The Merchant's War (8 page)

Well, rework that daydream. Leave Mitzi out for a minute: the future was still bright. Even though I’d signed up for heavy money to get the condo, I should still have spare purchasing power. A new car? Why not? And which kind of car—a direct-drive model where you kneel one leg on the seat and push with the other, or some fancy geared-up make-out wagon?

It was getting very hot. I tried again to turn off the heat, and failed again.

I found myself drinking Mokes one after another. And, actually, for a moment I thought seriously about pulling out the bed and getting a good night’s sleep.

Tired or not, I couldn’t spend my first night home that way! It called for a celebration.

A celebration called for somebody to celebrate with. Mitzi? But when I called Agency personnel they didn’t have a home number for her yet, and she had already left the office. And all the other dates I could think of were either years stale, or millions of miles away. I didn’t even know which were the in places to celebrate in any more!

That part, anyway, could be handled. I had a neat Omni-V console that came along with the apartment, two hundred and forty channels. I ran through the selector—housewares commercials, florists’ commercials, outerwear commercials (male), outerwear commercials (female), news, restaurant commercials—yes, that was the channel I wanted. I picked a nice place only two blocks from the sea-condo, and it was all that I’d wanted. Because I had made a reservation I was only kept an hour or so in the bar, drinking gin-and-Mokes and chatting up my neighbors; the dinner was the best of brand-name soya cutlets and reconstituted mashed veggies; there was brandy with the coffee, and two waiters dancing attendance to unwrap my portions and pull the tabs on my drinks. There was one little funny thing. When the check came I looked at it quickly, then more slowly, then called the waiter over again. “What’s this?” I said, pointing at the column of printouts that said,

Mokie-Koke, $2.75

Mokie-Koke, $2.75

Mokie-Koke, $2.75

Mokie-Koke, $2.75

“They’re Mokie-Kokes, sir,” he explained, “a refreshing, taste-tingling blend of the finest chocolate-type—”

“I know what a Mokie-Koke is,” I interrupted. “I just don’t remember ordering any.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” he said, all deference. “Actually you did. I’ll play back the voice tape if you like.”

“Never mind the voice tape,” I said. “I don’t want them now. I’ll just go.”

He looked shocked. “But, sir—you’ve already drunk them!”

Nine
A.M.
Bright and early. I paid off my pedi-cab, pulled the soot-extractor plugs out of my nostrils and strutted into the main lobby of the huge Taunton, Gatchweiler and Schocken Agency Tower.

We get older and we get cynical, but after the years of absence there was almost an epiphany of feeling that shook me as I entered. Imagine two thousand years ago entering the court of Augustus Caesar, and knowing that here, in this place, the affairs of the entire world had their control center and inspiration. With the Agency, the same. True, there were other agencies—but it was a bigger world, too! Here was where Power was. The whole vast building was dedicated to one sublime mission: the betterment of mankind through the inspiration to buy. More than eighteen thousand people worked in that building. Copysmiths and apprentice word-jugglers; media specialists who could sound a commercial out of the ambient air or print a message on your eyeball; product researchers dreaming up, every day, new and more sellable drinks, foods, gadgets, vices, possessions of all sorts; artists; musicians; actors; directors; space buyers and time buyers—the list went on indefinitely—and above them all, on the fortieth floor and higher, there was Executive Country where the geniuses who directed it all brooded and conceived their godlike plans. Oh, sure. I joked about the civilizing mission of us who dedicated our lives to advertising— but under the joking was the same real reverence and commitment that I’d felt as a cub scout in the Junior Copywriters, going after my first merit badges and just then beginning to perceive where my life could lead …

Well. Anyway. There I was, in the heart of the universe. There was one funny thing. I had remembered it as vast and vaulted. Vaulted it was—but vast? Actually it seemed tinier, and more crowded, than the Russian Hills tram station; so those years on Venus had corrupted my sensibilities. The people even looked shabbier, and the guard at the weapons detector gave me a surly and suspicious look as I approached.

No problem there. I simply put my wrist into the scanner, and the data store recognized my Social Security number at once, even though it had been ten years since its last use. “Oh,” said the guard, studying my stats as the recognition light flashed green, “you’re Mr. Tarb. Nice to see you back!” There was a false implication there, of course. From the look of her she’d still been in high school last time I entered the Agency building, but her heart was in the right place. I gave her bottom a friendly pat and swaggered toward the lift.

And the first person I saw on forty-five as I let go of the handbar was Mitzi Ku.

I’d had twenty-four hours to get over resentment at that lawsuit deal. It hadn’t been enough, really, but at least the sharp edges of jealousy had blunted a bit, and she really looked good. Not perfect. Although she was out of her bandages, that funny blurring around the eyes and mouth told you she was wearing plastiflesh where healing had not quite finished. But she was smiling at me tentatively as she said hello. “Mitzi,” I said, the words popping out of my mouth unexpectedly —I had not known I had been thinking them —“shouldn’t I sue the tram people, too?”

She looked embarrassed. What she would have said I don’t know, because from behind her Val Dambois popped out. “Too late, Tarb,” he said. I didn’t mind the words. I minded the contemptuous tone, and the grin. “Statute of limitations, you know? Like I told you, you missed the boat. Come on, Mitzi, we can’t keep the Old Man waiting—”

The morning was one shock after another; the Old Man was who I was going to see. Mitzi allowed Dambois to take her arm, but she hung back to peer at me. “Are you all right, Tenny?” she asked.

“I’m fine—” Well, I was, mostly, not counting a slightly frayed ego. “I’m a little thirsty, maybe, because it’s so hot in here. Do you happen to know if there’s a Mokie-Koke vending machine on this floor?”

Dambois gave me a poisonous look. “Some jokes,” he gritted, “are in lousy taste.”

I watched him flounce off, dragging Mitzi after him into the Old Man’s sanctum. I sat down to wait, trying to look as though I had simply decided to rest my feet there for a moment.

The moment turned out to be well past an hour.

Of course, nobody thought anything of that. Over in her own corner of the cell the Old Man’s sec
³
kept busy with her communicator and her data screen, glancing up to smile at me now and then the way she was paid to do. People who wait only an hour to see the Old Man generally gave thanks for their blessings, since most people never got to see him at all. Old Man Gatchweiler was a legend in his own time, poor boy, consumer stock, who rose out of obscure origins to pull off so grand a scam that it was still whispered about in the Executive Country bars. Two of the grandest old-line Agencies had wrecked themselves in flaming scandals, old B. J. Taunton nailed for Contract Breach, Fowler Schocken dead and his Agency in ruins. Their Agencies carried on a spectral existence as shells, written off forever by the wiseacres. Then Horatio Gatchweiler appeared out of nowhere to swallow the wreckage and turn it into T., G. & S. No one wrote Taunton, Gatchweiler and Schocken off! We were tops in Sales and Service. Our clients led the charts in Sales, and as to Service, well, no thousand-dollar-a-hit stallion ever serviced his mares as thoroughly as we serviced the consumers. A name to conjure with, Horatio Gatchweiler! It was almost liter
ally a name to conjure with, for it was like the unspeakable name of God. No one ever spoke it. Behind his back he was the “Old Man,” to his face nothing but “sir.”

So sitting in his tiny sec
³
‘s anteroom while I pretended to study the
Advertising Age
hourlies in the tabletop screen was nothing new for me. It was even an honor. At least, it would have been except for the sulky, nagging annoyance at the fact that he had given Mitzi and Val Dambois precedence.

When at last the Old Man’s sec
³
turned me over to the sec
²
, who led me to the secretary, who admitted me to his own private office, he did try to make me welcome. He didn’t stand up or anything, but, “Come right in, Farb!” he boomed jovially from his chair. “Good to see you back, boy!”

I had almost forgotten how magnificent his place was—two windows! Of course, both had the shades drawn; you can’t take chances on somebody bouncing a pencil-beam off the glass to pick up the vibrations of secret talks inside. “That’s Tarb, sir,” I offered.

“Of course it is! And you’re back from a tour on Venus—good work. Of course,” he added, peering up at me slyly, “it wasn’t
all
good, was it? There’s a little note on your personnel file that you probably didn’t bribe anybody to put there—”

“I can explain about that Agency party, sir—”

“Of course you can! And it won’t stand in your way. You young people who volunteer for a tour on Venus deserve well of us—nobody expects you to stand that kind of life without a little, uh, strain.” He leaned back dreamily. “I don’t know if you know this, Farb,” he said to the ceiling, “but I was on Venus myself once, long ago. Didn’t stay there. I won their lottery, you know.”

I was startled. “Lottery? I had no idea the Veenies ever ran a lottery. It seems so out of character for them.”

“Never did again,” he guffawed, “since a huck won the first one! They gave up the idea right after that—besides declaring me persona non grata, so I got hustled right back here!” He chuckled for several seconds at the fecklessness of the Veenies. “Of course,” he said, sobering, “I kept my skills up while I was on Venus.” From the way he peered at me I knew it was a question.

I had the right answer, too. “So did I, sir,” I said eagerly. “Every chance I got! All the time! For instance—well, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the inside of what the Veenies call a grocery store—”

“Seen a hundred of them, boy,” he boomed jovially.

“Well, then you know how incompetent they are. Signs like, ‘These tomatoes are all right if you’re going to eat them today, otherwise they’ll spoil,’ and ‘Prepared mixes cost twice what making the dish from basic ingredients would’—things like that.”

He laughed out loud, and wiped his eyes. “Haven’t changed a bit, I guess,” he said.

“No, sir. Well, I’d go through the store and then come back to the Embassy and write
real
copy for them. You know? Like for the tomatoes, ‘Luscious ripe flavor-full at the peak of perfection’ or ‘Save! Save! Save precious time with these chef-prepared ready-to-cook masterpieces!’ That sort of thing. And then I’d review all the latest Earth commercials for the staff—at least two hour-long pep meetings every week—and we’d have contests to see who could come up with better original variations on the basic sales themes—”

He looked at me with real affection. “You know, Tarb,” he said, with kindness verging on sentimentality, “you remind me of myself when I was your age. A little. Well, listen, let’s get ourselves comfortable while we decide what you’d like to do for us now that you’re back. What’ll you have to drink?”

“Oh, I think a Mokie-Koke, sir,” I said absently.

The climate in the room took a swift change for the worse. The Old Man’s finger stopped over the call button that would have summoned his sec
²
, in charge of bringing in coffee and refreshments. “What did you say, Farb?” he gritted.

I opened my mouth, but it was too late. He didn’t let me speak. “A
Moke?
Here in my office?” The expression went clear across the scale, from benevolence through shock to wrath. Livid, he stabbed down on a completely different button. “Emergency services!” he roared. “Get a medic in here right away—I’ve got a Moke-head in my office!”

They got me out of the Old Man’s office fast as any leper ousted from the sight of Louis XIV. Treated me that way, too. While I was waiting for the results of my tests I sat in the common-clinic waiting room in Subbasement Three, but, although it was crowded, there were empty seats on both sides of me.

At last, “Mr. Tennison Tarb,” crackled the voice from the overhead speaker. I got up and stumbled through the underbrush of hastily moved legs and pulled-aside ankles to the consultation room. It was like walking the Last Mile in those old prison movies, except that there were no mumbled words of encouragement from my fellow cons. There was the same expression on every face, and it said,
Thank God it’s you, not me!

I expected that past the sliding door would be the doctor who would prescribe my fate. Surprisingly there were two people there; one the doctor—you could tell by her ritual stethoscope around the neck—and the other, of all people, little Dan Dixmeister, grown all lank and gloomy. “Hey, there, Danny!” I greeted him, sticking out my hand for old time’s sake.

And for the same sake, I guess—his version of it—he studied my hand for a moment before reluctantly putting out his own. It wasn’t a shake. It was more like his offering his hand for me to kiss—no grip, just a limp touch and withdrawal.

Now, Danny Dixmeister had been my copy cub trainee half a dozen years earlier. I went to Venus. He stayed behind. Clearly he hadn’t wasted his time. He wore Deputy Department Head epaulettes and, on his sleeve, fifty-thousand-a-year stripes, and he looked at me as though I were the new apprentice and he the exec. “You really screwed up, Tarb,” he rasped joylessly. “Dr. Mosskristal will review your medical problem for you.” And the tone said
bad news.

Bad news it was. “What you’ve got,” said the doctor, “is a Campbellian addiction.” Her tone was neither kind nor unkind. It was the tone in which a doctor announces a white-blood-corpuscle count in a laboratory animal, and the look she turned on me was exactly the same look as Mitzi used to give a would-be returnee who might be recruited for her spy chains. “I suppose you could be reprogrammed,” she said, studying the results on the display before her. “Hardly worth the effort, I’d say. A very uninteresting chart.”