Yes, indeed, it was true that Marcantonio Gottschalk had been snubbed by the absence of Vyacheslav Gottand a number of other high-level pollies from his eightieth birthday celebration. It was hardly news that yet another power-struggle was going on within the cartel, but up till now details of who was taking whose side had been efficiently suppressed.
Dare he risk a guesstimate as to which of the conprotestations of illness-the Gottschalks were curiously conservative in a great many ways-had actubeen lies? The computers warned him not to; the cartel was far too big to tackle without really solid data. And yet his heart yearned for something big. It wasn’t so much that his contract still had nine months to run, as his dream had warned, but more that it had only nine months to run, and unless he gaffed somebody really spectacular before the end of the low-audience summer season he would be one with Nineveh and Tyre. He put a hi-pri on the story and instructed his computers, not with any real hope, to have one more go at finding out whether he could buy a key-code for the Gottschalks’ information bank at Iron Mountain.
Waiting for the evaluation, he moved on to other subThe mere idea of attacking the Gottschalks seemed to have restored him to complete normality, and he tabbed items old and new with assurance.
Lares Penates Inc. is almost certainly what rumor claims: a college-educated front for Conjuh Man, exthe blank flight from rationality with the same enthusiasm as knee ignorance of it. Mark for maximum detail and use when the reading breaks eighty in favor; so far, only seventy-two. The refugees converging on Kuala Lumpur must be being culled according to a preplan requiring reduction of their number by at least two-thirds and not as official releases would have it by division into loyalists and subversives. Reading eighty-eight in favor, hence usable today. But worth the risk of provoking an international incident? Who in the English-speaking world could give a damn about the fate of never mind how many people with brown skins speakan alien language?
While he was still hesitating over whether to use the item or keep it in reserve, an interruption. Sixty-plus in favor of his being able to buy a code and unlock the Gottschalks’ data bank at Iron Mountain. Estimated price between one and two million. That put it out of Flamen’s orbit anyway-there wasn’t enough cash in the informers’ fund-but instantly his professional suspicions were alerted. On all the previous occasions he’d made that inquiry the computers had immediately rung up a no sale sign. Instinct told him the right question to ask next: are they planning to get along without that parfacility?
Meanwhile, continuing: something big brewing among the X Patriots. The routine reading carried him straight back to the Gottschalks and the superficial verdict that they were once more fomenting discontent among knee extremists to ensure good sales for their latest product among frightened blanks. But there was a secondary possibility only five points lower on the scale which caused him to finger his neat brown beard and frown.
A breakthrough in the matter of Morton Lenigo? Rajudgment decreed that that was nonsensical. No immigration computer would conceivably issue Lenigo a visa after what he’d done in British cities like ManBirmingham and Cardiff. Nonetheless, for a reading which had been hovering in the middle forties for three years suddenly to jump into the high sixties was certainly a danger signal. And it would be a hell of a story if it turned into a story at all! He flagged it for intensive evaluation and reverted to the Gottschalks.
Yes, said his computers, the Gottschalks may very well be planning to dispense with Iron Mountain. They’ve been buying data-processing equipment in quantities too large to be explained away as tracking or range-finding systems.
Logical conclusion: if they were thinking of opting out of Iron Mountain the sale of one of their access codes would be an on-the-side fund-raising venture and they’d sit back and laugh like hyenas when the gullible purchaser found how he’d been cheated.
Sometimes I hate the Gottschalks, Flamen thought, not so much for what they are as for what they think other people are. Nobody likes being treated as a myidiot.