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"Not if we default. Then the banks and the French government will be left
holding the bag."
"We can't do that. It'll make the Beasley name mud."
"I don't care about the Beasley name. I care about my name! " roared Mickey
Weisinger, who, like so many CEOs in the late twentieth century, cared more
about his resume than the stockholders or the business he was charged to
captain.
"If we pull out of France, we might as well surrender Europe to rival theme
parks," complained Chairman Bob Beasley, the nephew of Sam and the only
Beasley family member left on the board. "Already the Lego people have an
outpost in Switzerland. And Banana-Berry Studios are looking at Berlin."
"I don't care. Let Lego have Europe. We'll concentrate on Asia and South
America. We're too exposed in Europe."
"That wouldn't have happened if we'd have licensed the damn thing," a voice
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grumbled.
"Who said that?"
No one raised his hand.
"That sounded like a vice president's voice," Mickey Weisinger said
suspiciously, patrolling the room. "Which vice president?"
No one volunteered.
So Mickey Weisinger fired all the VPs on the spot.
At the next meeting a flock of newly installed VPs voted to a man to pull out
of France.
Until Bob Beasley quietly objected.
Mickey Weisinger hesitated. No one bucked Bob Beasley. He was considered all
but the proxy of the dear departed spirit of Uncle Sam Beasley.
"I think we should lay this before a higher authority," he drawled, scratching
at the trademark family mustache.
"Uncle Sam?"
"Uncle Sam."
Weisinger sighed. "What'll it be this time? Tarot? Ouija board? I Ching? Or do
you want me to dim the lights while you try to channel him?"
It was New Age bullcrap, Mickey Weisinger privately thought, but this was
southern California, where people took their poodles to shrinks at five
hundred bucks an hour and arranged their furniture according to
two-thousand-year-old Chinese superstition.
"I think we should pay Utiliduck a little visit," Bob suggested. "We have that
new command-and-control wing down there. You know, the one we built in the
event of thermonuclear exchange."
Mickey scowled. "The cold war's over. The wall fell. Hell, Moscow has been
faxing us feelers on a Russo Beasley project, but we'll never bite. If French
winters are this rough these days, Russia's bound to be an iceberg."
"Take a walk with me, Mickey," said Bob Beasley in his folksy voice, clapping
an arm over Mickey Weisinger's broad shoulders and steering him out of the
conference room.
They took the monorail over Beasleyland, walked through the park, and for a
moment Mickey Weisinger's sour mood lightened. Even he was not immune to the
spell of Beasleyland under a glorious California sun. Everyone seemed to be
having a great time. Except the park employees-the only slice of the American
public the Sam Beasley Corporation treated with naked disdain.
Mickey's good mood lasted until Screwball Squirrel minced up, bushy tail
quivering, and stuck the cold steel muzzle of a MAC-11 into his back.
"What the hell is this?" Mickey growled.
"Just come along quietly, Mickey," said Bob Beasley in a new tone. One
completely without respect.
"What is this, a furschlugginer coup?"
"Not exactly," said Beasley as Mickey was escorted to a turn-of-the-century
apothecary shop on Main Street, U S.A., and into an open elevator.
Down in Utiliduck, where the trash was processed and the rides and attractions
were controlled by massive mainframes, Mickey Weisinger walked along
stainless-steel corridors to the hardened wing of Utiliduck.
A door emblazoned with the three overlapping black circles representing the
silhouette of Mongo Mouse's round-eared head lifted like a dull guillotine,
and he was pushed through.
A pleasant plastic sign featuring Mongo wearing a policeman's uniform and
lifting a white-gloved hand traffic-cop style greeted them. The sign said
Unauthorized Persons Not Allowed Beyond This Point. Intruders Will Be Shot.
"Isn't that a little extreme?" said Mickey Weisinger.
"Not down here," said Bob Beasley. "You've never been to this wing, have
you?"
"No," said Mickey in a very small voice because he felt like a Brooklyn hood
being taken for a ride in the trunk of a Buick.
The room Mickey Weisinger was taken to was as warm as a steam bath. He started
sweating immediately. It was a control room, he saw. Grid after grid of wall
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video monitors showed every cranny of Beasleyland above, including, he saw
with shock, his private office.
At the far end a man sat at a chair, punching buttons.
"Uncle, he's here."
"Give me a fucking minute," a grumpy voice said.
Then the chair turned, and Mickey Weisinger found himself staring at the man
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