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Read Ebook: Get Out of Our Skies! by Jarvis E K
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Ebook has 404 lines and 14627 words, and 9 pages
"Unemployment?"
"No," she smiled. "Public relations. Only I'm on the client's side of the fence. I work for an organization called Homelovers, Incorporated. Ever hear of them?"
Tom shook his head.
"Maybe you should. It's a rather important company, and growing. And they're always on the lookout for superior talent."
He squinted at her. "What is this? A job offer?"
"Maybe." She wriggled a little, and the slits in her dress widened just a fraction. "We've got the nucleus of a good PR department now. But with a really experienced man at the controls--it could grow enormously. Think you might be interested?"
"Maybe I would," Tom said. But he wasn't thinking about PR right then.
"Mr. Andrusco's had you in mind for a long time," Livia Cord continued. "I've mentioned your name to him several times as a possible candidate. If you hadn't been fired from Ostreich, we might have tried to tempt you away." Her fingers touched a stray lock of red hair. "Now--we don't have to be surreptitious about it. Do we?"
"No," Tom said guardedly. "I guess not."
"If you're free tomorrow, I could arrange a meeting with Mr. Andrusco. Would you like that?"
"Well ..."
"His office opens at nine. We could get there early."
Tom looked at his watch. Livia said: "I know it's late. But we could get an early start in the morning, right after breakfast. Couldn't we?"
"Home?" The girl leaned back. "Who said anything about home?"
Her bedroom was monochromed. Even the sheets were pink. At five o'clock, the false dawn glimmered through the window, and the light falling on his eyes awakened him. He looked over at the sleeping girl, feeling drugged and detached. She moaned slightly, and turned her face towards him. He blinked at the sight of it, and cried aloud.
"What is it?" She sat up in bed and nicked on the table lamp. "What's the matter?"
He looked at her carefully. She was beautiful. There wasn't even a smudge of lipstick on her face.
It was hard to keep track of the glass-and-steel structures that had been springing up daily along the Fifth-Madison Thruway. When Tom and Livia stepped out of the cab in front of 320, he wasn't surprised that the building--an odd, cylindrical affair with a pointed spire--was strange to him. But he was taken aback to realize that all sixty floors were the property of Homelovers, Incorporated.
"Quite a place," he told the girl.
She smiled at him tightly. Livia was crackling with business electricity this morning, her spiked heels clicking along the marble floors of the lobby like typewriter keys. She wore a tailored gray suit that clung to her body with all the perfection and sexlessness of a window mannikin. In the elevator, shooting towards the executive offices on the 57th floor, Tom looked over at her and scratched his poorly-shaven cheeks in wonderment.
They plowed right through the frosty receptionist barrier, and entered an office only half the size of Penn Station. The man behind the U-shaped desk couldn't have been better suited to the surroundings by Central Casting. He was cleft-jawed, tanned, exquisitely tailored. If his polished brown toupee had been better fitted, he would have been positively handsome.
The handshake was firm.
"Good to see you," he grinned. "Heard a lot about you, Mr. Blacker. All of it good."
"Well," Livia said airily. "I've done my part. Now you two come to terms. Buzz me if you need me, J. A."
John Andrusco unwrapped a cigar when she left, and said: "Well, now. Suppose we get right down to cases, Mr. Blacker. Our organization is badly in need of a public relations set-up that can pull out all the stops. We have money and we have influence. Now all we need is guidance. If you can supply that, there's a vacant chair at the end of the hall that can accommodate your backside." He grinned manfully.
"Well," Tom said delicately. "My big problem is this, Mr. Andrusco. I don't know what the hell business you're in."
The executive laughed heartily. "Then let me fill you in."
He stepped over to a cork-lined wall, pressed a concealed button, and panels parted. An organizational chart, with designations that were meaningless to Tom, appeared behind it.
"Speaking basically," Andrusco said, "Homelovers, Incorporated represents the interests of the world's leading real estate concerns. Land, you know, is still the number one commodity of Earth, the one priceless possession that rarely deteriorates in value. In fact, with the increase in the Earth's population, the one commodity that never seems to be in excess supply."
"I see," Tom said, not wholly in truth.
"I'm not following too well," Tom said frankly. "Just where does public relations come into this? I can't see much connection."
Andrusco frowned, but without wrinkling his serene brow too much. He went to the multipaned window and locked his hands behind his back.
"Let me put it this way, Mr. Blacker. With the Earth's population approaching the three billion mark, you can imagine that real estate is at a greater premium than ever--yes, even the remotest land areas have gained in market value. But let me ask you this. If there were only a hundred apples in the world, and you owned all of them, what would you do if you learned that someone else had discovered a fruitful orchard, which contains ten million apples?"
"I'd go out of the apple business."
"Precisely." Andrusco rocked on his heels. "In a sense, that's very much the problem that Homelovers, Incorporated may have to face in the next generation."
"Somebody swiping your apples?"
"In a way." The man chuckled. "Yes, in a way." He raised his arm slowly, and pointed to the sky. "The apples," he said, "are up there."
"Huh?" Tom said.
"Space, Mr. Blacker. Space is opening its doors to us. Already, the UN Space Commission has launched some two dozen manned vehicles into the outer reaches. Already, the satellite-building colony on the moon is well under way. The progress of our space program has been accelerating month by month. The expert predictions have been more and more optimistic of late. In another ten, twenty years, the solar system will be beckoning the children of Earth ..."
Tom said nothing for a while. Then he cleared his throat.
"Well ... I'm no expert on these things. But maybe the population could stand a little more real estate, Mr. Andrusco. In twenty years ..."
"Nonsense!" The voice was snappish. "The best authorities say it isn't so. There's plenty of room on Earth. But if ever a mass exodus begins--"
"That doesn't seem possible," Tom said. "Does it? I mean, only a handful of guys have ever gone out there. A drop in the bucket. I mean, Mars and all that may be fun to visit, but who'd want to live there?"
Andrusco turned to him slowly.
"The apples in the new orchard may be sour, Mr. Blacker. But if your livelihood depended on your own little stack of fruit--would you be willing to sit by and take the chance?"
Tom shrugged. "And is that the public relations job? To keep people out of space?"
"Put in its crudest form, yes."
"A pretty tough job. You know that guff about Man's Pioneering Spirit."
"Yes. But we're worried about the public spirit, Mr. Blacker. If we can dampen their ardor for space flight--only delay it, mind you, for another few years--we can tighten our own lines of economic defense. Do I make myself clear?"
"Not completely."
"Will you take the job?"
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