The Merchant's War (13 page)

But I got a grip on myself. It wasn’t doing a consumer any favor, I told myself, to give them ideas above their station. He was getting along all right the way he was. I might mess him up badly by interfering.

So I kept my mouth shut about prepaying the rent, but in my heart I was truly grateful.

ConsumAnon turned out to be a bad idea. I knew that in the first two minutes. The place Rockwell had taken me to was a
church.

Now, that’s not so bad in itself. In fact, it was kind of interesting—I’d never seen the inside of one before. Besides, you could look at it as a kind of research for my Intangibles work, which meant I could put in a chit for my and Rockwell’s pedicab fare (even though he’d insisted we take the bus).

But—these
people!
I don’t just mean they were consumers. They were the dregs of the consumer class, shriveled up little old men with facial tics; fat, frowning girls with the kind of complexions you get from solid soy and not much of that. There was a young couple whispering jitterily to each other, with a small child crying itself frantic unnoticed in the seat between them. There was a weaselfaced man skulking by the door as though he couldn’t make up his mind, stay or run—well, I couldn’t either, really. These people were
losers.
A well-trained consumer is one thing. They were all of that. They had been bred and trained to do what the world needed from them: buying what we Agency people had to sell. But, oh, what stolid and stunned faces! What made for a good consumer was boredom. Reading was discouraged, homes were no joy to be in—what else did they have to do with their lives but consume? But these people had made a travesty of that noble—well, fairly noble—calling. They were
obsessed.
I almost ducked out for a Moke to ease the jangly shudders they gave me, but as long as I’d come this far I decided to stay for the meeting.

That was my second bad mistake, because the proceedings rapidly became disgusting. First, they started with a
prayer.
Then they began singing
hymns.
Rockwell nudged me to join in, grinning and croaking away at the top of his voice, but I couldn’t even look him in the face.

Then it got worse. One by one, these misfits stood up and sobbed out their tawdry stories. Talk about sickening! This one had blighted her life by popping NicoChews, forty packs a day, till her teeth came out and her bosses fired her because she couldn’t handle her job —her job was phone operator. This other one was into deodorants and breath-fresheners, and had so thoroughly scoured away every trace of natural body exudates that his skin was chapped and his mucous surfaces dried out. The jittery young couple—why, they were Moke-heads like myself! I stared at them in amazement. How could they let themselves sink so low? Sure, I had a Moke
problem.
But just being here meant I was
doing
something about the problem. No way would I let myself turn into such raddled wrecks as they! “Go on, Tenny,” muttered Rockwell, nudging me. “Don’t you want to testify?”

I don’t know what I said to him, except that it included the word, “Good-by.” I squeezed past him and out the door, yearning for the open air. As I stood in the entrance, wheezing and clearing my lungs, the weasel-faced man crept out after me. “Gee,” he said, grinning slyly, “I heard what your friend said. Sure wish I had your monkey instead of my own.”

No one likes to hear that the trouble that blights his life is less awful than some stranger’s. I was not cordial. I said stiffly, “My, ah, problem is bad enough to suit me, thanks.” For some reason my mind was fluttering just then. I had half a dozen separate yearnings and loathings filling my head at once—the desperate need for a Moke, the contempt for those ConsumAnon dummies inside, the more acute dislike for Weasel-face himself, the itchy yearning for Mitzi Ku that came over me every now and then … and, under them all, something else that I couldn’t quite identify. A memory? An inspiration? A resolve? I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. It had something to do with what was going on inside—no, with something before that, something Rockwell had said?

Weasel-face, I suddenly realized, was hissing rapidly in my ear. “—What?” I barked.

“I said,” he repeated behind his hand, glancing about, “I know a guy’s got what you need. Moke-Eeeze pills. Take three a day, one each meal, and you’ll never need a Moke again.”

“My God, man!” I roared. “Are you offering me
drugs?
I’m no consumer. I’m Agency personnel! If I could find a cop I’d have you locked up—” And I actually looked around for a familiar Brinks or Wackerhut uniform; but you know how it is, there’s never a policeman when you want one, and anyway when I looked back Weasel-face was gone.

And so was my idea. Whatever it had been.

The human kidney is not meant to handle forty Mokie-Kokes a day. There were times over the next twenty-four hours when I wondered if Weasel-face hadn’t had a good idea after all. Some cautious inquiries at the Agency clinic (oh, how sweet they were to me now!) solidified the vague notions I’d had. The pills were bad news. They worked, but after a time—maybe six months, maybe more or less —the stressed nervous system faltered and ultimately broke. I didn’t want that. True, I was losing weight and the view in the mirror when I depilated showed new strain lines on my face every morning; but I was functioning well enough still.

No, hell, let’s tell the truth: I was functioning
magnificently.
Every new set of hourlies showed that Religion was uptrending. Joss sticks, up 0.03; prayer candles, 0.02; exit polls from three hundred and fifty randomly chosen Zoroastrian temples showed a nearly one percent increase in first-time worshippers. The Old Man called me himself. “You’ve established a lot of credibility with the Planning Committee,” he boomed. “Tarb, my hat’s off to you! What can I do to make your work easier? Another assistant?”

“Great idea, sir!” I cried, and added carelessly, “What’s Dixmeister doing now?”

So my old trainee was back on my team. Apprehensive, placatory, desperate to please —consumed by curiosity. Just the way I wanted him.

He wasn’t the only one devoured by curiosity, because everybody in the Agency knew something big was going on, and none of them knew exactly what. The gravy was that none of them knew how little I myself knew. Account executives and copy chiefs, on the way from level nine to level fifteen, a dozen times a day decided to take the shortcut through my office. Common courtesy made them stop in to slap me on the back and tell me what a great job everybody knew I was doing … and tell me that we really ought to get together for lunch or a drink, or a round of bumper pool at the country club. I smiled, and accepted no invitations. I declined none, either, because if they pressed me too hard they’d find out how ignorant I really was. So, “Sure thing,” I’d say, and, “Real soon!” And then if they lingered I’d pick up the phone and whisper into it until, smiling but eaten up inside, they went away. While Dixmeister, in his cubicle outside my office, would have his eyes on me, worried and glowering until he caught me looking at him, and then there’d be that hangdog, whimpery smile.

Ah, I loved it!

Of course, common sense reminded me not to push too hard. I was only a tiny cog in the takeover bid Haseldyne and Mitzi were putting together. I was tolerated more than needed. No. I wasn’t needed at all, except that it was easier for them to cut me in than to shut me up.

All I had to do was keep on making it easier for them to cut me in than cut me down … and then … and then the time would come when the takeover would go through, and Mitzi and Haseldyne would be owners. And, with a little luck, Tenny Tarb would be right on their team. An account executive—no, I thought, swigging a Moke, better than that. A C.E.O.! And that was a dream of splendor. You know what a king is? I’ll tell you what a king is. Compared with a Chief Executive Officer of a major ad Agency, a king is
nothing.

And, then, I thought, opening another Moke, what about the future? What if Mitzi and I got back together again on a full-time basis? What if we even got
married?
What if I were not just C.E.O. but a community-property coowner of the Agency? Intoxicating dreams! They made my little Moke problem seem pretty small potatoes. With that kind of money I could afford the best detoxing in the world. I could even … wait a minute … what was it? The idea that had been poking around in my subconscious at the ConsumAnon meeting?

I sat up straight and almost dropped the Moke. Dixmeister came rushing in, scared. “Mr. Tarb? Are you all right?”

“I’m
fine,
Dixmeister,” I told him. “Listen, didn’t I see the Old Man going down the hall a minute ago? See if you can find him—ask him if he’d like to drop in for a minute.”

And I sat back and waited, while the idea formed itself into perfect shape in my mind.

You don’t get the Old Man without his gaggle of droogs, three or four of them tagging along and clustering in the doorways while he paid his calls. They all had big titles, and any one of them made four times as much a year as I did, but they were stooges. I ignored them. “Thanks a lot for dropping in, sir,” I beamed. “Sit down, won’t you? Here. Take my chair!”

You don’t get the Old Man without five minutes of preliminary chitchat, either. He sat down and began to tell me about the old days and how he’d made his pile, averting his eyes from my Mokie-Koke dispenser as though it were false teeth I’d left on the dresser. I heard all over again the saga of how he’d come back from Venus with his lucky millions and bet it all on the forlorn hope of turning two dead Agencies into one towering success. “It worked, Tenn,” he rasped, “because of product! That’s what T., G. & S. is built on,
product.
I’m not saying anything against Intangibles, but it’s
goods
that people need to be sold, for their own sakes and the sake of humankind itself!”

“Right, chief,” I said, because no other response is allowed when power speaks, “but I’ve got a little idea I’d like to bounce off you. You know ConsumAnon?”

He gave me a frown like thunderclouds. His vertical lines were as deep as Mitzi’s, and there were a lot more of them. “When I see ConsumAnon people,” he declared, “I always think I’m looking at dupes of the Venusians. They’re crackpots at best!”

“You bet they’re crackpots, but there’s a market potential there that I don’t think we’ve tapped. You see, these ConsumAnon people have gone out of control. It’s Coffiest fifty times a day, a Mementoes habit that would bankrupt a star-class time-buyer, every sort of mega-hypertrophy of normal, decent consuming. So they go to C.A. Then what happens? Why, most of them stay clean about two days. If that. Then they slip. In a week they’re worse off than ever. They become institutional cases, as like as not, lost to consuming forever. And the successes are even worse. They’re brainwashed into
economizing.
Even
saving.
”

“I’ve always said,” the Old Man announced gravely, “that C.A. is the next thing to Conservationism.”

“Right! But we don’t have to lose these people. All we have to do is redirect them. Not abstinence. Substitution.”

The Old Man pursed his lips. Naturally all of the droogs followed suit. Not one of them had grasped the idea, and not one of them would admit it.

I let them off the hook. “We set up a self-help group for each kind of overconsuming,” I explained, “and we train them to
substitute.
If they’re Coffiest addicts, we switch them to Nic-O-Chews. Nic-O-Chews to the San Jacinto Mint—”

Clearing of throat from the doorway. “The San Jacinto Mint isn’t one of our clients,” said Droog No. 2.

I said stonily, “Then to someone who is our client,
of course
—we’re a full-range Agency, we’ve got something for every consuming niche, don’t we? I would estimate that a consumer who’s five years into, say, a Coffiest habit and just about on the skids still has years of useful life with, say, Starrzelius Diet-Aids.” The Old Man glanced once at his droog, who shut up instantly. I pressed on. “The next part,” I said, “is where I think the real money is. What about these self-help groups? Why shouldn’t they be actual clubs? Like lodges. They could charge dues. They could have to buy regalia and paraphernalia—watches, rings, tee shirts. Ceremonial robes. A different design for each degree as they move up, and so constructed that they can’t be passed on as second-hand goods—”

“Product,”
whispered the Old Man, and his eyes gleamed.

It was the magic word; I had won him over. The retinue knew it before I did, of course, and the air was thick with congratulations and plans. A whole new department within Intangibles. First a two-week crash feasibility survey, just to make sure there were no roadblocks and to identify the main profit areas. That would have to go to the Planning Committee, but then—“When it happens, Tenny,” the Old Man beamed, “it’s all yours!” And then he did the ritual act that generations of ad execs have done to show their wholehearted admiration. He took off his hat and placed it on the table.

It was glory time. My heart was full. And I could hardly wait for them to get out of the office because it was a grand scheme that would benefit its inventor very little. Money, yes. Promotion and prestige, yes. But substitution could not cure Campbellian limbic compulsion … and, God, how I wanted a Moke!

I even got to see my brassy lady once in a while, though not very often. She did show up in my office in response to the memo I flashed her about my new project, looking around abstractedly while I apologized for going to the Old Man with it instead of waiting until, uh,
after.
“No problem, Tenny,” she said cheerfully—and absentmindedly. “It won’t affect our, uh,
plans.
See each other? Why, certainly —real soon—we’ll be in touch—bye!” Real soon it was not. She wouldn’t come to my place and didn’t invite me to hers, and when I tried to get her on the phone she was either out or too rushed to talk. Well, that wasn’t unreasonable. Now that I knew what she was up to I could see that there wasn’t time in her life for everything just now.

But I still wanted to see her, and when I got a surprise call in my office just before quitting time I raced right up to her office, waited out the sec
³
, breezed past the sec
²
and was allowed to call Mitzi herself from the sec”s desk. “I was just on the phone with Honolulu,” I said. “Your mother. I’ve got a message from her.” Silence from the other end of the line. Then, “Give me an hour, will you, Tenny? Then let’s have a drink in the Executive lounge.”