The Universal Karmic Clearinghouse

Harry Zimmerman was an advertising copy writer for Batten & Finch in New York. One day when he got home from work, he found a plain white envelope in the middle of a small desk in his living room, where it had no business being.

Inside the envelope was a rectangle of shiny plastic. Written on it were the words Karmic Bank Visitor's Pass Good For One Hour. There was a square printed in one corner of the rectangle.

Musing, Zimmerman picked up a pencil and checked the square. Suddenly, he wasn't in New York anymore.

With no sense of transition, Harry Zimmerman found himself in front of an old-fashioned gray-stone office building. It stood by itself in the middle of a wide green lawn. Huge bronze gates were open. Above them, chiseled into the granite, were the words Karmic Bank & Clearinghouse.

Zimmerman waited, then walked inside.

There were rows and rows of desks. Men were examining piles of documents, making entries in ledger books and then piling the documents into wire baskets at the sides of the desks. Messengers took away the documents and brought in new ones.

As Zimmerman approached, a document slipped from its pile and sailed to the floor.

He picked it up and looked at it. It was made of a shimmery, transparent substance and showed a richly colored three-dimensional image of a landscape with figures. As he moved the document, the view changed. He saw a city street and then a boat on a river and then a lake with hazy blue mountains behind it. Other images slid past: elephants moving across a wide, dusty plain, people talking with one another at a traffic intersection, a deserted beach with dusty palm trees.

"Careful!" the clerk said and snatched the document out of his hand.

"I wasn't going to hurt it," Zimmerman said.

"I wasn't worried about it," the clerk said. "I was worried about you. Turn one of those things the wrong way and it can pull you into its construct. Then we'd have trouble getting you back."

The clerk seemed friendly enough. He was a fussy-looking middle-aged man, balding in front, dressed in a pearl-gray morning coat, sharply creased pinstriped trousers and gleaming black shoes.

"What are those things?" Zimmerman asked, indicating the shiny documents.

"I see that you're new here. They're X-two-D invoices--sort of instant cosmic balance sheets. Each of them records a planet's karmic status at a given moment. After deducting the bad karma, we convert the good karma into Intraversal Luck Units at the going rate of exchange and deposit the (continued on page 187) Karmic Clearinghouse(continued from page 145) I. L. U.s in their account, to draw upon as required. It's the same as banking anywhere, except that we deal in I. L. U.s instead of money."

"Are you telling me," said Zimmerman, "that people can draw out good luck when they need it?"

"That's it," the clerk said. "Except that we don't have individual accounts. We're strictly planetary."

"Do all planets have accounts here?"

"Oh, yes," the clerk told him. "As soon as they develop abstract thought or better, we open an account for them. Then they can draw on it when things get out of hand--like when disease is raging or wars are flaring up or there are unaccountable droughts and famines. All planets have these runs. But with enough units of luck, you can usually ride them out. Don't ask me the actual mechanics. I'm a banker, not an engineer. And with a little luck, I won't even be a banker much longer."

"You're getting out of banking?"

"Out of this entire construct," the clerk said. "The Karmic Clearinghouse level is really very limited. There's just this one building perched in the middle of a small nothingness. We do get hardship pay, but personally, I've had enough."

"Where will you go?"

"I've picked quite a nice reality construct from the catalog. What with my pension and my I. L. U. account, I expect to have a good time. The individual I. L. U. account is one of the best things about working for the Universal Technocrat. Also, the cafeteria isn't bad, and we do get the latest movies."

A bell sounded within Zimmerman's pocket, startling him. He took out the visitor's pass. It was flashing and ringing. The clerk pressed a corner and it stopped.

"That means your time is almost up," the clerk said. "It's been a pleasure talking with you, sir. We don't get many visitors out this way. Our reality construct hasn't even got a hotel."

"Just a minute," Zimmerman said. "What about Earth's account?"

"It's right here in the bank. No one has ever come around to collect it."

"I'm here now," Harry said. "And I'm Earth's authorized representative. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here. Right?"

The clerk nodded; he didn't look happy.

"I want to draw out some of Earth's luck. For the whole planet, I mean, not just for myself. I don't know if you've checked us out lately, but we've got a lot of problems. Every year, we seem to get more war, pollution, famine, floods, typhoons, unexplained plane crashes--that sort of thing. Some of us are getting nervous. We could really use some luck."

"I knew someone from Earth would come along one of these days," the clerk muttered. "I've been dreading this."

"What's the matter? You said our account was here."

"It is. But there's nothing in it."

"But how could that be?" Zimmerman demanded.

The clerk shrugged. "You know how banks operate. We have to show a profit."

"What does that have to do with Earth's luck?"

"We lent it out so it could earn some interest."

"You lent out Earth's luck?"

The clerk nodded. "To the Associated Civilizations of the Lesser Magellanic Clouds. A first-class risk."

"Well," Zimmerman said, "you'd better call it in now."

"That's the part I hate to tell you. Despite their very good credit rating, the Associated Civilizations of the L. M. C. recently vanished into a black hole. It's the sort of space-time singularity that could happen to anyone."

"That's tough for them," Zimmerman said. "But what about Earth's luck?"

"There's no way we can recover it. It's down there below the event horizon, with the rest of L. M. C.'s assets."

"You lost our luck!"

"Don't worry; your planet is bound to accumulate more. I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do about it."

The clerk's sad smile and balding head began to dissolve. Everything was shimmering and fading out, and Zimmerman knew that he was on his way back to New York. Here he was, the first human to get to another level of reality--the Columbus of the galaxy--and the only thing he had to tell the folks back home was that the Earth's luck had gone down a black hole; sorry about that.

It wasn't fair. There had to be something he could do to change things.

But what?

That moment, half in and half out of the fade-out, was decision time for Harry Zimmerman.

"Wait!" he cried to the clerk. "We gotta talk!"

"Look, I already said I'm sorry."

"Forget about that," Harry said. "I've got business to discuss with you."

The clerk made a gesture. The construct stopped fading. "What business?"

"A loan."

"A luck loan?"

"Of course. A big one. To tide us over until things straighten out."

"My dear sir," the clerk said, "why didn't you say so? Lending luck is our business. Come with me."

Harry followed the clerk into the bank.

Like Columbus taking the gold and pearls of Hispaniola back to Ferdinand and Isabella, so Harry Zimmerman, envoy involuntary, returned to the Karmic Clearinghouse to negotiate the luck loan that we Earth people so desperately needed. And that is the true story behind our present-day peace and prosperity here in the easygoing 21st Century.

The interest has turned out to be a little steep: The Karmic Bank is not in this for its health. Harry had to put up the planet for collateral, and if we don't find a way to pay back the loan soon, there's only one thing we can do. We'll have to hide out in a Chapter-13 black hole, the way the Associated Civilizations of the L. M. C did. It's a desperate measure, but anything's better than losing the planet.