Sneak Preview

by Robert Bloch

  Mirror, mirror on the wall—who is the fairest of them all? Not you, old boy.

  Not you, with the puffiness under the eyes, the scar-tissue on either temple. How long ago was that face-job? Eight years, almost nine. Damned good one, too, and it really made a difference then. But since that time the hairline had receded, and now the scars showed livid on the balding scalp. The hair itself was dark; even the lights couldn’t betray the secret of the color-rinse. But he knew it was grey, and his face was grey too.

  He thought of the things the mirror didn’t show—the concealed corset, the shameful secret of the tensile truss gripping his groin. No wonder his face was grey, he was an old man.

  But that was the wrong image. And here was Pete, ready to give him the right image—the right image for the audience waiting out there. The image of Our Hero, courtesy of Pete, his assistants, and Max Factor Number Five.

  Pete adjusted the cloth around his neck and went to work. No conversation, no nonsense; he knew better than to talk now. How long had Pete been with him—did he come before or after the face-job? It didn’t matter; he had everything down pat. Pat the base on, pat the color, pat the powder, pat the spirit gum, pat the wings of hair into place that conceal the scar tissue and the obscene nakedness of the skull. Then the artful combing over the growing bald spot in back, the skillful sweep of the eyebrow pencil and the delicate dab of mascara. In twenty short minutes he took away the tell-tale traces of twenty long years. And all without a word.

  He had other words to think about—his own words. The writers’ words, really, but to the millions listening and viewing the words were his own, just as this youthful, vigorous face was his own. Both belonged to his image. Pete could deliver the face, but he had to deliver the words himself, and every new performance was an old nightmare.

  If you muffed a line there was always the script, and if you flubbed the script there was the teleprompter—but it showed, it always showed, and nobody could cover your mistakes with makeup, there were other factors involved besides Max.

  The part called for conviction. Sincerity. A basic, underlying warmth, and above all, strength. Blowing a line destroyed the image. And ad-libs were out. That’s why he always studied so carefully before he faced the cameras.

  And that’s why he sweated. The real reason. The script was what made him the star, and he couldn’t forget it. Clothes make the man, but all the corsets and trusses and hairpieces and mascara in the world couldn’t save him if he didn’t sell the script. The moving eyebrow pencil moves on—

  Omar Khayyam, wasn’t it? A writer. Like the writers who worked on his scripts. Everybody was always bleeding about the poor writers. Faceless, anonymous boys in the back room who came up with all the goodies but never got the credit. And that, of course, was just a crock.

  If you’re faceless you don’t have to put on the lousy makeup. If you’re anonymous nobody expects you to live up to an impossible image. You can take the cash and let the credit go.

  Wasn’t that Omar Khayyam too? In the end the writers even had the last word. And in the beginning was the Word—

  To hell with it. The only words that mattered now were the ones he was going to sell. That’s the star’s job: to sell the words. Without the star, there’s no show. And without the show, there’s no star any more.

  Flop-sweat. That’s what they used to call it in the old vaudeville days. He’d never been in vaudeville, the two-a-day was way before his time, but he knew what the term meant. We bombed in Philadelphia. Okay, so you bombed in Philly and you laid an egg in Pittsburgh and they gave you the bird in Chicago. Next week you played somewhere else and what did it matter? There was always another town, another audience, another chance.

  But not here. Not now. This was the real Big Time. You were playing the Palace, all the Palaces all over the country, to all the audiences at once. Thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred million people. The star act, next to closing, and if you gave them a song-and-dance, they’d better buy it. Which meant you had to sell. They made you up, they built you up, but then it was up to you. The whole show rested on your shoulders.

  Pete was removing the cloth from his shoulders now, and he took a look at himself in the mirror. A good look, because he looked good. The image was there; the old image, the young image. And he had the script; he had the words in his hand; all he had to do was put them in his mouth and let them come out and wait for the laughs and the applause.

  Somebody stuck his head in the door and said, “Three minutes,” so he stood up and smoothed his collar and went down the hall to the studio and hit the mark under the lights and the director made a few last-minute suggestions about positioning the cameras and they were ready to roll. But it was all automatic now, he wasn’t thinking about the mechanics.

  He was thinking about his image and about his responsibility as the star of the show and about selling the script, and he knew now that he could do it because he was a pro, a real pro, and that’s all that mattered. Being a pro, in the business. There was no sweat any more; like the pro he was, he merely stood and waited to go on. And here it came—the music, the fanfare, and then the announcer’s voice on a filter-mike, giving him his cue:

  “Ladies and gentlemen—the President of the United States—”

  CHAPTER 3

  It was difficult not to like Wanda. She was every bit as blond and beautiful as Zank had claimed.

  Graham told her so, the very first night in his apartment.

  “I can’t understand why you aren’t in emotion pictures,” he confessed.

  “As a Bem?” She smiled up at him.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I like this better.”

  Graham frowned. “Really? All these strange men, week after week—”

  “Don’t be so medieval, darling. There’s nothing strange about men, actually. Of course you’re different.”

  Now it was Graham’s turn to smile. “Do they teach you what to say in school?”

  “They taught me everything in school. It might interest you to know I have my Mistress’s Degree in Erotology. Want to see my diploma?”

  “Quite unnecessary. I’m well satisfied with your credentials.”

  “Then why are you sitting so far away from me?” the girl demanded. “Did I do something wrong? Didn’t you you like the dinner I ordered?”

  “Certainly. You order dinner beautifully.” Graham regarded her gravely. “You’re perfect, all anyone could reasonably ask for. But maybe I’m not the reasonable type.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say so? Do you want to beat me? Are you a fetichist? Would you like to—”

  “No, nothing of the sort. It’s just that I think I’d rather talk.”

  “Talk?” Wanda’s eyes flickered momentarily, then opened wider. “Have you had a checkup lately?”

  Graham shook his head. “Zank asked me that, this afternoon. Everybody asks, the moment they recognize a departure from the standard response-patterns. Why?”

  “Well, isn’t that what checkups are for, lover? I mean, we can depend on the Psychos to help us adjust.”

  “Bomb the Psychos!”

  Wanda’s mouth was an oval of astonishment.

  “Don’t look shocked,” Graham said. “You forget that I’m a Talent. I’ve only been oriented, not conditioned. To me a Psycho is just another man, not a Father-Image.”

  “But surely you don’t question the benefits of adjustment?”

  “Of course I do. That’s part of a Talent’s job—to question. We’re brought up that way. Everybody else gets hypnotherapy from birth, but not the Talents. We’re not supposed to have any checks on creative imagination. We’re allowed to doubt if we want to.”

  “What is there to doubt?”

  Graham sighed. “You’ve been conditioned, you wouldn’t understand. It’s just that I see things differently.”

  “For instance?”

  The young man stared at her. “Well, you, for example. I sit here looking at you across the
room and where most men would see something perfectly normal—a beautiful naked girl wearing glasses—I don’t have the usual response. I keep wondering why you don’t take the glasses off, or at least wear contact lenses.”

  “Contact lenses?”

  “I learned about them on the microfilms. They were used in the past. Don’t be afraid—Talents are encouraged to scan, you know.”

  “But everybody wears glasses, always. Everybody is myopic.”

  “Perhaps. The Psychos claim that’s so, and nobody has ever questioned it, any more than they question the need for universal infant-appendectomy. But I wonder if it isn’t all part of the pattern of making everyone look alike, dress alike, think alike. Giving everybody his little scar, his little ocular badge. Conditioning the child to seeking security from the Psychos. Once you accept the knife, accept the visual aid, you’re well on the way to accepting anything they impose on you. You don’t question what the Psychos do and you don’t question what you see through the glasses they’ve given you to wear.”

  “You sound disturbed.”

  “I am disturbed.” Graham laughed. “That’s why Zank gave me this Fornivacation, remember?”

  “Yes. And you’re not going to spend it sitting in a posture-chair discussing glasses, either.” Wanda rose and went over to the accommodation-shelf. She found her kit, fumbled in it, then turned and extended a pill.

  “Here, take this,” she commanded.

  “What is it?”

  “Libidose, of course.”

  “But I don’t want—”

  She looked at him, genuine pleading in her eyes. He forced a smile as he gazed down at her. “Guess I’m thoughtless to upset you like this.” He reached for the pill, then hesitated. “If I swallow this, will you do something for me?”

  “Anything.”

  “Will you take off your glasses?”

  Wanda nodded and her hand moved to her eyes. “Better?”

  “Much better.”

  “But wait—you didn’t take your pill.”

  “Now I don’t need a pill.”

  There was no more talk of pills, or anything else, the remainder of the evening. And the next day Graham was quiet and obliging. After the breakfast order came up on the dispenser they took the vator down to the level beneath the hilltop and Graham piloted his copter to the beach area.

  Here they undressed and for a few hours relaxed in the filtered water pumped from the subterranea of what had once been the ocean’s floor—before the Dome’s installation.

  Far out on the horizon, beyond the rounded transparency of the Dome, they could see the actual ocean, with its tumbling waves. If they listened closely they could almost hear the roar of the grey fury.

  “Ever been out of the Dome?” Graham asked.

  “Of course. It’s my job to travel.”

  “I mean, on your own.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Wanda’s eyes narrowed. “Have you?”

  Graham shook his head. “No, but I’ve often wondered. What would it be like, for example, to take an old-fashioned boat and go sailing off on that ocean out there?”

  “I’ve sailed,” Wanda confessed. “Just in a jetsub, of course. I went out on a Fornivacation with a very important man, to the Island.”

  “What Island?”

  “Up north a ways. You can see it on a clear day—Catatonia Island. It’s a Psycho resort, off Longbeach.”

  “But that’s Domed too, I suppose?”

  “Certainly. Isn’t everyplace?”

  “Not from what I’ve heard. There can’t be more than three thousand Domes in the entire continent. That leaves millions of square miles open all over the world. What would it be like to get out there, breathe unfiltered air, feel unfiltered sunlight?”

  “Are you forgetting the radioactivity?” Wanda asked.

  “How could I forget it? Don’t we get an Official Geiger Count every day?”

  “They say in another generation it may be safe to abandon the Domes.”

  “They say.” Graham stood up, brushing the sand from his body. “They say, and they report, and we take their word for it. But I’ve scanned plenty of radiation data. And it’s my belief we could open the Domes right now. Next time you jet off on a trip, take a look at the countryside before you’re launched. It looks green and clean enough to me. My father told me that years ago.”

  “Your father!” Wanda rose and put her hand on his shoulder. “You knew him?”

  “Of course. Didn’t I say we Talents had a different kind of training? He lived with me until he was Socially Secured, four years ago. I was never put in a Big Family Unit like the rest of you.”

  He gestured and his movement indicated the figures on the beach area around them—the dozens of lolling and reclining figures, individual in their nudity but identical in their eyeglass badges, their close-cropped hair, their youthfulness.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Graham said.

  Wanda shrugged, nodded, rose. They walked toward the copter.

  “Is your father the one who gave you all these ideas?” she asked.

  “Perhaps. He was a great Talent, Wanda. Perhaps the greatest here on the Coast. Ever hear of Lewis?”

  “Lewis? The one who worked with the Technos to perfect the double screen for solid-view illusion?”

  Graham raised an eyebrow. “Where did you pick that up?”

  “Oh, I spent a week with a high-ranking Techno once, up near Sanfran. He told me all about it. So Lewis was your father?”

  “Was and is. I still hear from him on the vox-box hookup once a week.”

  “Do you ever talk to him about your opinions?”

  “I used to.” Graham ushered Wanda into the copter, set the controls, and ascended to speedzone. “But he’s changed since he went South. He never should have been Socially Secured in the first place. They promised to reclassify him as a Techno because of his work on the double screen. That’s what he wanted. Then something happened, I don’t know what, and he wouldn’t tell me. He got his Greetings and was assigned to a place called Gulfport.”

  “That’s one of the best, I hear. Beautiful country down there,” Wanda murmured.

  “Too beautiful, maybe. It did something to him. He doesn’t sound like the same man. Whenever I say something, he tells me to see Warner—that’s the Psycho Supervisor for our Talent Section, in Space Opera.”

  “Good man.”

  “You know about him, too?”

  “Heard of him.”

  Graham glanced at her as they landed at the foot of the hill. They took the vator up into the building. “But why are you so interested in my problems, all of a sudden?”

  “Because I’m interested in you.”

  “That’s very flattering.” Graham grinned. As they entered his apartment Wanda took his hand and guided him across the living room.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “In there.”

  Graham shook his head and drew back.

  “What’s the matter?” Wanda asked. “Another mood?”

  “I feel like thinking.”

  Wanda pouted. “Thinking! Talking! What you need is some relaxation.” She brightened. “Maybe we ought to go out tonight. There’s something special at the Playdium. Middleweight championship slashing match. Sounds exciting.”

  “I never got any euphoria out of watching two people cut each other up with sabres.”

  “How about some culture, then? The symph’s in town. With that new Talent, Kovac. They’re playing his Psychiatric Suite and the Melancholia and Fugue.”

  “Quit trying to entertain me, Wanda. I’m worried.”

  “What about?”

  “I got a funny idea, back there on the beach.” He walked across the room and opened the wall service-slot. “I’m going to see if I can clear an emergency vox-box hookup with my father.”

  “What on earth for?”

  Graham paused. “I’m not sure if I ought to talk to you about these things.”
r />   “Please, go on. I want to hear. I’m interested.”

  “Why?”

  “You ought to know the answer to that, after last night.”

  “You mean you’re—serious?”

  “I took off my glasses for you, didn’t I?” The girl moved close to him. “Tell me. Why do you want to call your father?”

  He gazed down at her and there was pain in his eyes, and speculation. “It just occurred to me there might be an explanation of why he sounds different. Maybe they didn’t leave him alone when he got down there. Maybe the Psychos did a laundry job on him. Even a prefrontal or a topectomy?”

  “But that’s absurd!”

  “Is it? Look, Wanda, I seldom get outside or meet anyone except Talents like myself. I don’t think ordinary workers are permitted anything like these weekly vox-box hookups—why should they, when their parents mean nothing to them anyway? But here in this building, there are plenty of other Talents, all with the same arrangement. Once a week they’re permitted to call their fathers or their mothers in the South.

  I ve never really thought about it before, but now that the idea hits me, I remember remarks my Talent friends have made, about their parents sounding different to them. And I remember some of those parents—my father’s friends—before they were Socially Secured in the South. A lot of them seemed to share his views, talk the way he did. And yet now the reports I get of their conversations are just like mine. Everyone is happy, everyone is contented, everyone is adjusted.”

  “Why not?” Wanda asked. “They’re Socially Secured. No more problems, just peace and plenty. Who wouldn’t relax?”

  “My father wouldn’t. He faced his problems, taught me to face mine. He’d never urge me to conform this way. I think he’s been worked over, and I intend to find out why.”

  Wanda tossed her head. “You’re wrong, Graham. It does not make sense.”

  “Nothing makes sense lately. But there must be a reason. Maybe everybody gets a laundry-job when they’re Socially Secured, just to keep them in line. Maybe my father was double-crossed, sent South just to get him out of the way. All his talk about giving up the Domes, abandoning hypnotherapy conditioning for everyone—it might have been considered dangerous. But he wasn’t subversive, he just believed in freedom for the individual.” Graham nodded to himself. “I’m going to arrange this call and ask some straight questions, try to get some straight answers. For that matter, I think I’ll pass the word along to some of my friends here in the building. Carson, Davis, Loeb. Maybe they can do the same thing when they call. We could pool our information, figure things out.”