Stevie Summers shook his head, 'The kids I sing for don't go for this holy-roller fling. So far as we're concerned, he can bugger himself with a wood auger. By the way, my old man's a Libertarian. I've heard a couple of your bleats on Tri-Di. Your two organizations oughta get together.'
'There's been some talk about it,' Roy nodded. Forry said, 'We better get ready for that press interview.' He took young Summers by the arm and led him to the door, going over details about the broadcast.
Roy sat down at his desk and looked unhappily at the pile of mail before him. He thumbed quickly through it. There was nothing from anyone he knew. All strangers. He said to Mary Ann, 'You want to go through this and spread it around to the girls for the standard answers? By the way, how come I haven't met any of the stenographers?'
Mary Ann came over from her own desk, carrying a letter. She said, 'Ferry doesn't want them on this floor. Two of them are Wobblies, but the others are outsiders. For all we know, the Graf might be able to get next to one of them. It's just as easy for a woman to take a crack at you as a man.'
Roy shook his head but said, 'I guess you're right. What's that?'
She put the letter down before him. 'It's from Wobbly headquarters in Chicago.'
Billy Tucker, who was also dressed identically to Roy Cos, said, 'Oh, oh. I was beginning to wonder when we'd get a kick from the Agitation Committee. Some of those speeches Ferd has been writing for you aren't exactly the standard message the Wobblies have been making for the last century or so.'
Roy ripped open the envelope and quickly scanned the letter.
'I'll be damned,' he said. 'I've been promoted from national organizer to a member of the Agitation Committee.' He looked up at Mary Ann. 'That's our executive committee, headed by the national secretary. He wants me to attend a meeting being organized by Synthesis.'
'What in the hell's Synthesis?' Dick Samuelson said. He was lounging against the wall, next to the door to the corridor, his carbine under his right arm.
Roy grunted and said, 'A new outfit that's trying to get all the radicals together. The whole shebang: Libertarians, Nihilists, Wobblies, the Anti-Racist League—everybody but those Eurocommunist slobs.'
The door buzzed. Samuelson readied his gun and checked the identity screen. It was Forty Brown.
The newsman came in followed by Ferd Feldmeyer, who was carrying a sheaf of papers. The speech writer, like all the others of the team, was in prole dress identical to that worn by Roy. It had been one of Ferry's ideas. The whole team dressed exactly alike. As they invariably moved in a tight group whenever they were in public, a hit man, at any distance at all, would have his work cut out telling which one was Roy. Roy had protested, particularly in the case of Mary
Ann, but she had overruled him. As with the grossly fat Ferd and the king-sized Billy Tucker, there was small chance that even a myopic assassin would confuse her with his target, but the whole crew of them being dressed alike wouldn't help him any.
Forry, noticing the letter in Roy's hand, said, 'What spins?'
'I've been made a member of the Agitation Committee. They want me to attend a special meeting that's being held in an attempt to amalgamate all radical groups.'
'That's out. No more public appearances,' Forry told him sourly. 'From now on, I've made arrangements for your broadcasts to be made from right here. The fuzzies stationed at your last rally picked up two armed men before they even got near enough to you for our boys to be needed. Next meeting, there'd be more than two, and it's just a matter of time before one or more of them gets within firing range. From now on, you don't leave the New Tropical Hotel. You don't even leave this floor.'
Roy said, 'I'll have to attend that Synthesis meeting, if the national secretary wants me to.'
'Screw the national secretary. Let him represent the Wobblies. He's expendable; you're not. You're the Deathwish Wobbly and you've put your message over more widely than all the rest of your outfit put together since it was first started.'
Roy shook his head, feeling tired all over again. 'I appreciate what you're trying to do, Forry, but I'm a member of an organization, not just a one-man agitator. I take orders from our elected officials just like Billy and Dick here do.'
The little newsman shrugged angrily but gave up and fished a cigarette pack from a jumper pocket.
Ferd Feldmeyer tossed his sheaf of papers on the desk before his employer 'Here's the United Church broadcast. I played it the way you said, stressing the fact that the Wobblies have nothing against religion per se since a man's relationship with his God is his personal business. But when organized religion intrudes on politics, it's no longer a matter of religion. They're as vulnerable as any other political organization.'
Roy Cos was quickly scanning the speech. He said, 'You used some concrete examples—the Roman Catholic Church, during the Middle Ages in particular, Islam, Shintoism in
Japan, and all other religions that have supported class-divided society down through the ages?'
'Sure, sure,' Feldmeyer said, running his obscenely obese hand back through thinning blond hair. 'Practically every large church—once it got big—has supportd the status quo. And the Prophet's United Church is no exception.'
Dick, at the door, reported, 'The rest of the boys have finished shaking down the reporters.'
'Okay, let them in,' Forry said.
There were a score or so of reporters and photographers. They were followed by three more of Roy's Wobbly guards, who stationed themselves alertly about the walls of the room, while the newsmen found places.
Most of the reporters had been here before. Roy's press interviews were daily affairs, as were his sessions with freelancers doing special articles. The senior of the newsmen, a wrinkled veteran, who was moist of eye from prolonged battles with the bottle, said, 'What spins, Roy?'
Roy Cos, seated behind his desk, said, 'I'm still here, Don. What're my odds today?'
'The bookies are giving even-steven that you get it today. Two to one that the Grafs boys get you by tomorrow. Four to one the next day, eight to one by the next,' Don told him.
Mary Ann winced; her face looked sick.
'Jesus,' Forry said. 'What're the odds that he lasts the week out?'
Don said, flatly, 'A hundred to one against. The word is out that the Graf's getting uptight about this. He likes to operate on the q.t. Publicity isn't his forte. The insurance companies are probably giving him the prod, too. All this publicity about the Deathwish Policies is giving them a black eye. People all over, not just in the States, are getting indignant. It pretty well shows that anything goes in this profit-oriented world. The multinationals are completely without morals. A man is put in a position where he can't make a real living and then coerced into giving up his life in return for a few days of hedonism. Yeah, the pressure is increasing on the multinational insurance companies, on the Swiss banks, on Lloyd's of London—any outfit that's got a finger in the pie.'
Roy said, his smile working the usual wonder on his stoic face, 'We'll make a Wobbly out of you yet, Don.'
The old reporter looked at some of the photographers and said, 'Why don't you guys wait until the interview's over before getting your pix? You just get in the way when we're trying to tape for Tri-Di.'
'Elitist,' one charged amiably, and sought a chair.
Forry said, 'No special releases today, chum-pals. Fire away if you've got any questions for the Deathwish Wobbly.'
One of them called out, 'Roy, what's your stand on world government? It's in the air these days. You've probably heard that the Congress has invited Australia and New Zealand to join the United States. And it looks as though England and Ireland will get the same invitation.'
Roy said, 'We Wobblies are in favor of world government but can't see much advantage to it, so far as the proles are concerned, so long as class-divided society is retained. We'd just continue to be in the same undesirable spot, subsisting on GAS. World government under an industrial democracy would be desirable, but under the status quo it would merely give the powers that be better control of us. Instead of having dozens of countries, each with its own special conditions, its own rules and regulations, they'd have all of us under the same thumb.'
Another reporter held up a hand and said, 'After you've taken over, are you Wobblies going to continue to use the computers to decide who's going to work at what jobs?'
Roy Cos touched the end of his nose and frowned. He said slowly, 'What you've got to understand is that Wobblies are advocating an industrial democracy. It'll be up to the people to decide such questions as that. We might come up with
