Alloway looked doubtful. “Did you read the script?”
“No.”
“I thought so. If you had, you’d know there is no chick with a natural frontage like that. Oh, the hell with it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I can always get back into tri-dims — and if worse comes to worst, there’s the pabacks. At least the money is clean.”
“Who cares if it’s clean, as long as it’s much?”
“There’s no such,” Walt said. “You can talk. You don’t have to take it from a chick with a complex as long as my arm.”
“She been psyched, or are you just guessing?”
“I’m guessing, but it’s a sure thing. In the last sequence I did for her, she insisted my baddie was destroying the father image. Father image! Dig that for the falcs!”
“Stick with it, Walt; it’s cool cash. So you put up with a cashew, so what?”
“Yeah,” Alloway said disgustedly.
“I’ll see you tonight?”
“Deborah’s?”
“Yeah, at about twenty or twenty-one.”
“I’m with you.”
“Grooved.”
Brant clicked off and turned back to Miss Silverstein, who had politely stared out the window during the conversation.
“Now then,” he said, “what can I do for you?”
“Was that Walter Alloway?” she asked.
“The same.”
“He... he makes a lot of money, doesn’t he? Writing, I mean.”
“One of our best scribes.”
She nodded, thinking of the money, he knew, and not the quality of Walt’s writing. “I want to make a lot of money,” she said suddenly.
“An admirable desire. Everyone does.”
“I... I’ve never tried any Vicarion material.”
“What have you written?”
She turned her head; a flush suffused her neck, and spread over her face. “Stuff,” she said. “You know.”
“Stark realism? Slices of life? Turning the cruel, cold spotlight on suffering humanity? Exposing the...”
“You needn’t make fun,” she snapped.
“I wasn’t,” Van said honestly. “I used to handle that kind of stuff until I hopped aboard. If you want to make money, you’d best turn in your pen for a later model. You can sell slice-of-life to some of the small Ree journals for five skins a throw. I won’t handle it.”
“Why not?”
“Because an agent’s commission on a five dollar sale is fifty cents. I run a business, not a benevolent society.”
“But... but do you really believe in this Vike stuff you sell? I mean, do you honestly believe it’s literature?”
“What’s literature?” Brant asked. “I define it as the profession of a writer or author.”
“That’s a rather narrow definition.”
“Maybe.” Van shrugged. “Literature is also what people read. If they no longer read Beowulf, it’s no longer literature. Vike literature serves a definite need in our society; if you insist on giving it a raison d’etre, that’s it.”
“And... you’d recommend that I write that kind of... of stuff?”
“Me?” Van grinned crookedly. “Honey, I’m not recommending anything. You can write just what you want to write.”
“If I wanted to write Vike stuff, where would I begin?” she asked earnestly.
Van sighed deeply, and his eyes roamed her body frankly. “First, shorten your skirt by about three feet. Throw your blouse away and bare your breasts. Get some tints and cosmetics, and find a drug habit. If you’ve got the man habit, it’s a bad one. Kick your mate out and solo it. Live with Vikes, and stay with Vikes, and play with Vikes. Don’t speak with a full mouth, and eat alone. As they used to say, get with it. That’s the only way you can write it, and the only way you can sell it.”
“I... I see.”
“Toss over all your realistic beliefs, because they’ve no place in the Vicarion world. And it is a Vike world, honey; don’t forget that for a moment. Then when you’ve done all that, come back in a year or two and let me see what you’ve got.”
“Such a long time? Couldn’t it be done faster?”
Van smiled. “I see you’ve read Pygmalion — one of the prime examples of early Vike literature. I thought that was on the Realist spit list.”
“It is.”
“And you read it anyway, huh? Well, that’s promising.” He thought about this for a moment. “Maybe you can do it faster, who knows? What’s your name again?”
“Lydia Silverstein.”
“Mmm. Change that, and fast. Come back in a week or so, and I’ll talk to you then.”
She smiled ingratiatingly. “All right. Thanks a lot. I really...”
“No slop, mother. Come back in a week with a new name. We can use some good women scribes if you work out.”
“Thank you. Thank you very...”
“So long, Miss Silverstein.”
She rose abruptly, walking swiftly to the door. He watched her stiff-hipped walk and called, “Miss Silverstein?”
She turned anxiously. “Yes?”
“Get rid of that girdle.”
“Oh, I will,” she said. She backed a pace, whirling in surprise when the door slid open behind her. She smiled, nodded, and then walked out. The door slid shut.
Van walked to the desk and looked at his chronometer. It was already nine forty-six, and Hayden Thorpe didn’t like to be kept waiting.
He walked to the closet, took a bottle of alcojel from the shelf on the door, and rubbed it over his chest, arms, and back. It dried almost instantly, leaving a high sheen on his muscles. He looked into the mirror appreciatively, winked at his reflection, and then closed the closet door. He walked back to his desk and buzzed Lizbeth.
“Sir?”
“I’m leaving, Liz. I may be back this afternoon. If not, I’ll see you at twenty tonight. Send your address on the Pri-Com, will you?”
“Fine, Van.”
“You know where I’m going now, don’t you?”
“Mr. Thorpe’s?”
“Right. You can reach me there if it’s urgent. Otherwise, I’m in Outer Mongolia.”
“Grooved, Van.”
“Keep thee close, Liz,” he said. He heard her throaty chuckle as he clicked off. He took one last look in the mirror, and then headed for the lift and the sixteenth level.
Chapter 2
Dino Pelazi’s offices were on the twelfth level, and were it not for the fluorescent lighting and the air conditioning, they would have been dark and barely habitable.
With the conveniences, they were pleasant if not exactly luxurious. He stood by the window now, looking out at the ribbons of concrete that stretched between the buildings, criss-crossing in a wild medley of apparent misdirection. The sun glinted off the speeding, metallic cars of the pneumotubes, glistening like huge tear-drops in their transparent cylinders. The sky beyond the city was wide and blue, and the sun squatted on it like a contented Indian on a flawlessly woven blanket. His eyes lifted to the sky, followed the endless pattern of a jet plane trailing an advertising slogan across the unmarred blue.
S...M...O...
His mind leaped ahead. Smoke Randel’s — Tasty — Toasted — Boasted About...
The slogan pushed his subconscious; he walked nervously to his leather-topped desk, nudged the lid from a cigarette box, and speared a thin white cylinder. He placed it between his lips, lit it, and then walked back to the window.
He watched the meanderings of the jet a while longer, pleased when the pilot missed crossing the second “t” in toasted. He watched until the jet streaked back for the tailless letter, and then went back to his desk and snubbed out the cigarette.
His hand darted to the intercom speaker, and he pushed down a lever.