There was a double beep, then the big screen in the corner of the room came on. He looked up at it.
"Jack?"
It was his boss, Reiss. A broadly grinning Reiss.
"Horst? What is it?"
"I just wanted to congratulate you on a superb job. I've just spoken to the board and they're delighted. In fact, I've got them to grant you a bonus of fifty thousand, payable immediately!"
Neville leaned toward the screen, his grin unforced. "That's great, I . . . Well, shit, Horst, we had a winner today. I told you. . . ."
"I know. And you were right, Jack. One hundred percent right. But it was no accident. You put a lot of work into this one and I'm grateful. Hugely grateful. Between you and me, there's even talk of appointing you to the executive council. But we'll discuss that tomorrow, neh? Everything okay there? Our people looking after you?"
Neville moved back a little, revealing the smiling hospitality girl. "I'm fine, Horst. There's one favor you might do me, though."
"Name it."
"The media reviews. I'd like to run through them again—work out some angles for our campaign over the coming weeks. Can you plug me through say six or eight of the major networks? I'd like to sleep on them."
Reiss laughed. "If that's what you want, you got it. And again, great job, Jack. You've put us on the map again in a big way and the Company's grateful. Very grateful." Reiss grinned and gave a bow of his head. "Tomorrow, huh?"
"Right."
The screen went blank. Neville sat back, letting out a long whistling breath, then let the girl begin to kneed the tiredness from his shoulders. A place on the executive council, huh? He nodded to himself, imagining it. And maybe, in a year or two, Reiss might groom him for his successor. If things kept going right for him.
"You big man, huh?" the girl asked, poking her head over his shoulder, her smile innocent, disarming.
He smiled. "Seems like it."
She nodded, impressed, then returned to her task with a new vigor. Neville closed his eyes, enjoying her touch. "That's great. You're very good at what you do."
"You, too, it seems."
He laughed. "Yeah. Seems the Company likes me."
"Seems so."
The screen beeped. Neville opened his eyes and looked. The MedFac logo had appeared on the screen, replaced a moment later by the image of a refined old Han with a long gray beard, flowing white silks, and the contemplative eyes of an ancient sage. It was Tung Chung-shu, MedFac's most senior arts reviewer. He was walking in the familiar setting of his garden—a small but tasteful affair—speaking slowly to the camera in Mandarin, one hand pulling at his beard thoughtfully. A voice-over gave the English equivalent.
". . . and until now I would have said there was no future for the medium, but Shih Shepherd's work has convinced me that a work of art—of real and genuine artistic significance—can be created within this previously trivial form."
Tung stopped, one arm resting lightly on the wooden balustrade of a tiny plank bridge, and looked out over a small pond filled with lilies. The camera angle changed, looking across at him, the old-fashioned house framed behind him.
"More impressive, perhaps, is Shepherd's manipulation of the recipient—the audience—for his art. As you know, I have always scorned the term interactive when applied to art. Most so-called interactive art-forms are little more than games—distractions. True art requires a deeper, more inward quality. And that—miraculously, one might almost say—is the true genius of this new work. At all times I was the passive recipient of the experience. Physically I went nowhere—and yet while I was inside Shepherd's work it felt as if I were in control of my environment, as if everything I did I had chosen to do. In that single respect—that of apparent volition—this experience was different, different in kind, from anything I have ever encountered in SimFic's product range, or anyone else's, come to that. There is no doubt about it, Ben Shepherd's The Familiar is a conceptual breakthrough, a new generation Stim—the product of new thinking and, so I gather from Jack Neville at SimFic, of brand new technologies."
Neville leaned back, nodding slowly, thoughtfully, as the screen blanked and a new logo—that of IntSat—appeared. Little do you know of the troubles we had with it, he thought, recalling the months they'd spent trying to perfect Shepherd's techno-gimmickry. But it had worked. And even the crusty old conservative Tung had had his silk socks knocked off by it!
"You want take this off?"
He nodded vaguely, then eased forward, letting the girl lift his silk one-piece and pull it over his head.
"That better, neh?"
But he was watching the screen, only half aware of the gentle movement of her hands on the skin of his back. The image had changed to show a studio set with four earnest young men—Hung Moo every one—leaning in toward each other. Behind them, forming a huge backdrop, was the cover of Ben's The Familiar, with its view of the idyllic German valley in which it was set.
That was a stroke of genius, he thought, preparing two versions—one from the Han perspective and one from the Hung Mao. Only Shepherd would have thought of telling the same story from two entirely different viewpoints.
Yes, and it had guaranteed an across-the-board sale. For the first time in living memory a single work had penetrated both markets. Indeed, if reports were to be believed a lot of people were buying both versions.
There were a few introductory exchanges and then the presenter of the show, Jake Kingsley, a dark-haired, soft-featured man in his mid-twenties, began to speak.
". . . the soundtrack is simply filled with the sound of birdcall and the hum of insects—strange sounds which, at the moment of one's immersion in the medium, seem natural and familiar things—as if it had always been—and yet afterward, in the quiet of recollection, I found the hairs on my neck rise; found myself disturbed profoundly by the memory of that strange, insistent sound."
"That's true," another of them said, joining in. "What also struck me was the amazing openness of things—you know, the big open skies above the town and the constant feeling of sun and wind on your flesh. It was so ... well so real. I mean, we're used to seeing these things on trivee dramas, but that's . . . well, it's like looking at a painting— it doesn't strike home. While I was there, inside the Stim, I was . . . outside. There's no other way of putting it. Shepherd's work"—he shook his head, awed—"well, it's just masterful . . . the most brilliant thing I've yet encountered."
It went on: more, and yet more in the same vein, eulogizing, professing amazement, astonishment, simple awe. And no dissenting voices. Not a single one. That in itself was amazing, for his experience was that when half the critics loved something, the rest would hate it with a loathing that was little short of spitting fury. This once, however, they had been caught off guard, overwhelmed by the shock of something totally, unexpectedly new. Ben's work had simply seduced them.
Neville smiled, then, turning from the now-blank screen, stretched out on his front, letting the girl straddle him, her hands massaging the small of his back.
He had been right to embargo the thing—to keep it secure in SimFic's warehouses until the day of release—letting the media and the public know only that SimFic had the greatest piece of product they would ever see, and risking the possibility that the hype would fall flat and no one like the thing. It had been a big risk—a huge fucking risk, now that he thought about it—but he'd been convinced about it, from the very first time he'd put on the HeadStim and experienced Ben's Familiar for himself.