squirrels and rabbits. And there was a stretch of white sand beach, the last left

on the whole lake.

Homer began mentally to write the ad he'd put in the Sunday paper and found that he looked forward

with some anticipation to setting down the words. This was one he could pull out all the stops on, use all

the purple prose he wanted.

"I like it, Mr. Steen," he said. "I think they won't be too hard to move."

"That is good," Steen replied. "We are prepared to give you an exclusive contract for a period of ten

years. Renewable, of course."

"But why ten years ? I can get this tract handled in a year or two, if it goes at all."

"You are mistaken. The business, I can assure you, will be continuing."

They stood on the brick walk in front of one of the houses and looked toward the lake. There were

two white sails on the water, far toward the other shore, and a row-boat bobbed in the middle distance,

with the black smudge of a hunched fisherman squatted in the stem.

Homer shook his head in some bewilderment. "I don't understand."

"There'll be some subletting," Steen told him smoothly.

"When fifty families are involved, there are always some who move."

"But that's another story. Subletting .... "

Steen pulled a paper from his pocket and handed it to Homer. "Your contract. You'll want to look it

over. Look it over closely. You're a cautious man and that's the kind we want."

Homer drove along the winding, wooded road back to the shopping centre with Steen.

The centre was a lovely place. It stretched along the entire south side of the property, backed by the

fourteen-foot wall, and was a shining place of brand-new paint and gleaming glass and metal.

Homer stopped the car to look at it.

"You've got everything," he said.

"I think we have," said Steen proudly. "We've even got our own telephone exchange." "Isn't that

unusual ?"

"Not at all. What we have set up here amounts to a model village, a model living space. We have our

own water system and our sewage plant. Why not a telephone exchange ?"

Homer let it pass. There was no sense arguing. It all was just this side of crazy, anyhow. No matter

how fouled up it was, Steen seemed satisfied.

Maybe, Homer told himself, he knows what he is doing.

But Homer doubted it.

"One thing more," said Steen. "It is just a minor matter, but you should know about it. We have a car

agency, you see. Many agencies, in fact. We can supply almost any make of car ....

"But how did you do .... "

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Clifford D. Simak - Aliens for Neighbors 03 - Carbon Copy

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