The Zap Gun

10

As Lars Powderdry and the others emerged from the theater in which the video tape of item 278 had been run, a loitering figure approached them.

"Mr. Lanferman?" Gasping for breath, eyes like sewn-on buttons, the football-shaped, ill-dressed, broken reed sort of individual was lugging an enormous sample-case. He wedged himself in their path, blocking all escape. "I just want a minute. Just let me say a couple of things—okay?"

It was one of Jack Lanferman's headaches, an encounter with marginal operators such as this man, Vincent Klug. Under the circumstances it was hard to know whom to feel more sorry for, Jack Lanferman who was big, powerful and expensive, as well as busy, with no idle time to spare, in that as a hedonist his time was convertible into physical pleasure and that was that. Or for Klug.

For years Vincent Klug had hung around. God knew how he gained access to the subsurface portion of Lanferman Associates. Probably someone at a minor post had been moved to pity and opened the floodgate a bare inch, recognizing that if not let in, Klug would remain a careless pest, would never give up. But this act of rather self-serving compassion by one of Lanferman's tiny above-surface employees merely transferred the pest-problem one level down—literally. Or up, if you viewed it figuratively. Because now Klug was so positioned as to bother the boss.

It was Klug's contention that the world needs toys.

This was his answer to whatever riddle the serious members of society confronted themselves with: poverty, deranged sex-crimes, senility, altered genes from over-exposure to radiation... you name the problem and Klug opened his enormous sample-case and hauled out the solution. Lars had heard the toymaker expound this on several occasions: life itself was unendurable and hence had to be ameliorated. As a thing-in-itself it could not actually be lived. There had to be some way out. Mental, moral and physical hygiene demanded it.

"Look at this," Klug said wheezingly to Jack Lanferman, who had halted indulgently, for the moment at least. Klug knelt down, deposited a miniature figure on the corridor floor. With blurred speed he added one after another more until a dozen figures stood ganged together, and then Klug presented the small assembly with a citadel.

There was no doubt; the citadel was an armed fortress. Not archaic—not, for instance, a medieval castle—and yet not contemporary either. It was fanciful, and Lars was intrigued.

"This particular game," Klug explained, "is called Capture. These here—" he indicated the dozen figures, which Lars now discovered were oddly uniformed soldiers—"they want to get in. And it—" Klug indicated the citadel—"it wants to keep them out. If any one of them, just one, manages to get inside, the game's over. The attackers have won. But if the Monitor—"

"The what?" Jack Lanferman said.

"This." Klug patted the citadel affectionately. "I spent six months wiring it. If this destroys all twelve attacking troops, then the defenders have won. Now."

From his sample-case he produced another item. "This is the nexus through which the player operates either the attackers, if that's the side he's chosen, or the Monitor, if he's going to be the defenders."

He held the objects toward Jack, who, however, declined. "Well," Klug said philosophically, "anyhow this is a sample computer that even a seven-year-old can program. Any number up to six can play. The players take turns—"

"All right," Jack Lanferman said patiently. "You've built a prototype. Now what do you want me to do?"

Rapidly Klug said, "I want it analyzed to see how much it would cost to autofac. In lots of five hundred. As a starter. And I'd like to see it run on your 'facs, because yours are the best in the world."

"I know that," Lanferman said.

"Will you do it?"

Lanferman said, "You couldn't afford to pay me to cost-analyze this item. And if you could, you couldn't even begin to put up the retainer necessary if I were to have my 'facs run off even fifty, let alone five hundred. You know that, Klug."

Swallowing, perspiring, Klug hesitated and then said, "My credit's no good, Jack?"

"Your credit's good. Any credit is good. But you don't have any. You don't even know what the word means. Credit means—"

"I know," Klug broke in. "It means the ability to pay later for what's bought now. But if I had five hundred of this number ready for the Fall market—"

"Let me ask you something," Lanferman said.

"Sure, Jack. Mr. Lanferman."

"How, in that strange brain of yours, do you conceive a method by which you can advertise? This would be a high-cost item at every level, especially at retail. You couldn't merchandise it through one buyer for a chain of autodepts. It would have to go to cog-class families and be exposed in cog mags. And that's expensive."

"Hmm," Klug said.

Lars spoke up. "Klug, let me ask you something."

"Mr. Lars." Klug extended his hand eagerly.

"Do you honestly believe that a war-game constitutes a morally adequate product to deliver over to children? Can you fit this into that theory of yours about 'ameliorating' the iniquities of modern—"

"Oh wait," Klug said, raising his hand. "Wait, Mr. Lars."

"I'm waiting." He waited.

"Through capture the child learns the futility of war."

Lars eyed him skeptically. Like hell he does, he thought.

"I mean it." Vigorously, Klug's head bobbed up and down in a convinced determined nod of self-assent. "Listen, Mr. Lars; I know the story. Temporarily, I admit it, my firm is in bankruptcy, but I still have cog inside knowledge. I understand, and I'm sympathetic. Believe me. I'm really very, totally sympathetic; I couldn't agree more with what you're doing. Honestly."

"What am I doing?"

"I don't merely mean you, Mr. Lars, although you're one of the foremost—" Klug groped urgently for the means to express his fervid ideas, now that he had ensnared an audience. To Klug, Lars observed, an audience consisted of anyone above the number of zero, and above the age of two. Cog and pursap alike; Klug would have pleaded with them all. Because what he was doing, what he wanted, was so important.

Pete Freid said, "Make a model for some simple toy, Klug." His tone was gentle. "Something the autodept networks can market for a couple of beans. With maybe one moving part. You'd run off a few thousand for him, wouldn't you, Jack? If he brought in a really simple piece?"

To Vincent Klug he said, "Give me specs and I'll build the prototype for you and maybe get a cost analysis." To Jack he quickly explained, "I mean on my own time, of course."

Sighing, Lanferman said, "You can use our shops. But please for God's sake don't kill yourself trying to bail out this guy. Klug was in the toy business, and a goddam failure, before you were out of college. He's had a hatful of chances and muffed every one."

Klug stared at the floor drearily.

"I'm one of the foremost what?" Lars asked him.

Without raising his head Klug said, "The foremost healing and constructive forces in our sick society. And you, who are so few, must never be harmed."

After a suitable interval Lars, Pete Freid and Jack Lanferman howled with laughter.

"Okay," Klug said. With a sort of miserable, beaten-dog, philosophic slumped shrug he began gathering up his twelve tiny soldiers and his Monitor-citadel. He looked ever increasingly glum and deflated, and clearly he was going to leave—which, for him, was unusual. In fact unheard of.

Lars said, "Don't interpret our reaction as—"

"It's not misunderstood," Klug said in a faraway voice. "The last thing any of you wants to hear is that you're not pandering to the sick inclinations of a depraved society. It's easier for you to pretend you've been bought by a bad system."

"I never heard such strange logic in my life," Jack Lanferman said, genuinely puzzled. "Have you, Lars?"

Lars said, "I think I know what he means, only he's not able to say it. Klug means that we're in weapons design and manufacture and so we feel we've got to be tough. It's our great and bounden duty, as the Common Prayer Book says. People who invent and implement devices that blow up other people should be cynical. Only the fact is we're loveable."

"Yes," Klug said, nodding. "That's the word. Love is the basis of your lives, all three of you. You all share it, but especially you, Lars. Compare yourselves to the dreadful police and military agencies who are the real and awful personages in power. Compare your motivation to KACH in particular, and the FBI and KVB. SeRKeb and Natsec. Their basis—"

"Upper gastro-intestinal irritation is the basis of my life," Pete said. "Especially late Saturday night."

Jack said, "I have colonic trouble."

"I have a chronic urinary infection," Lars said. "Bacteria keep forming, in particular if I drink too much orange juice."

Sadly, Klug snapped his huge sample-case shut. "Well, Mr. Lanferman," he said as he walked gradually off sagging with the weight of the loaded case as if the air were slowly leaking out of him, "I appreciate your time."

Pete said, "Remember what I said, Klug. Give me something with just one moving part and I'll—"

"Thank you very much," Klug said and, with a sort of vague dignity, turned the corner of the corridor. He was gone.

"Out of his mind," Jack said after a pause. "Look what Pete offered him: his time and skill. And I offered him the use of our shops. And he walked off." Jack shook his head. "I don't get it. I don't really understand what makes that guy tick. After all these years."

"Are we really loveable?" Pete asked. "I mean seriously; I want to know. Somebody say."

The final, irrefutable answer came from Jack Lanferman. "What the hell does it matter?" Jack said.