"Ngana."
"That sounds like an African name."
"It is. My mother's father was a Watusi."
Barlow didn't take the hand. "I thought you looked pretty dark. I don't
want to hurt your feelings, but I don't think I'd be at my best working
with you. There must be somebody else just as well qualified, I'm sure."
The psychist made a facial sign to Ryan-Ngana that meant, "Steady
_yourself_, boy!"
"Very well," Ryan-Ngana told Barlow. "We'll see what arrangement can be
made."
"It's not that I'm prejudiced, you understand. Some of my best
friends--"
"Mr. Barlow, don't give it another thought. Anybody who could pick on
the lemming analogy is going to be useful to us."
And so he would, thought Ryan-Ngana, alone in the office after
Tinny-Peete had taken Barlow up to the helicopter stage. So he
would. Poprob had exhausted every rational attempt and the new
Poprobattacklines would have to be irrational or sub-rational. This
creature from the past with his lemming legends and his improved
building lots would be a fountain of precious vicious self-interest.
Ryan-Ngana sighed and stretched. He had to go and run the San
Francisco subway. Summoned early from the Pole to study Barlow, he'd
left unfinished a nice little theorem. Between interruptions, he was
slowly constructing an n-dimensional geometry whose foundations and
superstructure owed no debt whatsoever to intuition.
* * * * *
Upstairs, waiting for a helicopter, Barlow was explaining to
Tinny-Peete that he had nothing against Negroes, and Tinny-Peete wished
he had some of Ryan-Ngana's imperturbability and humor for the ordeal.
The helicopter took them to International Airport where, Tinny-Peete
explained, Barlow would leave for the Pole.
The man from the past wasn't sure he'd like a dreary waste of ice and
cold.
"It's all right," said the psychist. "A civilized layout. Warm,
pleasant. You'll be able to work more efficiently there. All the facts
at your fingertips, a good secretary--"
"I'll need a pretty big staff," said Barlow, who had learned from
thousands of deals never to take the first offer.
"I meant a private, confidential one," said Tinny-Peete readily, "but
you can have as many as you want. You'll naturally have top-primary-top
priority if you really have a workable plan."
"Let's not forget this dictatorship angle," said Barlow.
He didn't know that the psychist would just as readily have promised
him deification to get him happily on the "rocket" for the Pole.
Tinny-Peete had no wish to be torn limb from limb; he knew very
well that it would end that way if the population learned from this
anachronism that there was a small elite which considered itself
head, shoulders, trunk and groin above the rest. The fact that this
assumption was perfectly true and the fact that the elite was condemned
by its superiority to a life of the most grinding toil would not be
considered; the difference would.
The psychist finally put Barlow aboard the "rocket" with some thirty
people--real people--headed for the Pole.
* * * * *
Barlow was airsick all the way because of a post-hypnotic suggestion
Tinny-Peete had planted in him. One idea was to make him as averse as
possible to a return trip, and another idea was to spare the other
passengers from his aggressive, talkative company.
Barlow during the first day at the pole was reminded
of his first day in the Army. It was the same
now-where-the-hell-are-we-going-to-put-_you_? business until he took a
firm line with them. Then instead of acting like supply sergeants they
acted like hotel clerks.
It was a wonderful, wonderfully calculated buildup, and one that he
failed to suspect. After all, in his time a visitor from the past would
have been lionized.
At day's end he reclined in a snug underground billet with the 60-mile
gales roaring yards overhead, and tried to put two and two together.
It was like old times, he thought--like a coup in real estate where
you had the competition by the throat, like a 50-per cent rent boost
when you knew damned well there was no place for the tenants to move,
like smiling when you read over the breakfast orange juice that the
city council had decided to build a school on the ground you had
acquired by a deal with the city council. And it was simple. He would
just sell tundra building lots to eagerly suicidal lemmings, and that
was absolutely all there was to solving the Problem that had these
double-domes spinning.
They'd have to work out most of the details, naturally, but what the
hell, that was what subordinates were for. He'd need specialists in
advertising, engineering, communications--did they know anything about
hypnotism? That might be helpful. If not, there'd have to be a lot of
bribery done, but he'd make sure--damned sure--there were unlimited
funds.
Just selling building lots to lemmings....
He wished, as he fell asleep, that poor Verna could have been in on
this. It was his biggest, most stupendous deal. Verna--that sharp
shyster Sam Immerman must have swindled her....
* * * * *
It began the next day with people coming to visit him. He knew the
approach. They merely wanted to be helpful to their illustrious visitor
from the past and would he help fill them in about his era, which
unfortunately was somewhat obscure historically, and what did he think
could be done about the Problem? He told them he was too old to be
roped any more, and they wouldn't get any information out of him until
he got a letter of intent from at least the Polar President, and a
session of the Polar Congress empowered to make him dictator.
He got the letter and the session. He presented his program, was asked
whether his conscience didn't revolt at its callousness, explained
succinctly that a deal was a deal and anybody who wasn't smart enough
to protect himself didn't deserve protection--"Caveat emptor," he threw
in for scholarship, and had to translate it to "Let the buyer beware."
He didn't, he stated, give a damn about either the morons or their
intelligent slaves; he'd told them his price and that was all he was
interested in.
Would they meet it or wouldn't they?
The Polar President offered to resign in his favor, with certain
temporary emergency powers that the Polar Congress would vote him if
he thought them necessary. Barlow demanded the title of World Dictator,
complete control of world finances, salary to be decided by himself,
and the publicity campaign and historical writeup to begin at once.
"As for the emergency powers," he added, "they are neither to be
temporary nor limited."
Somebody wanted the floor to discuss the matter, with the declared hope
that perhaps Barlow would modify his demands.
"You've got the proposition," Barlow said. "I'm not knocking off even
ten per cent."
"But what if the Congress refuses, sir?" the President asked.
"Then you can stay up here at the Pole and try to work it out
yourselves. I'll get what I want from the morons. A shrewd operator
like me doesn't have to compromise; I haven't got a single competitor
in this whole cockeyed moronic era."
Congress waived debate and voted by show of hands. Barlow won
unanimously.
"You don't know how close you came to losing me," he said in his first
official address to the joint Houses. "I'm not the boy to haggle;
either I get what I ask or I go elsewhere. The first thing I want is
to see designs for a new palace for me--nothing _un_ostentatious,
either--and your best painters and sculptors to start working on my
portraits and statues. Meanwhile, I'll get my staff together."
He dismissed the Polar President and the Polar Congress, telling them
that he'd let them know when the next meeting would be.
A week later, the program started with North America the first target.
Mrs. Garvy was resting after dinner before the ordeal of turning on
the dishwasher. The TV, of course, was on and it said: "Oooh!"--long,
shuddery and ecstatic, the cue for the _Parfum Assault Criminale_ spot
commercial. "Girls," said the announcer hoarsely, "do you want your
man? It's easy to get him--easy as a trip to Venus."
"Huh?" said Mrs. Garvy.
"Wassamatter?" snorted her husband, starting out of a doze.
"Ja hear that?"
"Wha'?"
"He said 'easy like a trip to Venus.'"
"So?"
"Well, I thought ya couldn't get to Venus. I thought they just had that
one rocket thing that crashed on the Moon."
"Aah, women don't keep up with the news," said Garvy righteously,
subsiding again.
"Oh," said his wife uncertainly.
And the next day, on _Henry's Other Mistress_, there was a new
character who had just breezed in: Buzz Rentshaw, Master Rocket Pilot
of the Venus run. On _Henry's Other Mistress_, "the broadcast drama
about you and your neighbors, _folksy_ people, _ordinary_ people,
_real_ people"! Mrs. Garvy listened with amazement over a cooling cup
of coffee as Buzz made hay of her hazy convictions.
MONA: Darling, it's so good to see you again!
BUZZ: You don't know how I've missed you on that dreary Venus run.