A warmth was spreading over his body. Larrimore felt a pleasurable glow. Startled, he looked sharply at Casanova. The man was smiling!
«There is one noticeable effect that hits men more than women,» Brightcloud was still explaining. «It might have some embarrassing results in certain social situations, but on the whole our male test subjects have found it very favorable.»
Larrimore couldn’t believe it! But it was there all right. For the first time in decades.
He looked toward the others along the table. Ransom seemed red-faced and was trying hard not to stare at Ms. Conroy. Takahashi, the self-professed saintly ascetic, was actively leering at her. Casanova was smiling up at her with tears in his eyes. Mann seemed about to faint, Blude was slack-jawed and sweating. Hawthorn was fingering Takahashi’s saffron robe.
«All right!» Larrimore croaked. It took all his strength to say it. «We’re convinced. We’re convinced. But don’t turn it off!»
Ms. Conroy began to edge back toward the door.
James Brightcloud flew from New York to Santa Fe that afternoon. His equipment stayed in the LS&T building, after being moved from the conference room to Casanova’s private suite. Larrimore wrote a seven-figure check on the spot, which Brightcloud deposited at the Citibank branch in LaGuardia.
He changed planes in Chicago and Albuquerque, and rented a car in Santa Fe. He spent more than a day driving to Phoenix, and when he boarded a Western Airlines jet there, he had washed off the dark makeup he’d used in New York and donned a sandy-blond curly wig.
In Los Angeles, the name he used for his next plane ticket was Julio Fernandez, and both his hair and his luxurious mustache were jet black. When he registered at the Sheraton Waikiki, the name he gave was John Johnston, and the moustache had disappeared. For two days he surfed and drank and sail-boated, getting tan again naturally.
On the third day, as he lay belly-down on the sand at the public beach a few blocks away from the hotel, Ms. Conroy spread her beach towel next to his and stretched out beside him. She was no longer wearing her red wig, nor her tinted contact lenses. Her short-cropped thick blonde hair and light eyes marked her as a native of a far-off cold and northern land.
She lay on her stomach and put on a pair of sunglasses. He leaned over and undid the strap of her bikini top.
«Thank you,» she said in accentless English.
«Thank you,» he replied. «The machine worked like a charm.»
«Of course. They paid the full amount?»
«Yep. It’s deposited.»
«Good.»
«How’s Casanova?» he asked.
She laughed, a deep-throated sound that had menace as well as mirth in it. «He is reliving all his childhood fantasies. I told him I was exhausted and had to get away for a few days. He easily agreed and began phoning every available woman in New York. He should be hospitalized by now.»
«Or dead.»
She shrugged.
«I still don’t see why we sold the machine to them. I mean, wouldn’t it have made more sense to get one into the White House… or the Congress?»
«No,» she said, with a shake of her head that sent a golden curl tumbling over her eyes. She brushed it aside impatiently. «In Russia, the Kremlin, yes. In China, even though the leaders in Peking are ascetic, we are having successes among the provincial leaders. China will break up eventually. Time is on our side.»
«And in America?»
«The business leaders, of course. And as subtly as possible. Not by… how do you call it, ‘the hard sell’?»
«Yeah.»
«Well, not that way. Subtly. Quietly. Let the word leak out from one office to another. The business leaders control the American government. As the businessmen use the machine to find their lost potency, the politicians will learn of it and demand that they get machines just like it.»
«I hope you’re right,» he said.
«Of course I am right. They will destroy themselves. It is inevitable. The result of capitalist decadence.»
«Capitalist decadence? What about the Kremlin? The machines have been in use there longer than anyplace, haven’t they?»
«Yes. Of course. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lapsed into obsolete Cold War ideology. It’s my childhood training. Forgive me, please.»
«Okay. But let’s keep this straight. It’s us against them.»
«Yes. We are agreed. The young against the old.»
«No kids off to war anymore.»
She nodded and brushed at the curl again. «It seems so simple and obvious. Do you think it really will work?»
«It’s already working,» he said. «We’re on our way now, baby. All around the world. We’ll get those impotent old bastards so dependent on these machines that they’ll be too busy to do anything else.»
«While those of us who don’t need the machines take over the world.»
«Why not?» He broke into a broad grin. «After all, those who can, do.»
THE MASK OF THE RAD DEATH
This one was written purely as an exercise.
Edgar Allan Poe is one of the best American writers and poets. He made seminal contributions to the genres of horror and the detective story, as well as to science fiction. His poetry often has a darkly brooding character that is at once menacing and pathetic.
One of his most chilling short stories is «The Masque of the Red Death.» If you have not read it, you should. If you have read it, you remember it. I have no doubt of that; it is a powerful tale of the futility of trying to avoid death.
It struck me that Poe’s story could be converted into a modern scene of nuclear holocaust by changing only a few words. The «red death,» for example, becomes the «rad death,» with rad standing both for radioactivity and the unit that physicists and physicians use to measure how much radioactivity a living organism receives.
So I deliberately rewrote Poe’s story into a modern nuclear-war setting, to see how many words had to be changed. Only a couple of dozen.
The exercise gave me a new appreciation for the ways in which Poe achieved his morbid effects. I do not recommend this kind of exercise to every person who is interested in learning to write, although there is much to be learned from it.
I do recommend that the beginning writer spend as much time reading as writing, or even more. And read widely! Do not limit yourself to reading science fiction alone. There is a tremendous world of literature, the memories of the English-speaking peoples and more. Tap into that treasury of knowledge and experience. To ignore it is akin to submitting to a lobotomy.
If you want to write, read. If you want to write well, read as widely as you can. Writers are generalists, of necessity. Specialization is for insects.
The «rad death» had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal—the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and the slow bleedings of the gums and the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim were the pest ban which shut him out from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress, and termination of the disease were the incidents of an agonizing length of weeks, or often, months.
But Senator Prosper was determined and dauntless and sagacious. When Washington was half depopulated by the bombs and their fallout, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and equally determined friends from among the military officers and bureaucrats of the city, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his well-prepared underground shelters. This was the senator’s own eccentric yet practical taste. A strong and hidden gateway was its entrance, embedded in the burnt-out wilds of a national park. The gateway had a hatch of incorruptible metal.