Arnold Hawthorn and Toshio Takahashi arrived together. Hawthorn, the company’s sales director, was sleek, silver-haired and devilishly handsome. He claimed to be bisexual, but no one had ever seen him so much as smile at a woman. Takahashi wore his saffron monk’s robe even to board meetings. The foreign sales people worshipped him, almost literally, and his kindness and Oriental patience were legendary. Good for morale, Larrimore mused. And he keeps those young squirts from trying to claw their way up the executive ladder.
Borden C. Blude, the production manager, came in next and immediately began chatting amiably with Takahashi. Blude was in his eighties, almost as old as Larrimore himself, and clearly senile. He hadn’t had a new idea since Eisenhower had resigned from Columbia, Blude’s alma mater. They didn’t let him do anything around the office, but Casanova —the man who actually owned Larrimore, Swain & Tucker—kept him around as a sort of mascot.
Cassanova was his usual punctual self, exactly ten minutes late. He was wheeled in by his nurse-secretary-assistant, Ms. Kim Conroy, who was known as Lollipop around the office, but never within Casanova’s hearing. A tall, ravishing redhead who claimed she could type two hundred words a minute, her only obvious talent was a set of well-developed pectoral muscles — undoubtedly an asset in pushing Casanova’s wheelchair.
The absolute master of Larrimore, Swain & Tucker, Casanova had lost the use of his lower extremities through a childish ambition to emulate Evel Knievel. By almost clearing twenty schoolbusses, Casanova went from a motorcycle to a wheelchair in his fortieth year, and turned his restless energy from race courses to board rooms. He owned LS&T, all of it. He was the sole stockholder. He had purchased the stock from this very board of directors when, after two of Larrimore’s negative decisions, they had failed to get in on both the pocket calculator and CB radio booms and the company was about to go broke. Casanova had never told them where he’d gotten his money, and they had never asked. He merely bought them all out, kept them all in their jobs, and showed up ten minutes late for board meetings, glowering at them all.
The titans of industry, Larrimore thought as his gaze swept along the conference table. Old men who should have been sent off to a farm years ago, a silver-haired fag, a jap saint, a cripple and his pet, and, turning his gaze inward, an impotent old arthritic.
«Very well, we’re all here,» Larrimore said, with a nod in Casanova’s direction. «What do you have to tell us, Mr. Brightcloud?»
Brightcloud launched into his description of the therapeutic machine. Larrimore knew the story; Ransom had outlined it for him a week earlier, after Brightcloud’s first demonstration of the device.
«Do you mean,» Hawthorn interrupted, «that this… this machine can make people feel good?»
Brightcloud nodded, his face serious. «It can alleviate nervous and muscular symptoms. It can even trigger beneficial changes in some internal organs.»
«Now that’s pretty hard to believe, fella,» old Blude said. «I’ve been in this business for a lotta years and…»
Casanova overrode him. «If this machine really works, how useful would it be to us? We’re in business to market new products, not set up toys in our infirmary.»
«It would be a low-volume, high-dollar product. You would market it the same way IBM does mainframe computers.»
Ransom, who usually kept quiet at board meetings, said, «I’d hardly call that low volume.»
«I mean you would probably want to lease the devices, instead of selling them outright.»
Larrimore grumbled, «What about the FDA? If this machine has biological effects …»
«We would be bound in honor to submit the device for their evaluation,» Takahashi said.
«Not legally,» Brightcloud said. «There has never been a clear legal ruling about devices, the way there is about foods and drugs. Even artificial hearts are passed on by an ad hoc committee of the National Institutes of Health, not the FDA.»
«That’s something,» Casanova murmured.
«You’re gonna make people feel better by shining some ray on them?» Blude demanded. «I just don’t believe it.»
Brightcloud allowed himself a tight smile. «The device does work, sir.»
«What about side effects?» Casanova asked.
«Practically none,» Brightcloud said. «We’ve searched very carefully for side effects, believe me. There are a couple of very minor ones that are not physiologically damaging at all.»
«What are they?» Larrimore asked, seeing out of the corner of his eye that he had beaten Casanova to the question.
«Very minor things. Less than you would get from standing in the sun for ten minutes.»
«Do you mean that you could get a tan from this thing?» Hawthorn asked.
«If you want to,» Brightcloud said. «It will stimulate the melanin cells in the skin if you adjust the output frequency properly, but tanning is only a minor effect. It would be an extremely expensive sunlamp.»
«It’s a shame,» Horace Mann wheezed, «that it can’t change black skins into white. Now that would be an invention!» He cackled to himself.
Ms. Conroy took a deep breath and asked, «Is the device selective in any way? Will it work better on one type of person than another?»
Brightcloud stood impassively for a moment, then answered, «We have tested it on five hundred subjects in the laboratory, and several hundred more in the field. There are no significant differences among the subjects that we have been able to find.»
«Were these subjects volunteers?» Takahashi asked.
«Almost all of them.»
«And you found no harmful after effects?»
«None whatsoever. Everyone we interviewed afterward reported feeling much better than they had previously. Including Mr. Ransom.»
Larrimore stirred in his chair. «Ransom? You didn’t tell me that you had exposed yourself to this machine’s radiation!»
The most junior executive looked apologetic, «I tried to, but you were too busy to listen.»
Casanova glared at both of them. «All right,» he said, to Brightcloud, «I want proof that the damned thing really works.»
«Right!» Blude slapped the table with the palm of his hand.
«I can show you all my data,» Brightcloud offered.
«No,» Casanova snapped. «You have to demonstrate the thing. I don’t think it can possibly work the way you claim it does.»
«It does work,» Brightcloud said tightly.
«Then let it work on me. Take away the pain I’ve got. Do that, and you’ve got a sale.»
With a single nod of his head, Brightcloud went back to the racks of electronics lining the rear wall of the conference room and touched one button. He turned back toward the table.
«I expected that you’d want a demonstration, so I preset the beam focus for the head of the table, Mr. Casanova. There’s no need for any of you gentlemen to move. Or you either, Ms. Conroy.»
Larrimore watched the stacks of gadgetry. Nothing was happening. No noise, no electrical hum, no blinking lights. Nothing. He turned to look at Casanova, who was also staring at the machine with a quizzical smirk on his face.
«There may be some residual radiation leaking off to the sidelobes of the main beam,» Brightcloud told them. «But there’s no need for you to worry. The only possible effects you’ll feel will be rather pleasant.»
Larrimore swiveled his head back and forth between the inventor and Casanova in his wheelchair. Suddenly he realized that he was moving his neck without the usual arthritic twinges.
«The side effects, which are very minor,» Brightcloud was saying, «come from a low-level stimulation of the glandular systems.»