"What about you, Madison? You're our hero of the glib."

Renfield raised his hands in a somewhat helpless gesture. "There are always rumors, Kingsley. It'd be unhealthy for a corporation to be without rumors in this day and age. Let's face it, the ways of the modern corporation are a little Byzantine."

Deutsch raised his eyebrow. "Byzantine, Madison?"

Renfield had the expression of a man who had very little left to lose. "Byzantine, Kingsley."

Deutsch smiled. "So, Madison, do you see me as a Byzantine emperor?"

"I wouldn't volunteer the analogy."

Deutsch looked at the other nine. "Madison may, in fact, be right, but let us remember one thing. The Byzantine emperor could rule only according to the information that he received. He was frequently only as good as his intelligence, and that was only if his intelligence was untainted. One of Adolf Hitler's greatest problems was that he surrounded himself with individuals who told him only what he wanted to hear. That's not only bad intelligence but criminally unintelligent. I have, throughout my long career, taken great care to see that my own intelligence sources were as direct and pure as I could make them."

That, also, was no exaggeration. Deutsch was famous for his elaborate spy system, which seemed to extend to every level of the corporation despite all the efforts of the individual departments to suppress, filter, and regulate stories that went up to the penthouse.

"During the last few days, these sources have been telling me a great many things. So many things, in fact, that the sheer volume of information that I have been receiving recently would be enough on its own to cause me a measure of alarm. Let me enumerate some of the things I've been hearing."

The ten heads of department were no longer transfixed. They were now preparing to squirm in their leather chairs with the CM logo embossed in gold on the backs. No one could remember when Kingsley Deutsch had called a meeting that promised so much discomfort. It was quite usual for him to call individual department heads onto the carpet, but to summon them en masse for a dressing down was quite unprecedented.

"Now, where shall I start? Perhaps with the phenomenon of client death that, although substantively a closely guarded corporation secret, seems to have become widely talked about."

Gorges Gomez of Client Services and Renfield of PR exchanged worried glances. Deutsch caught the exchange.

"You have something to say? Something to add to the discussion?"

Gomez cleared his throat nervously. "There are a lot of rank and file workers who know about this. Many of them are employed only because of the concessions that were made to the union in the original charter. It is virtually impossible to silence so many people whose company loyalty may at best be tenuous."

Renfield jumped in. "I think the important thing is that we have been extremely successful at keeping even a hint of this from the media-"

Deutsch waved him to silence. "Just relax. This is not a court of inquiry. I am merely conducting an informal review of some of our current problems. All will become clear when, following this review, I make my promised announcement. All I want to do now is to bring some matters out into the open that have previously been the preserve of locked doors and whispered conversations, matters like, for instance, the reason that two of my most senior executives should meet in a public restaurant to discuss the reestablishment of death experience research."

Edouard Hayes went white. His face took on a strangled expression.

Deutsch looked directly at him. "You have something you want to add?"

"I… really must make it clear that Vallenti and I were only discussing the possibilities that some clandestine group might be attempting to start up such research again. After Jonas's research and the resulting prostitute murders when he went insane-"

Deutsch held up a hand. "How many times do I have to tell you that this is not an inquiry?"

He walked slowly down the length of the table. In the middistance, outside the panoramic window, the sky-board was flashing the current Pepsi slogan in red, white, and blue holotype.

"Ladies and gentlemen, it would appear that we are spending too much of our time reflecting on thoughts of death. The death of clients, the death experience, perhaps these are a cover for a deeper unease about the basic philosophy behind what we are doing. It's there in our own vernacular. We refer to our clients as 'stiffs,' to the standard IE unit as a 'coffin.' Could it be that we subconsciously feel that, in marketing a technological discorporate fantasy, we have become vendors of a form of death? That is a question that you may find answered sooner than you think. Before that happens, however, I cannot impress upon you more strongly that this is absolutely the wrong time for this question to be asked. An army that broods upon death through the eve of battle is not going to win any place in history. Unless they are defending the Alamo. Has Combined Media become the Alamo, gentlemen? If it has, I have to warn you. You may have to start thinking of me as your personal Santa Ana."

THE PRIDE OF ERIN WAS STARTING TO fill up, and Ralph's money was definitely dwindling. He had never been the kind who could nurse a single drink through half the evening. He drank up and ordered again. When he couldn't order any more it was time to get the hell out of wherever he was. Also, he was no longer feeling comfortable in the place. There were couples meeting up for dates, junior execs in sweatpants hot from the raquets court, and women who had been working late now, with their blouses unfastened a couple of notches, looking for fun. Ralph knew perfectly well that sitting in his overalls, three parts drunk, he had nothing that represented any approximation of their idea of fun. God, it had been so long since he had been with a woman. He really didn't need the reminder. He finished his drink, nodded to the barman, and headed for the door.

There was nothing left to do but return to the RT and make the ride out to Lincoln Avenue. He had been a damn fool to go looking for that bar. It was starting to get late, and even the monorail would be doubly dangerous.

As he walked through Reagan Plaza, he noticed that a fairly large crowd had gathered in front of the Sanyo-Hyatt. Using any excuse to put off boarding the train for as long as possible, he sauntered in the direction of the big modern hotel to investigate.

It wasn't the usual crowd that he would have expected to find in Reagan Plaza. They were mainly blue collar like himself, welfare cases, even, and a sprinkling of definite oddities. A lot of them carried cameras; he saw autograph books, and a bearded individual in a ragged suit of the executive style of five years earlier was holding up a placard that read YOU ARE DOOMED! There had to be some major celebrity staying inside. He ambled up to a woman in a blue coat who looked very unhappy to be way in the back of the crowd. Ralph smiled at her, doing his best to look every inch the amiable drunk.

"What's going on?"

"I'm not going to be able to see."

"What's there to see?"

The woman in the blue coat looked at him as though he were crazy. " 'Wildest Dreams.' "

"Huh?"

"The contestants are coming out, and I ain't going to see them."

"No shit."

"Would you help me get through?"

"Jesus, I don't know."

Ralph took a closer look at the crowd. They weren't in front of the main entrance to the hotel; police saw-horses and squads of uniformed officers held them back on the sidewalk at either side, so they wouldn't get in the way of the guests coming in and out. The cops controlling the crowd seemed to be treating the whole event as fairly routine, although Ralph did notice that there was a large, black, unmarked armored truck of the kind used by the CRAC squad parked across the street.