Far-out Show (9781465735829) (37 page)

“I say let’s not rush to give up even
maybe-controls though. If an extra zerpy is making the problem it
might not be our extra zerpy. Our part of the extra zerpy. You know
what I mean.”

“Yeah. With two or more separate but
connected systems things could seem like our doing but be out of
our control,” Delmus agreed. “What can we do about that? How can we
check?”

“It’d work best for us if we didn’t have to
tell the guys on the
Whizybeam
the thing’s even there. That
means we can’t ask them if they know that’s the problem or if
they’ll go find it and call us back to let us know whether or not
it’s on,” Ackack said. “The best way to deal with this is for both
groups that control parts of it to shut them down.”

“If there are only two groups.”

“Right, but I’m strongly expecting that. Who
else would have any interest in being involved? Don’t go too far
digging for maybes about that, I’m looking for reassurance, not the
most realistic response ever.”

After the harsh tone sounded Ackack touched a
button and Techim appeared on the view-screen. As usual she showed
no emotion. She said, “They’re gone. We’ve lost contact with
Whizybeam
.”

“All contact?” Ackack asked.

“Yes. The signals in the open and the ones
they possibly didn’t know they were sending. All lost.”

“Did they maybe self-destruct?” Delmus
asked.

“Nothing is known at this point,” Techim
said. “The last we heard from them they thought they were detected
by an orbiting device of the inhabitants, then garbled bits that
could mean they were destroyed or taken prisoner. There were
talk-talk bits about what the inhabitants apparently call a laser
targeted on
Whizybeam
but we can’t even tell who sent those
signals. It’s all mixed together and unreliable.”

“Keep us informed,” Ackack said and
disconnected.

“We can hope they did self-destruct rather
than be captured. The inhabitants weren’t supposed to be able to do
that in orbit but so much of what we thought we knew about them
turned out to be wrong so why not that?” Delmus said.

Ackack keyed in code at the console, then sat
back to wait for a response with an expression of resignation and
determination.

“What did you do?” Delmus asked.

“I sent the code to initiate
Whizybeam
’s self-destruct unit. If we get back a response we
know the ship is still intact and that unit is working so we can
use it at the right time.”

“Good thinking. We can’t ask them what’s
happening but we can find out... Wait, if no signals are getting
through...”

“It doesn’t cost us anything to run the
test.”

The harsh tone sounded so Ackack made the
connection. Techim appeared on the view-screen, her expression and
demeanor impassive.

“More bad news?” Ackack asked.

“That’s yours to call. Following the lead of
an overheard concern at the
Bang-Boom Shows
home office,
we’ve discovered that contestant Nerber doesn’t exist.”

“Not true. We saw him in the episodes,”
Delmus said.

“Explain, Techim,” Ackack said.

“The contestant calling himself Nerber is
someone else but we have not yet learned who because a search of
the hatch records finds there is currently no living individual
recorded by the name Nerber. That is an alias. He is a fake.”

“A highly effective and successful fake
though,” Ackack said. “How is this possible?”

“There are no definite answers to that yet.
There are hints that he is connected though,” Techim said.

“He’s like a zerpy-type-thing?” Delmus was
confused.

“Tracing who he might be and how he came to
be allowed on the list of show contestants, the
Bang-Boom
guys ended up at a site that contains officially secured
information and were immediately turned away with a warning from
the governors. They are probably now under close official
scrutiny,” Techim said. “Our A.D.U. investigator learned about this
just before she tried to tap into the same
not-clearly-marked-as-taboo site. So we are probably not on the
extra close scrutiny list - yet. But of course we can’t know for
sure.”

“Do our analysts have any thoughts about
Nerber based on what they do know about him?” Ackack asked.

“He is probably knowledgeable about zerpies
and other technical systems. Maybe highly so. He bears a
resemblance to a top guy in secret zerpy design who was forced out
of the company by jealous rivals but we can’t be sure about that.
Information about the personnel and internal politics of those
secret development groups is almost as tightly held as the latest
zerpy designs. There are a few hints among the stuff traced out
that the governors may have had some involvement with him or with
his ouster or with his choice to be a contestant but there are no
clear and definite answers.”

“Okay. Keep us informed,” Delmus said and
disconnected

Ackack was focused on the small monitor on
the console. He said, “We have a response from
Whizybeam
’s
self-destruct unit. It is operable and now activated.”

He then keyed in some commands.

“That’s good news then. They’re still intact.
Uh, what did you just do?” Delmus wasn’t sure whether to let how
concerned he was show.

“I sent the signal to deactivate the
self-destruct unit. We know it’s working but it’s more stable when
it’s inactive. Oh, you were afraid I had detonated it?”

“I couldn’t be sure. With all that’s been
going on it didn’t seem out of the question that you were ending
the worry.”

“No, they could still be valuable so I won’t
send that signal until I’m very sure we can’t exploit them any
further.”

“What should we do about the Nerber thing?”
Delmus asked.

“One more complication piled on top of
confusions.”

“We only know this because of our snooping so
we’re under no obligation to do anything about it for now. But the
governors may be disturbed when they find out. The consequences if
the audience feels cheated or played for bigger fools that is
standard practice are surely never far from their minds. If the
governors learn that we knew and didn’t immediately bring them up
to speed they may decide to punish us,” Delmus noted.

“That’s when we throw themselves back on
them. It was their guys who chased the investigators away from the
trail of his identity. They protected his secret so we, docile,
prudent and loyal citizens took that to mean they wanted no notice
paid to the discrepancy of a name.”

“Good thinking, Ackack. I’ll be sure to let
you tell them that is our analysis since you state it so
emphatically.”

“Sooner or later you have to push back.
Knowing this much about him makes a lot of speculations possible.
Too bad we won’t have some secure and peaceful days to speculate
for a while yet. For instance, does he have a secret agenda? Did he
maybe go there intending to set himself up as king of that planet?
Or did he expect his fame from being the first of our kind to step
on another planet to make him so popular he could take control of
Ormelex, probably keeping the governors on but only as his tools?
It could be fun to think about it.”

“Whatever his agenda, and I assume that if he
survives this mess we’ll hear what that is, he must have
state-of-the-art tech help. But is that only from devices or are
some of the crew or others here on Ormelex working directly with
him?” Delmus said.

“See how much fun speculation can be. We can
amuse ourselves again and again with his maybes even when we know
which are his truly actuals. But let’s be practical since that’s
our standard position. How do we get the maximum profit from him?
By featuring him in shows is an ‘Of course’. By featuring him as
the topics of shows even if he doesn’t survive or won’t cooperate
on our terms is a ‘Sure, we’ll try that’. But is he worth more to
us as a hero with a dream or as a bad guy who tried to confuse our
beloved guys with lies? That’ll need some careful weighing. He’s
usable for either depiction.”

“In fact with different presentation guys we
could air two shows, one praising him to the upper limits, the
other booing at and scorning him for distruthing and misleading. No
matter how I look at him I see him as our special moneymaker.”

Ackack got solemn as he said, “There is the
maybe that he will be so hated when this is over that we won’t dare
to even mention his name to keep the public from remembering they
saw him and became enthused about him on a show we aired. We need
to go slow so we don’t tie ourselves tight to him until we’re sure
he’s not going to become poison overnight.”

“Thinking that way maybe we can blame all the
bad on him.”

“That would make us sad and to be thought of
nicely as victims rather than as open exploiters. With good
promotion we could probably sell that as the way things were. At
least if we don’t hold back or tolerate any doubts that he was a
clever guy who sneaky-sneaked by all our careful protections. We’d
have to pretend we’re not as smart as we know we are but... Hey,
that’s it! All the wrong decisions were made by less smart than us
underlings. We trusted them while we focused on critical other
business matters and they let us down. Nerber lied to them and they
let him slip through the screen-out-the-fakes process. It could
work,” Ackack said with enthusiasm.

“At the least we need to make plans about how
to make shows with him as a too-late-detected bad guy. Being with
preparations-made is for success the way to go,” Delmus said.

“Do you thing he knows about new devices like
Parbam’s Sproingy?”

“That has been in my mind too. We have no
evidence to say yes or no for sure. I am good with keeping it as
yet another maybe in the list of things I want to exploit him
about,” Ackack said.

“Always thinking like a business person.”

“How else?”

There is a soft musical tone. Ackack checked
the small monitor on the console then said, “We have to go for a
walk.”

Delmus looked at him with a confused
expression for a moment, then gave a little jerk. “Oh, that’s the
special code phrase. They want us to meet again?”

“Yes. Thanks so muchly for saying that loud
and in the clear to give it all away. That’s was why we agreed to
that code phrase. This is convenient though, I was thinking we need
to talk-talk to them some more but again out of sight.”

“Sorry. These meet... uh, walks, these walks
are such a new thing that I’m still startled by the idea.”

“But obviously not startled into silence,”
Ackack noted.

Not much later Delmus, Ackack, Gopgop, and
Uldene stood and moved around in the same empty space they had used
earlier.

Uldene said, “We're not gonna dance around
it, we know you got more downloads than you've aired or
acknowledged. What do you make of it? How can you use it?”

Ackack feigned innocence as he said, “More
downloads? What do you mean?”

Gopgop shrugged. “Have it your way. We
offered to work with you guys to defuse an impending major social
breakdown but you want to go it alone. Let that be the thing then,
we’ll let the governors deal with you. They probably know every
detail anyway. Come on, Uldene, we have better things to do.”

Delmus stepped over to Gopgop and gestured
apologetically, “Excuse Ackack, he misunderstood your question.
Yeah, we got more messages but they're badly, badly, distorted.
It's impossible to say based on them what's going on at the planet
they call Earth.”

“Is there good reason to think the situation
isn't as bad as the clear messages from the producers hinted?”
Uldene asked.

“Sadly the honest answer's no. We don't know
the details but it's bad,” Delmus said with conviction.

“But we can fake it through since nobody else
has any feeds from there either,” Ackack said. “I don't think. Do
you guys have sources we don’t know about?”

Gopgop was firm. “No. We would share those
with you if we did because keeping the peace is critical to the
future of us all.”

All three others turned aside to smirk and
roll their eyes at that silly claim but none said anything.

“What should you tell the audience about the
destruction or the capture of the contestants and the equipment?”
Gopgop asked. “They won't think in terms of this making it harder
to colonize that planet, only in terms of the violent scenes they
could have witnessed.”

“They don't know and don't need to know of
any agenda except their amusement in what's been done,” Delmus
replied.

“As long as we work around the edges of the
governors’ agenda we can play it up for the thrills of not knowing
the outcome and the excitement of watching it happen as if you were
there,” Ackack said.

“What about the doubts about its
authenticity?” Uldene asked.

“Play it up big enough and keep it moving
fast enough for a while and the masses always get caught up in the
excitement and the desire to be part of the crowd,” Ackack said.
“They won't care how fake it might be as long as we don't actually
say it's fake. They want to believe they're seeing life and death
on a far away planet. Don't bother them with facts.”

“But can A.D.U. do that?” Gopgop asked.

“We know how to adapt,” Delmus assured him.
“Before this mess we'd have dragged the story out over many months
but clearly the new demand is for a fast and furious story told
straight through in a minimum time.”

“With lots and lots of reruns,” Ackack
added.

“I'm still worried that the masses won't buy
into it if it's not real,” Gopgop admitted.

“I hate myself for it but I'm worried about
exactly that too,” Delmus conceded. “It’s my concern about my
future that won’t let me avoid this any longer for fear we won’t
deal with what could be a critical matter. We arranged to have a
special zerpy put aboard that ship without the crew knowing it and
we know at least one other group did the same. Now we’re wondering
if that zerpy could be causing some of their malfunctions. We think
it would be best overall to turn off all the parts of that device
to see if that helps get them home with the show material intact.
Are you Peepees one of those other groups?”