conscious mind could see when prompted. The third cube held a very evident letter E in 
the area of light and shadow that comprised the cube itself. The fourth chunk of ice 
contained the subtle but unmistakable outline of the letter X: S-E-X.
  Salsbury had come around behind Dawson's desk and had carefully traced these three 
letters with his forefinger. "Do you see it?"
  Scowling, Dawson said, "I saw the E immediately and the other two without much trouble. 
But I'm finding it hard to believe they were put there on purpose. It could be an 
accident of shading."
  "Ice cubes usually don't photograph well," Salsbury said. "When you see them in an 
advertisement, they've nearly always been drawn by an artist. In fact, this entire ad has 
been painted over a photograph. But there's more than the word in the ice."
  Squinting at the page, Dawson said, "What else?"
  "The bottle and glass are on a reflective surface." Salsbury circled that area of the 
reflection that dealt with the bottle
  and the cap. "Without stretching your imagination too far, can you see that the 
reflection of the bottle is divided in two, forming what might be taken to be a pair of 
legs? Do you see, also, that the reflected bottle cap resembles a penis thrusting out 
from between those legs?"
  Dawson bristled. "I can see it," he said coldly.
  Too interested in his own lecture to notice Dawson's uneasiness, Salsbury said, "Of 
course, the melting ice on the bottle cap could be semen. That image was never meant to 
be entirely subliminal. The conscious mind might recognize the intent here. But it would 
not recognize the reflection in that table unless it was guided to the recognition." He 
pointed to another spot on the page. "Would it be going too far to say these shadows 
between the reflections of the bottle and the glass form vaginal lips? And that this drop 
of water on the table is positioned on the shadows precisely where the clitoris would be 
on a vagina?"
  When he perceived the subliminal sex organ, its lips parted, Dawson blushed. "I see it. 
Or I think I do."
  Salsbury reached in his briefcase. "I've got other examples." One of them was a 
two-page subscription solicitation that had appeared shortly before Christmas several 
years before, in Playboy. On the right-hand page, Playmate Liv Lindeland, a busty blonde, 
knelt on a white carpet. On the left-hand page stood an enormous walnut wreath. She was 
tying a red bow to the top of the wreath.
  In one test, Salsbury explained, a hundred subjects spent an hour studying two hundred 
advertisements, including this one. When the hour ended they were asked to list the first 
ten of those items that they could remember. Eighty-five percent listed the Playboy ad. 
In describing it, all but two subjects mentioned the wreath. Only five of them mentioned 
the girl. When questioned further, they had trouble recalling if she was a blonde, 
brunette, or redhead. They remembered that her breasts were uncovered, but they couldn't 
say for sure whether she was wearing a hat or was clothed from the waist down. (She had 
no hat and was nude.) None of them had trouble describing the
  wreath, for it was there that the subconscious had been riveted.
  "Do you see why?" Salsbury asked. "There's not a walnut in that 'walnut' wreath. It's 
composed of objects that resemble the heads of penises and vaginal slits."
  Unable to speak, Dawson leafed through the other advertisements without asking Salsbury 
to explain them. Finally he said, "Camel cigarettes, Seagram's, Sprite, Bacardi Rum Some 
of the most prominent companies in the country are using subliminals to sell their 
products."
  "Why shouldn't they? It's legal. If the competition uses them, what choice does even 
the most morally uplifted company really have? Everyone has to stay competitive. In 
short, there are no individual villains. The whole system is the villain."
  Dawson returned to his executive chair, his face a book of his thoughts. One could read 
there that he disliked any talk against "the system" and that he was nonetheless shocked 
by what he had been shown. He was also trying to see how he could make a profit from it. 
He operated with the conviction that God wanted him to sit in an executive chair at the 
pinnacle of a billion-dollar corporation; and he was certain that the Lord would help him 
to see that, although subliminal advertising had a cheap and possibly immoral side to it, 
there was also an aspect of it that could aid him in his divine mission. As he saw it, 
his mission was to pile up profits for the Lord; when he and Julia were dead, the Dawson 
holdings would belong to the church.
  Salsbury returned to his seat in front of the desk. The litter of magazine pages on the 
blotter and bare oak seemed like a collection of pornography. He felt as if he had been 
trying to titillate Dawson. Irrationally, he was embarrassed.
  "You've shown me that a great deal of creative effort and money goes into subliminal 
commercials and ads," Dawson said. "Evidently, there's a generally held theory that 
subconscious sexual stimulation sells goods. But does it? Enough to be worth the expense?"
  "Unquestionably! Psychological studies have proved that most Americans react to sexual 
stimuli with subconscious anxiety and tension. So if the subliminal half of a television 
commercial for
  XYZ soda shows a couple having intercourse, the viewer's subconscious starts bubbling 
with anxiety-and that establishes a motivational equation. On the left side of the equals 
sign, there's anxiety and tension. To complete the equation and cancel out these bad 
feelings, the viewer buys the product, a bottle or a case of XYZ. The equation is 
finished, the blackboard wiped clean."
  Dawson was surprised. "Then he doesn't buy the product because he believes it will give 
him a better sex life?"
  "Just the opposite," Salsbury said. "He buys it to escape from sex. The ad fills him 
with desire on a subconscious level, and by buying that product he is able to satisfy the 
desire without risking rejection, impotence, humiliation, or some other unsatisfactory 
experience with a woman. Or if the viewer is a woman, she buys the product to satisfy 
desire and thus avoids an unhappy affair with a man. For both men and women, the desire 
is well relieved if the product has an oral aspect. Like food or soda."
  "Or cigarettes," Dawson said. "Could that explain why so many people have trouble 
giving up cigarettes?"
  "Nicotine is addictive," Salsbury said. "But there's no question that subliminals in 
cigarette ads reinforce the habit in most people."
  Scratching his square chin, Dawson said, "If these are so effective, why don't I smoke? 
I've seen the ads before."
  "The science hasn't been perfected yet," Salsbury said. "If you think smoking is a 
disgusting habit, if you've decided never to smoke, subliminals can't change your mind. 
On the other hand, if you're young, just entering the cigarette market, and have no real 
opinions about the habit, subliminals can influence you to pick it up. Or if you were 
once a heavy smoker but kicked the habit, subliminals can persuade you to resume smoking. 
Subliminals also affect people who have no strong brand preferences. For example, if you 
don't drink gin or don't like to drink at all, subliminals in the Gilbey's ad won't make 
you run out to the liquor store. If you do drink, and if you do like gin, and if you 
don't care which brand of gin you drink, these ads could establish a brand preference for 
you. They work,
  Leonard. Subliminals sell hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of goods every year, a