Easy and Hard Ways Out (19 page)

Dubrowolski pushed a strand of blond hair from his right eye. He suppressed a yawn.

“John,” said Rupp, leaning forward, “you're held in high esteem by the management here. Very high. We think there's a bright future for you at the Labs. I would say lab supervisor isn't at all beyond your reach in the next few years. Not at all.”

Dubrowolski tried to be serious, but couldn't quite do it. He'd begun, finally (he was always so slow at these things), to get the drift of the conversation: Rupp wanted something from him. Probably some special extra work or something. Maybe putting in some Sundays or late Saturday nights. Something that might interfere with his personal life. Well, if they really needed it, if the vice-president himself was asking …

“John,” said Rupp, very intently, “someone has been abusing the paging system at the Labs. Paging crazy names, people not here, dead people, and it's reached the stage where it's become disruptive. I want to know who it is.”

Dubrowolski cupped a hand over his mouth and nose, and peered at Rupp above the fingers.

“What makes you think I would know such a thing?” he said into the hand.

“This type of amusing, deviant behavior gets around very rapidly in a work environment,” said Rupp. He thrust his head in the direction of his small bookcase. Dubrowolski saw
Management Psychology, Executive's Handbook of Labor Problems
, and
The Chronically Abusive Employee
. “This has been going on long enough so that I'll bet ninety percent of the engineers and techs know who it is. I think you're more mature than that ninety percent, John. I think you realize this is no simple laughing matter.”

“Gee, in all honesty, Mr. Rupp, I really don't feel I'm that mature,” said Dubrowolski. “I feel I'm probably in the top forty percent maybe, but never the top ten for maturity. No sir.”

“John,” said Rupp, leaning closer, “I think you should know we've discussed this with outside psychiatric consultants—several, in fact—and more than one has told us the individual might be seriously deranged. So you're not helping anyone by not telling. You're keeping a sick man from treatment, that's all.”

So it was confirmed, thought Dubrowolski. Officially proclaimed. Brank was crazy.

“Now tell me, John, who is it?”

“May I speak freely?” said Dubrowolski.

“John, of course.”

“I don't know.”

Rupp's lips dissolved to two thin lines. He again opened the folder before him. “I see those draft people are really after your carcass,” he said. “We've gotten four questionnaires about you already this year. Of course, we keep telling them you're essential to the F24BZ project, but they keep asking if you're still working on it. Persistent son-of-a-guns, though, aren't they?” Rupp smiled.

Dubrowolski thought he might try running away to Canada. He could live in the Yukon and teach the Eskimos complex variables, he could scribble proofs on walrus hides, do degenerate things on weekends with the toothless Eskimo women. He looked up. “I'm, you know, sorry.”

Rupp gave him one quick, puissant look, then rose.

Dubrowolski also rose, dispirited, tipping over his chair in the process. “Sorry again,” he said, stooping to pick it up and sidling clumsily toward the door.

“Mr. Brine will escort you back,” said Rupp crisply.

Dubrowolski winced as Rupp bent the edge of the manila folder. As he opened the door, Rupp said, “By the way, what's the chances that Yig filter will be ready by the end of the week?”

Dubrowolski grinned despite himself. “The week? You mean the month, don't you? That thing'll take at least four weeks, probably six.”

“Oh, really?” said Rupp, his voice unusually deep and silky. “You sure?”

“Oh, pos—” said Dubrowolski, catching sight of Mills sitting in the outer office. And suddenly realizing, intuiting, that the entire purpose of the conversation, the whole elaborate buildup and straining for familiarity, the implied threats and promises, the paging business, all had been but a skewed framework from which to dangle those last two questions and extract without suspicion the answers. And he'd given them, blurted them innocently, and now, no doubt, they'd be used to hang someone. Brank, perhaps, or Steinberg, or Ardway, or all three. Someone. Using the troops to ensnare the officers, first him, and now Mills. He felt light-headed, bewildered, a loser's feeling of disorientation. He began to appreciate the almost geometric precision of it, the progression and diversions, the coiling logic tightening off-center. He glanced backward into the room and saw Rupp disappear into the closet.
Was
it a closet?

PROGRESS

Progress Report—Job 6145—H. Brank—12/1

With J. Dubrowolski, evaluating DuPont R-119, as recommended by L. Fong, Structures Department. Epoxy still maintaining integrity after 2 temperature cycles from –60 to +150 degrees C. although linewidth of Yig spheres beginning to degrade. Proceeding with further tests.

Progress reports had to be constructed like the rest of American technical writing, all traces removed of anything recognizably human, implications given of concentrated, energetic efficiency, majestically derived theories always substantiated in the end by laboratory data with slight, explainable, experimental errors. They were ritualistic rather than descriptive, and reminded Brank of travelogue movie shorts featuring shots of squinting Norwegian craftsmen meticulously carving wood, followed by scenes of five women at electric typewriters. “Although the old skills are still handed down from father to son, the bustling world of modern business has made a great impact on life in Novosvenske.”

Brank sat at his desk and worked out irrelevant derivations on white pads. Sometimes he drew schematic circuit diagrams next to the derivations, and sometimes he drew pictures of Steinberg, and sometimes he connected parts of circuits to parts of Steinberg to create a smoothly functioning unit. He took jump shots with the crumpled sheets into a corner wastebasket, hitting about three out of five on average. Dorfman began taking set shots, connecting on only twenty percent, but continuing long after Brank had stopped. At the nearest bench, Dubrowolski watched as Wizer sat on a high stool and performed measurements. Steinberg made little wheezing noises in his cubicle. Knobs turned, meters moved, circular traces whirled over oscilloscope screens. The air was heavy and still, men looked thoughtful, wrote things, observed. A light blinked twice. This was engineering.

Progress Report—Job 6145—H. Brank—12/2

With J. Dubrowolski, continuing to evaluate DuPont R-119. Although epoxy has maintained integrity after 5 temperature cycles, it has raised the effective sphere linewidth to 1.1 oersteds. Will try to determine cause of degradation and calculate whether tighter coupling can provide an acceptable loss-bandwidth tradeoff.

“I've invented a theorem,” said Dorfman.

“A math theorem?” said Brank.

“A general theorem,” said Dorfman, sucking a Wintergreen mint. “Here it is. Dorfman's first theorem.
At any given instant, the total world food supply cannot exceed the weight of the earth.”
He stood near Brank's desk, chest puffed out like a peacock's, satisfaction suffusing his face.

Brank stared at him. “How old are you, Sheldon?”

“What?”

“Old. Age. Your age. Here: a person's age cannot exceed the number of years he has spent without his umbilical cord tied to someone else. How old are you?”

“Thirty-six. Yours is only a definition, mine is a theorem. Why do you ask?”

“Because, don't you get tired of these theorems and puzzles and cute problems you're always doing? I ran out of gas on these things when I was twenty-three.”

Dorfman nodded slowly. “I figured you'd be jealous. Typical Old World attitude. It's this type of thing that keeps your mind alive, prevents you from becoming a mental celery stalk like—” He thrust his chin in Wizer's direction. “Your feigned bored cynicism on this is merely a cover-up for a fear of competition.”

“Sheldon,” said Brank, “I'm not in competition with you. On anything. I know this may come as a shock, but you are not one of the focal points of my life. It's not that I don't like you, it's rather that I don't consider you. You are not a factor in my equation. Your view of Elton, incidentally, is rather arrogant.”

“Harsh, but correct,” said Dorfman.

Brank noticed he had hairy arms. “What makes you think you're any different?”

“Look,” said Dorfman, “surely the trivia we work on here is not enough to keep our minds alive. Listen: you put three random dots on a paper and connect them with lines. What's the probability the resulting triangle is obtuse?”

“I give up,” said Brank. “But knowing the answer to problems like that is not necessarily keeping your mind alive, either. We're all on the same train here; the only difference is some of us walk through the cars and think they're getting ahead of the others.”

“Poor analogy,” said Dorfman. “Strained metaphor. I take courses. Art, literature, cultural things. I have plans. This is just temporary for me. No O.W. mentality here, no ghetto resignation.”

Brank dropped a pencil and bent to pick it up as Dorfman began edging away.

“You should leave it there,” said Dorfman over his shoulder. “Dorfman's second theorem.
Things already on the floor cannot fall
.”

Brank looked up and muttered under his breath. About that, at least, the crazy son of a bitch was right.

Progress Report—Job 6145—H. Brank—12/3

Calculations by J. Dubrowolski indicate unacceptable loss-bandwidth tradeoffs for epoxy-degraded Yig spheres. Trying to devise fixture to hold spheres onto rods without epoxy.

Brank went to Bill Brennan in Drafting and asked if there were a designer or draftsman available to make shop sketches.

“I think we'll have one about 1992. Are you kidding, Harvo? We're up over our ears; look at the cretins I get here.”

Potamos and Plotsky turned around. “A poor supervisor blames his workers,” said Potamos.

“He has the I.Q. of a crabapple,” said Brennan. “I'd suggest the Production drafting department, but they're impossibly loaded too.”

“This is job six-one-four-five,” said Brank. “I thought it had top priority.”

“It does,” said Brennan. “But so do all the other jobs we have. Ardway gave me a list of priorities. Seven jobs have top priority, five are ultra-urgent, and thirteen are urgent. We won't get to the urgent ones for about two months.”

Brank nodded.

Plotsky left his board and ambled over. “I hear there are yogis who can vomit at will. I hear some of them sit in a bathtub and draw water up their asses to give themselves enemas. It's disgusting, but this is what I heard. The thing I'm wondering is if they can jerk off without touching themselves. Think off, I guess you'd call it. This is what I'm wondering.”

“I can't help you there, Ralph,” said Brank. “It is a fascinating subject for speculation, though.”

Brennan threw up his hands in a theatrical gesture as Brank walked Plotsky back to his drawing board. On the shelf underneath, mixed in with the triangles, French curves, and protractors, Brank caught a glimpse of shiny magazine covers.

“Other people,” said Plotsky softly, “receive pornography they don't want in the mail and they become enraged. I send away for it, and I can't get it.”

Brank nodded sympathetically.

“Got a hot job here,” said Plotsky, indicating the sheet on his board.

“Must be,” said Brank, backing away. “I'm gonna have to make my own sketches.”

“Yeah, this is a scorcher,” said Plotsky. “Part for one of the bigwig's boats. Big hush-hush deal. Won't say who it's for.”

Brank halted, and stared at the ceiling for almost a minute. Then he began to laugh.

Later in the day, Steinberg approached him and asked how the new fixture was progressing.

“I'm doing the shop sketches myself,” said Brank. “I couldn't get a draftsman. They're working on some bigwig's boat. Big hush-hush deal, so nobody knows it's Rupp's.”

Steinberg quickly swiveled his head from side to side. “Shh! Shh! You're not supposed to mention that.” He whispered so that Brank could barely hear. “How did you find out? Only supervisory personnel are supposed to know that.”

“Wizer told me,” said Brank.

“Wizer. Hmm. Who told him, I wonder?”

“Oh, Rocco did. The way it works is, the secretaries tell the maintenance men who tell the techs who tell the engineers. Of course, sometimes word does filter back to the supervisors, but it's usually from the direct source, which means it's full of lies and distortions.”

“They told me it was very sensitive, that it required great discretion, that no leaks could be tolerated.”

“I'm sorry,” said Brank.

“I'm asking everyone to work overtime,” said Steinberg abruptly.

“But, Stan, it's pointless. You know the job's impossible.”

“We have to make maximum effort, we have to set examples.”

“Stan, it's impossible. Examples for whom?”

“We're all guilty, the blame is spread, the ax falls evenly. A chain is only as weak as its strongest link.” Steinberg sneezed, rubbed his eyes, sneezed again.

“I don't know,” said Brank.

“Know. Know. Mr. Ardway is watching. Put in the time. If you want, I'll take a vote on it, but you have to vote yes. Everyone does. This is a democratic lab, we're adults. We do what's necessary. You want the vote?”

“I yield, Mr. Chairman,” said Brank.

Brank sat and stared. Night work was impossible. Evening was a time for dinner and reading the newspaper and playing with Brucie, a time of lying on carpets, stretching out on sofas, massaging Joanie's legs, watching TV, sleeping. A mind and body locked into these patterns could accomplish nothing useful in a work environment, even if useful work were possible. Steinberg was slaving away in his cubicle over some arcane report. Dubrowolski ran out of lined paper in the middle of a derivation and continued the proof on the surface of the desk. Dorfman studied the
World Almanac
and mentally composed another anonymous letter to Rupp. Brank got up and took a walk.