The Merchant's War (28 page)

Dixmeister gave me a glum look. “I suppose you’re going to want to test all the circuits?”

“Nah, what for? The trouble’s got to be outside.” He opened his mouth to protest, but I closed it with, “And, listen, get all that junk out of those storerooms. I’m going to take them over for a brainroom.”

“But, Mr.
Tarb!”

“Dixmeister,” I said gently, “when you’re star class you’ll understand the need for privacy at times like these. Right now, don’t try. Just do it.”

I left him to it and went back to Mitzi’s condo, wanting very much to find her there. I had a problem or two still to solve. Mitzi was not the person to solve them for me, but she could give me, at least, the touch of beloved skin and the solace of body warmth … if this happened to be a night when she would be at home.

She wasn’t. All there was of her was a flash-paper note on the pillow to say that she had to be in Rome for a few days.

It wasn’t what I wanted but, as I sat staring out over the dirty, sleeping city with an ounce and a half of grain neutral spirits in my hand, I began to perceive that it might be what I needed.

My scripts were ready. The candidates to appear in them had been selected and stashed away in hideouts all around the city. It had not been hard to pick them, because I knew just what I wanted; getting them to the city and ready to go had been a lot harder. But they were there. From the condo I phoned in orders for two-man Wackerhut teams to round them up and deliver them to the recording studios, and by the time I reached the office they were there, too.

The actual recording was easy—well, comparatively easy. Compared to, say, six hours of brain surgery. It took all the skill I had and all my concentration, while I rehearsed my actors, and hung over the makeup people while they prepped them for the cameras, and ram-rodded the production teams along, and directed every move and word. The easy part was that every one of the actors spoke the lines easily and convincingly, because I’d written them out of knowledge of just what they could do best. The hard part was that I could use only skeleton crews, since the fewer people who knew what was going on the better. When the last one was in the can I shipped the entire crew, production, makeup and all, to an imaginary “remote” in San Antonio, Texas, with orders to loaf around there until I arrived, which would be never.

But at least in San Antonio they wouldn’t be talking to anybody else. Then I sent my actors down to the newly completed suite in the basement and got ready for the hard part. I took a deep breath, wished I dared swallow a pill to calm my nerves, exercised vigorously for five minutes so that I’d be out of breath and dashed into the office that once had been Mitzi’s. Val Dambois jerked upright, startled, from the figures on his desk screen as I panted, “Val! Urgent call from Mitzi! You’ve got to get to the Moon! The agent’s had a heart attack, the communication link’s gone!”

“What the hell are you talking about?” he snarled, the chubby face quivering. In normal times Dambois might not have let me get away with it, but he, too, had been pushed past his strain limit in the last few weeks.

I gabbled, “Message from Mitzi! She said it was crucial. There’s a cab waiting—you’ve got just time to get to the shuttleport—”

“But Mitzi’s in—” He stopped, eyeing me uncertainly.

“In Rome, right,” I nodded. “That’s where she called from. She said there’s a long priority order due in, and somebody’s got to be on the Moon to receive it. So come on, Val!” I begged, grabbing his briefcase, his hat, his passport; hustling him out the door, onto the lift, into the cab. An hour later I called the shuttleport to ask if he’d boarded the flight. They told me he had.

“Dixmeister!” I called. Dixmeister appeared instantly in the doorway, face flushed, half a soy sandwich in one hand, the other hand still holding his phone. “Dixmeister, those new spots I just taped. I want them aired tonight.” He swallowed down a mouthful of soy. “Why, yes, Mr. Tarb, I suppose we can do that, but we’ve got a group of other spots scheduled—”

“Switch the spots,” I ordered. “New instructions from the top floor. I want those first spots on the air in an hour, full display by prime time. Kill all the others; use the new ones. Do it, Dixmeister.” And he loped off, chewing, to get it done.

It was time to go to the mattresses.

As soon as Dixmeister was out of sight I got up and left, closing the door behind me. I would not open it again, at least not in the same world. Very likely I would never open it again at all.

My new office was a lot less luxurious than my old, especially because of where it was: down in subbasement six. Still, considering how little time I’d given them, Housekeeping had done their best. They’d put into it everything I’d asked for, including a wall of a dozen screens for direct display of any feed I chose. There were a dozen desks, all occupied by members of my new little task force. Best of all, Engineering had closed up a couple of old doorways and cut through some new ones, as ordered. There was no longer direct access from the corridor to the comm room. The only way to the Agency’s nerve center lay through my new suite of former stockrooms. The little cubicle where the standby engineers had been accustomed to drowse through their duties was empty, and its door had a lock on it now. The engineers themselves were long gone, because I had given all of them a week off on the grounds that the system was automatic and foolproof and I wanted to try the experiment of having it completely unmanned for a while. They looked doubtful until I convinced them that nobody’s job was threatened, then they left gladly enough.

The place was, in short, just what I had ordered, with everything I had been able to think of that was necessary to the success of my project. Whether it was also sufficient was another question entirely, but it was too late to worry about that. I put on my best and most confident grin as I approached Jimmy Paleo-logue at his “reception” desk in the corridor. “Got everything you need?” I asked genially.

He slid his desk drawer back just enough to show me the stun-gun nestling inside it before he grinned back. If there was a hint of strain in the grin you couldn’t blame him; after he’d gotten through with the detox center he’d been promised his old job back as a Campbellian technician; then I found him and persuaded him to this unpromising exercise. “Gert and I rigged a tangle-net at the door and another one just inside your room,” he reported. “Everybody’s armed except Nels Rockwell—he couldn’t manage to lift his arm enough to fire. He says he’d like a limbic grenade strapped to his body for, you know, last-ditch stuff—what do you think?”

“I think he’d be more dangerous to us than anybody else,” I smiled, though actually it struck me that the idea had merit. Not limbic, though. Explosive. Maybe even a mini-nuke. If things got bad enough we might all welcome a nice clean vaporization instead of the alternative—I left that thought behind me and strode into the suite.

Gert Martels jumped up and grabbed me for a hug. She’d been the most difficult of my people to recruit—they didn’t want to let her out of the stockade, even after I threw the Agency rank around; it had finally taken a job offer to the prison commandant—and she was also the most grateful for the chance, “Aw, Tenny,” she chuckled—sobbed—it was actually some of both—“we’re really doing it!”

“It’s half done,” I told her. “The first spots ought to be on any minute.”

“They’ve started already!” called fat Marie from her couch by the wall. “We just saw Gwenny—she was great!” Gwendolyn Baltic was the youngest of my recruits, fifteen years old and with a harrowing story. I’d found her through Nelson Rockwell; she was the product of a broken home when her mother was brainburned for multiple credit frauds and her father committed suicide rather than face detoxification for his Nico-Hype addiction. She’d been my choice to run the March of Dollars campaign, soliciting funds for more and better detox centers. I’d picked that to run first because it was the entering wedge, the least likely to shock the network continuity-acceptance people into action. “She was
grand,”
beamed Marie, and little Gwenrty blushed.

If they had already started we could expect a reaction soon. It came within ten minutes. “Company coming,” called Jimmy Paleologue from the corridor, and when I saw who it was I ordered him let in.

It was Dixmeister, hurrying down with urgent messages. “Mr. Tarb!” he began, but was distracted by the crowded desks. Not by the desks, exactly; by who was at the desks. “Mr. Tarb?” he asked querulously. “You’ve got
talent
here?
Actors
?”

“In case we need them for some last-minute retakes,” I said smoothly, gesturing to Gert to take her hand away from the stun-gun in her drawer. “You wanted me for something?”

“Oh, hell, yes—I mean, yes, Mr. Tarb. I’ve been getting calls from the nets. They’ve screened your new promo themes, for the candidates, you know—”

“I know,” I said, with my most menacing scowl. “What the hell is this, Dixmeister? Are you letting them get away with trying to censor
advertising?”

He looked shocked. “Oh, gee, Mr. Tarb, no! Nothing like that. It’s just that a couple of the Content Acceptance Division people thought there was a, well, a kind of a hint of, uh, Co— Uh, Con—”

“Conservationism, you mean, Dixmeister?” I asked kindly. “Look at me, Dixmeister. Do I look like a Conservationist to you?”

“Oh, gosh, no, Mr. Tarb!”

“Or do you think this Agency would put on Consie political commercials?”

“Not in a million years! It’s not just the commercials for the candidates, though. It’s this new charity drive, you know? The March of Dollars?” I knew; it was my own invention, a fund drive for expanding detox centers like the one I had been in.

“They’re questioning that, too?” I asked, smiling my so-they’re-up-to-those-old-tricks-again smile.

“Well, as a matter of fact, yes, but that’s not the part that I wanted to ask you about. The thing is, I went through the files and I can’t find a topfloor order for that whole campaign.”

“Well, of course not,” I said, opening my eyes wide in surprise. “I don’t suppose Val had time to finish it, did he? I mean, before he took off for the Moon like that. Flag it, Dixmeister,” I ordered. “As soon as he gets back, I’ll get on him. Good work noticing it, Dixmeister!”

“Thank you, Mr. Tarb,” he cried—grinning, very nearly shuffling his feet. “I’ll take another look for the order, though.”

“Sure thing.” Of course he would. And of course he wouldn’t find it, there being none. “And don’t take any gas from those network people. Remind them we’re not playing for marbles here. We don’t want to have to bring a charge of Contract Breach.”

He winced and left, though he couldn’t help one last, wondering glance at Marie and Gert Martels, clustered around Marie’s desktop screen. “It’s hotting up, isn’t it?” asked Gert.

“Hotting up,” I agreed. “Is that one of ours you’re looking at? Display it for me, will you?” Marie moved a stud on her control board, and the first of the wall screens lighted up with a network feed. It was the Nelson Rockwell commercial, eyes gleaming out of the bandage-swathed head as he delivered his pitch: “—severed patella, that’s the kneecap, two broken ribs, internal bleeding and a concussion. That’s what they did to me when I couldn’t pay for the things I hadn’t wanted in the first place—”

Gert giggled, “Doesn’t he look cute?”

“Real lady-killer,” I said genially. “Have you all got your stun-guns where you can get at them in a hurry?” Gert nodded, the smile suddenly frozen on her face. It wasn’t a smile any more. It was scary. I judged that the trouble it had taken to get her out of the stockade was well worth it.

Rockwell took his eyes off his own image on the screen and fastened them on me. “Do you think there’s going to be trouble, Tenny?” he asked. His voice didn’t shake but I noticed that his left hand, the one that wasn’t in his whole-body cast, hovered close to the desk drawer. What could be in it? Not a gun; I hoped not a grenade—I hadn’t quite made that decision yet.

“Well, you never know, do you?” I asked, strolling casually to his desk. “It’s just best to be ready for it if it comes, right?” They all nodded, and I craned my neck to see what was in the drawer. It took me a moment to realize that it wasn’t a grenade; it was one of his damned Miniature Simulated-Copper Authentic Death Masks of Leading Male Undergarment Models. I almost choked with a rush of sympathy. Poor guy! “Nels,” I said softly, “if we get out of this I
promise
you next week you’ll be in Detox.”

As far as you could tell under the bandages, his expression was scared but determined, and I think he nodded. Out loud I said to them all, “It’s going to be a long night. We’d all better get some sleep—take it in shifts.”

They all chorused agreement, and as I turned to my own office they went back to watching the end of the Rockwell spot: “— that’s my story, and if you’d like to help me get elected please send your contributions to—”

I closed the door behind me and went right to my own desk. I punched up the latest
Advertising Age
and stared down at the screen. They hadn’t waited for the hourly edition. They had a red-flashing special. The headlines were:

Shocking New Net Spots from H & K

FCC Orders Investigation

Things were hotting up, all right.

I hadn’t been entirely honest with them. One did sometimes know when there was going to be trouble. I knew. And I knew it wasn’t very far away.

I followed my own instructions, but not very successfully. Sleep didn’t come easily. When it came it ended in a hurry—a worrisome noise from the outer room, a bad dream, most frequently of all an increasingly fretful call from Dixmeister up in the world. He had given up hope of getting home that night, and every hour he called with some new and more urgent Fair Commercial Practices complaint or network blast. I had no trouble with them. “Handle them,” I ordered, every time, and handle them he did. He got Haseldyne & Ku’s lawyers out of bed three times that night, to hire a tame judge to deliver a Freedom-of-Advertising injunction. They wouldn’t stay enjoined. The hearings would all come due in a week or less, but within a lot less than a week, one way or another, it wouldn’t matter.