THREE
Thor peeled the top from a self-heating plastic can of coffee, He pressed the colored patches on the side of the can and artificial milk and sweetener were injected into the steaming liquid. He sipped for a while, planning out his day. He had considered using this time to catch up on contemporary news broadcasting. For the last few years, he had subscribed to a prestigious printout service in lieu of watching the holos.
Fu had intrigued him, though. He decided to look into the study he had bought. He fed the crystal in its holder into the slot of the holo set and sat back. After a brief title sequence, Fu appeared, considerably changed from the way Thor had seen him the day before.
Fu's hair was tied neatly back and he wore the long, formal robe of a Confucian scholar. His face was lightly made up to resemble that of a much older man and he wore artificial, three-inch fingernails. His skullcap was crowned with a coral button and a red tassel and as he appeared he was writing on a paper scroll with a brush dipped in vermilion ink. The table and chair were massive, garish, tasteless Manchu Dynasty pieces, heavily lacquered and deliberately chosen to offset the studied elegance of his dress and bearing. He was sitting in a courtyard and behind him was a spectacular view of the fantastic mountains of the Li river valley, stripped of their ugly twenty-first-century accretions.
Except for Fu and his costume, of course, it was all a computer generation. Actually, everything in the picture, down to the artificial lines in Fu's face, could have been produced by com-gen, but Thor doubted that the student could afford the complete process. In reality, he was sitting in an empty, all-blue studio and even his shadow on the tabletop was faked. The illusion, though, was flawless. It was decades since computer imaging had been in any way distinguishable from reality.
Fu glanced up from his scroll. "The time to begin is not now but at the beginning. Popular attitudes towards manned space exploration and settlement are inseparable from the actual developments." The voice was deeper and more resonant than Fu's actual speaking voice. "Therefore, let us return to the beginning of this century, when the first, faltering steps into space gave way to the rapid emigration and settlement which persists to this day."
The view moved past Fu, off the terrace, and towards the mountains. The point of view angled upward and moved towards the clouds, as if the holocamera were mounted in the nose of a rocket. The clouds flashed past and the sky darkened. Stars appeared. The point of view swiveled and now the viewer was looking back toward Earth. "More than a half-century ago," Fu's voice narrated, "the continuous-boost ion drive space vessel made its first appearance in the still mysterious and controversial joint U.S.-Soviet manned mission to a comet. U.S. records of that incident are still under seal and shall remain so until the next century. Whatever the actual circumstances of that mission, it ushered in the era of practical exploitation of interplanetary resources.
"Even with the initially available continuous acceleration rate of some point oh-one gee, or one-hundredth of the gravitational acceleration at the surface of the Earth, one could reach Mars and return within a few months. The size of the Solar System all the way to Saturn became comparable, in travel time, to that of the globe to European mariners of the sixteenth century." From the Earth, spectral figures of wooden ships, sails billowing as in a Holbein painting, began to spiral outward.
"This early stage was adequate for exploration. Carefully-chosen crews were picked for emotional stability to endure the long, dull stretches of voyage time. Although the time frames were similar, these explorers could make their crossings in far greater comfort and far less danger than those early mariners."
The ghostlike sailing ships were transformed to solid images of early exploration vessels with their chaotic shapes made up of boxes, spheres and tubes, bristling with spikes and knobs. "Within a few years, the compact nuclear fission engine was perfected. At last, real exploitation and settlement of the solar system was a paying proposition." The perspective changed to a compressed solar system, with lights blossoming on Luna and Mars, then bright, circling dots as artificial colonies were built in orbit, then random lights among the asteroids. Last of all, small lights sprung up on the Jovian and Saturnian satellites.
"Early expeditions were all sponsored by the governments of the technologically-advanced nations, led by the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. and closely followed by the Western European Consortium and Japan. As soon as the cost of space ships became low enough through mass production, giant private industries in the capitalist world began their ventures. When discarded spaceships, abandoned on the Moon or in orbit for economical or other reasons, became available for bargain prices, private entrepreneurs and special interest groups pooled their resources, bought ships and joined in the high adventure." Thousands of bright dots burst from Earth and sped to various destinations within the solar system.
"And adventure it was, since the second-hand ships, many of them decades old by that time, were not nearly as reliable or as safe as they had been in government service. Many of the early second-stage expeditions simply were never heard from after leaving Earth or Lunar orbit. That grim fact didn't slow the tide. Religious and political splinter groups left Earth by hundreds, fleeing political repression or moral contamination, or just looking for a good place to practice their way of life without interference or distraction. Many of these early ventures based themselves on the various satellites, but these remained dependent upon Earth for many essentials. When it was established that some asteroids were rich in hydrocarbons, quasi-self-supporting island colonies became a practical proposition." Now lights were leaving the Moon, Mars and many satellites, headed for the Belt between Mars and Jupiter.
"Concurrent with these developments was the perfection of the long-anticipated medium of holographic reproduction. With its unprecedented apparent realism, it was a quantum jump in communication technology, as superior to television as television had been to rock-painting. I say apparent realism because the holographic medium, coupled with the concurrently-developed technology of computer imaging, is able to present images of such detail and such apparent solidity that an effect of incredible realism is achieved, even though the subject may be entirely imaginary. For instance, the image of the solar system you see now looks quite realistic, whereas in reality it is as stylized as an Egyptian hieroglyphic.
"Because of this spurious impression of realism, there is a tendency among the mass audience to accept anything they see in the holos as fact. This was not lost upon the propagandists of the time. In democratic nations, there was a rush of legislation to prevent seekers of public office from using computer-enhanced holos to present a deceitful image, but these measures were almost universally struck down on grounds of interfering with rights of free speech. Ancient political hacks began appearing on holovision with young, handsome faces, perfect physiques and resonant, confidence-inspiring voices, just as your humble presentor has used the same technology to present an older and more dignified appearance than he is entitled to by nature, along with a similarly melifluous voice." The image returned to Fu in his mandarin getup and fairytale surroundings. He gestured with his long-nailed hands toward his environment. "All of this is illusion. I am illusion. And thus, holovision has become the most potent tool for controlling the mass perception of reality ever to fall into the hands of propagandists.
"By the nineteenth century the importance of the popular media in gaining mass support for government policies had been recognized. By the twentieth, every totalitarian regime made total state control of all means of information dissemination a priority, second only to control of the military. The systematic use of popular media for purposes of opinion control was first codified by Dr. Joseph Goebbels of the notorious Third Reich, who said—" Abruptly and repulsively, Fu's image was transformed into that of a ferret-faced little man in a brown, outdated uniform. In a heavy, Teutonic accent, Goebbels said: "The mass mind is far more primitive than most of us can imagine." Goebbels melted and coalesced into Fu once more.
"This contempt for the mass audience has infused every aspect of media manipulation from Goebbels's day to this. Early surveys conducted by marketers for purposes of advertising indicated that the most effective approach to advertising on television was to aim at the reasoning power and attention span of the mind of an eight-year-old child. The result indicated, more than anything else, an exceedingly low opinion of the eight-year-old mind.
"To the vast majority of world inhabitants, however, holovision was not a propaganda tool, but entertainment. With the profusion of satellite communications systems and low-cost holovision sets manufactured in Third world sweatshops, this mass medium became truly worldwide. Only in nations like the U.S.S R. and many of the Islamic states, which had jamming facilities, were the effects of worldwide holo programming diminished.
"The inhabitants of Zimbabwe became samurai-adventure addicts while those of Lima thrilled to American westerns. Above all, the populace of the poorer sections of the world found in these three-dimensional fantasies escape from the drudgery of their lives. The propaganda value of even these unreal, popular fantasies had long been known, but it had been manipulated mainly for commercial purposes. In the democratic societies, it was all but impossible to gain control of these popular media save through subversion. There were limited sanctions imposed worldwide, as when the Islamic bloc pressured the U.N. Media Affairs Committee to pass a ban on internationally-broadcast pornography, since there was a possibility that pirate booster stations might be set up in their countries and their people contaminated by access to such entertainment. The suppression of pornography was successful since there was already much agitation in the West against it. Other Islamic demands were ignored, such as a ban on images of pigs or unveiled women.
"However, the precedent made it possible to enforce other sanctions on holographic broadcasting as various pressure groups sought to force their standards into law. By tacking a rider onto the anti-pornography rule, for instance, religious fundamentalists managed to ban a great deal of formerly common language which they deemed indecent. Other groups followed suit, with varying degrees of success.
"It is, however, the use of popular entertainment programming to influence public attitudes toward manned space settlement and exploration that concerns us here. With this background in mind, let's look at the early years of holographic programming as it paralleled the expansion of man into space. ''
Thor switched the set off All that just as a prologue? Fu hadn't been kidding when he said he'd put a lot of work into it. He got another coffee, resumed his seat and switched the set back on. The next few hours were somewhat reminiscent of his informal survey of the day before, but with far more depth and scholarship. Fu's study involved not only the programs themselves, but also their sponsors, the political connections of their owners, the guild affiliations of the writers.
About halfway through, Thor began making connections. As the spacer-hostile programming of the last few years proliferated, the same connection appeared again and again. It was something Fu had missed, because he wasn't a student of corporate systems and practices. Neither was Thor, for that matter, but this struck close to him. At first he couldn't believe it. It had to be a coincidence. By the end of Fu's presentation, he had to accept the truth of his first hunch.
The minute the recording ended, Thor keyed Fu's code, hoping he would catch him at home. Fu's apartment appeared and the screen panned to a console where Fu sat, his fingers dancing across a keyboard. He looked up and grinned. "Wasn't expecting to see you again so soon. What's up?"
"We have to talk. Do you have a few minutes?"
"Sure," Fu said, puzzlement in his voice. He picked up a cushion and dropped it to the floor, then sat on it crosslegged. The two young men sat almost knee-to-knee. Except for being unable to touch, they might as well have been sitting in the same room.
"I just finished with your presentation," Thor said.
"All of it today? Figure you got your money's worth?"
"Great work. But I spotted something you didn't."
Fu frowned. "Didn't think I could've missed much."
"It's not something you'd have been likely to spot. I've found a thread tying all of this stuff together, going right back to the beginnings of the hostile programming, five years ago."
Fu grinned again. "Hot damn! I love conspiracies. What is it? Closet Earth Firsters among the producers? I checked into that, but it didn't seem to pan out."
"This is something so weird I couldn't believe it at first. The first of the hostile shows was Defenders of Earth. Do you remember who the sponsor was?"
Fu's brows knit in thought. "Some dogfood company. Purina?"
"No, it was Petcuisine, a brand marketed by Mid-America Feed and Grain, Inc."
"No connection yet," Fu said. "Elucidate."
"M-A Feed & Grain is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Space Technologies, Inc, which is a McNaughton enterprise."
"How does the McNaughton cartel happen to own a grain firm?"
"They did it back when the first hydrocarbon-rich asteroids were discovered. McNaughton wanted to have a lock on developing new high-grade fertilizers and developing new strains of grain to adapt to Ell-Five, lunar and Martian conditions. They figured the easiest way was to have their own grain company and the quickest way was to buy one that was already there. They picked up a faltering firm at a bargain price, pumped new capital into it, and made it pay for itself while they built their labs and did their research. Like most feed and grain firms, M-A ran a sideline in livestock and pet food."
"Not all of those shows are sponsored by dogfoods," Fu said.
"No, but the story's still the same. Asteroid is sponsored by Domestic Robots, Inc., which is owned by Space Technologies, Inc., which is a McNaughton firm. Space Cop is sponsored by Atlas Cleaning Products, a subsidiary of Eurochemical, which is owned by guess who. It goes all the way through this. Every last show in the first three years of hostile programming was sponsored by a McNaughton subsidiary. Now that's no longer true, because the trend has been set and everybody's leaping on the bandwagon."
Fu smiled like a saint who has just been granted beatific vision. "Boy, I can see I'm going to have to make some real changes in this study before I use it in my thesis! There's one real flaw in all this, though."
"I know," Thor said. "Why the hell would the world's biggest space exploitation company want to torpedo the whole idea of manned settlement of space? They're cutting their own throats."
"Obviously," Fu said, "we're working from incomplete data. There's a factor or factors that're not in our calculations. It could well be that the answers are not to be had here. It might involve the politico-economic situation in the offworld settlements."
"That could well be," Thor admitted. "In any case, I'm going to put a few people onto this and see what I can turn up. Do you have pretty good connections in the professional holo community?"
"I know some people," Fu said. "What do you need?"
"I'm wondering about the Media Writers' Guild. The producers only worry about money and schedules, the studios are interested only in audience share and profit margin but somebody has to write this stuff. If I was looking to get control of what people see in the holos, the writers' guild is the first place I'd try to control. Maybe the directors' guild, too."
"I'll get on it," Fu said. "I won't even charge you for the service."
"If you need money to buy information, let me know," Thor said. Fu signed off and Thor keyed a limited-access number he had never used before. He hoped Bob was at home and not out terrorizing New Jersey or something.
Bob was standing behind a rough wooden table with a motorcycle engine in pieces before him. He looked up irritably, then smiled. "Thor! Wasn't expecting to hear from you. Where are you?"
"L.A. Bob, I'm sending you a study on holoprogramming and I want to tell you about what I've been up to. Sorry to be so abrupt, but I think this is important."
"Send it over," Bob said. He disappeared from range while he fed a crystal-carrier into his set, then he returned. "Now, let's hear it."
Briefly, Thor told his story. Bob looked uncharacteristically somber during the recitation. "I must say," he said, when Thor was finished, "when you decide to rejoin the world, you don't waste time. This looks even worse than I'd feared. The change in attitude in pop holos I already knew about. I didn't think that it was some kind of plot, for Chrissake. I sure as hell didn't think that McNaughton was behind it. Damn!" He filmed for a while. "I told you you'd been out of touch. I've been worse. All this has been going on under my nose and I should've known about it. I'm going to have to do some digging."
"Bob," Thor said, "don't go in blustering and shooting your mouth off. I have a bad feeling about this."
Bob smiled frostily. "I didn't get to be this old by being careless. I'm sorry now that I made such a scene at the party. They'll be watching me. Believe me, Thor, where sex, money or politics are involved, people won't hesitate to kill you. The only thing missing here is sex and it may turn up yet. I'll be busy, but I'll keep a low profile. I have a controlling interest in one or two security agencies, you know. I'll put some people to work. Send me the code for your friend Fu. He sounds like somebody I should get to know. Us pro-spacers may have to go underground soon, and it's not too early to start setting up an organizational apparatus."
"You think it's coming that quick?" Thor asked.
"These people have been at work on this for a long time," Bob said grimly. "You've seen for yourself how far back it goes. They'll make their moves very quickly now that they're in the open. I think it's time for you to see my buddy Swenson. Catch a flight for Montana later today. I'll tell him you're coming."
"Montana?" Thor said. That was cowboys-and-Indians country, never developed beyond the agricultural stage even in this century.
"Yep. He runs a field station there. Protects endangered species of birds."
"Birds?" Thor was flabbergasted. "Tell me more."
The station was tucked into a cleft in the high mountains where the winter's snow still lingered. As the hired rotocraft settled onto the little meadow before the station, the door swung open and a man emerged. Thor had expected someone of Bob's generation and was surprised to see that Swenson was little older than himself. He was a vision from another century, dressed in jeans and plaid lumberjack shirt, with loggers boots and a stetson hat. He waved and Thor climbed from the rented vehicle. They shook hands and Thor took a deep breath of the thin, mountain air. It was a change from L.A.'s sea-level air and smelled much cleaner.
"Come on inside, Mr. Taggart," Swenson said. "From what Bob said to me, we have a lot to talk about."
As they walked toward the station, an unpretentious prefab building, Thor spotted a small bird perched in a nearby pine. It had a striking blue head and red beak. "I never saw one like that around Denver," he said, indicating the bird.
"Not likely you would have," Swenson said. He had a trace of Norwegian accent. "That one's from the Peruvian Andes. It likes the altitude here. The wildlife up there has been dying off fast, since the Amazon basin industrialized. I'm not sure how long the air up here will stay clean, though."
"I thought North American air had been clean for years," Thor said.
"That's a popular misconception," the young man answered. "What got cleaned up was low-level urban air. And only in the first world countries. It's destructively polluted in South and Central America, and in much of Africa and Asia. And pollution isn't the worst of it. The deforestation of the Amazon basin has cut into the oxygen supply."
"I've been hearing about that for years," Thor admitted as he passed through the door. "I thought it was mostly alarmist talk."
"Not any more. Oxygen levels are dropping dangerously worldwide. Even here in the U.S. agriculture is no longer profitable at some higher elevations The air's getting too thin to breathe. Can I get you some coffee?"
"Thanks." Thor looked around the little building. It was as plain and Spartan as a Ranger station, and he got the impression that Swenson spent little time indoors. There was a bunk, a table with two chairs, cooking equipment, a holoset and little else. Swenson set a pot of water on a heater. It seemed that he actually brewed his own coffee. They took seats at opposite sides of the table.
"Bob Ciano tells me," Swenson began, "that you're having some problems with the government that I may be able to help you with."
"That's the case. Did he tell you anything about the nature of my difficulties?"
"Just that you want to emigrate and that it now looks as if all your earthside assets could be seized."
"Right. He tells me that your foundation is in serious financial trouble. It seems we have a community of interest. Over the next few weeks, I'd like to funnel several hundred million into your foundation. Your share of the total sum is fifteen percent."
"You're being awfully trusting. How do you know I wouldn't just take all of it?"
"Bob trusts you, and I trust his judgment. And, to be truthful, I don't have many options. My financial skills aren't the best and I have very little time."
Swenson got up and checked on the coffee. He returned to the table with two thick, old-fashioned china mugs. "What about the interest?"
"I'm not sure when I'll be calling that money back in. Any interest it earns in the meantime we split fifty-fifty."
Swenson thought for a moment. "You're talking about an awfully large contribution to my little foundation here. I can spread it out among some others. That way it'll do a lot more good here and look less suspicious."
"Fine," Thor said. "The more holes it's hidden in, the harder it'll be to trace. Once I'm established offworld, I intend to set up another charitable foundation. When I send you word, you're to transfer the funds, minus your percentage, to the new fund. That should keep you in the clear should the feds come nosing around."
"As long as my foundation and I are in the clear, it sounds good," Swenson said.
"There should be no problem. I'm under no suspicion at the moment. By the time the Council suspects that I've emigrated for good, the money should be safely out of your hands and you're clean. You just transferred a donation from one charitable account to another. Maybe this way I can salvage some of my inheritance and we can save a few birds in the meantime." The two men shook hands.