Power

by Laurence M. Janifer

  Norin sat a bit straighter. No: one. Demeuth, his tiny sparkling eyes turned to the old man, needed no more than the briefest of head signals to leave his own desk and slide into Gerris’ (Gerris being, of course, absent—on what he would later call official duties, and what everyone would know was the beck and call of the—for Gerris—irresistible reporters) and cock his wrinkled middle-aged head, with its wisps of reddish hair disorderly over its top, in Norin’s direction. “Well, Isidor? What have you got for us this time? I saw Leverett, and I’m afraid the poor man doesn’t look well—not at all well. I must say, you’ve handed him a shocker this time, haven’t you? I mean, you must have done, to stir him up like that, my dear old boy, you must have found something—ah—quite spectacular.” Demeuth’s head bobbed once, twice, three times, all very quickly. “And I imagine you’re about to—ah—let me in on it, isn’t that so? Am I not correct, dear old boy?”

  You had to remember, Norin told himself, that Demeuth was nothing like the idiot he pretended to be, nothing like the odd, vacant character he seemed. “You’re quite right, Chakiris,” he said. Demeuth’s head bobbed once again while the wrinkled apple-face smiled. “I’m about to let you in on it.” A bright man, a very bright man, and surpassingly quick. He had found it to his advantage, these twelve years and more, to act the fool; but Norin had not, he reflected with a certain satisfaction coloring the terror, the depression, that filled him, been taken in by the act. Behind all the attitudes was a man worth knowing, and—in the absence of someone truly appropriate, it was true—worth exploring the horrors of the situation with.

  “Well, then, dear old boy,” Demeuth said, panting with impatience or appearing to do so, “do so, do so; don’t keep us in suspense here, now. That’s hardly polite to an old friend, pow, is it?”

  “Perhaps not, Chakiris.” Norin took a long single breath. As well as he could, he explained the situation with which the Council meeting had confronted him; and Demeuth interrupted only with sighs, gasps, exclamations of astonishment. Leverett kept peering at the two of them with curiosity and impatience, but Leverett could wait. They could all wait. They could all. . .

  At the very end of his tale he said, “The leader of the mutiny is my son.”

  Demeuth took that in as he had taken the rest— with astonishment, enough changes of facial expression to win him a post in 3V, and quite sensible, immediate, appraisal. “Your younger boy. Of course, that may lead to an even more complex situation.”

  Norin nodded. “I’d thought of that, of course,” he said. “Aaron is his own man—man!—and what he does is his own affair; I cannot concern myself with it. Its meanings for me, for my post and for my influence, shall have to be borne. But Alphard—”

  “Alphard?” Demeuth said, with what seemed, that once, true surprise. “I hadn’t thought—”

  “But I’d imagined that was what you meant when—”

  “Alphard? Dear old boy, no; Rachel was my thought. Married to this—this 3V-star fellow, isn’t she?”

  Demeuth’s doubt was, Norin thought, wonderful to behold; the wedding had spread itself over 3V for days beforehand and a day or so afterward, not to mention every other channel of public information (if that, he reflected, was what you called them), and a man would have to have been deaf and blind to have missed knowing of the wedding between “the beautiful daughter of one of our most influential long-time Dichtung members” and Miltiades Cannam, “this year’s simply magnificent heartthrob, and an actor who’s on his way to winning big awards, let me tell you . . . . . . “A month ago, yes,” Norin said, and then, cautiously: “But what does that have to do with—”

  “Thoth, dear old boy,” Demeuth said; intelligence might be the center of a talk, but the habits of idiocy were constant at the surface, which was, Norin knew, as it had to be: habit, in the end, was the only guarantor of a dependable mask. “Thoth. Now, it’s a dull city and a dry one, yes, but it is, after all, the major financial center of the System. And your new son-in-law has a certain interest in financial matters . . . as of course you know.”

  And Norin, whose particular pride it sometimes was to tell himself that he knew, within his interests, everything whatever, said quite honestly and slowly: “I don’t know anything about it. But I rather think I’d better.”

  Demeuth gave him a distant broad smile. “Yes, I’d think so.” A pause and a deep breath, and then the plunge: “You see, this man Cannam—he’s hardly an independent sort, you know. A star and all that, you see, but—well, dear old boy, he hardly has the time to manage his own business affairs. Such complexity . . . and then, of course, at that level handling becomes a special talent of its own, and we can hardly expect a man to be talented in all fields, now, can we?”

  Norin nodded. “And his business manager has a relationship with a firm on Thoth—”

  “A firm?” Demeuth broke in, his eyebrows high. Across the Hall, Norin noticed, Gaughlin, approaching peroration, was glancing ever more often and more waspishly in their direction. “Anyone might have connections of ... of that sort. In fact, once past a certain level of income—though so rigidly limited a man as yourself, in those areas, might never' know of the fact—a relation of that sort seems, in these days, almost mandatory. No. I speak, I’m afraid, of something much closer, and perhaps more complex. There are certain debts—and due to the debts, certain undertakings, of course—and anticipatory moneys invested—and . . . well, my dear old boy, it soon becomes obvious.”

  Gaughlin’s voice rose a bit. “Not to me,” Norin said. “Spit it out, Chakiris; get to the point, man.” Demeuth’s smile showed no trace of intelligence whatever. “But that is the point, you see. If Thoth is truly damaged, it is certain that a great readjustment of the money market will take place—oh, dry, dry facts, but quite pointed, I’m afraid. In that rearrangement Manville Quist will suffer great loss—if, indeed, he lives, since he is domiciled upon Thoth; but I understand that his security preparations are extensive. Naturally, they would be.”

  The name was, to Norin, faintly familiar. “Naturally?” he asked.

  “Mr.—ah—Quist,” Demeuth said easily, “has been threatened many times before; he is only partly of what we may call the legal world, you see. Now, Mr. Quist has invested heavily in backing what I understand is called a Stunner—”

  “The Cannam Stunner?” Norin asked. The spectacular 3V show was scheduled, he knew, for six months in the future; as usual, no private firm could pay for the equipment, the men, and the lines involved, no 3V beam owner was legally able to do so, and it was hardly the sort of thing that would fascinate the Government sponsorships. Instead, as Norin understood the matter, Cannam himself invested in the show, working for a return through a percentage of the fees paid by individual viewers.

  But Cannam clearly wasn’t the only investor; if Demeuth’s rambling had any meaning, he was barely an investor at all. “Quite,” the fat man said. “Mr. Quist, and an investment firm here on Earth entitled simply Trust, Ltd., are backing Mr. Cannam’s business manager—in fact, dear old boy, Trust, Ltd. has been doing so for many years. Mr. Cannam’s own funds are simply not available: they are invested in a complex of firms having little to do with the entertainment world—a complex, of course, which will react most unpleasantly to the threat of damage, or to damage itself, upon Thoth; the entire investment market, in fact, will take a plunge. . . Demeuth paused.

  It was complex, Norin told himself, but it was clear. “In other words, if anything does happen to Thoth, Cannam’s own money will begin to disappear, and his backers will also lose money. I grant you that’s unpleasant, but—”

  “I’m afraid, dear old boy, that you haven’t quite seen the point,” Demeuth said in the same tone with which the conversation had begun. “I admit that there is one other fact to consider: Mr. Quist—Cannam’s major backer upon Thoth, you recall, and himself somewhat extralegal—is in debt to Trust, Ltd.”

  It made, Norin began to see, a circle, and a peculiarly horrible one. Tru
st, Ltd. was outside the law approximately half the time, as Norin knew; if Quist, owed Cannam and Trust, Ltd. at the same time, there was no doubt as to which he would pay. The debt to Cannam was legal, and legal measures for its collection would take time; but a debt to an extralegal firm was collectible in terms of quite extralegal threats....

  No; wait. Quist wouldn’t owe Cannam: Quist, investing in the Stunner, would simply lose money, quite legally.

  As would Trust, Ltd. In which case . . .

  In which case, Norin asked himself, Where was the danger? “But—”

  “Ah, now,” Demeuth said. “I see your difficulty. You assume that sums of money in the amounts required to pay for this Stunner actually, coldly exist and are transferred to the account of Mr. Cannam’s business manager before the date of the show, so that he may pay them out. But such sums . . . my dear boy, such sums seldom, if ever, exist in quite that sense. They are promises-to-pay, percentages of stock appreciations, sums secured, in short, by the theoretical existence of other sums, and so on interminably. In the end, the money, exists, since it must be paid, in thousands of small portions, into the pockets of the workmen and the share-owners involved in the Stunner. But when Mr. Cannam’s business manager begins to do so—if a collapse at Thoth has lowered the values of the original investments, you see—he will find that neither Mr. Quist nor Trust, Ltd. is in a position to provide the sums already guaranteed.”

  “Then, since they will be acting in defiance of the law—the money having been promised . . .” Norm found himself trying to work the thing out, step by step.

  “Oh, my dear old boy, they will hardly want to bring the law down upon them in so straightforward and inescapable a manner,” Demeuth said. “They are, as you know, a bit on the shady side, and the law’s attentions would hardly suit them. Oh, no. They will, therefore, pay out the sums required and guaranteed.”

  Norin nodded, knowing he was being terribly slow about the whole business. “But if they can’t, if they haven’t the money . . .”

  “Why, then,” Demeuth said, “they will take steps to get the money. From, of course, the nearest available person: Mr. Cannam. Since it is his brother-in-law in charge of the raid, if raid there is—responsible, at any rate, for any sudden shudder at Thoth—a primitive mind, such as the collective mind of Trust, Ltd., will want Mr. Cannam to bear the responsibility. And since Mr. Quist is in debt both to Mr. Cannam and to Trust, Ltd., there is no doubt in what direction he will move—and with all possible urgency.” “They’ll both come down on Cannam,” Norin said. “Or his business manager. 1 see that much. But—”

  “The business manager may be, simply, swept out of the way,” Demeuth said. His face never changed expression; that, Norin remembered, was his first clue to the man behind Demeuth’s elaborate charade.

  “Mr. Quist will be in no mood for the making of what he would consider fine distinctions—and Trust, Ltd. is not noted for its ability to make such distinctions. Mr. Cannam will be, in their eyes, responsible for a great deal of money. And—if you’ll recall—his own investments will, by the same action which brings these men to his door, drop suddenly and sharply in value.”

  It was all clear, Norin thought; all very, terribly clear. “And if he can’t pay—”

  “Why, then,” Demeuth broke in, “they will—they must, in their own terms—make of him what is called, I believe, an ‘object lesson.’ They cannot afford, they might tell you, to allow any debtor to default on any large part of a debt; it might encourage others to do so, and in a time of panic such as might occur if Thoth is tumbled . . .”

  An object lesson, Norin was thinking. Cannam, and, by extension, Cannam’s wife—the obvious, the spotlit, the shining target, since next to her was the dark shade of her brother, the raider of Thoth, the origin of everything . . .

  An object lesson. An enforcement.

  And what was that, he asked himself, that (it seemed a good many years ago) he had told Tura-bul?

  Yes.

  Blood.

  “Hasn’t changed its orbit,” Hazeltine said. “On track and on trail.”

  “And passing dead over Thoth,” Frohlich added. The tiny lookout cabin of Skywatch Mars Fourteen felt as stuffy as it always had. No different—though with that ship up there, Frohlich thought, it should have felt different. More dramatic, anyway.

  “Just going along,” Hazeltine said dryly. “Harmlessly going its happy little way.”

  “Sure,” Frohlich said, and then, perhaps to Hazeltine and perhaps to the undramatic little room itself,

  he added, “Until we send an interceptor squad up there.”

  “Until?” Hazeltine said. “No orders yet.” Neither of them had taken his eyes from the pair of showup screens.

  “Not yet,” Frohlich agreed. “But there will be. There have to be. I mean—well, look: what else can they do?”

  “Look, look, look,” Miltiades Cannam was saying, trying to stay seated and calm at one end of the damn long table. Which wasn’t easy; and they goggled at him like fish, what else? Poor fish, he told himself; poor fish, poor suckers, and Cannam thought of his brother-in-law and thought about consigning all five (Grossbeck, Tripps, Vindi, Schor, and the new kid, this silly Holliday) to the odd Hell Alphard’s peculiar people kept threatening everybody with. Hell, indeed. There wasn’t all the time in the world, nothing like it, and he had a right to expect decent work. Well, didn’t he? “Look,” he began again, and they goggled, “this whole idea’s cracksy. Nothing to support it, nothing with any go to it; it’ll fall apart of its own damn weight. Cracksy, and that’s all.”

  Holliday stuck out his long pale neck. A turtle turning into a giraffe. “Nothing cracksy about it, Ty,” he said, his eyes very wide, his voice very earnest and almost as sure as (Cannam could imagine) he wanted it to sound. “A good solid premise: there’s this guy, he comes home after a hard day, right? And his wife’s got some psycho friends in, they’re all going to put on a play. So the guy, he won’t stand for this, and he starts a fight with the wife, only it gets mixed up with the play—”

  “I read it,” Cannam said, trying to stay calm. Somebody had to do the thinking for this crew. “I read it, I walked through it. I tried it, remember? Look, you don’t see the point.” What were they, amateurs? Nobody but Holliday with even enough belief to stand up for the scene. And a cracksy scene to start with. “None of you,” he said. “You’re bat-blind, you’re stuck to last year. Like last year was flypaper; that’s how you’re stuck to it.” Calm, he told himself. “Now the thing is this: the scene’s old, everybody knows it, and it just drags. No life in it, no fresh notions. Look, where’s the laughs? Tell me that: where’s the laughs?”

  Holliday began right off; bang went the starting-gate: “Well, look, Ty, you go and take this bit where the guy is holding a mop handle, and there’s this military—” and then he stopped. All around the table there was a silence. Afraid, Cannam thought. Running scared. It was just that Holliday was a little newer; took his time to realize you don’t fight the big boss. Nobody fights the big boss.

  That was flypaper too. “There’s no laughs,” he said. “It’s all jammed together, banged up and busted down.” A flicker from somewhere (Tripps and Schor?). “All right, it follows the rules. I will say that for it: it has got that much. It has got all the rules.”

  Hey-hey: bravery. Courage. Daring. “But, Ty.” Old little Grossbeck, looked like about age nine hundred and eighty with that bald head, and the little flat eyes. Skin as yellow as yellow paint, and that voice you kept thinking was going to turn into a whisper or a croak, one. But brave, all of a sudden—how’d that happen, baby? “You have to think of the audience,” he said. Precise and a little slow. “A scene plays for one particular audience. That is always true.” What made people like that drift into gagwriting, scenesketching, all the crazy jobs? Cannam knew he would never figure it out, and that was a weakness; what you don’t know, some shlockhead will use against you.

  So he had his head t
urned looking at the old man and Schor got up at the far end of the table, big and dark as somebody’s housebroken gorilla, picking up the argument with a dramatic gesture: standing. Leaning his hands down right on the table, flat, just like a real defiant type, stand up for the scene or march out and face a firing squad; sure, baby, a big man. “This isn’t like some little thing, Ty. I mean, this is for the whole megillah, the entire audience. And you get an audience like that, Ty-baby”—and Cannam got the big grin, I’m only out for your best interests, I mean to do good by you, believe me— “take it from me, you can’t be too subtle-like. It has to be—”

  Enough was enough. “I know what it has to be,” Cannam said. “It has to be tossed the Hell out. And it has to be replaced. And damn quick.”

  Holliday hadn’t had enough. “But—”

  Schor hadn’t moved. Cannam looked him up and down. Slowly, slowly. Took a big breath and looked around the table. “Who’s the final word?” he said. “Tell me that.”

  Schor shrugged, not making a big thing out of it. Around the table: Grossbeck shaking his slow old head, Vindi and Tripps as close as Siamese twins, looking dubious—there was something weird there and there always had been; one day when he had time he’d dig it out. You could never know too much. Vindi was starting to sit down when Holliday cleared his throat and everything froze again.

  “You are, Ty. Mr. Cannam.”

  “Fine,” Cannam said. “Call me Ty, baby-duck. We’re all friends here.” Giving them the fast flash of a smile, bright, bright, bright: the knife, that was the way. Send them all to Hell. Place needs a population increase, why not make Alphard happy? “Ty. Got that? And Ty’s the final word; you keep that in mind.” Look around the table. Schor was sitting down—when’d that happen?—and the freeze was on every face. So they’ll do it my way, and they won’t like it. But they’ll do it; that’s the big thing, that’s what has to be. “And the final word is, you jerk it,” he told them. “You get a new scene, baby-ducks, you all come very high-priced, you know that?” The knife again, just the flash of a smile. “And for those prices I want something fresh. New. Not from the stale counter, twenty percent off.”