I Will Fear No Evil (2 page)

“Good God, no! I need you, Hans—and Byram will need you still more. I can’t use trained seals; a man has to have the guts to disagree with me, or he’s a waste of space. But when a man bucks me, I want him to do it
intelligently
. You do. You’ve forced me to change my mind several times—not easy, stubborn as I am. Now about this other—sit down. Eunice, whistle up that easy chair for Dr. von Ritter.”

The chair approached; von Ritter waved it back, it retreated. “No, I haven’t time to be cajoled. What do you want?” He straightened up; the boardroom table folded its legs, turned on edge, and glided away through a slot in the wall.

“Hans, I’ve surrounded myself with men who don’t like me, not a Yes man or trained seal among them. Even Byram—especially Byram—got his job by contradicting me and being right. Except when he’s been wrong and that’s why he needs men like you on the board. But Parkinson—I was entitled to clip him—publicly—because he called for my resignation—publicly. Nevertheless you are right, Hans; ‘tit for tat’ is childish. Twenty years ago—even ten—I would
never
have humiliated a man. If a man operates by reflex, as most do instead of using their noggins, humiliating him forces him to try to get even. I know better. But I’m getting senile, as we all know.”

Von Ritter said nothing. Smith went on, “Will you stick?—and help keep Byram steady?”

“Uh . . . I’ll stick. As long as you behave yourself.” He turned to leave.

“Fair enough. Hans? Will you dance at my wake?”

Von Ritter looked back and grinned. “I’d be delighted!”

“Thought so. Thanks, Hans. G’bye.”

Smith said to Byram Teal, “Anything, son?”

“Assistant Attorney General coming from Washington tomorrow to talk to you about our Machine Tools Division buying control of Homecrafts, Ltd. I think—”

“To talk to
you
. If you can’t handle him, I picked the wrong man. What else?”

“At Sea Ranch number five we lost a man at the fiftyfathom line. Shark.”

“Married?”

“No, sir. Nor dependent parents.”

“Well, do the pretty thing, whatever it is. You have those videospools of me, the ones that actor fellow dubbed the sincere voice onto. When we lose one of our own, we can’t have the public thinking we don’t give a hoot.”

Jake Salomon added, “Especially when we don’t.”

Smith clucked at him. “Jake, do you have a way to look into my heart? It’s our policy to be lavish with death benefits, plus the little things that mean so much.”

“—and look so good. Johann, you don’t have a heart—just dials and machinery. Furthermore you never did have.”

Smith smiled. “Jake, for you we’ll make an exception. When you die, we’ll try not to notice. No flowers, not even the customary black-bordered page in our house organs.”

“You won’t have anything to say about it, Johann. I’ll outlive you twenty years.”

“Going to dance at my wake?”

“I don’t dance,” the lawyer answered, “but you tempt me to learn.”

“Don’t bother, I’ll outlive
you
. Want to bet? Say a million to your favorite tax deduction? No, I can’t bet; I need your help to stay alive. Byram, check with me tomorrow. Nurse, leave us; I want to talk with my lawyer.”

“No, sir. Dr. Garcia wants a close watch on you at all times.”

Smith looked thoughtful. “Miss Bedpan, I acquired my speech habits before the Supreme Court took up writing dirty words on sidewalks. But I will try to use words plain enough for you to understand. I am your employer. I pay your wages. This is my home. I told you to get out. That’s an order.”

The nurse looked stubborn, said nothing.

Smith sighed. “Jake, I’m getting old—I forget that they follow their own rules. Will you locate Dr. Garcia—somewhere in the house—and find out how you and I can have a private conference in spite of this too faithful watchdog?”

Shortly Dr. Garcia arrived, looked over dials and patient, conceded that telemetering would do for the time being. “Miss MacIntosh, shift to the remote displays.”

“Yes, Doctor. Will you send for a nurse to relieve me? I want to quit this assignment.”

“Now, Nurse—”

“Just a moment, Doctor,” Smith put in. “Miss MacIntosh, I apologize for calling you, ‘Miss Bedpan.’ Childish of me, another sign of increasing senility. But, Doctor, if she
must
leave—I hope she won’t—bill me for a thousand-dollar bonus for her. Her attention to duty has been perfect . . . despite many instances of unreasonable behavior on my part.”

“Uh . . . see me outside, Nurse.”

When doctor and nurse had left Salomon said dryly, “Johann, you are senile only when it suits you.”

Smith chuckled. “I do take advantage of age and illness. What other weapons have I left?”

“Money.”

“Ah, yes. Without money I wouldn’t be alive. But I
am
childishly bad-tempered these days. You could chalk it up to the fact that a man who has always been active feels frustrated by being imprisoned. But it’s simpler to call it senility . . . since God and my doctor know that my body is senile.”

“I call it stinking bad temper, Johann, not senility—since you can control it when you want to. Don’t use it on me; I won’t stand for it.”

Smith chuckled. “Never, Jake; I need you. Even more than I need Eunice—though she’s ever so much prettier than you. How about it, Eunice? Has my behavior been bad lately?”

His secretary shrugged—producing complex secondary motions pleasant to see. “You’re pretty stinky at times, Boss. But I’ve learned to ignore it.”

“You see, Jake? If Eunice refused to put up with it—as you do—I’d be the sweetest boss in the land. As it is, I use her as a safety valve.”

Salomon said, “Eunice, any time you get fed up with this vile-tempered old wreck you can work for me, at the same salary or higher.”

“Eunice, your salary just doubled!”

“Thank you, Boss,” she said promptly. “I’ve recorded it. And the time. I’ll notify Accounting.”

Smith cackled. “See why I keep her? Don’t try to outbid me, you old goat, you don’t have enough chips.”

“Senile,” Salomon growled. “Speaking of money, whom do you want to put into Parkinson’s slot?”

“No rush, he was a blank file. Do you have a candidate, Jake?”

“No. Although after this last little charade it occurs to me that Eunice might be a good bet.”

Eunice looked startled, then dropped all expression. Smith looked thoughtful. “It had
not
occurred to me. But it might be a perfect solution. Eunice, would you be willing to be a director of the senior corporation?”

Eunice flipped her machine to “NOT RECORDING.” “You’re both making fun of me! Stop it.”

“My dear,” Smith said gently, “you know I don’t joke about money. As for Jake, it is the only subject sacred to him—he sold his daughter and his grandmother down to Rio.”

“Not my daughter,” Salomon objected. “Just Grandmother . . . and the old girl didn’t fetch much. But it gave us a spare bedroom.”

“But, Boss, I don’t know anything about running a business!”

“You wouldn’t have to. Directors don’t manage, they set policy. But you do know more about running it than most of our directors; you’ve been on the inside for years. Plus Almost inside during the time you were my secretary’s secretary before Mrs. Bierman retired. But here are advantages I see in what may have been a playful suggestion on Jake’s part. You are already an officer of the corporation as Special Assistant Secretary assigned to record for the board—and I made you that, you’ll both remember, to shut up Parkinson when he bellyached about my secretary being present during an executive session. You’ll go on being that—and my personal secretary, too; can’t spare you—while becoming a director. No conflict, you’ll simply vote as well as recording. Now we come to the key question: Are you willing to vote the way Jake votes?”

She looked solemn. “You wish me to, sir?”

“Or the way I do if I’m present, which comes to the same thing. Think back and you’ll see that Jake and I have
always
voted the same way on basic policy—settling it ahead of time—while wrangling and voting against each other on things that don’t matter. Read the old minutes, you’ll spot it.”

“I noticed it long ago,” she said simply, “but didn’t think it was my place to comment.”

“Jake, she’s our new director. One more point, my dear: If it turns out that we need your spot, will you resign? You won’t lose by it.”

“Of course, sir. I don’t have to be paid to agree to that.”

“You still won’t lose by it. I feel better. Eunice, I’ve had to turn management over to Teal; I’ll be turning policy over to Jake—you know the shape I’m in. I want Jake to have as many sure votes backing him as possible. Oh, we can always fire directors . . . but it is best not to have to do so, a fact von Ritter rubbed my nose in. Okay, you’re a director. We’ll formalize it at that stockholders’ meeting. Welcome to the ranks of the Establishment. Instead of a wage slave, you have sold out and are now a counterrevolutionary, warmongering, rat-fink, fascist dog. How does it feel?”

“Not ‘dog,’ ” Eunice objected. “The rest is lovely but ‘dog’ is the wrong sex; I’m female. A bitch.”

“Eunice, I not only do not use such words with ladies around, you know that I do not care to hear them from ladies.”

“Can a ‘rat-fink fascist’ be a lady? Boss, I learned that word in kindergarten. Nobody minds it today.”

“I learned it out behind the barn and let’s keep it there.”

Salomon growled. “I don’t have time to listen to amateur lexicologists. Is the conference over?”

“What? Not at all! Now comes the top-secret part, the reason I sent the nurse out. So gather ye round.”

“Johann, before you talk secrets, let me ask one question. Does that bed have a mike on it? Your chair may be bugged, too.”

“Eh?” the old man looked thoughtful. “I used a call button . . . until they started standing a heel-and-toe watch on me.”

“Seven to two you’re bugged. Eunice my dear, can you trace the circuits and make sure?”

“Uh . . . I doubt it. The circuitry isn’t much like my stenodesk. But I’ll look.” Eunice left her desk, studied the console on the back of the wheelchair. “These two dials almost certainly have mikes hooked to them; they’re respiration and heart beat. But they don’t show voices as my voice does not make the needles jiggle. Filtered out, I suppose. “But”—she looked thoughtful—“voice could be pulled off either circuit ahead of a filter. I do something like that, in reverse, whenever I record with a high background db. I don’t know what these dials do. Darn it, I might spot a voice circuit . . . but I could never be sure that there was
not
one. Or two. Or three. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, dear,” the lawyer said soothingly. “There hasn’t been real privacy in this country since the middle of the twentieth century—why, I could phone a man I know of and have you photographed in your bath and you would never know it.”

“Really? What a dreadful idea. How much does this person charge for such a job?”

“Plenty. Depends on difficulty and how much chance he runs of being prosecuted. Never less than a couple of thousand and then up like a kite. But he can do it.”

“Well!” Eunice looked thoughtful, then smiled. “Mr. Salomon, if you ever decide that you must have such a picture of me, phone me for a competitive bid. My husband has an excellent Chinese camera and I would rather have
him
photograph me in my bath than some stranger.”

“Order, please,” Smith said mildly. “Eunice, if you want to sell skin pictures to that old lecher, do it on your own time. I don’t know anything about these gadgets but I know how to solve this. Eunice, go out to where they telemeter me—I think it’s next door in what used to be my upstairs lounge. You’ll find Miss MacIntosh there. Hang around three minutes. I’ll wait two minutes; then I’ll call out: ‘
Miss Maclntosh!
Is Mrs. Branca there?’ If you hear me, we’ll know she’s snooping. If you don’t, come back at the end of three minutes.”

“Yes, sir. Do I give Miss MacIntosh any reason for this?”

“Give the old battle-ax any stall you like. I simply want to know if she is eavesdropping.”

“Yes, sir.” Eunice started to leave the room. She pressed the door switch just as its buzzer sounded. The door snapped aside, revealing Miss Macintosh, who jumped in surprise.

The nurse recovered and said bleakly, to Mr. Smith, “May I come in for a moment?”

“Certainly.”

“Thank you, sir.” The nurse went to the bed, pulled its screen aside, touched four switches on its console, replaced the screen. Then she planted herself in front of her patient and said, “Now you have complete privacy, so far as
my
equipment is concerned. Sir.”

“Thank you.”

“I am not supposed to cut the voice monitors except on Doctor’s orders. But you had privacy
anyhow
. I am as bound to respect a patient’s privacy as a doctor is, I
never
listen to sickroom conversation. I don’t even hear it! Sir.”

“Get your feathers down. If you weren’t listening, how did you know we were discussing the matter?”

“Oh! Because my name was mentioned. Hearing my name triggers me to listen. It’s a conditioned reflex. Though I don’t suppose you believe me?”

“On the contrary, I do. Nurse—please switch on whatever you switched off. Then bear in mind that I
must
talk privately . . . and I’ll remember not to mention your name. But I’m glad to know that I can reach you so promptly. To a man in my condition that is a comfort.”

“Uh—very well, sir.”

“And I want to thank you for putting up with my quirks. And bad temper.”

She almost smiled. “Oh, you’re not so difficult, sir. I once put in two years in an N.P. hospital.”

Smith looked startled, then grinned. “
Touché!
Was that where you acquired your hatred for bedpans?”

“It was indeed! Now if you will excuse me, sir—”

When she was gone, Salomon said, “You really think she won’t listen?”

“Of course she will, she can’t help it, she’s already triggered and will be trying too hard not to listen. But she’s proud, Jake, and I would rather depend on pride than gadgetry. Okay, I’m getting tired, so here it is in a lump. I want to buy a body. A young one.”