The Merchant's War by Frederik Pohl Page B

“If I could just borrow it,” I pleaded. “I’ll bring it back within the week—”
    “You will, hell. You’ll read it here, if you read it at all, with my sec 3 watching you and making sure you pump the nitrogen back in when you put it back in the box. But I’m not sure it’s a good idea. Laymen shouldn’t try to understand medical problems, they’re simply not equipped. Let’s just say that you’ve had your limbic areas stimulated; under the influence of that great upwelling of pleasure you’ve become conditioned to associate Mokie-Koke with joy, and there’s nothing to be done about it.” She glanced at her watch and stood up. “Now I’ve got a patient to visit,” she announced. “Dixmeister, you can use this room for your interview with the patient if you like—just so you’re out of here in twenty minutes.” And she flounced away, clutching her book.
    And leaving me with Danny Dixmeister. “Pity,” he said, shaking his head at the screen, which still displayed my test results. “You probably had a reasonably good future ahead of you at one time, Tarb, if you hadn’t got yourself hooked.”
    “But it’s not fair, Danny! I didn’t know—”
    He looked honestly perplexed. “Fair? True, campbelling is something new—I don’t suppose you were watchful enough. But the areas for limbic commercials are clearly marked.”
    “Clearly!” I sneered. “It’s a dirty, vicious trick and you know it! Certainly our own Agency would never do such a thing to move goods!”
    Dixmeister pursed his lips. “The question,” he said, “hasn’t come up, since the competition owns the patents. Now. Let’s talk about you. You realize, Tarb, that any kind of high-level position is out of the question for you now.”
    “Now hold on, Danny! I don’t see that at all. I just put in a lot of lousy years on Venus for this Agency!”
    “It’s a simple matter of security,” he explained. “You’re a Moke-head. You’d do anything for a Mokie-Koke, including betraying your grandmother—or even the Agency. So we just can’t take the chance of letting you work on any high-security area—not to mention,” he added bitchily, “that you’ve shown a certain lack of moral fiber in letting yourself get hooked in the first place.”
    “But I have seniority! Tenure! A record of—” He shook his head impatiently. “Oh, we’ll find something for you, of course. But not creative. How are your typing skills, Tarb? No? That’s a pity—well, that’s a problem for Personnel, after all.”
    I leveled a look at him for a moment. “Danny,” I said, “I must have given you a harder time than I realized when you were my stooge.”
    He didn’t answer. He only gave me a look that was both cryptic and long. I was out of that room, up the elevator to Personnel — General Service on the fifth floor, waiting my turn with the fresh, young college kids and the middle-aged semiemployables before I quite deciphered that look. It wasn’t dislike, or even triumph. It was pity.
    What Dr. Mosskristal didn’t tell me about was one of the side effects of campbellization. Depression. She didn’t warn me, and when it happened I didn’t recognize it for what it was. I guess that’s what depression is. When you’re having it, it just seems like the way the world is. You never think of it as a problem, only a state of being.
    I had a lot to be depressed about. They found work for me, all right. Delivering art, carrying flowers to the stars of our commercials, dashing out into the street to flag and hold a pedi-cab for somebody from Executive Country, fetching soyaburgers and Coffiest for the secretaries—oh, I had a million things to do! I worked harder as a General Services dogsbody than I ever had as a star-class copysmith, but of course for that kind of work they don’t pay star-class money. I had to give up the sea-condo. I didn’t mind. What did I need such luxury for except to entertain, and who was there to