“How would we do that? You’re dead already. Everybody knows that. You died on Starrzelius Glacier; don’t you remember?” I struggled again, without results. “They’ll brainburn you,” I said. “Are you people crazy? Who wants to be brainburned?” The face said nonchalantly: “You’d be surprised.” And in an aside to somebody else: “Tell Hedy he’ll be ready soon.” Hands did something, there was a click, and I was helped to sit up. The skintight pulling at my joints told me it was a plasticocoon and that I might as well save my strength. There was no point to struggling. A buzzer buzzed and I was told sharply: “Keep a respectful tongue in your head, Courtenay. Mr. Taunton’s coming in.” B. J. Taunton lurched in, drunk. He looked just the way I had always seen him from afar at the speakers’ table in hundreds of banquets: florid, gross, overdressed-and drunk. He surveyed me, feet planted wide apart, hands on his hips, and swaying just a little. “Courtenay,” he said. “Too bad. You might have turned out to be something if you hadn’t cast your lot with that swindling son of a bitch Schocken. Too bad.” He was drunk, he was a disgrace to the profession, and he was responsible for crime after crime, but I couldn’t keep my respect for an entrepreneur out of my voice. “Sir,” I said evenly, “there must be some misunderstanding. There’s been no provocation of Taunton Associates to commercial murder-has there?” “Nope,” he said, tight-lipped and swaying slightly. “Not as the law considers it provocation. All that bastard Schocken did was steal my groundwork, take over my Senators, suborn my committee witnesses, and steal Venus from me!” His voice had risen to an abrupt shriek. In a normal voice he continued: “No; no provocation. He’s carefully refrained from killing any of my people. Shrewd Schocken; ethical Schocken; damned-fool Schocken!” he crooned. His glassy eyes glared at me: “You bastard!” he said. “Of all the low-down, lousy, unethical, cheap-jack stunts ever pulled on me, yours was the rottenest. /–“he thumped his chest, briefly threatening his balance. “/ figured out a way to commit a safe commercial murder, and you played possum like a scared yellow rat. You ran like a rabbit, you dog.” “Sir,” I said desperately, “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re driving at.” His years of boozing, I thought briefly, had finally caught up with him. The words he was uttering could only come from a wet brain.
He sat down unconcernedly; one of his men darted in and there was a chair seat to meet his broad rump in the nick of time. With an expansive gesture B. J. Taunton said to me: “Courtenay, I am essentially an artist.” The words popped out of me automatically: “Of course, Mr.-” I almost said “Schocken.” It was a well-conditioned reflex. “Of course, Mr. Taunton,” I said. “Essentially,” he brooded, “essentially an artist. A dreamer of dreams; a weaver of visions.” It gave me an uncanny sense of double vision. I seemed to see Fowler Schocken sitting there instead of his rival, the man who stood against everything that Fowler Schocken stood for. “I wanted Venus, Courtenay, and I shall have it. Schocken stole it from me, and I am going to repossess it. Fowler Schocken’s management of the Venus project will stink to high heaven. No rocket under Schocken’s management is ever going to get off the ground, if I have to corrupt every one of his underlings and kill every one of his section heads. For I am essentially an artist.” “Mr. Taunton,” I said steadily, “you can’t kill section heads as casually as all that. You’ll be brainburned. They’ll give you cerebrin. You can’t find anybody who’ll take the risk for you. Nobody wants twenty years in hell.” He said dreamily: “I got a mechanic to drop that ‘copter pod on you, didn’t I? I got an unemployable bum to plug at you through your apartment window, didn’t I? Unfortunately both missed. And then you crossed us up with that cowardly run-out on the glacier.” I didn’t say anything. The run-out on the glacier had been no idea of mine. God only knew whose idea it had been to have Run-stead club me, shanghai me, and leave a substitute corpse in my place. “You almost escaped,” Taunton mused. “If it hadn’t been for a few humble, loyal servants-a taxi-runner, a few others-we never would have had you back. But I have my tools, Courtenay. “They might be better, they might be worse, but it’s my destiny to dream dreams and weave visions. The greatness of an artist is in his simplicity, Courtenay. You say to me: ‘Nobody wants to be brainburned.’ That is because you are mediocre. / say: ‘Find somebody who wants to be brainburned and me him.’ That is because I am great.” “Wants to be brainburned,” I repeated stupidly. “Wants to be brainburned.”