The Space Merchants (7 page)

Visual was hot. The airbrush and camera people were having fun sculpturing a planet. It was the ultimate in "Before and After" advertising, and they were caught by the sense of history.

Development kept pulling rabbits out of hats. Collier once explained to me when I hinted that he might be overoptimistic: "It's
energy,
Mr. Courtenay. Venus has got
energy.
It's closer to the sun. The sun pours all that energy into the planet in the form of heat and molecular bonds and fast particles. Here on Earth we don't have that level of tappable energy. We use windmills to tap the kinetic energy of the atmosphere. On Venus we'll use
turbines.
If we want electricity on Venus we'll just build an accumulator, put up a lightning rod and jump back. It's an entirely different
level."

Market Research-Industrial Anthropology was at work in San Diego sampling the Cal-Mex area, trying Tildy's copy, Visual's layouts and films and extrapolating and interpolating. I had a direct wire to the desk of Ham Harris, Runstead's vice, in San Diego.

A typical day began with a Venus Section meeting: pep talk by me, reports of progress by all hands, critique and cross-department suggestions. Harris, on the wire, might advise Tildy that "serene atmosphere" wasn't going well as a cue phrase in his sampling and that she should submit a list of alternatives. Tildy might ask Collier whether it would be okay to say "topaz sands" in a planted article which would hint that Venus was crawling with uncut precious and semiprecious stones. Collier might tell Visual that they'd have to make the atmosphere redder in a "Before" panorama. And I might tell Collier to lay off because it was permissible license.

After adjournment everybody would go into production and I'd spend my day breaking ties, co-ordinating, and interpreting my directives from above down to the operational level. Before close of day we'd hold another meeting, which I would keep to some specific topic, such as: integration of Starrzelius products into the Venus economy, or income-level of prospective Venus colonists for optimum purchasing power twenty years after landing.

And then came the best part of the day. Kathy and I were going steady again. We were still under separate cover, but I was buoyantly , certain that it wouldn't be long now. Sometimes she dated me, sometimes I dated her. We just went out and had fun eating well, drinking well, dressing well, and feeling that we were two good-looking people enjoying life. There wasn't much serious talk. She didn't encourage it and I didn't press it. I thought that time was on my side. Jack O'Shea made the rounds with us once before he had to leave for a lecture in Miami, and that made me feel good too. A couple of well-dressed, good-looking people who were so high-up they could entertain the world's number one celebrity. Life was good.

After a week of solid, satisfying progress on the job I told Kathy it was time for me to visit the outlying installations—the rocket site in Arizona and sampling headquarters in San Diego.

"Fine," she said. "Can I come along?"

I was silly-happy about it; it wouldn't be long now.

The rocket visit was routine. I had a couple of people there as liaison with Armed Forces, Republic Aviation, Bell Telephone Labs, and U.S. Steel. They showed Kathy and me through the monster, glib as tourist guides: "...vast steel shell . . . more cubage than the average New York office building . . . closed-cycle food and water and air regeneration . . . one-third drive, one-third freight, one-third living space . . . heroic pioneers . . . insulation . . . housekeeping power . . . sunside-darkside heat pumps . . . unprecedented industrial effort . . . national sacrifice . . . national security ..."

Oddly, the most impressive thing about it to me was not the rocket itself but the wide swathe around it. For a full mile the land was cleared: no houses, no greenhouse decks, no food tanks, no sun traps. Partly security, partly radiation. The gleaming sand cut by irrigation pipes looked strange. There probably wasn't another sight like it in North America. It troubled my eyes. Not for years had I focused them more than a few yards.

"How strange," Kathy said at my side. "Could we walk out there?"

"Sorry, Dr. Nevin," said one of the liaison men. "It's a deadline. The tower guards are ordered to shoot anybody out there."

"Have contrary orders issued," I said. "Dr. Nevin and I want to take a walk."

"Of course, Mr. Courtenay," the man said, very worried. "I'll do my best, but it'll take a little time. I'll have to clear it with C.I.C., Naval Intelligence, C.I.A., F.B.I., A.E.C. Security and Intelligence-"

I looked at Kathy, and she shrugged with helpless amusement. "Never mind," I said.

"Thank God!" breathed my liaison man. "Excuse me, Mr. Courtenay. It's never been done before so there aren't any channels to do it through. You know what
that
means."

"I do indeed," I said, from the heart. "Tell me, has all the security paid off?"

"It seems so, Mr. Courtenay. There's been no sabotage or espionage, foreign or Consie, that we know of." He rapped a knuckle of his right hand solemnly on a handsome oak engagement ring he wore on the third finger of his left hand. I made a mental note to have his expense account checked up on. A man on his salary had no business wearing that kind of jewelry.

"The Consies interested?" I asked.

"Who knows? C.I.C., C.I.A. and A.E.C. S.&I. say yes. Naval Intelligence, F.B.I, and S.S. say no. Would you like to meet Commander MacDonald? He's the O.N.I. chief here. A specialist in Consies."

"Like to meet a Consie specialist, Kathy?" I asked.

"If we have time," she said.

"I'll have them hold the jet for you if necessary," the liaison man said eagerly, trying hard to undo his fiasco on the tower guards. He led us through the tangle of construction shacks and warehouses to the administration building and past seven security checkpoints to the office of the commander.

MacDonald was one of those career officers who make you feel good about being an American citizen—quiet, competent, strong. I could see from his insignia and shoulder flashes that he was a Contract Specialist, Intelligence, on his third five-year option from the Pinkerton Detective Agency. He was a regular; he wore the class ring of the Pinkerton Graduate School of Detection and Military Intelligence, Inc. It's pine with an open eye carved on it; no flashy inlay work. But it's like a brand name. It tells you that you're dealing with quality.

"You want to hear about Consies?" he asked quietly. "I'm your man. I've devoted my life to running them down."

"A personal grudge, Commander?" I asked, thinking I'd hear something melodramatic.

"No. Old-fashioned pride of workmanship if anything. I like the thrill of the chase, too, but there isn't much chasing. You get Consies by laying traps. Did you hear about the Topeka bombing? Of-course-I-shouldn't-knock-the-competition but those guards should have known it was a setup for a Consie demonstration."

"Why, exactly, Commander?" Kathy asked.

He smiled wisely. "Feel," he said. "The kind of thing it's hard to put over in words. The Consies don't like hydraulic mining—ever. Give them a chance to parade their dislike and they'll take it if theycan."

"But
why
don't they like hydraulic mining?" she persisted. "We've got to have coal and iron, don't we?"

"Now," he said with pretended, humorous weariness, "you're asking me to probe the mind of a Consie. I've had them in the wrecking room for up to six hours at a stretch and never yet have they talked sense. If I caught the Topeka Consie, say, he'd talk willingly—but it would be gibberish. He'd tell me the hydraulic miner was destroying topsoil. I'd say yes, and what about it. He'd say, well can't you
see?
I'd say, see what? He'd say, the topsoil can never be replaced. I'd say, yes it can if it had to be and anyway tank farming's better. He'd say something like tank farming doesn't provide animal cover and so on. It always winds up with him telling me the world's going to hell in a hand-basket and people have got to be made to realize it—and me telling him we've always got along somehow and we'll keep going somehow."

Kathy laughed incredulously and the commander went on: "They're fools, but they're
tough.
They have discipline. A cell system. If you get one Consie you always get the two or three others in his cell, but you hardly ever get any more. There's no lateral contact between cells, and vertical contact with higher-ups is by rendezvous with middlemen. Yes, I think I know them and that's why I'm not especially worried about sabotage or a demonstration here. It doesn't have the right ring to it."

Kathy and I lolled back watching the commercials parade around the passenger compartment of the jet at eye level. There was the good old Kiddiebutt jingle I worked out many years ago when I was a trainee. I nudged Kathy and told her about it as it blinked and chimed Victor Herbert's
Toyland
theme at us.

All the commercials went blank and a utility announcement, without sound effects, came on.

In Compliance With Federal Law, Passengers Are Advised That They Are Now Passing Over The San Andreas Fault Into Earthquake Territory, And That Earthquake Loss And Damage Clauses In Any Insurance They May Carry Are Now Canceled And Will Remain Canceled Until Passengers Leave Earthquake Territory.

Then the commercials resumed their parade.

"And," said Kathy, "I suppose it says in the small print that yak-bite insurance is good anywhere except in Tibet."

"Yak-bite insurance?" I asked, astonished. "What on earth do you carry that for?"

"A girl can never tell when she'll meet an unfriendly yak, can she?"

"I conclude that you're kidding," I said with dignity. "We ought to land in a few minutes. Personally, I'd like to pop in on Ham Harris unexpectedly. He's a good kid, but Runstead may have infected him with defeatism. There's nothing worse in our line."

"I'll come along with you if I may, Mitch."

We gawked through the windows like tourists as the jet slid into the traffic pattern over San Diego and circled monotonously waiting for its calldown from the tower. Kathy had never been there before. I had been there once, but there's always something new to see because buildings are always falling down and new ones being put up. And what buildings! They're more like plastic tents on plastic skeletons than anything else. That kind of construction means they give and sway when a quake jiggles southern California instead of snapping and crumbling. And if the quake is bad enough and the skeleton does snap, what have you lost? Just some plastic sheeting that broke along the standard snap grooves and some plastic structural members that may or may not be salvageable.

From a continental economic viewpoint, it's also a fine idea not to tie up too much fancy construction in southern California. Since the H-bomb tests did things to the San Andreas fault, there's been a pretty fair chance that the whole area would slide quietly into the Pacific some day—any day. But when we looked down out of the traffic pattern, it still was there and, like everybody else, we knew that it would probably stay there for the duration of our visit. Before my time there had been some panic when the quakes became daily, but I'd blame that on the old-style construction that fell hard and in jagged hunks. Eventually people got used to it and—as you'd expect in southern California—even proud of it. Natives could cite you reams of statistics to prove that you stand more chance of being struck by lightning or a meteorite than you do of getting killed in one of their quakes.

We got a speedy three-man limousine to whisk us to the local branch of Fowler Schocken Associates. My faint uneasiness about Market Research extended to the possibility that Ham Harris might have a tipster at the airport to give him time to tidy up for a full-dress inspection. And that kind of thing is worse than useless.

The receptionist gave me my first setback. She didn't recognize my face and she didn't recognize my name when I gave it to her. She said lazily: "I'll see if Mr. Harris is busy, Mr. Connelly."

"Mr. Courtenay, young lady. And I'm Mr. Harris's boss." Kathy and I walked in on a scene of idleness and slackness that curled my hair.

Harris, with his coat off, was playing cards with two young employees. Two more were gaping, glassy-eyed, before a hypnoteleset, obviously in trance state. Another man was lackadaisically punching a calculator, one-finger system.

"Harris!"
I thundered.

Everybody except the two men in trance swiveled my way, open-mouthed. I walked to the hypnoteleset and snapped it off. They came to, groggily.

"Mum-mum-mum-mister Courtenay," Harris stuttered. "We didn't expect—"

"Obviously. The rest of you, carry on. Harris, let's go into your office." Unobtrusively, Kathy followed us.

"Harris," I said, "good work excuses a lot. We've been getting damn good work out of you on this project. I'm disturbed, gravely disturbed, by the slovenly atmosphere I see here. But that can be corrected—"

His phone rang, and I picked it up.

A voice said excitedly: "Ham? He's here. Make it snappy; he took a limousine."

"Thanks," I said and hung up. "Your tipster at the airport," I told Harris. He went white. "Show me your tally sheets," I said. "Your interview forms. Your punchcard codes. Your masters. Your sigma-progress charts. The works. Everything, in short, that you wouldn't expect me to ask to see.
Get them out."

He stood there a long, long time and finally said: "There aren't any."

"What have you got to show me?"

"Finalizations," he muttered. "Composites."

"Fakes, you mean? Fiction, like the stuff you've been feeding us over the wire?"

He nodded. His face was sick.

"How could you do it, Harris?" I demanded.
"How—could—you —do it?"

He poured out a confused torrent of words. He hadn't meant to. It was his first independent job. Maybe he was just no damn good. He'd tried to keep the lower personnel up to snuff while he was dogging it himself but it couldn't be done; they sensed it and took liberties and you didn't dare check them up. His self-pitying note changed; he became weakly belligerent. What difference did it make anyway? It was just preliminary paperwork. One man's guess was as good as another's. And anyway the whole project might go down the drain. What if he had been taking it easy; he bet there were plenty of other people who took it easy and everything came out all right anyway.