Edmund Cooper - Kronk

Gabriel smiled gratefully at Camilla. She smiled gratefully back. Each was grateful that the other was alive and reasonably well.

Then Gabriel looked at the chopper which, though it had arrived too late to prevent, had at least arrived not too late to cure.

It wasn’t a proc chopper. It wasn’t even a medic chopper. It was a NaTel chopper.

The penny dropped.

Gabriel jumped to his feet, his head exploding with notions of mass-murder. Unfortunately, his muscles were not equal to his intentions, and he fell in a heap once more. Unfortunately also, it only took seconds for the massive dose of booster-tranquilizer he had been given to take effect.

“Relax, honey,” said the NaTel nurse, “everything is going to be fine. You both get lead fees, hazard allowance, physical injury compensation, mental agony percentage and another fifty per cent of lead fee for Eurovision transmission. The same, too, for any Stateside deal.

Lover boy, you’re both in rich red clover. Altogether, it can’t be less than five thousand. And for repeats, you—”

“Stupid, transistorized cow,” said Gabriel, gently smiling, struggling hopelessly against the tranquillizer. “Black-hearted female gitt. Goggle bitch. Frugging frigid fish.”

The NaTel nurse stroked his forehead gently. “There, darling. It’s all over. The shooting’s stopped. The little lady lives. And soon it will be raining folding money all over you both.

Ride with the tide, sweetie. Ride with the tide.”

Almost apologetically, Gabriel pushed the NaTel nurse to one side and crawled on all fours to Camilla. She was naked and just about to struggle into a new set of clothes provided by NaTel. He kissed her gently. He kissed the bruised breasts, the scratched shoulders, the haggard cheeks. Then very carefully he helped her dress.

“You know?” he asked.

She nodded, gazing without expression towards the chopper. The producer or somesuch was paying off the students, the camera laddies were smoking and pinching the bottoms of scurrying NaTel hostesses. A portable table and chairs had been brought out of the chopper, glasses and canapés also had materialized, magnums of champagne were cooling in large vulgar buckets. There was even a butane filled candelabrum.

Suddenly, Camilla began to laugh. She laughed loudly and helplessly.

A big bronzed man in a dinner jacket and with a long thin cigar stuck in his face turned and gazed at her curiously. Then he walked towards her. Gabriel helped Camilla to stand up. She was still laughing and swaying perceptibly.

“Dennis Progg, This Is Your World.” His face blossomed behind the cigar into a vast plastic smile. “Baby, you were great. We got thirteen minutes of chair glue. With intros, reactions and post-mortem, we got twenty-five minutes of compulsion at peak spot for fifteen, twenty mill U.K. God knows how many Eurovision, Stateside, etc. You got to make a mark, acknowledge cheque for six thousand five each, sign injury and mental distress waiver, then we all hit champers and cavvy. Howzat?”

“Tell me something,” said Gabriel softly, unable even to feel angry that a great volcano of hatred and blood-lust had been plugged by tranquillizer, “why? What the hell is it all about?”

“You were great, too, fella,” said Dennis Progg. “Really great, I mean that. You were both just great… Ever take in This Is Your World?”

“Thank God, never.”

Dennis Progg sighed. “You’re losing something. This Is Your World is a ’gramme designed to make mature, responsible, feeling people alive to the realities of life. It opens dimensions of experience. You are there when it happens. You are involved.” He turned to Camilla. “The students weren’t just raping you, darling. They’re going to rape X million women. Nothing but good can come. The menfolk aren’t going to forget it. They’ll want to get proc strength boosted so that girlies can go out at night again. They’re going to pressure parliament for more effective psych action. They’re—”

“We get six thousand five hundred each?” interrupted Camilla.

“Yes.”

“How much did the students get?” She glanced towards them. Having received payment, they were now fading back into Epping Forest. The man in the solar helmet turned and waved gaily.

“A hundred each… Sorry we had to use trash, darling. But authenticity and all that. We had pop-guns on them, and we made it clear — no payment if you were damaged.”

Again Camilla began to laugh. She turned to Gabriel. “Darling love, what a scream! What a splendid scream! Remember the last thing the God Machine said? And now this. The decision has been made for us…”

Gabriel did indeed remember. He remembered vividly. He looked at Camilla with a solemn expression on his face. “And then there were seven,” he said.

And suddenly, he, too, was laughing. He flung his arms round Camilla, holding her close, both of them laughing and crying at the greatest, cleanest, funniest, dirtiest joke in the world.

Dennis Progg stared at them. Trauma, he decided. Relief. Joy at six thousand five. Some people!

He looked at the supper table, an oasis of sanity in the crazy wilderness of Epping. It would be a pity to let the champers get warm.

Dr. Peregrine Perrywit was in heaven — or, at least, he was reasonably near, being in the NaTel guest bar, enjoying drinks and civilized conversation with the Marquis of Middlehampton and his younger brother, the Games, Contests and Prize Programmes Controller. The Marquis, gracious in condescension and the knowledge that he was being given three big healthy cats, required Dr. Perrywit simply to call him Burt. The NaTel Controller, no less great-hearted in cameraderie, indicated that friends — the gesture was to Dr.

Perrywit as a benediction — took some small pleasure in calling him Dirk.

Burt and Dirk — and Peregrine… Intimate, urbane. Also, it was more than gratifying to be in the high reaches of Lulu Tower on a warm summer evening, sipping hock and soda, and gazing idly at framed segments of the whole of London, spread out beneath one’s feet like a toy city ready to be trampled. This, thought Dr. Perrywit, was a moment to savour and remember. This was Contact.

Burt dropped some more ice into his Polish white spirit. Never could get the damn stuff cold enough, he thought sadly. That was the trouble with life — everything got too damn warm.

Take this jumped-up prolly: he was getting so warm at the thought of drinking with the Marquis that presently he would melt into a sticky mess. Still, for a panther, a tiger and a lion one had to make sacrifices.

“Curious, what-what?” Burt fixed Dr. Perrywit with a disconcertingly blank stare.

Dr. Perrywit was nonplussed. “Er — yes. Quite so. I mean definitely… curious.”

“I mean to say,” went on Burt, who based his dialogue on old movie interpretations of peers’ parlance, “whoever heard of a soft tiger and a soft lion and a soft panther?”

“My — ah — assistant assures me they are definitely — ah — soft,” said Dr. Perrywit cautiously.

“How soft?”

“Extremely docile. One might even say timid.”

“I have a thought,” said Dirk. “I might borrow them for the new We Bust Your Nerve series. You see, we could have the cats leaping round this naked prepube who has been carved up a bit and smeared with blood, and then—”

“Piss off,” said Burt evenly. He fixed Peregrine once more. “I say, you MicroWar types haven’t been frigging about with them have you? Couldn’t stand that.”

“Frigging about?” Dr. Perrywit was at a loss.

“Bugs,” explained Burt. “Couldn’t stand that. Dumb animals and all that rot. Thought MicroWar was rather strong on bugs. Wouldn’t want to think there had been any malarky with my soft cats… What do you say, Peregrine, old fella? Has MicroWar been bugging my beasties?”