"You know what it is."
"The charge, please."
I shrugged. "Fraudulent tendencies; to wit, unfair, untrue, and
scurrilous maligning of a competitive corporate body, individual,
and/or product. Okay, boys."
They handcuffed him and hustled him out without even picking up his
luggage and his raincoat. He tried to look confident, but I thought
the law-abiding public wouldn't suffer much longer from the connivings
of Statistomat, Inc. I settled back into the deep chair and turned with
a triumphant grin toward the door of the room's closet.
It opened. My brother, dressed in the distinctive charcoal-green suit
of a General Computers junior executive, stepped out, turning off the
tape recorder as he came.
He was grinning too. "You had me biting my lip," he admitted, "but you
came through all right. It's a good thing, too. It always gives me a
specially grateful feeling when I see society saved from a deviant
like that.... It's not that there was any danger they would have
challenged Incomac's market leadership, but even if they had continued
in existence as small as they are now they would have taken away _some_
customers. Our responsibility to our stockholders is not just to make
profit. It is to make the maximum possible profit--to optimize!"
Of course!
My brother's gaze was distant as his keen mind searched for the deeper
lessons of the day's work. He said, "Maybe we should get the public
release of those Commerce Department reports discontinued."