The Color of Fear td-99 Read online

  Before a grid of video monitors Chief Concepteer Rod Cheatwood groaned and said, "We're screwed. They're onto us."

  And he reached for the button marked Supergreen.

  YEARS from 1995 learned historians would convene at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, to settle the question of the root cause of the Great Franco-American Conflict.

  They would argue and hold rancorous panels for five solid days and still reach no consensus, although there would be a memorable fistfight in the apple orchard adjoining the John Hay Library where one professor would repeatedly crack the forehead of a colleague against the ancient monument dedicated to the illustrious H. P. Lovecraft until he had won his particular point.

  One side said it had all started with a mouse. A reasonable argument, since the Sam Beasley Company lay at the heart of the conflict and it had started with Mongo Mouse.

  Another school of thought held that twentiethcentury French cultural chauvenism exacerbated a minor dispute until it erupted into a full-scale international imbroglio.

  And a third said US. cultural imperialism naturally created the friction. America was as unpopular then as now, the visiting professor from Harvard pointed out.

  None of them got it right. It did not start with Sam Beasley's famous mouse, any more than it did with U.S. cultural imperialism or French snobbery.

  It started with Rod Cheatwood of Vanaheim, California.

  More specifically it started the sunny spring day Rod Cheatwood misplaced his TV remote control for the forty-eighth time.

  Rod was a concepteer at Beasleyland in Vanaheim, California. By that it was meant that he was a technician.

  Although he worked out of Beasleyland, he was no maintainer of attractions. No designer of rides. Instead, Rod was strictly research and development.

  Five years out of Cal Tech, Rod was a specialist in lasers. The downsizing of the defense industry put him on the street. He answered a blind ad and was surprised to see a happy cartoon mouse grinning back from the door when he showed up for the interview.

  "Why do you need a laser technician for a theme park?" Rod asked the interviewer, a suit with a blank face. "You can order all the light-show lasers you could ever want."

  "We want our own lasers."

  "I'm strictly into lasers as a military application."

  "You could do that here," the interviewer said, his glassy smile matching his glassy eyes. Did they all become so fatuous working here? Rod wonder.

  "I could perfect military lasers working for Sam Beasley?"

  "In a manner of speaking. We have a problem at our French base."

  "Base?"

  "Euro Beasley."

  "Never thought of it as a base."

  "The French hate us. Won't stand in line in the cold weather. Won't buy our souvenirs. They take day trips so our hotels are practically empty. We've lost billions."

  "So close the park."

  "You don't understand. We have a great track record in France. Our magazine, Journal de Mongo, has been a bestseller since 1934. The French love us. They just haven't warmed up to the park yet."

  "Lower your prices."

  "We've tried everything," the interviewer went on as if Rod's suggestion was out of the question. "Aroma therapy. Coupons. Nondiscount inducements. We even broke a long-standing rule and allowed beer and wine to be served in our park restaurants. Nothing seems to staunch the hemorrhaging."

  "A laser light show won't do it, either."

  "We'll give you a lab to work in, a full staff and anything you could want."

  Rod stood up. "Sorry. If I'd known this was you Beasley boys, I'd never have come in for the interview. I hear you treat your employees like dirt."

  "If you change your mind, give us a call, won't you?" the inteviewer said without taking offense or losing his fixed smile.

  Rod Cheatwood did come around in time. There were no defense jobs in California, true. And he was loath to move out of state, also true.

  But the real reason-entirely lost to posterity-that Rod came back to the Beasley Corporation was that he lost his TV remote and it was the forty-eighth time by actual count. It was also the last straw.

  The UHF band of the TV dial could not be accessed without the remote clicker, and while Rod flung sofa cushions about with wild abandon and raged at the cruel and unjust gods who had turned their faces from his simple wants and desires, he missed the twopart final episode of "Star Trek: the Next Generation."

  The next morning Rod was back in the Beasley employment office.

  "I'd take the job on one condition," he said.

  "We don't do conditions here at Beasley, but I'm willing to listen."

  "In my spare time I use your facilities to work on a side research project of my own."

  "What kind of project?"

  "A TV remote finder."

  "We own all marketing rights outright," the interviewer said quickly.

  "Two conditions," said Rod. "I get marketing rights."

  After a three-day negotiation involving slamming telephones, harsh words and veiled death threats, Rod Cheatwood agreed to split marketing rights on anything he developed with the Sam Beasley Corporation fifty-fifty.

  In his first day they explained color therapy to him.

  "Color therapy?"

  "It's old. It's very old. The Pythagoreans used it to heal the sick. So did the Greeks and Egyptians. They found that exposing the eyes to different colors produces different psychological effects on the brain. We discovered it works. We just need to make it work on a grander scale."

  "With lasers?"

  "The brighter the color, the better it works. Lasers are as bright as color gets outside of nature."

  "I follow," said Rod Cheatwood, fingering his tufted chin.

  "We want you to develop the brightest, most colorful laser light possible."

  "We're talking a cold laser here?"

  "Yeah. We don't want to burn holes in tourists by accident. It might kill repeat business."

  "An eximer laser system is what you need. But I can't guarantee it will do what you want."

  "We can prove it to you."

  "Go ahead."

  "You're still unhappy over our contract negotiation?"

  "You people," Rod said bitterly, "probably don't bury your dearly departed dead until you yank the gold fillings from their teeth, sell their bones to make gelatin and remove the fat for tallow."

  Surprisingly they took no offense. One even smiled with a quiet inner satisfaction.

  "How's your blood pressure these days?"

  "My blood pressure has been elevated ten points since I started here," Rod added testily. "And it's only been a day."

  "Come with us."

  They took him to a sealed chamber in Utiliduck beneath Beasleyland. The door was labeled Pink Room.

  The door was not pink, but when it was opened, the room was certainly pink. The walls were a mellow pink. Overhead lights shed a warm pink radiance. Even the recliner chair was pink. And when they closed the door after him, Rod saw the other side of the door was also pink. He was entirely enveloped in a womb of pink.

  "Sit down," he was told by intercom.

  Rod sat. He reclined in his chair and at first he didn't feel anything. After a few moments he relaxed. Then he really relaxed. His muscles softened. Even his bones seemed to soften.

  When they came to take him out fifteen minutes later, he didn't want to go.

  "Please let me stay a few minutes," Rod begged.

  "Fifteen minutes more. But you have to sign a release."

  "Anything," Rod said, signing without reading a sheet of paper thrust under his nose.

  After the fifteen minutes were up, he still refused to go. A Beasley doctor was summoned, a blood-pressure cuff was clamped over his exposed bicep and, when the doctor announced that his blood pressure was perfect, Rod was surprised.

  "Can I work in there?" he asked.

  "No. You won't get anything accomplished."

  "
I don't mind."

  Eventually they had to shut off the lights and leave him alone in the dark room until he begged to be let out of the Pink Room.

  "Our research tells us color therapy works through the second visual pathway."

  "There's more than one?" Rod muttered, staring at a pink spot on the other man's tie. It brought back calming memories of the Pink Room.

  "The first visual pathway goes from the retina to the optic nerve. That's how we see. But there's a second pathway, a more primitive one, that goes from the retina to the hypothalamus, which is in the reptile part of the brain."

  "Did you say reptile?"

  "Evolution has successively added layers to man's brain structure, sort of like stacking blocks," one of the Beasley boys explained. "The human brain is stacked atop our animal brain, and under that is the most primitive-the so-called reptile brain. That's where the second visual pathway leads. Other than to trigger melanin production, biologists don't know what it's for. But we've determined that strong primary colors follow this evolutionarily abandoned pathway to affect the reptile brain in a very primal way."

  "I've always hated green. Hated it with a passion."

  "Orange makes me nervous. And bright red can trigger seizures in some epileptics. It's our reptile brains reacting to color stimulation of the retina. As I say, it's an ancient psuedoscience that's still kicking around. They paint prison walls in some penitentiaries pink to calm down the most-violent inmates. Works like a charm, too. In fact, it's the secret behind the success of our Technicolor cartoons. We used only positive hues."

  "Okay, you sold me."

  "Good. Now, get busy delivering a laser that will pacify a planet."

  Rod went to his lab, but he wasn't thinking of pacifying planets. He was thinking of making his TV clicker impossible to lose ever again.

  Every TV remote, he knew, operated on the infrared principle. Different wavelengths of infrared light triggered different relays in the TV photocell receptor.

  It had been Rod's fantasy to implant a signal beacon in his clicker so that when he lost it, all he had to do was put on a pair of special goggles and hunt around for the constant infrared pulse.

  Trouble was, when Rod tended to lose his remote, he really lost it. Infrared light could pulse from under the couch, beneath a pile of magazines or from the bathroom. Rod had TV sets all over his house. And because too many remotes were almost as much trouble as no remote, he carried a universal remote whenever he walked through his house so that every set responded to his commands.

  There wasn't a form of light known that could pass through solid walls. Therein lay the problem with the infrared beacon.

  A new, more intense kind of color might solve that problem, Rod realized. Just as it might solve the Beasley problem. Two problems with a common solution, just like the condom.

  Taking apart a universal remote, Rod got down to cases. He hooked it up to a power source and started converting it to an eximer laser.

  "I need a pink several orders of magnitude greater than hot pink," he muttered.

  Rod experimented with various pink dyes extracted from natural substances, mostly exotic flowers, pink minerals and gemstones.

  And he knew he had it when he started feeling good-really good for the first time-since coming to work for the Sam Beasley Corporation.

  The feeling passed the minute he shut down the hot-pink pencil of the laser.

  When he showed his bosses what he had accomplished, they grinned under the pink radiance, clapped him on the back and told Rod Cheatwood what a wonderfully inventive employee he was, a credit to the Beasley Corporation, yesiree-bob.

  When the laser was shut down, they turned on him.

  "Not pink enough," one said.

  "We need saturated pink," said another.

  "Saturated?" Rod blurted. "I never heard of saturated pink. What is it?"

  "We'll know it when we see it."

  And they did.

  Using a dye laser in which the essence of the pinkest natural substances was diluted in alcohol and beamed out in one huge pulse of light that instantly exhausted the power source, Rod found himself walking his lab in happy circles when the closed door jerked open and a dozen happy faces crowded in.

  "You found it!" one Beasley boy crowed.

  "It's perfect," exulted another.

  "Do it again."

  "Can't," said Rod. "It burned out the power source."

  "Hookup another."

  "Wait a minute," Rod said suddenly. "'How could you know what happened? The door was dosed."

  "The pink pulse came right through the wall, it was so powerful"

  "Eureka!" Rod shouted, because he couldn't think of anything more appropriate. "I did it! I did it!"

  "He did it! He did it!" the Beasley boys said. "We have our saturated-pink hypercolor laser."

  "No, that's not what I meant. You saw the pulse through solid wall. It's my TV remote finder. I'm going to be rich."

  It was close to that moment when the pink pulse aftereffect began to dwindle, and the Beasley boys grew serious of face.

  "Actually," one said, "Beasley gets rich. Not you."

  "I own half the rights," Rod said.

  "You owned half the rights."

  "You signed them away, remember?"

  "When? When?" said Rod. "Show me proof."

  And they did. It was a short legal document, ironclad, and when he saw his more-flowery-than-usual signature at the bottom, Rod Cheatwood wanted to one by one tear out the larynges of the Beasley boys with his angry teeth and swallow hard.

  "When did I sign this?"

  "It was the release. You wanted fifteen minutes more in the Pink Room."

  "I thought it was a medical release," Rod said in horror.

  "Did we say medical release?"

  "No one ever said medical release."

  And the Beasley boys smiled that inner smile of theirs.

  "Damn," said Rod.

  "Let's have some more pink," one of the boys said.

  "Let's renegotiate that contract," countered Rod.

  And when the Beasley boys hesitated, Rod knew he had them. Sort of.

  In the end Rod settled for ten percent, because truth be known, he ached to bask in the glow of the pink laser, too.

  "It's really pink," the Beasley boys said happily.

  "The pinkest."

  "Hot pink."

  "Let's call it Hotpink. One word. That way we can trademark it."

  "What's next?" asked Rod.

  "More colors." Try green.

  "Then red."

  "What will they do?" asked Rod.

  "We'll find out when you generate them."

  Because the color-therapy charts they had supplied said that green was a particularly soothing and healing color, Rod built a second dye laser that generated an extreme green pulse from the pigments of tropical lizards. Everyone wanted a sustained glow, but that damn eximer laser ate up power too quickly.

  This time the Beasley boys stood around in front of the laser while Rod set a timer and, like a photographer wanting to be in the picture with his subjects, he rushed to join them. They were standing expectantly awaiting the green beam, which filled their eyes with the most vivid, hideous, stomach-churning green ever conceived.

  When Rod Cheatwood woke up in the Beasley infirmary three days later, his first question was a strange one.

  "What day is it?"

  "Sunday."

  "The sixth?"

  "Yes. You've been under three days."

  And tears started welling up in Rod Cheatwood's stricken eyes.

  "There, there," the Beasley nurse with the starched white cap adorned with paper mouse ears said soothingly. "We expect you to make a complete recovery."

  "I missed it...." Rod blubbered.

  "Missed what?"

  "The season finale 'Next Generation' episode," he said miserably.

  When he was well enough to return to work, Rod told the Beasley boys, "I guess green is o
ut, huh?"

  "On the contrary, it's a perfect offensive color."

  And they showed him a chart.

  Most color charts broke down into complementary colors or contrasting colors. The Beasley chart was divided into offensive colors and defensive colors.

  And they had new names. Hotpink. Supergreen. Contrablue. Ultrayellow. Optired. Infraorange. Deepurple.

  Over time they cataloged their properties and created various beamers.

  "How about we call them phasers?" suggested Rod. "They phase light."

  "Can't. Not our trademark."

  "Oh, right," said Rod.

  When they told him he was being shipped out to Paris to install the first hypercolor beamers in Euro Beasley, Rod Cheatwood was horrified.

  "I don't want to go to Paris."

  "Why not?"

  "They hate us. And they love Jerry Lewis." Rod shuddered.

  "You don't have to go to Paris. You can live under Euro Beasley."

  "Under? They have a Utiliduck there, too?"

  "Utilicanard. It means the same thing."

  It was not so bad. There were dorm rooms, with kitchenettes and TVs. And when the new pink lights were installed all over Euro Beasley, attendance shot up almost immediately.

  "How about a raise?" Rod asked one day when even the Beasley boys could not disguise the dramatic turnaround.

  "What do you need a raise for? You have your ten percent royalty."

  "I haven't had time to make my remote finder."

  "When you do, that will be your raise."

  "Mousefuckers," Rod grumbled.

  And so Rod lived for the day his work at Euro Beasley was done.

  Unfortunately that day never came. Instead, the French Foreign Legion came rappeling out of hovering helicopters and advanced on one of the many entrances to Utilicanard.

  When they were all on the ground, Rod knew what to do. He clapped a pair of solid lead goggles onto his eyes and, with his pounding heart high in his throat, he depressed a console button marked Supergreen.

  Even though he was spared the awful green light hitting his retina, he threw up anyway.

  Chapter 16

  The unmarked van was parked on US. 460, south of Petersburg National Battlefield Park. It was the direction the balloons had come from, so it was reasonable to conceive of a link between the two.

  Certainly if it was a TV truck, it would have identifying call letters or a network logo painted on the sides.