“Three months.”
“And you figure on a full length feature in six months. Father, what are you mixing?”
“All right, the pilot you just saw was a fifteen minute show. But we were working out a lot of bugs, and the technique was new. There’ll be no guessing on the feature, Van. We’ve got it down pat. When I say six months, I mean six months. Not a day over.”
“What about scribes?”
“That’s your end; you’re a literary agent, aren’t you?” “Sure, but scribes can’t eat promises.”
“We’ll pay them from the first nine hundred you raise.”
“How many will we need?”
“I used a team of six men and six women for the pilot. We need both, you know. This takes a special kind of writing, Van, you don’t know the half of it.”
“I know we won’t get six of each for less than a stone. My scribes are high-priced, Hayden.”
“Can’t you...”
“I’m their agent. I work for them, remember?”
“Then get some low-priced scribes. Get one of each, a man and a woman. They don’t have to be terrific; the medium will carry the lousiest writing, as long as it’s suited to the process. Besides, this is all new. There are no experienced scribes for this sort of thing.”
“How high can we go?”
“You’re not thinking of your commish, are you?”
“Hell, no! I want to know who I can get. For that, I want to know what I can pay. Come, father, don’t make glip.”
“All right. We can go to twenty gee.”
“Per?”
“I was thinking of twenty gee for both. If we have to make it per, okay.” Hayden smiled. “It’s your money, Van.”
“Yeah.” Brant stood up and took his hand. “Deal?” he asked.
“Deal,” Hayden said.
“Real,” Van acknowledged. “I’ll have the moo by the end of the week. Nine hundred gee. Another gee by the end of the month, and the rest in six months or so.”
“Right.”
“I see the light, father.”
“Give me a call, Van,” Hayden said. “This thing is big.”
“Your language is small,” Van answered. “This thing is doom!”
He called Walt Alloway from a pay phone. When his picture and voice came on, Van said, “I’m using scrambler thirty-one. Want to tune in?”
“Hush stuff?” Alloway asked.
“Much hush. Come on, Walt.”
“Sure,” he said.
Van pressed the button marked thirty-one on the face of the instrument. That would scramble his voice and picture so that only Walt, after adjusting his own set to decode, would receive his message. Common plug-ins were widespread, but the use of the scrambler made that impossible.
“Okay?” Van asked.
“Grooved.”
“Fine. You still want to take a powder on Lana Davis?”
“I’d love to. How?”
“I’ve got something big for you. It’ll mean a cut, though.”
“How much of a cut?”
“Down to twenty gee.”
“What!”
“Twenty gee,” Van repeated.
“That’s a mean slash, father.”
“I know. Do you want it?”
Alloway shook his head. “I’d sure like to get from under that chick, Van. But twenty gee. Hell, after taxes, I’d have marbles.”
“This is the biggest goddamn thing you’ve ever fallen into,” Van said harshly. “I can get sixty scribes who’ll do it for nothing, just on the promise of what it’ll bring them later on. If you don’t want it, I’ll look elsewhere. So long, Walt.”
“Hey, hold on, father!”
“What is it?”
“Well, chop a little more about it. Be fair, Van.”
“I can’t chop on the phone.”
“You’re scrambled, Van.”
“Even scrambled. Look, think it over. I’m your agent, and I say this is hot. You can take my word, remembering who pulled you out of the pabacks, or you can donut-leap.”
“Van, give me a chance to...”
“I’ll see you at Deborah’s tonight. I’ll tell you more then— But only if you’re in. If you’re cool, fool, this is too hot to spread around. You follow?”
“All the way. It’s big, huh, Van?”
“Bigger than birth.”
“But a cut in cash.”
“It’ll be the smartest move you ever made. Think about it.”
Brant clicked off, smiling to himself and swinging the door of the booth wide. He was on the fifth level, where his accountants, Barton and Houston, kept shop. They were the people to see next.
He stepped out of the booth, walked through the store, and out onto the curb. He was still smiling.
Brant grabbed the first pneumotube that came by, setting the electronic hailing signal at the curb. When the car stopped, he climbed in, deposited his coin, and punched the tabs near his seat. The car hummed and then swept forward swiftly. In three minutes, he’d travelled three miles, and he cursed the snail’s pace until he remembered he was down on the fifth level, a local level. The signal light near his seat blared red, and he rose as the car slowed and the door slid open. He stepped onto the curb, looked for the numbers on the buildings, found the one he wanted, and walked inside.
His heels echoed on the marble floors as he walked down the corridor. He passed two Rees in the hallway, complete with shirts and ties and wearing (of all goddamned things, he thought) hats. They studied the hair on his chest with obvious distaste, wrinkled their noses, and hurried off down the hallway. He shrugged, and then walked into the reception room of Barton and Houston.
A redheaded switchboard operator, her skin tinted an offcolor green, sat with her hands darting out for rubbery, snakelike connections. Her shoulders were bare, as were her breasts, and she had left the skin between her collar bones and the lower side of her bosom its natural shade. The effect was a bit startling, and Van glanced at it appreciatively.
The girl plugged one of the connections into a hole on the board.
“Barton and Houston, good afternoon.”
Van looked at his wrist chron. Damn if it wasn’t afternoon; twelve-ten already. He whistled tunelessly while she disposed of the lights flickering on her board. When she turned to him, he said, “Jo Houston, please.”
“Who’s calling, sir?”
“Van Brant.”
“Just a moment, Mr. Brant.”
Van walked over to the long window looking out over the criss-crossed ribbons that wound through the sky above and below the fifth level. Stretching from the third level up to the ninth, he saw the full-length figure of the star of one of the stereoshows originating on the seventh level. As he watched, the gigantic figure sucked in a deep breath. Her breasts moved suggestively, and her navel filled with shadow.
“Mr. Brant?”
He turned away from the window and the poster art, and walked back to the redhead, who was real. “Yes?”
“Mr. Houston will see you now, sir.”
“Thanks. Say, do you always dress formally in this office?”
The girl glanced down at her skin tint self-consciously. “Oh, no, sir. I’m going to a party straight from work. Mr. Houston said it would be all right if...”
“I see. I was just wondering.”
She smiled, and Brant smiled back and walked through the gate into Jo’s office. He was sitting behind a cluttered desk, with an enormous ledger opened before him. When Van entered, he rose and. extended his hand.
“Van, you old illidge! How goes the body?”
“Ticking and clicking, no kicking. And you?”
“Sound and round, like money found. What brings you, Van?”
“Business.”
“Oh?”
“Uhm,” Van said flatly. “Look, Jo, I haven’t been fixed since Lord knows. You don’t mind, do you?”
“No, no,” Jo said expansively. “Go right ahead. Just had mine, as a matter of fact. What’s your pleasure?”