Vectors (4 page)

Merle sat slumped in the car seat, staring into space. His right hand rubbed the shoulder of his empty sleeve and his blunt features were twisted in thought. Jack thought how much the old man was aging, how ill he looked. Maybe this effort was just too much to ask of him.

Merle glared at him, suddenly alive again.

"Stop gawping at me like a half-wit, Jack. When we get to the office, I want to talk to CBS and NBC. You handle ABC. Here's the way it goes."

Jack felt a surge of relief as Merle outlined his plans. Down but not out. As usual, Merle seemed to have found his angle.

"Can we price it low enough, Merle?"

"If it works out the way I'm hoping, we can underbid everybody in the business. I want you to fly out to the West Coast tomorrow night and bounce the main ideas off Alex Burns. He's key to this. I'll find somebody else to woo Lottie in your absence. Maybe I'll recruit Vince Menoudakis for the job."

Jack sniffed. "You'll be doing Lottie a disservice. You know these high power sales types. Lots of promises—until it's time to deliver. Then they don't have what it takes. Tolly Suomi, he's the man for my money."

"You don't have that much money, Jack. Here, give me a hand to get my stiff leg out of the cab. I feel like Pinocchio today."

* * *

The air was full of gray sand and black smoke, blinding the soldiers and blotting out the fierce desert sun. Tanks were barreling forward through the dust, a group of men with combat lasers following each one. The long, high scream of an omniprojector was approaching along a dry wadi, and a Clarke neutralizer was turning to meet it, lobed antennae moving into exact phase for cancellation. The operators of the neutralizer were tunneling deep into narrow trenches in the sand, reading the strength of the omniprojector signal on the dials set in their helmet displays.

"Mr. Suomi calling on line one, Mr. Walters."

"At last." Merle grunted in satisfaction. He left the screen display running, reached over and picked up the receiver. Tolly Suomi's bland, unlined face appeared on the intercom screen.

"Perhaps I am calling at an inopportune time, Merle. It sounds as though you are tuned to the NBC news report. Should I call back later?"

"No. I've been trying to reach you all day. I asked your office to find you and give you the message to call me. Where are you, Tolly?"

"Newark, New Jersey."

"Can you be here in Washington, tonight?"

Suomi's face, as usual, betrayed no curiosity or surprise. "I can. By seven o'clock at the latest, perhaps by six-thirty."

"I'll be here." Merle broke the connection and leaned back in his chair, looking for a comfortable position.

On the screen, the Clarke neutralizer had been homed on by a seeking missile and was out of action. The omniprojector was advancing again. Men fell before it, flopping and convulsing like landed fish as the vibrations tuned to their central nervous system frequencies.

Merle watched as the NBC newscaster summarized the day's fighting, the advances and retreats. It was on the nose with his own scratchpad estimates. He placed a call to Alex Burns and sketched out a scenario. Alex objected to some of the ideas, and they went at it hammer and tongs for the rest of the afternoon. When Suomi arrived they were still arguing. Merle waved him to a seat, fired a final salvo, and cut the connection.

"Never try and argue with a Scotsman, Tolly. Stubborn as donkeys. Must be the oatmeal."

Suomi smiled, smooth white in smooth ivory. "Alex Burns?"

Merle nodded. "You know him, do you? He's right again, blast him." He leaned back, his voice a bit too casual. "Had any chance to see much of Alex's work? I was wondering what you think of him."

"The same as you do, Merle. Not just the best, the very best." Suomi smiled the Tolly smile, a fraction of an inch elevation of the corners of his mouth. "Don't let's be coy, Merle. You know quite well I've tried to hire Alex Burns from you. Probably as many times as WAWD has tried to steal Vince Menoudakis—and with the same success. Nothing."

"Tolly, I don't own Alex. His job does. Get ahead of us on the simulations, and Alex would take a job with VVV tomorrow to find out how you do it. I couldn't hold him a day."

"And how to do that, when Alex Burns leads the world on simulation mock-ups." Suomi waved his arm at the display screen. "He's an artist with that thing. He can make it more real than reality. Burns is an artist the way Disney was, posing as something else. I'll tell you, Merle, I've needed an Alex in the past six months."

Merle nodded, his eyes averted. "Aye, it's been a hard time for all of us, Tolly."

The reaction was a Suomi maximum. One eyebrow raised a fraction of an inch. The sign of strong emotion. "Hard? When you've won the last four war jobs, in a row? Merle, I'm not here for social reasons. I dropped everything to get here today—just as you knew I would. We've been running in circles since the November bidders' conference, trying to find out how you can price the way you do and still make money. We've got our sources in Contracts Departments, same as you—and we still don't know how you do it."

Merle smiled, rubbing his left shoulder in his habitual gesture. "You're not a poker player, Tolly. You show your hand."

"I'm a chess player, Merle. I can tell when somebody is planning seven moves ahead and the rest of us are playing six. We've been competitors for a long time, the two of us. For fifteen years we've been neck and neck. Now, what's your secret?"

"You know, don't you, that we sewed up the TV rights for the Trucial War with NBC? That was a twenty million dollar deal, just for special footage."

"I know. It was a neat idea, putting it on the same basis as the Olympics—but I know that's not your trick. We caught on to that last Christmas and now we use it in our bids too." Suomi placed his hands flat on the desk between them. "The real thing, Merle. What will it cost me to get it? You know I'll find out anyway, if I stick at it. And VVV won't go broke without it. But you have to know what it feels like to lose four big ones in a row. Name your price, I'll pay it."

A lengthening silence. Merle looked out at the gardens far below, dusk falling over the bursting azaleas of early May. "You seem sure of yourself, Tolly. Got an insider in our accounting department?"

"I don't need that, Merle. Look at this office." He gestured at the furniture. "The better you're doing, the cheaper and lousier the fixtures. I daren't sit down too hard on this chair in case it falls apart. Come on, Merle, let's get to it. What's your price?"

"I've got my price, Tolly. Here's the ticket I'm selling." He reached into his suit pocket and pulled out his wallet. From it he took a sheet of paper about seven inches square. "That came to me yesterday."

Tolly Suomi read through it, caught his breath, and read it again, slowly. At last he lifted his head and looked Merle Walters straight in the eye. "How long, Merle?"

"You tell me. The medics can't seem to agree. One month, six months, two years. From now on, it's a game of roulette. Good thing Jack Tukey's ready. He'll make a good president for WAWD." He paused expectantly. "Don't you agree, Tolly?"

Suomi hesitated, for the beat of a hummingbird's wing. "An excellent president, Merle. He has a good business head, he eats work, and he can pick the right people—and keep them, too. Jack will make a good president for WAWD—a great president. In ten years' time." His voice raised a little. "You see, Merle, we've met, what, thirty or forty times over the past fifteen years? But I think I know you as well as you know me. Jack Tukey has one failing, but it's one you can't live with. Jack doesn't hate war—yet—as Merle Walters hates it. He doesn't hate the stupidity of it, the cruelty of it, the very idea of it."

Merle bowed his head. "I'm a war hero, Tolly, didn't you know that? To a lot of people in this country I'm Mister War himself. Generals are proud to shake my hand. I got this—" He gestured at his empty sleeve and left leg. "—being a hero, forty years ago in the Pacific. Fighting your countrymen. No, it's Tolly Suomi that really hates war, I would say. You remember World War Two, Tolly?"

"I was eight years old when it finished, Merle. I remember it. I lost no arm, no leg. But I was on holiday in the country, when my family was home in Nagasaki. I remember that. And other things, I remember your cost-benefit study, showing that napalm is not a cost-effective weapon of war. How much did that study cost you, Merle?"

"Enough so no one would question our results. And VVV Industries' analysis, showing that antipersonnel fragmentation bombs aren't a good investment of war capital. How much did that one cost you, Tolly?"

"As you say, Merle, enough. Vince did a marvelous sales pitch on that one."

"The next president of VVV, Tolly? Would Vince want it?"

Suomi looked quizzically at Walters and waved the thought away. "You don't hire Liszt and ask him to move pianos. Vince is an artist, too. He has something we can't analyze—no place for it in chess or poker. People like him, he likes them, he sells them. Never fails. He's right where he is."

Merle nodded quietly, rubbing the side of his face with his hand. The two men sat in silence for several minutes. Finally Merle spoke.

"So now you can guess my price, Tolly. The price for the secret, the way we can underbid the market, every time, on the fixed price war jobs. Only one way I'll accept payment." He gestured at the photograph of Lyndon Johnson, hanging on the wall. "Know why I've got that picture up there, Tolly? I'll tell you. He's the man who turned me from a hawk to—what I am. I lost two sons in Vietnam. Two boys, too young to vote, to feed the ego of a man who wouldn't ever admit he was wrong.

"Merger, Tolly. Merger, with you at the top. Vince Menoudakis as VP of Sales, Alex Burns as VP of Production. And Jack Tukey, as Executive VP, waiting in the wings. Your time will come, too, Tolly, and Jack has to be ready. And maybe I'll be around here for a while yet, as a high-priced easy-life consultant for you—when you need stirring up a bit. Life's not chess, and life's not poker, but there's some of both in it. Merger, Tolly. Let's talk terms."

Suomi sat, face expressionless, one hand stroking his beard. "Perhaps. Perhaps. Would Jack Tukey work for me?"

"He thinks you walk on water, Tolly. So does Alex."

"Suppose I agree, find out how you operate, then back out?"

"That's tough titty for Merle Walters. A man either goes along with his judgment of people, or he's got nothing. That's the least of my worries, Tolly."

Suomi was nodding slowly. "My ancestry and education prepared me for this, Merle. There has been something that year by year has bound our fortunes tighter together, two caterpillars in one cocoon." He held out his hand. "Agreed in principle—details to be worked out. I hope we both live to see an end—to the lawyers putting the groups together. It will take a while. You control a stock majority, I hope?"

Merle nodded. "As you do. I did a little tracing of the lines on VVV this morning."

"Then it can be done. So now, Merle, tell me. Tell me something that has been on my mind every spare minute for six months. You are bidding fixed price and you are thirty percent lower than the rest of us. How are you doing it?" Suomi was leaning forward intently.

Merle opened the credenza behind him, pulled out a bottle and two glasses. "Champagne, Tolly. Let me savor the moment. You'll have to open it. It takes two hands."

"You were that sure of yourself?"

"Either way, I would drink the champagne. Take a look at this."

He turned on the display screen. The picture filled with scenes of battle, again in the desert. The heat, the smoke, the noise, the chaos, almost the smell seemed to spring from the screen.

"Now, Tolly, what are you seeing?"

"The Trucial War. I don't know which action. Last week's, maybe, up on the border."

Merle smiled and raised his glass. "You've got a great eye, Tolly. It's the Trucials, it's even a border skirmish—but it's next week, not last week. You said that Alex Burns is a genius. I agree. Half the battles in that war never happen. They're Alex's simulations. We ship the footage to NBC—they pay for it—and they weave the commentary around it. Much better for them, they don't have to keep a camera team out in the field. About half the footage is genuine fighting. The rest is Alex."

Suomi's eyes were flicking from the screen to Merle and back again. He was running rapidly through the difficulties, the possibilities. "How can you meet the deliverables? How can you pass an audit?"

"No audit. Fixed price war, remember? Deliverables ? We maintain the lines we promised—you know, these aren't wars to win, they're to hold the status quo. We find the bidders on the other side, as early in the game as we can. We agree what will be fought, what will be simulated. They buy the simulations they need from us—a tidy profit there for WAWD. We have to mix it up, in case there are parties of journalists or junketing politicians. They see genuine battles. How can somebody tell if the other battles they see on the screen are real?"

"And you make a profit?"

"Thirty-five percent. No matter how much the simulations cost, or how much it takes to keep things going smoothly,
nothing
costs as much as a war—even a small one. One other thing, Tolly. Go and take a look at the war hospitals. There are still deaths, because there are still battles. We stopped the worst maiming a while back, the two of us, when we got rid of the worst weapons. Now, the injuries are down again—and WAWD gets credit for tactics and brilliant fighting."

Merle Walters raised his glass again. "Here's to the merger of WAWD Corporation and VVV Industries—the War leaders. You'll have to keep up the struggle now, Tolly, until some day maybe we'll get some sense. I'm not optimistic. We're aggressive animals, the lot of us. But here's to War, damn its soul."

Tolly Suomi was thoughtful. He flexed his shoulders, feeling a new weight there. At last he too raised his glass. "To the merger. And to our motto: War is much too serious a thing to be left to the Government."

The glasses clinked. On the screen in front of them, the battle raged.