CHAPTER THREE
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On the hill hunched a house whose horrors were but conjectures and it came to pass that he found himself alone in front of the pale iron gates that formed the final warning to intruders on a night that echoed loneness and painted it a wind-gust black.
He methodically rolled back the iron gates and the twisted hinges responded with tormented screams as he crossed its barrier and followed the wee-littered path. He wrenched his way up the winding course until he was abruptly called to a halt by a large and forbidding door, staggered slightly ajar. Phillips brushed his shoulder into the door's rough pitted surface and entered. Two steps into the abandoned hall he collapsed to his knees, tried to summon his strength but could only manage to murmur in a voice no louder than a stifled heartbeat, "They've struck!" before he was overcome by exhaustion and passed out across the cold tile floor.
Somewhere within the stillness, his dulled senses were recaptured; a faint trace of a smell he could not name crossed his nostrils, distantly near he heard voices and the blur in his eyes began to clear as he squinted to focus. He tried to speak, "The vertical hold controllers have gone out on strike," but to Phillips the words seemed more like formless waves than sounds practiced since birth.
Phillips could sense the change in the room. The walls seemed barren and ghostly cold. Panic lurked in the corners. The air was tight and tinged with a haunting expectation. He became fully aware of those beings sharing the quarter he was in. Directly across from Phillips, Mr. Allen traced with his fingers the bare spots on his painted bay window where the scenes had cracked and were chipping away. He put his back to the window and summoned his voice from the deep heart of his existence, Gentlemen, we have a job to do."
Carefully, the plans were constructed and subjected to the kind of intense scrutiny men on the edge are want to give. Through the night and into the wet milky morning they worked, one by one diffusing through the door until only Phillips and Allen remained ot sit within the room's morose glow.
After a time, the duration of which was lost by both men as they explored the less accessible recesses of the mind, the first rumblings of a portending stir frothed at the window-glass. The early hours combined with the effects of a sleepless night to render the sound imperceptible until it was squarely upon them. And when it had reached this precipice, it was instantly recognized as an immediate and real force. Without contemplating the consequences of their movements, the men slipped towards the door. They paused momentarily, reluctant to relinguish this last vestige of defense, before easing back the portal.
The brisk morning was first to whip their senses and they released themselves to its abuse. But in the ensuing minutes, it was the stifling clamor of motion that pulled most forcefult on their strained nerves. A great cloud of raged humanity swarmed outside the entrance way, hovering towards the two men. It was Phillips who came to meet it.
With his palms above his head he spoke, "All night I've been at it, trying to find an equitable solution without compromising our demands. They will not recognize us. They insist on exploiting our efforts. If this is going to be their position, then we will stand firm in our commitment. We shall show them the power of our solidarity."
The mob let go its hot breath and uncoiled forward. The dim morning cast a menacing green tone across the faces of the vertical hold controllers and the effect was not lost on Allen who wanted to retreat inside but dared not show signs of weakness. He stood firm despite the threatening approach, his forehead beginning to break in thin lines of perspiration. He was only vaguely aware of Phillips beside him determiningly addressing the crowd.
Phillips, though his voice never quavered, believed that the vertical holders had worked themselves into too great a furor to be brought under control. His mind raced; using his wiles on a last ditch effort to calm the controllers, formulating and escape path, and at the same time desperately hoping for a miraculous intervention to quell the chaping riotness that stretched around him.
And then, as if in answer to both men's wild prayers, two sharp blasts filled the air and the crowd began to rout. The swarm turned back and centered their attention around a square reflecting object. As they fled inside, both Phillips and Allen strained their eyes to catch a glimpse, but neither could find any significance to the silver truck or the registering sound that accompanied it.
Allen's lips were grey and his face was pale, his voice shook as he said, "That was closer than I ever care to get again."
Phillips steadied his hands enough to fill two glasses with a heavy liquor and he and Allen quickly quashed their contents. The alcohol smoothed Phillips's voice, "They've worked up steam overnight. We can prolong our plans no longer." His words slammed across the room.
Allen dropped himself into a chair, "It would have been more effective to have drawn out the hostilities, but I agree. We'll work another angle and you announce the pay raise." He spoke into his empty glass and his words drained his face leaving it a mirror of the glass.
The phone drilled an alarm through their ears and Allen reached for it. "Yeh, I'm going to give them the 2% . . . No we dare not hold off any longer. Send out the release just as we planned . . . He'll appreciate your remarks." He let go of the phone and picked up Phillips with his eyes, "He sends you his congratulations on a job well done and I fully concur. Your timing and control was excellent."
"I only wish we could have extended the proceedings a while longer."
Both men relaxed into their chairs, calmed now, their ordeal over, so they believed. If their was a victory to be savored, they were too fatigued to taste it. They fought sleep with the bars energy of their will.
Phillips thought he felt the sun come through the window but when he looked up the scene on the bay window had remained unchanged, cracked and breaking and hidden in shadows. The sun paced the perimeters of the compound mounting strength for an attempt to break through the thick haze that surrounded the window, the hill, and the cluster that had begun again to take frenzy on the pale-green lawn.
Phillips and Allen moved for the door to top off the crowd's rising ferver. Their step was now characterized by an indominable assurance as they faced the massive numbers of distraught faces.
"I am pleased to report that we can all get back to work. The strike is over. Our demands have been met and I have given my personal assurance that we will immediately begin work with the same diligence and devotion that has made our company great." Phillips tracked the luminous energy as it shredded the fog and he followed the light as it cast its arc on the footsteps finding the back path. He was sure that events were not as they should be. Phillips's voice cracked, he spoke louder but the primal senses of the crowd could not be overpowered, nor could he hope to convince himself that something was not estranged.
As Phillips choked down the panic that threatened to sweep his voice into the still air, Allen managed to slip inside and confront the foul news. The activity in the room Allen entered rumbled off the walls and quaked at the foundations as it uttered its chaotic message.
"We're ruined, we can endure no longer. If there's a power greater than ours, may it show mercy on us."
Allen tried to ascertain the twisting course of events but he could only pantomine thru the nightmare. His frantic pleas for answers multiplied the commotion. He jarred loose a response only by collaring the young messenger he had seen clampering into the house. The crumpled telegram stuck to the half-opened palm of the breathless messenger and Allen had to pry it away. As he read the yellow note, his jaw fell and his eyes weighed heavy in their sockets. The blood rushed from his face, he lowered himself into a chair.
"May the Saints have mercy on us. It's been confirmed," the news was relayed with bitter resolve.
"Lowest ratings again. What more can we give them?" Allen let his vehemence slash the dim light. "This will mean a complete corporate shakedown."
"With the convention due?"
The voice pondered out of the void, droning its dark secrets. "Forget the convention. No other network will carry it for fear of losing their audience. The parties have failed to give us a candidate we can serve to the viewing public."
The instant remained mute until it found its words, "We've got the finest makeup craftsmen in the business. They've turned pig slop into pig before."
"Sure, a hairline or an eyebrow can be touched up. But like I've been saying all along, our technology has lagged in the area of video-demagoguery and this is a case in point. Frank Llloyd Wright wouldn't build on these guys."
Phillips was still on the porch when Allen deftly placed the yellow message into his hands. Phillips read and for an instant the crowd was still. But then someone shouted, hot queries breathed in a uniform surge. Phillips tried desperately to seize the wandering tendrils of his thoughts but in the end he could only say in a voice caged with compassion and paternal fondness, "Go home now. Go to your families and friends. Perhaps we will meet again." And they understood or at least sensed what must be their recourse to events that they could not begin to fathom. They stood frozen for a brief eternity, then turned and herded away.
Silence pervaded the executive conference room Phillips led himself into. The men inside the room were nothing more than fixtures within that silence. Their palms on the table, they sat circling an oblong table, their concentration held tight. Phillips drew himself around the seated men but none noticed the circumference he paced. He could not physically penetrate their circle, no place at the table seemed appropriate for him to sit at. Nor could he reach their mental plane, for they had been grasped by a force beyond his power. A light seizure shuddered Phillips's spine and he grabbed at the door. The room and the aura it held was not to be part of Phillips's blood and he breathed easier as he exited from it. The room sucked the door closed, jealously guarding the hostages it kept inside. The sign on the door made a death rattle and one of the upper level management names crashed to the floor.
Still the men made no movement until it descended onto the room, or ascended from the inner consciousness of the men, beginning as a mere rustle in the decaying air, progressing to a murmur on each man's lips and becoming a voice of its own. "A face of mud won't wash." The voice called out again, "A face of mud won't wash," beseeching for a response, a sign, an intervention casting light on their mystery.
At once and in accord, the sign was seen. Not a sign from the past, for the past could not begin to summon the courage to unravel the dilemma now faced by these men, nor was a sign seen from the future, for the future is as obscure as the past. It was the present that set the precedent.
As the night faded with the sun, the chant came out of the darkness, "The present is the precedent . . . the present is the precedent . . . present precedent . . . present . . . dent." The union of the mind and the universe again unravelled the puzzle, "Reelect the President."
"We'll reelect the President to another term."
The response strangled all hope in the room, "He has refused to run, wanting to retire at the height of his popularity."
"But he's the man for the job. He's the celebrity we need to insure a large audience for the convention."
The messages were not fading back into the night and the rap on the door was not lost on the senses of the subjects in the room.
"I'm sorry to interrupt you sir," the voice was high and fidgety, "But you told me to report all new developments. The party leadership has ruled that it will not allow television coverage of its convention."
"What?"
The messenger boy rocked under the spirited eyes of the room, "I took down the exact words, do you want them? 'In the interest of national security and party harmony, we will not allow any news media inside our convention doors. We no longer wish to give our opponents fuel for the election campaign from the debates within our leadership. Firthermore, we do not wish to present the powers across the world with our candidates' responses to matters of national security.'" The messenger braced himself but the eviscerating response expected by the boy was thwarted by the defenses a mind under control subliminally produces. The pale demeanor of the room's occupants triggered hysterics in the messenger and he retreated hastily away.
The room remained voiceless until somewhere deep inside each man a dark cancerous doubt began to grow. A douby choking on self-incrimination and over-lapping with panic. Only the outside oedges of self-control remained, enough to take up the chant, "The president will not rerun. President not rerun . . . President . . . rerun . . . "
The door, left astir by the messenger, slammed shut, compressing the final sounds of the cry and shooting them back into the room. And it was Allen who was first ignited.
"Has not the solution been before us all along?" and he swept his hand towards the center of the table where a large orb was running test patterns.
Allen pushed his chair from the table with exaggerated movements for effect, pulled a cassette from the shelf and locked it into the tube. After several ponderous moments he queried, "Do you recognize what you're seeing?"
The realization engulfed the room in an instant of conflagration. Each pair of eyes burned in its socket, fired with the knowledge.
"We're viewing this year's convention."
"But is the public going to believe it?" The question rang off the wall.
"What are they going to believe, what they see with their own eyes, or what they don't see?"
"The problem remains," the pause languished over the room. If they won't buy it, we're through. They have to believe it."
The last words faded back into the stillness of the night, carrying with it the confidence in the spirit they had created. With the power lost, the meeting quickly disbanded, a course of action had been proposed but the chairs, now empty, except one, contained an air of unsettleness. Allen sat still, his eyes expressionless, his mind slowly flipping through the remaining questions. A rustling in the hall disturbed his reverie. Suspecting that the presence was returning, he clawed the table with his fingers, and waited.
Phillips wafted through the doorbeam, pulled out a chair opposite from Allen and sat down, sprawling his arms and shoulders across the table to move his head close to Allen. His voice coughed out of his lungs, "Did we get the raise?"
That particular question was not on the list that Allen had stuffed in his head and as a result his response was not immediately forthcoming. Phillips stayed precariously perched, seeming to add to the burden of the question the weight of his own existence. For his part, Allen came closer to the realization that his fate was inextricably linked to Phillips and this knowledge began to take its toll on his senses. He drooped forward, his face sanguine, and lowering his eyes said, "I don't know."
Phillips felt his stomach turn. His understanding of events and places began to cloud and merge together. HIs beliefs began to lose their grasp and slip through his mind. His speech rolled out thick and unsettling, "I can't afford not to be successful." He let hte words take flight and then paused before he revealed the secrets locked within his tormented soul. "It's not just my job. It's . . . It's the books."
Allen sat petrified as the tale wove around him spinning him into its web. He felt trapped within the confines of the revelations thrust on him.
"Given enough time I can transfer the revenues from the general strike fund to the pension fund. But I must have time." Phillips had begun to break down. His hands trembled, his face swelled, his head sunk into his chest. "The pension fund that was depleted by unfortunate investments, his breathing was torturous now as he labored to exorcise his demons. The tone in his voice cracked and pleaded for relief from the pounding of his insides. "I'm depending on that raise to keep the union away from my books." The air hung heavy with desperation. Phillips's confession waited in the room, not to be satisfied till the play of events escalated to their horrendous conclusion.
Allen summoned his strength and rose from his chair. He hovered over Phillips for some time before he let his words escape from the frightful regions of his darkest imaginings. He chose them carefully, plodding over each one, "You will get your raise."
The deed was done. The words spoken. Allen continued, "We'll need the Vertical Hold Controllers if we're going to accomplish our task. We can not stand by and experience technical difficulties." Allen let go the terrible news that the low ratings and resulting loss in advertising revenues could likely require a high level reevaluation of management personnel.
Phillips felt an icy movement along his back making him keenly aware of the frightful possibilities a reorganization might uncover. He queried into the past for answers and found that election coverage had always been a profit-making enterprise.
Allen dragged Phillips deeper into the mire as he explained that the political figures were so unpresentable as to plunge all hopes of capturing an audience into a bottomless depth of despair. All, with the exception of one. Phillips knew even before his name was spoken which man could lead them into a place of daylight. Allen let his head roll ominously from side to side, "That man won't run for fear that another term may ruin his place in history."
They both let the morbid quiet stalk the room as the solutions to their predicament occupied their thoughts. Allen fueled the damning fires by revealing that the convention could not be reported from within regardless because of a ban by the party hierarchy on all news crews. Then he loosed a ray of hope. "Phillips, we possess in our hands the potential for bringing people back to a time when the country was successful. Back to a time when families were safe and one could harvest the fruits of hard work." Phillips, his jaw locked in anticipation, his fore head curled, waited. "In the interest of the nation, we must rerun the last convention and set as a candidate the one man whose vision and leadership can resurrect the country and hopefully boost our ratings to a competitive level."
Phillips let the plan sink into the void before he replied, "When we explain that we're programming reruns, won't we lose some of our audience?"
Allen searched no further than his conscious mind to pull out his response. "They must believe that they are viewing a live event. It is up to your technical staff to merge place and time into a convincing product. Can you do it?"
Phillips rose, for a moment he hesitated, then directed his eyes towards Allen and said, "Yes." Together they stepped outside the conference room. Phillips brushed back his hair, let his eyes take on the focus of another place and said, "We accept the challenge and offer our services promising the same devotion that has in the past contributed to the network's success."
Both men knew the significance of recent events could not begin to be immediately reflected in their present atmosphere, yet each felt the clouds of fortune beginning to shape on the horizon. Neither, however, could tell what that fortune had in store for them. Allen stayed sullen, reserving optimism for a later date, "I have to wonder if all our efforts may prove futile if we fail to convince the viewing public that they are watching the future, not the past." He let those words seal that portion of their lives now made irrtrievable by times relentless onslaught and they let the doors lead them into the night.
As the two began to find their way toward the gate that let to hime and a nights rest, Phillips let his thoughts sorrey through his mind and his eyes pass over his shoulder back to the house. He looked again, something was wrong. It was a light, a light where there should not have been. It was no trick of the moon, Phillips proved that by rubbing his eyes. It was no trick of his imagination, he confirmed that by calling Allen's attention to the mysterious beam emanating from the basement window. Contrary to the warnings of their natural inclinations, they drew near to its sources. Until the beginnings of the light were frighteningly visible.