"Never," Pierre admonished, helping Mike up from the mat, "try to muscle another man who is stronger than you. The correct tactic is cunning in that case. Dodge him until you have a clear opening. The opening will always be different, always come at different times in the fight. But the other man will leave himself unprotected sooner or later. Dodge and wait for that moment if he is bigger than you."
Mike grabbed the chair, swung it at Pierre, who caught it and held it. Mike's shoulder hurt like hell, but he started muscling his instructor. Then, abruptly, he let go of the chair, clutched another, swung it as Pierre stumbled, regaining his balance. The blow knocked the bigger man off his feet and must have hurt him. But he managed to laugh anyway.
"So it is to be the School of Hard Knocks," Pierre said.
"That's a horrible pun."
"And that was horrible fighting. Suppose there had not been a second chair?"
"But there was. And you said every situation is different. I'm just proving my cunning."
"Well, you better keep your mind this sharp. We have two more hours before lunch."
Mike grinned, stood hunched on the tips of his toes, ready to spring either way to avoid the hairy Frenchman. He liked Pierre. Pierre had given him something which he had not even realized that he lacked: self-confidence. Yesterday, the teacher had allowed Mike to throw him a few times. Mike was certain it had been planned to boost his ego. And somehow it had. Just as a child knows he is not winning a game with his father—and yet does believe it at the same time. Show had drained his self-confidence and self-reliance. It was coming back now. With it, there rose a liking for Flaxen and the others. They were not so ominous and strange any longer. They were men—like Pierre— whom you could strike out at. He could never have struck out at Cockley. Never.
"I want him found!" Cockley roared at Howard Connie.
"But, sir—"
"Roger Nimron is obviously at the head of all this. I want him found! I want him killed!"
"Damnit, there isn't a trace of him!" Howard Connie was immediately sorry he had shouted. And he was immediately afraid.
Cockley stared at him a moment, his black eyes very black indeed. There was a clicking. Cockley held his hands out for Connie to see. Protruding from each thumbnail was a thin, pointed blade. Cockley turned his hands over, palms up, showed the sleek undersides of the stilettos.
The seconds ticked by. Neither man moved.
At last Cockley said, "Connie, you came close. You came damn close to getting your throat slit."
"I—"
"Shut up!"
Connie felt his knees shivering. He lowered himself into the nearest chair. He was not going to be killed. He could calm down now—yet he knew he could not.
"You never did find the black limousine, Connie. That's mistake number one. And the President wasn't killed by the spider you recommended. That was number two. Now you say you can't find Nimron. I am going to pretend I did not hear that; I'm going to pretend you were not here today. I'm going to call you back in forty-eight hours and ask you the same question: "Where is Roger Nimron?' You better have an answer. Three mistakes, Connie, are fatal in this business."
Connie knew when he had been dismissed. He rose and left quickly. He was still trembling when he reached his own office. The atmosphere of the smaller work areas was a buzz of activity, agents and messengers coming and going, papers being shuffled from desk to desk. He stopped at Miranda Mins's desk. He was too scared at the moment to appreciate the dark peaks of her breasts in the semi-transparent blouse with the yellow giraffes dotting it. "Get me head of Research," he said. "Get me Malone."
Miranda Mins punched out Malone's office and told him to come running. When the call was placed, she turned and looked at her boss as he entered his inner office and closed the door. He must be some goddamn oddie, she thought. I have to fight the rest of them off when I wear this, and he doesn't even notice. She turned back to her paper work, thinking that maybe she would ask for a transfer to the offices of one of the younger department heads —one who might care about certain things. . . .
In his office, Connie slumped into a chair, requested nerve pills (two packets) and a glass of wine from his console. These things popped into the tray—the pills in plastic seals and the wine in a capped, plastic tumbler. He took both packets, even though he knew it would go down on his record, and sipped the wine carefully. It tasted like plastic, but it tasted good.
The door slid back, and Malone entered. He was tall, thin, an intense man in his late twenties, some of the "new blood" Cockley had brought into Show—after spilling some of the old blood all over his office floor, no doubt. Connie thought of the blades in the thumbs, shuddered.
"You wanted to see me?" Malone asked.
He's an arrogant snot, Connie thought. But he was a good research man. And some day he would get so good that he would move up one more notch into the Department of Plan Execution. Connie's department. And he would take Connie's job. "Cockley wants research done on this Nimron thing," he said, letting the bitterness seep through in his words.
"We've done all we can!"
"Perhaps not. I want you to hit a new angle. The Presidents of earlier days had a great number of hideaways. Camp David, the Virginia Bunker, so on. Go back as far as you can and dig out everything on that subject you can find. If necessary, use the printed materials."
"But, that's-illegal!"
"It's not exactly illegal, and especially not for Show. Nothing is illegal for Show. Just find out where Nimron could be. I want everything you can gather, and I want it in twelve hours."
"Twelve—"
"Shut up and get moving!" he shouted.
"Yes, sir, Mr. Connie," Malone said, backing out and bowing in a mockery of respect.
Damn him! Connie thought. Damn him to Hell! But only after he gets the Information. Only then.
It was one o'clock when Mike finished lunch. Pierre was still eating. "Where do you put it all?"
"This is all energy food and protein. It either builds muscles or maintains them. I don't eat frills."
When Mike looked at the raw meats and fish and vegetables, he could see that was true. He supposed he tended toward frilly foods himself, but he could not imagine choking the uncooked meat down. Out of the question. "I'm due in Nimron's office now," he said.
"Good luck."
He nodded, walked through the densely packed aisles, edging around the extra tables that had been shoved in, stepping over litter. He had been amazed by the number of people working on this little project to overturn the world. There were three thousand of them, give or take a score. It was actually a small force in relation to Show, but considering the powerful weapons, old and new, and the facilities at their disposal, it was a formidable force. Still, he did not think it was formidable enough.
He stepped through the doorway into the hall and took the elevator to the floor that contained Nimmy's offices. He found the proper door, paused a moment, pressed the button beside it. The camera swiveled on him. A moment later, the door opened.
He stepped in, allowed the door to hum shut behind. He was in a small foyer, carpeted in gold with walls of mirrors. One of the mirrors lifted, revealing another room beyond the wall. He stepped through into this room, gasped slightly. It was medieval in design. Medieval design had died out long before he had been born. The past hundred years had been one of traditional modern (a phrase he found oddly contradictory) in furniture, clothing, homes, everything. Here everything was deliciously out of date. The ceiling was vaulted, constructed of what appeared to be real wooden beams. Above that, in darker shadows, he could see the hint of bomb-proof steel and concrete, but the immediate surroundings were cut from some ancient castle and set down inside this mountain. The floor was marble. White swirled with red and tinted with gold here and there, it was rich and wondrous. The walls were dark walnut paneling, their smooth facades broken only by a huge fireplace where logs crackled, coals glowed, smoke rose. A desk rested before the fireplace,
and at the desk sat the dark man who was Roger Nimron. His eyes were more than tri-dimensional. They burned into Mike, evaluated him. Then they smiled.
"Welcome to my sanctum sanctorum, Mike." He stood, walked around the desk.
At first, Mike was wary of the proffered hand. But he reminded himself that this was no gymnasium and this man was no Pierre. "Mr. President—"
"You call me Roger, and I'll call you Mike, okay? Formalities died out of this office a number of years ago."
"Thank you—Roger."
"You're awfully formal, you know. We'll have to break you of that, take some of the starch out of your jumper-suit. No one here is intrinsically worth any more than anyone else Admittedly, some are more valuable or more important than others, but we are all basically equal. Besides, you are an important individual. You are equal to all here and more important than most."
"Still, it isn't easy getting used to speaking with a President."
"There. See? You aren't really as impressed as you might think. You said a President instead of the President."
Mike looked about the room, let his eyes fondle the ornate gold candlesticks, the heavy, natural wood furniture. The detail and the glory of it hurt his eyes.
"Yes," Nimron said, seeming to follow Mike's line of thought, "perhaps the grandeur here put you off balance. It is a fascinating room, isn't it? There are three more in these quarters like it—all very lavish. The man who had it constructed—long dead—must surely have been an egotist. Imagine spending all that money on pomp when he would only have occasion to use it if the rest of the world was being burned to ashes. It seems almost anachronistic in light of the situation it was constructed to be used under,"
"Is it really true wood?"
"And real gold. Note the fireplace too. It would have been impossible to have a fireplace in a nuclear war, for the flue would permit radiation into the shelter unless angled a great many times. And angling would have trapped the smoke. For an answer, they came up with an ingenious water filtration system that does away with the smoke that rises up this pseudo-flue. It must have cost a small fortune in itself. Millions could die, evidently, as long as the few lived in luxury."
"Amazing."
"And terrifying in a way. Here we are, hoping to restore the old world with its old form of democratic rule, and it seems that injustices existed just the same as they do today. Sometimes, I wonder . . ."
Mike swallowed the little bit of saliva that had managed to collect in his mouth and pulled his thoughts back to practical things. "What are you trying to do exactly? What does Andrew Flaxen have to gain from all this? How did he get connected with you?"
"Those are questions enough for the first session," Nimron said, laughing. "Pull that chair over to this one, and I'll begin answering some of them."
Mike dragged the heavy-cushioned, hand-carved chair to the one like it. He was thinking about the smile on Nimron's face. That was the largest difference between the Show world and the world of these Revolutionaries. People smiled here. He liked that difference.
"Andrew Flaxen is, first of all, independently wealthy, for his family invented and made the first floaters. The Flaxens amassed so much money that they were not hurt very much when Show eventually took over their company along with the others."
Mike's eyebrows rose. He had entertained the idea that Flaxen was after money, for that was the only reason he could dredge up. Now that reason was full of holes. Big holes.
"And Andrew is a Romanticist," Nimron went on. "He yearns for some sort of back-to-the-old-world trend. He collects books and old movies. He even knows how to read and write extremely well and has from the time he was a small youngster."
"But the rich were among the first to give up those skills."
"Not all the rich. Most have given up reading and writing because the talents make them suspect. Anyone who would spend that much time learning nearly useless skills in this modern world where all machines talk and all arts are visual, Cockley figures, must be a reactionary. Andrew never advertises the fact he can read or write. He uses voice code for checks, card-tapes for everything. It was he who taught me to read. He knew my father, who was also an incurable Romanticist. He taught both of us. I have been literate since I was fourteen, but very few people know it. It is a secret to all but those in this complex and a few conspirators outside. Even so, Cockley tried to kill me."
"Cockley is moving faster and faster all the time," Mike said to show that he understood some of the immediacy of their cause.
"And we must move faster too. He doesn't suspect Andrew yet. I doubt that he suspects most people who are involved. We play a safe game. But he is suspicious of me now and he will begin to look more closely at a number of other people. To answer your question more explicitly, Andrew stands to gain the freedom to read and to write and to publish what he has written. And I stand to see my wishes for the old and glorious world—dreams that they may be —fulfilled. Revolutionaries seldom have greater desires than this, Mike. We are generally too unselfish for our own good."
"And my part?"
"We did not want to risk you, but you insisted on front line action. We want Lisa pulled out, so you will accomplish that. If we can get Lisa out, you and she can begin broadcasting a jamming series of experiences that override Show's own. That will signal the beginning of the Revolution. Our broadcasting facilities are nearly ready."
Mike stifled what surely must have been a gasp of astonishment rising in his lungs, forcing its way toward his throat. He knew they were going to overthrow Show. That was their purpose. But he had never actually thought Show would not be broadcasting anymore. That was very nearly an unthinkable thing. Yet, he told himself now, that was logical. He had never been taught to question the broadcasts of Show; they were something that would go on eternally, something without end, timeless. "But what would you broadcast to disrupt Show?" he asked finally.
"Hatred for the audience. Hatred for the sloths, the unexperienced worms they have become. They won't be able to take the psychic shock—our psychiatrists believe—of experiencing themselves hating themselves. Remember, when they are under the aura, they are the Performer. Any emotion the Performer has is also their emotion. When you hate them, they are going to experience self-hatred. We're hoping it will be unpleasant enough to make people turn off their sets. In the resultant confusion, the raids on all Cockley establishments will be launched. We have to capture all Show executives, jail them until the Revolution is complete and the power is finally and forever wrenched from their hands."
Mike's mind was chockablock full of new concepts, new ideas, new questions. He was finally confronted with blunt plans instead of vague theories; he could finally see how the world would be overturned and just how reasonable it actually seemed. His mind spun down its own corridors of thought, producing a small headache behind his eyes. The scope, the objectives of the Revolution were astounding. Even without the beckoning flame of Lisa, he might have joined their ranks, fought with them just to be a part of a plan so daring and yet practical. Still, there was Lisa. That was an added incentive, another firm reason that he should be part of the Media Revolution.
"I think this is more than enough for one day," Nimron said, standing. "Mull over what you know now. Think about every angle of it. Tomorrow you will have a great many new questions. I am very certain of that."
Mike exited through the foyer of mirrors.
He went to his floor, to his room. He lay down to think.
And to rest for the coming session with Pierre.
There was a flame in his mind, its roots were somewhere very deep in his heart.
You are dreaming of me again. Zombie. That's okay. I like the opportunity to shoot my mouth off. No one shoots his mouth off anymore. I would like to tell you of my history. I would like to go way back and tell you—show you —how I have changed over the years, decades, scores, centuries. Once I was called Village instead of Zombie. Then I was called Society. Then they called me Village aga
in for a time. Now it is Zombie because the village concept and the village itself has dwindled into a household. Into a few individuals, actually. Let me explain. Men are what they are, not because of what they say, but because of how they say it. Speech: When men merely spoke, telling their clean and dirty stories, they called me Village. I was a close-knit thing, A man can shout only so far, a few hundred yards at best. His words are then carried on by others, but they are distorted and the true meaning, the intended meaning, stretches to a relatively short radius. So I was Village when men spoke only. The Printed Word: It followed the alphabet and the written word. It made big changes in men—in me. What a man said—exactly what he said—could be carried great distances. Men could emulate the writer's lofty thoughts; men could laugh at his dirty stories a hundred miles away. A thousand. Men began to think differently. Not because of what they read but because they read it at all. Because of the printed word, men began to separate concept from action. Statement and deed were two distinct things which fewer and fewer men used together. Men began to draw apart. They now called me Society. For a long while, I grew and grew like some cancerous fungus. When I could grow no more, when I filled all the corners, they began to call me something else. They called me Village again. Electronics: They called me Village because they began to invent things that constricted society, that drew society in, in, in. They were trying to return to their collective racial womb. Their priests were strange ministers indeed: television, radio, quick-and-swift newspapers. The world shrank to the size of the moon. Then a single state. A city. A neighborhood, a house, a room. But they did not stop there, see? They continued shrinking things, drawing everyone closer and closer with their electronic wonders. It was not enough for them to have made the complete circle from Village to Village again. They began to imagine that the circle was really a mobius strip and they were always on the same side despite their frantic efforts to bring changes and more changes. Then came Show. Now they call me Zombie. There are seven hundred million subscribers to Show, but those millions are really only four people. They are all the Performers of the day program and Performers of the night program. The Government supports them because the Government is the program. They used to call a thing like that "a vicious circle." Seven hundred million and four ids and egos and superegos compressed into four bodies. Amazing, isn't it? Frightening too. It should not be frightening, for there were prophets who foretold these things which have come to pass. There was MickLooan or some such person. He or she predicted this whole thing, baby. Only this person wrote his prophecies. See? And no one reads anymore. . . .
Koontz, Dean - The Fall of the Dream Machine Page 6