And I’m, Malcolm thought, over here going, like, you’re a twit.
Malcolm picked up the fine goblet — no one would ever have called it simply a glass — and sipped some water. “Yes, Jimmy, I am indeed just an ordinary guy. I was merely lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time when the spirit of Lukas was searching space and time for a mind to pour his wisdom into.”
“Wow,” Jimmy said.
Someone else wrote this guy’s letter for him, Malcolm decided. Some secretary he pays a pittance to.
“Yes,” Malcolm said reminiscently, “when Lukas first contacted me, up there on that mountaintop, well, Jimmy, I tell you, it really blew me away. It was awesome. It was incredible. I just about lost it. I was going, like, ‘Hey, what is going on?’ You see what I mean?”
Jimmy nodded enthusiastically and put down his utensils, his main course unfinished. Saving room for the ice cream. “That is so true. Yes, sir, I do know what you mean.”
In that case, thought Malcolm, I’m glad I don’t. “So, Jimmy, you said you had an idea about my spreading my word a bit further?”
“Right on, Mr. Erskine. I’d like to see you go for it.” The stupid little puppy had suddenly become a narrow-faced shark. His success and his future billionaireness no longer seemed so mysterious to Malcolm. “Seminars, Mr. Erskine. Workshops. Look, your deal with Mammon is probably ten percent royalties for the first ten thousand copies, twelve and a half percent up to, let’s say, twenty-five thousand copies, and then fifteen percent for all copies above twenty-five thousand. Close enough?”
“Uh... Oh, yes. Close enough.” In fact, exactly what Malcolm’s contract with Mammon House specified. This kid was good!
“Okay. Now, the cover price is $21.95, so that means you get $21,950 for the first ten thousand copies, then another, um, $41,156.25 for the next fifteen thousand copies, and then you’re up into the fifteen percent bracket.” Suddenly he fixed Malcolm with a penetrating stare. “What’s your deal with your agent? Ten percent? Fifteen?”
“Zero. No agent.”
Flicker — he wasn’t a Jimmy any more — nodded vigorously. “Good. Great. So just suppose you sell fifty, no, one hundred thousand copies in hardcover. That’s, let’s see...” He stared into space, a spreadsheet filling his eyes. He muttered. Numbers appeared in the spreadsheet’s cells. He jerked and twitched, and then finally he said, “$310,043.75. Plus, of course, whatever kind of paperback rights deal you can pull off, out of which Mammon House gets their cut, and plus also stuff like foreign rights and magazine excerpts, out of all of which Mammon House also gets their cut. Which I’m betting is fifty percent. Right?”
Malcolm sighed and nodded. He should have tried to bargain Mammon down on subsidiary rights. They might have been willing to settle for twenty-five percent. But he hadn’t thought of it until after he’d signed the contract. “Yes, you’re right.”
“So I figure you’ll be pretty lucky to end up with a million, and two million seems kind of unlikely, don’t you think?”
Malcolm did think. He hadn’t thought about it in quite this detail before now. He’d just assumed he’d end up a millionaire from this one book. Well, in a strictly numerical sense he probably would, but compared to the kind of money Jimmy Flicker was already making, it didn’t seem so very impressive any more.
“And that’s before taxes,” Flicker reminded him, twisting the knife. He waved his hand. “Although I can put you on to a good guy in that department. He’ll save you all that he can. But you’ll still end up with peanuts.”
Before this evening, one million dollars would not have seemed like peanuts to Malcolm. Jimmy Flicker and this restaurant made it seem so now. “Oh, well. There goes the castle in Spain.”
Jimmy stared at him in amazement. “Spain? Jesus, Mr. Erskine, why would you want a castle in Spain anyway?” He shook his head. Then he looked up, ready to order dessert.
A waiter appeared immediately.
Jimmy ordered ice cream and coffee for both of them, a combination the thought of which made Malcolm’s stomach churn. He had always hated hot and cold combinations. In fact, he had always hated ice cream. Not that he’d be able to afford much of it, on his measly million dollars.
“Anyway,” Jimmy Flicker said, “now think about this. Let’s say you gave a seminar, teaching your business secrets — sorry, the Merskeenians’ business secrets. Let’s say you limited the group size to, oh, one hundred people per session, and let’s say you charged each person one thousand dollars to attend. We’d make it a one-day session. That should be enough, don’t you think?”
Five minutes would be enough for me to say everything I know about business, Malcolm thought. Or want to know. “A thousand dollars? A hundred people?” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine that many people paying that much just to listen to me talk.”
Flicker laughed. “Hey, Mr. Erskine, haven’t you been paying attention to what’s going on these days? All kinds of people are giving these seminars, charging anywhere from five hundred to a thousand dollars per day, and they’re packing them in! And I doubt if a single one of them is anywhere near as famous as you are now.”
“Really?”
“Oh, sure. Now. See, that’s $100,000 dollars gross just for one day’s lecturing. Ten sessions, and you’ve probably already grossed more than you will from your book in toto.”
So that’s why Shirley MacLaine does it! This had been a very enlightening dinner, after all. “But that’s gross, right?”
Flicker waved his hand. “There’ll be expenses, of course: rent, slides, fancy signs, advertising, coffee and doughnuts for the attendees, money for the people who assist you and set the thing up, some kind of nice handout, all of that stuff. Ten dollars an attendee, maybe. Twenty, at the most. Peanuts. Anyway, you can see how it wouldn’t even take you a month to net the first million, and then you’re really on your way. It just keeps on growing by word of mouth, even without any advertising. You’d have to do a bit of traveling around the country, but you’d be pulling down ten million a year, net, easy. Five, if you want to take more time off, only do it for part of the year. Anyway, you can see that that’s where the real money is.”
Malcolm was too dazzled by dollar signs to respond right away.
“Oh, and another thing,” Jimmy Flicker added. “Every time you give a lecture like that, you’re setting up another bunch of people to buy your next book.”
“My next book?” Malcolm said, coming suddenly down to earth. Sex, Sins, and Software? Would the kind of people who would come to the kind of seminar Flicker was proposing be likely to buy such a book? Probably not.
“Sure. Of course. Your next collection of wisdom from Lukas of Aldebaran. There’s got to be a lot more of that great stuff floating around out there in the space-time continuum, just waiting to help businesspersons, and you’re obviously the natural antenna for the messages. Why, you’ve got to write more books, Mr. Erskine! People need to hear what you have to say.”
The thought, Malcolm thought, just blows me away. I’m, like, aghast.
It had been hard enough to come up with one book’s worth of the gibberish. How on Earth could he come with another? Malcolm foresaw a long and boring course of study in the ways of the masters — Shirley MacLaine, Alan Watts, etc. If they had done it, so could he.
“Seminars, seminars,” Malcolm muttered. The only seminars he had ever given, if those could be called seminars, had been training sessions for software he had written, and those had been straightforward — merely a matter of leading through the operation of his latest program a roomful of computer illiterates, terrified that if they touched the keyboards in front of them they would start World War Three or at the least damage the computer. He had had real information to convey, and he had always been the world’s leading expert on the subject at hand. In a Business Secrets from the Stars seminar, the information would all be invented, fictive facts for foolish fellows, malarkey for marketeers, shit for shitheads.
“Yes,” Jimmy Flicker said enthusiastically, “seminars. Big money, big time, Mr. Erskine, sir. What do you say?”
“What do you say? I mean, why are you so interested?” In other words, Malcolm was going, like, what’s in it for you, and why are you so blown away, and why are you losing it so totally?
“I’ve got an organization that can handle all the work,” Jimmy said modestly. “Great bunch of people, now that I had the dead wood murdered. The ones who’re still with me, well, they really know their stuff.”
Malcolm had paused with his coffee half way to his mouth. “Cough. Choke. Murdered?”
Jimmy waved his hand. “I call it cosmic outplacement. Cheaper’n laying them off. Anyway, we could set you up real easy, get you going nationwide, making the big bucks. I’ll take twenty percent off the top, that’s before expenses. But you’ll still be making real money.”
Oh, what the hell, Malcolm told himself. They probably deserved to be murdered. “Ready any time, Jimmy, my lad.” This was all so much more exciting than programming. He could really begin to live now, as long as no one murdered him.
“So it’s a deal?” Jimmy Flicker asked.
* * * * *
Would it have put a damper on Malcolm’s cynical happiness if he could have observed a drama that had taken place that morning in that rambling ranch house in California? Since he would not have seen any connection to the happiness of Malcolm Erskine, probably not.
The Vice President of the United States had been invited to the ranch house where Gone and Fancy lived, respectively, in mindless and bitter retirement. The veep’s advisors had been enthusiastic and had packed his bags with picture books and his special Peter Cottontail jammies and had sent him on his way in the care of the ever reliable Zip Muchley.
The advisors knew that nothing of any substance would take place out there on the West Coast — the idea of consultations between Gone and Junior was too detached from reality to even be amusing — but they also knew that they could say that such consultations had taken place, and that would give their boy the imprimatur they wanted. Surrounded by the glowing nimbus of that blessing, Junior would be irreplaceable as Daddy Longlegs’ running mate, and he would contribute to the Longlegs reelection landslide.
The glow would still be there, they were sure, four years later, making Junior the only possible choice for the party’s presidential nomination at the end of Daddy Longlegs’ second term. Then on to the first Junior administration! Which would mean that for eight years, those advisers would rule the country.
Oh, it was a good time to be alive!
Junior might not have entirely agreed at the moment.
He had arrived the night before. He had met with Gone, which meant that they had been placed in facing chairs and had spent half an hour staring at each other, neither having anything to say. Finally, Junior had said, “You’re really old.” At that point, both he and Gone had been taken away and put to bed.
The next morning, Junior had another meeting. This time, it was with Fancy. It was a breakfast meeting.
“Eat up,” she snapped. “Stop playing with your food.”
Junior smacked his spoon repeatedly onto his oatmeal, spraying drops of milk on the tablecloth. “I hate this stuff. Always hated it. When I’m president, ain’t never gonna have oatmeal in the White House.”
Fancy sighed. Gone was bad enough, but this kid — ! She tried adopting a wheedling tone instead of the commanding one that had so far accomplished nothing. “Look, I’m eating it.” She forced herself to choke down a mouthful of oatmeal from her own bowl. “Mmm! Boy, that’s good!”
Junior looked skeptical and made no move to eat.
“God damn — Okay, okay. Forget the fucking oatmeal.” Fancy took a few moments to calm herself.
“Want I should punch him in the kidney, ma’am?” Zip Muchley asked.
Fancy looked at Zip standing behind Junior’s chair and imagined with some pleasure the Vice President squirming on the floor and trying to scream. But, no. For now, anyway, she needed him alive and unbruised — and certainly not with internal ruptures. “Thanks, Zip. Not right now.” She forced a smile. “So, Junior, what would you like for breakfast?”
Junior’s face lit up. “Anything?”
“Within reason, anything you want.”
“Oh, boy! Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes, because Tony the Tiger says they’re grrreat, and a fried egg on toast, sunny side up, but I don’t want the white part runny because I hate it when the white part’s runny. And a glass of milk. Really cold.”
“Zip, get it for him.”
“Remember what I said about the white part!”
Zip left, muttering about kidneys.
Zip returned a while later with the new breakfast, and Junior dug in happily, saying, “Yum!” and “Oh, boy!”
When he was finished, and Zip had wiped the egg yolk off Junior’s face and the milk from the cereal off his red power tie, the dialogue resumed.
“Okay,” Fancy said. “As I told you before, all you have to do is tell the President that you think he’d be a safer bet for reelection with me as his running mate. We’ll get you back in as a senator, so you can still be almost as important as you are now. How about that?”
Junior’s lower lip pushed out. He shook his head. “Don’t wanna be senator again. Wanna be veep.”
This went on for a few more minutes. Junior refused to budge. He started noisily blowing bubbles in the milk in his glass.
Finally, Zip looked at Fancy and raised his eyebrows questioningly. Fancy said, “Hmm,” and thought about political consequences.
Zip took the Vice President back to his bedroom to wait for Fancy’s decision. After what he had been put through, Zip was hoping she would choose the kidney option.
Fancy sat at the table and weighed matters.
Successor to the successor. She had it straight from the magnificent Lukas of Aldebaran himself. Of course she had actually heard it from Lukas’s spokesman, Malcolm Erskine, who had turned out to be rather less impressive than she had expected. But spokesmen were often a disappointment. What counted was the phrase itself and the unimpeachable — a word she loved — authority behind it. Therefore, it was ordained that she become the successor to Longlegs. In practical political terms, that meant she had to become the Vice President during his second term. Otherwise that horrifying boy would continue as Vice President and would end up as the successor to Gone’s successor.
Fancy shuddered at the thought. Surely to prevent that a ruptured kidney was justified!
But would that work? The kid was young, at least for a politician, and seemed to be healthy. A cover story would be necessary.
Alcoholism! Of course. She could see it now.
Fancy wasn’t given to fantasies the way Malcolm was. Hers was a cold, hard world of facts and action and cause and effect. The strong won and the weak lost. “You snooze, you lose,” she would sometimes say, when she wasn’t saying something equally trite or consulting psychics. She didn’t see a contradiction there because she was convinced that psychics had real powers and that what they dealt with was just as much a part of the physical world as anything scientists spent their time working with. Easier to understand, too.
This, however, was a moment for pleasant fantasizing. She closed her eyes and smiled at the vision.
The sudden death of the Vice President from kidney failure would be announced on the first day of the Republican nominating convention. Right after the opening ceremonies, Daddy Longlegs would make a wonderful speech about his gallant young partner. The floor of the convention center would
be awash in tears. Daddy would be nominated by acclaim to run again. Fancy, Daddy’s choice for running mate, would also be nominated by acclaim. Then there would be an electoral landslide victory for the Republican ticket.
And then, and then...
And then, unknown to her, a fleet of black helicopters with special silenced high-tech rotors landed nearby and disgorged a team of deadly ninja killers who would have instantly disabled all the guards posted in and around the building if there had been any. There weren’t any because Zip Muchley knew he needed only himself.
When the ninjas burst into the bedroom where Zip was guarding the Vice President, the huge agent chuckled. “You guys have been watching too many movies,” he told them.
He stood, sighed, stretched. His muscles bulged even through his Official Issue Secret Service Suit. The ninjas paused and backed away just a tiny bit.
“You could leave now,” Zip said. “So I won’t have to kill you.” Not that he’d mind. Displacement. He’d heard that word somewhere, and he thought it probably applied to this situation.
Someone new entered the room. The ninjas fell back respectfully, making way for the newcomer, who was dressed in ordinary casual clothing instead of a silly ninja outfit.
“Agent Weng!” Zip said in surprise. “I thought you had gone private.”
“I did,” Weng said. “These are my boys. I’m just doing this as a side contract. Sort of like a favor.”
Zip sighed. “I’m sorry it was you.” He looked down at Weng from his great height. “I wouldn’t want to have to hurt you.”
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