Authors: John Brunner
The radio mumbled on about extreme congestion affecting all roads northbound.
"Yeah," the guard said, taking the bill and rolling in neatly one-handed into a cylinder, like a joint "Go right on in. They been expecting you."
He pointed across the lot to where an illuminated sign above a revolving door wished the world a merry Christmas from Angel City Interstate Mutual.
Been
expecting? I sure hope that doesn't mean they gave up and went ahead without me!
Feet planted on signs of Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, as the revolving door hush-hushed. It turned stiffly; the airtight seals around it must recently have been renewed. Beyond, a cool marble-walled foyer, also ornamented with zodiacal emblems. Angel City's publicity was geared to the idea of escaping the destiny you'd been born to, and both those who took astrology seriously and those who were sceptical appreciated the semi-poetical quality of the ad copy which resulted.
Here the air was not only purified but delicately perfumed. Waiting on a bench and looking bored, a very pretty light-brown girl in a tight green dress, demurely sleeved, the skirt touching the neat Cuban-correction: Miranda-heels of her black shoes.
But slit to the waist in front. Moreover she was wearing pubic panties, with a tuft of fur at the crotch to suggest hair.
Last night in Vegas. Christ, I must have been out of my mind, knowing I had to sleep well, be in top form for today. But it didn't feel that way at the time. Just…Oh, God, I wish I knew. Bravado? Craving for variety? Dennie, I swear I love you, I'm not going to throw my precious job away, won't even look at this girl! Chalmers's floor is three, isn't it? Where's the directory? Oh, behind those filtermask dispensers.
(Yet, intermixed, pride in working for this firm whose progressive image was carried clear through to ensuring that its secretaries wore the trendiest of clothes. That dress wasn't orlon or nylon, either; it was wool.)
However, it was impossible not to look. She rose and greeted him with a broad smile.
"You're Philip Mason!" Her voice a trifle hoarse. Comforting to know that other people were affected by the air in LA. If only the huskiness didn't lend such a sexy quality…"We met last time you were here, though probably you wouldn't remember. I'm Bill Chalmers's aide, Felice."
"Yes, I do remember you." The cough conquered, though a faint itchy sensation remained on his eyelids. The statement wasn't mere politeness, either-he did now recall her, but his last visit had been in summer and she'd been wearing a short dress and a different hairstyle.
"Is there somewhere I could wash up?" he added, displaying his palms to prove he meant
wash.
They were almost slimy with the airborne nastiness that had eluded the precipitator on his car. It wasn't designed to cope with California.
"Surely! Just along the hallway to the right. I'll wait for you."
The men's room bore the sign of Aquarius, as the women's did the sign of Virgo. Once when he first joined the company he'd raised a laugh clear around a group of his colleagues by suggesting that in the interests of true equality there should be only one door, marked Gemini. Today he wasn't in a joking mood.
Under the locked door of one of the cubicles: feet. Wary because of the incidence of men's-room muggings these days, he relieved himself with one eye fixed on that door. A faint sucking sound reached his ears, then a chinking. Christ, a syringe being filled! Not an addict with an expensive habit who's sneaked in there for privacy? Should I get out my gas gun?
That way lay paranoia. The shoes were elegantly shined, hardly those of an addict who neglected his appearance. Besides, it was over two years since he'd last been mugged. Things were improving. He moved toward the line of wash-basins, though he took care to select one whose mirror reflected the occupied cubicle.
Not wanting to leave greasy marks on the light fabric of his pants, he felt cautiously in his pocket for a coin to drop in the water-dispenser. Damnation. The dirty thing had been altered since his last visit. He had nickels and quarters, but the sign said only dimes.
Wasn't there even one free one? No.
He was on the point of going back to ask Felice for change when the cubical door swung open. A dark-clad man emerged, shrugging back into a jacket whose right-hand side pocket hung heavy. His features struck a vague chord of memory. Philip relaxed. Neither an addict nor a stranger. Just a diabetic, maybe, or a hepatic. Looking well on it, either way, from his plump cheeks and ruddy complexion.
But who…?
"Ah! You must be here for this conference of Chalmers's!" Striding forward the not-stranger made to extend his hand, then canceled the gesture with a chuckle.
"Sorry, better wash up before shaking with you. Halkin out of San Diego, by the way."
Tactful with it, too. "I'm Mason out of Denver. Ah-you don't have a spare dime, do you?"
"Sure! Be my guest"
"Thank you," Philip muttered, and carefully stoppered the drain hole before letting the water run. He had no idea how much a dime bought you but if it was the same amount that had cost a nickel a year and a half ago it was barely enough to soap and rinse with. He was thirty-two, yet today he felt like a gangling teenager, insecure, confused.
His skin itched as though it were dusty. The mirror told him it didn't show, and his swept-back brown hair was still tidy, so that was all right, but Halkin was wearing practical clothes, almost black, whereas he himself had put on his newest and smartest gear-by Colorado standards, much influenced of course by the annual influx of the winter-sports jet set-and it was pale blue because Denise said it matched his eyes, and while it could never be crumpled it was already showing grime at collar and cuffs. Memo to self: next time I come to LA…
The water was terrible, not worth the dime. The soap-at least the company kept cakes of it on the basins, instead of demanding another dime for an impregnated tissue-barely lathered between his palms When he rinsed his face a trickle ran into his mouth and he tasted sea-salt and chlorine.
"You got held up like me, I guess," Halkin said, turning to dry his hands in the hot-air blower. That was free. "What was it-those filthy Trainites occupying Wilshire?"
Washing his face had been a mistake. There were no towels, paper or otherwise. Philip hadn't thought to check beforehand. There's this big thing about cellulose fibers in the water of the Pacific. I read about it and failed to make the connection. His sense of awkward teenageness worse than ever, he had to twist his head into the stream of warm air, meantime wondering: what do they do for toilet paper-round pebbles, Moslem-style?
Keep up the facade at all costs. "No, my delay was on the Santa Monica freeway."
"Oh, yes. I heard traffic was very heavy today. Some rumor about the sun coming out?"
"It wasn't that some"-repressing the ridiculous impulse to make sure no one black was in earshot such as Felice or the guards around the parking lot-"crazy spade jumped out of his car in the middle of a jam and tried to run across the other half of the road."
"You don't say. Stoned, was he?"
"I guess he must have been. Oh, thanks"-Halkin courteously holding the door. "Naturally the cars that were still moving in the fast lanes had to brake and swerve and
bang
, must have been forty of them bumped each other. Missed him by a miracle, not that it did him any good. The traffic coming away from the city was doing fifty-sixty at that point, and when he got across the divide he fell in front of a sports car."
"Good lord." This had brought them level with Felice, who was keeping an elevator for them, so they ushered her inside and Halkin hovered his hand over the floor-selection buttons. "Three, isn't it?"
"No, we're not in Bill's office. We're in the conference room on the seventh."
"Was your car damaged?" Halkin went on.
"No, luckily mine wasn't included in the shunt. But we had to sit there for more than half an hour before they got the road clear…You said you were held up by Trainites?"
"Yes, on Wilshire." Halkin's professional smile gave way to a scowl.
"Lousy dodgers, most of them, I bet! If I'd known I was sweating out my time for their sake…You did yours, of course?"
"Yes, of course, in Manila."
"My stint was in 'Nam and Laos."
The car was slowing and they all glanced at the lighted numbers.
But this wasn't seven, it was five. The doors parted to reveal a woman with a spotty face who said under her breath, "Ah, shit!" And stepped into the car anyway.
"I'll ride up with you and down again," she added more loudly. "You could wait until doomsday in this filthy building."
The windows of the conference room were bright yellow-gray. The proceedings had started without waiting for the last two arrivals; Philip was thankful that he wasn't entering alone. Eight or nine men were present in comfortable chairs with foldaway flaps bearing books, notepads, personal recorders. Facing them across a table shaped like an undernourished boomerang: William Chalmers, vice-president in charge of interstate operations, a black-haired man in his late forties who had developed too much of a paunch to get away with the fashionable figure-hugging gear he was wearing. Standing, interrupted by the intrusion: Thomas Grey, the company's senior actuary, a bald lean man of fifty with such thick spectacles one could imagine their weight accounting for the habitual forward stoop of his shoulders. He looked put out; scratching absently under his left arm, he accorded no more than a curt nod by way of greeting. Chalmers, however, welcomed the latecomers cordially enough, brushed aside their apologies, waved them to the remaining vacant places-right in the front row, of course. The wall-clock showed two minutes of eleven instead of the scheduled ten-thirty. Trying to ignore it, Philip picked up a folder of papers from his assigned chair and distributed mechanical smiles to those of his colleagues with whom he could claim casual acquaintance.
Casual…
Don't think about Laura. Dennie, I love you! I love Josie, I love Harold, I love my family! But if only you hadn't insisted on my-Oh, shut up. Talk about mountains out of molehills!
But his situation was precarious, after all. Notoriously, he was by nearly seven years the youngest of Angel City's area managers: LA, Bay, SoCal, Oregon, Utah, Arizona, NM, Texas, Colorado. Texas due for subdivision next year, the grapevine said, but as yet it hadn't happened. That meant that his footsteps were being hounded by hordes of skilled, degree-equipped unemployed. He had six salesmen with Ph.D.'s. Running to stay in the same place…
"If we can continue?" Grey said. Philip composed himself. The first time he had met the actuary he had assumed him to be a dry extension of his computers, lost in a world where only numbers possessed reality.
Since then, however, he had learned that it had been Grey who hit on the notion of adopting astrological symbolism for the firm's promotional material, and thereby endowed Angel City with its unique status as the only major insurance company whose business among clients under thirty was expanding as fast as the proportion of the population they represented. Anyone with that much insight was worth listening to.
"Thank you. I was just explaining why you've come."
Eyes rolling back to the limits of their sockets, mouth ajar, breath hissing in her throat! Useless denying it to myself. No woman ever made me feel more like a man!
Philip touched the inside of his cheek with the tip of his tongue. She had slapped him back-handed and marched out of the motel cabin with blazing eyes because he had offered her money. There was a cut. It had bled for five minutes. It was next to his right upper canine, all his life the sharpest of his teeth.
"It's because," Grey continued, "of the hike in life insurance premiums we're going to impose from January first. Of course we've always predicated our quotations on the assumption that life expectancy in the United States would continue to rise. But during the past three years it has in fact started to go down."
Sharp on nine the Trainites had scattered caltraps in the roadway and created a monumental snarl-up twelve blocks by seven. The fuzz, as usual, was elsewhere-there were always plenty of sympathizers willing to cause a diversion. It was impossible to guess how many allies the movement had; at a rough guess, though, one could say that in New York City, Chicago, Detroit, LA or San Francisco people were apt to cheer, while in the surrounding suburbs or the Midwest people were apt to go fetch guns. In other words, they had least support in the areas which had voted for Prexy.
Next, the stalled cars had their windows opaqued with a cheap commercial compound used for etching glass, and slogans were painted on their doors. Some were long: THIS VEHICLE IS A DANGER TO
LIFE AND LIMB. Many were short: IT STINKS! But the commonest of all was the universally known catchphrase: STOP, YOU'RE
KILLING ME!
And in every case the inscription was concluded with a rough egg-shape above a saltire-the simplified ideogrammatic version of the invariable Trainite symbol, a skull and crossbones reduced to Then, consulting printed data-sheets, many of which were flapping along the gutter hours later in the wind of passing cars, they turned to the nearby store-windows and obscured the goods on offer with similarly appropriate slogans. Unprejudiced, they found something apt for every single store.
It wasn't too hard.
Delighted, lads on the afternoon school shift joined in the job of keeping at bay angry drivers, store-clerks and other meddlers. Some of them weren't smart enough to get lost when the fuzz arrived-by helicopter after frantic radio messages-and made their first trip to Juvenile Hall. But what the hell? They were of an age to realize a conviction was a keen thing to have. Might stop you being drafted.
Might save your life.
Most of the drivers, however, had the sense to stay put, fuming behind their blank windshields as they calculated the cost of repairs and repainting. Practically all of them were armed, but not one was stupid enough to pull a gun. It had been tried during a Trainite demonstration in San Francisco last month. A girl had been shot dead. Others, anonymous in whole-head masks and drab mock-homespun clothing, had dragged the killer from his car and used the same violent acid they applied to glass to write MURDERER on his flesh.