“Could we know something about him?” the most senior criminal reporter said.
“He is a blackguard,” said Madison. “That’s all you have to know. We are going to try him and find him guilty in the press, and by that, force them to bring him to a public trial. That done, we have other game in sight.”
“Wait a minute,” said the leading reporter. “I don’t think anybody has ever done this on Voltar. People might not think it’s fair.”
“It’s up to you to manufacture crimes so monstrous that the public will be ravening after his blood. Do that and all thought of civil rights are swept aside. That’s PR at its best.”
Another criminal reporter said, “You used a funny term there, ‘public trial.’ I never heard of one. On Voltar, trials are private and they simply announce the crime and sentence.”
“Aha!” said Madison. “Star Chamber proceedings. Well, we can attack that in due course. Right now get very busy and dream up the crimes of Gris and we’ll get them into print.”
The four went into a huddle and then one said to Madison, “We know lots of crimes because we knew lots of criminals in prison. But could you give us some guidance in this?”
“Guidance?” said Madison haughtily. “You mean you want me to do your jobs? No, no, my friends. Let your imaginations take over, let the paper roll. After all, you are now PRs!”
They nodded and got to work.
Madison now called the roustabouts and had them set up a seventy-sixth floor music salon. He was delighted to find that Hightee’s staff had sent over the reworked chorder-bar with a note that they had duplicated it—making another but without the “pictures.” Madison sat down to it and began to record ragtime, and the ex-Academy of Arts reporter and the horror-story writer listened in amazement and got to work on the musical. Madison left them arguing about whether the choruses should be danced by skeletons or ghouls and went on to his next project.
Corralling the director and the rest of the available staff, he turned over to them what apparently had been General Loop’s drill hall, one of the largest rooms he could find on the seventy-sixth floor.
Madison told the director, “You take over here. Get rid of their prison pallor, show them how to wear clothes. You are really running a sort of actors’ school just now. And above all, get them trained so they can hold a sincere and earnest smile without strain. We’ve got to get rid of the killer look.”
“That will be tough,” said the director. “They’re killers!”
“Well, nobody is asking you to change that,” said Madison. “The final product is sometimes killing. But it is done in a different way: it’s called PR.”
“Got it,” said the director and promptly went to work.
Madison then went back to see how the reporters were coming along. They looked up from their work. They were all smiles.
“We’ve got it,” said the leading criminal reporter. “We’ve worked out some great copy. ‘Soltan Gris, the Apparatus officer, has been detected rushing all over the farm country of this planet poisoning the wells. He’s been killing grazing animals that way like flies.’”
Madison looked at the copy. These fellows were on the right track but they were kind of green. He had expected that. “That’s fine, boys. But add this for a bit of zing: The mangled body of the informant who told you was found immediately afterwards, drowning in her own blood.”
“Hey,” said a reporter, bright-eyed with admiration, “that’s genius!”
“No, that’s just PR,” said Madison. “You’ll get the hang of it quickly enough. Now, the four of you revise it, make duplicates of your release, and get it to the city editors.”
“Right!” the four reporters chorused, obeyed him and rushed out, on their way.
Madison smiled. Oh, things were going well. Just like old times. And when he got Gris on the stand, he could coach his lawyers on how to get him off: simply accuse Heller. Copy, copy, copy, miles of headlines!
J. Walter Madison was in his element!
PART SEVENTY-SEVEN
Chapter 2
Madison was feeling very much indeed in his element as he ate supper that evening. He was waiting for tidings from the reporters he had sent out and he was very confident that the news would be good.
He had even arranged a little internal PR caper to get peace back and he was having dinner with Flick: Flick had the best and most chefs.
So Madison was in a combination dining room and kitchen of the seventy-sixth floor and Flick was at the other end of the table. Flick was looking pretty bad: both his eyes were blackened now, for, as his footwoman had promised, one more raving mention of Hightee Heller would collide with her fist and Flick had incautiously raved anew about Hightee Heller.
Flick’s “bed-maker” was a willowy brunette with very deceptive beauty. She had been doing thirty years for passing herself off as married and then blackmailing men she picked up with threats of mayhem from a nonexistent champion wrestler husband. Her name was Twa. She was draped over the counter of the sparklewater dispenser.
“I can’t believe what you told me,” she said incredulously.
Flick’s footwoman, whose name was Cun, was lounging, still in uniform, against the door on the other side of the table. “Well, I seen it,” she answered the other girl.
Flick, distracted from his elsewhere thoughts, glanced up from his plate. “You two don’t belong in here. Can’t you let me and the chief eat our supper in peace?”
Madison grinned and covered it with a sip from his canister. Flick was in a fair way of getting himself killed by these two, and Madison had set up another scenario.
“You may have seen it,” said Twa, ignoring Flick, “but how do I know you really have the eye to judge?”
“Listen,” Cun bristled. “Before they threw me in the jug for outright spite, I was a bodyguard for the richest whorehouse madam on all Mistin. I’m telling you, there was five hundred guys, half-naked, handsome as Gods, standing there in front of that palace just begging to (bleep). And they were the heaviest hung birds I ever seen. And I tell you I’ve seen plenty. I never was no whore, you understand. But I had to pass on lots of men. So I am an expert!”
Flick was very uncomfortable, staring at his plate through swollen, discolored eyes.
“Yeah,” said Twa to Cun, “but you’re just pushing it on the basis of mass observation. Wasn’t there a particular one?”
“Oh, there was that,” said Cun. “He was young and he was handsome: he had silky black hair and the softest eyes. And when they scampered off, he almost knocked me down. It wasn’t no accident. He whispered, plain as day, ‘You see that flower tree over there? It’s nice and soft behind it and I have something pretty hard that needs handling. I haven’t had any in ages, and boy, do you look good!’”
“NO!” said Twa. “REALLY?”
“Oh, that’s a fact,” said Cun. “And there was a big blond one, what a MAN! They’re all aristocrats, you know. And as he rushed by, he said, ‘Hey, cutie, do you know where I can find a willowy brunette?’”
“Oh, boy,” said Twa. She turned to Madison. “Chief, can me and Cun run an errand for you to that island?”
“SHUT UP!” screamed Flick.
“We can leave Flick home,” said Cun. “I can find the place.”
“YOU’RE STAYING HERE!” howled Flick.
“Why should you care?” said Twa. “You’re not interested in us. All you can talk about is Hightee Heller.”
“SHE’S TOO NOBLE FOR YOU TO EVEN SPEAK HER NAME!” roared Flick.
“Noble, that’s the key,” said Twa. “Five hundred noblemen just slavering to get a girl’s back to the grass. Get the old Apparatus bus ready, Cun. I’ll go get my coat. I think I saw the chief nod.”
Flick was past Cun in a flash. He slammed the door violently and stood before it, glaring at them as he barred their way.
“All right, all right, all right!” shouted Flick. “The minute I finish my dinner, I’ll see both of you in th
e bedroom. Strip and get ready. I’ve re-reformed.”
“And no more mention of Hightee Heller?” said Cun.
Flick looked beaten in more ways than one. “I promise,” he said.
Madison beamed, benign as a god. He had carefully coached the women. He had restored everything internally. It was an odd employment of his craft, using it for peace, but by the simple expedient of advising the girls to PR the regiment, he had changed the mind and behavior of Flick. It just proved to Madison how much he himself was a master of his trade. Microcosm or macrocosm, it didn’t matter; for bad or for good, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that one could command, without fail, the destinies of men. The Supreme Being must feel this way from time to time as he directed the courses of the universe. The only reason Madison hadn’t done it the other way around and gotten Flick killed was that he didn’t need him for a headline.
PART SEVENTY-SEVEN
Chapter 3
Shortly after midnight, it was very difficult for Madison to descend from his cloudy heights to assimilate bad news.
The four reporters stood about his bed like lost wool animals, looking like they had been chewed upon by fangers who had taken great satisfaction in it.
Copy dangling limply from his hand, the lead reporter said, “They won’t take it.”
“What? A good sensational story like that?”
“They never heard of ‘handouts’ before. We tried every editor we could get past the door to. They wanted sources and every one said they’d send out their own reporters, but why bother?”
“Didn’t you try bribes?”
“That’s what we were doing time for. We didn’t think you’d like it if they put us right back in, what with the iron box and all.”
Madison waved them out of there with advice to have a drink and go to bed.
He was certain he knew what the trouble was: they were simply inexperienced and deficient in salesmanship. He wrote an order to the director to practice them in sincere and earnest expressions and went back to bed.
It was obvious he would have to break the first ice himself.
Accordingly, brisk and early in the morning, he dressed himself in his most conservative and expensive suit, practiced expressions a little in the mirror, picked up fresh copies of the well-poisoning story and went to the hangar.
A very exhausted Flick told his smug footwoman to take the controls, for he could hardly see and in addition, now, had trouble in even getting his hand up to point the way. PR had really worked!
Madison had decided there was no reason to start at the bottom. As the top of his profession himself, he had better start at the top.
By a slight misrepresentation to underlings, startled by the blanket order from Lord Snor to Homeview, Madison gained audience to the publisher, no less, of the Daily Speaker, the most widely circulated newssheet on Voltar.
In the lofty office which overlooked Commercial City with disdain, Noble Arthrite Stuffy kept Madison standing. “I understand you have some message from my cousin, Lord Snor.”
“Actually,” said Madison, “I came because I have a sensational news story. Headline stuff. Here it is.”
Noble Stuffy read it and tossed it back, “It’s written in news format. Is it supposed to be a story?”
“Yes, indeed,” said Madison. “Print it and you’ll increase your circulation.”
“We already circulate more than we can easily handle. Why would anyone want to increase their circulation?”
“To get better rates from the advertisers.”
Noble Stuffy frowned. “Advertisers? We don’t print advertising. I think you have us mixed up with notice-board cards. Where did you say you were from? Let me see your identoplate.”
Madison handed it over, expecting to be able to answer questions about PR man and bowl this publisher over. Instead, Stuffy snarled, “The Apparatus? You’re from the Apparatus? Well, let me tell you, whatever your name is here, this isn’t the first time the Apparatus has tried to get something changed or a story pulled. I suppose you have a Death Battalion waiting at the door or some such other poppycock. You have just become unpopular.”
Madison didn’t like the tone. He was used to editors and publishers bruising their heads against the floor before the PR of the government. “I could get a Royal order that you’d have to publish anything I say!”
“Hah,” said Stuffy. “You just get your Royal order and I will get you a revolution as quick as blink. Seventy thousand years ago a monarch tried to force papers to report the soirees of his commoner mistress and they even erased his name from history. Royal order! Oh, this will be rich when I mention it at luncheon at my club to other publishers.”
“I could start another paper and give you such competition, I could wipe you out!” grated Madison.
“Hah, hah!” said Stuffy. “There hasn’t been a new newssheet started in fifteen thousand years. Try it and the other papers will buy up all the available paper and leave you nothing to print on but gutter stones. Now you better leave before I ask somebody to throw you out.”
Madison departed. He went to other papers. He got the same treatment. He also found something else that was discouraging: These papers were all chains that republished, with local sections, on every planet of the Confederacy, and where it had looked like there were tens of thousands of newspapers on the one hundred and ten planets, in reality there were only about seventy-five.
Not letting himself look or feel downcast, for after all he was a veteran PR, he told himself he at least had a blanket order for Homeview.
It was getting on toward evening by that time but he phoned them from the airbus.
“Homeview?” he said to the bright face of the receptionist. “Please connect me to your news section.”
“News section? We don’t have a news section, sir.”
“You give out news!” said the incredulous Madison.
“Oh, yes, sir. I’ll connect you to the announcers’ rest lounge.”
The sleek face of an announcer came on: he was sipping hot jolt. Madison said, “Who is your ace news commentator?”
“Our what?” said the announcer.
“Don’t you have a news staff?”
“What would we want with that?” said the announcer. “Whoever is on at those periods, we just read items from each page of some leading newspaper. We use a different paper every day and give them credit. Oh, I see what you must mean: you mean the camera coverage of lordly and notable people. Do you want me to connect you to our social director?”
“No!” snarled Madison and hung up.
He sat while Flick hovered above the lanes. Confound it, Madison told himself, I can’t run a PR campaign on billboards! And come to think of it, the only signs I have seen just told what store it was.
“Take me home!” he snapped at Flick.
Once there, he soaked his feet. It was the first door-pounding he had done in a decade. It was making him cross.
Then, fortified by supper and easy in bare feet and a robe, he went into the reporters’ workroom and began to go through the stacks of newssheets that had been purchased. He had an idea that what he was up against was that curse of the PR profession, journalistic truth. Long, long ago, on Earth, they used to talk about it to graduates in journalism. But these days, they even awarded Pulitzer Prizes for the most false story of the year. The Voltarians, with all this nonsense about sources and accuracy, were definitely on the wrong road: even the corniest weekly in Podunk could give them lessons.
He was reading lead stories now.
NEW MONUMENT
DEDICATED
And another:
LADY PROMPTON
ORPHANAGE
SPEECH IN FULL
Those were headlines? How ghastly!
Pages two to seven were usually social news.
WIFE OF LORD ELD GIVES
PINK SPARKLEWATER
PARTY
And
DAME ALT GIVES
GARDEN SO
CIAL
AT ALT ESTATE
And
EDITOR’S WIFE
ANNOUNCES
WEEKLY AT HOME
Madison exploded. HOW DULL! These people had never grasped the idea that news is entertainment!
There was a little hope: several papers, on inside pages, bottom, carried news on the revolt in Calabar, and on the back page of one paper, five lines said that a couple of lovers had been found suicided in a river. Lacking anything else, those stories had the blood to make them headlines!
Mission Earth Volume 9: Villainy Victorious Page 26