Nervous, the man from IBM said, “Can I see some of these printouts?”
“Christ, I’m ankle-deep in them! Here!”
“Ah … Well … I’m dreadfully sorry, Mr. Gottschalk, but it looks as though you have a major trauma in that gear of yours, and at least a rebuild job will be called for. You’ll have to tone down the maximization directive, to start with. You’ve introduced a factor of infinity into its calculations, so to speak—”
“What do you mean, I introduced it?” Anthony Gottschalk raged.
“Yes, sir. The circuitry was designed exactly in accordance with your specifications, I’d remind you. I believe I did state that the unprecedented complexity of the—”
“I want something that works, not a crazy computer talking about temporal feedback and unstable oscillation!”
“I appreciate that, sir, and it will be taken care of as soon as I can divert the necessary highly trained staff inconspicuously from their regular jobs. Unfortunately we’ve just been granted a contract by Mr. Eugene Voigt of the Planetary Communications Commission for a floor-to-roof overhaul of their own rather elaborate installations, so the personnel will not be available until the month after next at the earliest.” He ended on a note of defiance.
“You bastard,” Anthony Gottschalk said. “You son of a double-dealing bitch.”
“Yes, sir,” the man from IBM said, and cut the connection.
But after three days of stalling Vyacheslav Gottschalk grew suspicious and tapped his own branch of the grapevine, and on the fifth day Marcantonio’s macoots called to collect Anthony Gottschalk for a family conference, as a result of which he was disinherited and his debts were repudiated.
The release of prototype System C weaponry was indefinitely postponed, for that, and for another perhaps even more significant reason.
NINETY-SIX
A SPRAINED KNEE REQUIRES ONLY BANDAGES BUT A BROKEN LEG NEEDS SPLINTS
“So they finally tracked you down!” Morton Lenigo said. He laughed. “At one stage we thought you must have been dropped in the ocean!”
Diablo didn’t give an answering smile. He knew very well how he had been located—a face as well known as his could have been spotted by any of a thousand X Patriot sympathizers the minute he showed himself on the street after leaving the Etchmark Undertower and seeing Reedeth and Madison into the ambulance the former had ordered to fetch them. He looked around the room, recognizing everyone present: Mehmet abd’Allah from Detroit, Rosaleen Lincolnson from Chicago, Dr. Barrie Ellison from Washington, Jones W. Jones from Newark, NJ … in fact, a representative roster of the powerful from every knee enclave in the States except his own home town of Blackbury.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I was to hear about Mayor Black firing you,” Lenigo continued. “We got that in hand, though, don’t we?” He glanced at Jones W. Jones.
“Yeah, it’s being taken care of,” the corpulent man said, and chuckled. “We let it be known in Capetown, by the way, that if Uys’s wife and family wanted him back they could have him one of two ways: today and intact, or tomorrow and in little itsy pieces. He left by an early plane this morning, incognito.”
“You don’t took too pleased,” Lenigo rumbled, staring at Diablo. “Something wrong, brother?”
Diablo collected himself. He said after a pause, “It all depends. Like—may I make a guess at the purpose of this meeting?”
“Well!” Lenigo leaned back in his chair, small eyes among many wrinkles very bright in his dark brown face. “Shoot, Brother! They always told me you were the best-informed stud on this continent, blank or kneeblank, and I’d appreciate the chance to hear you prove it. The more right you are, the more I want you on the proper side in the coming crunch. I guess I don’t have to tell you there’s going to be a crunch?”
“No.” Diablo felt sweat prickling on his forehead, but resisted the urge to wipe at it. “I say it goes like this. I say the Gottschalks—and most likely Anthony Gottschalk in person—have offered cheap prototypes of ultra-advanced personal weaponry which would allow in reality the kind of thing that blank citidef groups take for granted in setting up their damnfool block defense exercises, like one knee saboteur going in and wrecking a whole street of homes.”
He kept his gaze fixed on Lenigo’s face, which betrayed no expression, but from the corner of his eye he saw Rosaleen Lincolnson tense. She’d always been bad at concealing her emotions, ever since he’d first met her ten years before.
“I’ve had a lot of fun in the past, myself, at the expense of ISM because of that attitude—I’ve done shows in which one kneeblank about nine feet tall made with the Superman bit and all these here blanks tried to tie him down with sewing-thread like the Lilliputians and Gulliver. I—”
“Sure, I remember that,” Lenigo said. “A great image. And now it’s going to happen, baby!”
“The hell it is,” Diablo said. He hesitated, then decided to take the plunge, having been implicitly shown correct up till now.
“Doing the kind of deal with the Gottschalks which you’re planning is exactly the same as Mayor Black doing a deal with Hermann Uys, and I’m not having any part of it”
“Goddamn, man!” Lenigo exploded. “The Gottschalks are just about the only non-racialist group on this planet, and I’d do business with them any time. Anthony’s a honky, but Bapuji isn’t and Olayinka isn’t and—”
“Freeze it,” Diablo said coldly. “I don’t know if you realize why you were brought here, but I’ll spell it out for the rest of us in case you were ashamed to admit why. You were brought over because the Gottschalks wanted to scare the whole blank population of this country. You are like plague—you shut Mister Charley into a private prison cell of mindless fear.”
“That’s bad?” Lenigo said, and laughed.
“You’re going to tell us the Gottschalks have black equality at heart?” Diablo countered.
“Ever since the eighties they been giving us the tools to carve our own place in the sun,” Mehmet abd’Allah snapped. “Why you don’t freeze it for a minute and let Morton talk?”
“Because he said himself I’m the best-informed man on the continent,” Diablo said, and waited for it to sink in. During the pause, he wondered if he was actually being a fool, or worse yet a traitor, for stringing along with something that had been said by a man he’d himself helped into a Ginsberg ambulance a matter of an hour or so before.
“Even at the sample price of twenty-five thousand tealeaves,” he said, “you’re not going to get System C weaponry in quantities sufficient to exterminate every blank who can pay the full price of a hundred thousand. You—”
“Hold on a moment,” Jones W. Jones said, raising a broad pink-palmed hand. He turned to Lenigo.
“Darl, didn’t you say the designation of System C weapons was supposed to be secret?”
Lenigo was looking uncomfortable. He muttered, “According to Anthony … But wait till the brother’s finished talking.”
Diablo swallowed hard. He hadn’t expected to make this kind of impact. He said, “Concurrently with the release of the System C production model, which will be early next year, news of it will be released to the blanks. Output is planned on a level to supply both markets, but the blank one is the more important because the blanks will be paying more. While you’re still training the operators, the Gottschalks’ propaganda will foment such terror in blank cities that adjacent knee enclaves will almost certainly be stormed and sacked, which of course is what the Gottschalks need to maximize their sales potential.”
“Ah, hell, baby!” Lenigo said. “You’re exaggerating!”
Diablo said softly, “Am I? Brother Mehmet, who fed you the idea of blackmailing Morton into the country?”
Mehmet abd’Allah looked sheepish. He said, “If you’re that well-informed …”
“I’m even better informed than you think I am,” Diablo claimed boldly. Even though he wasn’t entirely convinced of the truth of what he was saying, the fact of saying i
t was curiously reassuring to his mind. “Who is it who’s planning to take out the Iron Mountain datastorage banks? I know someone is, and what’s more the Gottschalks know it too, because they’re building a brand-new data-processing complex in Nevada. Have you stopped to think what will happen if the Gottschalks are the only major corporation who still have their business records, their credit ratings, the rest of all that?”
“Sure we have!” Lenigo exclaimed. “That’s why it’s a priority on our list. Though,” he added on a lower note, “I am kind of upset to find out that you know it’s programmed.”
“I’m not the only one,” Diablo said. “Know who told me about it? Matthew Flamen.”
Rosaleen Lincolnson jumped to her feet “That’s impossible!”
Next to her, Dr. Barrie Ellison reached out a calming hand. He said, “Flamen does have computers, darl. And you can’t keep a major project entirely watertight.”
“This one isn’t just leaking,” Diablo said. “It’s sinking.” He swung around and took a pace towards Lenigo, leaning over him. “In fact, as far as I’m concerned, it’s sunk. Hear me, Brother Morton? I wouldn’t touch this idea of yours with a ten-foot pole. It stinks of honky conning. You been conned, you been tricked and your strings been pulled till you danced all pretty for the people!”
Lenigo, raging, tried to rise; Diablo shoved him back in his deep soft chair with a flat palm.
“You stay put and listen, man! Back home you may have a great image-building team, but here you a John-ny-come-lately fresh off the farm with kookaburrs in your nappy pate! You can scare those damnfool honkies out there playing tin soldiers with their lasers and grenades, but no handkerchiefhead demagogue gone make this nigger fall in and march over the cliff!” He was breathing so violently his voice was growing shrill.
“You want to be told how you been conned? I tell you, down to dates and times! Anthony Gottschalk figures he’ll have rolled up enough of the monos and junior pollies to unseat Marcantonio by spring next year. He figures he can use your phoney reputation as an organizational genius to whip up hate among the blanks and make the System C weapons the—the Voortrekker in the field. For my sake—for the sake of my black hide? You make me laugh till I spew, darl! You run out of credit in Washington, doc: what happens? They keep right on whipping up hate, lying to make out that you’re stockpiling the arms, and next thing the blanks come down and there won’t be anyone alive enough in Washington to use a gun! Fact, doc?”
Barrie Ellison said nothing, but swallowed very hard.
“You like the idea of being used as a front for Gottschalk sales promotion? You welcome to it, broze an’ sis!” Unconsciously Diablo’s accent was thickening towards the coarse Gullah/Jamaican/Creole of the southern enclaves, and he knew it and kept right on going, letting his emotions direct his tongue. “All mah lahf Ah been mah own man, baybuh! Ah not gwine lay mah skin on de lahn foh a stupid knot-heid wid an oversahz mouf! Yoh done tole de folks yoh got secrets, yoh got plans, yoh got ahdeas! Ah say shit. Ah say you done been tuhned inta honky front an’ Ah quit heah an’ now!”
Blind with rage, he stormed towards the door, and stopped only when one of the two armed macoots who had brought him here, and who had waited on guard at the entrance since his arrival, prodded him hard enough in the belly for the pain to penetrate his armor of fury.
Recovering his self-possession, he turned slowly and found that Lenigo was on his feet, glowering at him. There was a moment during which the air seemed to crackle with invisible lightning. Then Lenigo rounded on the man nearest to him, Mehmet abd’Allah.
“Looks like Mayor Black didn’t lose his marbles! Letting this traitor go was a right good notion!”
In a strained voice Mehmet said, “Yes, Morton, but if he does know as much as this—”
“No loyal kneeblank would sell our secrets to a honky spoolpigeon! You heard him say he told Matthew Flamen!” Lenigo wiped his sweating face. “Come Monday the bastard will have spread it all over!”
“No, baby,” Diablo said. “The Gottschalks bought out Holocosmic to close down the Flamen show. They want you to go right along promoting their sales for them.”
“And he didn’t say he told Flamen,” Dr. Barrie Ellison said. “He said Flamen told him.”
“You’re not going to believe … Lenigo’s words trailed away as he looked around the ring of dark stern faces enclosing him.
“It does kind of fit together,” Rosaleen Lincolnson said reluctantly. “Like the blanks are better armed than we are right now, and even if we did get hold of System C units we still would have to learn to use them.”
“Meantime the blanks would come down like hawks,” Diablo said. “So scared that we might be able to afford the cut-price equipment, they’d make damned sure no one in any of the enclaves could even make the down payment.”
“They’re vicious bastards,” Dr. Ellison conceded. “It figures.”
“But—!” Lenigo exploded. Mehmet abd’Allah cut him short.
“Is this a Gottschalk sales campaign?” he demanded of Diablo.
“Biggest ever, that’s all.” Diablo clenched his fists. “You fall for this con job, you won’t have a moment’s peace the rest of your life and it won’t be a long life either.”
“Don’t listen to him!” Lenigo screamed.
The others ignored him. They were exchanging serious glances. Jones W. Jones said, “I guess this needs to be checked out before we commit ourselves any further. I mean, I know the Gottschalks always feed new weaponry into the enclaves first, but it’s one thing to think of it as a compensation for economic and numerical inferiority, and another as a systematic con job.”
“Didn’t you ever watch my shows out of Blackbury?” Diablo demanded in genuine astonishment.
“Of course, but—”
“But what?” Diablo stamped his foot. “But you never took them seriously, just dismissed them as anti-blank propaganda? The hell with you, then! There was truth in there, truth as I see it, and that’s what I’m saying now and I’d honestly rather be among blanks than among fools who can fall in behind this bastard Lenigo and dance right along to the tune the Gottschalks play. Let me out of here before I throw up.”
He strode towards the door and this time the macoots made no attempt to stop him.
When he had gone, Lenigo said, “Broze an’ sis, I give you my word …”
They weren’t listening. They were paying attention to Dr. Ellison, who was saying, “In any case, if this kind of supposed-to-be-secret detail has reached Pedro Diablo, and if we’re to believe that he learned it off a blank spoolpigeon, we got to cool it. It simply isn’t going to work the way we have it set up.”
“But—” Lenigo said.
“Freeze it,” Mehmet abd’Allah told him, and turned back to Dr. Ellison.
“Now me, I don’t relish being used any more than he does.” A jerk of the head towards the closed door through which Diablo had vanished. “I suggest we should …”
NINETY-SEVEN
BACKTRACK
Flamen looked from the looped-tape cut of Celia to the reality and back again, and tried with some puzzlement to analyze his own feelings. Something wrong …? No, not wrong exactly; just not as he had expected. The fury he had felt at being deprived of his show by the new Holocosmic directorate—Gottschalk nominees, all of them, assembled hastily from half a dozen networks and cobbled into a spur-of-the-moment board—should have lasted indefinitely. To have a lifetime career snatched away ought to have created a lasting grudge.
But already, within less than a week, he was more relaxed than he had been for many years past, forgetting to worry about the future. Yes, that was it: the necessity kept slipping his mind.
He shook his head. Stretched out on a long lounge opposite him, Celia glanced up. “Is something the matter?” she inquired.
“Nothing,” Flamen said in a tone of vague surprise. He went on looking at her. She had been here for two days now; she had simply arrived, unannounced, wit
h all her baggage from Prior’s place, and settled back into her own home as if there had been no discontinuity. She was completely free of the aftereffects of the drugs she had been given at the Ginsberg, as far as Flamen could tell, except that a certain tension had gone from her behavior; there was no hint of the snappishness which had colored her voice and expression for months on end before her hospitalization. Also they had had more pleasure in bed than he could recall at any previous time.
She seemed, in a word, happy.
Maybe it was just as well, Flamen told himself, that his plan to dislodge Mogshack from his position of influence had run aground on the weird confusion of last weekend. What had happened? Everything had been such a fantastic muddle of hard verifiable fact—like the news of the Gottschalks’ new data-processing equipment and the unaccountable reference to “Robert” Gottschalk—with sheer unmitigated nonsense. But because of it, he had abandoned his intention of having Celia packled to Conroy’s parameters, and it looked as though that was very lucky for him. No one could deny that Celia was better now than she had been for ages, perhaps better than during their entire married life.
He gave a contented little sigh. To have avoided making a fool of himself was something to be grateful for, of course, but to have Celia back, more than just cured, was still better.
A chime sounded from the vuset facing him, and he realized with a start that it was midday. The set had been fixed to switch itself on automatically and play his show, and he hadn’t canceled the instruction because this was the first time he’d been home at noon since the Gottschalks bought the network; he’d been tied up in the office on all the previous days, sorting out the loose ends and making half-hearted inquiries about alternative employment.
Come to think of it, he wasn’t even sure what use the new directorate was making of his vacant slot. He stared at the screen as it lit, and was astonished beyond measure to see a dark familiar face appear: Pedro Diablo.