The Jagged Orbit (17 page)

SIXTY-TWO THE PROXIMATE CAUSE OF A FEDERAL DIRECTIVE IN PURSUANCE OF WHICH THIRTY-THREE INTERNAL SECURITY MAINTENANCE OPERATIVES WERE DOWNGRADED OR DISHONORABLY DISMISSED

Sometime during the night Morton Lenigo managed to elude the ISM operatives assigned to tail him and when things had calmed down enough for such matters to come to the attention of their headquarters he had already had almost five hours to lose himself.

SIXTY-THREE
LONGER HOURS AND LOWER PAY

"Assuming Voigt kept his promise," Flamen said, punching the appropriate code into his comweb board with a series of crackling clicks, "this line ought to plug straight through to the Federal computer he's reserved to sort out our interference problem. . . . Yes, there we are. Now we'll feed it the show as canned and let it compare that with the version received by the public, and draw the—ah—logical conclusion. There was something wrong with the reading we got earlier, that's definite. Zero's impossible." He wondered if his conviction sounded forced. "I'll get IBM to check, see if the digit selector slipped its gears. Probably it ought to have shown 100."

Prior was plucking at his lower lip. "Yes, I guess there isn't any other explanation," he muttered.

"So that's it" Flamen pushed back his rotachair and started to rise.

"You mean . . . ?" Diablo hesitated. "You mean you're finished for the day?"

"Well—yes, of course. We only do the one slot, Monday through Friday."

"But you hardly seem to have done anything," Diablo said. "I mean . . . Well, I have this feeling I must have missed something."

"I tried to explain everything as I went along," Flamen said. "But if there was something I overlooked—"

"No, I guess it's just that I'm not used to working with your kind of equipment." Diablo shook his head, an expression of wonderment on his dark face. "Let me see if I got it right. All you needed to do was select the subjects, right? And make up the reconstructions from the stock tape you found on file, and speak the commentary so it could be recorded. Then
everything
else was automatic?"

"Sure." Flamen was looking vaguely puzzled. "We always have exactly fifteen minutes—or to be strictly accurate, fourteen and forty-five seconds to allow for station ID at either end. And the commercials are prerecorded, naturally, and the new material is automatically adjusted so that it fits into the available time. The last computer on the row sort of weaves the various strands together and provided Holocosmic's own computers don't raise any objections we have the tape."

"Are there many objections?"

"Oh ... I guess we have to change something about once a week, on the average. It's a lot too often, at that."

Diablo thought about it for a while. Suddenly he laughed. "I must sound like a real country mouse," he said. "It is kind of a shock, though. You see, I've been accustomed to working a nine-till-nine schedule five and often six days a week, with a couple of half-hour meal-breaks if I was lucky. This has live-action studio work beat to a faretheewell. Why, that snippet with Uys and Mayor Black alone would have had to be planned a week ahead for me to get such detail into it. Never mind casting and rehearsing the actors." He paused, speculatively eying Flamen. "Would you mind if I asked a hell of a personal question?"

"Depends. Try me."

"What do you pull in for this like three hours a day job?"

"Ah .. . Oh, it's a matter of record, if you know where to look, and I guess it's nothing to be ashamed of. A hundred thousand a month, gross. Mark you, that has to spread over rental and maintenance for the computers, this office, Lionel's salary, my informers' fund which about two or three times a year turns me up a beat which I couldn't have deduced without access to confidential sources, miscellaneous expenses like buying computer security codes, the whole shtick."

"And—my salary now, as well?"

"I doubt if I could afford you!" Flamen gave a humorless chuckle. "No, like you said, you wanted the letter of the Blackbury contract adhered to, so you're a charge on Federal funds. As a matter of interest, though, what were they paying you in Blackbury?"

"Two thousand," Diablo said after a brief hesitation.
"Two thousand?"
Prior almost fell off his chair. "Oh— but I guess that's net, isn't it?"

"Of course. I didn't have to pay anyone or rent any equipment. I had a city-subsidized apt with a rent of only a hundred, no office costs, nothing else."

"Sounds as though, all things considered, you might have been better off than I am," Flamen said, and glanced at his watch. "Well, shall we say the same time tomorrow?"

"There's a flag up on your comweb," Prior said. "Aren't you going to answer it?"

"Damn. So there is." Flamen dropped back into his chair and pulled the fax paper out of its slot. "Ah, that doctor at the Ginsberg wanting to get in touch. I guess I'd better take it."

"Shall we—?" Prior suggested, starting to leave the room.

"Darl, several million people are about to see Celia in a hospital oversuit, aren't they? Want I should pretend with you and Mr. Diablo around?"

"If it's something personal, I certainly don't want to intrude," Diablo said, also half-rising.

"No, it's another matter of record and I don't much care."

"As you like." Diablo hesitated yet again. "While I think of it, though . . . Forgive me, but people do behave differently out here and I don't want to make any
faux pas.
Is your mistering me a bit of Crow Jim?"

"What?" Hand poised to punch the comweb code for the Ginsberg, Flamen looked up. "Sorry, I didn't catch that."

"I've been wondering," Diablo said doggedly, "whether you've been calling me
Mister
Diablo all the time because I'm a knee."

"What else would I—? Oh,
now
I catch. You have this 'soul brother' thing in the enclaves, don't you? Call people all the time by their first names?"

"Well. . . more or less. I mean anyone I was going to be working with regularly, at least," Diablo qualified. "And I thought blank society was equally informal."

"Used to be, I think. Lake in my father's day I believe we had the same thing." Flamen frowned, withdrawing his hand from the comweb board. "Yes, I recall him joking about how well you had to know someone before you found out his last name and could look him up in a directory. But I read something about this once ... Of course! A piece by Xavier Conroy; I remember now. He said something about the need to assert individuality and surnames being more numerous than given names. Stuck in my mind because there are several hundred thousand Matthews around nowadays but all the people named Flamen in the entire United States are relatives of mine in one way or another—just a single family. Scattered to hell and gone, of course, but if you checked the records you could tie them all together. At that I don't suffer from one of the really common first names, either: Michael, David, John, William ..."

"So you call people mister automatically?"

"You'd be better advised to than not. Lionel, how long was it before I started calling you by your first name?"

"After you married Celia, I guess," Prior said. "But I didn't mind you calling me just 'Prior' when we were working together before that."

"You want to know what to call us?" Flamen said, glancing back at Diablo. "Hell, personally I don't mind what people call me—I'm not looking for reassurance about my status. But I guess for safety's sake, for the time being at least, you'd better stick by the formal custom: Flamen, Prior. No mister except to a third party. Okay?"

"Thanks," Diablo nodded. "I—uh . . . Well, I hadn't realized that leaving Blackbury would be so much like going to a foreign country." His eyes roved the room. "Everything seems so strange," he added in a burst of frankness. "I guess I swallowed the propaganda about the enclaves really still being part of the United States, just enjoying a bit more self-determination than they used to. Say, can I ask you a favor?"

"Let's hear it."

"Could you sort of—uh—isolate that computer which makes up reconstructions out of stock shots? It's the kind of gadget I've been dreaming of all my life without realizing. I feel like a back-country boy with a banjo made of cowhide and baling wire who hears a guitar for the first time."

Flamen exchanged a questioning glance with Prior, who resolutely refrained from offering any kind of answer.

"You want to see if you can put it through hoops too?" he said. "I guess we could arrange that, but I doubt if it can be today. I'd have to ask for someone to drop by from IBM and wire in the proper code—I was already used to similar equipment before I had this particular one installed. You could probably have a dummy delivered to your apt, though, to practice on and learn the codes before tackling a full-sized machine."

"That's a great idea," Diablo nodded. "I certainly ought to do that. But I'm sorry—I held you up from making your call with all these questions, I'm afraid."

"Don't worry. I doubt if it's anything urgent." Flamen turned back to the comweb.

Prior fidgeted a little, with repeated glances at Diablo, clearly unhappy at this exposure of a private matter to someone who was a stranger, a knee and a professional rival. His thought processes were almost audible: suppose Diablo were to be re-admitted to Black-bury and decided to exploit what he'd learned to discredit Flamen ... ?

His relief was evident when the comweb said, "Dr. Spoelstra has been called to attend to an emergency admission and can only be interrupted for the most urgent—"

But another voice broke in: "Dr. Reedeth, Mr. Flamen!" The screen lit with his image, and he was not alone. Behind him, looking extremely miserable, Lyla Clay was sitting on the very edge of a chair with her hands pressed tightly together between her knees.

"If you don't mind speaking to me instead of Dr. Spoelstra," he went on, "she briefed me fully, I believe. It's quite a simple matter, actually. You may recall that when you were here yesterday you voiced—ah—a certain opinion regarding your wife's treatment."

He waited. Flamen at length gave a wary nod.

"As a result of your comments we re-processed Mrs. Flamen's psychoprofile today"—Reedeth was choosing his words very carefully—"and we found that there had indeed been a flattening of the therapy-response curve. In lay terms, you might say that from now on hospitalization can do little or nothing for her and a gradual re-acclimatization to the everyday world is indicated. In principle, bearing in mind your remarks yesterday, we wondered whether you'd be willing to waive the premature discharge penalty if we gave you an assurance that it was in her best interests ....?"

Flamen was silent for a moment. Then he gave a sudden harsh laugh. "Do I take it that you wouldn't have noticed she was better unless I'd turned up yesterday?"

"Of course not," Reedeth said stiffly. "You'll recall that she went to green yesterday morning as a result of the regular weekly review of her condition. The point I just mentioned would have come to light at the full-scale monthly checkup in about two weeks' time, but since you'd just made some rather—ah—intemperate comments ..." He shrugged. "We carried out an extra examination, that's all."

"It wouldn't have something to do with the heavy intake of rioters pleading insanity which you must have been hit with earlier today?" Flamen suggested.

"Considering we had to deal with seven hundred commitments or suspected commitments, I think it surprising that Dr. Spoelstra did manage to have the extra examination of your wife fitted in," Reedeth countered. It was a non-answer, but Flamen didn't bother to pursue the matter.

"In principle, then, the answer's yes. On one condition. What happens—do you want me to come and take her home?"

Reedeth looked uncomfortable. "Not exactly. She's been asked whether she's willing to be discharged, and she is, and she's fit enough provided that she suffers no undue strain in the near future and continues to take the drugs we prescribe, but . . . Well, frankly she's refused to be discharged into your care."

"What?"

"I'm afraid so, and we can't really argue, because of the background to her breakdown. But she has agreed to accept her brother as guardian, so if you have no objection and he has none ... ?"

"He's right here," Flamen said curtly. "I'll ask him." He killed the sound pickup for a moment and looked at Prior. "Well?"

"I—" Prior swallowed enormously. "I suppose so. I am her brother, after all! It's a responsibility, isn't it?" On the last word his eyes flicked very swiftly towards and past Diablo. Flamen reflected cruelly that there might have been a different reply had a stranger not been present.

"He says yes," he relayed to the waiting Reedeth. "Set the wheels in motion, then, and I've no doubt my brother-in-law will be over to collect Celia this afternoon. But I did say I was going to waive the premature-discharge penalty on one condition only, didn't I? I'll do so subject to. her being independently packled to determine whether she has benefited or suffered from the treatment she's been accorded at the Ginsberg. Is it a bargain? If the packling shows that she's not better, as you claim she is, I not only stand by the premature discharge clause—I'll sue."

He waited. At length Reedeth said, "It'll have to be comped, naturally, but . . . Yes, I'm sure we have sufficient confidence in our methods to accept that proviso. In principle, we agree."

For an instant Flamen's assurance wavered. Trying to slip a packle program through to the Federal computers in the guise of an attempt to eliminate the sabotage on the show was going to be risky—should he save his unexpected resources for some other target, such as the Gottschalks? But Mogshack was a far more accessible victim and there had been that ninety-plus reading.