II
New York, New York. What a wonderful town! All my fretful annoyances were submerged, even the one about why Mitzi cut me out of the gravy train. Ten years didn’t seem to have changed the tall buildings that disappeared into the gray, flaky air. The cold, gray, flaky air. It had gone winter again; there were patches of dirty snow in corners, and an occasional consumer furtively scooping them up to take home to avoid the freshwater tax. After Venus, it was heaven! I gawked like a Wichita tourist at the Big Apple. I walked liked one, too, bumping into scurrying pedestrians, and things worse than pedestrians. My traffic skills were gone. After the years on Venus I just wasn’t used to civilized ways. There was a twelve-pusher pedibus here, three cabs competing for one gap in the flow there, pedestrians leaping desperately between the vehicles all over—the streets were jammed, the sidewalks were packed, every building pumped a few hundred more people in and out as I passed—oh, it was marvelous! For me, I mean. For the people I was bumping into or tripped or made dodge around me, it might not have been so delightful, I suppose. I didn’t care! They yelled after me, and I don’t doubt what they yelled were insults, but I was floating in sooty, choky, chilly bliss. Advertising slogans flickered in liquid-crystal display on every wall, the newest ones bright as sunrise, the older ones muddied and finally buried by graffiti. Samplers stood along the curbs to pass out free hits of Glee-Smoke and Coffiest, and discount coupons for a thousand products. There were hologram images in the smoggy air of miraculous kitchen appliances and fantastically exotic three-day tours, and sales jingles ringing from everywhere—I was home. I loved it! But it was, admittedly, a little difficult to make my way through the streets, and when I saw a miraculously clear stretch of sidewalk I took it.
I wondered at the time why the elderly man I pushed aside getting to the sidewalk gave me such a strange look. “Watch it, buster!” he called. He was waving at a signpost, but of course it was graffiti-covered. I wasn’t in a mood to worry about some minor civil ordinance. I walked past—
And WOWP a blast of sound shook my skull and FLOOP a great supernova flare of light burned my eyes, and I went staggering and reeling as tiny, tiny elf voices shouted like needles in my ears Mokie-Koke, Mokie-Koke, MokieMokieMokie-Koke! And went on doing it, with variations, for what seemed like a hundred years or more. Stenches smote my nose. Subsonic shivers shook my body. And— a couple of centuries later—while my ears were still ringing and my eyes still stinging with that awful blast of sound and light, I picked myself up from where I lay sprawled on the ground.
“I warned ya,” yelled the little old man from a safe distance.
It hadn’t been centuries at all. He was still standing there, still with the same peculiar expression—half-eagerness, half-pity. “I warned ya! Ya wooden listen, but I warned ya!”
He was still waving at the signpost, so I staggered closer and blearily managed to decipher the legend under the graffiti:
Warning!
COMMERCIAL ZONE
Enter at Own Risk
Evidently there had been some changes while I was away, after all. The man reached cautiously past the sign and tugged me away. He wasn’t all that old, I realized; mostly he was used. “What’s a ‘Mokie-Koke’?” I asked.
He said promptly, “Mokie-Koke is a refreshing, taste-tingling blend of the finest chocolate-type flavoring, synthetic coffee extract and selected cocaine analogues. You want some?” I did. “You got money on you?” I had —a little, anyway—the change left over from the cash dispenser I’d finally located. “Would you tip me one if I showed you where to score some?” he wheedled.
Well, who needed him for that? But I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the woebegone little guy, so I let him lead me around the corner. There was a vending machine, just like all the other Mokie-Koke machines I’d been seeing all along, on the Moon, in the spaceport, along the city streets. “Don’t fool with the singles,” he advised anxiously. “Go for the six-pack, okay?” And when I gave him the first bottle out of the batch he pulled the tab and raised it to his lips and swigged it down where he stood. Then he exhaled loudly. “Name’s Ernie, mister,” he said. “Welcome to the club!”
I had been drinking my own Mokie-Koke curiously. It seemed pleasant enough, but nothing special, so that I wondered what the fuss was all about. “What club are you talking about?” I asked, opening another bottle out of curiosity.
“You been campbelled. You shoulda listened,” he said virtuously, “but, say, long as you didn’t, you mind if I walk along with you wherever you’re going?”
Poor old guy! I felt so sorry for him that I split the six-pack as we headed for the address the Agency had given me. Three shots apiece. He thanked me with tears in his eyes but, all the same, out of the second six-pack I only gave him one.
The Agency had done well by me. When we got to my new home I shook Ernie off and hurried in. It was a new sea-condo just towed in from the Persian Gulf—former oil tanker—nearly a hundred square feet of floor space with kitchen privileges just for me, and it was about as convenient to the Agency building as you could hope, moored right off Kip’s Bay, only three ships out into the river.
Of course, the bad side was what it cost. All the savings I’d accumulated on Venus went to the down payment, and I had to sign a mortgage for three years’ pay. But that wasn’t so bad. I’d served the Agency well on Venus. There was little doubt in my mind that I was due for a raise—not only a raise, but a promotion—not only a promotion, but maybe a corner office! Altogether I was well satisfied with the world (not counting a couple little questions that nagged at my mind, like that damned lawsuit I hadn’t been invited to join) as I relished a Mokie-Koke and gazed around my new domain.
But to work! There was so much to do! Until they located my bags, if that ever happened, I needed clothes and food and all the other necessities of life. So I spent the rest of the day shopping and lugging packages back to the sea-condo, and by dinner time I was just about settled in. Picture of G. Washington Hill over the foldaway bed. Picture of Fowler Schocken on the hideaway bureau. Clothes in one place, toilet stuff in my personal locked cabinet in the bath—it took all day, and it was tiring, too, because the heat was on full blast in my room and there didn’t seem to be any way to turn it off. I had a Moke and sat down to think it over, enjoying the spaciousness and the quiet luxury. There was a special condo-only band on the vid, and I watched it reel off the many attractions available to us lucky tenants. The condo had its own pool, with seating for six at a time, and a driving range. I made a note to sign up for that as soon as I got my own cue. The future looked bright. I dialed back to the pool—gallons and gallons of sparkling pure water, nearly armpit deep—and sentimental thoughts began to steal into my mind; me and Mitzi side by side in the pool … me and Mitzi sharing the big foldout bed … me and Mitzi — But even if Mitzi decided after all to share my life, with six megabucks of her own to throw around she’d probably want to share it in some fancier place than even the sea-condo …
Well, rework that daydream. Leave Mitzi out for a minute: the future was still bright. Even though I’d signed up for heavy money to get the condo, I should still have spare purchasing power. A new car? Why not? And which kind of car—a direct-drive model where you kneel one leg on the seat and push with the other, or some fancy geared-up make-out wagon?
It was getting very hot. I tried again to turn off the heat, and failed again.
I found myself drinking Mokes one after another. And, actually, for a moment I thought seriously about pulling out the bed and getting a good night’s sleep.
Tired or not, I couldn’t spend my first night home that way! It called for a celebration.
A celebration called for somebody to celebrate with. Mitzi? But when I called Agency personnel they didn’t have a home number for her yet, and she had already left the office. And all the other dates I could think of were either years stale, or millions of miles away. I didn’t even know which were the in places to celebrate in any more
!
That part, anyway, could be handled. I had a neat Omni-V console that came along with the apartment, two hundred and forty channels. I ran through the selector—housewares commercials, florists’ commercials, outerwear commercials (male), outerwear commercials (female), news, restaurant commercials—yes, that was the channel I wanted. I picked a nice place only two blocks from the sea-condo, and it was all that I’d wanted. Because I had made a reservation I was only kept an hour or so in the bar, drinking gin-and-Mokes and chatting up my neighbors; the dinner was the best of brand-name soya cutlets and reconstituted mashed veggies; there was brandy with the coffee, and two waiters dancing attendance to unwrap my portions and pull the tabs on my drinks. There was one little funny thing. When the check came I looked at it quickly, then more slowly, then called the waiter over again. “What’s this?” I said, pointing at the column of printouts that said,
Mokie-Koke, $2.75
Mokie-Koke, $2.75
Mokie-Koke, $2.75
Mokie-Koke, $2.75
“They’re Mokie-Kokes, sir,” he explained, “a refreshing, taste-tingling blend of the finest chocolate-type—”
“I know what a Mokie-Koke is,” I interrupted. “I just don’t remember ordering any.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said, all deference. “Actually you did. I’ll play back the voice tape if you like.”
“Never mind the voice tape,” I said. “I don’t want them now. I’ll just go.”
He looked shocked. “But, sir—you’ve already drunk them!”
Nine A.M. Bright and early. I paid off my pedi-cab, pulled the soot-extractor plugs out of my nostrils and strutted into the main lobby of the huge Taunton, Gatchweiler and Schocken Agency Tower.
We get older and we get cynical, but after the years of absence there was almost an epiphany of feeling that shook me as I entered. Imagine two thousand years ago entering the court of Augustus Caesar, and knowing that here, in this place, the affairs of the entire world had their control center and inspiration. With the Agency, the same. True, there were other agencies—but it was a bigger world, too! Here was where Power was. The whole vast building was dedicated to one sublime mission: the betterment of mankind through the inspiration to buy. More than eighteen thousand people worked in that building. Copysmiths and apprentice word-jugglers; media specialists who could sound a commercial out of the ambient air or print a message on your eyeball; product researchers dreaming up, every day, new and more sellable drinks, foods, gadgets, vices, possessions of all sorts; artists; musicians; actors; directors; space buyers and time buyers—the list went on indefinitely—and above them all, on the fortieth floor and higher, there was Executive Country where the geniuses who directed it all brooded and conceived their godlike plans. Oh, sure. I joked about the civilizing mission of us who dedicated our lives to advertising— but under the joking was the same real reverence and commitment that I’d felt as a cub scout in the Junior Copywriters, going after my first merit badges and just then beginning to perceive where my life could lead …
Well. Anyway. There I was, in the heart of the universe. There was one funny thing. I had remembered it as vast and vaulted. Vaulted it was—but vast? Actually it seemed tinier, and more crowded, than the Russian Hills tram station; so those years on Venus had corrupted my sensibilities. The people even looked shabbier, and the guard at the weapons detector gave me a surly and suspicious look as I approached.
No problem there. I simply put my wrist into the scanner, and the data store recognized my Social Security number at once, even though it had been ten years since its last use. “Oh,” said the guard, studying my stats as the recognition light flashed green, “you’re Mr. Tarb. Nice to see you back!” There was a false implication there, of course. From the look of her she’d still been in high school last time I entered the Agency building, but her heart was in the right place. I gave her bottom a friendly pat and swaggered toward the lift.
And the first person I saw on forty-five as I let go of the handbar was Mitzi Ku.
I’d had twenty-four hours to get over resentment at that lawsuit deal. It hadn’t been enough, really, but at least the sharp edges of jealousy had blunted a bit, and she really looked good. Not perfect. Although she was out of her bandages, that funny blurring around the eyes and mouth told you she was wearing plastiflesh where healing had not quite finished. But she was smiling at me tentatively as she said hello. “Mitzi,” I said, the words popping out of my mouth unexpectedly —I had not known I had been thinking them —“shouldn’t I sue the tram people, too?”
She looked embarrassed. What she would have said I don’t know, because from behind her Val Dambois popped out. “Too late, Tarb,” he said. I didn’t mind the words. I minded the contemptuous tone, and the grin. “Statute of limitations, you know? Like I told you, you missed the boat. Come on, Mitzi, we can’t keep the Old Man waiting—”
The morning was one shock after another; the Old Man was who I was going to see. Mitzi allowed Dambois to take her arm, but she hung back to peer at me. “Are you all right, Tenny?” she asked.
“I’m fine—” Well, I was, mostly, not counting a slightly frayed ego. “I’m a little thirsty, maybe, because it’s so hot in here. Do you happen to know if there’s a Mokie-Koke vending machine on this floor?”
Dambois gave me a poisonous look. “Some jokes,” he gritted, “are in lousy taste.”
I watched him flounce off, dragging Mitzi after him into the Old Man’s sanctum. I sat down to wait, trying to look as though I had simply decided to rest my feet there for a moment.
The moment turned out to be well past an hour.
Of course, nobody thought anything of that. Over in her own corner of the cell the Old Man’s sec3 kept busy with her communicator and her data screen, glancing up to smile at me now and then the way she was paid to do. People who wait only an hour to see the Old Man generally gave thanks for their blessings, since most people never got to see him at all. Old Man Gatchweiler was a legend in his own time, poor boy, consumer stock, who rose out of obscure origins to pull off so grand a scam that it was still whispered about in the Executive Country bars. Two of the grandest old-line Agencies had wrecked themselves in flaming scandals, old B. J. Taunton nailed for Contract Breach, Fowler Schocken dead and his Agency in ruins. Their Agencies carried on a spectral existence as shells, written off forever by the wiseacres. Then Horatio Gatchweiler appeared out of nowhere to swallow the wreckage and turn it into T., G. & S. No one wrote Taunton, Gatchweiler and Schocken off! We were tops in Sales and Service. Our clients led the charts in Sales, and as to Service, well, no thousand-dollar-a-hit stallion ever serviced his mares as thoroughly as we serviced the consumers. A name to conjure with, Horatio Gatchweiler! It was almost literally a name to conjure with, for it was like the unspeakable name of God. No one ever spoke it. Behind his back he was the “Old Man,” to his face nothing but “sir.”
So sitting in his tiny sec3‘s anteroom while I pretended to study the Advertising Age hourlies in the tabletop screen was nothing new for me. It was even an honor. At least, it would have been except for the sulky, nagging annoyance at the fact that he had given Mitzi and Val Dambois precedence.
When at last the Old Man’s sec3 turned me over to the sec2, who led me to the secretary, who admitted me to his own private office, he did try to make me welcome. He didn’t stand up or anything, but, “Come right in, Farb!” he boomed jovially from his chair. “Good to see you back, boy!”
I had almost forgotten how magnificent his place was—two windows! Of course, both had the shades drawn; you can’t take chances on somebody bouncing a pencil-beam off the glass to pick up the vibrations of secret talks inside. “That’s Tarb, sir,” I offered.
“Of course it is! And you’re back from a tour on Venus—good work. Of course,” he added, peering up at me slyly, “it wasn’t all good, was it? There’s a little note on your personnel file that you probably didn’t bribe anybody to put there—”
“
I can explain about that Agency party, sir—”
“Of course you can! And it won’t stand in your way. You young people who volunteer for a tour on Venus deserve well of us—nobody expects you to stand that kind of life without a little, uh, strain.” He leaned back dreamily. “I don’t know if you know this, Farb,” he said to the ceiling, “but I was on Venus myself once, long ago. Didn’t stay there. I won their lottery, you know.”
I was startled. “Lottery? I had no idea the Veenies ever ran a lottery. It seems so out of character for them.”
“Never did again,” he guffawed, “since a huck won the first one! They gave up the idea right after that—besides declaring me persona non grata, so I got hustled right back here!” He chuckled for several seconds at the fecklessness of the Veenies. “Of course,” he said, sobering, “I kept my skills up while I was on Venus.” From the way he peered at me I knew it was a question.
I had the right answer, too. “So did I, sir,” I said eagerly. “Every chance I got! All the time! For instance—well, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the inside of what the Veenies call a grocery store—”
“Seen a hundred of them, boy,” he boomed jovially.
“Well, then you know how incompetent they are. Signs like, ‘These tomatoes are all right if you’re going to eat them today, otherwise they’ll spoil,’ and ‘Prepared mixes cost twice what making the dish from basic ingredients would’—things like that.”
He laughed out loud, and wiped his eyes. “Haven’t changed a bit, I guess,” he said.
“No, sir. Well, I’d go through the store and then come back to the Embassy and write real copy for them. You know? Like for the tomatoes, ‘Luscious ripe flavor-full at the peak of perfection’ or ‘Save! Save! Save precious time with these chef-prepared ready-to-cook masterpieces!’ That sort of thing. And then I’d review all the latest Earth commercials for the staff—at least two hour-long pep meetings every week—and we’d have contests to see who could come up with better original variations on the basic sales themes—”