by John Brunner
Ted’s jaw dropped. “His code?” he said after a pause.
“I checked immediately. No such. It’s been deleted. And doubtless his protective phage went with it.”
“That makes the job more difficult,” Brad said. “I still think it ought to be done. And when she reads this information you’ve uncovered, I’m certain Suzy will agree.”
COLLAPSE OF STOUT PARTY
“Interesting. Very interesting. This might save a lot of trouble. Say, Perce!”
“Yes?”
“Know that hole-in-corner place Precipice CA? Looks like their sheriff went a step too far.”
“Oh, Gerry. Oh, Gerry. If you weren’t new around here I guess you’d realize nothing at Precipice can go too far. The pokers from Claes who wrote the deal they have with the government were the smartest con men that ever pulled wool over the eyes of a Washington sheep. But for once I’ll bite. It would be great to undermine them. What you got?”
“Well, they arrested these here tribers, and—”
“And?”
“Hell, look at the sentences they handed down!”
“Not to leave town for one year minimum, to accept escort by a dog apiece … So?”
“Goddammit, escort by a dog?”
“They got kind of weird dogs out there. You didn’t check, did you?”
“Well, I guess I—”
“Save it, save it. You didn’t check. So, not having checked, what did you expect to get out of this?”
“I though maybe—uh—an injunction? Grounds of cruel-and-unusual? Or even kidnaping. I mean one of the tribers is only thirteen.”
“There are four states where they routinely agree applications to be declared competent if the applicant is past his or her thirteenth birthday. California’s one. It might be educational for you to find out what the others are. As to cruel-and-unusual, you should also know there’s one city where you can still legally be burned alive provided they don’t pick a Sunday. They didn’t do it much lately, but it’s on the books, not repealed. Ask any computer. Oh, get back to work, will you? While you’ve been gabbing they probably sneaked a brand-new tapeworm past you.”
Pause.
“Perce!”
“What is it this time?”
“Remember what you said about a tapeworm?”
“Oh my God. That was a joke. You mean they spat in our eye again?”
“See for yourself, It’s kind of—uh—fierce, isn’t it?”
“Fierce is only half of it. Well, I guess it better claim its first victim. You found it. You go tell Mr. Hartz to abandon the attack on Hearing Aid.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Carry the good news from Y to X! Tamper with this thing, and—and my God! The data-net would be in chaos in one minute flat or maybe sooner! Hurry!”
BIG TOP
Belly sour with hunger, throat dry with dust, he wandered the darkening streets of Quemadura, scarcely aware that he was part of a trend. There were people and vehicles converging. He went with the crowd. Drained, passive, he ignored reality until suddenly he was spoken to.
“Damn it, shivver, you deaf and dumb or something?”
What?
He emerged from his chrysalis of overload, blinking, and discovered where he was. He’d seen this place before. But only on three-vee, never in reality. Above all he had never smelt it. The air was foul with the stench of frightened animals and eager people.
Many signs, hurtfully bright, flashed on and off to confirm his discovery. Some said circus bocconi; others stated more discreetly that a Roman-style show would start in 11 minutes. The 11 changed to 10 as he watched.
“What kinda seat you want?” rapped the same grumpy voice. “Ten, twenty, thirty?”
“Uh …”
He fumbled in his pocket, finding some bills. As part of the ambience, tickets for this show were issued by a live human being, a scar-faced man missing fingers from his right hand. On seeing cash he scowled; however, the machine at the side of his booth decided it was genuine and parted with a ten-dollar ticket.
Wondering what he was doing here, he followed signs saying $10, $10, $10. Shortly he was in a hall: maybe a converted aircraft hangar. There were bleachers and boxes surrounding an arena and a pit. Machines were hanging up phony-looking decor, banners with misspelled Latin slogans, plastic fasces bundled around dull plastic axes.
Making his way with mechanical politeness to a vacant seat in a high row with a poor view, he shamelessly listened to what the earlier arrivals, the keen ’fishes, were saying.
“Wasting those ’gators on kids, hell! I mean I hate my kids as much as anybody, but if you can get real live ’gators—well, hell!”
“Hope they got some whites on the menu. Sickan-tired of these here blacks, allatime wanna make like grandpa, fight a lion singlehanded and clutched but clutched on the heaviest dope!”
“Course it’s all faked, like they got radio implants in the animals’ brains so they don’t get to really hurt anybody ’cause of the insurance being so stiff and—”
A hugely amplified voice rang out. “Five minutes! In just five short minutes the great spectacle begins! Absolutely and positively no one will be admitted after the start of the show! Remember only Circus Bocconi goes out live live live in real time up and down the whole West Coast! And we record as well, retransmit to the unlucky portions of the continent!”
Suddenly he was vaguely frightened, and cast around for a chance to leave again. But the customers were coming thick and fast now, and he was unwilling to push against the flow. Besides, there was a camera coasting his way. It rode a jointed metal arm, like a mantis’s foreleg, dangling from a miniature electric trolley on a rail under the roof. Its dual eye, faceted, seemed to be focusing on him. He was even more reluctant to attract attention by leaving than he was to stay and watch the show.
He folded his arms close around his body as though to stop himself from shivering.
It would only be an hour, he consoled himself.
The introductory acts he was more or less able to disregard though some nausea gathered in a bubble at the base of his gullet during the second item: imported from Iraq, one genuine snake-eater, an ugly man with a bulging forehead hinting at hydrocephalic idiocy who calmly offered his tongue to a snake, let it strike, then drew in his tongue again, bit off its head, chewed and swallowed, then rose shyly grinning to acknowledge the audience’s howls of applause.
Then came a stylized match between gladiators, a nod to the ostensible “Roman” format of the show, which concluded with the retiarius bleeding from a leg wound and the gladiator proper—the man with the sword and shield—strutting around the arena prouder than a turkeycock, having done nothing to speak of.
Dull resentment burgeoned in his mind.
It’s disgusting. Butchered to make a Roman holiday. A cheat from start to finish. Filthy. Horrible. This is where parents learn to raise the kids who get their kicks from tribaling a stranger’s home. This is where they get taught you should remember how you killed your mother. Cut off your father’s balls. Ate the baby to stop mom and dad loving it more than you. Sick. All sick. Crazy sick.
At Tarnover there had been a kind of subcult for circus. Something to do with channeling aggression into socially acceptable paths. The memory was a dim echo. There was a dreadful confusion inside his head. He was hungry and thirsty and above all miserable.
“And now a short break so our sponsors’ messages can reach the world,” boomed the master of ceremonies over the monstrously loud PA. “Time for me to let you know about a unique feature of our Roman shows. Al Jackson, who’s our champion gladiator, that you saw a minute back …”
Pause for a ripple of renewed clapping and shouting.
“Yea-hey! Tough as they come, with family following in his footsteps—y’know his son is warlord of the Blackass tribe?”
Pause. This time not filled. As though the speaker had been waiting for a scream and yell from the tribers, who weren’t pre
sent.
But he covered the hiatus expertly.
“Al issues a real-time challenge on all these shows—yes, literally a challenge in real time, no fixing, no prearrangement. Want to try your skill against him, take over the net and trident for the final slot? You can, any of you! Just stand up and holler how!”
Without intending, he was on his feet.
“He raised the warlord of the Blackass tribe?”
He heard his own voice as though it were coming from light-years’ distance.
“Yeah man! A son to be proud of, young Bud Jackson!”
‘Then I’m going to take Al to little tiny pieces.” He was leaving his seat, still listening to himself shout at the top of his lungs. “I’m going to make him weep and beg and plead for mercy. I’m going to teach him all the things his son taught me, and I am going to make him howl, and blubber, and plead and moan. And it’s going to go on for a lot longer than this show.”
There was a rattle of applause, and the audience sat up and looked eager. Someone patted him on the shoulder as he passed and wished him luck.
DEFINITION OF TERMS
“A classic instance of the death wish.”
“Garbage. I had no least intention of being dead. I’d watched that fat slob. I knew I could dismantle him even though I was weak and excessively angry. Didn’t I prove it? He was seven days in the hospital, you know, and he’ll never walk straight again.”
“Agreed. But on the other hand making yourself conspicuous before a three-vee audience … ?”
“Yes. Yes, there was that.”
THE MEDIUM IS THE MESS-UP
Traditionally one had defaced or scrawled on posters and billboards, or sometimes—mainly in rural areas—shot at them because the eyes or nipples of a model formed convenient targets.
Later, when a common gadget around the house was a set of transparent screens (like those later used for the electronic version of fencing) to place over the TV set for mock-tennis and similar games, strangely enough the viewers’ ratings for commercials went up. Instead of changing channels when advertising began, people took to switching in search of more of the same.
To the content of which they were paying no attention. What they wanted was to memorize the next movement of the actors and actresses and deform their gestures in hilarious fashion with a magnetic pencil. One had to know the timing of the commercials pretty well to become good at the game; some of the images lasted only half a second.
With horror the advertisers and network officials discovered that in nine cases out of ten the most dedicated watchers could not recall what product was being promoted. For them, it wasn’t “that Coke ad” or “that plug for Drãno”—it was “the one where you can make her swipe him in the chops.”
Saturation point, and the inception of diminishing returns, was generally dated to the early eighties, when the urban citizen of North America was for the first time hit with an average of over a thousand advertisements per diem.
They went right on advertising things, of course. It had become a habit.
SWORD, MASK AND NET
Chuckling, Shad Fluckner laid aside his magnetic pencil. The commercial break was over and the circus program was due to resume. Employees of Anti-Trauma Inc. were more than just encouraged, they were virtually compelled, to watch the broadcasts from Circus Bocconi in Quemadura. Sponsoring circus was one of the best ways the corporation had found to attract new clients. Precisely those parents who spent most time indulging violence on the vicarious level were those most afraid of what would happen if their children’s aggression were to be turned on them. In fact, the more circus the parents watched, the sooner they were inclined to sign the kids up for a course of treatment. The relationship could be shown to be linear plus or minus fourteen percent.
It was no sweat for him. He’d always enjoyed circus anyhow. But if they knew, at Anti-Trauma HQ, what one of their employees had figured out to do to their latest commercial, feathers would well and truly fly. Ho-ho! It was a shame he couldn’t share his discovery with anyone; his colleagues would interpret it as disloyal except for those who’d decided it was time to move to another job, and … Well, he had the same idea in mind himself, and might reach the decision before the lifetime of the commercial expired. Meanwhile it was great fun to fool with.
Still grinning, he composed himself to watch the final segment of the show, the bit where Al Jackson allegedly issued an open challenge to members of the audience. Rigged for sure, this deal, but occasionally …
Hey.
Not so heavily rigged, this one. Not unless they decided to surple Al and—Goddamn, he’s screaming! He really is screaming! This is great stuff for once. This is really very sick indeed. This is muchissimo. Hmm … yes!
Eyes bulbing, he leaned closer to the screen. No fake, that blood. Nor the howls of agony, either! Say, who could this poker be who was making mincemeat of Bocconi’s star turn—?
“But it’s Lazarus,” he said suddenly to the air. “Beard or no beard, I’d know that shivver anywhere. And he gave me the slip before and this time—oh, this time … !”
NEXT IN LINE
“And once he was recognized on three-vee it was only a matter of time,” Hartz said, leaning back behind his desk. It was captioned Deputy Director. Thumbing one of many switches, he shut off the rolling replay of the Haflinger tapes.
“Yes, sir,” Freeman said. “And the FBI was very quick to corner him.”
“Quicker than you to drain him,” Hartz said, and gave a sleepy smile. In the context of this office, his home base, he was a different person from the visitor who had called on Freeman at Tarnover. Perhaps that was why he had declined an invitation to return.
“I beg your pardon,” Freeman said stiffly. “My brief was to extract all possible data from him. That couldn’t be done quickly. Nonetheless, to within a margin of about half a percent, I’ve achieved it.”
“That may be good enough for you. It’s not enough for us.”
“What?”
“I believe I made myself clear. After your long-drawn-out interrogation of this subject we still do not know what we most want to know.”
“That being … ?” Freeman’s voice grew frostier by the moment.
“The answer, I submit, is self-evident. An intolerable situation exists concerning Precipice vis-à-vis the government. A small dissident group has succeeded in establishing a posture of deterrence in principle no different from that adopted by a crazy terrorist threatening to throw the switch on a nuke. We were ready to eliminate this anomaly. Only Haflinger—Locke—Lazarus—whatever he was calling himself at the time—intervened and sent us back to square one. You have spent weeks interrogating him. In all the mounds of data you’ve accumulated, in all the kilometers of tape you’ve totaled, there is no slightest clue to what we want to know.”
“How to deevee the phage he wrote to protect Hearing Aid?”
“Ah, brilliant! You worked it out!” Hartz’s tone was laden with excess irony. “It is, as I said, intolerable that one small community should interfere with the government’s right to monitor subversion, disaffection and treason. We have to know how to discontinue that tapeworm!”
“You’re crying for the moon,” Freeman said after a pause. “Haflinger doesn’t know how to do that himself. I’d stake my reputation on it.”
“And that’s your final word?”
“Yes.”
“I see. Hmm. Regrettable!” Hartz tipped his chair back as far as it would go, twisted it through a few degrees, gazed with concentration into the far corner of the room. “Well, what about the other contacts he had? What about Kate Lilleberg, for instance? What have you found out about her recent actions?”
“She would appear to have reverted to her former plans,” Freeman sighed. “She’s back in KC, she’s filed no application to move her pet mountain lion, and in fact I can think of only one positive decision she has made since her return.”
“That being, I gather, to alter one
of her majors for the coming academic year. She now plans to take data processing, doesn’t she?”
“Ah … Yes, I believe she does.”
“A strange coincidence. A very weird coincidence indeed. Don’t you think?”
“A connection is possible—in fact it’s likely. Calling it coincidence … no.”
“Good. I’m glad that for once you and I agree on something.” Hartz returned his chair to the upright position and leaned intently toward Freeman. “Tell me, then: have you formed any opinion concerning the Lilleberg girl? I appreciate you never met her. But you’ve met people intimately involved with her, such as her mother, her lover and sundry friends.”
“Apparently a person with considerable common sense,” Freeman said after a pause for reflection. “I can’t deny that I’m impressed with what she did to help Haflinger. It’s no small achievement to elude …”
His words faded as though he had suddenly begun to hear, what he was saying ahead of time.
“Go on,” Hartz purred.
“I was going to add: such an intensive hunt as has been kept up over six years now. Since Haflinger absconded, I mean. She seemed to—well, to grasp the scale of it at once.”
“And didn’t disbelieve what he told her, either. Did she?”
“She didn’t behave as though she did. No.”
“Hmm … Well, I’m pleased to inform you that you’ll have adequate opportunity to confirm or deevee your opinion.” Hartz hit another switch; the wall screen in the office lit, showing a vastly enlarged face.
“Computer evaluation here at BDP suggests that your no doubt sophisticated techniques might benefit from reinforcement by—what to call it?—an alternative approach, let’s say, which may strike you as old-fashioned yet which has something to be said in its favor. Because we intend to destroy that tapeworm Haflinger gave to Hearing Aid!” With a sudden glare. “And before the end of this year, what’s more! I have the president’s personal instructions to that effect.”
