Advanced Mythology (10 page)

“Could it be another creature?” Enoch asked, raising his eyebrows.

“How would we know?” Holl replied. “We’ve spent all our years trying to avoid other beings. I’m not certain we’d recognize the evidence if it was here.”

“Could it be the Earth herself? We’ve always tried to live in harmony with nature, but I was so small when we last lived on our own I don’t know what it should feel like.”

“I couldn’t know,” Holl said. “I was born in Gillington Library. I’ve never lived elsewhere. But I will say there’s nothing in the shape of the burn that corresponds with the shape of the Earth’s energies here.” Holl touched the wall once more. He felt nothing but the coolness of fieldstone and concrete and the hum of the spell. “We’ll just have to wait until the next incursion, and hope we can catch whatever it is while it’s happening.”

Enoch looked toward the stairs and let out a snort. “They’ll not like ‘wait and see’ as an answer.”

Holl chuckled. “I am sure they’ll accept it, if I ask for volunteers for the vigil first.”

Enoch nodded, following his brother-in-law out of the cellar. And there was another good reason they’d named Holl as heir apparent: he had an agile mind.

***

Chapter 9

“If Mr. Collier has a moment to see me,” Keith offered the middle-aged African-American woman a winning smile as she picked up the receiver of the complicated-looking telephone system. “I’ve got to get back to my office before eleven. I’ve got a meeting I can’t miss.”

“I’m asking his personal assistant right now, sir. If you’ll just wait for a little while?” She spoke into her headset microphone in a low voice for a moment, then pushed another button on the keyboard. She nodded at Keith. “Burghart, Collier and Associates; good morning, may I help you?”

Keith stepped back, brushed down the front of his russety-tan suit jacket, and straightened his tie. He started to pace back and forth among the burgundy tweed chairs. He’d been thinking about this moment all yesterday evening while driving back to Chicago, and all morning while he was getting dressed.

How best could he get Marcy’s point across without being too pushy? He felt that he ought to approach the moment as if he were an advertiser trying to win a customer. How would Enoch play as a product?
Try Enoch brand Son-in-law,
Keith thought playfully.
Compact, effective, lasts for centuries, g …
No, he’d better stay
far
away from phrases like “guaranteed satisfaction.” But this was serious. He promised himself he’d play the matter completely straight, for Marcy. She was trusting her whole future of happiness to him. That was a sobering notion.

“Keith Doyle?” a man’s voice asked, startling him out of his thoughts. Alan Collier came toward him with his hand out. Though the rest of her features had come from her mother, Marcy had inherited her wide, dark-blue eyes, straight black hair, and white-white skin from her father. Mr. Collier stood slightly taller than Keith, and his wiry frame and athletic grip suggested he worked out regularly at something like handball or tennis. “Hey, guy, it’s been a couple of years!”

“Hi, sir,” Keith said, returning the handclasp firmly. “Yeah, I think it’s been since sophomore year.”

“Good to see you. C’mon back. Coffee?” He led Keith through the door into an elegant suite of rooms. “Becky was saying just the other day she wondered what had become of you.”

“Same as Marcy. Finished my bachelor’s degree. I’m in grad school now.”

“Cool,” Mr. Collier said, gesturing Keith to a chair. “So, what can I do for you?”

Keith glanced around, trying to figure out just where to begin.

It was a handsome office, suitable for a partner of the firm. There were signs of money around the room, but very little wood. Almost all chrome, leather, and black melamine. Keith found it cold. He felt like blurting out that his prospective son-in-law could go a long way toward improving his office furniture, but that would impede Marcy’s chances of happiness, not improve them.

“Have you seen Marcy lately?” Mr. Collier asked.

“Well, yes,” Keith said. “Just the other day. In fact, she’s why I’m here.”

Mr. Collier raised his eyebrows, looking hopeful.

“You know she’s living down on Hollow Tree Farm,” Keith began. “She’s really happy there.”

“We haven’t seen a lot of her in the last couple of months,” Mr. Collier said, reproachfully. “Her mother and I were wondering why.”

“Well, she’s been a little shy about facing you,” Keith said.

“Oh, not us! We’re her parents. We love her.”

“I know,” Keith replied. “You see, she’s been seeing this guy. Well, he’s a good guy, but he’s not what you’d call the usual kind of person. She wants you to meet him, but she’s not sure how … she wants to make sure you like each other.” Keith cleared his throat. Better start over. “I don’t know whether she’s mentioned it a lot, but she’s really interested in getting married. Soon. What she wants more than anything else is to get your blessing, yours and Mrs. Collier’s. It’s really important to her.”

Alan Collier eyed him askance. “She’s not … pregnant, is she?”

“No! I mean, I don’t think so. I think they’re waiting. She’s really serious. I mean, Marcy and Enoch.”

“Are you sure you’re not here on your own behalf, Keith?” Mr. Collier asked, with a “between-us-guys” kidding expression. “Marcy used to talk about you a lot.”

“No, sir. Not for myself. I’m committed. I mean, I’ve got a girlfriend.
Very
serious.”

“I think there’s still a spark of something there,” Mr. Collier pressed. “You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t still fond of my daughter.”

“I did have a crush on her,” Keith admitted, “but I don’t any more.”

“You were stuck on her for a long time during your sophomore year. Long enough for it to turn into real romance?” Mr. Collier asked.

“No, sir,” Keith insisted, puzzled as to the direction the conversation was going. It was as though Mr. Collier wasn’t hearing what he was saying. “We both grew out of it. We have someone else. Each. Marcy’s more like one of my sisters. I’ve got three. It’s Enoch she’s interested in.” This wasn’t going well. The more he talked, the more Mr. Collier looked convinced Keith was thinking the opposite of what he was saying. Keith was just making it worse by trying. He’d better get out of there before the man got the idea he really was there to make a bid for Marcy’s hand. “I’m sorry, sir. I’d better go.”

“Come anytime,” Mr. Collier said, genially, standing up. “You’re just like one of the family.”

He can’t face it,
Keith realized, hurrying down the street in hopes of catching a bus.
Now I know what Marcy’s been up against. It’s like I’m just knocking on the door. He’s not letting me in. I’ll have to try again.

Keith looked at his watch. He’d better get moving. It was a long way back to PDQ.

* * *

“I want this to be big, really big,” Doug Constance said, leaning forward conspiratorially. Keith and the others, Dorothy, Paul, Janine, and Rollin sat poised around the conference table in the largest boardroom at PDQ. Pinned to the felt boards around the room were photos and schematics of the Origami in dozens of different configurations. Inspiration, Keith thought. “We have a chance to change people’s perceptions about communication and productivity. One-unit offices are the wave of the future. One-unit computer systems keep all your data in one place, one very portable place. One-unit entertainment systems will give you an endless range of options for movies, games, music—and they’re all the same unit. We save space. We save resources. Brainstorm on it. Not you, J. Pierpont Finch,” he said, as Keith sat up with his mouth open. “Let’s hear some other ideas before you blow us away.”

Keith let his mouth close. This was the second major strategy meeting on the Origami. Now that they had conditionally won the account, it was up to them to prepare what Dorothy called “the dog-and-pony show.” The president of the company had gone back to his corner office, leaving the rank-and-file to hash out the details of the account.

“What are we selling here?” Janine asked. “The convenience? Every PDA is convenient.”

“This is more than a PDA,” Paul said. “It’s a handheld computer.”

“That takes too long to say.” Doug waved a hand. “Do enough people know the difference? I know
I
don’t.”

“Let’s assume the person on the street will find out. Let’s just tell them what it is,” Janine said.

“I think we ought to concentrate on the battery life,” Rollin said. He and Janine were a team, having worked together for the last couple of years. Keith envied them their chemistry, their easy give and take. “That’s miraculous, twenty hours. My laptop poops out in three.”

“Yeah, but my cell phone lasts for more than three days,” Paul said.

“With this you don’t sell a battery,” Janine argued sharply. “It’s a machine. What it
is.
How long it lasts is gravy, not a selling point.”

“Oh, yes it is,” Rollin said, with an exasperated look at his partner. “What good is it if it’s out of gas?”

“How about the combined features?” Keith offered. “Being able to record music off the air and dub it into videos…?”

“Is anyone but techno-geeks going to like that?” Doug asked.

“Man, these days
everyone
is a techno-geek,” Rollin said. “Start a conversation in a bus terminal, and homeless people start coming up to you with their cell phones.”

“Is it universality or exclusivity we’re trying to promote?” Dorothy asked.

Rollin grimaced. “You know most people will end up using it to play solitaire.”

Paul laughed. “A truth, but an ugly truth. Do we make use of it?”

“How about an ad with the cards all jumping out to become features of the machine?” Janine asked.

“I think that would get really confused, visually,” Dorothy said.

“Don’t make it look like gambling,” Rollin said. “Bad connotation.”

“All right, folks, this is what we’ve got from the big boys,” Doug said, holding up a sheaf of documents. “We’re going to take this a step at a time. Two television commercials, one for now, one for the holidays, to run in 10-second, 30-second, and 60-second blocks. A billboard. Full-page ad for the glossies. Newspaper ad, to run in full-page in the tabloids and half-page in the full-sheets. They’ve got a company up the street working on the design for the box, but we’re providing the wrap.”

Doug started leafing through the briefs. “Janine and Rollin, you did some really good work on the Daiyenu Play System. You can do that. This is for the big time, remember. Gadfly can still decide they don’t want us for media ads, even after we spend a million dollars for them.” The team nodded. He turned over the next sheet of paper in the stack. “Billboard. Outdoor displays, worldwide …” He looked at Keith, then put it on the bottom of the stack, shaking his head.

“We’ll take that,” Janine said at once, holding out her hand. “I’ve got some great ideas.”

“Uhh …” Doug said. “Maybe we’ll work on this one closer to the end of the rotation. You work on the TV ads first. We’ll need the lead time for post-production.”

Keith was getting more nervous by the moment. So far, Doug hadn’t offered him an assignment. He could understand the executive’s reluctance to trust thousands of dollars and the account to the hands of an inexperienced part-timer. He knew Doug considered his outburst on the product name a fluke.

Keith smiled absently at the intern who brought around everyone’s order from the coffee shop. He peeled off the lid and glanced into the murky pool. The cappuccino was too dark to have been made with a single espresso. Keith hated bitter coffee. He took a handful of sugar packets out of the box on the table, shook them down, and tore all the corners off at once, keeping his eyes on Doug, willing him to hand over a brief. He stirred the sugar into the coffee, took a big swig, and nearly spat it out across the table. The intern had already sugared it for him. Not wanting to make a fuss, Keith drank the syrupy brew.

The jitters came on gradually but with the force of a slowly charging rhino. Before he knew it he was getting dirty looks from the others for tapping his pencil on the table. He put the pencil away, but then he didn’t know what to do with his hands. He found himself playing with a rolled-up napkin, shredding it into strands and twisting them around. Dorothy gave him an odd glance. He looked down between his hands, and discovered it was turning into a miniature cable-knit sweater. It had the mark of glamour on it, meaning he’d been using magic without thinking about it. Enoch would have given him an
A
in miniature magical macramé and told him not to do it in public.

“I used to be dynamite at construction-paper snowflakes,” he said, tossing the scrap of paper aside. He put his hands under his thighs and sat on them.

“And we’ve got a full-page ad here for the executive journals: financials, airline magazines,
Newsweek
,
WSJ
. Something classy and understated …” The pent-up energy just exploded in Keith. He had to move or self-destruct.

“I’ll take that one,” he said, springing to his feet. “I’ve got an idea.” Everyone looked at him. He sat down.

“Okay, Keith,” Doug said, surprised, handing over the paper. “All right. Let’s come in later and talk about it some more. There’s a dozen other briefs pending. We need to get the vital ones out of the way now.”

“I’ll take Keith for a while,” Dorothy said, grabbing him by the shoulder. “Should we meet back here about four? We ought to be able to hash out some initial ideas before quitting time.”

The others nodded, leaning together to look over their data sheets. Dorothy held onto Keith’s arm and marched him out of the room. He smiled over his shoulder at the others. His hands were shaking. He took a couple of deep breaths before Dorothy swung in front of him and shook a finger under his nose.

“What was with you in there?” Dorothy asked on the way out. “You were more hyper than ever.”

“Double caffeine and eight sugars,” Keith said. “Next time I’ll taste it first, I swear.”

“God, I bet your mama had to keep you on a leash as a kid.”

“Nope,” Keith grinned. “We had a fenced-in yard.”

“Well, come on before Doug comes out here and takes that back.”

* * *

Keith followed Dorothy into her small office. She closed the door behind them and waved him to a chair by the window. The high-ceilinged room had a non-insulated brick wall suggesting that the building had originally been a factory or a warehouse. The rest of the office was furniture-mart modern, complete to the melamine storage units, all of which were stuffed and overstuffed with sample books, binders and sourcebooks. Jammed along the wall were a desk and a drawing table. Under the window was a small table piled high with papers and books. Framed on the wall along the top molding were copies of newspaper and magazine advertisements. Keith guessed by the style that they were her work.

“We’ll have to find you a cubicle,” Dorothy said, standing with her hands on her hips, looking around. “It’s an office, but it’s too small to swing a cat. I don’t usually have a permanently assigned creative partner like Rollin and Janine, so they’re not wasting any extra space on me. I can find you a desk, or you can take that little table by the window.”

“I’m happy to be anywhere,” Keith assured her. “The table’s fine.”