The Mississippi Company

by Mark Kertzman

Chapter 22

Ravi came up from darkness very slowly, very woozily. He knew something was not right when he felt both feather-light and restrained at the same time.

With a groan, he opened his eyes and looked down at himself.

Sure enough, there were steel handcuffs tight around his wrists and a five-point belt securely strapping him to a deep acceleration couch. His legs floated aimlessly, tethered neither by physical restraints nor by any gravity.

Bringing his eyes up, Ravi saw the cozy interior of an intra-orbital shuttle. Of the twenty seats available, only three others were occupied. A couple of large blue-uniformed security men lounged down the narrow aisle. Across from Ravi, he was dully surprised to see the man in the rumpled, and now quite stained and torn, suit.

“Wh... wh... what...?”

“Happened?” Jon finished pleasantly. “Simple. You forgot that metal pipes conduct electricity. I guess you could say you got the shock of your life.”

“Bastard,” Ravi mumbled.

Jon choose to ignore that. He smiled.

“Why did you do it, Ravi?”

“What?” Ravi looked confused.

“Why did you defraud all those people?”

“Get bent,” Ravi shot back.

“I can’t figure it out. Why?” Jon repeated.

“Why do you think?”

“Oh. For the money.”

“Yeah,” Ravi responded.

“Like this?”

Jon flipped a slim silvered briefcase over the seat to face Ravi. He opened it, just enough to give the fraudster a glimpse of its contents. It contained a pile of bearer bonds with a million-euro face value each, stacks of euro and new yuan notes, and two small velvet bags that Jon knew held high-quality cut diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires....

He snapped the case shut again. A look of amusement crossed his rugged face, generated by Ravi’s wide eyes.

“Don’t worry, Ravi. We found your stash back at the Fairmont New Kowloon, while you were sleeping it off.”

Ravi didn’t reply at first. When he did, it was to change the subject.

“Where are we going?”

“Where do you think?” Jon gestured towards the front of the craft. The door to the pilot’s compartment was open, and through the cockpit windows could be seen the impressively large blue, green and white crescent of the Earth.

Ravi leaned forward to look, then eased back into the straps with a resigned sigh.

“How’d you come up with this little scam, anyways?” Jon persisted.

“You’re kidding, right?”

Jon shook his head. “No. How did you get the idea?”

Ravi shrugged. “It was easy. Like taking candy from a baby. Everyone was dying to buy a piece of an asteroid mine, so I just started selling one.”

“Without opening one first.”

“Details, Details. It all just went into my pocket anyways.”

“How much?”

“Enough,” Ravi fired back.

Jon let that one go. He had a good idea of the amount anyway. Shaking his head unconsciously, he continued. “Do you know how many people you’ve defrauded?”

“Plenty. What difference does that make?”

“Do you know how many?”

Ravi looked away from Jon’s steady gaze. When he answered, it was in a lower, quieter voice.

“Well, I don’t know how many, exactly...”

“How did it work? How many people did each new ‘investor’ have to sell to?” Jon’s tone made it clear that “investor” was an ironic term.

“At least five.”

“And do you know how deep your little pyramid went?”

“Well...”

“How deep? How many people sold to people, who sold to people...” Jon let it trail off.

Ravi pursed his lips, blowing out suddenly. “Before the cops shut us down, we were getting money back from people six sales away from our first mark.” Ravi’s voice was tinged with pride.

Jon whistled appreciatively. “So, if every person sold to at least five more, and there were at least six levels to the pyramid, why...”

Jon paused. He looked like he was calculating, but in fact he already knew the number, knew how much money and how many victims. “Why, that’s over fifteen thousand people.”

Ravi just shrugged.

“Fifteen thousand people, Ravi. Fifteen thousand people who were sending you money. Fifteen thousand people who you stole from, who paid you their life savings, their dreams.”

Ravi wasn’t looking at Jon any more.

“You know, you are not the first smart guy to come up with a little scheme like this. It reminds me of an old case, way back in the nineteenth century.

“You see, back then, the American West was opening up. There was land for the taking, resources to be exploited, money to be made. Sure, lots of people went west and helped to make the world we know. But there were many more who stayed home, back in Europe. Except they wanted a piece of the action, too.”

Jon paused. Ravi glanced at him from under heavy eyelids.

“There was this really smart guy. I bet he was a lot like you, Ravi. Anyways, he figured out that if he could offer people back in Europe a chance to buy into the new frontier, they would jump at it. Not only would they jump at it, but they would jump at a chance to sell this great investment to all their friends and family. So that’s what he did; he set up a company and started selling shares. Except there was nothing to them. Nothing but one of the first truly successful pyramid schemes.”

Jon fell silent. For a moment, neither man spoke.

“Interesting story,” Ravi finally deadpanned.

“Thought you might like it,” Jon shifted, looking out the little porthole thoughtfully, focusing on the hard, bright stars. “Wherever there is a new frontier, there will be plenty of opportunity. There will also be people like you, Ravi, who are just scammers. Back then, the frontier was everything west of the Mississippi River. That old scammer wanted to create excitement about the frontier, so he called his scheme the Mississippi Company.”

“Great name.”

“Kind of like the Orbital Heavy Metals Extraction Company, right Ravi?”

“I guess so.”

Jon didn’t reply. He was staring at the pinpricks of light out the porthole window.

A high, desperate gleam appeared in Ravi’s eyes. Glancing up the aisle to make sure that the security men were out of earshot, he leaned towards Jon, pitching his voice low.

“Do you know how much money is in that briefcase?”

“I have a pretty good idea.” Jon’s fingers drummed absently on the case.

“Do you know?”

Jon turned back to Ravi. “About twenty, twenty-five million. Euros.”

Ravi nodded spasmodically. “Take the cash. Help yourself to some of the gems. Hell, take it all. Take it. Just make sure that when we get to Earth my paperwork gets lost or something. Get me out of this, and you can have whatever you want. Take it, man!”

Jon’s tired eyes didn’t blink, didn’t move, didn’t stray from Ravi’s wild gaze.

Proceed to Chapter 23...