Ballroom of the Skies Read Online Free PDF

to it. How about the stash, the dinero, the rupees, the happy old dollars?”
    “How do you mean?”
    “I’m used to fighting. Hell, I’ve got the most pornographic set of comic strips this side of Capetown. They’re always trying to shut me down. I got a half million press run. So I do this. I put a banner head. Paid Advertising, it says. Not the opinion of the publisher, it says. I give youinside page one, and you write it and sign it. Thirty thousand rupees it costs you. Sixty thousand bucks. Lay it on the line and you can use that page for any damn thing you want. You can use it to challenge Gondohl Lahl to a personal fistfight if you want to. You’ll do a labor camp stretch if that Enfield crowd doesn’t like it, and Kelly will still be here, operating at the old stand. That’s the deal, and take it or leave it.”
    “How much down?”
    “The whole thing down. They’ll confiscate anything you got before they ship you out. I can’t take chances.”
    “It’s a lot of money, Kelly.”
    “You look like a guy with a lot of money.”
    “I’ll have to … check with some friends. I’ll make a decision and come in tomorrow and tell you.”
    “If the answer is no, don’t bother to come in. I won’t dicker. That’s the price. It stands. What are you doing tonight? I got a couple cute little Singhalese tourists lined up, and four freebees to a new private tridi way uptown.”
    “No thanks. See you tomorrow.”
    “Not too early. I expect to have a hangover.”
    Dake went back to the city and bought passage to Philadelphia on one of the feeder lines maintained by Calcutta International Jetways. CIJ used all Indian personnel for their major schedules, but hired U.S. personnel for the feeder lines, entrusting to them the creaking, outmoded aircraft. Once U.S.-owned airlines had linked the entire world. But, in the exhaustion following the war, with the regimentation and labor allocations that had cut travel so severely, the airlines, starved for freight and passengers, had slid inevitably toward bankruptcy, in spite of the subsidies of an impoverished federal government. Thus, when CIJ had made a reasonable offer for all lines and franchises, the airlines had taken it gladly, the investors receiving CIJ stock in return for their holdings. CIJ service was quick, impersonal, efficient. There were only two other passengers on the sixty-seat aircraft. Dake knew that CIJ took a continual loss on the New York–Philadelphia run, but maintained the frequent schedule for the convenienceof the Indian nationals who supervised their investments in both cities. He leaned back in the seat for the short run. The spattered lights of the city wheeled under one wing. The other two passengers were a pair of Madrassi businessmen. They conversed in Hindi and Dake could catch words now and then, enough to know that they were talking about the Philadelphia branch of the Bank of India.
    He could never quite become accustomed to being considered by the Pak-Indians a second-class citizen. Toynbee had coldly outlined the ecology of civilizations. The great wheel had turned slowly, and the East was once again the new fountainhead of vitality. Their discrimination was subtle, but implacable. In major cities Indian clubs had been established. Americans could be taken there as guests, but were forbidden membership. There had been a fad when American women had begun to wear saris, to make imitation caste marks on their foreheads. The Pak-Indian Ambassador had called on the President. Saris disappeared from the shops. Fashion magazines hinted that caste marks were crude, even rude. Everyone was happy again. For a time it had been possible to emigrate to India, that new land of opportunity. But so many had taken advantage of it that restrictions became very tight, and it was still possible, but very very difficult to manage, involving a large cash bond. Though the war of the seventies had done much to alleviate racial tension in the States,