The A Board now bore the numbers 63 74 28, and the spangled young lady was fishing for another globe. Edmund Cahill said slowly, "You have things rigged to make this Alton Smith the PR Board winner, which gives him the prize of being anything he wants to be, and that'll wreck the National Lottery?"
Franklin nodded confidently. The young lady dipped a globe, fed it into the launcher, and the number one floated over Yosemite Valley.
"So what'll he want to be?" Cahill asked.
Franklin smiled. "God."
Walner Frayne was one of four Prockly and Brannot employees who held the post of Senior Lottery Consultant. They alternated in planning and supervising campaigns to make the monthly PR Board winners what they wanted to be - whatever they wanted to be.
Frayne was a valued Prockly and Brannot employee, highly respected and well paid for his skill with Lottery winners. He thought the job idiotic, and he hated it, and several times a year - when confronted with new PR Board winners demanding the impossible - he found himself on the verge of resigning. Then he considered his salary, fringe benefits, expense accounts, seniority, and retirement status, and he desisted.
With this particular drawing, the idiocy had taken on a new guise. A week had passed, and every board except the PR Board had winning names posted under the winning numbers, from the 63 74 28 19 25 of the A Board (own your own apartment building, enjoy a super income for life) to the 21 91 56 38 40 of the Z Board (the zillion-dollar board, the grand sweepstakes, with numbers from all of the boards eligible except those already drawn). This was normal; since names of PR Board winners were protected by an elaborate security system, they could not be posted. As a result, only the Lottery officials and Prockly and Brannot employees knew that the PR Board prize hadn't been claimed.
Frayne and his two assistants, Ron Harnon and Naida Ainsley, had kept packed bags with them since the night of the drawing. The moment the PR Board winner checked in, they had to go to him, obtain his signature on a contract that guaranteed Prockly and Brannot's services in making him whatever he wanted to be (subject to the conditions stated in the Lottery rules), and put their campaign in motion.
Wherever he was. Lottery winners had checked in from as far away as Bombay and Brisbane. But a week's delay was unheard of.
F. Pierpont Prockly, exuding essence of lavender and lime cigarette smoke, waddled into the office where Frayne and his assistants sat regarding each other glumly. "Nothing yet?"
Frayne shook his head. "We've been listing the possibilities." He picked up a memo pad. "He's lost his ticket. He's in some hospital in a coma. He bought two tickets, and they're stuck together with the winner underneath. He's on a meditation retreat in the Amazon jungles - he claimed his prize immediately, but the carrier pigeon was blown off course by a hurricane."
Prockly glared at them. Unheard-of situations had to be blamed on someone, and he had the air of a man looking for a candidate. "When the Lottery Governors hear about this -" Gloomily he turned on his heel and left them.
"There are times," Frayne announced, "when I wish I was working the T Board."
Ron Harnon, who had a youthful unconcern for seniority because he possessed so little of it, said with a grin, "You think it's easy dealing with elderly women who want to climb Mount Everest?"
"Nothing to it," Frayne told him. "I have a friend who works the T Board, he's with Transworld Travel, and he tells me all you have to do is pick a steep hill near the woman's home and tell her she'll have to climb it twice a day for practice. After the third day it's a cinch to switch her to a trip around the world with a stop at the Everest Hilton on the way to Tahiti."
"Have any of the boards ever had an unclaimed prize?" Naida Ainsley asked.
Neither of them knew, and it was the wrong moment to be making inquiries on that particular subject.
Another two weeks passed, and they were helpless to do anything but wait. Had the missing winner been on any other board, the Lottery Governors would have launched a worldwide publicity campaign to locate him. With the PR Board this was impossible.
Finally, on the twenty-fifth day, one Alton Smith timidly presented himself at St. Louis L Headquarters. Frayne left at once for St. Louis, with his two assistants.
The little house was shabby but scrupulously clean, and so was its owner. Alton Smith was a small, elderly man with thinning white hair, a wistful face, and an oversized Adam's apple. His bulging contacts occasionally gave his eyes a glint of humor, but more often he seemed to be gazing into the infinite. His voice had the pathetic squeakiness of the aged. He was so obviously a gentle, kindly soul, and he radiated such innocent friendliness, that Frayne liked him at sight - until he remembered why he was there.
Then he regarded him with horror. This was the winner of the PR Board lottery prize. He had won the right to be whatever he wanted to be, and no one would ever make of Alton Smith anything other than what he was.
Smith said wistfully, "I don't suppose there's any money."
It was not a question. Obviously he knew there wasn't any money.
Frayne said firmly, "No. No money. Haven't you read the rules?"
"I don't need it myself," Smith said apologetically, "but it would be nice to be able to help my daughters."
"What would you like to be?" Frayne asked him.
"Nothing, I guess."
Frayne stared at him. "You've won the PR lottery and you don't want to be anything? Then why'd you buy the ticket?"
"I thought the agent said VR," Smith said. His manner was that of a first-time offender confessing a crime. "I thought it would be nice to own a little vacation resort. When my number wasn't drawn, I threw the ticket away. One of my grandchildren found it, and yesterday she was playing lottery with it, checking it against the winning numbers, and when she saw it was the same as one of them she asked her mother what she'd won. So I filed just in case there might be a little money. I wouldn't have bought it if I'd known it was PR."
"Come, now," Frayne said, radiating a confidence he did not feel. "A winning PR ticket is a lot better than money or owning a vacation resort. You can be anything you like "
"I'm too old."
"Nonsense. What's your occupation?"
"I used to be a floor manager."
Harnon caught Frayne's blank reaction and leaned over to whisper, "He was a building custodian. He was in charge of keeping floors clean."
"How about a promotion?" Frayne suggested. "Wouldn't you like to be head floor manager?"
Smith shook his head. "It was a small building, and I was the only one. Anyway, I'm retired."
"Or a change in rating?" Frayne persisted. "We could send you to school or get tutors for you."
"You could get an engineer's rating," Harnon put in. "Operate heating and air-conditioning units. Lots of small buildings hire part-time engineers. The money you earned would supplement your pension."
Smith shook his head. "I don't learn too good. Anyway, I'd rather just be retired."
"That doesn't keep you from being what you'd like," Frayne said desperately. "Politics? Represent your precinct on the neighborhood council?"
"I wouldn't like that. I mostly just like to take it easy and do a little gardening. I guess there's nothing. I told my daughter there wouldn't be."
Frayne felt himself teetering on the brink of an unthinkable disaster: A PR Board winner refusing his prize! "There's got to be something!" he exclaimed.
Smith shook his head. "No. I really don't want to be anything. I could have used a little money, though."
Frayne sent appealing side glances at his assistants and received only blank looks in return. When the silence became embarrassing, he said lamely, "We'll look into your problem and see what we can work out for you."
They got to their feet, and Smith followed them to the door. His manner remained apologetic; he seemed to sense their distress and in his kindly way feel sorry for them. He said, "Maybe -"