Executive

by Piers Anthony

  No, it was something else. Her lips were there only as my expectation; they had no substance apart from that. Well, substance, but not reaction. It was like kissing a woman who had no knowledge I was there, as if I were a ghost.

  I broke the kiss and considered. Well, I had expected expertise and was mistaken. This woman had a passion for me but not experience in seducing men. She was not Helse, regardless of the image.

  Again I considered. Feelie helmets were sophisticated devices with properties that unsophisticated users could readily overlook. Obviously this woman did not realize that there were potential multiple tracks and had confined herself to one. That meant that she could craft a scene as perceived by a camera or as viewed by one participant or the other, but could not merge the two. For true interaction such merging was essential. So her kiss was what she thought I should feel but inadequate because she didn’t know what I should feel.

  I could correct that. All that was required was some simple instruction—in the use of the helmet.

  I drew back, in my animated response. “Woman,” I said in English, “I must show you something.” Then I pictured myself with a feelie helmet on. “This setting is for one viewpoint,” I explained, touching the appropriate place on the helmet. “Normally it should be for the third-party impressions. This is the one you have been using. This other setting is for a second viewpoint.” I touched the next. “Normally you should use it for your own impressions—the way you personally see and feel. You have not been using this. Set it this way”—I had the third-party camera pan in close, so the detail was clear—”and it will continuously record your impressions without your conscious effort. And this setting”—I showed the third—”this is for a third viewpoint. You should leave this one alone. I will use it for my impressions.”

  I removed the helmet in the scene, and it disappeared. “Now what do we have?” I inquired rhetorically. “We have channel three, recorded by me, for me. We have channel two, recorded by you, for you. And we have channel one, recorded and modified by both of us, so it is a composite camera-eye picture.”

  I paused, then spoke again. She had never spoken in the scene, which probably meant that she hadn’t realized that it was possible. If a person recorded the mental pattern consistent with the effort of formulating certain words, that recording would reproduce as the formulated words. “Now, those three channels are not the whole scene,” I continued. “They do not provide proper interaction. For that we need a special modification. When I kiss you, I need to feel not what I expect to feel but what you arrange for me to feel physically. Otherwise I am kissing a ghost. I must feel your reaction to my action or it becomes nothing.”

  I caused the helmet to reappear. “It works like this. After you have recorded your impressions on your channel, you do some recording on my channel, using this special setting that augments mine without erasing it. You place there the impressions you want me to experience. So when I kiss you, your lips must kiss back. That’s there on my channel, so that when I do kiss you, I feel what you have prepared for me to feel. Similarly I will set it up for you on your channel. With the two together”—I spread my hands—”a great deal can be experienced, when a scene is properly crafted. But it requires careful attention and work by both parties.”

  I caused the helmet to fade out again. It had been a long time since I had really played with one of these devices, and I enjoyed showing off my expertise. “Now, obviously there is a problem here,” I said, in a kind of lecture. “How can I provide my reaction to something you haven’t yet put in the scene? Well, there are two ways. First, I can react to what you have already put in the scene, and you can replay that section and get a more accurate notion of the total effect. But that can be tedious. Second, I can anticipate what you might do and prepare for that. Of course, that can lead to peculiar effects. Let’s say I anticipate that if I kiss you, you will kiss back. But, in fact, you slap my face. Then, when I kiss you, I will instead feel the slap. That would be a funny kiss! Or you might slap me, and I would feel your lips kissing. The viewpoints have to integrate. So here we go into a slightly computerized function built into the helmets. This insures that a given action meets with an appropriate response. So if I kiss you, you either kiss back or slap me but not both—or if both, at least one at a time. If I do something you have not anticipated, so that you have prepared no response, then it becomes dead stick—like your present kiss. That means you have to go back and prepare an appropriate set of responses, so we can go on from there. It is, in its fashion, like a chess game, wherein each player must consider the various possible responses to the move he makes and prepare for them. Of course, he can’t go too far; normally he sets up only a single, negative response to an action by the other party that he doesn’t want and a number of more positive responses to actions he does want. When two people have a similar course in mind, the scene can go quite far before being returned for more input.”

  I paused again. I didn’t worry that this was too much information for a helmet novice; she could play the scene over and over until she understood. “Now I will prepare several alternatives, which the helmet will automatically key in according to their types; this is a function of this special interactive mode. You may explore them and then prepare your own sets of responses. I suspect that our next exchange of chips will be more interesting.”

  Then I set up my scenelets. In one, I kissed her, her lips were closed, and it was a long, quiet contact. I planted in her channel the pressure of my hands at her back and my arms encircling her. In another, her lips parted, and I planted the feel of my tongue passing through my own lips to touch hers. In another, she turned a bit, and my left hand slid down to cup her right buttock through the material of her voluminous cloak. In yet another, she resisted, drawing back her head as I approached, and I paused, then let her go and turned away without kissing her. Nothing was forced; she had to select the alternative in order to experience it, and she could cut if off at any time simply by turning off the helmet. In each of the cases I also prepared the appropriate camera-view sequence.

  The kissing ones were similar and really didn’t need modification, but the turning-away one did.

  Satisfied, I returned the chip to Shelia for shipment. I discovered that I had expended two hours; the time had flown!

  CHAPTER 8

  HELMET SEX

  Yes, I have answers,” Phist said. Evidently his wife had already advised him of my misgivings about the elimination of criminals. “Where feasible, there must be restitution; where not, elimination.”

  “How can there be restitution for murder?” I demanded.

  “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life it can be done literally. We can continue to execute murderers.”

  “How can killing ever be justified?” I asked, troubled “To execute a murderer—that doesn’t bring the victim back, it just makes two people dead. That’s no good.”

  “There was a time when you seemed to feel otherwise,” he reminded me gently.

  “I killed,” I said. “I never liked it.”

  “A decade or two with a gentle woman has nevertheless had its effect on you.”

  “And has two decades with a violent woman affected you?” I returned.

  He smiled. “Perhaps. But to address the present problem: there is use, within industry, even for murderers. Inclement assignments. I suspect we can absorb all the murderers you can provide, and a number of lesser criminals.”

  I knew he wasn’t bluffing. “Tell me how.”

  “In deep space there are posts that few accept voluntarily. Guard duty on remote planetoids of the Belt, the Charon tour, close Solar duty, that sort of thing. Men don’t like being sterilized by the radiation of their working environment, or being exposed to a fifty-percent risk of death, or being left alone for months at a time. A criminal would not like it, either, but would not be in a position to protest this as punishment. He either performs appropriately or he spends the rest of his life in de
ep space, isolated from all other human contact.”

  Now I remembered: Roulette had mentioned this alternative, and I approved it. In the rush and stress of events, it had entirely slipped my mind.

  I pondered. I thought of being confined alone in space myself, and knew I would shortly go mad. Only the promise of restoration of human company would sustain me. Even the least social of criminals would feel that lack to some extent. Yes, the criminal would perform.

  “Maybe so,” I agreed. “It does avoid the brutal alternatives of killing or letting criminals back into society, and it does seem to be a way to get personnel for inclement assignments. I’m glad these intra-cabinet consultations are working out so well.”

  “They are working,” Phist agreed. “But these are the halcyon days of creation; implementation may be another matter. There is apt to be a massive reckoning when the tide touches the public.”

  “I assumed this post to do a job, and I mean to do it,” I said. “The people should understand, when the new order emerges. It is for their own good.”

  He smiled warily. “Do you remember my fortune in the Navy?”

  I realized he was not referring to his recent rise to the heights. “As—a whistle-blower?”

  “The same. It was my job to procure equipment for the Navy as economically as possible, for a given standard of performance and quality. I discovered that we had been paying a hundred thousand dollars for a hundred and ten dollars worth of spare parts. We were being charged $9,606 for wrenches that could be had for twelve cents on the civilian market. Antenna motor pins worth about two and a half cents were going for over two thousand dollars. Thirteen-cent nuts for two thousand dollars; sixty-seven-cent bolts for one thousand—”

  “Now wait!” I protested. “How can a thirteen cent nut go for twice as much as a sixty-seven-cent bolt? I mean—”

  “I refer you to the ancient saying: The Navy moves in mysterious ways, its blunders to perform.”

  I smiled. “I remember.”

  “Naturally I put a stop to such purchases and instituted an investigation. And—”

  “You were fired,” I finished. “Or put on Navy hold. Same thing. That was why I, as an upstart young officer, was able to leapfrog you on promotion and eventually add you to my command.”

  “Where you gave my talent for effective procurement free rein and protected me from the backlash and did my career more good than ever would have been the case otherwise,” he said warmly. “All this in addition to your sister.”

  “You were worthy of Spirit,” I said honestly. “She would gladly have stayed with you, if that had been possible. Just as I would have stayed with Rue.”

  We were silent for a moment, remembering our past loves.

  “My point,” Phist resumed in due course; “is that virtue is not always rewarded. You may install the best of all possible governments, but you will not necessarily be hailed for your achievement.”

  “I am already in the process of discovering that,” I said, emulating one of Thorley’s artfully rueful smiles. “Still, it will be worth doing. I swore when I was fifteen to extirpate piracy from the face of the System. I found as I proceeded that there was always a higher source of the corruption. Now I am in a position to complete my vow—and to fulfill the other one I took: to put Jupiter’s financial base in order. Success will be its own reward.”

  “If success comes,” he agreed with the caution of experience, “I have a rather challenging program.”

  “Implement it,” I told him.

  “Don’t authorize it until you know its nature,” he warned. “I feel it may well be an exercise in futility to attempt to regulate anything as massive and fragmented as Jupiter industry. Over the centuries the government has not been able to get an accurate accounting from any of the large iron companies, let alone effectively police their operations, and I see only one way to achieve any of that now.”

  I knew about the iron companies. They had grown rich and powerful in fair times and foul, because they controlled the single most vital substance in the System: the magnetic-power metal, iron. Without it our mechanized civilization would grind to a halt. The metal was intrinsically inexpensive, but somehow its value magnified by the time it reached the black-hole labs for conversion to contra-terrene iron. The same magnets could handle CT iron, moving it without physical contact with any terrene matter, until the time came for its merging with normal iron and total conversion to energy. There was our literal power base: iron. Of course, the key was in its conversion to CT, which was accomplished by the enormous concentration of gravitons by very special gee-shields. Those artificial black holes could convert any matter to antimatter—this was a fairly straightforward operation, so long as the change was to the same type of substance, which is to say tin to tin or iron to iron—but not just any matter could be handled magnetically. So far, all things considered, nothing better had been found than iron. “So how do you propose to make the iron companies behave?”

  “Nationalization,” he said seriously.

  I sighed. “Saturn nationalized everything, and look what they have: the System’s most monstrously inefficient industry. With the most massive farm bubbles extant, they still can’t feed their own population and have to purchase grain from us. Apart from their military machine, they are a second-rate industrial power. I can’t see any particular promise in that route.”

  “It is not nationalization that is at fault but deprivation of individual incentive,” he reminded me. “I mean to keep incentive. What I propose to do is nationalize at least one major company in each key aspect of industry and revitalize that company so that it can become truly competitive. This will accomplish two things: first, it will give the government, for the first time, an avenue to ascertaining the true nature of the businesses, from which we can extrapolate an honest tax base for Senator Stonebridge to implement; second, it will enable us to enter the market competitively, forcing restraint in pricing by example.”

  “How can we control prices by example?” I asked. “We can control the prices of the companies we operate but not those of the ones we don’t.”

  “If the others raise their prices in an unjustified manner, ours will gain a larger share of the market,” he explained. “For centuries the Big Iron has colluded to increase the price of crude ore, overcharging clients and cheating the government unmercifully; but our iron company would not cooperate. It will represent a gap in the dike; no consumer company is going to pay more than it needs to for iron, and we shall offer a fair price—and the lowest price, if need be. This is the essence of free enterprise; we shall bring it to iron at last—without any direct governmental coercion. Prices will drop across board, I am certain.” He actually rubbed his hands together.

  I liked the notion. “Which companies do you have in mind for nationalization?”

  “The Planetary Iron Company,” he said.

  “Planico? I thought that was the one large iron company in trouble.”

  “True. With annual revenues in the billions, they managed their affairs so disastrously that they were the subject of an attempted takeover by a competitor. Their reserves are as good as any, but their present management is so wrongheaded as to be laughable.”

  “Surely it would be better to take over a sound company.”

  “No. Two reasons. First, we can acquire Planico relatively cheaply, merely by buying up a bare majority of their stock at the present devalued rate; no one will even realize we’re doing it, until it is done, if we handle it correctly. It really will be best not to disturb the economy by drastic overt takeovers; the senator satisfied me on that score. Second, we can make our point better by turning an ailing company into a healthy one than by keeping a healthy one healthy. If our management is good, we’ll wind up with the best-run company on the planet, regardless.”

  The notion appealed as it came clear to me. “Selective nationalization,” I repeated. “Of ailing companies in various sectors of the economy. I wonder if this will h
elp provide jobs for the unemployed.”

  “No. We’ll be firing inefficient employees. There will have to be a planetary work program for Employment of Last Resort. That will be expensive.”

  “But if the work program trained people to fill the jobs in the nationalized companies?”

  “Then we could hire them. Of course, if they’re really qualified, they could be hired by the private companies too.”

  “Maybe there could be training branches of the nationalized companies, so that we could slowly convert the unemployed to employable.”

  “That could do,” he agreed.

  • • •

  If the poor had protested the seeming raising of taxes, while the rich had been silent, the nationalization of key companies reversed that reaction. The billionaire scions of industry were virtually unanimous in their outrage, while the unemployed folk flocked eagerly to apply for jobs in the nationalized companies. Evidently they regarded this as much preferable to the make-work employment the government would otherwise provide. A lot of hiring was done, but this saved the government no money. It merely changed the pocket from which the money leaked.

  The hiring of the poor was counterbalanced by the flight of the highly trained technical personnel. The majority of them seemed to regard working for a government-owned company as anathema.

  Perhaps the standardized wage scales had something to do with it. Our scales were not actually inferior to those of private enterprise, but there were no perks—no unofficial benefits that avoided the tax rolls. Also, though private industry was by law equal opportunity for all races and ages and both sexes, somehow that did not manifest perfectly in practice, while the government companies truly did operate by merit alone. That seemed to upset many qualified workers.

  • • •

  The next time Shelia handed me the chip, she pursed her lips in a silent whistle. Evidently she was enjoying this in a certain voyeuristic way. Well, she had a right to.