He opened the arrival bin and pulled out a handful of paper. One thick
bundle was the dossier on Lassen; Walton initialed it and tossed
it unread into the Files chute. He would have to rely on Eglin's
judgement; Lassen seemed competent enough.
Underneath that, he found the script of the FitzMaugham memorial
program to be shown that evening. Walton sat back and started to skim
through it.
It was the usual sort of eulogy. He skipped rapidly past FitzMaugham's
life and great works, on to the part where Interim Director Walton
appeared on the screen to speak.
This part he read more carefully. He was very much interested in the
words that Percy had placed in his mouth.
XI
The speech that night went over well ... almost.
Walton watched the program in the privacy of his home, sprawled out
on the foamweb sofa with a drink in one hand and the text of Percy's
shooting-script in the other. The giant screen that occupied nearly
half of his one unbroken wall glowed in lifelike colors.
FitzMaugham's career was traced with pomp and circumstance, done
up in full glory: plenty of ringing trumpet flourishes, dozens of
eye-appealing color groupings, much high-pitched, tense narrative.
Percy had done his job skillfully. The show was punctuated by
quotations from FitzMaugham's classic book, _Breathing Space and
Sanity_. Key government figures drifted in and out of the narrative
webwork, orating sonorously. That pious fraud, M. Seymour Lanson,
President of the United States, delivered a flowery speech; the old
figurehead was an artist at his one function, speechmaking. Walton
watched, spellbound. Lee Percy was a genius in his field; there was no
denying that.
Finally, toward the end of the hour, the narrator said, "The work
of Popeek goes on, though its lofty-minded creator lies dead at an
assassin's hand. Director FitzMaugham had chosen as his successor a
young man schooled in the ideals of Popeek. Roy Walton, we know, will
continue the noble task begun by D. F. FitzMaugham."
For the second time that day Walton watched his own face appear on
a video screen. He glanced down at the script in his hand and back
up at the screen. Percy's technicians had done a brilliant job. The
Walton-image on the screen looked so real that the Walton on the couch
almost believed he had actually delivered this speech--although he
knew it had been cooked up out of some rearranged stills and a few
brokendown phonemes with his voice characteristics.
It was a perfectly innocent speech. In humble tones he expressed his
veneration for the late director, his hopes that he would be able to
fill the void left by the death of FitzMaugham, his sense of Popeek as
a sacred trust. Half-listening, Walton began to skim the script.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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