"Stross, Charles - The Midlist Bombers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)
"Market explo – expansion," he replied unsteadily. "Basically, we think that our midlist authors haven't been getting the blast they deserve in order to be as successful as they could be. But, what's worse, our market has been eroded seriously by competition from other media over the past thirty years; principally television and other forms of electronic media. This has led to a tendency to concentrate on known, safe best-sellers who will show a steady profit, at the risk of ignoring the midlist authors who might be tomorrows giants, but who are being squeezed out of the market today."
The older accountant nodded, a glazed expression on his face. His younger colleague smiled grimly. "The profit margins are, shall we say, marginal?" she suggested. "Frankly, the idea of a five million pound promotion aimed at virtual unknowns is preposterous; we could buy two Robert Ludlum's for that! Surveys have shown that advertising doesn't work effectively on commodities with no brand-name identity, which is the main handicap of your midlist. They have a couple of thousand dedicated readers, no more ... it's just not good enough. You'll have to do better."
Jonathan didn't let her hostility faze him. He smiled broadly. "But I am," he said. "This is no ordinary promotion! If this one works, the market for books will explode – every one of those authors will be turning a hundred thousand a year in profit within three months if we go ahead!"
Suddenly the older accountant sat up stiffly, all traces of inattention fading from his face. "Did somebody mention profits?" he croaked.
Jonathan nodded very seriously. "You say the product lacks brand-name identity," he said, "so I've come up with a campaign that lacks brand-name identity too! An anonymous, five-million pound project to blow up – er, increase – book sales in the UK by over a thousand percent!"
The younger accountant leaned forward intently, eyes shining with something remotely approaching lust. "You'll have to be more specific, Mister Smiddler," she purred. "We obviously can't release liquidity for a high-risk, non-specific project without a better idea of what they're going to be investing in, yah?" But, Jonathan saw, she was already fiddling with the binding on her filofax, revealing naked, crisp sheets of paper within, vulnerable to the intimate scribbling of her pen; he had a captive audience.
"It's like this," he began. "Do either of you know anything about the consequences of Electro-Magnetic Pulse?"
t minus 17 days 4:10 p.m.
For Dave Greenberg, the apocalypse arrived with a ballistic missile.
It wasn't like this working for NASA, he thought angrily as the overloaded graphics workstation crashed for the third time that morning. Assorted runic sentences crept up the screen as the computer began the lengthy reboot sequence; why can't I just jack this job in and write full-time? he wondered. But the answer was clear. For one thing, there wasn't a big enough market for his hard-SF novels – at least not on this side of the Atlantic – and for another: well, Dave enjoyed designing rocket motors.
He looked around the dingy lab and shook his head. but not in these conditions! If only Imperial College could afford to equip him effectively, they'd see what a limey space program could do! But no ... all he had was a computer simulation of the Real Thing, running on a wobbly computer that crashed regularly under the unbearable workload of tying its own cybernetic shoelances. And, oh yes, a lab with whitewashed breeze-block walls in an annex they'd built off a Portakabin. Gaah, he thought disgustedly as the computer gurgled feebly to itself and reported on the status of an assortment of cryptic daemons. Why did I ever jack in that job with Hughes Aerospace? Whatever posessed me to stop writing about space-travelling dolphins and come and work here? Why did I –
The phone rang.
"External call," said the switchboard operator; "connecting you now – "
"Hello?"
"Hello?" echoed Dave.
"Dave! Good to speak to you! It's Jonathan Smiddler here, from Schnickel and Bergdorf. Am I interrupting anything, or can I have a moment of your time ..?"
What the hell? thought Dave. He glanced at the screen, where the workstation had just about remembered who it was and what it was meant to be doing. "Sure," he said; "I'm not busy. How are you?"
"Oh, I'm okay," said Jonathan, with a note of almost plaintive earnestness. "I'm wonderful! In fact, everything's hunky-dory – "
"But haven't you just been bought out by Spart-Dibbler?" asked Dave. "I mean, aren't they – " he swallowed – "going to axe everyone who doesn't turn over fifty thousand trade copies per novel or something?"
"Well ... " Jonathan said nervously, "I was wanting to talk to you about that. You see, we've decided we're going to launch a new promotion for our midlist, people like yourself, and we've got this colossal budget arranged! I mean, this has never been done before – uh no, it has been done," he correct himself; "but only twice, in Japan."
"When was that?" demanded Dave. Suddenly he felt his spine go very cold and shivery. Jesus, he thought; the rumours are true ...?
"Oh, around the end of the last war. It didn't catch on, luckily, but we think we've got an application for this kind of publicity stunt: a harmless one, I hasten to add! But the thing is, we want to organise a firework display for the launch, and we were wondering if you could come up with something substantial; around the throw-weight of a V-2, for example, capable of lifting a hundred kilograms to an altitude of about eighty nautical miles ... "
Dave blanked, switching to professional mode. "Can do," he said; "as a matter of fact, I'm working on the design for something of the kind right now. It'll cost you, but if we buy the parts second hand it shouldn't be too much. I happen to know the Imperial War Museum is selling off their collection of V-2's ..."
"No problem," said Dave, relaxing and suddenly realising that for the first time that week he was smiling. "I'm your man, Johnny! As we used to say at the Cape – you just got a green bird!"
t minus 16 days 3:20 p.m.
"I'm willing to concede," said the junior accountant, "that the profit-making potential of this venture is worth looking into. But, Mister Smiddler, there a few side-issues which frankly require closer scrutiny before we clear funding for your project. Your bona-fides are adequate – we wouldn't for a moment accuse you of being linked with any terrorist organisation, not even the New York Review of Books – but don't you think it's just a little bit dangerous to start throwing around promotional firecrackers like that? Even if they do shut down every television station and video player in the south of England for the next three years?" Her elderly colleague nodded, then began to snore quietly.
Jonathan stared her down. "Of course," he said: "but we're not fools! The firecracker is going to go off at an altitude of about eighty nautical miles; all the fall-out drifts out across the Atlantic before it precipitates. A few cod get radiation poisoning: small fry. We do it on an overcast night so nobody is looking up, and the flash is attenuated by the clouds. Look, my team – " he paused to look out of the window at the misty West End roadscape as the London traffic geared up for another morning of gridlock lunacy – "my team are professionals. They know what's at stake, they're highly motivated, and they know what they're doing! Dave – Dave used to built warheads for Polaris missiles, did you know that? Lydia spent a lot of time in the Middle East; she's got contacts on the buying side. We've got – hell, we've got Dave Greenberg, for God's sake, the man who re-designed the Space Shuttle SRB's after the Challenger disaster and won a Nebula for the novelisation! Chris Bishop, who runs a software company with Dave Frogland on the side, has volunteered to program the guidance computers. These people are science fiction writers, you know!"
"Subversives and deviants," she corrected him, smiling toothily.
Jonathan rolled his eyes. "Yes, but they're useful to you!" he said. "There's a convergence of interests, don't you see? A mutual interest in relieving Joe and Jill Public of that painful bulge in their wallets. Can't you work with them in the interest of the holy dollar?"
"Humm ... " snored the senior accountant.
"But what about the possible consequences?" asked the junior. For a moment Jonathan thought she looked slightly worried, but she carried on speaking: "the potential for us to be sued is staggering! And what if we accidentally trigger off an all-out East-West thermonuclear superpower confrontation scenario? That might significantly diminish our profit–to-earnings ratio in the longer term."
Jonathan sat up and made a steeple of his fingers. "That's unlikely," he said. "Firstly it won't show up on the annual trading balance sheets, so you don't need to worry your little head about it: there's no accounting risk. Secondly, I've had a crack team of cyberpunks looking into the long-term prognosis for the past fortnight, just in case there are real world side effects. They're unanimous; the Americans won't stick their neck on the block for the British, and the Russians couldn't afford to. Anyway, the British nuclear deterrent is nothing to do with the East-West confrontation, it's to do with the French. CND found it out years ago, just before MI-5 leaked it on Yes Minister. We've been at war with the French for seven centuries out of the past thousand years, and they've got the Bomb too: so if Whitehall gets the idea that war's broken out they'll probably just nuke Paris."
"And what then?" she asked.
"Oh, I suppose the French will drop three megatons on Edinburgh and that will be that."
"Why Edinburgh?" asked the senior accountant, briefly waking up. "Wouldn't London be more likely?"
Jonathan sighed. "Yes, but Edinburgh is the cultural capital of the nation. The French are so much more realistic about these things than we are."
"Right. And this campaign is aimed at the affluent south, where there's a greater likely take-up on book sales, yah?" nodded the junior accountant. "Which wouldn't be inhibited even by a low-yield trans-Manche thermonuclear midi-power confrontation! That's wonderful!" She shut her filofax – which bulged with the post-coital scribblings of a fiscal orgy – and smiled sweetly. "That's wonderful thinking! So seductively profitable!"
"Are you going to clear the funds?" he asked.
She nodded. "We're going to look into it, yah. It's – " her tongue crept out from between her teeth, pink and pointy and not, as Jonathan had half-suspected, bifurcated – "it's delicious! Yah, I shall have to put it to the board myself, this afternoon!" She stood up and held out her hand; her elderly colleague slumped in the leather chair beside her, snoring softly. Jonathan found himself having his hand pumped vigorously, almost suggestively; she smiled at him alluringly. "Would you care to discuss this further over dinner at Stringfellows tomorrow night?" she asked, batting her eyelids and fingering the lapel of his tweed sports jacket suggestively. "I'd like to, you know. I'm sure further discussions would be mutually ... profitable."
t minus 10 days 11:15 a.m.
The heat in the airport arrival hall was oppressive, like stepping into a giant oven. Lydia slumped slightly, but forced herself to walk towards the doors, past the moustachio'd security guards with their fingers on the trigger. Near the exit, a short man in a cream silk suit was holding up a placard; LYDIA SHORT, it spelt. She made a bee-line for him.
"You're Abdul?" she asked. "I'm Lydia Little."
"Delighted to meet you." He smiled behind his dark glasses. "Please come this way?"
There was a Mercedes, waiting for them among the battered taxis with its engine and air–conditioning running. The driver held the door open for Abdul, who got in first. Then they moved off.
"So you are serious about wanting this commodity, Miss Little," Abdul commented. He lay back in his seat and seemed to close his eyes, but in the shadowy interior of the car Lydia couldn't be sure. She felt her pulse running fast.
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