The Running Man - Stephen King [18]
Richards said nothing.
Killian pulled a dossier onto the virgin surface of his desk blotter. Richards saw that it had his name typed on the front. Killian flipped it open.
“Benjamin Stuart Richards. Age twenty-eight, born August 8, 1997, city of Harding. Attended South City Manual Trades from September of 2011 until December of 2013. Suspended twice for failure to respect authority. I believe you kicked the assistant principal in the upper thigh once while his back was turned?”
“Crap,” Richards said. “I kicked him in the ass.”
Killian nodded. “However you say, Mr. Richards. You married Sheila Richards, née Gordon, at the age of sixteen. Old-style lifetime contract. Rebel all the way, uh? No union affiliation due to your refusal to sign the Union Oath of Fealty and the Wage Control Articles. I believe that you referred to Area Governor Johnsbury as ‘a corn-holing sonofabitch.’”
“Yes,” Richards said.
“Your work record has been spotty and you’ve been fired…let’s see…a total of six times for such things as insubordination, insulting superiors, and abusive criticism of authority.”
Richards shrugged.
“In short, you are regarded as antiauthoritarian and antisocial. You’re a deviate who has been intelligent enough to stay out of prison and serious trouble with the government, and you’re not hooked on anything. A staff psychologist reports you saw lesbians, excrement, and a pollutive gas vehicle in various inkblots. He also reports a high, unexplained degree of hilarity—”
“He reminded me of a kid I used to know. He liked to hide under the bleachers at school and whack off. The kid, I mean. I don’t know what your doctor likes to do.”
“I see.” Killian smiled briefly, white teeth glittering in all that darkness, and went back to his folder. “You held racial responses outlawed by the Racial Act of 2004. You made several rather violent responses during the word-association test.”
“I’m here on violent business,” Richards said.
“To be sure. And yet we—and here I speak in a larger sense than the Games Authority; I speak in the national sense—view these responses with extreme disquiet.”
“Afraid someone might tape a stick of Irish to your ignition system some night?” Richards asked, grinning.
Killian wet his thumb reflectively and turned to the next sheet. “Fortunately—for us—you’ve given a hostage to fortune, Mr. Richards. You have a daughter named Catherine, eighteen months. Was that a mistake?” He smiled frostily.
“Planned,” Richards said without rancor. “I was working for G-A then. Somehow, some of my sperm lived through it. A jest of God, maybe. With the world the way it is, I sometimes think we must have been off our trolley.”
“At any rate, you’re here,” Killian said, continuing to smile his cold smile. “And next Tuesday you will appear on The Running Man. You’ve seen the program?”
“Yes.”
“Then you know it’s the biggest thing going on Free-Vee. It’s filled with chances for viewer participation, both vicarious and actual. I am executive producer of the program.”
“That’s really wonderful,” Richards said.
“The program is one of the surest ways the Network has of getting rid of embryo troublemakers such as yourself, Mr. Richards. We’ve been on for six years. To date, we have no survivals. To be brutally honest, we expect to have none.”
“Then you’re running a crooked table,” Richards said flatly.
Killian seemed more amused than horrified. “But we’re not. You keep forgetting you’re an anachronism, Mr. Richards. People won’t be in the bars and hotels or gathering in the cold in front of appliance stores rooting for you to get away. Goodness! no. They want to see you wiped out, and they’ll help if they can. The more messy the better. And there is McCone to contend with. Evan McCone and the Hunters.”
“They