Demons

by Gardner Dozois

  "How is that?"

  "I accept aid from any source, because I am totally committed. But so are you, and therefore, you, too, will accept assistance without asking the cost, or to whom the payment will be made."

  Patrick felt a flurry of confusion. "And to what am I totally committed?"

  "To your patents. Did you not know?"

  Patrick had to think about this. Finally, he shook his head, not in denial, but to admit incomprehension. "Well," he defended. "It's my job."

  Fast's mouth, immobile and cryptic as the Mona Lisa's, seemed almost to smile. "Yes, but only because you have contracted for it. So you see, what I have done is not a particularly strange thing. You . . . everyone . . . has entered into his own private contract, with something. My only difference is that I have put mine in writing. This does not necessarily mean that I am more honest than you. Perhaps I am merely more perceptive.

  "True, my deal is with the Devil. But is that immoral? Morality is relative. My action, my way of life, has to be evaluated against the background of your action, and your way of life. You think me immoral, if not insane. Yet you wrote this contract for me. Why? Because you want to keep me happy. And why do you want to keep me happy? So that I'll keep your patents coming. Therefore you've made your own contract—with your patents. You resolve all questions of sin, virtue, and morality in light of the effect on your patents. With you, nothing can be sinful—even an assignment to hell—if it helps your terpineol patents. Before you judge my contract, take a look at your own."

  Patrick stared at the gray man. Finally he smiled uneasily. "Whatever you say, John."

  "And now I'll do you a favor, Con. Change the name."

  "Change what name?"

  "Neol. It's wrong."

  "What's wrong with it?"

  "The sound; wrong altogether. If you should ever have to . . . call . . . anyone with it, it wouldn't do it. Also, you ought to have five letters, exactly, one letter for each point of the pentagram. Correct symbology is essential.''

  "Whom would I be calling?" said Patrick. "And why?"

  "You know . . . for your patents."

  Patrick looked blank, then frowned, then finally he smiled. "All right, John. Whether or not you're a mystic, I'll give you 'x-plus,' for mystification."

  After Fast had gone, Patrick and Sullivan stared at each other.

  "Do you believe any of that?" said Patrick.

  "I believe he thinks he saw something. A kind of self-hypnosis."

  "How about the yield. You know one hundred percent of theory is impossible."

  "No, Con, I don't know that. And neither do you. Within experimental errors, he may well have got one hundred percent. And even if he didn't, he really might have got fairly close to it. A pilot plant always does much better than a bench-scale unit. You just naturally expect the yield to be high. All the variables are optimized, easily controlled."

  "So you think he just hypnotized himself into seeing the devil?"

  "Why not? Actually, he's an accomplished amateur hypnotist. I'm told he is quite a parlor performer, if you can catch him."

  "I know. He'll be at the party tonight, for something like that. But he's wrong about me. I'm not totally committed to my patents. It's my job, the same as it's your job. John Fast doesn't know what he's saying."

  Sullivan's eyes twinkled wickedly. "You're absolutely right, Con. There are some things you would not resort to, even to save the Neol patent position. You would not sell your own grandmother into white slavery even if it would win the interference and solve the whole problem." He paused, then added maliciously, "Would you, Con?"

  Patrick snorted. "Don't tempt me!"

  "Are you going to change the name?" asked Sullivan.

  " 'Neol'?"

  "You know what I mean."

  "Well, maybe. There's nothing really wrong with 'Neol.' "

  "Except that John Fast thinks it's wrong."

  ". . . Without saying how to make it right," added Patrick. "I want to think about it. And I might change it, just to be ornery."

  That which we call a rose

  By any other name would smell as sweet.

  Shakespeare

  Patrick sat in his office, looking at the proofs of the "Neol Technical Manual," and thinking hard. This was Harvey Jayne's manual, and Jayne was trying to steal Miss Willow. But Jayne needed Patent Department clearance for his manual. Right away, this suggested possibilities. This morning, he had it nearly figured. And then John Fast had decided the name was wrong. And what difference did it make to John Fast? He wasn't even going to ask, because tonight he was going to need the man.

  But could he change the name? How sacred was this manual to Jayne?

  Patrick considered the matter.

  He knew, certainly, that a technical manual prepared and published by an American chemical giant was like nothing else in the world of books. It was the strange child of the mating of the laboratory with Madison Avenue, midwifed by the corporate public relations committee. It told all. It was rich in history, process descriptions, flow sheets, rotogravures, chemical equations, and nomographs. It was comprehensive, and its back pages were filled with thousands of arrogant footnotes. The stockholders of Hope Chemical were given the impression that the sole function of the "Neol Technical Manual" was to incite an unendurable craving for Neol in the hearts of purchasing agents throughout the country. But Patrick knew that the compiler privately harbored other motives. For that man, Harvey Jayne, it represented an opportunity for creativity that comes only when the company builds a new plant; it could not happen to Jayne twice in one lifetime.

  In this manual, Harvey Jayne would have a ready-made solace for whatever disasters might lie ahead. His wife might on occasion fail to recognize his greatness; his son might fail in school; he might, alas, even be laterally transferred within the company. Yet withal, his faith in himself would be restored, and the blood brought back into his cheeks, when he gets out his old Technical Manual, to read a little in it, to fondle its worn covers, and to look at the pictures. So doing, Harvey Jayne might murmur, with tears in his eyes, as did Jonathan Swift, re-reading Gulliver's Travels, "God, what genius!"

  So, thought Patrick, this volume will be cherished forever by Harvey Jayne. He will keep it in his office bookcase, with a spare in his den at home. When he transfers, it will be carefully packed. Years later, for presentation at his retirement dinner, his lieutenants will borrow his last copy from his wife, or perhaps steal one from the company library. They will have it bound in the company colors, blue and gold; and the chairman of the board, the president, and numerous fellow vice-presidents will autograph its pages.

  Now, brooded Patrick, the whole of this immense and immemorial undertaking, this monster, this manual, centers around the product trademark, which is as essential to it as the proton to the atom, the protoplasmic nucleus to the growing cell. The manual is known by this name. Once thus baptized, the name is sacred. And to deny this book its name, to suggest that its name is wrong, that it should have another name, is to invite the visitation of the Furies, for this is desecration, a charge so sinister that it must rank with defamation of motherhood, or with being against J. Edgar Hoover.

  Yes, there were possibilities. For personal disaster. He could not change the name of the manual. And yet he was going to. Why? he wondered. Why am I going to do this? I am as crocked as John Fast. His mind floundered, searching. I have to fight Harvey Jayne, that's why. No. That's not why. It's something else. John Fast said the name was wrong. The new name should have five letters. He tugged briefly at his mustache, then leaned over to the intercom.

  Books cannot always please.

  George Crabbe

  "Con," said Cord, "it's not really bad. A few editorial changes should do the job."

  Patrick's face was a blank. "How about 'Neol'?"

  "It's clear. The closest thing is 'Neolan,' registered for textiles."

  Patrick brightened. "Clear? It's a clear case of infringement!"


  Cord stared at him. "What . . . what did you say?"

  "I said it infringes. And I hasten to add, Cord, my boy, that you look quite strange with your mouth open." He reached for l he phone and dialed Jayne.

  "Oh, hi there, Harvey . . . No, I didn't call to protest about Miss Willow. We're really grateful you can do something for her, Harvey. Her place is with you, Harvey. On one condition . . . It's this, Harvey, that you double her raise. She's worth every bit of it. Good, Harvey, splendid you see it our way . . . Tech Manual, Harvey? Yes, we're looking at it right now. No, Harvey, I'm afraid we can't do that. There's a very close prior registration that will probably kill Neol as a trademark. No, Harvey, please get that out of your head. Miss Willow has nothing to do with it. She will transfer with our very best wishes . . . That is indeed your privilege, Harvey. If you want to present the manual to the board on Monday morning without Patent Department clearance, go right ahead. It would, of course, be my duty to give Andrew Bleeker a memo itemizing my objections, absolving the Patent Department of all responsibility for the content of the manual. There will be carbons, of course, to . . . You will? Why that's fine, Harvey." He hung up. "He's coming over."

  "I'm amazed," said Cord dryly.

  "Keep your fingers crossed on Willow."

  "But you said the louse could have her, with a double raise," said Cord.

  "Alec, you wouldn't believe me if I told you what is about to happen. So I won't waste time. We have only a few minutes before Harvey is due to show. So—Cord."

  "Yes, Con?"

  "I didn't address you. I merely stated your name. It turns crisply from the tongue, like honest bacon in the griddle. A fine name. Cord, Cord, Cord. A good word to say. Here, I'll write it, too. Flows easily on paper. Cord looks good. Listens good. Charming. A man's name is the best thing about him. Like Narcissus. Hello there, you beautiful name!"

  Cord flushed red. "Con, for goodness' sake. It isn't at all remarkable!"

  "Yes, my boy, it is . . . to you." He leered at his lieutenant. "A man's name is his most enchanting possession. For you, for me, for Harvey Jayne, for anybody."

  "So?"

  "That's how we find a substitute for Neol. We will derive us a new word, from 'Jayne.' Harvey will find it irresistible. And it will be a good trademark. Think of the trouble American Cyanamid had, trying to find a trademark for their acrylic fiber. They finally named it after the project leader, Arthur Cresswell. They called it 'Creslan.' And Cluett-Peabody, naming their 'Sanforize' process for pre-shrunk fabric after the inventor, Sanford. And think of how many of Willard Dow's products are 'Dow' something or other, 'Dowicide,' for example. And look at Monlanto 's 'Santowax'; 'Santowhite,' 'Santomerse.' And Du Pont's 'Duponol,' and W. R. Grace's 'Grex' polyethylene. So we'll name our terpineol after Harvey Jayne. 'Jayne-ol.' Of course not exactly 'Jayne-ol.' We'll have to fix it so he won't recognize it. Some phonetic equivalent."

  "He'll recognize it, Con. It'll just make him madder."

  "No, I don't think he will. A man has a selfish complex on his own name. He loves it, and he doesn't want other people to have It. He has trouble remembering people who have similar names. So if we do this right, he won't recognize it when he hears it. It'll fascinate him, but he won't understand why. He'll approve it on the spot. But first, we'll have to work him over, soften him up a little. So listen carefully as to what you have to do."

  "Harvey," said Patrick, "you're making us revise our company leaflet on trademarks."

  "I didn't know you had one," said Harvey Jayne suspiciously.

  "It lists everything that shouldn't be done—all possible error. At least it did. Now, you've added a few more. We'll have to revise."

  "This brochure. You wouldn't happen to have a copy—"

  Patrick handed him the leaflet. "Brand-new edition, just off the press this afternoon."

  Jayne read slowly. " 'The trademark should be capitalized, and preferably set in distinctive type. If the trademark is registered in the United States Patent Office, follow it with the registration symbol, ®. If no application for registration has been filed, or, if filed, not yet granted, then use an asterisk after the trademark, with footnote identification. Hope Chemical Company's trademark for . . . ' " I don't care whether it's capitalized or not. And I didn't say 'trademark' every time I said 'neol.' I just said plain old neol. I want it to become so familiar to our customers that they'll think of it as a household word."

  Patrick shook his head sadly. "Harvey, I understand your viewpoint, and I deeply sympathize. Such charity and philanthropy are all too infrequent in this hatchet-hearted corporation."

  "Charity? Philanthropy?"

  "Yes. Really touching. Gets me, here." Patrick struck his fist to his chest. "You want to give the trademark to the general public, including our competitors. Come one, come all, anybody can use this name, which isn't a trademark any more, because Harvey doesn't want it spelled with a capital."

  "I don't see how spelling it lowercase prevents it from being a trademark."

  "It converts it into the thing itself. Remember "cellophane'? It used to be Du Pont's trademark for transparent wrappings, and it was spelled with a capital C. And then it became so well known that the newspapers and magazines began spelling it lowercase, and they never mentioned it was Du Pont's brand of anything, because everybody by that time thought of cellophane only as the transparent wrapping itself. It had become the common name of the thing itself: it had become generic. Now anybody can sell his own transparent wrapping and call it 'cellophane.' Cellophane has now joined the list of irresistible trademarks that are wide open to the public: shredded wheat, mineral oil, linoleum, escalator, aspirin, milk-of-magnesia."

  "Anything else wrong?"

  "Several other points. On the title page, you ought to say 'Copyright, Hope Chemical Company.' "

  "But how can I say 'Copyright' before we publish? I thought you just said you couldn't do that. You said we couldn't say Neol was registered."

  "I won't try to explain it, Harvey. That's the way it has worked out historically."

  "Anything else?"

  "We don't like your trademark, 'Neol,' " said Patrick. "We think it infringes at least one mark already registered. Besides which, it's a weak mark, made up of weak syllables."

  "What . . . what are you saying?" sputtered Jayne. "There's nothing wrong with 'Neol.' How can it be weak?"

  "Look at it this way," said Patrick smoothly. "Fashions in trademarks come and go, like women's hats. At the moment, the ad people are conditioned to think in terms of certain well-worn prefixes and suffixes. The suffix is supposed to classify the product as a liquid, a solid, a plastic, a synthetic fiber, a flooring compound, soap, deodorant, toothpaste, and so on. True, they have their differences, but these are minuscule. The pack of them are so much alike you'd take them for a children's a capella choir."

  "That's probably true for most trademarks," said Harvey Jayne smugly, "but not for 'Neol.' 'Neol' was selected by our computer, which was programmed to synthesize words from certain mellifluous-sounding syllables, and to discard everything harsh. And not only that, but to present a final list of one hundred names graded according to final audial acceptance. 'Neol' headed the list."

  Patrick shook his head pityingly. "Look, Harvey, when you use a computer, you've got two-and-a-half strikes against you from the start. In the first place, the only marks the computer can grind out will be made up of these forbidden syllables we've already ruled out. And secondly, no computer can zero in on the gray area between the legally acceptable 'suggestive' marks and the legally unacceptable 'descriptive' marks. Even the courts have a hard time with this concept. To demonstrate this, we are going to decomputerize 'Neol' for you."

  "De . . . computerize . . . ?"

  "Yes, our decomputer takes a computerized trademark and tells us whether it's too close to known marks or names to be registrable."

  "May I see it, this decomputer?"

  "You could, but that won't be necessary. It
's so simple, I'll list describe it to you briefly. It consists of two cylinders, rotating on the same shaft, one next to the other. On the left cylinder we have prefixes, on the right, suffixes. All our syllables were compiled from trademarks in the chemical and plastics fields. When a new trademark comes in, we break it down into syllables and see if it's in our decomputer. If it's not here, we search it in the Trademark Division of the Patent Office, in Washington."

  "What syllables do you have on your, ah, decomputer?" said Jayne uneasily.

  "Really only the extremely common ones. For prefixes, things like 'ray, hy, no, ko, kor, di, so, ro,' the 'par-per-pro' set, 'vel, val,' and of course, 'neo.' "

  "Neo, you said?"

  "Yes, 'neo,' which is simply the Greek variant of 'new,' which again frequently comes out as 'nu,' or in the Latin form, 'novo.' "

  "And I presume 'ol' is among your proscribed suffixes?" demanded Jayne bitterly.

  "Yes, that's 'ol,' from Latin, 'oleum,' oil. So that gives us 'Neol' or 'new oil.' "

  Jayne frowned and looked at his notes. "Well, how about 'Neolun'? Or do you have 'lan' in your suffixes, too?"

  "Yes, indeed. But there again, we consider 'lan' as a species of the 'on' family, from 'rayon,' of course. Between vowels, 'on' takes a consonant, so you would come out with lin, lan, lon,' and so you have 'neolan.' "

  Jayne threw up his hands. "Well, then, you fellows just do whatever you have to do, to fix this. Say the right words over it. Do your legal mumbo jumbo."

  Patrick studied Jayne quietly for a moment. "Harvey. I'm going to do something I shouldn't. I'll clear a trademark—no, not Neol. Some other mark."

  Jayne looked dubious. " We would have to originate it. Our ad people have to screen these things. All kinds of image and audio requirements."

  "Impossible, Harvey. This is not a job for the agency. All they can do is put together syllables to skirt along the fringes of what they think your customers will almost but not quite recognize. The way they draw up those lists, they practically guarantee their mark will be weak. Leave them out of this. I'll give you a mark I will guarantee you will like and that will not infringe any existing mark."