They seized me.
"Wait a minute!" I screamed—my voice was sharpened by them pulling my arms up behind my back and trying to lift me to throw me out. "I'm an employee! I was just signed on by Mr. Rockecenter himself!"
They dropped me in a pile in the middle of the floor. The leading security man said, "I'll bet!"
The personnel manager said, "You're on! Five dollars!"
The leading security man said, "You're on! Rip open his shirt!"
They did, with buttons flying about.
A security man got out a strange-looking light. He shined it on my chest. I looked down.
Glowing in fluorescent green was Rockecenter Family Spi with date and initials.
"Jesus," said the leading security man. "You lose, Throgmorton."
"No, you lose," said the personnel manager.
They got in a dreadful wrangle. Somebody called the Psychiatric Department and a psychiatrist came in and told them they had both lost and were overreacting. He made them pay each other five dollars and then, sort of absently, took both bills and left.
I found myself with a personnel consultant in a cubicle. She was punching out computer cards. It was very lengthy. She was taking the data from my Federal credentials.
Finally she pushed all the cards into a computer. She pressed a test button to recall the data to a screen. Nothing happened. The screen remained blank.
"So that's that," she said. "You've been processed."
"Wait," I said. "The computer screen stayed blank."
"Of course," she said. "You wouldn't want to have your cover blown, would you?"
I left.
Mr. Bury's office door was ajar. I pushed it open and walked in.
"Where the hell have you been?" he said. "They've been waiting for us for an hour!"
We rushed out and got a cab.
At last things were happening!
As we rode along, blocked from time to time with traffic jams, Mr. Bury seemed very quiet. Once in a while his eyes flicked at me.
Finally, he spoke. "How much do you know about this Wister?"
"Not as much as you," I lied. "I just saw you were taken aback so I covered for you." No use to have Bury gunning for me because I knew too much.
"Hmmm," he said. "I don't like this way of handling this Wister thing, Inkswitch. The right way is usually pretty tortuous but in this case, a direct hit would seem more like it."
I stiffened with alarm. I did not have that platen. And I sure wasn't going to get myself blown up in a Voltar invasion. With the planet in this state, they'd wipe out every living thing on it, rebuild an ecology and colonize. That "every living thing" included me.
How could I handle this? Ah. "Torpedo Fiaccola wasn't very lucky," I said.
It was his turn to stiffen—and Wall Street lawyers are pretty expert at hiding their feelings—what feelings they have, that is, if any.
"Jesus!" he said. He was looking at me in sort of shock. Then curiosity got the better of him. "Did the (bleepard) talk to you?"
"No," I said. "Wister sent him to the North Pole. Probably all he can talk now is polar bear." It was time to take his mind off me. "It was Wister that collected the hundred G's, not Fiaccola."
"JESUS!" said Bury.
"Yes," I said, pleasantly. "Wister is using your hit money to finance this cheap fuel invention."
"Oh, my God!"
"I know," I said, "that you are thinking that if that got back to Mr. Rockecenter, he would do something awfully nasty."
Bury was staring at me in horror. I might as well drive it home.
"But, there is something you can tell me," I said. "Why is Mr. Rockecenter so dead set against having a son?"
His face looked like a white prune.
Finally he said, "He's impotent. Just a voyeur. He's been unable to perform for years."
"Oh, come, come, Mr. Bury," I said. "Let's not squirm around. I stood up for you in his office when I could have let you have it to the hilt. Now admit that that shows you can trust me. There's more to this than that."
"Inkswitch, I do not know how in hell you have gotten any information you have. But it is VERY dangerous information. I would betray professional confidence if I told you one word more! The defense rests!"
We rode along through two more traffic jams. Then he looked at me and smiled a sort of wintry smile—a twitch at either corner of his mouth below bleak eyes. "Inkswitch, after taking consultation with myself, I have come to the conclusion that you're one of the wiliest, craftiest sons of (bleepches) I have ever met. No, let me enter a correction on the record. You ARE the wiliest, craftiest son of a (bleepch) I ever met. I think our partnership will justify the findings of the highest court!"
"And you, Mr. Bury, are the most vicious, conniving (bleepard) I have ever had the privilege of working with."
We shook hands solemnly in mutual admiration.
We had arrived at our destination. "Now," said Mr. Bury, "let's go get this Wister's life so (bleeped) up and ruined, he'll never again be able to lift his head! Let's do it beyond any appeal and carry it straight through to total condemnation!"
With what enthusiasm we alighted!
Bury lifted his hand slightly, indicating the skyscrapers which reared imposingly all about us. "We are in the advertising center of the world. We are about to call on F.F.B.O., the largest advertising and public relations firm in America. Let me do all the talking."
"F.F.B.O.?" I said. "What does that stand for?"
"Fatten, Farten, Burstein and Ooze. It is the prime test of the qualified advertising man to be able to say it quickly and without stammering. That means you're in the know. But, I repeat, let me do all the talking. As I'm a lawyer, they can't hold me for perjury or defamation."
We went into a huge, ornate lobby. Metal fish swam around the murals. They appeared to be suckers.
Our elevator shot up. It spilled us into a small room.
There were no chairs. People were idling about, obviously not belonging there, looking frustrated. A high, bulletproof glass cage was in one corner with a single girl behind the maze hole. The walls of the room were dark red. There was an upper port and I could see a sawed-off shotgun muzzle with an alert eye behind it. There were no signs or directions.
Bury took a card out of his wallet. He put it against the bulletproof glass. The girl flinched.
"Foreign public relations vice-president," demanded Bury.
The girl snatched a phone. She barked into it hysterically. She instantly shouted through the maze hole, "Floor 50! Go right up, Mr. Bury!"
The people in the room flinched, crowded back to get out of our way.
We got into an elevator. Out of the corner of his mouth, without moving his lips, Mr. Bury said, "I didn't like the slow response. I understand their corporate delay tactics very welclass="underline" there's something wrong here. This may require the third degree. Pull your hat down over your eyes. Now, when I cough, look very tough. When I stamp my foot, put your hand inside your coat as though you are going to draw a gun. Got that?"
I was learning the world of corporate expertise. I said I had it.
Bury suddenly added, "But on no account draw Or shoot anybody. We own the insurance company that has their policy and we don't want to be paying damages. Let any recourse to mayhem be theirs. Then the policy will lapse."
We had arrived. The elevator door slid open. A beautiful waiting room stretched on either side.
Two girls, scantily dressed like ushers, had a roll of carpet between them on a rod. The carpet was red.
Marching backwards, they began to unroll the carpet so that we could walk forward on it.
Two flower girls, dressed in gauzy white, leaping this way and that, daintily strewed flowers from their baskets in our path.