Far-out Show (9781465735829) (30 page)

“If they put things back the way they were
when the ship was turned over to them, all should quickly return to
defaults. Mechanically they can then go on as if this didn’t
happen. But this has confirmed for them that there are things they
weren’t told about that could hurt them so they’ll be on edge and
eager to learn every detail of the ship’s structure and
programming. Where that could lead we can only speculate
about.”

“Put that in a
rempilcarp
for me,”
Gopgop requested.

“The crew tried to cheat and the consequences
of that made them aware that A.D.U. had cheated on them. The next
move is up to the crew,” Techim said.

“Keep us informed,” Uldene said, then blanked
the screen.

“She’d be a valuable resource anywhere in our
operations but she’s especially useful when she has access to their
inner workings while they trust her completely,” Gopgop said.

“Or at least as much as they let show.”

“Right. Does any top person ever completely
trust any underling? You offer what you can to buy loyalty but
personal history argues against believing you’re being given
that.”

“I don’t like being left to wait for the
Bang-Boom
guys to get smart and accept the realities of
their situation but there’s not much we can do until the ship is
powered back up,” Uldene said angrily.

“Once that happens though we should consider
using Minx to find out what’s actually happening way off
there.”

“Yeah, our secret of last resort, the zerpy
onboard the ship that nobody but the two of us and Foxpat know
about. Minx so anyone finding a reference to it won’t realize it’s
a zerpy since its code name doesn’t follow the six letters for a
person, eight letters for a zerpy rule.”

“We paid a lot of money to have it be our
secret but there are no guarantees that the onboard techs won’t
stumble on it and recognize it as a zerpy not on their equipment
lists while they’re teasing apart all the hardware and software to
find other things planted by A.D.U.”

“Since they’re already having equipment
problems it’s especially worrisome that there were no absolute
guarantees that it won’t somehow mess up other signals and make
more trouble for them once we activate it,” Uldene said.

“There’s little we can do about that though.
When we decide we need more and better feedback and maybe even to
take control of the ship’s systems we’ll do what we have to. It’s
good to be the decision-maker. And to be far enough away that the
consequences could make us poor but won’t kill us outright.”

A musical tone sounded. Gopgop checked the
monitor and said, “Routine domestic update.” He tapped a button and
Fervor appeared on screen in full oration but with the sound
muted.

“There are moments when I’m happy there are a
few zealots like this Fervor fellow keeping an eye on things with
something other than a short-term personal profit motive. Of course
the rest of the time I consider him and the other geekocreepos to
be interfering, unrealistic trouble-makers,” Gopgop said.

“Is he still fussing about the lack of
educational values in
The Far-Out Show
?”

“Yeah. I remember when he first came to
public attention. He’s learned a lot and uses it effectively. He
dresses to be different because the Selectors never pass up a
chance to give the viewers something eye-catching. He’s also become
more tolerant of the way things are done. Time was he argued
against any fakery in programs, now he only gets bothered when he
feels the shows go too far with that. Which is now his objection
with
Far-Out
. I don’t really disagree that they’re
stretching a little material to preposterous lengths but that’s
business.”

Uldene said, “He’s right that promotions for
the show promised educational aspects but
educational
is a
wiggle word that always requires interpretation. He must realize
that without an official tight definition to point to, that’s a
bottomless pit of disagreement.”

“If I understand his unspoken agenda he knows
that but wants to get as many of the rest of us as possible
thinking about the topic. I doubt that he expects to have what most
of us would concede is a victory for his positions, only that he
got guys talking.”

“That’s probably my underlying problem with
him. I don’t see why a guy would spend so much time on anything
except for a concrete payout in cash or clout.”

“Were you ever idealistic even when you were
a mere hatchling, Uldene? Of course not. Forget that, I’m only
kidding. The practical question for us is, Will he get enough
important guys to think about the lack of educational emphasis in
the show to result in pressure on us? The material is of a
ziz-pod
on a strange planet far away. That should clearly be
automatically educational for everyone, at least if those aspects
weren’t buried under the chatter about how superior we are to the
inhabitants there and stuff like that.”

As he blanked the view-screen Uldene said,
“This Fervor guy has for really true gotten to you hasn’t he?”

Gopgop shrugged. “I don’t understand why the
A.D.U. guys don’t recognize that they could end the geekocreepos
complaints and have a second hit show if they cut the material
together with a different emphasis in the talk-talk part. But I’m
not going to point that out to them until I’m sure there’s no legal
way to get to use their transmissions but have another company that
we get a bigger share of the profits from make it into educational
programs. I get that the common thinking is that the target
audience of those who need to be distracted to keep them docile
won’t watch anything that’s non-violent but I’m willing to test
that and see what other audience there might be. Pacification By
Distraction is the most profitable kind of entertainment but that
doesn’t mean there’s no profit in other types. I’m not about to
abandon what pays us big-big, but I see it as good business to
explore other ways to make profits.”

“The educational talk-talk was to give the
governors cover so they could approve the programs since it’s
essential to their secret agenda of exploring the universe,” Uldene
pointed out.

“That’s how it started, yeah, but there’s no
reason not to see what other opportunities for profit it could lead
to. Let’s think about those to exercise our cleverness. Until these
latest reports of equipment problems I was all in favor of buying
into P.D.Q. now before their snaggiewarp travel ships become
general news and there’s a rush to cash in on that.”

“You’ve reversed your thinking?” Uldene
asked.

“Not reversed it but I’m more cautious. Yes,
the biggest profit depends on timing. Even a short delay in buying
in could mean being squeezed out because the price soars too high.
If the systems aren’t reliable though, the bottom will fall out of
the P.D.Q. version in a hurry and with that the chance for the
vipsig mermin
. Not a lot of investors know as much as we do
about how things are going with the test run of the systems. That
means opportunities but also cautions. I’m voting for holding off
until we know more.”

“How long would that be?”

“At least until we know that the ship has
power again. The crew and the A.D.U. techs will analyze every bit
of data to identify any true flaws among the deliberate twists and
turns. With Techim inside we should find out about those even
before the A.D.U. guys get the word from their techs. With that
input I’ll be ready to reconsider a major investment in P.D.Q. but
not without that.” Gopgop continued in his thoughts,
You’re
willing to be rash and put the company, which means a lot of my
money, at risk because you’re buying the line those others are
feeding you. You lowered your defenses to listen to them and now
you seem unwilling to accept that you know that was a mistake even
if I supposedly don’t know you had those secret meetings
.

“All right. I’m not thrilled with your
position but I can’t do that on my own so I’ll focus on learning
all I can on the performance and reliability of
Whizybeam
’s
systems,” Uldene said. He thought,
This is a bad decision though
so I’ll speed up my search for other partners to be ready to dump
you when it’s convenient and let you worry yourself into a stupor
alone.

“Here’s a ponderable, Uldene. Since I haven’t
found much useful information about it and you’ve been researching
it too and haven’t mentioned anything so I assume you haven’t found
any either, can we somehow trick the geekocreepos into learning
about and revealing the secret’s of the governors’ zerpy killer
device? The Sproingy thing. That Parbam said it was restricted
information and that turns out to be the case. If we can at least
find out what company makes them we could check on the possibility
of buying in to get those zerpies for ourselves.”

“An interesting idea. I have no instant
thoughts about it as either possible or not but I’ll think on it.”
Thanks for that idea. The chance to own the company that makes
those would be a perfect time to dump you and move on.

“Am I correct that when
Whizybeam
’s
systems are back to their defaults we can trigger the individual
and ship self-destruct units again?”

“Confirmed.”
Hmm, can I trust you not to
panic too soon and destroy them to end your vulnerability when they
could be salvaged? More for me to think on.

Delmus sat in his chair facing the A.D.U.
office view-screens. Ackack paced behind him, big feet slapping the
floor.

Delmus asked, “Come on, what are the
fidgemits
waiting for? How sure are you that your gimmick to
make them leave our hidden remote controls alone wouldn’t permanent
damage the engines or something?”

“The supervising engineer said it was
unlikely that our requested safeguards could do any major
harm.”

“No guarantees but you approved the programs
anyway.”

“We approved the programs because we know any
guarantees about things like that are worthless. We have enough
tech background to know that exactly what they might do to try to
get back to the default conditions or to find ways around the
safeguards without going back to the defaults would determine the
effect they produced. If they do something weird or that violates
the system’s restrictions that we kept them from knowing about they
could mess up a bunch of things. And permanent damage can’t be
entirely ruled out,” Ackack said.

“What happens now?”

“Keep busy by dreaming up ways to convert
this confusion into program material. We don’t have any action to
show from the scene but if we’ve actually lost them the audience
will understand that what we show them as the last minutes of
Whizybeam
is a recreation.”

“Or a total fabrication. You’re probably
right. But make it scary and exciting enough and they won’t
care.”

A harsh tone sounded and Techim appeared on
screen. Delmus almost threw himself across the console to hit the
button that put her through to them and asked, “What do we
know?”

“Contact is reestablished,” Techim said.
“We’re still analyzing the signals. We can’t detect some routine
feedback signals. That probably means they’ve kept some changes in
place but we can’t be sure yet. They seem to be back to full power
and the life-support systems are working.”

“We were confident they’d get around to using
common sense,” Delmus said. “We’re going to have words with them
and make sure they know they have no choice but to return all
systems to their default modes. You techs should find all the
feedback returned to routine soon.”

Techim nodded. The screen blanked. Delmus
signaled a zerpy that usually hovered off to one side until needed
to approach and prepare to transmit their messages.

“It’s time to get tough with them. Are you
ready, Ackack?”

Soon Halsey was on the view-screen from the
producers’ office on
Whizybeam
projecting his usual calm and
unflappable air.

Delmus launched right into it, demanding
“What did you guys do that caused the whole ship to lose power like
that?”

“We appreciate your warm and sympathetic
words since we were in grave danger from your faulty equipment. At
the appropriate time – which means before the appropriate audience
- we’ll demand a full apology for saddling us with untested
material that could easily get us killed,” Halsey said.

“Did your guys tinker with the systems? Is
that what caused the problem?” Ackack shouted as he waved his arms
around in what was intended to be a threatening manner.

“The systems malfunctioned but our clever
techs were able to figure out what went wrong and fix it. We’ll
provide our full report when we get back,” Halsey said.

“Things should be back to normal but they’re
not,” Delmus said. “You weren’t authorized to change anything.”

“Don’t be a
discer prumous
, Delmus. We
are expected to do all that needs to be done to keep your ship
working until we get it home. It’s in the contract. I won’t waste
time talking about such
crilmentzee.
”

“The signals we’re receiving don’t give us
the feedback they should to show the systems are working as
intended,” Ackack said. “Also, what took you so long to get the
engines started again? It’s common sense that if you change
something and that produces an unexpected result you reverse what
you did to correct the problem.”

“That assumes that you know that any changes
you made caused the problems, Ackack. Did you sent us off in a ship
rigged to break down without reasonable cause? Did A.D.U. actually
sabotage the very guys it’s depending on for product? That doesn’t
seem like a sensible way to do things,” Halsey said.