"The contestants for 'Wildest Dreams' stay here?"

"Don't you know nothing?"

Ralph blinked. "Apparently not."

"So will you help me through to the front?"

Ralph looked at the woman for the first time. She wasn't really bad-looking in a washed-out kind of way. She really could be quite attractive if one could get past the shabby nylon utility coat. He reminded himself that he was no raving prize. "Maybe we could ease ourselves a little closer. How soon do the contestants come out?"

"It's only the Dreamroad contestants. Bobby Priest himself is with them sometimes."

Ralph was a little bemused. There was a definite light of obsession in the woman's eyes. Even the obsessed could be grateful after the fact. "How soon do they come out?"

"Any minute."

Ralph put a protective arm around her and started easing them deeper into the crowd. The "Wildest Dreams" fans didn't part easily, and Ralph had to use some degree of applied pressure. He received a few threats and curses for his pains. All of the "Wildest Dreams" fans seemed to be equally desperate and equally obsessed. How could anyone get that way about a goddamned game show? There was a definite tension in the crowd, but there was also a lonely, unhappy feeling, as well. These people seemed to take little pleasure in what they were doing. Ralph knew drunks like that. He and the woman in the blue coat did make some progress, though, and came within four layers of the front before they were stopped by the pressure of bodies. He still had his arm around the woman's shoulders, and since she didn't ask him to take it away, he left it there.

There was shouting at the front rows. The woman in the blue coat stiffened.

"They're coming! They're coming!"

She started bouncing up and down, making small squeaking noises. Ralph realized that it was the same thing that contestants did when they won big on the greed shows like "Hundred Thousand Giveaway." And she wasn't the only one. The whole crowd was pushing and jumping. The situation suddenly felt very unstable, and Ralph realized that it was about the last place in the world that a drunk needed to be. He had to fight for his footing as the crowd surged sideways. He still had his arm around her and couldn't get it free. The whole mob was pressing forward as though some very, very stupid collective mind was brutishly determined to push its way through the police lines. Ralph stumbled again. He let go of the woman. There was chaos up ahead. People were screaming. It was hard to tell if it was hysteria or pain. One of the barriers seemed to have collapsed, and people had gone down with it. There were people on the sidewalk. They were being trampled. He almost lost his footing as he stumbled into one of the ones who had fallen. He went down himself a moment later, but was able to struggle up again. The two people who went down in front of him and cushioned his fall were not so lucky. He started pushing backward against the tide, trying to ease over to the wall of the hotel. At least he would have his back to something. He had to get out of this bloody insanity.

THE MEETING IN THE PENTHOUSE boardroom of Combined Media continued. It seemed destined to go on all night. It had moved into its second phase. Deutsch was cross-questioning each department head in turn, dragging out corporate secrets that they never would have willingly revealed to other departments. Covert glances were being exchanged, and there was real fear in the room. Either something earth-shaking was coming, or Deutsch had gone stone mad. Right at that moment it was the turn of Charlotte Estes, the head of Research. Deutsch stood behind her, lightly resting his hands on the back of her chair.

"So, Charlotte, to clarify, according to your research, there would appear to be no way to predict which clients will succumb to premature death syndrome. You're saying that some will die after a couple of years, while others will last out their full natural span."

Estes shook her head. "There's really no such thing as a natural span in the IE dreamstate. Of the twenty test subjects that we have been monitoring since the start of public availability, one died after seven months. Three more went in the third year, and a fourth one a year later. One died four months ago, and two more went in the last three weeks. The others are still alive, but they show distinct signs of premature aging. I see no chance of them surviving beyond another five years."

Gorges Gomez leaned forward in his chair. "You mean you knew about the probability of premature death all along?"

"We suspected it."

"And no one was warned?"

Deutsch took over. "What would you have had us do, Gorges? Shut down the entire service and go into liquidation?"

Gomez shook his head. "No, but…"

Madison Renfield half raised a hand. "Perhaps I might assist here."

Deutsch smiled. "The floor is yours, Madison."

"We in Public Relations have done a little research of our own on the matter of PDS."

Gomez muttered under his breath. "When the shit turns nasty, call it by its initials."

Deutsch fixed him with a cold stare. "You have something to add, Gorges?"

Gomez shook his head sadly. "No, Kingsley, not a thing."

Deutsch turned to Renfield. "Please go on."

"Well, to boil it down to basics, all the research that we've done on lifespan clients seems to demonstrate that, once they've entered the program, no one on the outside gives a damn about them. As far as the world is concerned, they've gone down a one-way street and aren't coming back. Beneath this there is also a measurable level of resentment. The lifespan client is perceived to have committed an act of terminal selfishness, and what happens to them from there on in is strictly their own problem."

Throughout the meeting, David Patel of Legal had been making periodic notes on a yellow pad. Now he looked up questioningly. "Was this attitude research conducted only in terms of the public at large, or was there a specific survey of friends and families of those who became lifespan clients?"

Renfield smiled. He was ahead of that question. "It combined both. We discovered that among the families of longtimers, there was frequently a good deal of relief mingled with the resentment. All too often they were getting rid of a relative who was proving to be a liability of one kind or another."

Edouard Hayes frowned. "The fact that the stiff's family didn't like him isn't going to stop them bringing a lawsuit for some hundred million or so if he drops dead in our care."

Patel looked at Hayes as though he was stating the childishly obvious. "The original charter covers us against this kind of eventuality. The lifespan client basically renounces most of his or her civil rights when they enter the program. As far as the law is concerned, they are legally dead. Their assets are held in trust or disposed of just as in the event of death, and they have no estate as such on which claims can be made. Our only legal responsibility is to see that the clients don't cause harm to the living. It would take an act of Congress to change our position."

Charlotte Estes looked up with a grin. "I take it we have nothing to fear from Congress."

Deutsch also smiled. "We have made a considerable investment over the years to insure that we have nothing to fear from Congress."

He walked back to the head of the table.

"While we are indulging in this almost Maoist exercise in confession and self-criticism, there is something that I should perhaps bring out into the light. A number of you seem to be concerned that-how did you put it, Edouard?-'a clandestine group within the corporation' was attempting to revive death experience research. I see that I must look to my own security."

Edouard Hayes stared at Deutsch openmouthed. "Your security, Kingsley?"