Alternating Currents by Frederik Pohl Read Free Book Online

else?’
     
    She glanced at the papers in her hand, hesitated, then said: ‘Nothing important. Uh, Gunner. That 3-V preempt for tonight—’
     
    ‘Yeah, honey?’
     
    ‘Do you want me to cancel it?’
     
    I said, ‘No. You’re right, we won’t use the time for the Arcturan-American Friendship League or whatever we had scheduled, but you’re wrong, we’ll use the time some way. I don’t know how right now.’
     
    ‘But Junior said—’
     
    ‘Honey,’ I told her, ‘Junior says all sorts of things. Anybody looking to scalp me?’
     
    ‘Well,’ she said, ‘there’s Mr Connick. I didn’t think you’d want to see him.’
     
    ‘No, I’ll see him. I’ll see anybody.’
     
    ‘Anybody?’ I had surprised her. She dived into her list again. ‘There’s somebody from the Truce Team—’
     
    ‘Make it everybody from the Truce Team.’
     
    ‘- and Commander Whitling from—’
     
    ‘From the hospital. Sure, and tell him to bring some kids.’
     
    ‘- and ...’ She stalled off and looked at me. ‘Gunner, are you putting me on? You don’t really want to see all these people. 5
     
    I smiled and reached out and patted the viewphone. From her point of view it would look like an enormous cloudy hand closing in on her screen, but she would know what I meant. I said, ‘You could not be more wrong. I do. I want to see them all, the more the better, and the way I’d like to see them best is in my office, all at once. So set it up, honey, because I’ll be busy between now and then.’
     
    ‘Busy doing what, Gunner?’
     
    ‘Busy trying to think of what I want to see them for.’ And I turned off the viewphone, got up and walked out, leaving the others gobbling into emptiness behind me. What I needed was a long, long walk, and I took it.
     
    ~ * ~
     
    When I was tired of walking I went to the office and evicted Haber from his private quarters. I kept him standing by what had once been his own desk while I checked with Candace and found that she had made all my appointments for that evening, then I told him to get lost. ‘And thanks,’ I said.
     
    He paused on his way to the door. ‘For what, Gunner?’
     
    ‘For a very nice office to kill time in.’ I waved at the furnishings. ‘I wondered what you’d spent fifty grand on when I saw the invoices in the Chicago office, Haber, and I admit I thought there might have been a little padding. But I was wrong.’
     
    He said woundedly: ‘Gunner, boy! I wouldn’t do anything like that.’
     
    ‘I believe you. Wait a minute.’ I thought for a second, then told him to send in some of the technical people and not to let anybody, repeat anybody, disturb me for any purpose whatever. I scared him good, too. He left a shaken man, a little angry, a little admiring, a little excited inside, I think, at the prospect of seeing how the great man would get himself out of this one. Meanwhile the great man talked briefly to the technicians, took a ten minute nap, drank the Martinis out of his dinner tray and pitched the rest of it in the dispos-all.
     
    Then, as I had nearly an hour before the appointments Candace had set up for me, I scrounged around fat-cat Haber’s office to see what entertainment it offered.
     
    There were his files. I glanced at them and forgot them; there was nothing about the hoarded memoranda that interested me, not even for gossip. There were books on his shelf. But I did not care to disturb the patina of dust that even the cleaning machines had not been able to touch. There was his private bar, and the collection of photographs in the end compartment of his desk drawer.
     
    It looked like very dull times waiting, until the studio men reported in that they had completed their arrangements at my request, and the 3-V tape-effects monitor could now be controlled by remote from my desk, and then I knew I had a pleasant way of killing any amount of time.
     
    Have you ever played with the console of a 3-V monitor, backed by a