Lessing told the compu-sec, “Screen my letters, highlight specific requests, and hold. Ask Mr. Milne to make an appointment.” He fumbled with his weaker left hand to shut off the machine.
It was hard to remember all the things he had to do. The present kept drifting away, and he increasingly depended upon Liese to hold it in focus. She had stayed young-looking in spite of white hair and the fragile, translucent look that slender, Germanic women developed in old age. Thinking of Liese made him feel warm inside.
He had not decided yet whether to take the gerontological treatment developed by the Party’s labs in Schenectady. Rebuild cells? Restore vibrancy to flagging organs? Let miniaturized snowplows clear the cholesterol out of clogged arteries? It sounded like magic. It also wasn’t ready for public dissemination: what to do with millions of elderly people miraculously restored to youth? You could keep such a process secret and use it yourself, of course, but that smacked too much of the bad, old days: hidden patents, secret cartels, buy-outs to keep products off the market, legal razzle-dazzle, and the rest of the “business practices” the Party had fought to eradicate. These days it would be a Federal crime — a capital offense — to hide something as important as a method of reversing aging.
Which didn’t solve the problem.
Economic crimes had diminished, though: profiteering, insider trading, sweetheart contracts, and a hundred other tricks so complicated Lessing barely understood the first page of the lawyers’ briefs. All he knew was that fair profit was fair incentive; anything more was a rip-off — and cause for a visit from PHASE.
“Sir? Mr. President?” Max Stalb, chief of his Cadre bodyguards, was peering in the car window at him. Max sported a handlebar moustache and wore heavy, copper bracelets that were rumored to conceal a number of useful tools and weapons.
“Ah? What?”
“We’re here, sir. The Eighty-Five installation.”
“Oh… fine. I’ll go in by myself.”
“Can’t let you do that, sir. Regs.”
“Well, here, then: you carry this.” Lessing opened the door, got out, and handed Max a bulky package wrapped in gay, red-and-gold Christmas paper. “You’re with me as far as the elevators. After that you stay put. You don’t have security clearance for Eighty-Five’s innards.”
Max gnawed the ragged ends of his moustache. “Don’t like it, sir.”
Lessing grinned. “Too damned bad. Come on.”
The receptionist was a humanoid, a graceful simulacrum of glass and golden wire and shiny steel. It came to life as they entered.
“This facility is closed, sirs, for the four days of the First Führer’s Birthday celebration,” it announced. “If you wish to see someone, please leave your names and vid-phone numbers where you may be reached.”
“I am Alan Lessing, Primary Operator. Scan and identify.” Things hummed and clicked. The machine said, “Accepted. Your companion now, please.”
“He will wait for me here. Make him comfortable.” Lessing took back his package and made his way along the half-remembered corridor.
The elevator ride was a descent into memory. He could almost see Wrench beside him again, as on that long-ago day, swathed in an N.B.C. suit three sizes too large.
Beyond the air lock at the bottom the central operations room was alive with noise, lights, and people! Lessing’s first impression was of a boxing match, a great hall jammed with spectators just before the fight. A bluish haze, like smoke or fog, hid the swinging booms of the ceiling lights, leaving most of the audience in semi-darkness. Some were quiet, but others were talking, cheering, arguing, yelling, fighting, and gesticulating, a madhouse of tumult and open mouths and waving arms. In the background screeching Banger rhythms competed with classical symphonies, a fat man singing an operatic aria, Indonesian Gamelan music, and a torch singer belting “Let Me Slarm You, My Jee-Ga Jee-Oh!” These, in turn, were drowned under a clattering rumble like that of a thousand factories, the drone of aircraft, carillons of bells, and peals of thunder. The wall screens flashed gaudy pictures, charts, and columns of flickering symbols. Lessing smelled incense, ripe strawberries, barbecuing beef, overheated electric insulation, salt water, rotten meat, and pine needles — among other things. At the far end of the room a mushroom cloud exploded noiselessly and dissipated against the ceiling. Nobody noticed.
Bedlam was too gentle a word. This was a convention down in Hell.
He looked at the people. The nearest was a spade-bearded man in a rusty-black suit; he was glaring at a portly British gentleman with a cigar. A skinny, starved-looking little man in a wrap-around robe shook his head violently in answer to a vulture-nosed woman wearing a business suit and ‘sensible’ shoes; she shook her fist at him. Farther away a naked Banger dancer leaped and pranced before a throng of hand-clapping rabbis with flat, black hats and sidelocks. On the other side of the elevator vestibule a man in the pontificals of a medieval pope conferred animatedly with a scarred soldier in bronze armor. The mob was denser farther away, but the haze obscured them.
Somebody noticed Lessing and pointed. Heads turned, then others. Most had faces, but some were only featureless globes.
A taller, more substantial figure advanced through the haze to meet him: Vincent Dom. Eighty-Five had turned Dom’s hair to silver and added wrinkles, but the image had essentially stayed the same over the years.
“Good morning, Mister Lessing,” Dom said. “I was not expecting this visit on a holiday. I regret that my human staff is absent and unable to serve you.”
“Eighty-Five…? What is all this?”
The other looked embarrassed. “Nothing, really. Your human ideas and opinions are so diverse that I find it edifying to create simulacra of many types of human beings and interact them with one another. It helps me in my task of developing a complete understanding of all the nuances of your thoughts and feelings. Would you care to participate?”
“No, thanks. I have things to do.” He began to trudge forward toward the central dais. As he walked, he unwrapped his parcel. The crowd gave way. He would have passed right through them anyhow; they were holo-images, the creations of Eighty-Five’s incredible circuitry. He remembered just in time not to accept the helping hand up onto the dais proffered by one of the figures there. The helpful fellow was as intangible as the rest, and he would have fallen flat on his face! Only the silvery robots visible here and there among the throng were solid and real.
Dorn followed him up the steps. He bent and peered at the parcel. Lessing could almost hear the zoom-cameras whirring, photographing, analyzing, recording, and testing.
Dom inquired, “Well, President Lessing, what have you there?”
“A Christmas present. I bought it for my stepson-in-law, Frank Ames… Patty’s husband… two years ago, but he went off on the Mars mission, and I never got to give it to him. You want to see?” He pulled off the wrapping paper and brought out a blue-and-gold helmet of thick, rubbery-looking plastic. “Shall I try it on?”
Dom licked his lips, a particularly human mannerism “I don’t see….”
“Ain’t I the cat’s pajamas?… as poor Wrench used to say.” He snugged the helmet’s chin strap tight. “There!”
“That is a Patriot hearing protector helmet,” Dom announced dubiously, “model seventy-three, extra-large size, price $293.65 at Save-o-Mart. It is used at shooting ranges during target practice.”
Lessing took a second item out of the wrappings. “Right! And these are Radicom sunglasses, price $79.99, from the same store. As you can see, they fit perfectly.” He put them on and twisted the tiny switch to its maximum setting. The world went completely dark.
“Just what are you doing, Mister Lessing?” Dom’s voice had become that of Melissa Willoughby.