THE FEELIES Page 16

  "I have called this special meeting because I have an announcement to make that I believe may be of historic proportions."

  Kingsley Deutsch didn't mince words. He was a megalomaniac, certainly, but he was an absolutely successful megalomaniac, and if he said historic proportions, he meant historic proportions. Historic as in history, not historic as in a fifteen-second sound bite on the next day's news shows. The men and women who had been summoned to the penthouse stood transfixed, and the pause before he continued was a form of torture. The torture, however, wasn't about to stop.

  "Before the announcement, though, I think we have to spend a little time taking stock of the situation that currently exists within this enterprise of ours. There is little point attempting to advance into history if we cannot summon even the confidence to face tomorrow. I said that this corporation was beset by rumor. Your comments please."

  The frightening blue eyes scanned the assembled men and women. There were just ten of them, so small an assembly that they were dwarfed by the overwhelming conference table that was almost thirty feet of dark mahogany polished to the finish of glass. For ten people, however, they wielded a great deal of power. They were the ten department heads, the ten top people in the whole of Combined Media. Between then, they commanded almost, although not quite, as much power as Deutsch himself. And yet, they said nothing. The meeting itself already had them off balance. It had been the end of the working day when they had been summoned without warning to Deutsch's presence: "The penthouse. Immediately."

  Deutsch looked around once more and half smiled. Behind him, hanging over the city, a skyboard advertising Pepsi Cola had lit up. He focused on Madison Renfield.

  "What about you, Madison? You're our hero of the glib."

  Renfield raised his hands in a somewhat helpless gesture. "There are always rumors, Kingsley. It'd be unhealthy for a corporation to be without rumors in this day and age. Let's face it, the ways of the modern corporation are a little Byzantine."

  Deutsch raised his eyebrow. "Byzantine, Madison?"

  Renfield had the expression of a man who had very little left to lose. "Byzantine, Kingsley."

  Deutsch smiled. "So, Madison, do you see me as a Byzantine emperor?"

  "I wouldn't volunteer the analogy."

  Deutsch looked at the other nine. "Madison may, in fact, be right, but let us remember one thing. The Byzantine emperor could rule only according to the information that he received. He was frequently only as good as his intelligence, and that was only if his intelligence was untainted. One of Adolf Hitler's greatest problems was that he surrounded himself with individuals who told him only what he wanted to hear. That's not only bad intelligence but criminally unintelligent. I have, throughout my long career, taken great care to see that my own intelligence sources were as direct and pure as I could make them."

  That, also, was no exaggeration. Deutsch was famous for his elaborate spy system, which seemed to extend to every level of the corporation despite all the efforts of the individual departments to suppress, filter, and regulate stories that went up to the penthouse.

  "During the last few days, these sources have been telling me a great many things. So many things, in fact, that the sheer volume of information that I have been receiving recently would be enough on its own to cause me a measure of alarm. Let me enumerate some of the things I've been hearing."

  The ten heads of department were no longer transfixed. They were now preparing to squirm in their leather chairs with the CM logo embossed in gold on the backs. No one could remember when Kingsley Deutsch had called a meeting that promised so much discomfort. It was quite usual for him to call individual department heads onto the carpet, but to summon them en masse for a dressing down was quite unprecedented.

  "Now, where shall I start? Perhaps with the phenomenon of client death that, although substantively a closely guarded corporation secret, seems to have become widely talked about."

  Gorges Gomez of Client Services and Renfield of PR exchanged worried glances. Deutsch caught the exchange.

  "You have something to say? Something to add to the discussion?"

  Gomez cleared his throat nervously. "There are a lot of rank and file workers who know about this. Many of them are employed only because of the concessions that were made to the union in the original charter. It is virtually impossible to silence so many people whose company loyalty may at best be tenuous."

  Renfield jumped in. "I think the important thing is that we have been extremely successful at keeping even a hint of this from the media-"

  Deutsch waved him to silence. "Just relax. This is not a court of inquiry. I am merely conducting an informal review of some of our current problems. All will become clear when, following this review, I make my promised announcement. All I want to do now is to bring some matters out into the open that have previously been the preserve of locked doors and whispered conversations, matters like, for instance, the reason that two of my most senior executives should meet in a public restaurant to discuss the reestablishment of death experience research."

  Edouard Hayes went white. His face took on a strangled expression.

  Deutsch looked directly at him. "You have something you want to add?"

  "I… really must make it clear that Vallenti and I were only discussing the possibilities that some clandestine group might be attempting to start up such research again. After Jonas's research and the resulting prostitute murders when he went insane-"

  Deutsch held up a hand. "How many times do I have to tell you that this is not an inquiry?"

  He walked slowly down the length of the table. In the middistance, outside the panoramic window, the sky-board was flashing the current Pepsi slogan in red, white, and blue holotype.

  Another Generation

  Another Generation

  Another Generation

  "Ladies and gentlemen, it would appear that we are spending too much of our time reflecting on thoughts of death. The death of clients, the death experience, perhaps these are a cover for a deeper unease about the basic philosophy behind what we are doing. It's there in our own vernacular. We refer to our clients as 'stiffs,' to the standard IE unit as a 'coffin.' Could it be that we subconsciously feel that, in marketing a technological discorporate fantasy, we have become vendors of a form of death? That is a question that you may find answered sooner than you think. Before that happens, however, I cannot impress upon you more strongly that this is absolutely the wrong time for this question to be asked. An army that broods upon death through the eve of battle is not going to win any place in history. Unless they are defending the Alamo. Has Combined Media become the Alamo, gentlemen? If it has, I have to warn you. You may have to start thinking of me as your personal Santa Ana."

  THE PRIDE OF ERIN WAS STARTING TO fill up, and Ralph's money was definitely dwindling. He had never been the kind who could nurse a single drink through half the evening. He drank up and ordered again. When he couldn't order any more it was time to get the hell out of wherever he was. Also, he was no longer feeling comfortable in the place. There were couples meeting up for dates, junior execs in sweatpants hot from the raquets court, and women who had been working late now, with their blouses unfastened a couple of notches, looking for fun. Ralph knew perfectly well that sitting in his overalls, three parts drunk, he had nothing that represented any approximation of their idea of fun. God, it had been so long since he had been with a woman. He really didn't need the reminder. He finished his drink, nodded to the barman, and headed for the door.

  There was nothing left to do but return to the RT and make the ride out to Lincoln Avenue. He had been a damn fool to go looking for that bar. It was starting to get late, and even the monorail would be doubly dangerous.

  As he walked through Reagan Plaza, he noticed that a fairly large crowd had gathered in front of the Sanyo-Hyatt. Using any excuse to put off boarding the train for as long as possible, he sauntered in the direction of the big modern hotel to investigate.

&n
bsp; It wasn't the usual crowd that he would have expected to find in Reagan Plaza. They were mainly blue collar like himself, welfare cases, even, and a sprinkling of definite oddities. A lot of them carried cameras; he saw autograph books, and a bearded individual in a ragged suit of the executive style of five years earlier was holding up a placard that read YOU ARE DOOMED! There had to be some major celebrity staying inside. He ambled up to a woman in a blue coat who looked very unhappy to be way in the back of the crowd. Ralph smiled at her, doing his best to look every inch the amiable drunk.

  "What's going on?"

  "I'm not going to be able to see."

  "What's there to see?"

  The woman in the blue coat looked at him as though he were crazy. " 'Wildest Dreams.' "

  "Huh?"

  "The contestants are coming out, and I ain't going to see them."

  "No shit."

  "Would you help me get through?"

  "Jesus, I don't know."

  Ralph took a closer look at the crowd. They weren't in front of the main entrance to the hotel; police saw-horses and squads of uniformed officers held them back on the sidewalk at either side, so they wouldn't get in the way of the guests coming in and out. The cops controlling the crowd seemed to be treating the whole event as fairly routine, although Ralph did notice that there was a large, black, unmarked armored truck of the kind used by the CRAC squad parked across the street.

  "The contestants for 'Wildest Dreams' stay here?"

  "Don't you know nothing?"

  Ralph blinked. "Apparently not."

  "So will you help me through to the front?"

  Ralph looked at the woman for the first time. She wasn't really bad-looking in a washed-out kind of way. She really could be quite attractive if one could get past the shabby nylon utility coat. He reminded himself that he was no raving prize. "Maybe we could ease ourselves a little closer. How soon do the contestants come out?"

  "It's only the Dreamroad contestants. Bobby Priest himself is with them sometimes."

  Ralph was a little bemused. There was a definite light of obsession in the woman's eyes. Even the obsessed could be grateful after the fact. "How soon do they come out?"

  "Any minute."

  Ralph put a protective arm around her and started easing them deeper into the crowd. The "Wildest Dreams" fans didn't part easily, and Ralph had to use some degree of applied pressure. He received a few threats and curses for his pains. All of the "Wildest Dreams" fans seemed to be equally desperate and equally obsessed. How could anyone get that way about a goddamned game show? There was a definite tension in the crowd, but there was also a lonely, unhappy feeling, as well. These people seemed to take little pleasure in what they were doing. Ralph knew drunks like that. He and the woman in the blue coat did make some progress, though, and came within four layers of the front before they were stopped by the pressure of bodies. He still had his arm around the woman's shoulders, and since she didn't ask him to take it away, he left it there.

  There was shouting at the front rows. The woman in the blue coat stiffened.

  "They're coming! They're coming!"

  She started bouncing up and down, making small squeaking noises. Ralph realized that it was the same thing that contestants did when they won big on the greed shows like "Hundred Thousand Giveaway." And she wasn't the only one. The whole crowd was pushing and jumping. The situation suddenly felt very unstable, and Ralph realized that it was about the last place in the world that a drunk needed to be. He had to fight for his footing as the crowd surged sideways. He still had his arm around her and couldn't get it free. The whole mob was pressing forward as though some very, very stupid collective mind was brutishly determined to push its way through the police lines. Ralph stumbled again. He let go of the woman. There was chaos up ahead. People were screaming. It was hard to tell if it was hysteria or pain. One of the barriers seemed to have collapsed, and people had gone down with it. There were people on the sidewalk. They were being trampled. He almost lost his footing as he stumbled into one of the ones who had fallen. He went down himself a moment later, but was able to struggle up again. The two people who went down in front of him and cushioned his fall were not so lucky. He started pushing backward against the tide, trying to ease over to the wall of the hotel. At least he would have his back to something. He had to get out of this bloody insanity.

  THE MEETING IN THE PENTHOUSE boardroom of Combined Media continued. It seemed destined to go on all night. It had moved into its second phase. Deutsch was cross-questioning each department head in turn, dragging out corporate secrets that they never would have willingly revealed to other departments. Covert glances were being exchanged, and there was real fear in the room. Either something earth-shaking was coming, or Deutsch had gone stone mad. Right at that moment it was the turn of Charlotte Estes, the head of Research. Deutsch stood behind her, lightly resting his hands on the back of her chair.

  "So, Charlotte, to clarify, according to your research, there would appear to be no way to predict which clients will succumb to premature death syndrome. You're saying that some will die after a couple of years, while others will last out their full natural span."

  Estes shook her head. "There's really no such thing as a natural span in the IE dreamstate. Of the twenty test subjects that we have been monitoring since the start of public availability, one died after seven months. Three more went in the third year, and a fourth one a year later. One died four months ago, and two more went in the last three weeks. The others are still alive, but they show distinct signs of premature aging. I see no chance of them surviving beyond another five years."

  Gorges Gomez leaned forward in his chair. "You mean you knew about the probability of premature death all along?"

  "We suspected it."

  "And no one was warned?"

  Deutsch took over. "What would you have had us do, Gorges? Shut down the entire service and go into liquidation?"

  Gomez shook his head. "No, but…"

  Madison Renfield half raised a hand. "Perhaps I might assist here."

  Deutsch smiled. "The floor is yours, Madison."

  "We in Public Relations have done a little research of our own on the matter of PDS."

  Gomez muttered under his breath. "When the shit turns nasty, call it by its initials."

  Deutsch fixed him with a cold stare. "You have something to add, Gorges?"

  Gomez shook his head sadly. "No, Kingsley, not a thing."

  Deutsch turned to Renfield. "Please go on."

  "Well, to boil it down to basics, all the research that we've done on lifespan clients seems to demonstrate that, once they've entered the program, no one on the outside gives a damn about them. As far as the world is concerned, they've gone down a one-way street and aren't coming back. Beneath this there is also a measurable level of resentment. The lifespan client is perceived to have committed an act of terminal selfishness, and what happens to them from there on in is strictly their own problem."

  Throughout the meeting, David Patel of Legal had been making periodic notes on a yellow pad. Now he looked up questioningly. "Was this attitude research conducted only in terms of the public at large, or was there a specific survey of friends and families of those who became lifespan clients?"

  Renfield smiled. He was ahead of that question. "It combined both. We discovered that among the families of longtimers, there was frequently a good deal of relief mingled with the resentment. All too often they were getting rid of a relative who was proving to be a liability of one kind or another."

  Edouard Hayes frowned. "The fact that the stiff's family didn't like him isn't going to stop them bringing a lawsuit for some hundred million or so if he drops dead in our care."

  Patel looked at Hayes as though he was stating the childishly obvious. "The original charter covers us against this kind of eventuality. The lifespan client basically renounces most of his or her civil rights when they enter the program. As far as the law is concerned, they are legally dead. The
ir assets are held in trust or disposed of just as in the event of death, and they have no estate as such on which claims can be made. Our only legal responsibility is to see that the clients don't cause harm to the living. It would take an act of Congress to change our position."

  Charlotte Estes looked up with a grin. "I take it we have nothing to fear from Congress."

  Deutsch also smiled. "We have made a considerable investment over the years to insure that we have nothing to fear from Congress."

  He walked back to the head of the table.

  "While we are indulging in this almost Maoist exercise in confession and self-criticism, there is something that I should perhaps bring out into the light. A number of you seem to be concerned that-how did you put it, Edouard?-'a clandestine group within the corporation' was attempting to revive death experience research. I see that I must look to my own security."

  Edouard Hayes stared at Deutsch openmouthed. "Your security, Kingsley?"

  "I authorized the monitoring of that execution down in Mississippi."

  There were ten stunned faces around the conference table. Since the failure of the initial research, the monitoring of an actual death, on Deutsch's specific personal instructions, had been the most taboo act in all of Combined Media. That Deutsch himself should have secretly authorized such a thing was unthinkable.

  "You look surprised. Did you think that, just because Jonas went insane, the whole subject of humanity's greatest mystery should be shelved forever? I waited until I was confident that the dust had settled sufficiently and then I made my move. It is, after all, the ultimate curiosity. Did you really think that I would resist it?"

  It was Charlotte Estes who asked the obvious question. "Have you experienced the recording?"

  Deutsch shook his head. "Not yet. I have never seen myself as a human guinea pig. There is another set of convicts who are, as we speak, being exposed to the experience. If no harmful effects are revealed, I will experience the recording myself. After that, I will decide on our next move."