Tomorrow’s World

Chapter 15

Cold turkey, the ancients had called it. They had misnamed it, Van Brant thought.

He consumed his remaining drugs in the space of three days, and then it began. He woke at 1100 on the fourth morning. He went directly to the bar, lifted the lid, and reached in for a vial, surprised when he found only empties. He remembered that he was all out, then. He stood staring down at the empties, and when Liz came into the room, he glanced up briefly. His eyes avoided hers, the way they had even since the night he’d...

He could still not bring himself to think about it honestly. He’d hated himself, and he’d hated her; and now her subtly exposed body was a constant reminder of what had been. He’d expected her to leave the next morning. She hadn’t, and considering the circumstances, he could not force himself to ask her to go.

“I tried to get some for you,” she said softly.

He looked up, but his eyes still did not meet hers. “And?”

“None; not anywhere. It’s going to be rugged, Van.”

“I know,” he said.

He hadn’t known. He hadn’t known at all what it would be like. Happy time was 1115; he’d watch the hands of the chronometer work their way around the blank white face. At 1105, he remembered there were no more vials in the bar. He shrugged the memory aside, and waited, watching the insidious creep of the chron’s hands.

At 1110, he felt the first pangs of desire. They started in his mind, started as a gentle probing that reminded him it would soon be happy time. They moved rapidly, reaching into his veins, starting an insistent hum in his blood, a hum that softly beckoned the stab of the needle. By 1115, the hum had become a thunderous buzz. He went to the bar unconsciously, completely forgetting there were no drugs in it. He blinked his eyes at the empty vials, slammed the lid shut, and began pacing the floor.

This was no holdoff; this was no voluntary tease, he kept telling himself. He couldn’t put it off until his blood was ready to erupt, and then pop it, enjoying it ten times as much. There was nothing to pop.

He began twisting his hands, and then he began scratching. He scratched his arms, and his back, and his neck, and his face. He’d never been so itchy; he scratched until his skin was red and raw, and then the pain started — a sharp pain that crossed his back and tightened his muscles. And then a dull, throbbing pain in the pit of his stomach.

Liz watched. She sat quietly on the edge of the bed while he paced the room; she didn’t say a word. She watched as his fingers became claws. She watched as he tore at his skin, as his pacing became more frantic. She watched when he doubled over with pain. She watched when he began trembling, when the muscles of his face lost complete control, when his features crumbled into a shivering, jelly-like mass. His breath trembled from his open mouth. He tore at his hair, wet his lips, and strained his neck. He sat, and then stood immediately, and then sat again. He jiggled his feet and twisted his hands, and blinked his eyes. His nose began running, and then his eyes started watering. He opened his mouth wide, trying to suck in air.

When he got sick, she led him to the bathroom. He tried to squirm free of her hands, but he was too weak to protest. He leaned over the bowl, retching drily, and she held him firmly, still silent.

The scream of his blood died, for a while. It came back in an hour, clamoring for the drug. There was no drug, and the cycle began again, ending ultimately over the bowl, where his stomach tried to eject food it did not possess.

The reports of suicides did not cheer him. Liz kept a watchful eye on him, her face taking on an expectant look whenever he wandered close to a window. She could only guess at what was going on inside him, but her face held honest fear and concern.

On the second day of the cold turkey, he left the apartment. He told Liz he couldn’t stand the four walls any longer; he told her he wanted to stretch his legs and breathe some fresh air. He told her he’d shaken the drug.

He told the same thing to himself.

He told it to one corner of his mind, but his body knew he was out to seek drugs illegally.

He tried the worst parts of the city. He offered large sums of money; he would have offered his life. There were no drugs to be had. The heat was on, and the illegal traffic had burrowed underground, far from the probing eyes of the Federal authorities. He walked the streets, sick with the panic of defeat, and sick with the physical disintegration of his body. He walked with his shoulders hunched against the wind, his eyes staring blankly at the cast-iron skies that solemnly forecast the winter. There was a still, funereal feel to the air. The people he passed were silent, Vike and Ree alike. The Vike faces were drawn and haunted, mirrored reflections of his own. And the Rees, like murderers drowned in their victims’ blood, avoided Vike eyes, walked the streets with the guilty look of an ill-behaving conqueror.

He wondered how all this had happened, and his thoughts took his mind off the drug for a while. He kept walking, unseeing almost, and he was surprised to find himself at his office building. He shrugged, took the lift up, pressed his thumb into the lock, and entered.

A light was burning, and he cursed the inefficiency of the office staff until he opened the door to his private office and found Lois Sylvan sitting at his desk.

She had never looked worse. Her face was drawn and white; the overhead lamp cast deep, black pockets under her eyes. Her lips were thin and cracked, and her face was an active field of muscular spasms. There was the haggard look of a witch about her. Her hair was stringy, matted; her fingers were long and thin, and they trembled violently. She looked up when he entered the room, and there was all the loneliness and despair of the Vike world in her vacuous eyes.

“It’s all over,” she said.

“Don’t be silly. Just because...”

“Not only the drugs,” she protested. “Everything. Everything, Van. It’s all over.”

“What do you mean?” Panic had stabbed deep within him. For a moment, it superseded the other panic, the pressing desire for the drug. “What’s happened?”

“This,” she said. “This. Look at it.” Her hands trembled violently when she reached for the white slip of paper on the desk top. She handed it to him, and then pulled her hands back to clutch at her stomach as a new pain racked her body. Van took the paper and stared at it incredulously.

“This is a lie,” he said.

Lois spoke over the pain in her abdomen, her eyes clenched shut.

“No, Van. It’s the goods. It’s straight.”

He looked at the paper again. It told him that Pall Associates now owned a majority of the stock throughout the publishing and entertainment fields, and that editorial requirements would be changed abruptly in the near future.

He nodded his head vaguely. “We should have seen this coming, Lois. We should have...”

“We didn’t,” she said blankly.

“It still doesn’t mean the end. We can still submit material. We can...”

“No,” she said dully. And then a pain knifed her sharply, and she doubled over and screamed, “Oh, God! Oh God, Van, this is awful.” She gasped an then shouted, “Van, Van!”

“Easy,” he told her. “Get a grip.”

“I can’t take it; I can’t take it. It’s too much. It’s death, Van. It’s the worst things I ever imagined, all rolled into one; I can’t take it.”

“We’ll come back,” he said. “We’ll shake this, and then we’ll start submissions again, and...”

“No. I told you, no.” She shook her head, her arms still wrapped around her middle. “Look at the signature, Van. At the bottom of the page. Look at it.”

He looked.

“No!” he said. “No, this can’t...”

“It is, Van! It’s the end, I say. The end of everything. Of you and me and all the Vikes. Not just the drugs, Van. Everything!”

Her voice rose hysterically; he looked at the signature once more, and a hopeless feeling of defeat washed over him.

The notice was signed: Dino Pelazi, President.

It was easy to see now, of course — the same way a cancer is easy to detect once the entire system has been invaded. Dino Pelazi and Pall Associates. A dummy corporation backed by the Rees, quietly eating up the field, cautiously and stealthily taking control of the entertainment and publishing mediums, the strongest Vike weapons.

And the Ree weapon — money.

As simple as that. God knew how they got it, but it still spoke, and it spoke loudly. It had spoken loudly enough to buy a drug legislation lobby, had spoken loudly enough to shove the law through. It had spoken loudly enough to buy shares and more shares, and finally controlling interests, until the Vikes woke up — too late.

Too late, and why? Because of Pelazi’s clever cover plan. The cover plan, a tactic as old as Methuselah. Years and years of cover plans in the history of the world, and the Vikes hadn’t tumbled to one as simple as Pelazi’s had been.

If you want to invade Sicily, your cover plan indicates you’re going to invade Indo-China. You plant letters and documents, and bodies and false communiques; you allow your phones to be tapped, your radio messages to be decoded, your personnel to be loose-lipped. You plant a plot to invade Indo-China: This is your cover plan. You mass a few troops, poised to attack Indo-China, while your real force is poised to attack Sicily. If the enemy fall for your cover plan, he’ll concentrate his defensive forces in Indo-China; he’ll leave Sicily comparatively undefended. You can breeze right in with your troops.

Pelazi had pulled the same stunt. His real invasion was a big one, it thrust to the heart of the Vike world, the important publishing and entertainment fields. He planned his invasion well, gathering his forces — money — and slowly massing them for the attack. At the same time, his cover plan had gone into action. His cover plan was the trial and Statute 431, the Belly thing. He’d steamed up the entire Vike citizenry over the coming trial, tied them up in preparations for the trial, forced them to devote their entire energy toward winning that trial. And the Vikes, concentrating on the trial, missed the importance of the bigger things that were happening all around them. The real invasion had moved upon them like a case of leprosy, eating away their organs while they worried about a common cold.

Van Brant had contributed to the big invasion; he’d sold most of his shares to Pall Associates long ago. Money, the Vike’s own weapon, poured into the hands of the Ree. How many stupid Rees had contributed to Pelazi’s death fund? How many grubby peasants had scraped up their last dollar for the cause of destroying the Vike? How many Ree millionaires had Pelazi duped into contributing?

It made Brant a little ill. He felt almost personally responsible for the defeat, as if — by selling out to Pall — he had contributed vastly to the death blow. He became morose and moody, and he went into the third day of the cold turkey with Liz hovering over him guardedly. He snapped at her, and he even slapped her once; but she stood by, hanging on his moods, putting up with his ranting.

The call came at 0600 on the morning of the third day.

Liz took it, and when she came back, she said, “Walt Alloway, Van. He seems excited.”

“Tell him I’m out.”

“He...”

“I’ve got enough worries without scribes in my hair. Tell him all work has stopped on the Senso, and tell him the agency is closed temporarily. Tell him...”

“He looked frantic, Van.”

“Oh, for godsakes, where is he?” He stood up and walked to the vid. “Hello,” he growled.

“Van, you’ve got to help me. Lois...”

“Look, Walt...”

“Please, Van; she’s ready to jump! Please, Van come over. Please.”

“Who? What?”

“Lois. She’s outside on the balcony. She’s locked the doors, and she’s ready to...”

“What?”

“Van, it’s twelve up from the level below. She’ll...”

“I’ll be right over.” He clicked off, wiped his hand across his running nose. “Come on, Liz.”

They grabbed a pneumotube, and were at Alloway’s place in five minutes. A sizable crowd had already gathered on the level. Van paused on the sidewalk, looked up the twelve stories to Walt’s apartment. He spotted the balcony, and saw the glint of Lois’ red hair in the sunlight. He led Liz into the lobby, and they took the lift up together.

Walt met them at the door. The absence of narcotics had taken its toll on his face and his eyes. He took Van’s hand tightly, and almost pulled him into the apartment. “Van, I don’t know what to do. She’s out there, and I know she’s going to jump. I know it, Van. This thing has hit her hard; she’s been a walking ghost. Van, what...”

“Have you called the police?”

“They were here. They’re getting nets now, but I’m afraid she’ll go before...”

“Why don’t we break down the doors?” Brant asked.

He took a step toward the balcony, and Walt shouted, “No! Good God, no!” He grasped Van’s arm, swung him around. “She’ll jump the moment we touch those doors. Stay away from them.”

“Well, what the hell are we going to do?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” He ran his fingers through his hair, shook his head.

“Have you tried talking to her?” Liz asked.

“Yes, no. I mean yes. Yes, I have.”

“And what happened?”

“She didn’t answer. Liz, she’s going to jump; I know that. She’s had enough. You haven’t seen her; you don’t know what it’s like, or how badly she was hooked. This is killing her. She’s just a kid, Liz; she can’t take it any more.”

“Talk to her again,” Liz said.

“What good will it do? I’m afraid she’ll...”

“Talk to her,” Liz repeated.

“All right. All right, I will.”

He walked to the balcony doors, paused just inside them, and then turned to look back at Brant and Liz. He wet his lips, faced the closed doors again, and said, “Lois? Lois, can you hear me?”

They could not see through the duraloid doors. Lois did not answer.

“Lois? Honey, this is Walt. Honey, can you hear me?”

They waited a long moment, and then her voice came, muffled by the thickness of the doors. “Go away, Walt.”

“Lois, Van and Liz are here. Van wants to tell you about a new show for us. A real fine one, this time. A real good one, Lois; you’ll like it. He... he wants us to get started right away on it. Why... why don’t you unlock the doors, Lois? Van would like to talk to you.”

“Leave me alone, Walt. Please. Just leave me alone.”

“Honey, I... this can really be a big thing. Bigger than the Senso. Van says it’s the greatest, honey. Really the greatest. He says... he says he wants you on it, honey. He says...” Walt turned away from the doors and bit his lip. He shook his head, and Van saw the tears spilling over his cheeks. He faced the doors again. “Lois?”

“Walt, please.”

“But honey, I’m serious; this is something that can make both of us, something...”

“He’s right,” Van shouted. He walked quickly to the balcony doors, and Liz followed him. He put his face close to the metal and said, “Lois, this is Van. Come on inside, baby; we’ve got a lot to discuss.”

“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing.”

“Lois, we’ve got something here that’s screaming for your brand of scribing. Baby, this is the biggest...”

“Nothing,” she repeated. “Nothing. All gone.”

Van turned to Alloway. “She sounds like she’s snapped her wig,” he whispered.

“Listen,” Liz said sharply. They listened, and the sound of sirens filled the room, piling up below.

“The police,” Walt said. “They’re back. Thank God. Thank G...”

“What’s that?” Lois shrieked.

“Honey...”

“Why did you call them? Why? Why?” Her voice was high now, strident, almost unintelligible. “Oh God, haven’t I had enough?”

“Lois...”

“Stay away,” she screamed.

They heard a scuffle on the balcony outside.

“She’s climbing the rail,” Liz said, horror in her voice.

“Lois!” Walt shouted.

“Stay away! Stay away!”

Van threw his shoulder against the locked doors. The duraloid held, and he bounced back, bracing himself for another fling.

“No! Don’t come near me!”

He hit the door again, and this time the snap bolt broke. The doors flew wide, and the cold air rushed into the room. She was poised on the railing of the balcony. Her red hair fanned out behind her head, captured by the wind, slapping against her face, her neck. Her breasts were bare, and she wore lace shorts that showed the long line of her leg. Her eyes were wide and blank, filled with fear, deeply sunk in shadowed pockets.

She screamed “No!” and Van lurched across the balcony, reaching for her as she leaped.

His outstretched fingers touched the skin on her ankle, and he thought he had her. But then the feel of her flesh was gone, and there was only cold air in his hands. The scream invaded the air, high, hysterical; it hung there for a moment, and then broke into a thousand brittle fragments that hurtled for the level below.

“Lois!” Alloway shouted. He ran onto the balcony, gripped the railing, his knuckles showing white. He looked over the edge; the scream ended abruptly, seemed to hold on the air for a second, and then was replaced by a deep silence.

He stood looking over the balcony. The silence ended as suddenly as it had begun, broken by the hum of voices from the level below.

Alloway turned slowly, the tears drying on his cheeks. The wind caught at his hair. “I loved her,” he said.

“Walt...”

“I loved her.”

His eyes met Brant’s, and held them tightly. “You killed her, Van,” he said. “You know that.”

“Walt, I was trying to...”

“Not now. That’s not what I mean, Van. That’s not what I mean at all. You killed her when you hired her for the Senso; you killed her when you turned her Vike. You killed her, Van.” He began crying again, and the tears spilled freely down his cheeks. His face twisted grotesquely; his shoulders and chest heaved, and he spoke in anguished sobs. “The biggest thing on the scene, you said...”

The biggest thing on the scene...

“Set the industry solid, you said...”

Set the industry...

“Something new, something tremendous...”

Something new...

“You sucked her in, Van. You sucked her in, and you killed her. You and your damned Senso. You and your goddamned Senso.”

Senso. Senso. Senso.

“And I loved her. Van, Van, I loved her. I loved her.”

He buried his face in his hands, and he sobbed bitterly.

But Van Brant wasn’t listening any more.