“Now turn your back to Peter.”
Rossner turned.
“Are you relaxed, Glenn?”
“No.”
“Relax. Be calm. Don’t worry about anything at all. That’s an order.”
The lines in Rossner’s face softened.
“How do you feel, Glenn?”
“Relaxed.”
“Good. You won’t try to keep Peter from obeying the orders I give him, regardless of what those orders are.”
“I won’t interfere,” Rossner said.
Salsbury turned to the Englishman. “Loop that cord around Glenn’s neck as you did with Michel.”
With an expert flip and twist of the garrote, Holbrook was in position. He waited for orders.
“Glenn,” Salsbury said, “are you tense?”
“No. I’m relaxed.”
“That’s fine. Just fine. You will continue to be relaxed. Now, I’m going to tell Peter to kill you — and you are going to permit him to do that. Is that clear?”
“Yes. I understand.” His placid expression didn’t waver.
“Don’t you want to live?”
“Yes. Yes, I want to live.”
“Then why are you willing to die?”
“I–I—” He looked confused.
“You are willing to die because refusal to obey the key means pain and death anyway. Isn’t that right, Glenn?”
“That’s right.”
Salsbury watched the two men closely for signs of panic. There were none. Nor even any of stress.
The stench from Michel Picard’s fouled body was nearly overpowering and getting worse.
Rossner surely knew what was about to happen to him. He had seen Michel die, had been told he would die in the same way. Yet he stood unmoving, apparently unafraid.
He was willing to commit what amounted to suicide rather than disobey the key. In fact disobedience was literally inconceivable to him.
“Because they aren’t. There’s nothing supernatural involved. Just the ultimate in behavior modification techniques.” Salsbury was elated. “Peter, give me the cord. Thank you. You have both done well. Exceptionally well. Now, I want you to wrap Michel’s body in the canvas and move it to the next room. Wait there until I have additional orders for you. ”
As if they were a pair of ordinary laborers talking about how to move a load of bricks from here to there, Rossner and Holbrook quickly discussed the job at hand. When they had decided on the best way to roll and carry the corpse, they set to work.
“Congratulations,” Klinger said. He was perspiring. Cool, dry, steady-eyed Ernst Klinger was sweating like a pig.
What do you think of the computer lights now? Salsbury wondered. Do they look as Christmasy as they did ten minutes ago?
The computer room smelled of lemons. Salsbury had used an aerosol spray to get rid of the odor of feces and urine.
He took a bottle of whiskey from his desk drawer and poured himself a shot to celebrate.
Klinger had a double shot to steady his nerves. When he had tossed it back he said, “And now what?”
“The field test.”
“You’ve mentioned that before. But why? Why can’t we go ahead with the Middle East plan as Leonard outlined it in Tahoe, nearly two years ago? We know the drug works, don’t we? And we know the subliminals work.”
“I achieved the desired results with Holbrook, Rossner, and poor Picard,” Salsbury said, sipping his whiskey. “But it doesn’t necessarily follow that everyone will react as they have. I can’t possibly have complete confidence in the program until I’ve treated and observed and tested a few hundred subjects of both sexes and of all ages. Furthermore, our three mercenaries were treated and responded in controlled lab situations. Before we can take the extraordinary risks involved with something like the Middle East plan — where we’ve got to create a new subliminal series for another culture and in another language — we’ve simply got to know what the results will be in the field.”
Klinger poured himself another shot of whiskey. As he lifted the glass to his lips, a look of fear flitted across his face. It lasted no more than a second or two. Pretending to be thinking about the field test, he stared at the liquor in his glass and then at the bottle on the desk and then at Salsbury’s glass.
Laughing, Salsbury said, “Don’t worry, Ernst. I wouldn’t slip the drug into my own Jack Daniels. Besides, you’re not a potential subject. You’re my partner.”
Klinger nodded. Nevertheless, he put his glass down without tasting the whiskey. “Where would you run a field test like this?”
“Black River, Maine. It’s a small town near the Canadian border. ”
“Why there?”
Salsbury went to the nearest programming console and typed out an order to the computer. As he typed he said, “Two months ago I drew a list of the basic requirements for the ideal test site.”
All of the screens began to present the same information:
“Lumber camp?” Klinger asked.
“It’s a company town for Big Union Supply. Nearly everyone in Black River works for Big Union or services the people who do. The company maintains a full-scale camp — barracks, mess hall, recreation facilities, the whole works — near their planned forests for unmarried loggers who don’t want to go to the expense of renting a room or an apartment in the village.”
“There’s an interesting bit of additional data that goes with that one,” Salsbury said. “The American station is owned by a subsidiary of Futurex. It plays a lot of old movies at night and on weekends. We’ll be able to get copies of the station’s program schedules well in advance. We can prepare subliminally augmented prints of the movies they’re going to show and switch those for the original prints in the station’s film library.”
“That’s a bit of luck.”
“Saves us some time. Otherwise, Futurex would have had to acquire one of the stations, and that could take years.”
“But how can you be certain the people in Black River will watch these movies you’ve doctored?”
“They’re going to be inundated with subliminals in a variety of media that will command them to watch. For instance, the Dawson Foundation for Christian Ethics will run dozens of public service commercials on both the Canadian and American stations, two days in advance of the movies. Each of these commercials will harbor very strong subliminal commands directing the people in town and in the lumber camp to tune in at the right time on the right channel. We’ll also do direct mail advertising for several of Leonard’s companies — as a means of getting even more subceptive messages to them. Everyone in town will receive ads in the mail and some free gifts like soap samples, shampoo samples, and free rolls of photographic film. The advertisements and the samples will be packaged in wrappers rich in subliminal commands to watch a certain television station at a certain hour on a certain day. Even if the subject throws the piece of mail away without opening it, he’ll be affected, because the envelopes will also be printed over with subliminal messages. The major magazines and newspapers entering Black River during the period of programming will carry ads full of subceptive commands that direct the people to watch the movies.” He was getting a bit breathless in his recital. “A motion picture theater could not ordinarily prosper in
