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: 2016-01-14; view: 416