“Morph, Jo.”
“Morph it is. A straight lad, eh?”
“Always.”
Jo moved to the bar, pressed a stud in its top, and removed a leather case. “Been on herro myself,” he said. He selected a vial from the case and handed it to Van. He waited while Van checked the gauge and located the vein. He nodded, then, and said, “Happy, Van.”
Van nodded acknowledgement and fired. It hit him fast and hard, and he sucked in a deep breath, twisted the cap, and handed the vial back to Jo. “Your stuff is always good.”
“Only the best for my clients,” Jo said. “What’s on your mind, Van?”
“Liquidation.”
“Huh?”
“I need cash fast, Jo. I want you to get rid of all my holdings; everything but the agency. I need close to a stone by Saturday.”
Jo whistled softly. “In a jam?”
“No. Business.”
“Sounds good.”
“It is. Can you do it for me?”
Jo spread the fingers of one hand wide. “Sure.” Then he cocked his head to one side, his deep brown eyes set into the layers of flesh on his face. “Anything that might interest me?”
“Sorry, Jo.”
Jo smiled. “Okay, okay.” He patted the air with his hand. “So what’s new otherwise?”
“Nothing much. You?”
“A few new accounts. Very nice. You know Steele and Dawes?”
“Advertising?”
“Yes. Enormous. We just got them.”
“How’s Day?”
“He’s fine. Holding down the Barton end of Barton and Houston.”
“Steele and Dawes, you say. Why does it ring a bell?”
“The boys who finally broke through the prohibition lobby.”
“Oh yes, of course. The ones who started the new swing in liquor advertising.”
Jo nodded. “You remember what the ads used to be like. For Mellow Flavor or For A Taste Treat. Anything but what they really wanted to say.” He chuckled audibly, remembering, and added, “I’ll never forget the first one, Van. The name of the liquor was Daley’s, I believe. Steele and Dawes plastered the town with tri-dim bottles. Everywhere you looked, a bottle was staring down at you. And all the copy said was, Daley’s Makes You Drunk As A Lord!”
He laughed aloud, and Van laughed with him, remembering what a furor that first honest liquor ad had caused.
Chapter 4
The party was a sumptuous thing, but then all of Deborah Dean’s parties were. She’d had one complete wall of the living room knocked down for the occasion, replacing it with a clear pane of plexoid that ran the length of the room. Her apartment was swank, high up on the fiftieth level, looking down over the city and the river. When Van came in with Lizbeth on his arm, the lights were low in the room, and the city twinkled and sparkled outside the plexoid sheet like a galaxy of blazing, multi-colored suns.
Deborah spotted them the moment they came through the door, and she hurried over. She was the only woman Brant knew who could carry off green eyes and a blue skin tint well. Her breasts were spattered with glistening gold dust, the nipples luminous in the dim light of the room. Her skirt was long in the back, almost trailing the floor, gashing upward in a wide V that terminated at her waist in the front.
“Van,” she cried, “How good!”
Van took the hand she extended, and smiled cordially. “Deborah, this is Lizbeth.”
Deborah grinned, and her eyes roamed Lizbeth’s body candidly. Van watched her with some amusement, secretly admitting that Liz had really outdone herself tonight. She had a thin blue, shimmering strap of plastone decorously clinging to her breasts. She had chosen a peach skin tint, and had contrasted it with a pitch black skirt that ended on her thighs. Her lips matched the plastone strip, and she’d done her hair to go with the skirt. They’d had a fix in Van’s car, and her eyes sparkled behind their blue contacts. Even Deborah was impressed, and Van knew she didn’t impress easily.
“Nice, Van,” she said.
“Why, thank you, Deb.”
She smiled again. “What’s your pleasure?”
“We’ve been fixed,” Van told her. “Maybe later.”
“You know where the bar is. Just help yourself. I’ve got a wonderful Senso for later, and something new in a tri-dim. And, oh, I’ve got some destructive tapes, Van. The very latest sound.” She closed her eyes ecstatically. “Doom, pure doom.”
“I’ll be listening.” He paused. “I’d like to talk to you later, Deb.”
“Why not now?”
“Alone,” he said.
Deborah opened her eyes in surprise. “Why, Van, you’re not turning Ree, are you?”
“Don’t be disgusting,” Van said quickly.
She patted his cheek, her hand cool and firm, a sensuous musky perfume rising from its palm. “I was kidding, darl. As a matter of fact, I want to talk to you, too. When the Senso is showing, grooved? But then, I hate to have you miss it. It really is good.”
“I’ll see it some other time.”
“All right, Van. I’ll look for you later.”
She waved and was gone, ready to greet another pair of guests.
“She’s nice,” Lizbeth said. “I like her stomach. Who does it for her?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see anything unusual about it.”
“Didn’t you notice? It was beautiful, Van, really. Oh, you’re kidding me! Didn’t you really notice?”
“There’s Rog Moore,” Van said.
“Who?”
“Moore. You know him. The big psych. I wonder what the hell he’s doing here.”
“Why not? Psychs are human.”
“Are they?”
Lizbeth giggled and took his arm. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s mingle.”
They walked across the room to a small clique who had a song going. They listened to one chorus, and then both joined in on the refrain:
They all enjoyed a good laugh, and then a tall, dark-haired boy in silver breeches began improvising a chorus.
“There once was a Ree man named Dino!
“Who strolled on the old bal-colino.
“He tripped on his clothes,
“And ruptured his nose
“In a most realistic fash-ino!
“Ohhhhhhh...”
They all laughed, and then a clever girl with pink shells on her nipples took up another chorus, a bit raw this time, but still funny. They were in the middle of another refrain when Van saw Walt Alloway come into the room. He excused himself and started for the door, the sound of the singing behind him. At the bar, a young girl lifted her leg and popped off with a vial. She was undoubtedly new at it because her eyes seemed ready to leave her skull, and she began trembling so badly that Van thought she’d lose her skirt.
He grabbed Walt by the arm before he’d even had a chance to say hello and began steering him toward a dark corner.
“Hey,” Alloway complained, “what the hell’s the rush?”
“You want to hear this, or don’t you?”
“Sure, sure. But I want to taste some of this new stuff I hear Deborah’s got. Hell, father, I haven’t had a fix since noon in preparation.”
“All right, go pop. But hurry back, Walt.”
“Sure,” Walt said, looking at Van curiously. “Sure.”
He started toward the bar, waving his hand in greeting as he passed Rog Moore, the psych. Van followed Walt with his eyes until he reached the bar, and then lost him in the cluster of people there. When Van swung his eyes back, he realized that Moore was heading in his direction. He turned his head away quickly, pretending to look through the plexoid at the city. But Moore had already spotted him, so he gave it up.