And Now the News

by Theodore Sturgeon

  “Say what?” said Joe stupidly, and immediately clapped his hand to his chest. “Uh!”

  “What happened?”

  “It … I mean, it buzzed.”

  Zeitgeist laughed. “Let me tell you what you’ve got there. In front, two little speakers, an amplifier to drive them, and a contact microphone that picks up your chest tones. In back, on this side, a band-pass arrangement that suppresses all those dominating high-frequency whimperings of yours and feeds the rest, the stuff you’re weak in, up front to be amplified. And over here, in back—that’s where the power supply goes. Go over there where you were and record something. And remember what I told you—you have to help this thing. Talk a little slower and you won’t have to say ‘I mean’ while you think of what comes next. You know what comes next, anyway. You don’t have to be afraid to say it.”

  Dazed, Joe stepped back to where he had been when the first recording was made, glanced for help up at the green line of the oscilloscope, closed his eyes and said, falteringly at first, then stronger and steadier, “ ‘Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this contin—’ ”

  “Cut!” cried Zeitgeist. “Joe, see that tone-generator over there? It’s big as a spinet piano. I can do a lot but believe me, you haven’t got one of those strapped on you. Your amplifier can only blow up what it gets. You don’t have much, but for Pete’s sake give it what you have. Try talking with your lungs full instead of empty. Push your voice a little, don’t just let it fall out of you.”

  “Nothing happens, though. I sound the same to myself. Is it working? Maybe it doesn’t work.”

  “Like I told you before,” said Zeitgeist with exaggerated patience, “people who are talking aren’t listening. It’s working all right. Don’t go looking for failures, Joe. Plenty’ll come along that you didn’t ask for. Now go ahead and do as I said.”

  Joe wet his lips, took a deep breath. Zeitgeist barked, “Now slowly!” and he began: “ ‘Four score and seven years—’ ” The sonorous words rolled out, his chest vibrated from the buzzing, synchronized to his syllables. And though he was almost totally immersed in his performance, a part of him leaped excitedly, realizing that never in his whole life before had he listened, really listened to that majestic language. When he was finished he opened his eyes and found Zeitgeist standing very near him, his eyes alight.

  “Good,” the man breathed. “Ah, but … good.”

  “Was it? Was it really?”

  In answer, Zeitgeist went to the controls, rewound the tape, and hit the playback button.

  And afterwards, he said gently to Joe, “You can cry—see?”

  “Damn foolishness,” said Joe.

  “No it isn’t,” Zeitgeist told him.

  Outside, it was morning—what a morning, with all the gold and green, thrust and rustle of a new morning in a new summer. He hadn’t been out all night; he had died and was born again! He stood tall, walked tall, he carried his shining new voice sheathed like Excalibur, but for all its concealment, he was armed!

  He had tried to thank Zeitgeist, and that strange man had shaken his head soberly and said, “Don’t, Joe. You’re going to pay me for it.”

  “Well I will, of course I will! Anything you say … how much, anyhow?”

  Zeitgeist had shaken his head slightly. “We’ll talk about it later. Go on—get in the car. I’ll drive you to work.” And, silently, he had.

  Downtown, he reached across Joe and opened the door. For him, the door worked. “Come see me day after tomorrow. After dinner—nine.”

  “O.K. Why? Got another … treatment?”

  “Not for you,” said Zeitgeist, and his smile made it a fine compliment for both of them. “But no power plant lasts forever. Luck.” And before Joe could answer the door was closed and the big car had swung out into traffic. Joe watched it go, grinning and shaking his head.

  The corner clock said five minutes to nine. Just time, if he hurried.

  He didn’t hurry. He went to Harry’s and got shaved, while they pressed his suit and sponged his collar in the back room. He kept the bathrobe they gave him pulled snugly over his amplifier, and under a hot towel he reached almost the euphoric state he had been in last night. He thought of Barnes, and the anger stirred in him. With some new internal motion he peeled away its skin of fear and set it free. Nothing happened, except that it lived in him instead of just lying there. It didn’t make him tremble. It made him smile.

  Clean, pressed, and smelling sweet, he walked into his building at eight minutes before ten. He went down to the express elevator and stepped into the one open door. Then he said, “Wait,” and stepped out again. The operator goggled at him.

  Joe walked up to the starter, a bushy character in faded brown and raveled gold braid. “Hey … you.”

  The starter pursed a pair of liver-colored lips and glowered at him. “Whaddayeh want?”

  Joe filled his lungs and said evenly, “Day before yesterday you took hold of me and shoved me into an elevator like I was a burlap sack.”

  The starter’s eyes flickered, “Not me.”

  “You calling me a liar, too?”

  Suddenly the man’s defenses caved. There was a swift pucker which came and went on his chin, and he said, “Look, I got a job to do, mister, rush hours, if I don’t get these cars out of here it’s my neck, I didn’t mean nothing by it, I——”

  “Don’t tell me your troubles,” said Joe. He glared at the man for a second. “All right, do your job, but don’t do it on me like that again.”

  He turned his back, knowing he was mimicking Zeitgeist with the gesture and enjoying the knowledge. He went back to the elevator and got in. Through the closing gate he saw the starter, right where he had left him, gaping. The kid running the elevator was gaping, too.

  “Eleven,” said Joe.

  “Yes, sir,” said the boy. He started the car. “You told him.”

  “ ’Bout time,” said Joe modestly.

  “Past time,” said the kid.

  Joe got out on the eleventh floor, feeling wonderful. He walked down the hall, thumped a door open, and ambled in. Eleanor Bulmer, the receptionist, looked up. He saw her eyes flick to the clock and back to his face. “Well!”

  “Morning,” he said expansively, from his inflated lungs. She blinked as if he had fired a cap pistol, then looked confusedly down at her typewriter.

  He took a step toward his corner desk when there was a flurry, a botherment up from the left, then an apparition of thinning hair and exophthalmic blue eyes. Barnes, moving at a half-trot as usual, jacket off, suspenders, armbands pulling immaculate cuffs high and away from rust-fuzzed scrawny wrists. “Eleanor, get me Apex on the phone. Get me Apex on the—” And then he saw Joe. He stopped. He smiled. He had gleaming pale-yellow incisors like a rodent. He, too, flicked a glance at the clock.

  Joe knew exactly what he was going to say, exactly how he was going to say it. He took a deep breath, and if old ghosts were about to rise in him, the friendly pressure of the amplifier just under his collarbones turned them to mist. Why, Miss Terr Fritch, Barnes would say with exaggerated and dramatic politeness, how ki-i-ind of you to drop in today. Then the smile would snap off and the long series of not-to-be-answered questions would begin. Didn’t he know this was a place of business? Was he aware of the customary starting time? Did it not seem that among fourteen punctual people, he alone—and so on. During it, seven typewriters would stop, a grinning stock boy would stick his head over a filing cabinet to listen, and Miss Bulmer, over whose nape the monologue would stream, would sit with her head bowed waiting for it to pass. Already the typewriter had stopped. And yes, sure enough: behind Barnes he could see the stock boy’s head.

  “Why, Miss Terr Fritch!” said Barnes happily.

  Joe immediately filled his lungs, turned his back on Barnes, and said into the stunned silence, “Better get him Apex on the phone, Eleanor. He has the whole place at a stand-still.” He then walked around Barnes as if the man were a pill
ar and went to his desk and sat down.

  Barnes stood with his bony head lowered and his shoulders humped as if he had been bitten on the neck by a fire ant. Slowly he turned and glared up the office. There was an immediate explosion of typewriter noise, shuffling feet, shuffling papers. “I’ll take it in my office,” Barnes said to the girl.

  He had to pass Joe to get there, and to Joe’s great delight he could see how reluctant Barnes was to do it. “I’ll see you later,” Barnes hissed as he went by, and Joe called cheerfully after him, “You just betcha.” Out in the office, somebody whistled appreciatively; somebody snickered. Joe knew Barnes had heard it. He smiled, and picked up the phone. “Outside, Eleanor. Personal.”

  Eleanor Bulmer knew Barnes didn’t allow personal calls except in emergencies, and then preferred to give his permission first. Joe could hear her breathing, hesitating. Then, “Yes, Mr. Fritch.” And the dial tone crooned in his ear. Mr. Fritch, he thought. That’s the first time she ever called me Mr. Fritch. What do you know. Why … why, she never called me anything before! Just “Mr. Barnes wants to see you,” or “Cohen of Electrical Marketing on the line.”

  Mr. Fritch dialed his home. “Hello—Lutie?”

  “Joe! Where were you all night?” The voice was waspish, harrying; he could see her gathering her forces, he could see her mountain of complaints about to be shoveled into the telephone as if it were a hopper.

  “I called to tell you I’m all right because I thought it was a good idea. Maybe it was a bad idea.”

  “What?” There was a pause, and then in a quite different tone she said, “Joe? Is this … Joe, is that you?”

  “Sure,” he said heartily. “I’m at work and I’m all right and I’ll be home for dinner. Hungry,” he added.

  “You expect me to cook you a dinner after—” she began, but without quite her accustomed vigor.

  “All right, then I won’t be home for dinner,” he said reasonably.

  She didn’t say anything for a long time, but he knew she was still there. He sat and waited. At last she said faintly, “Will veal cutlets be all right?”

  On the second night after this fledging, Mr. Joseph Fritch strode into the porte-cochere and bounded up the steps. He ground the bell-push with his thumb until it hurt, and then knocked. He stood very straight until the door opened.

  “Joe, boy! Come on in.” Zeitgeist left the door and opened another. Joe had the choice of following or of standing where he was and shouting. He followed. He found himself in a room new to him, low-ceilinged like the others, but with books from floor to ceiling. In a massive fieldstone fireplace flames leaped cheerfully, yet the room was quite cool. Air-conditioned. Well, he guessed Zeitgeist just liked a fire. “Look,” he said abruptly.

  “Sit down. Drink?”

  “No. Listen, you’ve made a mistake.”

  “I know, I know. The bill. Got it with you?”

  “I have.”

  Zeitgeist nodded approvingly. Joe caught himself wondering why. Zeitgeist glided across to him and pressed a tall glass into his hand. It was frosty, beaded, sparkling. “What’s in it?” he snapped.

  Zeitgeist burst out laughing, and in Joe fury passed, shame passed, and he found himself laughing, too. He held out his glass and Zeitgeist clinked with him. “You’re a … a—luck.”

  “Luck,” said Zeitgeist. They drank. It was whiskey, the old gentle muscular whiskey that lines the throat with velvet and instantly heats the ear lobes. “How did you make out?”

  Joe drank again and smiled. “I walked into that office almost an hour late,” he began, and told what had happened. Then, “And all day it was like that. I didn’t know a job … people … I didn’t know things could be like that. Look, I told you I’d pay you. I said I’d pay you anything you—”

  “Never mind that just now. What else happened? The suit and all?”

  “That. Oh, I guess I was kind of—” Joe looked into the friendly amber in his glass, “well, intoxicated. Lunchtime I just walked into King’s and got the suit. Two suits. I haven’t had a new suit in four years, and then it didn’t come from King’s. I just signed for ’em,” he added, a reflective wonderment creeping into his voice. “They didn’t mind. Shirts,” he said, closing his eyes.

  “It’ll pay off.”

  “It did pay off,” said Joe, bouncing on his soft chair to sit upright on the edge, shoulders back, head up. His voice drummed and his eyes were bright. He set his glass down on the carpet and swatted his hands gleefully together. “There was this liaison meeting, they call it, this morning. I don’t know what got into me. Well, I do; but anyway, like every other copywriter I have a project tucked away; you know—I like it but maybe no one else will. I had it in my own roughs, up to yesterday. So I got this bee in my bonnet and went in to the Art Department and started in on them, and you know, they caught fire, they worked almost all night? And at the meeting this morning, the usual once-a-month kind of thing, the brass from the main office looking over us step-children and wondering why they don’t fold us up and go to an outside agency. It was so easy!” he chortled.

  “I just sat there, shy like always, and there was old Barnes as usual trying to head off product advertising and go into institutionals, because he likes to write that stuff himself. Thinks it makes the brass think he loves the company. So soon as he said ‘institutionals’ I jumped up and agreed with him and said let me show you one of Mr. Barnes’ ideas. Yeah! I went and got it and you should see that presentation; you could eat it! So here’s two VPs and a board secretary with their eyes bugging out and old Barnes not daring to deny anything, and everybody in the place knew I was lying and thought what a nice fellow I was to do it that way. And there sat that brass, looking at my haircut and my tie and my suit and me, and buying it piece by piece, and Barnes, old Barnes sweating it out.”

  “What did they offer you?”

  “They haven’t exactly. I’m supposed to go see the chairman Monday.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Say no. Whatever it is, I’ll say no. I have lots of ideas piled up—nobody would listen before! Word’ll get around soon enough; I’ll get my big raise the only smart way a man can get a really big one—just before he goes to work for a new company. Meanwhile I’ll stay and work hard and be nice to Barnes, who’ll die a thousand deaths.”

  Zeitgeist chuckled. “You’re a stinker. What happened when you went home?”

  Joe sank back into his chair and turned toward the flames; whatever his thoughts were, they suffused him with firelight and old amber, strength through curing, through waiting. His voice was just that mellow as he murmured, “That wasn’t you at all. That was me.”

  “Oh, sorry. I wasn’t prying.”

  “Don’t get me wrong!” said Joe. “I want to tell you.” He laughed softly. “We had veal cutlets.”

  A log fell and Joe watched the sparks shooting upward while Zeitgeist waited. Suddenly Joe looked across at him with a most peculiar expression on his face. “The one thing I never thought of till the time came. I couldn’t wear that thing all night, could I now? I don’t want her to know. I’ll be … you said I’d grow to … that if I put my back into it, maybe some day I wouldn’t need it.” He touched his collarbone.

  “That’s right,” said Zeitgeist.

  “So I couldn’t wear it. And then I couldn’t talk. Not a word.” Again, the soft laugh. “She wouldn’t sleep, not for the longest time. ‘Joe?’ she’d say, and I’d know she was going to ask where I’d been that night. I’d say, ‘Shh.’ and put my hand on her face. She’d hold on to it. Funny. Funny, how you know the difference,” he said in a near whisper, looking at the fire again. “She said, ‘Joe?’ just like before, and I knew she was going to say she was sorry for being … well, all the trouble we’ve had. But I said ‘Shh.’ ” He watched the fire silently, and Zeitgeist seemed to know that he was finished.

  “I’m glad,” said Zeitgeist.

  “Yeah.”

  They shared some quiet.
Then Zeitgeist said, waving his glass at the mantel, “Still think the bill’s out of line?”

  Joe looked at it, at the man. “It’s not a question of how much it’s worth,” he said with some difficulty. “It’s how much I can pay. When I left here I wanted to pay you whatever you asked—five dollars or five hundred, I didn’t care what I had to sacrifice. But I never thought it would be five thousand!” He sat up. “I’ll level with you; I don’t have that kind of money. I never did have. Maybe I never will have.”

  “What do you think I fixed you up for?” Zeitgeist’s voice cracked like a target-gun. “What do you think I’m in business for? I don’t gamble.”

  Joe stood up slowly. “I guess I just don’t understand you,” he said coldly. “Well, at those prices I guess I can ask you to service this thing so I can get out of here.”

  “Sure.” Zeitgeist rose and led the way out of the room and down the hall to the laboratory. His face was absolutely expressionless, but not fixed; only relaxed.

  Joe shucked out of his jacket, unbuttoned his shirt and took it off. He unclipped the elastics and pulled the amplifier off over his head. Zeitgeist took it and tossed it on the bench. “All right,” he said, “get dressed.”

  Joe went white. “What, you want to haggle? Three thousand then, when I get it,” he said shrilly.

  Zeitgeist sighed. “Get dressed.”

  Joe turned and snatched at his shirt. “Blackmail. Lousy blackmail.”

  Zeitgeist said, “You know better than that.”

  There is a quality of permanence about the phrase that precedes a silence. It bridges the gap between speech and speech, hanging in midair to be stared at. Joe pulled on his shirt, glaring defiantly at the other man. He buttoned it up, he tucked in the tails, he put on his tie and knotted it, and replaced his tie clasp. He picked up his coat. And all the while the words hung there.