Wrench scrunched around to face Lessing and Morgan. “There is a good reason for the Cadre to have its own doggies. Sam, you know what I mean.”
“So do I,” Lessing said. “It’s no secret: Goddard and PHASE.”
“Dingo-dongo! You win the macrame potato-masher!” Wrench made a grandiose game-show gesture.
Morgan ran his hands over his short, young-business-executive haircut. “Goddard’s getting stronger every day. His guys are the ones people see at rallies, inparades, bumping heads with the leftists, the Blacks, the Jews, and the rest. What’s more, Mulder and the Board of Directors like what he’s doing.”
“The bully boys, the street troops,” Wrench grumbled. “We get the schools, the publishing, the re-education programs, the heavy security stuff. Goddard gets the glory.”
“And if it isn’t Goddard, it’ll be the old-power boys: the FBI or the CIA. They’ll be back.” Lessing drew a finger across his throat.
“The Vizzies infiltrated those agencies during President Rubin’s administration,” Wrench admitted. “Outram did some sweeping, but some of ‘em are still there. They’re scared we’ll come to full power.” He punched in a new channel and watched a dachshund stand up and beg in a cutesy human voice for a can of Luvva-Dog. “Here’s Yama-Net. What’ve they got on now?”
Morgan wrinkled his nose. “Crap, what else? Yama-Net sells appliances, electronics, computers, cosmetics, and plastics; Omni-Net peddles cars, steel, heavy industry, and transport; First-Net pushes communications, food, banks, insurance, and real estate. Business as usual.”
“Not quite,” Wrench corrected. “At least now the Jews don’t run all the media. Only Dee-Net: clothes and fashions and soaps and detergents and deodorants and the like.”
“Which doesn’t leave a lot for us. We’re the new kids on the block.” Morgan opened one of the cloisonne boxes on the coffee table in hope of finding mints or nuts; it was empty. “Our Home-Net markets whatever’s left… mostly product lines we’ve acquired since Starak.”
“I thought Outram was going to break up Big Media,” Lessing said.
“He tried. Mulder’s still trying. The power of money, you know.” Wrench flexed his diminutive biceps like Atlas; the other two chuckled.
Morgan said, “Once the media honchos saw he was serious… that it’d be a cold day in hell before they could reoccupy New York and Chicago and their other corporate citadels… they set up shop in Louisville, Salt Lake City, New Orleans, Milwaukee, Seattle, and elsewhere, diversified to protect against attack by Starak, by Pacov, by Outram… and especially by us. The foreign biggies like Yama-Corp moved to pleasanter climes abroad, but they hung onto their American affiliates. We’re where the consumer dollars are.”
“Yeah, look at Dee-Net,” Wrench said. “After Pacov unzipped Israel and ended its control of Middle Eastern oil, the Vizzies moved their Dee-Net headquarters up to Montreal. You’d think they’d give up, but they’ve still got more’n enough piss to water the lawn. Here, see!” He pressed a button.
The TV wall displayed a young, handsome, and very blonde Adonis wearing tennis shorts, a sun-glow Bylon shirt of shocking vermilion, and a tan so darkly bronze as to appear almost black. This masculine vision swung a tennis racket at the screen and sang, “With Tanel on the label you’ll be an able Gable! Bang up, foozies!” His craggy features glowed with the light of Absolute Truth. “Push your A-3 button right now! Jick it for Dad, jick it for Mom, jick it for your bint-baby, jick-a-tick it for yourself. Love my rag-a-tags! ” He caressed his shirtfront lasciviously, then was replaced by a chorus of prepubescent children attired in dazzle-white sports clothes.
These sang in unison, “Goozy, goozy, little foozy! Tanel koozy! Tanel doozy!”
“Judgment Day is al hand,” Wrench mourned. “Banger slang to sell tennis fashions! Sex did it better… and that we could at least understand!”
Morgan pulled his stockinged feet up under himself on the divan. He had left his Cadre uniform boots by the door. “Dee-Mar’s offering bribes to the Pakistanis, the Turks, the Free Iranis, and the Saudis to regain control over Persian Gulf oil. Israel’s gone, but their lobby’s alive and well.”
“Dee-Mar?” Lessing interjected.
“You were really out of things, weren’t you, off wrestling weeds in Russia? Dee-Mar, short for ‘Diversified Marketing Corporation, Limited,’ is the super-syndicate that owns Dee-Net, and it’s as Jewish as lox and bagels.”
Wrench pointed to a lace-edged, lavender bolster. Lessing tossed it to him, and the little man plumped it up and leaned back. “Our own Homex Corporation’s in there pushing, though. Right after Pacov and Starak our Third World investments looked pretty wim-pish. The Greeks nationalized Tee-May Industries, and we lost megabucks when the Soviet refugees trampled our Italian, Belgian, and German stuff into the mud. We had to transfer most of our action back to the movement’s original bases in South America: coffee, bauxite and other minerals, emeralds, Argentine beef, agro-products from the reclaimed lands in the Amazon Basin… a lot of stuff. Now we’re coming back.”
“No drugs?” Lessing asked mildly. Unlike many meres, he had never gone in for brain-benders. Aside from high-school experiments with Emily Pietrick and a rare joint with his unit in Angola, he had avoided “phunny pharmaceuticals,” as one of the TV yuck-sters called them. One of the few good things the Born-Agains had accomplished back around the turn of the century was to make smoking, sniffing, needling, and most other intoxicating recreations socially incorrect. Only liquor had survived the Puritans’ zealous scythes.
Morgan threw him an irritated glance. “Not us! Some supercorps deal in drugs, but to Mulder and the Board they’re a no-no. Against good genetics and racial principles, you know. Hell, maybe we should’ ve gone in for smokables and White Christmas and snuffy-doo, principles or not. We could’ve made a bundle. You got any idea how much Yama-Corp made on Thai and Indian stuff last year? Or Dee-Mar on Turkish and Irani ‘Red Gold’? Shit, we could’ve been pulling in those bucks!”
“‘What shall it profit a man…?’” Wrench rolled his eyes up ward and donned an angelic smile. “Money’s fine, but you’ve got to consider image, Sam. Remember last year, when the Latin Americans asked if we wanted to buy into their nose-candy, and Mulder turned ‘em down? Well, they went to Nevarco instead… big gambling, entertainment, prostitution, and crime, along with legit stuff… and cut a deal. Then when Mexico started sending troops to the lib-rebs, Nevarco was as popular as dog turds and head lice. Now they couldn’t sell a Bible to a Born-Again!” He flicked a button on his remote control.
“Hey!” Morgan grabbed at the little box. “Let’s see that… the news! ” Wrench held on but let Morgan have his way.
The picture-wall showed a scene on a rubble-strewn city street: a group of men wearing white suits, their faces concealed by copper-hued, mirror-glass helmets, were the only persons to be seen. They wore gloves and boots and carried breathing tanks and awkward backpacks, and they roused an echo in Lessing’s memory, but he couldn’t recall what it was. A sealed van followed the party as they picked their way slowly along the littered pavement past silent, empty buildings.
“New York,” Morgan whispered.
“Center of Manhattan.” Wrench indicated a rusting sign.
Lessing asked, “Haven’t they got it cleaned up yet?”
“On the surface, yes,” Wrench said. “Almost all the bodies have been disposed of, but they’re still working underground: thousands of people died in the subways. Hans Borchardt thinks Starak made its victims look for dark and cool places. They crawled down in there to die.”