himself!"
"I understand that's his own opinion also," Campbell muttered. "I had the story in not inconsiderable detail after he'd been forced into my skimmer at gunpoint this morning."
"But what possessed them?"
"A visit from Herman Uys," Campbell said.
"Uys? In Blackbury? But I wouldn't have thought he'd be seen dead in ..." Prior's voice tailed away in bewilderment. After a pause he added feebly, "Anyhow, I didn't know he was in the country."
"Nor did Diablo," Campbell said grimly. "Nor—which is far worse—did the Immigration Service." He wiped his face with a large yellow handkerchief. "The Afrikaners must have developed some wholly new technique for deceiving our computers, I guess. But that's irrelevant; they've tipped their hand and we'll be on guard in the future. Let's stick to the point."
He tucked away his handkerchief and leaned closer to the camera.
"Apparently Uys has been conducting heredity checks on all municipal employees. Mayor Black has rashly promised to cut back the non-melanist heredity of the city's population to twenty-five percent in the next generation, and I need hardly tell you that the rigidity of his attitude is backfiring very satisfactorily. We've already had undercover feelers regarding the proposed safe-conduct of surplus population units, chiefly young unmarrieds, to other cities in order to widen the gene-pool, but I'm pleased to say we can scotch that idea under the Mann Act. However . .."
He hesitated. Suddenly his executive urbanity slipped like a carnival mask on a broken elastic.
"Frankly, Mr. Prior, we're, engaged in so many ticklish maneuvers right now, with such minuscule computer weightings in our favor, that the dismissal of Pedro Diablo is far from the unalloyed blessing it might appear. I doubt if you're familiar with the contract between the Federal government and the Blackbury city council, but it just so happens it's one of the worst anyone ever wrote. Because it's one of the oldest; it predates the advent of the computers we use nowadays to get rid of dangerous loopholes. Some crazy goddamned idiot thought we could bribe kneeblanks to desert from the enclaves, way back when, and there's still a provision in the contract which compels us to guarantee equivalent employment and better salary and living conditions to anyone who comes out of the city, whether he defects or gets deported. And Diablo knows all about that. He quoted clause, paragraph and line to me when I was bringing him away this morning. And he is boiling mad."
"So it occurred to me," Voigt put in, "that the services of one of (he most brilliant talents ever to handle the visual media might not inappropriately be engaged by the nearest surviving counterpart on blank-run channels of the programs he has been accustomed to prepare in his—ah—former environment. Especially since our computer analyses, Mr. Prior, indicate that some time around now your principal's temperament is liable to get him into a certain amount of trouble with the Holocosmic directorate."
The sly old fox! Prior shook his head in reluctant admiration. The PCC might be a dead letter, but Eugene Voigt certainly was not. There were so many possibilities inherent in the proposal just made to him that his head was spinning. If worse came to worst and Flamen stupidly involved himself in a quarrel with Holocosmic, it would be a marvelous lifeline to be associated with Diablo; talent like his would remain salable indefinitely. In point of fact, however, it seemed unlikely things would come to such a pass. Assuming Diablo really was as angry with his former boss as Campbell believed, why shouldn't a joint Flamen-Diablo show become the only program which could tackle knee scandals as well as blank ones? That would bring the audience rushing back by the tens of millions—people like Nora, for instance, and his neighbors, half-fascinated and half-repelled by the walking talking aliens against whose depredations they had to be on guard night
"I understand that's his own opinion also," Campbell muttered. "I had the story in not inconsiderable detail after he'd been forced into my skimmer at gunpoint this morning."
"But what possessed them?"
"A visit from Herman Uys," Campbell said.
"Uys? In Blackbury? But I wouldn't have thought he'd be seen dead in ..." Prior's voice tailed away in bewilderment. After a pause he added feebly, "Anyhow, I didn't know he was in the country."
"Nor did Diablo," Campbell said grimly. "Nor—which is far worse—did the Immigration Service." He wiped his face with a large yellow handkerchief. "The Afrikaners must have developed some wholly new technique for deceiving our computers, I guess. But that's irrelevant; they've tipped their hand and we'll be on guard in the future. Let's stick to the point."
He tucked away his handkerchief and leaned closer to the camera.
"Apparently Uys has been conducting heredity checks on all municipal employees. Mayor Black has rashly promised to cut back the non-melanist heredity of the city's population to twenty-five percent in the next generation, and I need hardly tell you that the rigidity of his attitude is backfiring very satisfactorily. We've already had undercover feelers regarding the proposed safe-conduct of surplus population units, chiefly young unmarrieds, to other cities in order to widen the gene-pool, but I'm pleased to say we can scotch that idea under the Mann Act. However . .."
He hesitated. Suddenly his executive urbanity slipped like a carnival mask on a broken elastic.
"Frankly, Mr. Prior, we're, engaged in so many ticklish maneuvers right now, with such minuscule computer weightings in our favor, that the dismissal of Pedro Diablo is far from the unalloyed blessing it might appear. I doubt if you're familiar with the contract between the Federal government and the Blackbury city council, but it just so happens it's one of the worst anyone ever wrote. Because it's one of the oldest; it predates the advent of the computers we use nowadays to get rid of dangerous loopholes. Some crazy goddamned idiot thought we could bribe kneeblanks to desert from the enclaves, way back when, and there's still a provision in the contract which compels us to guarantee equivalent employment and better salary and living conditions to anyone who comes out of the city, whether he defects or gets deported. And Diablo knows all about that. He quoted clause, paragraph and line to me when I was bringing him away this morning. And he is boiling mad."
"So it occurred to me," Voigt put in, "that the services of one of (he most brilliant talents ever to handle the visual media might not inappropriately be engaged by the nearest surviving counterpart on blank-run channels of the programs he has been accustomed to prepare in his—ah—former environment. Especially since our computer analyses, Mr. Prior, indicate that some time around now your principal's temperament is liable to get him into a certain amount of trouble with the Holocosmic directorate."
The sly old fox! Prior shook his head in reluctant admiration. The PCC might be a dead letter, but Eugene Voigt certainly was not. There were so many possibilities inherent in the proposal just made to him that his head was spinning. If worse came to worst and Flamen stupidly involved himself in a quarrel with Holocosmic, it would be a marvelous lifeline to be associated with Diablo; talent like his would remain salable indefinitely. In point of fact, however, it seemed unlikely things would come to such a pass. Assuming Diablo really was as angry with his former boss as Campbell believed, why shouldn't a joint Flamen-Diablo show become the only program which could tackle knee scandals as well as blank ones? That would bring the audience rushing back by the tens of millions—people like Nora, for instance, and his neighbors, half-fascinated and half-repelled by the walking talking aliens against whose depredations they had to be on guard night
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