The Tomorrow File Read online

  I stopped at a government grogshop in the neighborhood and picked up four bottles of Bordeaux. The clerk swore—“On my mother’s grave”—the wine had been made from real grapes. I didn’t believe him for a minute. In the early 1980’s the multinational cartels had started buying up French vineyards. The prices of natural wines and brandies went so high that the only things left for most objects to drink came out of oil wells.

  In my office, I had Ellen Dawes get through to Phoebe Huntzinger at our Denver Field Office. It took almost fifteen minutes to locate Phoebe in Denver’s Computer Room. When she came on screen, she was wearing white paper coveralls. She looked her usual cool, imperturbable self.

  “Nick,” she said. “How are you? Checking up on me?”

  “Of course,” I said. “I thought you might have taken off for Rio. How are you, Phoebe? Any luck?”

  “A little. We’ve tuned the laser and boosted the amplification. The signal is stronger now, sharper, but preliminary tests still don’t show much more than they did before.”

  “Still no conceptions?”

  “No. Just sensations and inconclusive tests on simple words like ‘Go.’ ‘Come.’ ‘Walk.’ ‘Run.’ Things like that. Then we tried emotive words: ‘Cry.’ ‘Shout.’ ‘Frown.’ ‘Scream.’ ‘Smile.’ And so forth. A little progress there.”

  “Fine. I think you’re on the right track. Who's the Team Leader?”

  “An em named Stanley. That’s his last name. Peter Stanley. Know him?”

  “No. Good?”

  “Well. . . .He’s enthusiastic’.”

  “That helps. Is he around now?”

  “Just went out for coffee, Nick. Anything I can do?” “Phoebe, the problem there may not be the technology. It may be in the experimental objects. When Stanley gets back, suggest he try hallucinogens on the objects prior to test. Especially lysergic acid diethylamide. If it intensifies sensation the way the freaks claim, it may get a conception through to the computer.”

  “Wild idea,” she said.

  “Worth trying. Probably nothing, but you never can tell. If he’s short on hallucinogenic drugs, tell him to requisition more. I’ll approve.”

  “I’ll tell him, Nick. It’s nice out here. I profit from it.” “Don’t stay too long. You might not come back.”

  I was assigned a private serving em from the Maintenance Department to keep my penthouse in order. He was ordered to serve six hours a day, four days a week. I suspected he served about ten hours a week and watched TV the remainder of the time. It was cushy duty. Knowing the customs of the lower Public Service ranks, I supposed he had paid his ruler something for the assignment. In any event, my apartment was kept reasonably clean. I could detect no pilferage or search of my personal effects, so I was satisfied.

  The em, a bearded obso, was just going off duty when I arrived home. I gave him one of the bottles of wine I had purchased and told him not to come in on Saturday until after 1200. He asked no questions; the wine was answer enough.

  I undressed, slid into bed, napped until 1900. Then I rose, showered, pulled on a fresh summer-weight zipsuit. I wore no underwear. I switched on a music cassette—Vivaldi’s Four Seasons —opened one of the bottles of Bordeaux, and sampled it. It might not have been produced from grapes, but a clever chemist had compounded it; it was light, dry, with good body and bouquet. Only the acrid aftertaste betrayed its test-tube origins. I tried a drop or two on a plastowel. The stain washed out immediately. That was encouraging. I once performed a similar test with a “genuine grape Burgundy.” Not only was the stain indelible, but two hours later there was a hole in the towel.

  The air conditioning had been turned on full all day; the apartment was almost painfully cold. I stepped out onto the terrace, sliding the thermopane door closed behind me. I wandered around to the west side. The setting sun looked like a human ovum.

  It was a hot July evening, the atmosphere supersaturated, the air smelling distinctly of sulphur. There had been an inversion layer over much of GPA-1 for the past two days; objects doing outdoor service wore masks over nose and mouth, glared at the murky sky with red-rimmed eyes. I went back into the chilled interior thankfully. It might smell of Freon, but it was better than breathing smoke, ash, soot, hydrogen chloride, carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, and air that had been filtered through too many lungs before it was my turn.

  Paul Bumford arrived promptly at 2030.1 poured him a glass of wine. I noted he was wearing a minimum of makeup.

  "Let’s go out on the terrace for a moment," I said. "I hate to do this to you; it’s brutal out there. But I want you to see the sunset. The one advantage of air pollution; magnificent sunrises and sunsets.”

  We stood at the rail, watching the sun slowly stop. I talked rapidly in a low voice. I recounted my San Diego conversation and the call to Phoebe Huntzinger.

  “That Denver project is one possibility for increased use of hallucinogens,” I explained. “Tonight, when the efs are here, I’m going to bring up the subject of the Ultimate Pleasure pill. We’ll discuss methods of development. Follow my lead. Volunteer nothing.. Let one of them suggest a hallucinogenic approach. Compute?”

  “Yes. But aren’t we going at this ass-backward? We don’t have the factory yet.”

  “We will,” I said. “Scilla or some other. While we’re serving on the factory, we’ve got to plan increased need for LSD, mescaline, and all the rest. Check your files of ongoing projects, and see what you can do. On Tuesday, you’ll have to go to San Diego with me. A perfect cover: I’m taking you out to meet the Field Office objects and familiarize you with their service. All right?” “Fine.”

  “I'll make the arrangements. We’ll take the courier flight out Tuesday morning. I’ll come back Wednesday morning. You stay on a day or two, serving with the FO. I’ll see Hawkley on Tuesday afternoon. I’m taking civilian clothes, but all you’ll need are zip-suits.”

  “Going to use your real name, Nick?”

  “Have to. Sooner or later I’ll have to identify myself and sign papers. We can’t afford the dangers of a fiddled BIN card. Besides, the Field Office is in San Diego, and my father has a factory out there. There must be a hundred objects in that city who know me by sight. Too risky to forge a new identity. I’ll chance it.”

  “How will Hawkley contact you?”

  “On Monday I’ll go uptown and lease a mailing address, or desk space—whatever it takes. If I have to show my BIN card, I will. But if I pay in advance, I doubt if they’ll want identification. See any flaws?”

  He pondered a moment.

  “What if Hawkley doesn’t go for it?”

  “Then I’ll stay on another day, or until I find a sharp attorney who can handle it all and keep me hidden.”

  “Nick, you’re taking all the risk. I’m not doing anything.” “Oh, but you will,” I assured him. “You will, indeed. If the deal goes through, you may have to pay a visit to Scilla. You’ll have good cover: You’re checking the facilities of your suppliers. And while you were visiting the DIVRAD Field Office, you thought you’d stop by and say hello, and so forth, and so forth. But all that’s futuristic. Right now, the important thing is to get control of that factory and build up its sales. Let’s go back in; I’m beginning to sweat.” .

  “You said you had something for the Tomorrow File. Can you talk about it inside?”

  “Good point. No, I’ll give it to you now. This morning I had a long meet with DIVLAW. They want to draw up an official position paper on how inheritance should be handled in all methods of reproduction. You’re familiar with the problems?”

  “Yes.”

  “Incredibly complex. No precedents in litigation. DIVLAW’s solution is fragmentary, a hodgepodge. No solution at all. How’s this for the Tomorrow File; All created objects, all objects, regardless of reproductive technology, become wards of the state. No orphans. No bastards. No daughters. No sons. All objects created have legal equality. The government acts in loco parentis. And inherits all. Well?”
/>   “Nick? Are you serious? No inheritance? No family at all? It would take a century of conditioning.”

  “It could be done in less,” I said. “The difficulty isn’t liquidation of the family as a social unit. That’s been going on for generations. The sticking point is individual motivation. If an object was prevented by law from bequeathing love to heirs, would the object lose desire to amass it?”

  “You mean, how would government inheritability affect the profit motive?”

  “Well . . . call it the acquisition drive. A desire to succeed in a capitalistic society. That’s the problem.”

  “Nick, answer me one thing?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Do you have a plan?”

  “A plan?”

  “A design. A coherent view of the future. The suggestions you’ve made recently for the Tomorrow File seem to fit a pattern. I can’t visualize it. But I sense something there.”

  I was startled. Exactly what I had thought about Lewisohn's ideas that morning. Paul was no fool. This needed thought, review of my own suggestions, long and careful computation to determine if synthesis was possible. And if it was, would my plan and Lewisohn’s be complementary or antithetical? It was interesting. “I have no plan, ” I said shortly. “Let’s go inside and cool off.

  Mary Margaret Bergstrom was a husky ef, solid as a stump, and as shapely. Her face reflected nothing of her intelligence. Features heavy and coarse. Complexion sallow. I looked in vain for animation. The eyes were, if anything, wary. She seemed to have suffered, in the past, some awful hurt, and was determined not to risk pain again. But perhaps I was romanticizing. It was quite possible she was simply overconditioned. It was happening frequently with younger scientists: pure objectivity and complete incapacity to make value judgments.

  I courted her while Paul and Maya Leighton inspected my cassette library. I lighted Mary’s cannabis cigarette, kept her wine glass filled, strove desperately to find a subject, other than our service, that might rouse her. I found it by accident when I congratulated her on hitting the national lottery for one thousand new dollars.

  Within minutes we were having a lively discussion on gambling —odds, horse vs. dog racing, soccer vs. j'ai alai, roulette vs. Chemin de fer, poker vs. gin rummy, and the mathematical possibilities of winning at the daily numbers drawing. Maya and Paul joined us; talked quickened, gestures became more vigorous. I opened the second bottle of wine.

  At this point in time, the US Government, in addition to sole ownership of the nation’s grogshops, also sponsored lotteries and operated a nationwide chain of betting parlors. All gambling was legalized in 1983, and prostitution a year later. Casinos and bordellos were now as much a part of government activities as day-care centers and veterans’ hospitals. The income from bets on sporting events alone was sufficient to reduce the personal contribution rate (formerly the income tax rate) by 5 percent.

  I discovered that Mary Bergstrom was an addicted gambler. I wondered if Paul had been aware of it. If so, why hadn’t he told me? Mary’s knowledge of odds, spreads, points, combinations, and all the other details of wagering was encyclopedic. We listened, fascinated, while she described a system of winning at roulette she was devising with the help of a King Mk. IV computer. We resolved to make a visit, en masse, to the Central Park Casino as soon as Mary’s system was perfected.

  Then our conversation became more general. I drew them into a gossipy discussion of personalities in SATSEC, who was using whom, what marriages were planned, divorces scheduled. My news that Pomfret Wingate was to play the lead in a nude perform1 ance of King Lear sent the efs into almost hysterical laughter.

  “Well”—Paul shrugged—“if it gives him pleasure, why deny him?”

  “And speaking of pleasure,” I said, rising to turn off the cassette player, “here’s a puzzle for you all. What is the greatest pleasure, the ultimate pleasure, a human object can know? Paul?” “Physical orgasm,” he said promptly.

  “Mary?”

  “Gambling,” she said. “And music.”

  “Maya?”

  She was a queenly ef, almost as tall as I. Soon after entering my apartment, she had taken clips from her coiled red hair and let it tumble down her back, to her waist. Her official zipsuit had obviously been altered to display her body to advantage: wide shoulders and hips, narrow waist, long legs.

  She had enormous hazel eyes, generous mouth, impudent smile. Her eye shadow was mauve, the false lashes extraordinarily thick. Her ears bore huge clamp rings, not on the lobes but on the pinna. A tooty fashion. Her zipper was pulled low enough to exhibit cleavage. She wore a black velvet mouche, star-shaped, on the upper, shiny bulge of the right breast.

  When I spoke her name, asking her the ultimate pleasure a human object could know, she raised her leonine head slowly in a cloud of cannabis smoke and looked at me mockingly.

  “The greatest pleasure?” she said. ^Almost any pleasure if you surrender to it completely.”

  “Now that is interesting,” I said, “because—

  “Wait a minute, Nick,” she said. I think she was smiling. “We’ve answered. Now it’s your turn. What do you think is the ultimate pleasure?”

  “That’s easy,’' I said. “Danger.”

  “Physical danger?” Mary asked.

  “Possibly. Perhaps a better word would be peril.”

  I believe I lied successfully.

  Then we were all talking at once. We smoked up a storm, finished the wine, started on petrovod and petronac. The conversation bubbled, ebbed, exploded anew: sex, cannabis, alcohol, drugs, art, music, gambling, danger, dancing, crime—which might be the most pleasurable?

  “All in all,” I said finally, “you pays your love and you takes your choice. Too bad we can’t come up with something to intensify the pleasure of the means we select.”

  “Drugs can do that,’’Mary said. “Or so it’s said. I’ve never tried them.”

  “Drugs?”

  “Hallucinogens,” Maya said.

  “That’s an idea I hadn’t thought of,” I said slowly. “Paul, we might consider that.” ,

  “What’s this all about?” Mary Bergstrom asked.

  “Paul and I were discussing the possibility of developing a pleasure pill, the Ultimate Pleasure pill, the UP. Then we realized we couldn’t start until we knew what we were looking for. What is the Ultimate Pleasure? There are four of us here. We have at least four different answers.”

  The efs were interested now, leaning forward intently.

  “I still think it could be done,” I said. “Hallucinogens would certainly be one line of approach. Paul, this is DIVRAD’s service. Why don’t you and Mary and Maya try to come up with a plan, a system of attack. What are the immediate goals? Intermediate? Final? How many servers will we need? What specialties? How large a budget? Should we try it here or farm it out to a Field Office? Or is it so big and complex that we need several teams working on it in several places? Could you do that?”

  “Of course,” Paul said. “The first target, obviously, is a basic conception of what we’re looking for. Mary?”

  “It could be physiological,” she said slowly. “Or emotional. Or mental.”

  “Or something even deeper,” Maya said.

  “Deeper?” I said. “Instinctive.”

  “Perhaps,” she said. “Something like that.”

  Paul and Mary started discussing how they might begin to outline a plan of attack on the problem.

  “Maya,” I said, “come on into the kitchen and help me make some coffee.”

  “Real coffee?” she asked.

  “Close enough,” I said. “After another petronac and another Bold, you won’t know the difference.”

  She laughed and followed me into the kitchen. I asked her to leave with the others and then return a half-hour later.

  “All righty,” she said blithely.

  It didn’t seem to make any difference to her.

  After they all left I switched the air c
onditioners to exhaust and got rid of the cannabis smoke. I cleaned up the living room, stacking plastiglasses and ashtrays in the sink. I washed my face with cold water. Gradually the buzzing in my brain dulled to a pleasant drone. I stood erect, closed my eyes, lifted my arms sideways and attempted to touch forefingers over my head. I didn’t miss by much.

  I might have been reasonably sober, but Maya Leighton was still flying when she came back. She strode in, kicked off her sandals in the living room, and was in the darkened bedroom before I got the front door locked. I left one lamp on, then followed her into the bedroom. Her zipsuit lay in a crumpled heap near the bed. I picked it up, shook it out, draped it over a chairback.

  “Sleepy?” I asked.

  “Far from it.”

  Her voice was full, musical, but not as confident as she intended. A slight tremor there. I looked at her, the bed dimly visible in nightlight from the undraped windows. She stared back at me, eyes enormous and black. Glistening. The huge earrings lay on the bedside table.

  “What is that on your left thigh?” I asked.

  “A tattoo,” she said.

  “A tattoo of what?”

  “A scarab,” she said.

  “Scarab? That’s a dung beetle.”

  “Yes. A dung beetle. Bite it.”

  I bit it.

  She was lying on her right leg, hip, shoulder. Head pillowed. Hair flung. A lush Circe. Her body was more than baroque. There was extravagant opulence. It came perilously close to being a caricature of an ef’s body.

  There was a bursting heat in her. Almost feverish. Eyes halfclosed, glimmering. Mouth half-open in a pant. But she was conscious and aware. She did not surrender, as Lydia Ferguson had, to her own sensuality. But to my demands. A fine point, but significant.

  I used her. Or did she use me? I knew my motive. It was, I thought, more devious than hers. But still. . . .

  She seemed hypersensitive. I suspected drugs, but could taste nothing on her lips or tongue but sweet saliva.

  I used her painfully, but I could not daunt her. I had to know, you see. I left bruises and the marks of teeth on that tumescent flesh. She did not object or cry out. But opened herself to me, urging on the night.