Authors: Lawrence Sanders
“What’s her name?” I asked.
Angela took a deep breath.
“That’s why I’ve been playing this cloak-and-dagger game. Her name is Lydia Ann Ferguson. She’s the daughter of Franklin L. Ferguson, Director of the Department of Bliss. Is his name on your list of possibles?”
“Yes,” I said. “Have you ever met her?”
“About a year ago, at a party in DIROB’s home in Washington. She’s blond, about the age and height you mentioned.”
“Were she and Harris users?”
“Yes, for the past three weeks.”
“It can’t be only her.”
“Of course not. This is nationwide. Well organized. Dedicated people, very intelligent, very dangerous.”
“What do they want?”
“I have no idea. At the moment, apparently, all they want is to destabilize the country.”
“Maybe,” I said. “What were your plans?”
“For Harris? I was hoping he’d get some hard evidence on Lydia Ann Ferguson. Then I’d have her committed and decant her. Her father would raise hell, but he couldn’t stop me.”
“He’d have to resign,” Paul put in.
“Would he?” Angela asked, as if the idea had only at that moment occurred to her. This ef was toxic. “I suppose he would. Well, I was certain that under interrogation Lydia Ann would implicate others and tell us what is going on. But Harris was stopped. I suppose she did it.”
“I suppose so,” I said.
We were all silent then, running through the permutations and combinations. Finally Paul spoke: “Nick, are we in?”
“Yes.”
“Then you could do it.”
“Take Harris’ place? No way. They know me at Pub-Op.” “Not take his place, but do his service. With Lydia Ann Ferguson.”
“Yes,” Angela Berri said. “Yes. You could do it, Nick. With your body and that smile, what ef could resist you?” “Thanks a lot,” I said. “But no, thanks.”
“My annual Section Party is scheduled a little more than two weeks from now,” she went on, ignoring my protest. “Ferguson will fly up for it, I know. I condition two clone efs for him every year. He wouldn’t miss it for the world. I’ll ask him to invite his daughter. She’s in the city; it’s logical. You’ll meet her then, at a party of a hundred people.”
“Is she profitable?” Paul asked.
“Yes. Very.”
Paul was silent.
“Well, Nick?” Angela said.
“I’ll meet her,” I said, deciding suddenly. “I guarantee nothing.”
“Don’t be so modest,” Angela said. “I
know.”
We moved back inside. The three of us stood there awkwardly, not speaking.
“Paul,” Angela said finally, “I wonder if you’d mind leaving us? I have some things to discuss with Nick. Not concerning this matter. Section activities.”
“Of course,” Paul said genially. I knew he was furious.
Later, we lay naked in her bed, resting.
“Nick,” she said, “do you trust Paul Bumford?”
“That’s the second time you’ve asked me that. The answer is still the same: Yes.”
“He’s
such
a bitch. . . .”
One of my duties as Assistant Deputy Director of Research & Development was to conduct distinguished visitors on tours of the Division’s facilities. The sight-seeing groups were generally of two types: politicians and scientists.
On the morning of Angela Berri’s annual party, at which I was to meet Lydia Ann Ferguson, my first scheduled service was to conduct a group of visiting Japanese pols on my portion of a Section tour.
The tour progressed as expected—and ended as expected: They asked to see our most famous project—Fred. Or rather, Fred HI,
since Fred I had stopped after forty-eight hours, and Fred II after seven months. Fred III was the severed head of a Labrador retriever we had succeeded in keeping alive for more than three years.
As they clustered about the oversized, sterile bell jar in which Fred existed, I explained the project briefly in their language. A liquid nutrient was constantly circulated through Fred’s natural blood vessels. A computer and automatic pump controlled temperature and pressure. A continual EEG signal registered on a cathode ray oscilloscope, and all other life signs, including hormonal and enzymatic levels, were monitored.
The Japanese watched, fascinated, while I shined a bright light in Fred’s eyes. The pupils contracted. I spoke his name softly into a microphone: “Fred!” He heard it from the little speaker inside the bell jar and his muzzle lifted. I pumped in a synthetic odor akin to fresh beef. His mouth opened and he began to salivate.
I finally drew the visitors away from the bell jar and accompanied them down an underground corridor to the computer room where Phoebe Huntzinger would take over. I found myself walking alongside an em I recognized as a prince of the Imperial Household.
“Tell me, please,” he said in a low voice, “what do you hope to learn from this experiment?”
“We have already learned a great deal, Excellency. The construction of the equipment necessary, the formulation of the liquid nutrient, the nature of consciousness. the rate of brain cell stoppage, and so forth.”
He finally asked the question invariably asked by visitors. “Is it possible that such a technique could be applied to humans?”
“It is possible.” I nodded. “Anything is possible. There is no problem that cannot be solved.”
We bowed to each other when we separated. I went back to A Lab, to Paul Bumford’s office. He was inside, but the door was locked. He was intently scanning a long roll of computer printout. It had folded up around him, in a loose pile almost as high as the desk. He looked up, rose to unlock the door. He locked it again behind me.
“Well?” I asked.
I had persuaded Angela to requisition the raw data of the previous week from the public opinion polling organizations that provided input for the computation of Satrat. Then, without Phoebe Huntzinger’s knowledge, Paul had run a comparison of the raw data with the tapes supplied Phoebe.
“Angela’s right. ” He sighed. He sounded almost disappointed. “Nine of the twelve tapes are inoperative.”
“Strange,” I said.
“What’s strange?”
“Angela said she began to suspect the Satrat was being fiddled six months ago. The logical thing for her to have done then would be to run the kind of test you just did. That would have confirmed her suspicions and she could have stopped the faking. But instead she let it continue while she set up her little spy network.”
“I suppose she thought it was more important to discover who was doing it.”
I nodded and stood up, knee-deep in computer paper.
“Make a tight roll of this,” I told Paul. “I’ll add it to the file in my safe. I have to go to the bank. I need some love. Then I’ll be in my office until 1700. Stop by the apartment about 1900. We’ll go up to Angela’s together.”
“What are you going to say to Lydia Ferguson when you meet her?”
“ ‘Happy to meet you, Lydia.’ ”
“Be serious. I mean after, when you talk to her. Are you going to ask if you can see her home?”
“First I’m going to ask if she likes Italian food.”
“Italian food? What’s that got to do with anything?”
“You’ve forgotten. Mary’s autopsy report. Harris had consumed proveal, propep, spaghetti, and red petrowine four hours before he was stopped.”
I went over to the branch of the American National Bank located within the compound. The ANB was one of Lewisohn’s ideas. It had been sold to the Congress as a “standard by which civilian banking could be judged.” A lot of kaka, of course. Lewisohn realized that, with more than five million adult servers, the government was missing a good bet in not establishing a bank to cater to their financial needs. The ANB offered a full range of services. How would you like to be a banker with five million depositors?
I handed over my BIN and told the server how much love I wanted. Checks were obsolete, it was paperless banking. A computer checked my account, okayed the transaction, made the debit, and I was handed my 200 new dollars. Fast and painless. I didn’t like to think of what would happen if the people fiddling the Satrat computer decided to fiddle bank computers. Instant chaos.
I walked back to my office slowly, wondering if there was any possible way to obtain a printout of Angela Berri’s bank account. I Was still pondering her use of a beachhouse owned by a foundation financed by corporations to whom we sold licenses and, on occasion, gave invaluable free assistance. It might be interesting to compare the dates of her deposits, for instance, with the dates of contract grants to Walker & Clarke Chemicals.
But even if I could obtain her bank record, I couldn’t believe that intelligent, ambitious ef would be stupid enough to deposit any more than a reasonable percentage of her rank-rate in the American National Bank. If she was on the suck, she was hiding the love somewhere else. There were many ways to do it. I could compute a few original methods myself.
I omitted lunch and devoted the afternoon to catching up on my “correspondence.” It went swiftly, since practically all communication was done by minicassettes. The dictation machine could make an original tape and up to five copies simultaneously, in case of multiple mailings. I usually made only an original and one copy for filing.
I rejected, as politely as possible, practically all the invitations I received to address conventions of professional associations, contribute to scientific journals, take part in symposia, engage in televised debates, etc. I accepted a few speaking engagements, offered by prestigious commercial and academic groups. Not solely for the personal prestige but because of the esteem my Division enjoyed. It was important, politically, to hyperactivate our image.
I got back to my apartment about 1730, stripped down, went into the kitchen, and mixed a tall vodka-and-Smack. It was petrovod— but with Smack you couldn’t taste the difference.
Of course, the day wasn’t over yet.
I took a bath. Something I rarely do, preferring to shower. But as a PS-3, I rated a tub. It seemed silly not to take advantage of it occasionally.
I dressed with more care than usual. A two-piece suit of the light blue metallic (the jacket collarless), and a turtleneck sweater of white plastisilk, woven with black bugle beads. I wore formal hoshoes of black nylon and black plastikid. My makeup, as usual, was minimal. I did wear a silver brooch studded with lapis lazuli. It had been given to me by Mother. She said it had belonged to
her
mother. It was pleasantly obso.
I was on my second vodka-and-Smack when Paul arrived.
Unfortunately, he was not very prepossessing, physically, but he
did very well with what he had. I noticed first the sequined eyeshadow and lip rouge, and a small, star-shaped beauty mark at one side of his chin. He was wearing a plum-colored velvet suit with a ruffled blouse of puce lace.
“What would you like?” I asked.
“You,” he said.
“To drink.”
“Vodka, please. By itself. Chilled.”
We slumped at opposite ends of the couch, sipping our drinks.
“I have something good for the Tomorrow File,” I said lazily, “but I don’t want to discuss it now. Let’s just relax.”
“Nervous?” he said.
I laughed. “You’re hyper.”
“It
is
important.”
“I suppose so. Have you ever met DIROB?”
“No. Never.”
“Meet him tonight. Introduce yourself. You’ve got to start meeting the movers and shakers.”
“What’s he like?”
“Pleasant enough. Dry palm-stroke. He smiles too much. And a gloss to him. Like all upper-rank pols. Hair, suit, eyes, skin—he
shines.
Not science-conditioned. He came up through social engineering. But don’t take him lightly. He’s survived. He smells the wind.”
Paul nodded. “I’ll be ever so worshipful. By the way, Mary Bergstrom hit the national lottery for a thousand.”
“Good for Mary,” I said. “Finished? Let’s go.”
Last year her apartment had been transformed into a
fin de siecle
Parisian bordello, all red velvet, black lace, and frolicking plaster cupids. This year her decorator had opted for a jungle village, with natural plants in tubs.
Angela Teresa Berri moved through the undergrowth smiling, white teeth gleaming against a skin dyed a tawny brown. She wore a sleeveless gown that appeared to be aluminum foil with a bonded surface of stretch plastic. It came high on her thorax, cleaved to her body, ended in a hemline of points halfway down her hard thighs.
If anyone doubted she wore nothing beneath, it was only necessary to view her from the back. She was almost completely exposed, low enough to display the Y-division of her buttocks. She wore no shoes, but leather thongs ringed her toes and wound tightly to her knees. She had a golden serpent thrice encircling her left bicep. The snake’s eyes were rubies.
Only she could have worn such a costume and made it believable. She was more than an ef, more than human. She was a primitive power. A force. It radiated from her. It went beyond sexuality.
Everyone in the Section with a rank of PS-4 and higher had been invited and was there. In addition, three other Deputy Directors were present, and a party of five had flown up from Washington, D.C.: DIROB Ferguson and his staff. All five were ems; none was accompanied by his wife. The Chief Director, it was rumored, had been invited but had sent his regrets. Something about another famine in Bangladesh.
No attempt was made at formal introductions. I slipped sideways through the crowd, carrying my sweetish petrorum punch in a plastic coconut shell, greeting familiar friends and acquaintances, sliding palms with two of Ferguson’s assistants I had not met before. Both had the gloss I had mentioned to Paul: the polish that increases in brilliance as you move up in Public Service, like a waxed surface drying to a hard shine.
Finally I came face to face with the Great Man himself, Franklin L. Ferguson, Director of Bliss.
“Good evening, sir,” I said. “Nice to see you again.”
We stroked palms automatically while his glazed eyes sought to focus.
“Flair!” he finally burst out, with a politician’s memory for names. “Nicholas Flair!”
“Right, sir.”
He smiled proudly. “Never forget a name. Let’s see—you’re a scientist, huh?”