Easy and Hard Ways Out (12 page)

“Kant, Mr. Immanuel Kant,” said the voice over the public address system. Brank grinned slightly and watched Steinberg in the metal frame. He's smiling enigmatically, thought Brank. That means he's upset. Though his desk faced away from Steinberg's enclosure he could see his supervisor clearly in the tiny mirror he had pasted to his In box. The mirror, his “surveillance system” as he called it, was his trademark. He'd had it on all his previous jobs; it had warned him of Big Ed Brophy at G.E.; had reflected enraged images in living, moving color of Carl Gerst at Hewlett Packard; had been torn off (though subsequently returned) by the fiendishly clever G. C. Peralt at the now defunct Peralt Labs. The mirror. And the alarm clock. Set to go off on coffee breaks. And the books pinched in by metal book ends. Blatantly non-technical, non-engineering.
Biography of Jim Konstanty. Sin Motel. Elementary Crocheting
.

Signs of defiance and surveillance, of resistance and containment. Brank watched as Steinberg's small figure approached.

“Harvey,” said Steinberg in a clogged and thickened voice, “I'd like to see you and Dubrowolski in my office for a minute.”

“Okay,” said Brank, rising and walking over to Dubrowolski's chaotic desk as Steinberg quickly scuttled back to his enclosure.

“He wants to see us in his office, Dubrowo,” said Brank.

“Who?” asked Dubrowolski, looking up from a fantastic, cascading sea of half-filled white pads, torn yellow papers, three-by-five cards, old calendar leaves, pieces of cloth covered with calculus symbols, scribbled-in open books, dog-eared catalogs, pencils, pens, erasers, rubber bands, paper clips, and rolls of Scotch tape. Several documents fluttered unnoticed to the floor as he lifted his head.

“Our boss,” said Brank. “Snot nose.”

“Oh, him,” said Dubrowolski. “Well, I'm right in the middle of a derivation now, Harv. This will ruin my train of thought.”

“Dubrowo, he may be a plugged-up, tube-eyed, constipated cloaca, but he's still our boss, and if you don't come he will see to it in his own inimitable, sniveling way that your ass is removed from this place of business. I'm telling you, he's capable. Now if you don't come I can't be responsible.”

Dubrowolski looked up and smiled. He was a big, blond recent college graduate whose name in the company records was brutally truncated one day by the Accounting Department computer, which had since churlishly refused to recognize anything beyond seven letters. Dubrowolski was handsome, intelligent, and engagingly naïve. On his first job they told him he was a professional, so he came into the office at 11
P.M.
in old clothes, and worked very hard all through the night because he functioned better then. Naturally, he was fired after a week. “But they told me I was, you know, a professional,” he complained to Brank later. Brank decided then that Dubrowolski needed help. It soon became apparent that in addition to being naïve, Dubrowolski was paranoic, hurt easily, insulted readily, and believed that groups of people he'd never seen were out to get him. “They sent me another letter,” he'd tell Brank each month. “If I, you know, take a crap in the morning I get a questionnaire in the afternoon asking if it was hard or loose and if it affects my draft status. I think they're persecuting me, Brank.
Me
, the wonderful guy they themselves declared essential to the national defense.”

“They persecute everybody,” said Brank, “and therefore it's not persecution.” He had to prevent himself, whenever he spoke to Dubrowolski, from adding “kid” to each sentence. “Besides, it's cowardly and unpatriotic not to serve. Serving is a right and a privilege.”

“But, but, how, I mean, how can you? You never served yourself, Harvey!”

“True, and that's one of the principal reasons I'm so determined that others shall not suffer the same deprivation. Were I not deferred, I would defend to the death your right to defend me to the death.”

“Every time I do anything,” said Dubrowolski now, shaking his head, “it always comes down to a decision. Would I, you know, rather do this or fight the Viet Cong. Right now I'd rather talk to Steinberg, even though it ruins my derivation.”

He put down his pencil, stood up, and stretched, and then he and Brank walked toward Steinberg's enclosure as the latest draft questionnaire swan-dived quietly to the floor along with several other papers.

Sitting in his glass cubicle, facing the even rows of desks and benches, Steinberg began to rotate his neck inside his shirt collar. A single droplet of perspiration formed high over his left eyebrow and began a tortuous journey down his forehead. He blew his nose into a tissue that immediately disintegrated and left him with a handful of mucus. He spotted Brank talking to Dubrowolski. He simply had to find out what the situation was. Ardway would be calling him in tomorrow morning and would go crazy when Steinberg told him he hadn't met the deadline. He would scream and rant and rave and threaten to take Steinberg's group away and his job away and would point out Steinberg's age, and would then demand to know when the job would be done. And Steinberg had better be able to tell him. Tell him what he wanted to hear, too, independent of the facts. As he had done the last time Ardway had called him in and paralyzed him with threats. He glanced up and caught sight of Dorfman doing one-legged deep knee bends near the tool cabinet, but did not notice Brank and Dubrowolski enter his cubicle.

“You said you wanted to see us,” said Brank.

Steinberg turned. “Oh, yes. Yes. Sit down for a minute.” He offered them two wooden chairs. Brank sat on one. Dubrowolski sat on Steinberg's desk.

“Kinda warm,” said Steinberg. “Isn't the lab kinda warm?”

“I don't think so,” said Brank.

“Me neither,” said Dubrowolski.

“I feel kinda warm,” said Steinberg.

Dubrowolski stood up. “Is that it?” he said. “It didn't take as long as I expected.”

“Is what it?” said Steinberg.

“Is that, you know, what you wanted to ask us?” said Dubrowolski. “I mean about the warmth?”

“Oh,” said Steinberg, grinning enigmatically. “Oh, no. No, that wasn't it at all.” He glanced into the lab again and saw Dorfman doing another round of bends. “Why does he do that?”

“He does it because I did it,” said Brank. “I did ten one-legged bends, and he'll practice until he can do eleven. He can't stand to be inferior to anyone. Of course, just when he does eleven, I'll come out with some old baseball facts, and then you'll see him studying the sports almanac. That's the way he is.”

“And that's the way you are,” said Steinberg, with a perception that belied his tunnel vision. “What I asked you in for is to give me another rundown of the problem you found.”

“All right,” said Brank. “It's the Yig spheres. The problem is they fall off their mounting rods after five or six temperature cycles. Dubrowo found it accidentally, but we've since verified it on several filters.”

“What about that new cement? Weren't you ordering a better cement?” said Steinberg.

“We were,” said Brank. “And it came in, but Incoming Inspection rejected it. Holtzmann and Boltzmann. It's a special, heat-conductive epoxy; it took a hell of a long time to find. I've been trying to speak to Dr. Brundage to see if he knows a substitute, but he's been tied up. According to the manufacturers, we'll have to wait at least four weeks before they can even make up any new samples for us to check.”

Steinberg nodded lazily. His face felt flushed, glowing. “Five cycles is only a design goal,” he said softly. “So right now though, technically, we can still get this past the Air Force. Is that right?”

Dubrowolski blinked. “You mean we shouldn't tell them? You don't mean that, do you? I really can't see how you can have a ‘design goal' on something like this, but of course, if the specs call for only three temperature cycles, they probably won't spot it. But we certainly can't let it pass. I mean, you know, that wouldn't be honest.”

“Of course,” said Steinberg quickly. “I'm just examining possibilities here. No need to get excited. I have no intention of committing fraud.”

“Okay,” said Dubrowolski, still ruffled.

Steinberg looked at him and then at Brank. “All right, gentlemen, thank you.” Brank and Dubrowolski walked toward the door. “Harvey,” Steinberg called out. “Any chance at all, even the slightest, of finding a new cement within two weeks?”

“I doubt it,” said Brank.

“But you're not a hundred percent sure.”

“No.”

“Good. Thank you.”

They left, and Steinberg was alone, and suddenly he was conscious of the wetness of his armpits, the difficulty of breathing. He looked at the wall thermometer and saw that the temperature was seventy-two degrees. He walked to the opening in his enclosure, stopped, and cleared his throat. “Uh, people. People, attention. Attention here.”

He saw them grudgingly look up. The sullen faces. That wise-aleck kid, Dubrowolski, who'd sat on his desk. Wizer, with his devious inscrutability.

“I'd like to take a little vote here regarding opening the windows.”

He heard a snicker but did not see who it was. Sons of bitches. You can't treat them like adults. You try to be democratic, to deal with them like human beings, but no, they won't let you; they have to make it tough. He decided that within the next few months he'd cut out the vote on whether to make coffee in the lab in the afternoons. Or whether to play music or news on the radio at lunchtime. Or whether it was time to empty the carton of used soda bottles. One day he'd just arbitrarily
order
someone to do it. We'll see how much they like it then, he thought. If they wanted to be treated like babies, he'd treat them like babies. Just as soon as this present crisis was over.

“All right, on the windows … all those voting for a quarter inch, raise hands.”

FOREIGN TISSUES

Four o'clock. Pecan paneling. Sofas lining the walls. Private washroom. Black leather upholstered chairs. White shag carpeting. Death-lady secretary serving steaming coffee. Five grown men sit at a massive walnut table upon which, near the center, rests a small wooden box with a knob on one side and a cloth baffle on another.

Rupp's hand shakes as he lifts the coffee to his lips. Whatever happens, I've done my sincere best, he thinks. God knows that, and God is more important than anybody, even
A
. Next to him, the usually outgoing Marchese sits erect, silent, looking strangely out of place in a business suit.

“We don't, uh … well, the thing we don't see is how the situation could have gotten this far,” says Redberry, seated at the head of the table. He is a crew-cut, reticent, disarmingly pleasant-looking fellow who keeps his head cocked at a shy thirty-degree angle to the vertical so that others tend to tilt their own heads when talking to him. Actually the pleasant reticence is a ruse to cover a chillingly inhuman personality, the only exterior hints of which are references to himself in the first-person plural and an occasional slight facial twitch that is easily shaped into a smile.

“Our department can only go by what the others give us,” says a thin, acne-ravaged man opposite Marchese. He is Vern Fish, dandruff-laden Vice-President of Accounting, whose only friend is the incredibly advanced and useless computer that he's had installed to improve efficiency. “We're like cause and effect,” he continues. “Rough up my input and pretty soon you'll be hurting in the output.”

“Vern, uh—” says Redberry, pointing to the table directly in front of Fish.

Fish looks down, then brushes away a collection of white specks that have fallen on the walnut, the vigor of his motion causing a new, unnoticed shower. Marchese thinks: I wonder if dandruff is like snow, with no two flakes alike.

“When do, uh, when do you expect to know definitely regarding the inspection?” asks Redberry.

“I think tomorrow is reasonable, Mr. Redberry,” replies Rupp. “Don't you think we can have something by tomorrow, Vince?” Rupp looks over at Marchese.

“Oh, I imagine so. If En-gin-eer-ing will just get me the final release on the draw-ings, we should be able to move.”

Son of a bitch, thinks Rupp, glancing nervously at the humming, baffled box squatting on the table.

“Gentlemen,” says the man opposite Rupp, “we have ourselves a crisis here. A cr-i-sees.” Ed Lingenfelter, Vice-President of Sales, was a man people referred to as portly when he was in the room, and a lardo, pig, tub-o, whale when he wasn't. At conferences, he specialized in falling backward off his chair.

Lingenfelter's life is a goddamn crisis, thinks Rupp.

Lingenfelter looks like a marsupial, thinks Marchese.

The dragon lady brushes some dandruff near Fish's coffee into an ashtray she holds next to the table.

“Well, it's, uh, it's appárent we can't do any more today,” says Redberry.

“But McGuinn is coming in two weeks,” says Lingenfelter. “I promised him personally we'd have it ready. Jesus, we've got a crisis here. Jesus, this is some calamity zooming in.”

Look at that, thinks Marchese. Look, Lingenfelter has hair on the outside of his ears.

Fish is visualizing a box on female employees' time cards that they can check when they have their periods so
EPICAC
can include the effects of menstruation in its production estimates.

Lingenfelter's chair begins tilting backward and he waves his arms wildly to stabilize himself.

I wouldn't mind grabbing a little of that vampire lady's ass, thinks Rupp. I wonder if her underwear is black, too.

“We still can't do anything about it today, Ed,” says Redberry. “Tomorrow, with the status reports, we'll have something to work with.”

The men begin to push themselves back from the table, to stand up. The wooden box crackles.