“I’ll do my best, sir,” Raeder said.
Moulian stopped chewing gum for a moment and said, almost reverently, “You can do it, Jim. Just remember. You’re the people, and the people can do anything.”
The way he said it made Raeder feel momentarily sorry for Mr. Moulian, who was dark and frizzy-haired and popeyed, and was obviously not the people.
They shook hands. Then Raeder signed a paper absolving the JBC of all responsibility should he lose his life, limbs or reason during the contest. And he signed another paper exercising his rights under the Voluntary Suicide Act. The law required this, and it was a mere formality.
In three weeks, he appeared on Spills.
The program followed the classic form of the automobile race. Untrained drivers climbed into powerful American and European competition cars and raced over a murderous twenty-mile course. Raeder was shaking with fear as he slid his big Maserati into the wrong gear and took off.
The race was a screaming, tire-burning nightmare. Raeder stayed back, letting the early leaders smash themselves up on the counter-banked hairpin turns. He crept into third place when a Jaguar in front of him swerved against an Alfa-Romeo, and the two cars roared into a plowed field. Raeder gunned for second place on the last three miles, but couldn’t find passing room. An S-curve almost took him, but he fought the car back on the road, still holding third. Then the lead driver broke a crankshaft in the final fifty yards, and Jim ended in second place.
He was now a thousand dollars ahead. He received four fan letters, and a lady in Oshkosh sent him a pair of argyles. He was invited to appear on Emergency.
Unlike the others, Emergency was not a competition-type program. It stressed individual initiative. For the show, Raeder was knocked out with a non-habit-forming narcotic. He awoke in the cockpit of a small airplane, cruising on autopilot at ten thousand feet. His fuel gauge showed nearly empty. He had no parachute. He was supposed to land the plane.
Of course, he had never flown before.
He experimented gingerly with the controls, remembering that last week’s participant had recovered consciousness in a submarine, had opened the wrong valve, and had drowned.
Thousands of viewers watched spellbound as this average man, a man just like themselves, struggled with the situation just as they would do. Jim Raeder was them. Anything he could do, they could do. He was representative of the people.
Raeder managed to bring the ship down in some semblance of a landing. He flipped over a few times, but his seat belt held. And the engine, contrary to expectation, did not burst into flames.
He staggered out with two broken ribs, three thousand dollars, and a chance, when he healed, to appear on Torero.
At last, a first-class thrill show! Torero paid ten thousand dollars. All you had to do was kill a black Miura bull with a sword, just like a real trained matador.
The fight was held in Madrid, since bullfighting was still illegal in the United States. It was nationally televised.
Raeder had a good cuadrilla. They liked the big, slow-moving American. The picadors really leaned into their lances, trying to slow the bull for him. The banderilleros tried to run the beast off his feet before driving in their banderillas. And the second matador, a mournful man from Algiceras, almost broke the bull’s neck with fancy capework.
But when all was said and done it was Jim Raeder on the sand, a red muleta clumsily gripped in his left hand, a sword in his right, facing a ton of black, blood-streaked, wide-horned bull.
Someone was shouting, “Try for the lung, hombre. Don’t be a hero, stick him in the lung.” But Jim only knew what the technical adviser in New York had told him: Aim with the sword and go in over the horns.
Over he went. The sword bounced off bone, and the bull tossed him over its back. He stood up, miraculously ungouged, took another sword and went over the horns again with his eyes closed. The god who protects children and fools must have been watching, for the sword slid in like a needle through butter, and the bull looked startled, stared at him unbelievingly, and dropped like a deflated balloon.
They paid him ten thousand dollars, and his broken collar bone healed in practically no time. He received twenty-three fan letters, including a passionate invitation from a girl in Atlantic City, which he ignored. And they asked him if he wanted to appear on another show.
He had lost some of his innocence. He was now fully aware that he had been almost killed for pocket money. The big loot lay ahead. Now he wanted to be almost killed for something worthwhile.
So he appeared on Underwater Perils, sponsored by Fairlady’s Soap. In face mask, respirator, weighted belt, flippers and knife, he slipped into the warm waters of the Caribbean with four other contestants, followed by a cage-protected camera crew. The idea was to locate and bring up a treasure which the sponsor had hidden there.
Mask diving isn’t especially hazardous. But the sponsor had added some frills for public interest. The area was sown with giant clams, moray eels, sharks of several species, giant octopuses, poison coral, and other dangers of the deep.
It was a stirring contest. A man from Florida found the treasure in a deep crevice, but a moray eel found him. Another diver took the treasure, and a shark took him. The brilliant blue-green water became cloudy with blood, which photographed well on color TV. The treasure slipped to the bottom and Raeder plunged after it, popping an eardrum in the process. He plucked it from the coral, jettisoned his weighted belt and made for the surface. Thirty feet from the top he had to fight another diver for the treasure.
They feinted back and forth with their knives. The man struck, slashing Raeder across the chest. But Raeder, with the self-possession of an old contestant, dropped his knife and tore the man’s respirator out of his mouth.
That did it. Raeder surfaced, and presented the treasure at the standby boat. It turned out to be a package of Fairlady’s Soap—”The Greatest Treasure of All.”
That netted him twenty-two thousand dollars in cash and prizes, and three hundred and eight fan letters, and an interesting proposition from a girl in Macon, which he seriously considered. He received free hospitalization for his knife slash and burst eardrum, and injections for coral infection.
But best of all, he was invited to appear on the biggest of the thrill shows. The Prize of Peril.
And that was when the real trouble began....
The subway came to a stop, jolting him out of his reverie. Raeder pushed back his hat and observed, across the aisle, a man staring at him and whispering to a stout woman. Had they recognized him?
He stood up as the doors opened, and glanced at his watch. He had five hours to go.
At the Manhasset station he stepped into a taxi and told the driver to take him to New Salem.
“New Salem?” the driver asked, looking at him in the rear vision mirror.
“That’s right.”
The driver snapped on his radio. “Fare to New Salem. Yep, that’s right. New Salem.”
They drove off. Raeder frowned, wondering if it had been a signal. It was perfectly usual for taxi drivers to report to their dispatchers, of course. But something about the man’s voice...
“Let me off here,” Raeder said.
He paid the driver and began walking down a narrow country road that curved through sparse woods. The trees were too small and too widely separated for shelter. Raeder walked on, looking for a place to hide.