Read Here Comes Civilization: The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn Volume II for Free Online

practically tears in my eyes the way I was singing it. How much capital did I need, he wanted to know—five hundred? I told him I couldn't operate one single day with less than seven times that. He asked me if I was really seriously trying to buy my lousy little planet back—or was today my birthday and I was expecting a present from him? "Don't give your presents to me," I told him. "Give them to fat people. They're better than going on a diet."
    And so we went. Both of us talking ourselves blue in the face, swearing by everything, arguing and bargaining, wheeling and dealing. It was touch and go who was going to give up first.
    But neither of us did. We both held out until we reached what I'd figured pretty early we were going to wind up with, maybe a little bit more.
    Six thousand, one hundred and fifty dollars.
    That was the price over and above what Eksar had given me. The final deal. Listen, it could have been worse.
    Even so, we almost broke up when we began talking payment.
    "Your bank's not far. We could get there before closing."
    "Why walk myself into a heart attack? My check's good as gold."
    "Who wants a piece of paper? I want cash. Cash is definite."
    Finally, I managed to talk him into a check. I wrote it out, he took it and gave me the receipts, all of them: the twenty for a five, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Sea of Azov—every last receipt I'd signed. Then he picked up his little satchel and marched away.
    Straight down Broadway, without even a good-bye. All business, Eksar was, nothing but business. He didn't look back once.
    All business. I found out next morning he'd gone right to the bank and had my check certified before closing time. What do you think of that? I couldn't do a damn thing: I was out six thousand, one hundred and fifty dollars. Just for talking to someone.
    Ricardo said I was a Faust. I walked out of the bank, beating my head with my fist, and I called up him and Morris Burlap and asked them to have lunch with me. I went over the whole story with them in an expensive place that Ricardo picked out. "You're a Faust," he said.
    "What Faust?" I asked him. "Who Faust? How Faust?"
    So naturally he had to tell us all about Faust. Only I was a new kind of Faust, a twentieth-century American one. The other Fausts, they wanted to know everything. I wanted to own everything.
    "But I didn't wind up owning," I pointed out. "I got taken. Six thousand one hundred and fifty dollars worth I got taken."
    Ricardo chuckled and leaned back in his chair. "O my sweet gold," he said under his breath. "O my sweet gold."
    "What?"
    "A quotation, Bernie. From Marlowe's Doctor Faustus . I forget the context, but it seems apt. 'O my sweet gold.' "
    I looked from him to Morris Burlap, but nobody can ever tell when Morris Burlap is puzzled. As a matter of fact, he looks more like a professor than Ricardo, him with those thick Harris tweeds and that heavy, thinking look. Ricardo is, you know, a bit too natty.
    The two of them added up to all the brains and sharpness a guy could ask for. That's why I was paying out an arm and a leg for this lunch, on top of all my losses with Eksar.
    "Morris, tell the truth. You understand him?"
    "What's there to understand, Bernie? A quote about the sweet gold? It might be the answer, right there."
    Now I looked at Ricardo. He was eating away at a creamy Italian pudding. Two bucks even, those puddings cost in that place.
    "Let's say he was an alien," Morris Burlap said. "Let's say he came from somewhere in outer space. Okay. Now what would an alien want with U.S. dollars? What's the rate of exchange out there? How much is a dollar worth forty, fifty light years away?"
    "You mean he needed it to buy some merchandise here on Earth?"
    "That's exactly what I mean. But what kind of merchandise, that's the question. What could Earth have that he'd want?"
    Ricardo finished the pudding and wiped his lips with a napkin. "I think you're on the right track, Morris," he said, and I swung my