Koontz, Dean - The Fall of the Dream Machine Read online

  They ran to a larger limousine waiting with its lights out a few hundred feet down the lane. Just as they climbed in, a vibra-beam tore at the earth in front of the car, set the ground steaming. To Mike's surprise, the driver turned the floater to face the Show guards instead of running. The beams crackled against the windscreen, glanced off the hood and fenders without doing damage.

  "Vibra-proof," the new stranger said, smiling.

  "And expensive," Jorgova added.

  The blades of the air system stuttered, and the car jolted for a moment as one of the guards went under. The other Show man jumped to the side of the road, kept firing. The chauffeur swung the car around, veered toward the man. He was an excellent driver. His hands worked as smoothly as a concert violinist's, plucking and drawing at the wheel. The limousine clipped the remaining guard with its front bumper, sent him in a death plunge over a hundred foot drop onto spiked rocks.

  "We're behind schedule," the newcomer said. "Let's move."

  The chauffeur accelerated. Trees flashed by, gray shadows against the darker shadows of the night.

  Immediate danger behind, Mike began to think, once again, of his situation, his apartness. He turned to the man who seemed to be in charge. "What is expected of me?"

  "What?" the other asked, looking at him, more than curiosity clouding his dark eyes.

  "What do I do to earn this freedom?"

  "Nothing," the other man said. "We have freed you because—"

  Mike forced self-assurance into his voice and into his own heart. "Don't give me any propaganda line. You are leading some sort of revolution against Show. It's supposed to be taboo, but the stories float through the studios, fast and thick. What do you want of me?"

  The stranger remained silent a moment, then sighed. "There is no sense leading you in slowly. And I don't blame you for being determined to know where you stand. You will be behind a desk throughout the Revolution—when it comes. You will never go back into Show again. Other men will do that."

  He felt as if he were being shoved along, carried with the tide instead of riding atop it. "I want to be in the front lines," he snapped. He did not want to be in the front lines, really, but he had to gain some control over what was happening to him or he'd be nothing more than he had been in Show—a puppet, a tool.

  "That's impossible! We need you too much to risk—"

  "Either I work in the front lines or I get out here," he said, taking hold of the door handle.

  They stared at each other, one trying to outlast the other. There was no sound but the purring of the air system, the whoof of an occasional gust of air sweeping across the car. The chauffeur and the man with the broken arm were listening, waiting.

  "You really mean it," the other man said at last.

  "You're damn right I do."

  More silence. At length: "All right. You win." He turned to the chauffeur. "Blake, take us to Dr. McGivey's instead."

  "Then I'm on the front lines?"

  "Exactly."

  It had not been heroism or anything remotely like it that had driven him to demand to be in the thick of action. He had been sinking again into a swamp where the currents twisted him without any regard to where he wished to go. Had they demanded he fight, he would have demanded a desk job. He felt as if he were guiding his fate now. And he felt, very slightly, better. "What will I do, specifically?"

  The stranger offered his hand, shook. "First, I am Andrew Flaxen. I'm some sort of officer in this whole thing; I'm not sure what exactly." They stopped shaking. "Your mission, since you demand action, will be to rescue Lisa Monvasa from Show."

  The night rushed past like coal dust

  II

  She undressed without turning the lights on. She suspected them of having planted cameras recently.

  She made a game of seeing things in the shadows: a dog's head, ears flattened in rage, teeth gritted; a matronly woman bending over a loaf of homemade bread, sticking— what?—toothpicks into the product; a spider. . . .

  Something else . . .

  But she could not see herself.

  She crawled onto the humming Lull Cushion of the bed and listened to the notes that slithered over its million fibers, abandoned herself to the massaging tingle of its babel tongues. . . .

  She was tired.

  She thought about Mike and about Show. And, in the pit of her mind, somewhere deep down, they were two different things.

  She fell asleep.

  III

  Anaxemander Cockley was not a man to be sneered at. He controlled, figuratively and literally, seven hundred million people. He owned Show. It had been his from the start —his invention, his crusade, his success. He had first conceived of it while in his twenties. But no one would back him then; all the financiers so stuck on the idea of traditional television that they could not see beyond their red noses. Wherever he went, he was rebuked. There were no investors for "crackpot schemes."

  That had been two hundred years ago. Not only had he made a success of Show and lived to gloat about it, but his vast sums of money enabled him to set up the most complete, most detailed set of computer surgeons in the world. He was able to buy from the UN organ bank to replace whatever wore out. Then he began building his own organ bank and forgot the UN; he was completely self-contained. He had lived to gloat—and had been gloating for two hundred years.

  His early years pointed to his later success. He had, when young, dedicated his life to making money. He had several good character traits to help him along; imagination, ruthlessness, greed, and a will of purest iron. When his father died, leaving him in charge of the small electronics firm that had produced conservative things for conservative businesses, it was Anaxemander who turned the plant into a laboratory. Risking all the profits and holdings, it was Cockley Electronics that turned out the first workable robot—a robosweep that could sweep any floor, sliding its compact body under the lowest obstacles that would force a housewife to get down on her pretty hands and knees. Realizing that the greatest area open to ideas was the undeveloped field of housework and home repair machines, Cockley next produced the robomower which sped across the grass (pre-programmed for that individual lawn in the expensive models and simply radio-controlled in the cheaper make) snipping away without aid. The company moved from a low six figure company to one of the top hundred in three years. In five years, it was grossing thirty-nine million dollars per quarter—thanks to the robopainter and the roboironer.

  The robopainter was, perhaps, the most complex machine devised by Cockley Electronics. It was a spider-like apparatus that wielded four rollers for interior work and a roller and three brushes for exterior painting. Each leg was capped with a suction cup that allowed it to climb easily where a man would be in danger. In fact, the original promotion gimmick was the machine's climbing up the bald face of Racatacha Peak, that sheer and featureless cliff recognized as the tallest on the moon.

  The money had come. Eventually, he handed over the production of all the robomechs to Ford, GM, and General Electric. Then the big boom came with the mass production. He received monthly royalty checks in the hundreds of thousands. With his money, he devoted himself to the building of the Cockley Laboratories for Mind Studies. It was this institution and its hundreds of workers who crystallized Show into a reality.

  It took eleven years from the birth of the idea to its perfection.

  He would never forget that night in 1991 when the fifty reporters, by special invitation, had set themselves warily into the mind-sharing chairs and flicked on—warily again —the mind-sharing auras, and had felt just what it was like for Algernon Fowler to stick his head in a lion's mouth. They experienced his fear, his arrogance, his sexual stimulation. They also sat entranced as the acrobats left their perches and glided through empty air to waiting hands; and most spectacularly—and, Cockley thought, most luckily—they had even experienced death when that lovely young girl (what had her name been? Elen Petrovotch? Petrovitch?) had missed the hands and crashed a hundred
and two feet to the arena floor. That night—at the age of forty—he had changed the world for the second time. The robomechs had started a new trend in society's evolution. But Show was a revolution.

  Old art forms died. This was art carried to its logical end: the actual sharing of another man's perceptions. There were no more books or movies; they were not legislated against, but merely became passé and undesirable in light of the modern advances in entertainment. Television was obsolete overnight, though it managed to hang on a few more years. With shared love and shared sex, there was less and less need for the real thing. Population declined, taking with it all fears of an overpopulated world—except in a few backward countries where Show had not yet reached. It was a revolution not altogether bloodless, a revolution of media.

  Now, a hundred and ninety years later, there were over half a billion Show subscribers sitting in homes all over the world, linked to the brains of the Performers. The business (at three hundred a year per subscription) gleaned nearly two hundred and twenty-five billion a year, counting the sales of its own products, which it advertised incessantly in subliminal commercials the audience did not even realize it was seeing. It was no longer a business; it was a world power. And Cockley had never relinquished control. It was no longer the money he was after.

  It was the power. And someone was trying to sabotage the very basis of his power structure.

  Anyone's basic emotions could be transmitted, but the audience had come to expect higher degrees of excellence than they got from the casual actor or "extra." Performers were chosen almost from birth for their sensitive natures, their fine emotional edges. Their parents were paid well, and their life then consisted of training and more: sharpening their abilities to transmit their feelings, vitalizing their emotions so the pickup cones could get clear, good material. There were very few people naturally able to be Performers, and not all of the ones who entered training made it through. When the Revolutionists stole the Performers, they took away the foundation of Show.

  Without Jorgova, he could not use Lisa. The next oldest Performer was a fifteen year old boy, an out-of-the-question match for Lisa. He would have to team the youngster with that thirteen year old girl and only use Lisa for extra sequences. And Lisa was so damned good!

  Anaxemander Cockley drummed his fingers on the real wood top of his desk and mulled over a mental list of suspects. He had many enemies, he knew. Topmost in his mind was the President of the United States. The government had fought Show openly and covertly for years, until it saw it could not win. As the decades passed, Show vice-presidents had more or less taken over the Government, worming their way into Congress with Show support.

  Most people in this country (and now the world) experienced a great deal of life through Mike, Lisa, and Show. There had been other stars through the years, but the latest two had been the best team yet. The birthrate was way down, for there were few husbands with wives as attractive as the big-busted, sleek-bodied women Performers— and, even fewer with wives who were as willing and cooperative. There were fewer and fewer young people. The Government lost the faction of the populace that had always been the easiest to propagandize, to fill with visions. The older people grew complacent, obtained something like happiness. Yet the President still agitated, still looked for a means of bringing back the glorious days of his power. .

  Second on the list was the UN Secretary General, who had fought against Show's international trend, thus attempting to stop Cockley's rise to power. But since Show was then a private enterprise, the Secretary had been unable to do a thing. Except, perhaps, steal Performers.

  Cockley decided that the Secretary's office would soon have to fall into his hands. The Presidency too. It was foolish to allow even these near powerless positions to be manned by civilians. Past history showed that a conspiracy could grow unnoticed in a bureaucracy the size of Show. Witness the Kennedy assassination, he thought. The man would have to be removed next election. No. No, he would have to be removed sooner. . . .

  The message light on his desk flashed, and a yellow card popped out of the delivery slot like a lightly browned piece of toast. He slipped it into the player, leaned back to listen.

  "Health report: A. Limey," the rasping machine-voice said. "Good condition in general—save congestion of the lungs. Pancreas in excellent condition/kidney good condition/bladder fair to good condition/testicles good to excellent."

  He fed the card into the shredder just as the door buzzer rang.

  "Come in."

  The door opened and Limey stepped through, his false smile tinted slightly with fear. Cockley noted that, and it made him happy. Fear. He wanted to have them scared to death of the old man. It kept them in place. "You wanted to see me?" Limey asked.

  "Close the door."

  Limey did.

  "Sit down."

  Limey did this thing too.

  "You shouldn't smoke those filthy cigars," Cockly said, eyeing the smoldering stump clamped tightly between the other man's yellow-stained fingers. "Your health record says your lungs are filled with scar tissue."

  Limey put the stub out in an ashtray provided for the relatively few visitors to the executive suite. "I guess this is about Jorgova?"

  "How did it happen, Limey? You told me security was flawless. You told me there would not be another escape."

  "Well—"

  "You realize, I hope, that training Performers to reach the standards viewers have come to expect is not an easy or inexpensive task."

  "I think I understand the trouble and money involved, Mr. Cockley," the little man said, shifting uneasily.

  Cockley stood and began pacing around the blue carpeting. "No, I doubt you understand them at all. At first the viewers were satisfied with just different things: mountain climbing, alligator wrestling, auto racing. But in time the novelty wore off. Then Show developed the ninety percent relays to replace the eighty percent ones. But even more was needed. We decided to train our actors. The Government passed the Show Conscription Act. Since the Government was composed mostly of Show people, the bill met little opposition in either house. And the public raised no outcry, for a majority of the public was living mainly through Show. The President had to sign it. So we draft (and pay the parents handsomely) five thousand babies a year and train them. We would draft more if we could find them. But only two or three a year manage to make it through the final stages of the training, the discipline. And even fewer manage to withstand the probing of seven hundred million minds when they perform. The recent toto-experience relays make it even harder on them. Jorgova is a rare item, a natural-born Performer. I don't think you understand one little bit, Mr. Limey."

  Limey's eyes grew wide, like dishes, as Cockley turned to face him. The older man's thumbs were no longer merely thumbs. They were weapons. Thin blades extended an inch and a half from the blunt edge of both nails. They glinted in the light.

  They sparkled.

  "You're not—"

  "We must have employees who understand, Mr. Limey. We can't have men who allow the opposition to place a bodyguard in our midst, a Revolutionary next to our star actor."

  Limey stood, circled the chair, putting it between them. The door seemed an eternity away. Cockley seemed as close as his next breath . . . if he were to have a next breath.

  The door's locked," Cockley said. "And the room is soundproofed."

  Limey grabbed and heaved the chair.

  Cockley ducked, surprisingly fast for an old man.

  And his leap was even faster. There was a flash of silver, a spattering of red. There was a thumping of a body on the carpet, a gurgled scream never completed.

  Cockley returned to the desk, buzzed for servants. The door opened and two men with blank, emotionless faces entered. "Take him to Dr. Odegarde," Cockley said. "He knows what organs to extract for the supply tanks."

  When they had gone with their silent burden, he sat down at the desk and began to review his mental list of enemies. The blades were back in his
thumbs again. His mind flittered from one possibility to another. His mind was awfully fast for an old man's mind. But then, he was not an old man. And he would never be one. Never. . . .

  IV

  Mike had no idea where he was. They had blindfolded him, hustled him into yet another car, and sped for parts unknown. The only thing that had been pronounced about the trip was a bobbling sensation, a heaviness, as if the car had dipped into water. Indeed, the whirring of the air system had seemed to cease—rather to become another sort of whirring, much duller and much baser. There had been a second similar sensation—this time a coming out of water. When they took the blindfold off, he was in a white-walled room, stark and empty. They had led him to the lounge, living room, auditorium or whatever it was, leaving him alone with instructions to wait for Dr. McGivey. He was waiting.

  The room was beautiful. Whoever Dr. McGivey was, he had taste—and considerable sums of money. A fountain splashed in the middle of the floor, burbling over a shelf of volcanic rock that towered nearly to the ceiling. Green dots of plant life were sprinkled liberally in the crevices of the stone, an occasionaly orange flower mixed with them. The floor was also volcanic rock, with every other block polished in a way to contrast the rough and the smooth almost as the squares on a checkerboard. Pieces of low-slung furniture—mostly comfortable couches and chairs-were strewn about in a manner that made them blend in with the carefully created shadows, leaving the better lighted areas for statuary and paintings.

  "Mr. Jorgova," a voice said, steady and deep.

  He turned to see a white-smocked gentleman at the sliding door. He stood. "Dr. McGivey?"

  "Yes. Arthur McGivey. First name, please."

  Arthur McGivey was a broad-shouldered six-footer with gray hair and eyes to match, cool, detached, almost emotionless. Mike thought of him as a very efficient man. But his step was light and quick, and something like amusement sparkled behind the eyes. They shook hands.

  "What am I to do here?" he asked. He still had fear for his life. The unknown world ahead was still perhaps a bit darker than the slavery he had left behind. But he was going back for Lisa. The thought cheered him more than he thought it should. He remembered something Limey had said: "You'd think you really loved her!"