MINUS 089 AND COUNTING

They were quartered on the fifth floor until ten o’clock the following day, and Richards was nearly out of his mind with anger, worry, and frustration when a young and slightly faggoty‑looking pal in a skintight Games uniform asked them to please step into the elevator. They were perhaps three hundred in all: over sixty of their number had been removed soundlessly and painlessly the night before. One of them had been the kid with the inexhaustible fund of dirty jokes.

They were taken to a small auditorium on the sixth floor in groups of fifty. The auditorium was very luxurious, done in great quantities of red plush. There was an ashtray built into the realwood arm of every seat, and Richards hauled out his crumpled pack of Blams. He tapped his ashes on the floor.

There was a small stage at the front, and in the center of that, a lectern. A pitcher of water stood on it.

At about fifteen minutes past ten, the faggoty‑looking fellow walked to the lec­tern and said: “I’d like you to meet Arthur M. Burns, Assistant Director of Games.”

“Huzzah,” somebody behind Richards said in a sour voice.

A portly man with a tonsure surrounded by gray hair strode to the lectern, paus­ing and cocking his head as he arrived, as if to appreciate a round of applause which only he could hear. Then he smiled at them, a broad, twinkling smile that seemed to transform him into a pudgy, aging Cupid in a business suit.

“Congratulations,” he said. “You’ve made it.”

There was a huge collective sigh, followed by some laughter and back‑slapping. More cigarettes were lit up.

“Huzzah,” the sour voice repeated.

“Shortly, your program assignments and seventh floor room numbers will be passed out. The executive producers of your particular programs will explain fur­ther exactly what is expected of you. But before that happens, I just want to repeat my congratulations and tell you that I find you to be a courageous, resourceful group, refusing to live on the public dole when you have means at your disposal to acquit yourselves as men, and, may I add personally, as true heroes of our time.

“Bullshit,” the sour voice remarked.

“Furthermore, I speak for the entire Network when I wish you good luck and Godspeed.” Arthur M. Burns chuckled porkily and rubbed his hands together. “Well, I know you’re anxious to get those assignments, so I’ll spare you any more of my jabber.”

A side door popped open, and a dozen Games ushers wearing red tunics came into the auditorium. They began to call out names. White envelopes were passed out, and soon they littered the floor like confetti. Plastic assignment cards were read, exchanged with new acquaintances. There were muffled groans, cheers, cat­calls. Arthur M. Burns presided over it all from his podium, smiling benevolently.

—That Christly How Hot Can You Take It, Jesus I hate the heat

—the show’s a goddam two‑bitter, comes on right after the flictoons, for God’s sake

—Treadmill to Bucks, gosh, I didn’t know my heart was­

—I was hoping I’d get it but I didn’t really think­

—Hey Jake, you ever seen this Swim the Crocodiles? I thought­

—nothing like I expected­

—I don’t think you can­

—Miserable goddam­

—This Run For Your Guns—

“Benjamin Richards! Ben Richards?”

“Here!”

He was handed a plain white envelope and tore it open. His fingers were shaking slightly and it took him two tries to get the small plastic card out. He frowned down at it, not understanding. No program assignment was punched on it. The card read simply: ELEVATOR SIX.

He put the card in his breast pocket with his I.D. and left the auditorium. The first five elevators at the end of the hall were doing a brisk business as they ferried the following week’s contestants up to the seventh floor. There were four others standing by the closed doors of Elevator 6, and Richards recognized one of them as the owner of the sour voice.

“What’s this?” Richards asked. “Are we getting the gate?”

The man with the sour voice was about twenty‑five, not bad looking. One arm was withered, probably by polio, which had come back strong in 2005. It had done especially well in Co‑Op.

“No such luck,” he said, and laughed emptily. “I think we’re getting the big­money assignments. The ones where they do more than just land you in the hos­pital with a stroke or put out an eye or cut off an arm or two. The ones where they kill you. Prime time, baby.”

They were joined by a sixth pal, a good‑looking kid who was blinking at every­thing in a surprised way.

“Hello, sucker,” the man with the sour voice said.

At eleven o’clock, after all the others had been taken away, the doors of Ele­vator 6 popped open. There was a cop riding in the Judas hole again.

“See?” The man with the sour voice said. “We’re dangerous characters. Pub­lic enemies. They’re gonna rub us out.” He made a tough gangster face and sprayed the bulletproof compartment with an imaginary Sten gun. The cop stared at him woodenly.

MINUS 088 AND COUNTING

The waiting room on the eighth floor was very small, very plush, very intimate, very private. Richards had it all to himself.

At the end of the elevator ride, three of them had been promptly whisked away down a plushly carpeted corridor by three cops. Richards, the man with the sour voice, and the kid who blinked a lot had been taken here.

A receptionist who vaguely reminded Richards of one of the old tee‑vee sex stars (Liz Kelly? Grace Taylor?) he had watched as a kid smiled at the three of them when they came in. She was sitting at a desk in an alcove, surrounded by so many potted plants that she might have been in an Ecuadorian foxhole. “Mr. Jan­sky,” she said with a blinding smile. “Go right in.”

The kid who blinked a lot went into the inner sanctum. Richards and the man with the sour voice, whose name was Jimmy Laughlin, made wary conversation. Richards discovered that Laughlin lived only three blocks away from him, on Dock Street. He had held a part‑time job until the year before as an engine wiper for General Atomics, and had then been fired for taking part in a sit‑down strike pro­testing leaky radiation shields.

“Well, I’m alive, anyway,” he said. “According to those maggots, that’s all that counts. I’m sterile, of course. That don’t matter. That’s one of the little risks you run for the princely sum of seven New Bucks a day.”

When G‑A had shown him the door, the withered arm had made it even tougher to get a job. His wife had come down with bad asthma two years before, was now bed‑ridden. “Finally I decided to go for the big brass ring,” Laughlin said with a bitter smile. “Maybe I’ll get a chance to push a few creeps out a high window before McCone’s boys get me.”

“Do you think it really is—”

“The Running Man? Bet your sweet ass. Give me one of those cruddy ciga­rettes, pal.”

Richards gave him one.

The door opened and the kid who blinked a lot came out on the arm of a beautiful dolly wearing two handkerchiefs and a prayer. The kid gave them a small, nervous smile as they went by.

“Mr. Laughlin? Would you go in, please?”

So Richards was alone, unless you counted the receptionist, who had disap­peared into her foxhole again.

He got up and went over to the free cigarette machine in the corner. Laughlin must be right, he reflected. The cigarette machine dispensed Dokes. They must have hit the big leagues. He got a package of Blams, sat down, and lit one up.

About twenty minutes later Laughlin came out with an ash‑blonde on his arm. “A friend of mine from the car pool,” he said to Richards, and pointed at the blonde. She dimpled dutifully. Laughlin looked pained. “At least the bastard talks straight,” he said to Richards. “See you.”

He went out. The receptionist poked her head out of her foxhole. “Mr. Rich­ards? Would you step in, please?”

He went in.

MINUS 087 AND COUNTING

The inner office looked big enough to play killball in. It was dominated by a huge, one‑wall picture window that looked west over the homes of the middle class, the dockside warehouses and oil tanks, and Harding Lake itself. Both sky and water were pearl‑gray; it was still raining. A large tanker far out was chugging from right to left.

The man behind the desk was of middle height and very black. So black, in fact, that for a moment Richards was struck with unreality. He might have stepped out of a minstrel show.

“Mr. Richards.” He rose and extended his hand over the desk. When Richards did not shake it, he did not seem particularly flustered. He merely took his hand back to himself and sat down.

A sling chair was next to the desk. Richards sat down and butted his smoke in an ashtray with the Games emblem embossed on it.

“I’m Dan Killian, Mr. Richards. By now you’ve probably guessed why you’ve been brought here. Our records and your test scores both say you’re a bright boy.”

Richards folded his hands and waited.

“You’ve been slated as a contestant on The Running Man, Mr. Richards. It’s our biggest show; it’s the most lucrative—and dangerous‑for the men involved. I’ve got your final consent form here on my desk. I’ve no doubt that you’ll sign it, but first I want to tell you why you’ve been selected and I want you to under­stand fully what you’re getting into.”

Richards said nothing.

Killian pulled a dossier onto the virgin surface of his desk blotter. Richards saw that it had his name typed on the front. Killian flipped it open.

“Benjamin Stuart Richards. Age twenty‑eight, born August 8, 1997, city of Harding. Attended South City Manual Trades from September of 2011 until De­cember of 2013. Suspended twice for failure to respect authority. I believe you kicked the assistant principal in the upper thigh once while his back was turned?”

“Crap,” Richards said. “I kicked him in the ass.”

Killian nodded. “However you say, Mr. Richards. You married Sheila Rich­ards, nee Gordon, at the age of sixteen. Old‑style lifetime contract. Rebel all the way, uh? No union affiliation due to your refusal to sign the Union Oath of Fealty and the Wage Control Articles. I believe that you referred to Area Governor Johns­bury as a corn‑holing sonofabitch.'”

“Yes,” Richards said.

“Your work record has been spotty and you’ve been fired . . . let’s see . . . a total of six times for such things as insubordination, insulting superiors, and abu­sive criticism of authority.”

Richards shrugged.

“In short, you are regarded as antiauthoritarian and antisocial. You’re a deviate who has been intelligent enough to stay out of prison and serious trouble with the government, and you’re not hooked on anything. A staff psychologist reports you saw lesbians, excrement, and a pollutive gas vehicle in various inkblots. He also reports a high, unexplained degree of hilarity—”

“He reminded me of a kid I used to know. He liked to hide under the bleachers at school and whack off. The kid, I mean. I don’t know what your doctor likes to do.”

“I see.” Killian smiled briefly, white teeth glittering in all that darkness, and went back to his folder. “You held racial responses outlawed by the Racial Act of 2004. You made several rather violent responses during the word‑association test.”

“I’m here on violent business,” Richards said.

“To be sure. And yet we—and here I speak in a larger sense than the Games Authority; I speak in the national sense‑view these responses with extreme dis­quiet.”

“Afraid someone might tape a stick of Irish to your ignition system some night?” Richards asked, grinning. .

Killian wet his thumb reflectively and turned to the next sheet. “Fortunately­ for us‑you’ve given a hostage to fortune, Mr. Richards. You have a daughter named Catherine, eighteen months. Was that a mistake?” He smiled frostily.

“Planned,” Richards said without rancor. “I was working for G‑A then. Some­how, some of my sperm lived through it. A jest of God, maybe. With the world the way it is, I sometimes think we must have been off our trolley.”

“At any rate, you’re here,” Killian said, continuing to smile his cold smile. “And next Tuesday you will appear on The Running Man. You’ve seen the pro­gram?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know it’s the biggest thing going on Free‑Vee. It’s filled with chances for viewer participation, both vicarious and actual. I am executive pro­ducer of the program.”

“That’s really wonderful,” Richards said.

“The program is one of the surest ways the Network has of getting rid of embryo troublemakers such as yourself, Mr. Richards. We’ve been on for six years. To date, we have no survivals. To be brutally honest, we expect to have none.”

“Then you’re running a crooked table,” Richards said flatly.

Killian seemed more amused than horrified. “But we’re not. You keep forget­ting you’re an anachronism, Mr. Richards. People won’t be in the bars and hotels or gathering in the cold in front of appliance stores rooting for you to get away. Goodness! no. They want to see you wiped out, and they’ll help if they can. The more messy the better. And there is McCone to contend with. Evan McCone and the Hunters.”

“They sound like a neo‑group,” Richards said.

“McCone never loses,” Killian said.

Richards grunted.

“You’ll appear live Tuesday night. Subsequent programs will be a patch‑up of tapes, films, and live tricasts when possible. We’ve been known to interrupt scheduled broadcasting when a particularly resourceful contestant is on the verge of reaching his . . . personal Waterloo, shall we say.

“The rules are simplicity themselves. You—or your surviving family—will win one hundred New Dollars for each hour you remain free. We stake you to forty­-eight hundred dollars conning money on the assumption that you will be able to fox the Hunters for forty‑eight hours. The unspent balance refundable, of course, if you fall before the forty‑eight hours are up. You’re given a twelve‑hour head start. If you last thirty days, you win the Grand Prize. One billion New Dollars.”

Richards threw back his head and laughed.

“My sentiments exactly,” Killian said with a dry smile. “Do you have any questions?”

“Just one,” Richards said, leaning forward. The traces of humor had vanished from his face completely. “How would you like to be the one out there, on the run?”

Killian laughed. He held his belly and huge mahogany laughter rolled richly in the room. “Oh . . . Mr. Richards . . . you must excuse m‑me—” and he went off into another gale.

At last, dabbing his eyes with a large white handkerchief, Killian seemed to get himself under control. “You see, not only are you possessed of a sense of humor, Mr. Richards. You . . . I—” He choked new laughter down. “Please excuse me. You’ve struck my funnybone.”

“I see I have.”

“Other questions?”

“No.”

“Very good. There will be a staff meeting before the program. If any questions should develop in that fascinating mind of yours, please hold them until then.” Killian pressed a button on his desk.

“Spare me the cheap snatch,” Richards said. “I’m married.”

Killian’s eyebrows went up. “Are you quite sure? Fidelity is admirable, Mr. Richards, but it’s a long time from Friday to Tuesday. And considering the fact that you may never see your wife again—”

“I’m married.”

“Very well.” He nodded to the girl in the doorway and she disappeared. “Any­thing we can do for you, Mr. Richards? You’ll have a private suite on the ninth floor, and meal requests will be filled within reason.”

“A good bottle of bourbon. And a telephone so I can talk to my w—”

“Ah, no, I’m sorry, Mr. Richards. The bourbon we can do. But once you sign this release form,”—he pushed it over to Richards along with a pen—“you’re in­communicado until Tuesday. Would you care to reconsider the girl?”

“No,” Richards said, and scrawled his name on the dotted line. “But you better make that two bottles of bourbon.”

“Certainly.” Killian stood and offered his hand again.

Richards disregarded it again, and walked out.

Killian looked after him and with blank eyes. He was not smiling.

Date: 2015-04-20; view: 655