Her mouth moved and for a second she had too much anger in her to speak. Then it came out in a rush. “We will see about that!” she enunciated with a harsh, deliberate insolence. She glared at both men, then left the office.
Holcombe winced as she slammed the door.
“Say, Art—you’ve really got a way with women,” Chuck said with a grin.
The I.M.C. vice-president glowered at his reporter. “You’d better come up with something.” He glared at the closed door. “That lady has more power than she knows.”
Chuck heaved his lean figure to its feet and waved at Arthur Holcombe as he left the office, his shoes silent on the thick rug. “See you in Sioux Falls, Arthur.” He paused in the opened door and glanced back. “Not a bad town, actually.”
He left with a grin and Holcombe glowering at the closed doar. “Funny!” he said in a flat voice. He looked at his cigar. It had gone out.
• • •
Tracy stepped onto the sleek, neon-striped, stainless-steel-mirrored escalator and rode it down, seething, but trying to contain her fury. Chuck appeared at the top and eased his way down quickly, bypassing the people who had gotten on after her. He excused himself, dodged around a fat lady, and caught up to Tracy.
He put out a hand toward her. “Hey, Socks! Don’t go away mad.”
Tracy turned her head quickly and frowned at him. “What do you want?” she demanded, her voice a most unmodulated growl.
He stepped on the escalator step just above her, smiling at her in his airy way. “Just thought I’d tell you I like your style.”
She did not respond, except to turn and look at their downward path, uncrossing her arms and grasping the rail in an attempt to act less uptight.
“I thought old Arthur was going to swallow his corporate stripes,” Chuck said. “You’ve come a long way.”
Tracy whipped her head around at him again. “You mean you’re sorry you fired me?”
“Socks,” Chuck said placatingly, “you just weren’t a very good reporter.”
She turned back and spoke with fervent words that had a trace of practiced idealism. “I was a kid out of college who thought newspapers ought to be more than dirt and bad news.”
The tall, brown-haired reporter showed her his palms. “Come on. Bad news is what the truth is all about.” He stepped down to her level and she edged over reluctantly.
“Not to me!” she snapped. “And not to television. People have enough troubles without us loading them up with more.”
Chuck shook his head as they made a turn to the next Down escalator. “That’s an excuse to deliver glamorized horse pucky instead of news.” Her slowness in the turn put Chuck on the escalator ahead of her and now their heads were on a level.
“You know, you’d think that even so dull a brain as yours would finally get the message. I have fifty-five million viewers worldwide. You have a few thousand old crones in the public library.” She smiled viciously at him. “Why don’t you wise up, mister?” She leaned toward him to spit her last words in his face. “Nobody reads!”
He smiled back at Tracy and his manner and words infuriated her. “Then you’ve got nothing to worry about. I’ll write my story for the old crones while you dazzle the world with electronic close-ups.” He held out his hand. “In the meantime, how about a truce?”
She didn’t take his hand, and watched him suspiciously as they took a turn onto another escalator. “I don’t trust you,” she said warily.
“But you like me a little, right?” His grin was wide and confident. “And we’ll be alone together for a week. So what the hell!” He waggled his extended hand.
Tracy did not rise to the bait. “If you foul up my story . . .” she said warningly.
Chuck looked innocent. “How can I do that? I’m just playing a hunch.” He gestured with his extended hand. “Anyway, Delos is now perfect, so there’s nothing to worry about, okay?” He stuck his hand back toward her.
“I don’t like being called Socks,” she said.
Chuck shrugged. “I can’t help it. First time I saw you, you had those red stocking on. Remember? Absolutely beautiful. Couldn’t sleep for a week after that.”
“Yeah,” Tracy nodded, making a face. “And then you fired me.”
“That was business,” he said. Again, he thrust his big, bony hand at her. She looked at it, but didn’t take it. “Come on,” he urged, “whaddaya say? A truce?”
She gave a little in her stern manner, but pointedly ignored the proffered handshake as they got off the escalator at the main floor. “I’ll . . . I’ll think about it.”
Without a word, she about-faced and walked briskly toward the side door. Chuck watched her go, making a little bet with himself. When she turned, just as she reached the exit, and glanced back over her shoulder, he grinned. She swiveled her head around and went out through the thick glass door as fast as possible.
“That’s a fine-looking woman,” he muttered to himself. A passerby looked at him and Chuck grinned brightly at him. Unembarrassed, he spoke aloud. “I said, that’s a fine-looking woman.”
The man frowned at him, then appeared embarrassed himself and hurried off. Chuck turned the other way and strode across the big, glittery lobby whistling. Passing the space-shuttle display, he went out onto the street in front of the building.
Tracy paused on her side street, licked her lips nervously, thinking about Chuck Browning and their brief acquaintance some years before. For some reason she remembered that he always called escalators ess-cal-a-tores and it unaccountably amused her. She ceased smiling when she remembered she was supposed to be angry . . . and had good reason to be.
• • •
The First Class area of the jetliner was divided into private compartments not unlike those of a European train. Chuck Browning stood in the aisle, looking over the back of a bald-headed Russian security agent as he whispered into the ear of an elderly Russian general. Chuck thought he and his plump wife both resembled the late Premier Khrushchev. The reporter saw the general look around the K.G.B. type and give Chuck a cold, fishy stare.
The whisper was not designed to be discreet. “Nyet!”
The security man straightened and turned to Chuck after he had pulled the curtains closed. “General Karnovsky regrets,” the bald-headed Russian shrugged, and with little regret in his voice or manner, “but he does not give interviews now. He is on vacation.” He shook his head, smiling, but the smile was more a baring of teeth, a mechanical action, like that of a mannequin who had learned that certain social skills were expected. “Strictly non-political,” he added.
“I’m just looking for a little human interest, that’s all,” Chuck told him. He touched the security man’s shoulder. “Listen, a good interview in an important American paper could do the general a lot of good. Maybe get him a promotion.”
The K.G.B. type looked at the fingers on his shoulder and Chuck dropped his hand. “The general does not need a promotion,” he said in a flat, no-nonsense voice.
Chuck shrugged. “You got a point.” He tried to come up with another angle, but the security man gestured politely down the aisle of closed curtains.
“Good-bye,” he said firmly.
Chuck nodded in regret and stuck a card into the security man’s breast pocket. “Just in case,” he said.
He then walked toward the First Class seating area, and paused to look back at the security man. He was nowhere in sight, but a crumpled card lay like a rebuke on the deep pile carpet.
Chuck nodded to himself. Rejection was commonplace to a reporter. As he walked down the aisle between the rows of large, comfortable seats, and passed a wide variety of international businessmen, he thought about how a reporter must learn to accept rejection and not be crushed by it. He must also learn not to be overly flattered when he was sought after, for almost always it was to be used for something he wanted sold or promoted.
“We are a conduit,” he thought to himself. He remembered Napoleon Bonaparte’s words:
“Three hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.”
Chuck also remembered the words of the late Lenny Bruce, who had said, “Publicity is stronger than sanity: given the right P.R., armpit hair on female singers could become a national fetish.”
Grinning, Chuck passed a group of Japanese businessmen chatting brightly, stepped around an Indian and his dark-browed wife in a beautiful sari who were parading up the aisle, and overheard an American with a thick briefcase say, “My company is vacuum-welding gizmacks to extruded gormacles out in space right now!”
Chuck stepped into a vacant seat space to allow a plump pair of Nigerian couples, dressed in ornamented caftans and hats, to get by. For some reason still thinking of journalism and the press, he recalled Randolph Churchill’s line “The Press is the greatest curse of civilization.” Chuck didn’t agree. As life became more complex and complicated there was a growing need to communicate. The minorities—racial, social, scientific, ethnic, biological, anthropological, and whatever—needed more and more to communicate with others, with themselves, with society as a whole. Only the press—in all its many-splendored parts—could do that, Chuck thought. “When you see a mistake in a newspaper,” an old reporter named Harry Warner had told Chuck, “the only thing you can be sure about is that there will be more where that one came from.”
Chuck dodged his way through the international crowd, all of them in varying degrees of vacation spirits, and reached the lounge. A thickset man wearing in his lapel the pin of the Zero Population Growth Party, was telling some others, “We’ve licked it in America. Now if we can just convince the rest of the world that overpopulation reduces the quality of life for everyone . . .”
Chuck ordered a drink from the bartender, and remembered Mark Twain’s dictum that “A newspaper is not just for reporting the news as it is, but to make people mad enough to do something about it.”
That was what Chuck believed he was doing. The hunch about the Delos story was not one hundred percent certain. He had had hunches before—based on rumors, intuition, and tips. He’d once spent two weeks researching a hunch that the Los Angeles Metropolitan Water District was recycling sewer water into the water supply. It was perfectly logical, as water was getting more and more scarce. And chemically feasible. But the public distaste for such a venture would have been enormous, had the story been true. Actually, Chuck wasn’t all that certain it would not be true in the near future.
He collected his drink, along with the thought that Oscar Wilde called journalism “organized gossip.” Edging around an Arab prince who was discussing his entry in the upcoming Grand Prix, Chuck found an empty seat next to Tracy Ballard.
As the lanky reporter sighed into the plush seat, Tracy looked up from her small hand-held tape recorder, which she used for recording notes to herself.
She indicated the multi-nationals around her. “We can get good footage on the plane, emphasizing the glamour and importance of the Delos guests.” She narrowed her eyes and tilted her head as she surveyed the lounge. “Maybe a montage of international types.”
Chuck grinned as she clicked off her recorder. She had turned a note to herself into an opening conversational gambit with him.
“How did you do?” she asked, tipping her head back toward the Russian general.
“Terrible. I first tried the Iranian oil minister. Nothing.” He shrugged. “Then Karnovsky said ‘Nyet,’ and that leaves Takaguchi over there as my last shot.” He tipped his glass toward three Japanese businessmen engaged in animated conversation.
One of the short, distinguished-looking men was older, obviously the boss, and spoke the least. The others were younger and quickly deferred to the man whenever he spoke.
Chuck spoke to Tracy as he studied Takaguchi. “I don’t know. It just bothers me. The Delos guest list looks like a rerun of the last Geneva Conference.” He gestured around them. “Rocket experts, oil ministers, heavyweight electronics people.”
“Well, for God’s sake,” Tracy growled with exasperation, “at twelve hundred dollars a day who else can afford the price?” She shook her head vigorously. “You’re trying to make something out of nothing at all.”
Chuck took a sip of his drink. “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he responded, still looking gloomily about.
Nearby was a pair of middle-aged men who were smiling broadly and whispering to each other. They reminded Chuck of two guilty boys giggling over a dirty magazine. He pointed at them and asked Tracy, “Do you think those are typical Delos customers?”
Tracy’s shoulders lifted and fell. “Middle-aged but not grown up. The kind that look at their secretary’s legs every time she bends over the filing cabinet.”
Chuck grinned at her. “What’s wrong with looking at nice legs?”
“Nothing, except that sneaky part.” She quivered. “I just hate it”
Chuck got to his feet and announced, “I’ll just do a little reportorial eavesdropping and see what they’re like.” He wandered over and sat down on the arm of a seat and pawed slowly through the magazines in a rack.
One of the men, overweight and without the hair he’d once had, was nudging his friend in the ribs and pointing at the pictures in a colorful brochure. “Hey, Ed, how do you think I’ll look as Caligula or Caesar or Tiberius or one of those other Roman dudes?”
Ed looked at him and pursed his lips. “About how you looked when you dressed up like a woman for the club frolics.”
“Jesus, Ed, I was drunk that night! And it was for charity.”
Ed snorted. “And you don’t plan on drinking in Roman World? Come on, Al . . .”
Al shrugged. “Well, hell, what’s the point of going and spending all that write-off money if you don’t have fun?”
Ed nodded, a smile on his lips. “Indulgent joker, aren’t you? You really think the tax boys will let us write off a trip to Delos?”
A leer crossed Al’s face. “Sure, sure. Bob Kerr, over at Tri-State Soyabread, he went there and wrote it off and the I.R.S. didn’t blink an eye.” He looked around conspiratorially, saw Chuck, but ignored him as the reporter seemed immersed in a copy of Delos Highlights. “Listen, Delos can help you out. They got this service see?” Again he looked around, grinning. “You know that form you filled out before you came? They got this computer that will match you up with anyone in the same field, in a related field, or even in some field you don’t even think about, but with which you can wangle a connection.”
“How am I going to do that?”
“This service, man. They are really slick. Listen, they don’t advertise it, for God’s sake, but it’s there. You’re in wind-power machinery, right? Okay, so anyone in energy production you can have a conference with, right? Or metals? Meteorologists?” He settled back. “See how it works? If you can’t make a connection, they can. Provide you with some pretty good info on how to write it off.” He made an expansive gesture. “Hell, you might make a deal, too, for that matter!”
Ed nodded again. “It certainly must increase the potential of people that can come to Delos. At their prices, you need to write it off!”
Al smirked again. “Hell, ol’ buddy, you ’n’ me know we’d be able to figure a way to write it off. Why give Uncle any more money than we need to, huh?”
“But getting a written-off vacation isn’t why you came, is it?”
Al’s smirk slid again into a leer. “Hell, no. For that I coulda gone to Bermuda or Hawaii or someplace.” His eyes slid around again.. “But they don’t offer no super deals like Delos, nossir.” His finger stabbed at the brochure again. “Lookit that, Ed. Isn’t that something?”
Chuck craned his neck and saw a voluptuous brunette in a skimpy Grecian-style chiton, standing at two high, ornate doors, gesturing for the viewer to enter. Beyond was the impression of an immense orgy: writhing bodies, servants, wine, food, Roman couches, columns, dancers, musicians, men in togas, and so on. But no bared breasts, no naked loins. Everything was there, but discreetly hidden. An
arm just happened to cross between camera and bosom, a potted plant or Senator’s shoulder between bared loins and viewer. Discreet, but it told its story.
Al sighed again and pointed out several more well-built female figures to his companion. “Always wanted to get in on one of those Roman-orgy things.” His friend nodded agreement. “Started back when I was a kid, y’know? Those movies . . . Ben-Hur, the deMille epics, The Fall of the Roman Empire, all those Cleopatra films, some of those Italian musclemen flicks, remember?” Ed nodded again. “The Egyptian, Samson and Delilah, Messalina, Quo Vadis? Jesus, there were some great scenes in those pics!”
“So that’s where you’re headed?”
Al nodded eagerly. “Nowhere else, man. Forget that Futureworld stuff. Who cares what happens tomorrow? It’s today, man!”
“What about Spa World? They’re supposed to be pretty good.”
“Oh, sure, I thought about them. Maybe next time. No, it’s Roman World for me, no doubt about it. Listen, you know Mike Jacobson? He was in Delos for three days and he had to take a week’s vacation to rest up after. No kidding. Said it was fan-frigging-tastic!”
“I was thinking of sort of wandering around and sampling each section,” Ed said.
Al shook his head. “C’mon, try Roman World with me first. Then if you wanta travel on, okay.” He shook the brochure again, pointing at a buxom blonde bath attendant. “How about that one . . . or one like her? I heard they are programmed to . . .” He looked around, then started whispering to his companion.
Delos 2 - Futureworld Page 3