Invaders From Earth

4

The next day was the fourth of May, 2044, and the first day of intensive work on what was rapidly becoming known around S and D as the Ganymede Contract.

The dramatic newsbreak of the night before seemed to be the universal topic of discussion; every telefax sheet, every news commentator, every cab driver, had his own set of opinions on the revelation. Kennedy thought of this time as a kind of primordially formless era, before the shrewd minds of Steward and Dinoli went to work shaping a clear-cut and unified public opinion from the present chaos.

They met in the office of Ernie Watsinski, second-level public-relations man, and, incidentally, Dinoli’s son-in-law. Watsinski was a tall, stoop-shouldered man of thirty-eight, weak-eyed, with a dome-like skull sparsely covered with sandy hair. Physically he was easy to overlook. But he had a razor-keen mind and an astonishing capacity for quick decisions. He had made second-level at the age of thirty-one, marrying Dinoli’s daughter the following year.

He affected twentieth-century functional by way of office furniture, and as a result his private room looked severely ascetic. He perched on the arm of a lemon-colored desk chair and glanced around the room. All eight of the third-level men were present, and Dave Spalding.

“How many of you saw the big newsbreak last night?” he asked. His voice was thin and high-pitched, but still somehow commanding. “All of you? Fine. That’s what we like to see here. I worked that program up myself, you know. With aid from Hubbel and Partridge.”

He slouched back in the chair, crossing his long spidery legs. “Your colleagues of the sixth- and seventh-level have been running gallups all morning. We’ve got some of the early results in. Seems almost everyone saw that spot last night, and the early gallups show tremendous interest focused on this Ganymede thing. Okay. The interest exists; it’s our job to channel it. That clear and pellucid?”

Without waiting for any response, he continued. “You’ve all been relieved of your present assignments. You’ll be working directly under me; the other three second-level men will be operating peripherally in the same general area, but the key work on this contract is going to come out of this office. I have this straight from Dinoli. Any questions? Good. Now, let’s toss this around for half an hour or so. First thing I want is a suggestion for a broad approach. Kennedy?”

Kennedy had been astonished by the sight of his own arm waving in the air. He recovered quickly and said, “I have an idea or two on our general slant, if that hasn’t already been determined.”

“It hasn’t. That’s what we’re here to do. Go on.”

“Well,” Kennedy said carefully, “My wife and I saw the program last night. Her reaction to the sight of the Ganymedeans was one of pity. They aroused her maternal protective instincts. I’d suggest we play to this, Ernie. The poor, childlike, innocent Ganymedeans who have to be taken over by our occupation forces for their own good.”

“Shrewd point, Kennedy. Let’s kick that around a little. Haugen?”

“I’m dead opposed,” Haugen said thickly. He twined his fleshy fingers together. “My wife reacted pretty much the same way Kennedy’s did. She even thought they were cute. The gallups will probably tell you that it was a universal reaction. Okay. We follow Kennedy’s plan and build the Ganymedeans up as babes in the woods. What happens if they decide to fight back? Suppose there’s a massacre bloodier than all get-out when we try to occupy Ganymede?”

“Amplify,” Watsinski said.

“What I’m getting at is this: it may be necessary to gun those creatures down by droves. We can’t hide that completely from the public, Ernie. And the outcry will be fantastic. We may even have a revolution on our hands. The government’s certainly going to be in trouble.”

Watsinski narrowed his eyes until they were mere slits, and stroked the side of his long, curved nose. At length he said, “Kennedy, you see the flaw in your proposition?”

Shamefaced, Kennedy nodded. Haugen had deflated his idea quickly and sensibly. They would have to prepare the public for the worst.

Watsinski glanced around the table. “Before we move on, is there anyone else who wants to argue for Kennedy’s point? I want to make sure.”

Slowly Dave Spalding raised his hand. “I do. I think it’s wrong to go into this expecting a bloody massacre. The occupation ought to be as peaceful as possible, and if we build up a publicity blanket of love for the Ganymedeans then it damn well better be peaceful.”

There was an instant of silence. Kennedy distinctly heard Watsinski’s sobbing intake of breath, as if he were being very patient. Watsinski said, “Spalding, you’re only a fourth-level man, and we can make allowances. But we try to shape public opinion here. We don’t try to shape the doings of the Corporation to fit the kind of atmosphere we’ve created. They happen to employ us. This kind of thing has hurt you before, Spalding, and it’s likely to hurt you again if you don’t get your thinking clarified.”

Kennedy glanced quickly down the table at Spalding, and glanced away. The young fourth-level man had gone very pale at the rebuke. His nostrils nickered in momentary anger; he said nothing.

Watsinski said, “Well. We can go ahead, then. Kick it around some more, fellows. I’m listening.”

Lloyd Presslie got the floor. “We could take the opposite track. Paint the Ganymedeans as monsters. Alien demons from an ice-bound planet. Wipe this damn mother-love out of the picture, just in case we have to come down on them hard.”

Watsinski was smiling, showing yellowish, uneven teeth. “I like,” he said gently. “I like. Let’s kick it around some more, shall we?”

But Kennedy knew that any further talk was going to be superfluous. Watsinski’s smile meant that the meeting had arrived at what was going to be the policy; that Presslie had accidentally hit on the plan which Dinoli and his top staff men had already formulated, and which Watsinski had been prepared to shove down the third-level men’s throats, if necessary.

Kennedy ate lunch that day, as he had every day of his eight-year employment at Steward and Dinoli, in the agency cafeteria on Floor Ten. He twitched his yellow status-card from the protective folder in his wallet, slapped it against the translucent plastic plate in the dispensary wall, and waited for it to be scanned.

A moment later the standard Thursday third-level lunch issued from a slot further down in the dispensary. Kennedy repocketed his meal-ticket and picked up his tray. Algae steak, synthetic vegemix, a cup of pale but undeniably real coffee. Dinoli had never been very liberal with his lunches. The second-level men ate in their private offices, so Kennedy had no idea of what they were served, but he was willing to wager the menu wasn’t one hundred percent natural foods.

Just as he started to head for the third-level table in the front of the cafeteria, someone nudged his elbow, nearly spilling his tray. He turned, annoyed.

Dave Spalding stood behind him, smiling apologetically.

“Sorry, Ted. I didn’t mean to knock your tray over. But I called you, and you didn’t answer.”

Kennedy glanced at the tray Spalding held. The fourth-level menu was something he had already thankfully forgotten, and he was not happy to see it again. Weak soup, chlorella patties, protein sauce. Synthetic caffeine drink. He looked away, embarrassed.

“What is it, Dave? You want to talk to me?”

Spalding nodded. “Unless you’ve already made plans for lunch. We can take one of the tables at the side.”

Shrugging, Kennedy agreed. Perhaps Spalding wanted to ask his advice. As a third-level man, it was his responsibility to help any lower-rated man who sought him out.

There were a few small tables arranged at the far side of the cafeteria for meetings such as this. Ordinarily, one ate with one’s own level, but tables were provided to care for inter-level lunches as well. It simply would not have done for Kennedy to have had to eat at the fourth-level table in order to speak with Spalding.

They sat down. Kennedy was happy the second-level men ate elsewhere; he did not want his name linked too tightly to Spalding’s in Watsinski’s mind.

“Can I speak to you with absolute honesty?” Spalding asked.

“Of course, Dave.” Kennedy felt ill at ease. Spalding, at twenty-eight, was Marge’s age—four years his junior. When Harris had left the Agency for independent press-agenting work a year ago, Spalding should have entered third-level. But instead, Lloyd Presslie had been jumped over him into third. “What’s on your mind?” Kennedy asked.

Spalding paused, a forkful of chlorella patty poised midway between plate and mouth. “The Ganymede contract. I want to know how you feel about it.”

“A job,” Kennedy said. “Possibly quite a challenging one.”

Spalding’s dark eyes seemed to bore into him. He was scowling. “Just a job? A challenge?”

“Should it be anything else?”

“It’s the biggest sell since the days of Judas, and you know it as—as pellucidly as I do,” Spalding said, bitterly mocking Ernie Watsinski’s favorite word. “The whole thing is simply a naked grab of strategic territory. And we’re supposed to peddle the idea to the public.”

“Does it matter,” Kennedy asked, “which particular commodity we’re selling? If you want to start drawing ethical boundaries, you’d have to ring the whole agency. I’ve had plenty of jobs just as—well, shady—as this one. So have you. That Federated Bauxite thing I was on, just to take one example—”

“So you had to convince some people in Nebraska that they weren’t having their water supply polluted. I suppose that’s small enough so you can swallow it down. But Ganymede’s too big. We’re selling two worlds—ours and theirs. Ted, I want out.”

“Out of the contract?”

“Out of the agency,” Spalding said.

Kennedy chewed quietly for a moment. “Why are you telling me all this?” he asked after a while.

“I have to tell someone, Ted. And I feel I can trust you. I think you’re basically on my side. I know Marge is. She can convince you.”

“Keep Marge out of this discussion,” Kennedy said, forcing back his anger. Spalding was only a wild-eyed kid, despite his twenty-eight years. Some of them never grew up, never learned that life was essentially a lot of compromises within compromises, and you had to do the best you could. “You’d really leave the agency over this contract?”

Spalding looked so pale as to seem ill. “I’ve been building up to it a long time. We’ve been handed one sell after another, but this one’s too big. It’s lousy, Ted. I tried to play along with all the others. But they had to go and yank me out of fourth-level to work on this one. Why?”

“Maybe they wanted to see how you’d react.”

“Well, they’re going to see,” Spalding snapped. “I tried to put in my pitch when we met with Watsinski this morning. It was your point I was defending, too, even if you gave up. But you saw how I got slapped down. Policy on this was set a long time ago, Ted.”

Kennedy felt inwardly calm. He mopped up his plate with exaggerated care, thinking that this was no problem of his, that he took a mere intellectual interest in Spalding’s qualms of conscience, with no emotional involvement. “You haven’t thought this through, Dave. Where would you go? You’re not a youngster any more. You’re twenty-eight, and still fourth-level. Dinoli’s sure to blacklist you. You couldn’t get a job anywhere in PR or advertising.”

“I wouldn’t want one. It would be foolish to jump out of Dinoli into some other place just the same, only not quite as big.”

“You couldn’t get a job anywhere else, either. Dinoli has influence. And he doesn’t like three-year men to quit,” Kennedy said.

“You don’t understand. I wouldn’t get a job. I’ve always wanted to be a writer, Ted. This is my chance.”

“Video? Dinoli has his fingers in that, too. He’ll—”

“No. Not video. Books, Ted.”

For the first time Kennedy realized the glow in Spalding’s eyes was as much that of fanaticism as youth. “Books? You can’t make a living doing books,” Kennedy said. “Could you get along on two or three thousand a year? That’s if you’re a smash success right away, I mean.”

Spalding shrugged. “I’d manage if I had to.”

“Don’t you want to get married? Isn’t there anyone you love, man?”

“There’s a girl I love,” Spalding said quietly. “But she can wait. She’s waited long enough already.”

Kennedy studied the younger man’s slim, curiously intense face. “Have you mentioned this quitting business to anyone else in the agency yet?”

Spalding shook his head. “I was hoping something might come out of that conference this morning. But nothing did.”

“Listen, Dave. Stay here awhile. A week, two, maybe a month. Don’t rush into anything.” Kennedy wondered why he was going to all this trouble persuading Spalding to stay in a place he obviously hated and was ill-qualified for. “Think about this move for a while. Once you quit Dinoli, you’re sunk for good.”

Spalding’s eyelids drooped broodingly. After a long silence he said, “Maybe you have something there. I’ll stick for two weeks more. Just to see if I can bend this contract into a better direction, though. If nothing works out, I’m leaving.”

“That’s a sensible attitude, kid.” The patronizing kid annoyed Kennedy as soon as it escaped his mouth, but by then it was too late.

Spalding grinned. “And you’re an agency man for life, I suppose? Solidly sold on the virtues of Lou Dinoli?”

“He’s no saint,” Kennedy said. “Neither am I. It doesn’t pay to aim for sainthood these days. But I’ll keep my job. And I’ll be able to live with my conscience afterward.”

“I wonder about that,” Spalding murmured.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing,” Spalding said quickly. “Just shooting my mouth off again. It’s an old habit of mine.” He grinned pleasantly and said, “Thanks for sparing the time, Ted. You’ve cleared my mind tremendously. I really appreciate it.”

The gong sounded, ending lunch hour. Spalding touched Kennedy’s arm in a gesture of gratitude and scampered away, dumping his empty tray in the big hopper.

More slowly, Kennedy followed him, and abstractedly let the plastic tray slide down into the washer’s maw. I have no illusions, he told himself firmly. I’m not a fanatic agency man like Haugen. I think some of the things we do are rotten. I think this contract’s rotten. But there just isn’t any percentage in standing up and saying so. The guy who stands up only gets slapped down twice as hard and twice as fast.

He felt a sudden deep surge of pity for Dave Spalding. You had to pity a man whose conscience wouldn’t let him rest. This was no world for a man with a conscience, Kennedy thought morbidly, as he headed back toward his desk to begin sketching out the Ganymede campaign.