Work Done for Hire by Joe Haldeman

that they were manufactured with nanocircuitry that broadcast the location of each bill. The government denied that with just the right degree of “Who, us?”
    If they were counterfeit, an amateur like me probably couldn’t tell. I took the magnifying glass and examined Kennedy’s right eye on each one, and they all looked the same. The paper had authentic-looking threads, but I’d seen how counterfeiters could bleach out a one-dollar bill and photoprint any denomination onto it.
    The e-mail hoax. A few months after I got back, I got a bunch of e-mails that tried to hire me to kill the president. But that was a kid, Timmy something. He’d never confessed, but went to juvenile court and got a suspended sentence.
    Could they be related? I ought to find out what became of young Timmy. Maybe he came into money.
    I picked up the phone. Don’t use 9-1-1 unless it’s an emergency. I clicked on the directory. Call the Iowa City cops or the state troopers? Or Coralville or the Kampus Kops, for that matter. Or go straight to the FBI or Homeland Security?
    Well, I didn’t especially like any of those organizations. Which one would cause me the least trouble?
    I wished I still smoked. This would be the time to stoke up a pipe and emulate Sherlock Holmes. But I didn’t even have any tobacco, just a little marijuana and some rolling papers stashed away. That would be a real good idea.
    Would I be breaking a law by inaction? I assumed so, but what would the law be?
    Technically, I was in possession of an unregistered military weapon, but the selector switch only said SAFE and SEMI. If it didn’t shoot full auto, I assumed it was legal.
    I could put the ten grand in the bank while I decided what to do. But no. At 3.5 percent it would earn less than a dollar a day. And it probably wouldn’t be in there a day, before the cops came knocking.
    Was I accessory to a crime? A conspiracy to kill some unidentified bad guy. That might be a crime once the bad guy was identified, but right now you could argue that I just had a legal gun and a hypothetical use for it.
    Plus ten dead Kennedys.
    It couldn’t be real. Somebody was setting me up. But for what, a joke? A blackmail deal? It would be an expensive joke, not very funny, and if they blackmailed me they could get a three-figure check and a comic-book collection, which I’d have to collect from Mother’s attic.
    I went to the computer and found that a new rifle like this, with a standard high-power scope, would run $2,600 out of the box. I ought to just take it down to Gun ’n’ Porn. But they probably wouldn’t take a weapon that didn’t have papers.
    Or I could wait and see who they wanted dead. There were a couple of people I’d gladly kill for free; maybe I’d be lucky.
    It occurred to me that that was a thing any guy might say casually. But it does mean something different if you once assassinated people for $1,300 a month and all the army chow you could eat.
    Presumably most of the people I’d killed as a sniper were guys like me, ordinary people snared by chance or circumstance and turned into killers by their own government. I told myself that I could feel sorry that they were dead, without feeling guilty for being an instrument in the chain of events that led to our unfortunate meeting. I was drafted, and most of them were forced into uniform by poverty and politics.
    This was completely different, except for the tool engaged. The target would probably not know he was a target, and presumably wouldn’t be shooting back.
    And the person shooting him would not be a just-following-orders soldier. He’d be a hired assassin.
    I should take the whole thing, money and all, down to the police station, and wash my hands of it. Any normal person would.
    Instead, I stared at it and thought.
    If I did have an immortal soul, it was already forfeit. So ponder the ponderable: first, could I do it and not get