phone, leaning back in her chair, looking across the room, relaxed, a doctor soothing a patient. It took only a few moments. But when it was all over she was entirely self-possessed. “Please go away,” she said, stubbing out her cigarette. “Not until you tell me when you’ll see me.” “I … haven’t time to see you, Mitch. I’m not your wife. You have no right to bother me like this. I could have you enjoined or arrested.” “My certificate’s on file,” I reminded her. “Mine isn’t. It never will be. As soon as the year is up, we’re through, Mitch.” “There was something I wanted to tell you.” Kathy had always been reachable through curiosity. There was a long pause and instead of saying again: “Please go away,” she said: “Well, what is it?” I said: “It’s something big. It calls for a celebration. And I’m not above using it as an excuse to see you for just a little while tonight. Please, Kathy-I love you very much and I promise not to make a scene.” “… No.” But she had hesitated. I said: “Please?” “Well-” While she was thinking, her phone rang. “All right,” she said to me. “Call me at home. Seven o’clock. Now let me take care of the sick people.” She picked up the phone. I let myself out of her office while she was talking, and she didn’t look after me. Fowler Schocken was hunched over his desk as I walked in, staring at the latest issue of Taunton ‘s Weekly. The magazine was blinking in full color as the triggered molecules of its inks collected photons by driblets and released them in bursts. He waved the brilliant pages at me and asked: “What do you think of this, Mitch?” “Sleazy advertising,” I said promptly. “If we had to stoop so low as to sponsor a magazine like Taunton Associates-well, I think I’d resign. It’s too cheap a trick.” “Um.” He put the magazine face down; the flashing inks gave one last burst and subsided as their light source was cut off. “Yes, it’s cheap,” he said thoughtfully. “But you have to give them credit for enterprise. Taunton gets sixteen and a half million readers for his ads every week. Nobody else’s–just Taunton clients. And I hope
you didn’t mean that literally about resigning. I just gave Harvey the go-ahead on Shock. The first issue comes out in the fall, with a print order of twenty million. No-” He mercifully held up his hand to cut off my stammering try at an explanation. “I understood what you meant, Mitch. You were against cheap advertising. And so am I. Taunton is to me the epitome of everything that keeps advertising from finding its rightful place with the clergy, medicine, and the bar in our way of life. There isn’t a shoddy trick he wouldn’t pull, from bribing a judge to stealing an employee. And, Mitch, he’s a man you’ll have to watch.” “Why? I mean, why particularly?” Schocken chuckled. “Because we stole Venus from him, that’s why. I told you he was enterprising. He had the same idea I did. It wasn’t easy to persuade the government that it should be our baby.” “I see,” I said. And I did. Our representative government now is perhaps more representative than it has ever been before in history. It is not necessarily representative per capita, but it most surely is ad valorem. If you like philosophical problems, here is one for you: should each human being’s vote register alike, as the lawbooks pretend and as some say the founders of our nation desired? Or should a vote be weighed according to the wisdom, the power, and the influence-that is, the money-of the voter? That is a philosophical problem for you, you understand; not for me. I am a prag-matist, and a pragmatist, moreover, on the payroll of Fowler Schocken. One thing was bothering me. “Won’t Taunton be likely to take- well, direct action?” “Oh, he’ll try to steal it back,” Fowler said mildly. “That’s not what I mean. You remember what happened with Antarctic Exploitation.” “I was there. A hundred and forty casualties on our side. God knows what they lost.” “And that was only one continent. Taunton takes these things pretty personally. If he started a feud for a lousy frozen continent, what will he do for a whole planet?” Fowler said patiently, “No, Mitch. He wouldn’t dare. Feuds are expensive. Besides, we’re not giving him grounds-not grounds that would stand up in court. And, in the third place . . . we’d whip his tail off.” “I guess so,” I said, and felt reassured. Believe me, I am a loyal