“I’ll check out a few more cabins at random,” Summer told her. “If it turns out you and I are the only ones with that extra spy device, then—”
“But nobody can know what we’re really up to,” she said. “What I mean is, at least a dozen other reporters and such boarded when the Hollywood II docked on Barnum. All to do writeups and vidreports on the making of Galaxy Jane. We’re merely, far as anyone is supposed to know, more of the same. Why single us out for special—”
“That’s one of the things,” said Summer, “I’ll have to find out.”
Resting her palms on her knees, Vicky said, “I’ve been doing quite a lot of research on Zombium, Mr. Summer, and—”
“Start calling me Jack.”
“Well, okay. It’s just that I’m still sort of in awe of you,” she said. “What I mean is, when I was still a kid in private school way off in the Earth System I was reading your wonderful pieces in Muckrake, which I had to sneak into my dorm because we—”
“Angelcake, this sort of gush’ll rust my screws,” complained Scoop, swinging his big metal feet to the parlor floor.
“We’ll need some background footage,” Summer said in the cambot’s direction. “Now that the ship’s taken off, you can roam the decks gathering—”
“Wait a sec, palsy walsy. I call my own shots on what gets filmed and—”
“Not this trip. So go on out and start—”
“Vicky, are you going to let this duffer order me—”
“Mr. Summer…Jack’s in charge,” said Vicky. “Run along and do some of that incisive filming you’re noted for.”
“I hate to leave you alone with this bozo.” Slowly, with evident reluctance, Scoop rose from his chair. “Remember the info I got on him out of the NewzNet personnel files? He turns out to be near as bad as the crazed shutterbug he used to work with, especially when it comes to making passes at young, innocent maidens or even—”
“That’ll be enough.” She pointed at the door. “Stay away awhile, too.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll breeze.” The robot opened the door. “Holler if he gets grabby.” He left them.
“I apologize for Scoop,” said the young woman. “Could be they put too much good-natured kidding in him. Anyway, we’re both professionals, Jack, and I certainly feel more than safe alone with you.”
“Most everybody does.”
“I wasn’t too familiar with Zombium until I got this assignment,” she resumed. “In my schools alcohol and brainstimmers were much more popular than drugs like Zombium. It sounds like pretty dangerous stuff, though, from what I’ve been learning.”
“Zombium is tricky,” he said. “The first few times you use the stuff—orally in powdered form, usually—you just feel incredibly euphoric and untroubled.”
“You ever tried any?”
He shook his head. “Nope, but I did a lot of research, talked to users, a few years back.”
“Oh, that’s right. I read that series in Muckrake,” she said. “In fact, it was to you that Flo Haypenny admitted her longtime addiction to Zombium.”
“And her cure.”
“You think she’ll be uneasy having you around while she’s starring in Galaxy Jane?”
“Been years since all that happened.”
Vicky said, “As I understand it, after the first few doses things can get worse.”
“Usually, in order to keep the euphoria coming, you have to keep increasing the amount you take,” he explained. “The stronger the dose the greater the chance of slipping into a deathlike trance. Again, the severity of the trances increase, too. Initial trances last from a few hours up to a day, but later on they can stretch to weeks or even months. And about a third of the longtime users rise up and walk around, somnambulist style, during the trances. Causing them no end of problems and accidents.”
“According to the statistics in The Galactic Guide to Licit & Illicit Drugs, something like fourteen percent of long-term Zombium users never come out of their trances at all. They just stay that way until they die.”
“Closer to twenty-five percent.”
She shivered once. “That’s sort of awful.”
Summer stood. “It is,” he agreed. “But smuggling and peddling the drug is also a great way to get rich. That makes the dealers, some of whom may well be sharing our trip on the fabled Hollywood II with us, nasty and rough. Especially when reporters come along who intend to futz up their business by doing video exposes.”
“I understand that, yes, and I can look out for myself,” she said, rising. “Although I am a little unsettled by Scoop’s not finding those other bugs.”
“Let’s get to the story conference.” He crossed to the doorway. “So we can start impressing all and sundry with how interested we are in the making of Galaxy Jane.”
Chapter 6
When the orange-feathered screenwriter leaped from his chair and up atop the conference table, trotted down half its length and attempted to throttle the handsome humanoid producer, the white-enameled public relations robot seated between Summer and Vicky down at their end of the long oval chuckled appreciatively. “This is what I mean about this picture being a lot of fun,” he said.
“Women’s angle!” cried the angry parrotman as he struggled to get a good feathery grip on the Galaxy Jane producer’s smooth tanned throat. “Geeze, Gonzer, this is a goddamn pirate flicker!”
The PR ’bot put his white fingers to his metallic lips.
“They clown around like this all the live-long day.”
“I noticed the scuff marks on the table,” said Summer.
The husky cyborg headwriter, seated next to the struggling producer, inclined his aluminum right hand in the direction of his agitated parrot colleague. “I don’t want to have to stun you again, Harl,” he said. “Calm down and return to your chair, old buddy.”
“Calm down! Calm down!” He left off his choking attempts. “We’re scripting an epic here, Gunner! It’s a sweeping saga of piracy and a gutsy plea for political understanding as regards the basic rights of the hungry and downtrodden—”
“Actually, gentlemen,” remarked an obese toadman at midtable, “you’ve exaggerated the political situation in your script. True, Galaxy Jane did become modestly involved in an uprising among the Green Men of Gravespawn while residing for—”
“Modestly involved! Modestly involved!” Shedding feathers, the parrot man went clomping along the table top to where the immense toad was sitting. “We’re talking, beanbrain, about a spiritual and moral revolution that profoundly affected a significant—”
“The motives of the renegade robot who led that long-ago revolt, this so-called Tin Mahatma, were nowhere so clearly defined as they appear in your rather simpleminded script, Mr. Grzyb. What you’ve failed—”
“Actually, Professor Bleistift,” said the cyborg author across the table, “I wrote most of the scenes dealing with the native uprising against the imperialistic—”
“Um,” said the pudgy blond young man who was sitting on the far side of Vicky. “All you folks keep throwing around terms like imperialistic, which tends to make it look as though my great grandfather—the illustrious Captain Thatcher King of the Royal Mounted Stungunners—was some sort of unsavory tool of an oppressive government. It’s bad enough, really, that your shabby script paints him as a twit who was shacking up with some unkempt lady crook.