dusk, Eve Simpson catalogued her new hardships among California's Channel Islands. 'They promised me,' she said, scowling in the late sun as she jogged along the beach, ''
Trundling beside little Evie in a gold cart, her male secretary made an entry in his portable 'corder and judged that it was time for his hourly demur. “Evie dear, they don't have any new heroes available just yet. He
'Resonance I'll give him,' Eve puffed. 'Brains, I couldn't find. The next hapless ass NBN fobs off on me who blows a dozen takes because his labile memory isn't up to three lines of dialogue, welllll,' she said ominously, and fought to recover her breathing rhythm. As much as she despised jogging, Eve loathed dieting more.
Bruce, her secretary, knew why the National Broadcasting Network paid him so well: given enough provocation, NBN's most prized teen sexpot could discover a blinding migraine that might hold up shooting schedules for days. It wouldn't be such a bitch of a job, he admitted to himself, if little Evie were your standard model seventeen-year-old Hollywood centerfold — which is to say, trained to be utterly disinterested in anything beyond immediate appearances. But Eve Simpson was distinctly abnormal, he gloomed, noting the rivers of perspiration that trickled down her spine to be absorbed by the velour stretched across those famous buns. In ten years she might be pudgy. Right now she was a morsel men — most men, he smiled to himself — craved. Until they fetched up against the inner Evie. A mind swift and incisive as a weasel's bite, a tongue she wielded like a broken bottle. A clever gay fellow could feast like a pilot fish on gutted egos, cruising near the jaws of Eve Simpson.
Eve slowed to a walk as the beach curled toward the east, then turned away from rocky prominences and began to retrace her path. 'You're watching the rad counter, I hope,' she said. 'The Lompoc and Santa Barbara fallout pattern could shift on us.'
'We're clean as puppy teeth,' he said and snickered, waving a negligent palm at the glass-ported concrete dome just under their skyline. 'I'll bet there's a batch of vice-presidents gnawing their cuticles to ribbons up there, watching you and worrying enough for all of us.' He steered around a pile of kelp, giggled. 'If the wind changed we'd hear them from here; they'd have a feces hemorrhage.'
'Bruce, you wouldn't say'shit' if you had a mouthful,' she accused, lengthening her stride as she called back. 'Did you ever wonder if there were such a thing as being too socialized?'
'Oh, Gohhhd, Evie's a sociologist again,' he moaned.
'At least you can pronounce it,' she shot back. “Oh: see if I have a schedule conflict between my dialect tutor and blocking out the scenes for my Friday 'cast. And have wardrobe magic up some bra straps that don't slice me in three,' she added.
It was pure hell to make do on a desert island, she thought. Well, not exactly a desert. Eve slowed to a walk again, noting the similarities between the familiar scrub oak and cactus of Catalina, and her present location on Santa Cruz Island. She knew the history of Santa Cruz from the Caire settlements through the Stanton purchase, its off-limits status, and the far-sighted lease arrangements NBN had worked out with the Bureau of Public Information. Knowing the dichotomy between news broadcasts and the actual progress of the war, little Evie thought of it as the Bureau of Public Disinformation. Invasion defenses by civil defense organizations in Los Angeles, indeed!
For that matter, what civil defense? Eve's media theory tutor, a Southern Cal professor named Kelsey with connections at AP and UPI, was already squirreling away a collection of news items which, by the process of wartime censorship, had become non-news. One day it might become ten pages in a learned journal; meanwhile it was grist for Eve's formidable mill.
News: patriotic Americans over eighteen years of age were swamping induction centers.
Non-news: it didn't take many people to swamp induction centers that for the moment had no means to ship inductees, or training centers for them. When the military machinery got in gear, sixteen- year-olds might feel the draft.
News: a coordinated counterattack by US/RUS orbital weapons had won the first great battle in near space. We alone had orbital spies.
Non-news: the RUS moonbase was now only a collection of desperate people in a few leaking domes, unable to mount another launch and without hope of survival if another bevy of nukes came their way.
News: an estimated twenty per cent of China's population, and twenty-five per cent of India's, had perished.
Non-news: so had a full forty per cent of ours. Centralization had provided the good life. Too much centralization had obliterated it.
News: survivors in all US coastal areas were girding themselves for invasion, clearing debris from vital thoroughfares, cheerful in their faith in flag, mom, and apple pie.
Non-news: that piece of news was a lie. Survivors in most coastal regions were scrabbling for existence after less than a week. Any transportation that depended on rails or macadam was in thick yogurt, though belt line throughways around a few cities had survived beyond Dead Day. Moms were dying, apples were radioactive, and east of the Alleghenies the flag carried paranthrax.
News: crisis relocation centers were getting supplies from federal stores by secret means in a coordinated mutual-aid effort. The few isolated cases of local satrapy would be documented and punished.
Non-news: it would be hard to keep the role of the delta dirigibles a secret for long, and few of the centers showed much interest in anything beyond their own survival. Some were dispensing antibiotics and broadcasting survival tips oriented toward keeping their gates clear of more evacuees.
News: The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints urged Americans to turn to prayer and good works; to accept this judgment of God with a firm resolve to emulate the Godly as a path to survival.
Non-news: Catholics, Jews, Unitarians and athiests wanted equal time. It was not difficult to infer a connection between different ratios of survival between faiths, and different amount of Godliness. What
Eve Simpson had already absorbed an undergraduate's knowledge of media and information processing. She knew that word of mouth was still the best advertising, and that a convincing demonstration was the spoon that filled mouths with the right words. It occurred to Eve that Senator Collier of Utah was a convincing demonstrator with the right words and, under these circumstances, the right background. B.A., J.D., and LDS. His Presidential candidacy might be a foregone conclusion if the latest rumor were true.
She had heard it while on Stage Three, one of the concrete domes of the hush-hush complex they called Sound Stage West. The complex had been built into the mountain overlooking the secluded valley of Santa Cruz Island so that news, non-news, and rumor could all receive their 'proper' processing in an emergency. The President, it was rumored, was not safely tucked into a maximum-security hole, nor was the Vice President. The stream of messages issued by the
White House press secretary only purported to come from the top. The rumor dealt with a brace of impact nukes and one of the provisioned caverns of Virginia's once-lovely Shenandoah Valley. If it was true — real non- news — then the Speaker of the House was now President of the United States.
Eve found the rumor worrisome. 'Give me that towel,' she said suddenly, and mopped herself as she climbed aboard the golf cart. 'Put this thing in overdrive or something, Brucie; I want back inside.'
'You've got time,' he soothed.
'Have I? If our government goes belly-up, Bruce, the only thing left to glue this country together will be media. Tell me honestly: do you think Sound Stage West could take a direct hit?'
'So they say,' he replied, intent on conning the vehicle. 'Since three of NBN's top shareholders and a senator are here with their hotsies and luggage, I tend to believe it.'
The big titties bounced with Eve's laughter. 'Why is it that fags have all the brains,' she gurgled rhetorically. Bruce merely smiled. He knew how to field a left-handed compliment, however poorly tossed.
