“I’ll consider it very seriously,” Flamen said. “Can you let me have some documentation, perhaps? I ought to know something about him before committing myself.”
“I’ll make sure it’s sent to you within an hour,” Reedbeamed. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am, Mr. Flamen! I’ve been looking for a way to secure his refor ages. It simply isn’t fair to-Oh.” His smile vanished. “I guess there’s one point I forgot to mention. He’s a kneeblank.”
There was a long silence. During it, Flamen was acuteaware of Diablo’s dark eyes on him.
“That’s irrelevant,” he said at last. “I’d be concerned about two things if I agreed to your proposal: his sanity, and his usefulness to my company. It does so happen that we have a short-term vacancy for an electronicist, and I guess if he’s as good as you tell me he’ll suit us fine. So send me that documentation and I’ll call you back. Okay?”
“Definitely okay,” Reedeth said warmly and cut the connection.
Flamen leaned back, scowling at Prior. “So my dear wife doesn’t care to be discharged into my care!” he grunted. Prior bridled
“Matthew, I really do think you’re embarrassing-ah-Diablo here by discussing these very private subjects!”
“Yesterday it was a pythoness, today it’s a spoolpi-hell, Lionel, there are some people you don’t try and keep secrets from because you can’t survive in either line of business unless you know how to keep your mouth shut! I’ll bet Diablo knew about Celia’s trouble anyway, didn’t you?” he concluded, turning to the kneeblank.
“Ladromide,” Diablo said after a pause. “I thought of using it to pin a program on. Slant would have been here’s this alleged disciple of the hard cold truth who drove his wife into a world of illusions. I watched your show for a week while I was making up my mind, and decided in the end it was worth having you around on the public scene whatever the hell had gone wrong priHe looked and sounded uncomfortable, as though he were not used to praising people.
Flamen laughed. “That was a narrow escape,” he said. “I’ve seen what happened to one or two of the targets you’ve used. What’s your score on sassies up to now?”
“On-what?”
“Sassies. Suicides After Spoolpigeon Investigation.”
“Oh. We call them eewoes. Easy way out.” Diablo cogitated. “I guess around forty,” he said at last. “I don’t keep tally, though.”
“Really?” Prior said, impressed. “Ours isn’t much over half that.”
Diablo looked at him, then at Flamen again. Deliberately fixing the latter with his dark stern gaze, he said, “I could suggest a reason. Blanks are harder to make feel deep-down guilty.”
“I don’t think I like your tone of voice,” Prior said frigidly.
“I don’t think I much like gauging the success of a vushow by the number of deaths it’s caused,” Diablo answered. “That evens it.”
“Freeze it,” Flamen snapped. “I mean both of you! Diablo’s a stranger, Lionel, and there are things they feel differently about in places like Blackbury. I look forward to working with our new colleague because having him around is going to sharpen my wits. I’ve been getting stale. Maybe I should try a twelve-hour day too, see if that gets my imagination back in shape. But right now I have some loose ends to tie up, and so have you. Suppose you arrange for Diablo to have his own area of the office-move some walls around a bit, have a comweb put in, anything that’s necessary. And arrange to go pick up Celia, too.”
“As you say,” Prior muttered, rising and heading for the door.
On the threshold, poised to follow him, Diablo hesiand glanced back.
“Say-uh-Flamen! I didn’t mean to make like an uppity nigra, you know. When I think what you could do to pillory us knees with that equipment”-he jerked his head-“I’m kind of surprised at your restraint.”
“Oh, sure,” Flamen said indifferently. “I could show Mayor Black like in bed with three blank girls, or the Detroit city council in a daisy-chain around the comtable, detail correct down to the pubic hair. But that’s not what it’s for. It’s for things that rate an eighty-plus probability reading, and up.”