"Good. What's the slant?"
"That he was too easygoing, too humane. We build up the Herschelites as ultrareactionaries who intend to enforce their will on humanity if they get the chance, and imply FitzMaugham was fighting them tooth and nail. We close the show with some shots of you picking up the great man's mantle, etcetera, etcetera. And a short speech from you affirming the basically humanitarian aims of Popeek."
Walton smiled approvingly and said, "I like it. When do you want me to do the speech?"
"We won't need you," Percy told him. "We've got plenty of stock footage, and we can whip the speech out of some spare syllables you left around."
Walton frowned. Too many of the public speeches of the day were synthetic, created by skilled engineers who split words into their component phonemes and reassembled them in any shape they pleased. "Let me check through my speech before you put it over, at least."
"Will do. And we'll squash this Herschelite thing right off the bat."
Pauline Medhurst squirmed uneasily in her chair. Walton caught the hint and recognized her.
"Uh, Roy, I don't know if this is the time or the place, but I got that transfer order of yours, the five doctors...."
"You did? Good," Walton said hurriedly. "Have you notified them yet?"
"Yes. They seemed unhappy about it."