Invaders From Earth

5

May moved along through its second week, and the Steward and Dinoli organization effortlessly made the transition from its previous batch of contracts to the one all-encompassing job they were now committed to. A bright-eyed fourth-level kid named Furman relieved Kennedy of the Federated Bauxite portfolio, and from that moment on he was a full-time member of the Ganymede project.

Watsinski was his immediate superior—the idea-coordinator of the project. Each of the other three second-level men had his own special responsibility in the affair—Kauderer handling space purchasing; McDermott, governmental liaison and United Nations lobbying; Poggioli, opinion sampling and trend-testing. But these were essentially subsidiary enterprises; the central ideological flow was channeled through Watsinski, Dinoli’s heir apparent and the reigning boss of the second-level men. Watsinski’s team consisted of nine: Kennedy, Haugen, Spalding, Presslie, Cameron, Richardson, Fleischman, Lund, and Whitman. These were the men who would sell Ganymede to the people of Earth.

No one, not even Watsinski, seemed in any great hurry to get the project rolling. They spent the first few days just doodling ideas and filing them without even bringing them up for discussion. It was a curiously low-pressure beginning for a Steward and Dinoli project.

There were several target dates to be kept in mind.

Kennedy scribbled them all carefully in his personal notebook as soon as they filtered down from above.

Kennedy refrained from letting Marge see the timetable; it was just too neat, too well planned, and he knew what her immediate reaction would be.

It would be pretty much that of Dave Spalding the day the memorandum had been sent around. Spalding’s desk had been moved out of the fourth-level quarters, and now he worked near Haugen and Kennedy. He looked up when the sealed envelope was deposited on the corner of his desk, ripped it open, skimmed through it.

“Well, here it is. The blueprint for conquest.”

Alf Haugen dropped his memorandum to the shining surface of his desk and glanced at Spalding, a troubled look on his heavy face.

“What the hell do you mean by that?”

Trouble bristled a moment in the office; smoothly Kennedy said, “Always the cynic, eh, Dave? You’d think the Ganymedeans were going to get trampled into the dust.”

“Well, we—”

“You have to hand it to Dinoli,” Kennedy continued. “He can work out a timetable six months in advance and judge every trend so well we don’t need to amend the schedule as much as twenty-four hours.”

“It’s a trick of the trade,” Haugen said. “Dinoli’s a shark. A real shark. God damn, but I respect that man! And I don’t even care whether he’s listening or not!”

“You really think the third-level office is wired?” Spalding asked anxiously.

Haugen shrugged amiably. “Probably is. Dinoli likes to have a loyal staff around him. There are ways of finding out who’s loyal. But I don’t care. Hell, I’m loyal; if old Lou wants to tune in on what I’m saying, I’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Kennedy folded the memorandum and tucked it away; then he left his desk and crossed the floor to Spalding’s. Leaning down with both hands on the other’s desk, he put his face close to Spalding’s and said, “Dave, do you have a free minute? I’m going to Library Deck for a pickup and I need a hand carrying the stuff.”

“Why don’t you ring for a porter?”

The tip of Spalding’s shoe protruded from under his desk. Kennedy found it with his own foot and pressed down hard. “I don’t trust those boys. I’d like you to help me out.”

Spalding looked puzzled, but he shrugged and nodded. When they were out of the third-level area and in the corridor, Kennedy gripped him tightly by the arm and said in a low voice, “That ‘blueprint for conquest’ gag was a little out of place, Dave. It wasn’t called for.”

“Wasn’t it?”

“That’s neither here nor there. You’re not expected to make anti-agency cracks in the third-level area. If Haugen had reported you he’d have been within his rights.”

A cold smile crossed Spalding’s face. “Is it against the law to speak out against a nasty business deal?”

“Yes,” Kennedy said. “Either you stick with it and keep your mouth shut or you get out. One or the other. What happened to your ambitions of a couple of days ago—becoming a writer, and all that?”

Spalding smiled apologetically. “I decided to swallow my qualms and stick with it.”

“That’s a sensible move, Dave. I figured you’d outgrow that adolescent mood of rebellion. I’m glad to hear you talk this way.”

“The devil with you, Ted. I haven’t outgrown anything. I’m sticking here because I need the money. I’m drawing third-level pay now, and that’s good cabbage. A few more months of Papa Dinoli’s shekels and I’ll have enough of a nest egg to quit and do what I want to do. What I really want to do.” Spalding’s eyes glittered “Fight cynicism with cynicism. It’s the only way.”

Kennedy blinked. He said nothing.

“Now,” Spalding went on. “That library pickup. Is it legit, or did you just cook it up so you could give me a word of advice?”

“I just cooked it up,” Kennedy admitted.

“I thought so. Mind if I get back to work, then?”

Spalding smiled and ducked past him. “You louse,” Kennedy said quietly to himself, at Spalding’s retreating back. “You cold-blooded louse.”

Kennedy remained in the hall for a moment; then, realizing he was standing frozen with a stupefied expression on his face, he snapped out of it and walked back to his desk.

It wasn’t any secret that Dave Spalding regarded the Ganymede contract with loathing. Kennedy had already written that off to Spalding’s fuzzy-minded idealism; idealists always had a way of being fuzzy-minded.

But the sudden sharp revelation just now had shown Kennedy a very unfuzzy-minded Spalding, who was coldbloodedly extracting enough money from the Ganymede contract to let himself get quit of the whole enterprise. That cast a new light on things, Kennedy thought. He felt a faint quiver of doubt. Somehow he couldn’t laugh off Spalding’s opinion of the contract any more.

Haugen was at the water cooler as Kennedy returned to the third-level area, and Kennedy joined him. The beefy executive was sipping his drink with obvious enjoyment. Spalding was bent studiously over his notes.

“What time’s the meeting?” Kennedy asked.

He knew what time it was. But Haugen said, “Watsinski wants us in his office in half an hour. Got any sharp ideas?”

“A few,” Kennedy admitted cautiously. “Couple of notions. Maybe Ernie’ll take them. Alf ?”

“Hey?”

“Tell me something—straight. What do you think of this whole business about Ganymede?”

As soon as he said it, he knew it was a mistake. Haugen turned, peered at him full-face, frowned in puzzlement “What do I think—huh? About what?”

“The contract. Whether it’s right.” Kennedy began to sweat. He wished he had kept quiet.

“Right? Right? ” Haugen repeated incredulously. He shrugged. “Is that what you were worrying about? Caught something from Spalding, maybe?”

“Not exactly. Marge worries a lot. She’s socially oriented. She keeps bringing the thing up.”

Haugen smiled warmly. He was forty, and knew by now he’d never advance beyond third-level; he was serene in the knowledge that his competence would keep him where he was, and that there was no danger of his slipping back or any chance of his moving forward. “Ted, I’m surprised to hear you talk this way. You’ve got a fine home, a splendid wife, luxury living. You’re a third-level exec. You’re pulling down thirty thousand a year plus bonuses, and you’re bucking for second-level. You’ll get there, too— you’ve got the stuff. I can tell.”

Kennedy felt his face going red. “Soft-soap won’t answer my questions, Alf.”

“This isn’t soft-soap. It’s fact, plain hard fact. You have all these things. Lots of people don’t. Okay. Now you get called in by Dinoli, and he tells you to let the public think thus-and-so about the planet Ganymede, or moon Ganymede, or whatever the blazes it is. Do you stand around asking yourself if this is right?” Haugen chuckled richly. “The hell you do! For thirty thousand a year, who cares?”

Kennedy took a sip of water. “Yeah. Yeah.”

“You see?”

Kennedy nodded. “I think so,” he said.

Half an hour later Kennedy was at his place around the table in Ernie Watsinski’s office, sitting next to Haugen and across the table from Spalding. Watsinski sat perfectly quietly, a lanky uncouth figure draped over a chair, waiting for the group to assemble. Richardson was the last man to arrive; he slipped in quietly, hoping no one would notice his tardiness, and in that moment Watsinski came to life.

“Today, gentlemen, is the eleventh of May,” he began, in his thin voice. “It’s precisely one week since we last met in this room. It’s also—I take it you’ve all seen the time sheet that was circulated this morning; if you haven’t, please raise hands—ah, good. As I say, it’s also precisely ten days till the beginning of the public phase of our campaign. A lot of work is going into this project, gentlemen —a hell of a lot of work. If you knew how Joe Kauderer is running around lining up media breaks for us—well, you’ll know soon enough, when Joe makes his report to you at the big meeting with Dinoli. But the thing is really moving. Really moving.

“Now I’ve given you this week to think things out, to look at the big picture and fit yourself into it. You know we at S and D regard public relations work as an artistic creation. You’re shaping an esthetic whole. The beauty of a fully-developed opinion pattern is like the beauty of the Mona Lisa or a Rembrandt or a Beethoven symphony. If any of you men don’t feel this Ganymede thing with all you’ve got, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know right here and now, or else later in privacy. This has to be real. It has to be sincere, gentlemen.”

Watsinski seemed to have worked up genuine passion over his rhapsody. His eyes were glossy with the beginnings of tears. Kennedy glanced over at Spalding, but the young man sat tight-jawed without revealing a bit of the emotion he might have been feeling.

“Okay, gentlemen, let’s get to work,” Watsinski said suddenly, in an entirely different tone of voice. He had descended from empyreal heights with marvelous rapidity. “At our last meeting we decided on our general pattern of approach—it was Lloyd Presslie’s suggestion, since taken up with Dinoli and in essence approved, that we take into account the distinct possibility of strong reaction on Ganymede and therefore build the Ganymedeans up as unsympathetic types. I guess you’ve all been thinking about ways and means of doing this. Richardson, start talking.”

All eyes swiveled to the back of the room. This was Watsinski’s way of indicating his displeasure at Richardson’s tardiness; there would be no other formal reprimand.

Richardson was a thin-lipped professorial type with a dry, pedantic manner. He ran his hands through his thinning hair and said, “I’ve been thinking of three or four separate multilevel approaches to this thing, Ernie. But I won’t throw them all out on the floor right now. The basic handle is a kiddie-approach. Kiddies and women. Men don’t form their own opinions, anyway. I propose that we assault this thing by filtering anti-Ganymede stuff into the kiddie shows and the afternoon women-slanted videocasts. I’ve drawn up a brief on how to go about it, listing fifteen selected shows and the angle of leverage on each one. Some of the writers are former S and D stablemen. You want to go through the brief now, or file it afterwards?”

Watsinski stirred restlessly. “Better save it for later, Claude. We’re still searching for the broad patterns. Detailed implementation comes later.” Kennedy could see that the second-level man was inwardly displeased that Richardson had come through; Watsinski liked nothing better than to see a staffman squirm and admit he was unprepared. But if you were third-level you just didn’t come unprepared to a meeting with Watsinski.

They went around the table. Haugen had developed a slippery idea for feeding pro-Ganymedean stuff into overseas video shows and newspapers, carefully picking the countries, selecting the ones least in favor in the United States at the moment. Then, via a simple contrast-switch, local opinion could be pyramided on the basic proposition, If they’re for it, we’re gonna be agin it!

Watsinski liked that. Fleischman then offered his ideas: a typically Fleischmanoid product, many-layered and obscure, for grabbing public opinion simultaneously at the college and kindergarten level and letting babes and late adolescents serve as propagandists. Watsinski went for that, too.

Then it was Kennedy’s turn. He tugged nervously at his collar and put his unopened briefcase before him on the table.

“I’ve sketched out a plan that substantially dovetails with the ones we’ve just heard, Ernie. It can be used alongside any or all of them.”

“Let’s have it.”

“In brief, it’s this: we need a straw man, a dummy to set up and kick over. Something to engage local sympathies firmly and finally.”

Watsinski was nodding. Kennedy moistened his lips. He said, “At the moment the only human beings on Ganymede are a couple of dozen Corporation spacemen and scientists. I don’t think there’s a woman or a child on the place. Where’s the human interest in that? Where’s the pathos when we highlight them against the Ganymedeans? Who gives much of a damn about a bunch of Corporation scientists?

“Now,” Kennedy went on, “here’s my suggestion. We start disseminating word of a colony of Earthmen on Ganymede. Volunteers. A couple of hundred chosen people, brave self-sacrificing men, women, and children. Naturally there isn’t any colony there. The Corporation wouldn’t send noncombatants into a militarily unsettled area like Ganymede. But the public doesn’t have to know that If we make the doings of the colony consistent, if we start believing in it ourselves—then the public will believe in it too. And once we’ve got a firm fisthold on their sympathies, we can do anything with them!”

Kennedy had hardly finished speaking when half a dozen hands were in the air. For an instant he thought they were going to laugh him down, but then he saw the way they all looked, and realized his suggestion had inspired them to new heights.

Presslie got the floor and said, “It’s a natural! Why, then we can follow through by having the Ganymedeans wipe out this colony. It’s a sure bet for engaging sympathy in any sort of necessary police action! Innocent women and children perishing, flames, blood—why, this is the handle we need! Of course I can suggest some modifications, but those can come later.”

Watsinski nodded. “Kennedy seems to have hit on a sharp idea. I’m going to suggest it to Dinoli as our basic line of approach, and build all the other plans around it. Good work, Kennedy. Lund, let’s hear from you, now, I want to kick this all the way round the table.”