The Complete Stories_ Volume 1 - Isaac Asimov [88]
Francis Belanger burst into Jesse Weill's office in his usual steaming tizzy, his reddish hair disordered and his face aglow with worry and a mild perspiration. He was brought up sharply by the sight of Weill's head cradled in the crook of his elbow and bent on the desk until only the glimmer of white hair was visible.
Belanger swallowed. "Boss?"
Weill's head lifted. "It's you, Frank?"
"What's the matter, boss? Are you sick?"
"I'm old enough to be sick, but I'm on my feet. Staggering, but on my feet. A government man was here."
"What did he want?"
"He threatens censorship. He brought a sample of what's going round. Cheap dreamies for bottle parties."
"God damn!" said Belanger feelingly.
"The only trouble is that morality makes for good campaign fodder. They'll be hitting out everywhere. And, to tell the truth, we're vulnerable, Frank."
"We are? Our stuff is clean. We play up straight adventure and romance." Weill thrust out his lower lip and wrinkled his forehead. "Between us, Frank, we don't have to make believe. Clean?
It depends on how you look at it. It's not for publication, maybe, but you know and I know that every dreamie has its Freudian connotations. You can't deny it."
"Sure, if you look for it. If you're a psychiatrist—"
"If you're an ordinary person, too. The ordinary observer doesn't know it's there and maybe he couldn't tell a phallic symbol from a mother image even if you pointed it out. Still, his subconscious knows. And it's the connotations that make many a dreamie click."
"All right, what's the government going to do? Clean up the subconscious?"
"It's a problem. I don't know what they're going to do. What we have on our side, and what I'm mainly depending on, is the fact that the public loves its dreamies and won't give them up. . . . Meanwhile, what did you come in for? You want to see me about something, I suppose?"
Belanger tossed an object onto Weill's desk and shoved his shirttail deeper into his trousers. Weill broke open the glistening plastic cover and took out the enclosed cylinder. At one end was engraved in a too fancy script in pastel blue "Along the Himalayan Trail." It bore the mark of Luster-Think.
"The Competitor's Product." Weill said it with capitals, and his lips twitched. "It hasn't been published yet. Where did you get it, Frank?"
"Never mind. I just want you to absorb it."
Weill sighed. "Today, everyone wants me to absorb dreams. Frank, it's not dirty?" Belanger said testily, "It has your Freudian symbols. Narrow crevasses between the mountain peaks. I hope that won't bother you."
"I'm an old man. It stopped bothering me years ago, but that other thing was so poorly done, it hurt. . . . All right, let's see what you've got here."
Again the recorder. Again the unfreezer over his skull and at the temples. This time, Weill rested back in his chair for fifteen minutes or more, while Francis Belanger went hurriedly through two cigarettes. When Weill removed the headpiece and blinked dream out of his eyes, Belanger said, "Well, what's your reaction, boss?"
Weill corrugated his forehead. "It's not for me. It was repetitious. With competition like this, Dreams, Inc., doesn't have to worry for a while."
"That's your mistake, boss. Luster-Think's going to win with stuff like this. We've got to do something."
"Now, Frank—"
"No, you listen. This is the coming thing."
"This!" Weill stared with a half-humorous dubiety at the cylinder. "It's amateurish, it's repetitious. Its overtones are very unsubtle. The snow had a distinct lemon sherbet taste. Who tastes lemon sherbet in snow these days, Frank? In the old days, yes. Twenty years ago, maybe. When Lyman Harrison first made his Snow Symphonies for sale down south, it was a big thing.
Sherbet and candy-striped mountaintops and sliding down chocolate-covered cliffs. It's slapstick, Frank. These days it doesn't go."
"Because," said Belanger, "you're not up with the times, boss. I've got to talk to you straight. When you started the dreamie business, when you bought up the basic patents and