The Merchant's War (14 page)

Well, it wasn’t an hour, it was a lot nearer two, but I didn’t mind waiting. Although I was well on the way to being a fair-haired boy, my official status had not yet improved to the point of full Executive privileges. I was glad to be admitted on Mitzi’s invitation and sit with my Drambuie, gazing out over the cloudy, smoggy city with all its wonderful wealth and promise, in the company of my peers—well, almost peers. They didn’t snub me, either. In fact when Mitzi at last appeared and frowned around the room, looking for me, I had trouble disengaging myself to find a quiet table for two.

She was frowning—she was always frowning these days—and she looked flustered. But she waited until I had ordered drinks, her favorites, Mimosas, with nearly real champagne and reconstituted orange juice, before she demanded, “Now, what’s this about my mother?”

“She called me, Mits. She said she’d been trying to reach you ever since you got back, and no luck.”

“I did talk to her!”

“Once, right,” I nodded, “the day after you landed. She says for three minutes—”

“I was busy!”

“—and then you never returned her calls after that.”

There were at least half a dozen of the frown lines warning me, and her voice was chilly: “Tarb,” she snapped, “get straight. I’m a big girl. What’s between my mother and me is none of your business. She’s an interfering old busybody who’s half the reason I left for Venus in the first place, and if I don’t want to talk to her I don’t have to. Got it?” The drinks arrived, and she grabbed for hers. Halfway to her lips she added, “I’ll call her next week.” And poured half the Mimosa down her throat.

“It’s not really bad,” she admitted grudgingly.

“I can make them better myself,” I offered. Thinking: Damn it, I’d better get out of that shared-time condo fast, can’t expect Mitzi to offer her place every time. And it was as though I’d spoken out loud. She leaned back in her seat, regarding me thoughtfully. Most of the frown lines had gone from her brow, bar the two that now seemed semipermanent, but her gaze was more analytical than I would have hoped for.

“Tenny,” she said, “There’s something about you that appeals very strongly to me—”

“Thank you, Mits.”

“Your dumbness, I think,” she went on, not paying attention to what I said. “Yes. That’s it. Dumb and helpless. You remind me of a lost pet mouse.”

I essayed, “Only a mouse? Not at least a kitten to cuddle?”

“Kittens grow up to be cats. Cats are predators. I think what I really like best about you is that you’ve lost your fangs somewhere.” She wasn’t looking at me now, staring past me out the window at the smoggy lights of the city. I would have given a lot to know what sentences were forming in her mind just then, that she had vetoed before they came out of her mouth. She sighed. “I’d like another of these,” she added, coming back to the world I was in.

I signaled the waiter and whispered in his ear while she exchanged smiles and nods with a dozen others from Executive country. “I’m sorry I stuck my nose in about your mother,” I said.

She shrugged absently. “I said I’d call her. Let’s forget it.” She brightened. “How’s the job going? I hear your new project’s looking good.”

I shrugged modestly. “It’ll be a while yet before we know if it will amount to anything.”

“It will, Tenn. So until then are you going to stay with Religion?”

I said, “Well, sure, but that’s pretty well in hand. I thought I’d take a few extra classes, see about speeding up that master’s degree.” She nodded as though she were agreeing, but said: “Did you ever think of switching to Politics?”

That startled me.
“Politics?”

She said thoughtfully, “I can’t tell you much right now, but it might be useful if you got your feet wet in that.”

There was a little tingle down my backbone. She was talking about
after!
“Why not, Mits? I’ll turn Religion over to my Number Two tomorrow! And now—we’ve got the whole evening before us—”

She shook her head. “You do, Tenny, I’ve got something else I’ve got to do.” She saw how my face fell. It seemed to depress her too. She watched the waiter bring the second round of drinks before she said: “Tenny, you know I’ve got a lot on my mind right now—” .

“I understand perfectly, Mits!”

“Do you?” The thoughtful look again. “You understand, anyway, that I’m busy. I don’t know if you understand how I feel about you.”

“Good, I hope.”

“Both good and bad, Tenny,” she said somberly, “both good and bad. If I had any sense at all—”

But she didn’t say what she’d do if she had any sense at all and, since I had a numbing suspicion that I knew what it would have been, I let the sentence hang in air. “To you,” she said, examining the new Mimosa as though it were medicine before she sipped it.

“To us,” I said, lifting my own drink. It wasn’t a Mimosa. It wasn’t an Irish Coffee, either, though it looked like one. On top was the regulation puff of whipped NeerKreme, but what was underneath it was what I had sent the waiter scurrying down to my office to get: four ounces of pure Mokie-Koke.

The next morning, first thing, I snapped my fingers. Dixmeister materialized in the doorway at once, waiting for either orders or an invitation to come in and sit down. I gave him neither. “Dixmeister,” I said, “I’ve got Religion pretty straight now, so I’m turning it over to—what’s his name—”

“Wrocjek, Mr. Tarb?”

“Right. I’ve got a couple days free, so I’m going to get Politics on the right track.” Dixmeister shifted position uncomfortably in the doorway. “Well, actually, Mr. Tarb,” he said, “since old Mr. Sarms left I’ve been pretty much running Politics myself.”

“That’s exactly what we’re going to straighten out, Dixmeister. I want all current sitreps and plan outlines fed to my monitor for approval and action, and I want them this afternoon. No, in one hour … no, come to think of it, let’s do it now.”

He stammered, “But—but—” I knew the problem; there were at least fifty separate stores of data to be tapped and digested, and preparing a decent synoptic was half a day’s work. About that I cared little or not at all.

“Do it, Dixmeister,” I said benignly, leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. Ah, how good it felt!

I had almost forgotten I was a Mokie.

They say that Mokie-Koke gets you so wired up after a while that your decisions suffer. It isn’t that you can’t make the decisions. It isn’t even that they’re wrong when you make them. What it is, you’re so hyper, so strung out, that one decision isn’t enough for you. You make one, and then another, and then another, bing-bang-biff, and when the ordinary human being can’t keep up with you, which is always, you lose your cool. Dixmeister probably would have thought that was going on with me, because I guess I gave him the sharp part of the tongue pretty often. But I wasn’t worried. I knew that was
supposed
to happen, but I did not fear its happening to me. Oh, sure, maybe after a long time—ten years, five years—far enough in the future, anyway, so that I didn’t have to worry about it, since I was going to give the stuff up any day. First chance I got. And meanwhile, actually, I was touching all bases and swinging the old home-run paddle. Even Dixmeister had to admit it. I spent two days on current projects and plans, and, man, how I made the old place hum!

The first thing I got into was the PAC department. You know what a Political Action Committee is. It’s a group of people with a special interest who are willing to put up money to bribe—well, strike that, to
influence
—officials to enact laws and regulations that favor whatever it is they care about. In the old days the PACs belonged mostly to businessmen and what they called labor unions. I remembered seeing those great old historical romances with the American Medical Association and the used-car dealers—eager young doctors winning tax exemption for conferences in Tahiti; antic car salesmen battling for the inalienable right to put sawdust in a transmission. That sort of show is fun when you’re young, but as you get older and more cynical you stop believing people are so goody-goody … Anyway, those battles are of course long won, but PACs are still around. They’re almost as good as religion. You set them up and collect their money, and what do they spend it on? In the long run, advertising! Either their own, or for the campaign ads for the candidates they like. So in one long day I set up a dozen new PACs. There was an Objet-d’art PAC (I got the idea from Nelson Rockwell), a Swiss Army Knife PAC (“We need them to clean our nails—is it our fault that criminals use them for other purposes?”), a Pedicab-Pumpers PAC, a Tenants’ PAC to legislate longer sleeping hours before the daytime users of the space moved in—oh, I was knocking them out!

It was almost too easy. I had more energy left at the end of a hard day than I knew what to do with. I could have gone on with school, but what was the point? How much higher in the world would a graduate degree get me? I could have moved to a better place, but the thought of hunting one out and moving into it depressed me … and there was one other thing. I
felt
secure. The way things were going I had every reason to
be
secure. But I had been real secure once before and out of a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand Destiny had reached down to smite me … I stayed in the shared-time condo. And talked with Nels Rockwell when we happened to be awake together, and watched the Omni-V until all hours when we were not. I watched sports events and soaps and comics, and most of all news. The Sudan had just been reclaimed for civilization, using the same Campbellian techniques that had been used on me—glow of pride at the world bettering itself every day; little nagging itch of resentment, because the Campbellian techniques had, after all, not bettered my own world a hell of a lot. A whale had been sighted off Lahaina, but further investigation showed it was just a lost tank of jojoba oil. The spring Olympics were going on in Tucson, and there was a big upset in the unicycle event. Ms. Mitzi Ku, interviewed at the entrance to T., G. & S. Tower, denied reports that she was leaving the Agency—

And she looked so sweet and so tired on the little screen; and I wished for … No. I didn’t wish “for” anything. I just wished. There was too much involved between me and Mitzi to wish for anything specific.

She didn’t answer when I tried to call her at home.

The way to make all my wishes true with Mitzi, I told myself, was to do the best possible job on politics; and so I made the next morning hell for poor little Dixmeister. “The work’s
wasted,”
I yelled at him, “because Casting’s lying down on the job!” He was directly responsible for Casting, of course.

“I do my best,” he sulked, and I just shook my head.

“Candidate screening,” I explained, “is one of the most important functions of a political campaign.” He was still sulking, but he made the pretense of an eager nod. Well, of course, everyone knew that. It had been established way back in the mid-twentieth century that a candidate shouldn’t sweat much; he had to be at least five per cent taller than average so he didn’t need a box to stand on in a debate. His hair could be gray, but he had to have plenty of it. You didn’t want him too fat (but not too skinny, either), and above all he had to be able to deliver his lines as though he really believed them.

“Absolutely, Mr. Tarb,” Dixmeister said indignantly. “I always tell that to Central Casting, the whole list—”

“It isn’t good enough, Dixmeister. From now on I’ll do the first cut myself.”

His jaw dropped. “Gee, Mr. Tarb, Mr. Sarms always used to let me handle that.”

“Mr. Sarms isn’t here any more. Casting call is nine
A.M.,
in the big room. Fill it.” And I waved him out of the room and closed the door, because I was half an hour behind on my next Moke.

Fill the big room he did, all nine hundred seats except for the first row. That was mine —mine and my secretary’s and my makeup guy’s and my director’s. I came down the center aisle, not looking to the left or right, waved the entourage into seats and jumped up onto the stage. At once Dixmeister came bounding in from the wings. “Quiet!” he yelled. “Quiet for Mr. Tarb!”

I stood there, looking over them, waiting for the feel of the audience to reach me. Actually, they were quiet enough already, because they knew where they were. This hall was where the Old Man held his all-exec pep rallies, where major presentations were made and new accounts solicited us. Every one of the nine hundred seats had its own back, arm, cushion and phone jack—the Agency executives traveled first class! And the nine hundred people from Central Casting were nearly all consumer class in their origins.

So they were quiet with awe, and as I perceived their feelings I knew how to pitch to them. I waved an arm around the vast auditorium. “Do you like what you see here?” I demanded. “Do you want this sort of thing for your own lives? It’s easy!
Just make me like you.
You’re each going to be called up here on the stage and given ten seconds to make a presentation. Ten seconds! It’s not much, is it? But that’s all the seconds there are in a flash spot, and if you can’t make it here in this auditorium you can’t do the job for T., G. & S. in prime time. Now, what do you do with your ten seconds? That’s up to you. You can sing. Tell a story. Say what your favorite color is. Ask for my vote—anything! But what you say doesn’t matter, just so you make me care about you and want to help you get elected—make me
like
you!”

I nodded to Dixmeister. As the makeup guy helped me down to my seat Dixmeister sprang forward and barked: “First row! Start from the left! You on the end there—onstage!” Dixmeister jumped down into the seat beside me, anxiously dividing his glances between my face and the actor before us. The actor was a big one, shaggy-haired, bright eyes under shaggy brows. A likeable face, all right. He’d thought about his bit, too. “I trust you all!” he boomed, “and you can trust Marty O’Loyre, because Marty O’Loyre
loves
you. Please help Marty O’Loyre with your vote on Election Day!”

Dixmeister stabbed the timer with his finger, and the result blinked up from the monitor: 10.0 seconds. Dixmeister nodded. “Great timing, and three name repetitions.” He studied my face, trying to jump the right way at the right time. “Good sheriff candidate?” he guessed. “Solid, strong, warm—”