Peter Jensen: The blackmailed mother book I

Quarran had come in and under his guidance, sales improved a hundred percent. Then its chief engineer came up with a revolutionary development. A year ago Roger Carmel had approached Quarran with nothing more than an idea down on paper. Out of the discussions and negotiations, Carmel became vice-president with a hefty increase in salary, plus a percentage of the profits. In return he gave Skopos exclusive marketing and production rights.

Where current models were weighing sixty to eighty pounds, his miniskopos weighed less than twenty – and it was a tenth of the size as well. Instead of bulky and expensive reels of tape, it used cartridges, 8-track music cartridges like the automobile stereo players. A person would slip in a cartridge, costing less than five dollars per hour of recording time, and depending on whether the unit was plugged into a camera or a television set, it would record or play. It could do both at once, if a person wanted to monitor what was being recorded. The whole unit was eight inches high, a foot wide, and a little over fifteen inches deep. It could fit on top of a television set. Or so it would, when the aluminum casing arrived.

And if that wasn't enough, it could also be used for color as well as black-and-white.

That was a year ago. Since then, the concept had been transformed into test units. There were bugs, of course; tape had to be specially made and the cartridge feeder mechanism designed from scratch. The components weren't available, and companies building field-effects and integrated circuits had to be talked with and their samples tested. It had been one long headache and fight – and the man who ran the whole she-bang was Carmel, for he alone understood what it was all about.

Oliss, a born huckster, skillfully let the news of the pending miniskopos "leak" out. It had set the industry on its ear; everybody was talking about it, everybody wanted to buy it. The home entertainment market would have at last a dirt-cheap way of showing video tape, of transcribing favorite television shows, of making "home movies". The schools and the government would have the perfect teaching aid, which could be bought en masse without wrecking budgets.

The Carmel miniskopos was worth a fortune.

But the time hadn't arrived when Carmel could rest on his laurels. That final effort to get them over the top and the units into the hands of buyers had to be made. Quarran was right; the miniskopos had to be ready to be shown to the government in two weeks, for with contracts in hand, the high cost of production and tooling could be weathered. Later would come the home markets, which were never over-night, but took advertising, negotiations, and the slow grinding of public acceptance. Later it would be Martin Oliss' turn to work his tail off from the marketing end.

"I hate doing it," Carmel said after listening to Quarran reiterate the obvious. "I hate doing it, but I suppose we could fashion one out of sheet metal. It won't look as well as the stamped paneling, and probably won't work as well, either. It sure as hell won't be as light."

"I can talk around that. Once those bureaucrats get their mitts onto a working prototype, they'll be too blinded to nit-pick." Quarran tapped his cigar ash into the large ceramic bowl beside him. "They'll specify aluminum and weight requirements, and by that time we'll be able to supply them."

"Y-yes, that s-sounds alright to me," Krocklin agreed.

Carmel sighed. "Then sheet metal it is. I'll call the plant and…"

"You go to the plant," Quarran said forcefully.

"But I just got backs!"

"It can't be helped. There's not enough time to make more than one, and that one has got to be right. I don't want you to merely hope that the men down there will know what the devil you want; I don't want you to assume they can read your plans – I want you to be sure that every detail is perfect."

Carmel looked at Quarran witheringly. "I suppose you want me to leave today?"

"I'm sorry."

Under the circumstances Carmel realized that he would have to go. Not that he couldn't argue with Quarran, or even flatly refuse; it was the inherent realization that he was needed in Kirsten to supervise the fabrication. He glumly considered the inevitable scene with Lonnie. There were times when he wished he was still a bachelor.

Martin Oliss had other thoughts on his mind. Just as gloomy, perhaps, because he didn't know what he was going to do, but a great deal more dark, because of their subject. In less than two weeks he'd be handed the job of selling the finished product – not that it needed any selling. He'd just take orders, the way the miniscope was exciting the public. In less than two weeks, any chance that he had to steal the miniscope for his own use would be gone. In less than two weeks…

Oliss fingered his mustache, sighing inwardly. What had ever gotten him into this two-faced industrial spying anyway? Greed, pure and simple. The greed for other women, enhanced by his own wife's insatiable lust for strange cock, had introduced him to the swinging element in Rapier City. He had been a devout member of the wife-swapping club for some time; it was their use of Club Royale and its private shows and still more private "rooms" for viewing and fucking which had allowed him to become acquainted with Sam Zeigler, Club Royale's owner and operator.

That Goddamned gangster Zeigler. Oliss conjured up a swear word for the cynical member of the state crime syndicate Mafia connected, though not controlled – who catered to the greedy vices of otherwise respectable members of the community. Greed, always greed. Greed had gotten Cylvia Oliss into the dog show there, a more than willing participant on the round stage when the club had rented the whole second floor for one mass orgy last Spring.

Greed had made Martin Oliss go after and lay Zeigler's ex-chorus girl playmate; the only one who had balls enough to try, Zeigler had said afterwards.

And greed had made Oliss an enthusiastic partner when Zeigler had outlined his plan to take the secret of the miniscope and let one of the syndicate fronts – the outwardly legitimate Vantage Electronics Corporation – have it. The promise of a cut which would put Oliss on easy street overnight had put dollar signs in his eyes, and his wife had thought the scheme perfect.

The trouble had been that the miniscope was in Kirsten, and Oliss was stuck in Rapier City. He'd approached Carmel with under-played, implied suggestions that there were greater riches to be made if Carmel "sold out" on the sly, but it had failed dismally.

"I bet you've been approached secretly by other companies, eh, Roger?" had been met with open, naive shock. Carmel couldn't believe that the competition could stoop so low.

"You know, you could have tripled, quadrupled, your profit if you'd considered others before or Quarran," had been met with a frown and a patriotic spiel about company loyalty.

"I'd sure like to see your drawings, Roger," had been met with a shrug and a vague answer that the blueprints were in short sections, constantly being revised, and that they wouldn't make sense to anybody except Carmel himself.

Oliss had finally come to the conclusion that Carmel was an innocent in the affairs of business manipulations, and that when it came to ethics and morals, he was as flexible as a glass rod.

Oliss was frustrated, and now the eleventh hour was here. He was going to have to do something fast, something desperate and a gamble, but then won't all business a gamble? The meek shall inherit the earth – not to Martin Oliss! The meek inherited dirt after the good stuff was grabbed by the ruthless.

Well, then damnit, start thinking of a way to grab! Oliss' brain churned with nefarious plots. He thought about blackmailing Carmel with a girl, but he realized nothing short of doping the man would get him under the covers with another woman. But what about Mrs. Carmel? Oliss suddenly grinned. Sure… there might be the answer. It might work… he recalled what Cylvia had told him a couple of times as she'd laughed over the weepings of Roger's sexually starved wife. "She's too much like me, Martin," she'd said. "She's as ripe for plucking as I was ten years ago."