New Writings in SF 18 - [Anthology] Read online

  ‘Right, Maverick: where’s this world-shaker of yours?’ In the reverse over-shoulder. Maverick’s scarred face says: ‘It’s a thing, all right. Capo: with this thing I’ve dreamed through, we can cut Washington and all 172 States out of the education caper, and cut every publishing business out as well.’

  ‘So show me, Jan!’

  Maverick reaches down (off screen), comes up with a grab bag, and pulls out a box-like object measuring about twenty centimetres by fifteen by five thick:

  ‘How would you like, Capo, to be able to leg this?’ Rapping it with his knuckles: ‘You know the standard Tellus T.34I individual teaching machine and T.34M master module ? Used in every learning room in every damn one of the 172 states of the Americas. Only one way you can buy Tellus: in the standard package of a hundred Is plus one M pre-programmed with the twenty HEW minimum basic courses requirement; package costs just under one million Ams (just enough under, to escape Amtaxlaw section 3.414.2) or around 500 Ams per course-available-per-student (per CAPS, in the ed-trade jargon)—and I reckon they’re not charging much more than twice what they really have to. Now, Capo: we can sell this baby at just one little Am for one, in single carload lots; and each one is equivalent to one HEW course in a T.34M plus one T.34I. Work it out for yourself: twenty of these babies will give a student everything he gets from Tellus now, for only twenty Ams; Tellus’ cost per CAPS, 500 Ams, our cost per CAPS one, tiny Am. We have other advantages too, on top of a price gulf big enough to swallow Tellus and every other publisher in the Americas: for instance, this thing can be dropped without breaking; it doesn’t need to be connected to a master module, and it doesn’t need any power inside or plugged in from outside, so it’s completely portable and can be used anywhere.’

  ‘Yeh, yeh. How’s it work? Pneumatics, you’ll tell me!’

  ‘Nothing like that. Listen, you know how a computer will do when it has something very hard to tell you, like a new mathematical formula or something ?: puts it up on the screen in words and numbers, and lets you read it, real slow. Well, now: suppose you took a photograph of that, you could carry it around with you and read it anywhere, couldn’t you ? Next step : think how much you could carry round with you, if you had a packet of a hundred or two or even three hundred photographs like that.’

  ‘One thing wrong with that. If there’s a lot more of this hard stuff to be shown you than the computer can put on the screen all at once, it’ll show it you batch by batch. You’ve seen me go over the Household accounts sometimes : I push this button here on my desk once, and each time I do that the computer shows me the next batch of a hundred or so transactions after the batch on the screen when I pushed; and then it freezes it there till I’m ready to go on and push this button again; you understand? Now, the order of these things is important: I mean, each batch of transactions has its proper place in past time, and they got to come in turn in the same order, or they don’t mean nothing at all. You, you’re wanting to carry around hundreds of photos of these batches, or of things like them, like a pack of cards. You’ll just get them shuffled up, and you won’t be able to make mule nor whole horse out of them.’

  ‘No! No! No such difficulty. Look!’ He opens the box, takes out a stack of a hundred or so thin sheets of photoprint paper; lays the stack on the desk, lifts the top sheet to the height of his head. Bermuda tan jumps back in surprise, as the pile of sheets rises up like a shake from a snake charmer’s basket: the sheets have been taped together concertina fashion, zig-zagging, so they make a continuous strip that can be pulled out long or folded zig-zag back into a neat, flat stack.

  ‘Neat. Hey, if you could find a way of sort of hinging the sheets together all at one edge, then you could use both sides of each sheet, could get twice as much stuff in each stack.’

  ‘There’s probably some snag to that. I’ll have the technical boys go into it, but don’t be too disappointed if it turns out to be just one of those nice ideas that can’t be made to work well enough at the price. The main thing is, do we go ahead ?: this is too big a thing for my pocket money to finance; it will have to come out of the family’s household money.’

  ‘Plenty of that. Sure, why not? Just come and be sure to get my nod each time you notch up ten million net outgoing, won’t you?’

  The screen went black for a moment. Then, iris out, with crescendo of brass, to the title (hand brushed, dry red oil on coarse canvas) ‘Django Maverick to date : Finis.’

  Murray Jenkins stretched, turned to Wade: ‘The families have a nice, old-fashioned rigour to their budgetary control. Ran. Those low margins of theirs make for good financial discipline, bracing atmosphere in the building. Sometimes, I think ... well, that’s not just the point, is it: where is this Maverick now?’

  Wade waved at the screen. The screen slid silently sideways, and a scarred man of about forty stepped quietly, very quietly through the opening left behind, stood looking at the audience of Tellus management teamers in their emblematic wigs. He was the scarred man they had seen in the last screen scene in Bermuda tan’s office, with the Magritte on the wall.

  Jenkins eased another quarter turn of aplomb on, stood up (making his team gasp in chorus), and said: ‘Interesting to know you so well. Maverick. Won’t shake hands; don’t suppose you want to, much. Will you deal ?: I mean, either big you, or you personally ?’

  Maverick shook his head gently: ‘Not us. Not me.’

  Jenkins shrugged; ‘Wade will give you a drink for the road. You’ll excuse me. Have office chores. You know.’

  In his private office (secretary across the road, getting a new reservoir fitted to an antique ink fountain pen he never used), Jenkins punched for the straight outside line, bypassing the Tellus PBX and the bunny who worked it. After a while he got his connection and spoke:

  ‘Hello, Captain...Fine, thanks. You and yours ? ...Good. Good. You think that private school is doing your daughter any good ? ... Mmmm. Well, it must be worth it, even if it means scraping: a HEW school couldn’t manage her you know, not with their having no staff. So its private or the change tank, I guess. How’s the boy? ... IBM want how much to take him in as a premium apprentice? They’re still cutting it thicker than the rest of us then, but if he isn’t rated for anything else ... What? ... Well they’ll let you pay by instalments, if you pay the interest for them; the law says they got to do that...Who really needs a boat? Who really needs a car of his own? Just hardware, Captain—the liveware must come first.... Yeah, I know: you’re not like Joe Schmook: you have this high-class neurosis, needs hardware to keep it quiet; if it’s not kept quiet, you get these fits of public spirit, like don’t we all ? ... Of course I was only kidding! ... Yes, of course it’ll all be all right.... No, nothing this week. Well, just a trifle: there’ll be a man called Django Maverick leaving our front entrance as soon as we let him. You’ll know him, because Ran Wade will show him out. Well, I have reason to believe that he isn’t paid up with his driving licence, or his dog licence, or something: you could ask him about it. He’s tough: if he resists arrest, and some nervy officer should happen to shoot him, I wouldn’t be surprised. Would you ? ... Yeah, sure. Only not Wednesday: we’re duty entertaining, just some boring bright people from the agency. Look in about eight Thursday: there’ll be a few real friends in, beer and things out of cans in the rumpus room, like that...So long. Captain.’

  For a quarter of an hour, Jenkins stared silently out of the window. Mirrored in the window of the block opposite, he could see the front entrance of the Tellus block he was in. At the end of that time there were some shouts outside, and a couple of shots. He sat down, called Wade on the internal system, told him to go home and rest up from his night’s work.

  Perhaps he should have sent Wade to see the company quack, before sending him home. He must have been a bit confused: twenty minutes after he left, a Tellus delivery truck ran him over in the middle of the road, right by the McLuhan Memorial on Feedback Drive. The Tellus driver said he couldn’t do a damn thing to save him, he w
as goofing. Nobody else saw the accident. Nobody in Tellus ever talked about it much, or about anything at all that happened that day: that Angst really is indescribable; and none of them wanted even a nudge of that.

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