Easy and Hard Ways Out (24 page)

Rupp thinks: What does this mean? God, God, what does this mean? What is he trying to tell me about that plane?

“The key, as I see it, is to get rid of the excess baggage. Keep the head, throw away the rest. Any other approach is bound to fail.”

Rupp stares, speechless, his mind a complete blank.

“You must have some thoughts about dying, Saul. You're a religious man, from what I remember. What's your view of death?”

A
leans back, awaiting a reply. Rupp tries to push a coherent sentence out past his lips.

“You mean what I … what I think about death? What I think about it?”

A
says nothing.

“Death is—” Rupp begins to shake his head back and forth. “Well, it's terrible, the worst. Death? I mean, who wants to die? It's … you just lie there, your bones.”

A
rises from his chair, walks to a corner shelf, and examines (or pretends to) some books. “What about heaven?” His back is to Rupp.

Rupp, who believes in heaven about twenty-five percent (his belief in hell is about seventy percent), does not, for the moment, answer. An expert in the field himself, he understands that
A
is baiting him; he understands, too, suddenly and clearly, that these games are always won by the man higher on the organization chart, independent of answers.

“If you believe in heaven, the thought can be comforting,” says Rupp.

“Do you?” asks
A
, back still turned.

He's mocking me, thinks Rupp. Next he'll ask where heaven is, how is one transported there, etcetera, etcetera, until I look thoroughly absurd.

“I'm not sure,” says Rupp, cheeks flushing.

“You're not?” says
A
.

A portion of Rupp's fear slides into anger. “No.” And instantly back to fear.

Suddenly,
A
turns half around. “Saul, is Engineering doing the job it should?”

It's happening, thinks Rupp. He knows. He knows everything. Everything. “I never expected it to take this much time,” says Rupp plaintively. “It's a small boat. I didn't think the steering system could be that complicated.”

A
hears, but ignores. He wants to discuss philosophy, a philosophical evaluation of the function of engineering, but instead the man is whining some infantile excuse, defending himself against an imagined attack.
A
tries again.

“No, I mean is Engineering doing what it
should
, rather than simply what it can?”

Rupp is submerged in a quivering blue funk. He tries to figure out what it is
A
knows, what horrible and humiliating facts he's unearthed from Rupp's past.
The ladies' rooms
, he thinks in dismay. He knows that I can't help glancing into ladies' rooms when they open the door. Oh, sickness! Oh, grotesque depravity! (In fact, it had always been one of life's keen disappointments that he'd never glimpsed any special secret female devices corresponding to urinals.) He is just about to speak, when he realizes the impossibility of it, of anyone ever knowing. No, he thinks, it's something much more reasonable. Like his tapping the phones.
A
has found out that he listens in on phone conversations, can monitor any call from anyone in management. By now, thinks Rupp, he knows I used to tap my parents' phone when I was in high school. Probably even knows I tap my own phone at home so I can record Maddy's conversations. He must've found out exactly how I wired … Wait a minute, wait a minute. No, that's impossible too.
A
would've never called him in then. He would simply have been fired without ceremony. No, it wasn't the phones. It must be … the disguises. That's it. The disguises. All right, bad enough, but not impossible. Certainly better than the ladies' rooms.

“Dr. Auerbach,” says Rupp sincerely, “I do what I do only so that I can more readily understand and evaluate the true attitudes of the men. I know it's not a standard practice, the wigs and the makeup and particularly the false bellies and behinds, but I honestly feel that knowing one's personnel is more—”

Again,
A
shuts off reception. All right, the man is beneath philosophy. And apparently hiding a good deal too. And clearly quite upset about it—religious influence, no doubt—so that his guilt lies on the surface like scum on a pond. Still,
A
begins to lose interest. Guilt and fear were so commonplace.

“For example, how's the thin-film ferrite program doing?”
A
asks casually, lowering the abstraction level one notch in order to extract a coherent reply.

The effect is exactly the opposite of what he's intended; Rupp is simply incapable of accepting at face value a question about an obscure research project. He rises from his chair.
Is it the stock manipulations? The time he ran into Odz at that porno film? His leaving two hours early last Wednesday?
He tries to speak, can't, forces out, “I'm not really—”

A
gives up. A waste. Only thing left is to resume work. “Oh, by the way, Saul. Before you go. Don't forget to keep pounding away on that F24. I promised McNamara personally, you know, that he'd get
ECM
and radar systems ten years ahead of their time. I'd feel pretty bad if we let Mac down.”

Rupp, still standing, has barely heard. After the phrase “before you go,” his senses have dimmed in euphoric relief.
Before you go
—He was getting out. Free. The F24 not a major concern in the Great Man's mind. At least not yet. Rupp's impulse is to flood the room with reassurances, guarantees they'll meet the schedule, but he suppresses it. Over-affirmation would raise suspicions, even additional conversation would lead to questions, probing. And
A
was just about finished with him.
Before you go
. He walks to the door, opens it.
A
has turned back to perusing his bookshelves.

“I'm right on top of it, Dr. Auerbach,” says Rupp, and then, compulsively, and with great relief blurts out, “Oh, incidentally, I'm replacing all those company envelopes I've used for my personal mailings.”

He slowly closes the door, but just before he does he glances back, and there, caught in the shaft of light from the outer office, is
A
, full-face and unsmiling, staring at him horribly with remote, detached curiosity.

AUERBACH LABORATORIES

Inter-Office Memorandum
12/3/66

From:
EPICAC

To: W. Murphy

cc: N. Klapholtz, binary file

Subject: Paper towel expenditures, toilet paper expenditures

The accounting department monthly expense audit has, for the past three periods, shown an approximately exponential increase in funds appropriated for both paper towels and toilet paper to stock the lavatories. This month's spending was sufficient to actuate the predanger-level warning loop, the programming of which has resulted in this memorandum. Since none of us want to risk the consequences of an actual danger alert, kindly restrain expenditures in the areas indicated.

Sincerely,

EPICAC

E: terminal

ADVICE

a. A Minor Technicality

Tuesday morning, a rare day—Klein was in, and his news from the outside spread rapidly through the lab. “Sanders hiring Grade-Two wiremen. Hazeltine letting go draftsmen, but taking on senior lab techs. Grumman laying off three hundred, all engineers. And vacation is only a hundred seventy-eight days distant.” At that Klein smiled, then complained of a tickling sensation near the back of his throat.

In his cubicle, Steinberg sat and let the words reverberate in his skull: three hundred, all engineers. Today Grumman, tomorrow … And then where would he be? Where would both of them be? He thought of Rose, his mannish, once powerful wife, reduced to a wheelchair by arthritis. He let his mind dwell fondly on that time she'd replaced their hot water heater in the basement, done all the plumbing and gas piping herself. “It's enough you have to work every day,” she'd said. “You just leave the rest to me.” His dear, sweet Rose, his strength, how she used to set up the vaporizer for him every night, how firm yet gentle she was on top of him in bed, how patiently she held back until he'd reached orgasm. Rose, imprisoned now in a wheelchair, steel-band arms barely able to move. And Dennis trying to batter his way out of Montana Law School, his sixth year, complaining about the required courses in Livestock Easements and Landmark Ranching Decisions. (High school guidance counselor: “You can't tell with a thing like intelligence, Mr. Steinberg. Your son may just be a late bloomer.”) Yeah, thought Steinberg now. A late bloomer. Like his Dad.

His decision was made without question; no need for votes here, or democratic processes, or agonizing reappraisals. Abstract principles would not keep him employed. He summoned Brank to the office.

“There's just a little tiny point I'd like to clear up before the inspection,” he said.

Brank stared at him impassively, and Steinberg felt a nostril suddenly go dead, air supply cut to zero by a draining sinus.

“The acceptance test sheet,” he continued, “has data columns for five temperature cycles.”

Brank's eyes grew liquid; Steinberg seemed to shimmer.

“We're only doing three, so we'll just duplicate the third column of numbers in the remaining two columns.”

Brank nodded, and spoke slowly. His head felt immensely heavy. “There are five columns—because the actual spec is five cycles. Is that right?”

Steinberg turned sideways, excluding Brank from his tube of vision. In the far corner of the room, he saw Dorfman doing deep knee bends.

“We were told it was three,” said Brank softly, “but it was always five, wasn't it?”

Steinberg nodded, head turned away.

“The inspector will never agree,” said Brank.

Steinberg blew his nose. “He won't actually witness all the tests. He'll see a few, and take our report on the rest.”

“Blevin will never buy this,” said Brank.

“Don't worry about Blevin.”

Brank slouched against the glass. “They must be applying incredible pressure to make someone like yourself agree to this, Stan.”

Steinberg turned back to him, ignoring the sarcasm. “We've all got to agree. This is just a minor, nit-picking technicality that can ruin the entire project. We'll fix it later when we get the right epoxy, but we can't let this whole thing go under, and us with it, because of ten cents' worth of cement.”

“If we fix it after the fact it's an admission we screwed up,” said Brank. “You know we'll never fix it.”

“All right,” said Steinberg, his voice rising. “All right, so we won't fix it. It's an asinine requirement anyway. Stupid military nit-picking. Just tell me you'll duplicate the last data column, that's all I want to know.”

Brank shook his head. “I have to think about it,” he said.

b. You Know You Shouldn't

“Now they're asking me to fake the data for the inspection,” said Brank.

“Who?” said Dubrowolski, looking up, a large ink stain on the side of his cheek.

“Well, Steinberg. But I think it goes higher.”

“Oh. Rupp, probably. I told you, he tricked some information from me that time. You're not actually, you know, gonna do it, are you?”

“I don't know,” said Brank. “Why not?”

“Well, because”—Dubrowolski faltered, his eyes widened—“because it's lying.”

“So?”

“Well, you're not supposed to lie. If we were gonna lie, I mean why go through all that work?”

“What's the difference, as long as they pay us?”

“The difference is, the difference is—” Dubrowolski puffed out his cheeks. “Aw, come on, Harv, you know you shouldn't do it.”

Brank looked at him. “I know,” he said.

He caught a glimpse of them in Pat's area as he passed by, the
ECM
pods half assembled, bright cubes of stainless steel in coiling coaxial cables, ordered, geometric patterns of flat spiral antennas, row after row of gleaming, golden connector pins, cylindrical glass tubes with helical electrodes, densely packed printed circuit boards looking like street maps of a strangled city; he felt short of breath and walked unsteadily until he reached the Accounting men's room.

“I know,” he said again, aloud.

c. Rm Wth Bath—Rsnbl

He entered his favorite stall, closed the door, flipped down the toilet seat cover, and sat down. He needed time to think, and this was the best place for it. Small pellets of pain broke open just behind his eyes. He wished he were single again, wished he could just get up and run away. It was so easy to run away; it solved everything so neatly. He looked at the wall of the cubicle and saw a new set of equations above a drawing labeled “Portrait of the Engineer as an Old Man,” and showing a figure that closely resembled Rupp. The figure was holding a penis-like projection that extended from a large letter A.
Good
, wrote Brank next to the cartoon, and looked up, startled, as a soft voice above him said, “Thank you.”

Over the side wall of the cubicle a face had appeared, flanked by two sets of hairy fingers that clung tenaciously to the faded green partition. The face was rounded and cheerful, bulbous nose and receding chin, a throwback, thirteenth-century English dairy farmer.

“I hope I didn't scare you,” said the mouth. “I've been wanting to meet you for quite a while, actually. My name is Schneck. Dr. Schneck. People usually call me Julius.”

Brank called him nothing; he was unable to speak.

“I've been living here for some time now,” continued Schneck. “Years in fact, I think. You lose track. But I think it's years.”

Brank, staring in shocked fascination, searched his brain for rational explanations. “You mean you—you
live
here? What do you mean
here?
You work here?”