Escape Velocity

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Escape Velocity Page 21

by Christopher Stasheff


  “Come along, children.” He turned and ambled away toward the big interior doors.

  Dar could fairly hear Sam bristling as they followed.

  The androids swung the doors open, inclining in a slight bow as Whitey passed through. As Dar filed by, he definitely did not receive the expected impression of being scanned. What with one thing and another, it boosted his opinion of Whitey's status till it almost soared.

  They entered a world of sybaritic luxury—parqueted walls with huge, inscrutable paintings that fairly screamed, “ART!” surrounding chairs that seemed to mold themselves around the sitter's body, a carpet so thick that it must have had a heartbeat, and a tastefully almost-dressed hostess who bent low to murmur, “Refreshment, citizen?”

  A month ago, Dar would have grabbed her and enacted the wildest scene of animal lust ever recorded (which it no doubt would have been). But, with Lona in the same room, the woman just didn't seem interesting. “Yes, something to drink, thanks. Nothing too stimulating.”

  When she handed him the drink, he took a tiny sip—and euphoria/ecstasy/exaltation/Nirvana rose up behind his eyeballs and exploded in streamers that enveloped his brain. He sat rigid for a moment, then coughed delicately into his fist, and set the drink down. He'd had occasional experiences with the pipeweed of Wolmar, during prairie grass fires, and knew a depressant when one hit him. The lady had taken him at his word, and then some; he wondered if he'd unwittingly spoken a code phrase.

  Then a medium-sized man with a giant of a personality swept into the lounge. “Tambourin! You infernal old scoundrel! Welcome back!”

  Whitey stood up just in time to be almost knocked down by the dynamo's enthusiasm. All that kept him up was the bear hug as Stroganoff's rolling laughter boomed in their ears.

  Then Stroganoff held Whitey back at arm's length, grinning from ear to ear. “Let me look at you, ancient my wastrel! . . . Not a day! Ten years, and he hasn't aged a wrinkle!”

  “Well, I was old enough the last time I saw you.” Whitey slapped Stroganoff on the shoulder. “Solid meat still, eh? You're not doing so badly yourself, David!”

  “Not since they gave me that new stomach, no. But let me put on my manners a second. Glad to meet you, folks, I'm David Stroganoff. Who're your friends, Whitey?”

  “Oh, this is Fulva Vulpes.” Whitey stretched a hand out to Lona, whose eyes registered only the faintest of surprises. “She's my assistant director and director of editing.”

  Stroganoff's eyebrows went up. “Unusual combination.” He pressed Lona's hand. “You must be very good with computers.”

  Now Lona did show surprise. She glanced at Whitey. Stroganoff chuckled. “And who's this enchantress?”

  Sam answered the compliment with a glare, which brought even more charm feeding back from Stroganoff. “Watching to make sure the compliment's not more than its subject is worth, eh? Believe me, it's sound as an erg. What is she, Tod—your unit manager?”

  “If it comes in a bureaucratic package and is wrapped with red tape, I can cut it,” Sam said warily.

  “Unit manager, it is! And you, citizen?”

  “Cobum Helith, research and script development. Co's the one who came up with the idea for tying my verses into a story, Dave.”

  “Wh . . . Tod'n' I've been talking for some time now.” Father Marco shook Stroganoff's hand without batting an eyelid. “I work from fundamental mythic structures—which means I have trouble thinking commercially, of course.”

  “Well, don't let it worry you—the myth hasn't been born that can't be debased,” Stroganoff said with a perfectly straight face. He turned to Dar. “And the young one, Tod?”

  “Perry Tetic—‘Pa' to us juveniles. He's the debaser you just mentioned.” Whitey was obviously making it up as he went along. “The commercializer. He's very good at putting the most abstract ideas into words even the average dunce can understand.”

  “Oh, really.” Stroganoff shook Dar's hand with guarded interest. “Let's hope we have time for a chat, Perry. I'm kind of interested in that kind of thing, myself.”

  “Let's make time.” Dar was sure of being able to hold up his end of that conversation; anyone who'd been through Cholly's curriculum could. At least Whitey had given him a role he knew something about—and, looking back on it, he realized Whitey'd done the same for each of the others, too.

  “. . . a little behind the state of the art,” he realized Lona was saying. “Could I have a look at your editing facilities?”

  “Of course, of course! Tour of the whole place, in fact. Sound Stage Number Ten's the first stop—I just ducked out of there, and I've got to quack back to make sure everything's running smoothly. Come on, this way!”

  He set off, Whitey beside him; the rest followed in their wake. They turned into a corridor that opened off the lounge, Whitey and Stroganoff talking double-speed.

  “So you put together your own production unit, eh, Tod? Glad to see you were listening when I kept saying you ought to package up a tank-play—but I didn't expect you to raft your own team!”

  “Only way I'll touch it, Dave.” Whitey shook his head, jaw set. “With me in control over the whole thing. You may notice we're lacking a producer, though.”

  “Yeah, I did kind of notice that.” Stroganoff grinned like a shark. “Is that an offer, Tod?”

  “What do you want—thumbscrews?”

  “Always the consummate diplomat. You know I can't resist a chance on something this good—but you need backing, too. You can't be crazy enough to try to finance something like this on your own.”

  “Well, I don't exactly have a reputation for thrift.” Whitey grinned. “But I'm not that far gone.”

  “No thrift, my Aunt Asteroid,” Lona muttered. “He's got enough in the Bank of Terra to buy a small planet—developed!”

  It was a good chance to get close to her Dar sidled up and whispered, “They're buddies. How come Stroganoff keeps calling him ‘Tod'?”

  “ ’Cause he doesn't know about ‘Whitey,’ ” Lona muttered back. “Nobody does, outside the taverns.”

  Well. That also explained the security problem that had been giving Dar heartburn. He'd thought Whitey was bringing sure disaster down on them by using his real name—but anyone on Falstaff who'd told Canis Destinus that Whitey the Wino was helping Dar Mandra wouldn't have known him as Tod Tambourin. So his best alias was his real name.

  “Right in here.” Stroganoff hauled open a door that looked like a huge airlock hatch. “Stage Ten.” As Sam filed past him, he added, “ ’Fraid I didn't catch your name, citizen.”

  “She's Ori Snipe,” Whitey called back over his shoulder, and Sam forced a quick smile and handshake as she left Stroganoff in her wake.

  They walked into chaos. Dar's first whirling impression was of a thousand people frantically everywhere, doing purposeless things and shouting at each other in an arcane jargon. But after a few minutes, he began to be able to make sense out of it. There weren't really a thousand people—more like three dozen. And they weren't really moving very quickly—it was just that there were so many of them moving in so many different directions that it seemed frantic. He locked his gaze onto one woman and watched her for a while. She was riding around on a lift, a slender telescoping column on top of a three-wheeled dolly, adjusting the lights that hung far above him. Her movements were methodical, almost plodding—nothing chaotic about them at all. He dropped his gaze to watch another person, then another.

  “It may look confusing,” Stroganoff said beside him, “but everyone knows what he or she has to do, and does it.”

  Dar glanced up at him, saw a frown. “Something wrong?”

  Stroganoff shook his head. “No, it's all going smoothly. A little ahead of schedule, in fact.”

  “Then what's the matter?”

  “Oh, nothing, really.” Stroganoff forced a smile. “It's just that sometimes the phoniness of it gets to me.”

  Dar frowned. “But you're making stories, here—and stories have to be made
-up; they can't be real.”

  “Oh yes, they can.” Stroganoff pursed his lips. “There're a lot of really great stories in the history books.”

  The statement had a ring of familiarity to Dar; suddenly, he could almost believe he was back in Cholly's Tavern. He cleared his throat to get rid of a sudden tightness. “That almost sounds like education.”

  “Sh!” Stroganoff hissed, finger to his lips. He glanced around furtively, then breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank heaven! No one heard you!”

  “Why?” Dar stared. “What's wrong with education?”

  “Be quiet, can't you?” Stroganoff glanced around again. “Don't you dare say that word in here!”

  “Why? What's the matter with ed . . . uh . . . hum . . . you know!”

  “What's the matter with it is that it pulls low ratings,” Stroganoff explained in a lowered voice. “That kind of program never attracts more than a handful of viewers.”

  “Yeah, but that's a handful of all the people in Terran space! A handful out of a trillion-and-a-half!”

  “So that ‘handful' is a billion or so people; yes, I know.” Stroganoff nodded. “But that never sinks in, to the people who run this company. All they know is that they can get a higher price for a more popular show.”

  “So.” Dar frowned. “You don't dare put in anything ed . . . uh . . . at all deep, or they'll cancel the script.”

  Stroganoff nodded. “That's the basic idea, yah.”

  “And you don't like it that way?”

  Stroganoff hesitated; then he shook his head.

  “So you don't like your job?”

  “Oh, I like it well enough.” Stroganoff looked around him. “There is still a fragrance left, out of the old glamor I thought was here when I was a kid. And it is exciting, putting together a story, even if it's purely trivial dross. It's just that . . . well, sometimes it gets to me.”

  “But why?”

  “Because I wanted to educate.” Stroganoff turned back to Dar with a gentle, weary smile. “Not just a few interested students in a classroom—but the whole, huge mass of the audience, the billions of people who aren't interested, who don't want to learn all those ‘irrelevant facts' about Socrates and Descartes, and Simon de Montfort and the Magna Carta.”

  “I kinda thought knowing about the Magna Carta was necessary for all the citizens in a democracy,” Dar said uneasily. “At least, if that democracy is going to survive . . .”

  “If,” Stroganoff said, with a sour smile. “Look around you.”

  Dar swallowed. “I think you've got a point.”

  “Oh, I know I do.” Stroganoff looked up at the lights on their grid of pipes, gazing at them but not seeing them. “And I knew 3DT was the perfect thing to teach with—give the people lectures, but make them so visually interesting that they'd watch it in spite of themselves. Don't just tell them about Waterloo—show it to them, the actual place, the way it is today, and the way it was then. Then show them the battle, reenact it, cut to an overhead shot so they can see how Wellington and Napoleon were moving their troops . . .” He trailed off, a faraway look in his eyes.

  “Wait a minute!” Dar stabbed a finger at the producer “I saw that battle! In an old 3DT program! The charge, and the horses galloping into the sunken road—then you saw from overhead, watched Napoleon's army folding in, but while you were watching it, you heard Wellington describing his strategy . . .”

  “Sure you didn't read that in a book somewhere?”

  “Yeah, but it didn't make any sense until after I saw the program! Josephine's Boudoir, that was it!”

  “Yeah, it sure was.” Stroganoff's mouth worked as though he'd tasted something bitter. “I'm surprised you're old enough to have seen it.”

  “I was way out on a, um, frontier planet. I remember it was mostly a pretty risque version of Napoleon's private life—but it did have the battle of Waterloo in it.”

  “Yes. It did have that.” Stroganoff smiled out at the studio. “Not much education in it—but some. It'll do.”

  “Why didn't you go into educational programming?” Dar asked softly.

  Stroganoff shrugged, irritated. “I did, fresh out of college. But they insisted that everything be dull and dry. Claimed the students wouldn't take it seriously if it was too entertaining—and they had research studies to back them up. Strange as it may seem, most people don't believe it's education if it isn't dull—and that means it reaches a very few people, indeed.”

  “Most of whom would learn by themselves, anyway?”

  Stroganoff nodded. “The minority who read. Yes. They're wonderful people, but they're not the ones I was worried about, not the ones who endangered democracy.”

  Dar nodded. “It's the ones who don't want to learn that you want to reach.”

  “Right.” Stroganoff closed his eyes, nodding. “Not that it's going to do any good, of course. Oh, if I'd started a hundred years ago, maybe . . .”

  “It can't be that bad!” Dar frowned. “I thought a democracy had to become decadent before it collapsed.”

  “So?”

  “But we're not!” Dar spread his hands, hooked into claws. “Where're the orgies? Where's the preoccupation with sex? Where're the decadent aristocrats?”

  “At the I.D.E. enclave in New York.” Stroganoff gave him a wry smile. “Ever seem 'em? Funny about that . . .”

  “Well, okay. But the orgies . . .”

  “Been looking for them pretty hard, haven't you? Well, don't worry—they don't need to be there. How many orgies do you think the average Roman shopkeeper saw? Look for the decadence in the small things—the people who don't bother to vote because the candidates're ‘so much alike.' The people who think it's fine for the government to crack down, as long as it doesn't interfere with their getting their supply of their favorite euphoric. The people who think talking politics is in poor taste. There's the decadence that kills a democracy.”

  “And it traces back to lack of knowledge,” Dar said softly.

  “Not all of it.” Stroganoff frowned; then he nodded. “But a lot of it. Yah. A lot.”

  “Ever hear of Charles T. Barman?” Dar said slowly.

  “The rogue educator?” Stroganoff grinned. “Yeah, I've heard of him. Read his main book, even. Yes, I've followed his career with great interest. Great interest. Yes.” He turned to Dar, his eye gleaming. “They never caught him, you know.”

  “No,” Dar said judiciously, “they never did.”

  Dar took a sip and frowned up at Lona over the rim of his glass. “What's he doing in there?”

  “Creating,” Lona answered.

  “For so long?”

  “Long?” Lona smiled without mirth. “It's only been six hours so far.”

  “It takes that long to do up one of those—what'd Stroganoff call it . . . ?”

  “Series format,” Sam reminded him.

  “Yeah, one of those.”

  “He finished that three hours ago.” Lona took a sip. “Stroganoff needs the script for the first program, too.”

  “But he's just talking into a voice-writer! How can a one-hour script take more than an hour?”

  “It's thinking-time, not talking-time. And don't forget, it's got to be verse. That's the only reason Stroganoff might be able to persuade OPI to do it—because it's a 3DT series of Tod Tambourin's poetry.”

  “And poems take a great deal of work,” Father Marco said softly. “Actually, I don't see how he can possibly have a full hour's worth of verse by 10:00 hours tomorrow.”

  “Oh, verse he can manage.” Lona glanced at the closed bedroom door that hid Whitey. “Poetry would take forever—but he isn't worrying about quality. Verse he can grind out by the yard.”

  “What if inspiration should strike?” Father Marco asked quietly.

  “Then,” Lona said grimly, “we may be in here for a week.”

  “Oh, well.” Dar got up and went over to the bar-o-mat for a refill. “At least he gave us a nice waiting room.” He looked around at the lu
xurious hotel-suite living room. “Come to think of it, I hope inspiration does strike. . . .”

  Dar had a vague memory of Father Marco shepherding them all to their bedrooms, muttering something about an early day tomorrow, but it was rather fuzzy; a tide of some nefarious mist reeking of Terran brew seemed to have rolled in as the light faded. He awoke with a foul taste in his mouth, a throbbing ache in his temples, and an acute sensitivity to noises. He dropped back against the pillow, but sleep refused to return. Finally he resigned himself to having to pocket the wages of sin—though the pocket in question was feeling rather queasy at the moment—and slowly, very carefully, swung his feet over the side of the bed. He clutched his head and waited for the room to stop rolling, gulping air furiously to quiet his stomach. Eventually, it sort of worked, and he staggered to his feet. Then he had to lean against the wall, gasping like a beached fish, to wait until things stabilized again. It was a longer wait, but it worked, and finally he was able to stagger out into the sitting room.

  The light had been turned down to a dim glow from the ceiling, thank heaven—but there was a babble of voices. Strangely, they didn't make his head hurt any worse—and, even more strangely, there was only one person in the room.

  That person was Whitey, sprawled in a recliner with a strange glow in his eyes. He noticed Dar, cocked his head to the side, and held out a tumbler full of a thick, brownish liquid. Dar groped for it, seized it, and drank it off in one long gulp. Then his eyes bulged as his stomach gave a single, tumultuous heave. He swallowed it down and exhaled in a blast. “My lord! What it that stuff?”

  “Uncle Whitey's Homemade Hangover Helper,” Whitey answered. “Don't ask what's in it.”

  “I won't,” Dar said fervently. He groped his way to a recliner and collapsed into it. “How'd you know I was going to need it?”

  “I looked in on you halfway through the ‘night.’ ” Whitey grinned. “You were a gas.”

  Dar frowned. “A gas?”

  “Thoroughly tanked,” Whitey explained.

  A hazy memory of Whitney's bleached face, peering down intently, floated through Dar's mind. “Oh, yeah. I remember something about it.” He frowned, then forced a feeble chuckle. “Yeah, you . . . no, it must've been a dream.”

 

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