“You supplied the lyrics for the record?”
“No,” I said. “Just supplementary material, not the basic lyrics.”
Vivian Kaplan wrote all this down.
“It’s going to be one hell of a record,” I said.
“Yes, it sounds as if it would be. You’re going to press how many copies?”
“We hope to sell two million,” I said. “The initial pressing will be only fifty thousand, however. To see how it goes over.” Actually, I planned to get them to press three times that number.
“When can you make a copy available to us?”
“It isn’t even mastered yet,” I said.
“A tape, then?”
“Yeah, we could get a tape to you sooner.” It came into my mind that I could give her a tape which lacked the subliminal material; we would simply not add that layer of sound-on-sound.
“It is our opinion,” Vivian Kaplan said, “after examining the evidence, that you are having a sexual affair with Ms. Aramchek.”
“Well,” I said, “you can stick it up your ass.”
Vivian Kaplan gazed at me for a time; then she wrote a few words with her pen.
“It’s my business entirely,” I said.
“What does your wife say?”
“She says fine.”
“She knows, then?”
I could think of no answer to that. I had walked into a verbal trap, but one which meant nothing; they were on the wrong track entirely. I thought, They have the wrong ball; let them run it to the wrong goal line. Fine.
“As far as we can tell,” Vivian Kaplan said, “you have completely severed your ties with your leftist Berkeley past. Is that so, Mr. Brady?”
“It is so,” I said.
“Would you like to draw up a statement of political loyalty about Ms. Aramchek for our files? Since you know her and can speak reliably about her?”
“No,” I said.
“We have great confidence in you, Mr. Brady, in terms of your patriotism.”
“You should have,” I said.
“Why would you turn this chance down to ratify your standing? This would virtually close your files.”
“Nobody’s file is ever closed,” I said.
“Inactive, then.”
“Sorry,” I said. Ever since the displacement of my own will by the ETI helper I had found it difficult to lie. “I can’t oblige you,” I said. “What you want is evil and immoral; this is what is destroying the fabric of our society. Mutual spying by friend upon friend is the most insidious wickedness that Ferris Fremont has inflicted on a formerly free people. You can write that down, Miss Kaplan, and put it in my file; better yet, you can paste it on the outside of my file as my official statement to all of you.”
Vivian Kaplan laughed. “You must feel you have a pretty good lawyer.”
“I feel I have a pretty good grasp of the situation,” I said. “Now if you’re through, get out of my office. I have tapes to listen to.”
Rising, Vivian Kaplan said, “When will you have the tape for us?”
“A month.”
“It will be the tape you’ll use to transfer onto the master?”
“More or less.”
“ ‘More or less’ is not good enough, Mr. Brady. We want the exact master tape.”
“Sure,” I said. “Whatever.”
Lingering for a moment, Vivian Kaplan said, “We got a telephone tip from one of your sound engineers. He said there’s some very funny stuff in some of the subtracks.”
“Hmmm,” I said.
“It made him suspicious.”
“Which sound engineer is that?”
“We protect the anonymity of our informants.”
“You certainly should,” I said.
“Mr. Brady,” Vivian Kaplan said briskly, “I want to inform you at this time that you are terribly, terribly close to arrest, you and Ms. Aramchek, in fact your entire record firm and anyone connected intimately with you, your families, and friends.”
“Why?”
“We have reason to believe that there will be subversive sentiments expressed in the Let’s Play! album, put there probably by you and Ms. Aramchek and possibly others. We are giving you the benefit of the doubt, however; we will examine the record before its release and if we find nothing in it, you may release it on schedule and distribute as planned. But after analysis, if we find anything—”
“The curtain comes down,” I said.
“Pardon?”
“The Iron Curtain,” I said.
“What does that mean, Mr. Brady?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I’m just tired of all the suspiciousness, all the spying and accusing. All the arrests and murders.”
“What murders, Mr. Brady?”
“Mine,” I said. “I’m thinking specifically of that.”
She laughed. “You’re highly neurotic, as your profile indicates. You worry too much. You know what is going to kill you, Mr. Brady, if anything does? Screwing around with that Aramchek girl at your age. The last time you had a physical exam you showed elevated blood pressure; that was when you were admitted to the hospital in Downey following—”
“The elevated blood pressure,” I said, “was because—” I broke off.
“Yes?”
“Nothing.”
Vivian Kaplan waited for an interval, and then she said in a low, quiet voice, “You don’t have the satellite to help you any more, Mr. Brady. They got the satellite.”
“I know,” I said. “You mean the ETI one? Yes, the Russians blew that up; I saw that on TV.”
“You’re by yourself now.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“You understand what I mean.”
“I don’t,” I managed to say; it was an effort to lie, a dreadful effort, an offense against myself. I could hardly do it. “I thought the official U.S. position on that satellite was that it—what crap did I hear? ‘A discarded satellite of our own?’ or something like that. Not from outer space; worthless. Our own obsolete signals coming back to us.
“That was before the Soviet Union photographed it.”
“Oh,” I said, nodding. “So now the line has changed.”
“We know what that satellite was,” Vivian Kaplan said.
“Then how could you destroy it? What kind of demented mind could give the signal to destroy it? I don’t understand you. You don’t understand me and I don’t understand you. To me you are insane.” I ceased; I had said too much.
“You want an alien entity ruling your mind? Telling you what to do? You want to be a slave to—”
“What the hell do you think you are, Ms. Kaplan?” I said. “That’s what FAP
