Surprised at my calm, I called the Metropolitan Protection Corporation. “Are you a subscriber, sir?” their operator asked. “Yes, dammit. For six years. Get a man over here! Get a squad over here.” “One moment, Mr. Courtenay. . . . Mr. Mitchell Courtenay? Copysmith, star class?” “No,” I said bitterly. “Target is my profession. Will you kindly get a man over here before the character who just took a shot at me comes back?” “Excuse me, Mr. Courtenay,” said the sweet, unruffled voice. “Did you say you were not a copysmith, star class?” I ground my teeth. “I’m star class,” I admitted. “Thank you, sir. I have your record before me, sir. I am sorry, sir, but your account is in arrears. We do not accept star-class accounts at the general rate because of the risk of industrial feuds, sir.” She named a figure that made each separate hair on my head stand on end. I didn’t blow my top; she was just a tool. “Thanks,” I said heavily, and rang off. I put the Program-Printing to Quarry Machinery reel of the Red Book into the reader and spun it to Protective Agencies. I got turndowns from three or four, but finally one sleepy-sounding private detective agreed to come on over for a stiff fee. He showed up in half an hour and I paid him, and all he did was annoy me with unanswerable questions and look for nonexistent fingerprints. After a while he went away saying he’d work on it. I went to bed and eventually to sleep with one of the unanswered questions chasing itself around and around in my head: who would want to shoot a simple, harmless advertising man like me?
four I took my courage in my hands and walked briskly down the hall to Fowler Schocken’s office. I needed an answer, and he might have it. He might also throw me out of the office for asking. But I needed an answer. It didn’t seem to be the best possible time to ask Fowler questions. Ahead of me, his door opened explosively and Tildy Mathis lurched out. Her face was working with emotion. She stared at me, but I’ll take oath she didn’t know my name. “Rewrites,” she said wildly. “I slave my heart out for that white-haired old rat, and what does he give me? Rewrites. ‘This is good copy, but I want better than good copy from you,’ he says. ‘Rewrite it,’ he says. ‘I want color,’ he says, ‘I want drive and beauty, and humble, human warmth, and ecstasy, and all the tender, sad emotion of your sweet womanly heart,’ he says, ‘and I want it in fifteen words.’ I’ll give him fifteen words,” she sobbed, and pushed past me down the hall. “I’ll give that sanctimonious, mellifluous, hyperbolic, paternalistic, star-making, genius-devouring Moloch of an old-” The slam of Tildy’s own door cut off the noun. I was sorry; it would have been a good noun. I cleared my throat, knocked once, and walked into Fowler’s office. There was no hint of his brush with Tildy in the smile he gave me. In fact, his pink, clear-eyed face belied my suspicions, but-I had been shot at. “I’ll only be a minute, Fowler,” I said. “I want to know whether you’ve been playing rough with Taunton Associates.” “I always play rough,” he twinkled. “Rough, but clean.”
“I mean very, very rough and very, very dirty. Have you, by any chance, tried to have any of their people shot?” “Mitch! Really!” “I’m asking,” I went on doggedly, “because last night a ‘copter-borne marksman tried to plug me when I came home. I can’t think of any angle except retaliation from Taunton.” “Scratch Taunton,” he said positively. I took a deep breath. “Fowler,” I said, “man-to-man, you haven’t been Notified? I may be out of line, but I’ve got to ask. It isn’t just me. It’s the Venus Project.” There were no apples in Fowler’s cheeks at that moment, and I could see in his eyes that my job and my star-class rating hung in the balance. He said: “Mitch, I made you star class because I thought you could handle the responsibilities that came with it. It isn’t just the work. I know you can do that. I thought you could live up to the commercial code as well.” I hung on. “Yes, sir,” I said. He sat down and lit a Starr. After just exactly the right split second of hesitation, he pushed the pack to me. “Mitch, you’re a youngster, only star class a short time. But you’ve got power. Five words from you, and in a matter of weeks or months half a million consumers will find their lives completely changed. That’s power, Mitch, absolute power. And you know the old saying. Power ennobles. Absolute power ennobles absolutely.” “Yes, sir,” I said. I knew all the old sayings. I also knew that he was going to answer my question eventually. “Ah, Mitch,” he said dreamily, waving his cigarette, “we have our prerogatives and our duties and our particular hazards. You can’t have one without the others. If we didn’t have feuds, the whole system of checks and balances would be thrown out of gear.” “Fowler,” I said, greatly daring, “you know I have no complaints about the system. It works; that’s all you have to say for it. I know we need feuds. And it stands to reason that if Taunton files a feud against us, you’ve got to live up to the code. You can’t broadcast the information; every executive in the shop would be diving for cover instead of getting work done. But-Venus Project is in my head, Fowler. I can handle it better that way. If I write everything down, it slows things up.” “Of course,” he said.