Corrupting Dr. Nice

by John Kessel

  "That money was a personal gift from my mother. There were no quid pro quos. ATD did not even know my intention to retrieve this specimen from the past."

  =You're arguing on her ground, Owen. Don't rise to her bait.=

  Emma Zume's eyes misted up. "Taking this creature from the Cretaceous violates the natural temporal order. How can you expect anyone who has a respect for the Tao to be other than deeply skeptical of your motives?"

  "I certainly understand your point of view, Ms. Zume. I'm only interested in understanding that natural order, not exploiting it."

  "If that's so, are you willing to let a team from our organization inspect the conditions under which you're keeping this dinosaur? Are you willing to certify that you will not use her for commercial purposes? Are you willing, at the end of this so-called experiment, to return this specimen to its own era?"

  She was pushing too hard. Bill was right. Why should Owen argue with her on her premises? "Let's forget this charade," he said. "You know that we've met before."

  That stopped her.

  =At last,= whispered Bill.

  "Possibly," the woman finally said. "Were you at the Historicals for the Future rally in Rio last year? Or the Gaian Planet Bakeoff at Mount Shasta?"

  "No. I was thinking Jerusalem, first century."

  "I do not time travel. It's a matter of principle with me."

  Owen calculated furiously. "Listen, I might be willing to allow your committee to inspect Wilma's surroundings---if it's represented by you."

  =What, are you crazy? Hang up.=

  Owen needed to shut Bill up. 'Be quiet and listen," he subvocalized. "Pay attention to her every move. I have a plan."

  Emma Zume looked wary. "It's much more likely we will send our Mr. Thrillkiller."

  "No deal, then. It has to be you."

  "Why?"

  "Let's just say I want to get to know you better."

  Emma Zume smiled an unhumorous smile. "Don't think you're going to get anywhere with me. This is strictly a matter of principle, not a social visit."

  "I wouldn't think of it, Ms. Zume."

  "I'll tell you right now, I'm an active supporter of the Sexual Deliberation movement."

  "I respect that decision. I think it's a wise one."

  She paused. "When can we arrange for our visit?"

  Owen called up his calendar. "How about Wednesday at three?"

  "We'll be there."

  "I'll look forward to meeting you," Owen said.

  "Dr. Vannice, if your are as good as your word, you will receive my personal apology," Emma Zume said, and rang off.

  Owen pushed back from the phone screen, got up and went to the window. Wilma had come back up the hill, broken through the hedge, and was wallowing in the swimming pool. A half hour ago Owen would have been dismayed, but his mind was elsewhere now. Emma Zume--whoever she was--had turned the day around.

  =Positively the same dame,= Bill said.

  "You think so?" Owen said. "Well, we're going to find out. Help me come up with a disguise."

  TWO: TWO-FACED WOMAN

  A windowboard in Times Square flashed a big head-and-shoulders of Jesus hugging an adorable fluorescent orange puppy. The copy followed:

  Miracle Dog!

  HIS Favorite. Why Not Yours?

  This was the twenty-three-year-old Jesus, riding his charisma for all it was worth, oblivious to the advice of his older avatars. The ad reminded Genevieve of Max, the apartment in Toronto, and her mother. She wondered if her mother was still alive.

  Gen passed a man dressed in a tattered ruff and codpiece, playing a harmonica, an upturned hat in front of him. Times Square was full of displaced historicals. This would never be allowed in the privately run areas of Manhattan. The city government was looking for some corporation to sponsor midtown, but so far nobody had bitten.

  She took the escalator down to the Times Square station, ran her ward over the turnstile sensor and stepped onto the platform. "Reclaim the Future!" blared a poster pushing the upcoming metric conversion. But the poster crawled with smart paint spelling out anti-metric slogans. As she watched it switched from "Liters are Lame!" to "Centimeters Suck!"

  A couple of businessmen with discreet corporate logos embroidered on the shoulders of their dark suits made way for her. Gen had pulled her broad-brimmed hat below one eye, but her spotless white gloves and ankle-length dress of watered silk proved she was a lady. She had let her hair grow long, reddened it slightly; today it was pinned up, a few wisps curling past her ears.

  The uptown train arrived. A man in a four-button suit stood to offer her his seat. Across from her sat a teenaged girl wearing a video shirt that replayed the famous sequence from the Jerusalem hostage crisis. Owen, in a martial arts frenzy, snapped Jephthah's knee, then, hair flying, whirled toward the camera.

  Above the kid a sign read, Hard Times? Pick a New One! Contact NAFTA Directory of Colonization, 001-NEWCHANCE.

  The man who had sacrificed his seat noticed her gaze. "A lovely young woman like yourself doesn't need to think about emigrating," he said. Red carnation in his buttonhole, he stood, legs spread apart to balance in the swaying train, one hand resting on the knob of his black lacquered cane.

  Gen looked him in the eye. "I'm not thinking about emigration."

  "You're fortunate. Because if you were short of cash, or in danger of losing your job--"

  "--you could help me out. You're a public-minded man."

  "Once you get to know me, you'll be impressed by the size of my . . . mind." As the train swayed through a bend, the man's hip brushed her shoulder.

  Gen leaned forward. "Let me show you something."

  The man lowered his head. She pulled the phony badge from her purse. "Delta Uberrasch, NYPD undercover," she said in a low voice. "Thanks for your offer of assistance. You see that man over there?" She indicated a big square-shouldered man wearing an eye patch. "He's a slave dealer. You can help me bring him in."

  "But I--"

  "When we pull into the next station, I want you to obstruct his path off the train. I'll come up behind. I don't think he's carrying a weapon. Even if he is, I doubt he'd kill you in public."

  "Uh--I think this is a mistake."

  "No, that's him all right, Jerry the Nipper."

  The train slowed. "Broadway and 75th. Llannely Ward," the train's speaker announced. Gen stood up. "Get ready now."

  The man scuttled toward the doors, looking over his shoulder at the big fellow, who got up and approached behind him as the train glided to a stop. Mr. Carnation was trembling visibly. When the doors opened, he bolted from the train and dashed up the stairs.

  The man with the eye patch stood aside to let Gen off the train. "Thank you," she said.

  "You're very welcome," the man said.

  At street level she crossed over into Llannely Ward. The security station examined her ID and checked her for concealed weapons, then passed her through to the sunny street. Corporation Llanely ran the blocks north of 72nd and south of 79th, west to the Hudson River dikes. The streets, shops and restaurants were full of employees with Llanely patches on their shoulders.

  The trees lining the immaculate sidewalks were green, and a fresh breeze from the river wafted the smell of lilacs. In a playground a knot of teenagers--one of them wearing the Owen Zealot assault shirt--were dancing to a music box. "Number one for the third week in a row," the DJ stuttered over a song intro, "'Desert Slide' by Ben Simeon!" Eerie pipes and a blues vocal over hypnotic drums.

  A shop window screen hyped the upcoming Madison Square Garden bout between Muhammad Ali and Jack Dempsey. A few buildings farther along the smiling face of Voltaire, a respirator loose around his neck, beamed out of a flotilla of promos for his top-rated gab show. Behind him stretched a rusty landscape. ". . . This week, live from Mars!" Switch to a clip of Voltaire's sidekick William Jennings Bryan, the butt of the cynical megastar's jokes, ogling a statuesque settler in a form-fitting surface suit. "Cultivate your garden, Billy!"
>
  The Acropolis Center smothered the old West Side Expressway like some art deco monstrosity from Things to Come. Gen rode the pedestrian mover to the Riverside Esplanade, and took an elevator up ninety-two floors. Among the offices of lawyers, commodities brokers, genetics counselors, and time exporters, Lance rented a suite for his Committee to Protect the Past.

  "May I help you?" asked Lance's receptionist, a pudgy man with thinning brown hair, blue eyes shrunken behind archaic glasses that were not just an affectation.

  The receptionist was an aging version of James Dean. There were a number of hopeless James Deans around; it had taken the time recruiters numerous tries before they realized his personality was so fragile they couldn't get decent work out of him for any length of time before a breakdown or a suicide. Besides, he lost most of his hair by the time he was forty, and in every version had a tendency to put on weight. This one was fairly nice, but bemused.

  "I've been here before," Gen said. "Ms. Emma Zume?"

  The receptionist tried hard to focus. "Oh, yes."

  "Is Mr. Thrillkiller in?"

  "He's out right now. He'll be back soon, though."

  "He usually lets me wait in his office."

  "Suit yourself."

  Gen went on back.

  Lance employed a lot of used historicals. It was good PR. Overeager speculators had retrieved numerous celebrities hoping to make a killing representing their services. But for every Voltaire or Truman Capote, there were a dozen who put future audiences to sleep or cracked under the strain of an alien world. Who wanted to see new plays by Eugene O'Neill, who was, let's face it, a downer in his first incarnation anyway, and a hopelessly addictive personality besides? After the John Keats fad waned, who cared about John Keats, especially when most of them were so susceptible to modern tuberculosis strains that the medical upkeep was prohibitive?

  Lance's office boasted a spectacular view. From the edge of the dike fishermen cast their rods into the Hudson. Brightly colored sailboats were tacked by their AIs down the river while passengers took the breeze on the spring day. Across the river the white stucco and glass outcroppings of apartments clustered like grapes on the gardenlike Jersey bluffs.

  Gen settled down on the divan. A crumpled TV lay on the side table; she picked it up, shook it out, lay it across her lap. She flicked idly through the stations, then switched to information services. She called up "search," typed in the name "Vannice" and set it to scan news reports over the last week.

  She found two stories. Esmeralda Vannice, 22, of Scranton, Pennsylvania, had won 680 million dollars in the Northern Hemisphere Lottery. Vannice had been putting in her time as a diaper processor at a Pennsylvania landfill being reclaimed by the Sri Lankan conglomerate Enterprise Trincomalee. Asked how she planned to spend her windfall, Vannice said she was going to get her body refurbished. “I already sold one ear, one eye, a parathyroid gland and a kidney. We was ready to emigrate. And then this happens. Whooee, am I relieved!”

  The second story was a business report announcing that ATD Pix, a wholly owned subsidiary of Vannicom Ltd., had secured exclusive rights to cover the trial of the Jerusalem zealots. A spokesperson for CEO Rosethrush Vannice said that the trial, scheduled to begin in a month, would be broadcast live on Legalwire One.

  There was no mention of Owen: his notoriety was dying down.

  After Jerusalem, Gen and August had spent a couple of months in Japan. Then Paris in the 1920s, to run a version of the Wire on a Bourse bullion trader. Three months playing bridge in the ninth-century Maya resort at Palenque, then back to contemporary New York, where they had run into Lance at a Knicks game.

  During all this time, much as Genevieve had sought to put Owen behind her, she couldn't.

  August tried to explain Owen to her. "We were fooled because he treated everyone the same. Good old egalitarian Dr. Nice. The problem is that he assumes everyone has the same morality he has. His egalitarianism makes him blind to differences.

  "The dark side of this is that when it's brought home to him that someone is different, he can't continue treating them as equal. He feels betrayed. He invents a version of you that's unreal, then blames you when you don't fit."

  It sounded right. But August ignored the fact that he and Gen were in the business of projecting unreal versions of themselves. Though whenever she thought of him dumping her she grew murderously angry--still, at some level, for some reason, she feared that Owen was better than she was.

  It was all she could do to push these thoughts away. At that basketball game August told Lance about his failed plan to liberate Wilma for ComPP. Lance commiserated, and urged them to join him anyway. "Why chase marks from resort to resort when you can settle in one place, set out your bait and they'll send you money--and feel good about doing it?"

  Before Lance had finished talking Gen had a plan. She didn't have to forget Owen. She could humiliate him.

  She plucked a Bliss egg from the dish on Lance's desk, peeled off the foil and let the drug-infused chocolate dissolve on her tongue. She imagined meeting Owen in his native habitat, a dinosaur among his own extinct class. She smiled. She didn't want his money. She wanted his heart, ripped out and steaming on a plate.

  Lance entered the office, with August right behind. "--When that happens I always try a Philadelphia opening, or you could double the bird," Lance was saying. “Hello, Gen.”

  “Call me Emma. Emma Zume.”

  “Sure, Emma. Nice name.”

  Lance Thrillkiller was a homely man: no chin, overbite, a big nose, receding hair. His thick eyeglasses were an affectation. He looked the way Owen ought to, Gen thought. Such a perfectly ugly man, you told yourself, could not be up to anything tricky. That was why the Killer had twanked himself into a frog from his natural princelike good looks.

  "How would you like to take a little trip out to Connecticut this Wednesday?" Gen asked him. "To visit a dinosaur."

  "You made the date." Lance did not sound happy. He went over to the wall and opened a bar. "Would you care for a drink?"

  "No, thank you."

  “Scotch, August?”

  “On the rocks.” August kissed Gen’s cheek and settled into an armchair.

  Lance poured August a scotch. "I'm having second thoughts about this, Genevieve."

  "Emma."

  "Sorry. But I don't need to draw the attention of somebody like Rosethrush Vannice. After the press this dinosaur's drawn, if she even knows we're coming we won't get past the gate.”

  "Half of that publicity has come from her own operatives."

  "Perhaps. Still, I don't like the idea of putting myself in her crosshairs. At the risk of seeming selfish, my dear, what's in it for me?"

  Gen balled up the TV and tossed it into the middle of his desk. "Check out the Wall Street Journal. They just announced she's got the exclusive rights to the Zealot trial. How would you like to get a piece of that action?"

  "How?"

  "She wants as many people as possible to tune in. She doesn't care who wins, or what side they're on. The zealots are ideal representatives of everything that gets your contributors thrumming against time travel. They've been locked up for most of a year, in a time two thousand years removed from their own."

  “My heart bleeds for them.”

  “I’m sure Rosethrush’s heart does too. So while I talk to Junior, you unleash that fabled charm of yours on Mom. Get her to lean on the court to release one of the Zealots under your supervision. Originally August was going to get you a dinosaur; I’d say a persecuted historical will stand in perfectly well, maybe even better. You'll double your contributions in a week.”

  Lance's eyes lit up. "I knew there was a reason why I loved you."

  "Have you decided which of the Zealots Lance should ask for?" August asked.

  "How about the leader?" Lance said. "What's his name, Jephthah?"

  “A rather bloodthirsty character,” August said.

  "He's not a guy you're going to be able to control," Gen said
. "They'd have to chain him to his chair."

  "That could be good."

  "He's a hater. No, go for Simon. He's more sympathetic. He was an apostle. That's a hot angle."

  "August? What do you think?"

  "I think this is a perfect reason for you to visit the Vannice estate. But I don't want Genevieve with you." August put down his glass and plucked an egg from the desk. "Is this such a good idea, Genevieve? What's to be gained by crossing paths with Dr. Nice again?"

  "Sweet revenge."

  "Revenge is a bad motivation for a grifter. Did I ever tell you about Arky Birnbaum and the college chancellor?"

  "When I was twelve. And fourteen. And seventeen. And twenty-two."

  "How old are you now?"

  "Dad, I'm not Arky Birnbaum."

  "You're putting yourself at risk. How can you hope that Vannice will believe you're not who you are?"

  "He'll believe, all right. I'm not Genevieve Faison, either. I’m Emma Zume. Emma Zume is an idealistic innocent. She needs protection. To her, Owen Vannice is a man of the world."

  “She must be cerebrally challenged if she thinks he’s a man of the world.”

  “On the contrary, Emma is highly intelligent. Only she’s got a very stiff backbone.”

  Lance took two of the chocolates. "Given this Zealot plot, August, I think I’d like Gen to come along. She can distract Vannice."

  "That’s what I’m afraid of," August said. "Let’s turn this reasoning around. If Simon will stand in perfectly well for the dinosaur, then raising the issue of the dinosaur is not necessary, Gen. Rosethrush Vannice is not someone to be taken lightly. And the father is an eccentric buzz saw."

  Gen knew he was right, but she wasn’t going to let it go. "August, if this plan of mine works out, I'll have both his parents urging me to complete this scam."

  "But you won't even tell me what it is!"

  "What it is will become evident soon enough, if it's going to work at all."

  August folded his hands over his slight paunch. "I guess what really bothers me is that I won't be there to watch out for you."