Player Piano (17 page)

“Wha’d I do wrong?” said Lynn.

“Ssssh!” said Khashdrahr fiercely, and he placed himself, like a guard, between the puzzled crowd and the Shah.

The Shah dropped to his knees on the platform and raised his hands over his head. The small, brown man suddenly seemed to fill the entire cavern with his mysterious, radiant dignity, alone there on the platform, communing with a presence no one else could sense.

“We seem to be witnessing some sort of religious rite,” said the announcer.

“Can’t you keep your big mouth shut for five seconds?” said Halyard.

“Quiet!” said Khashdrahr.

The Shah turned to a glowing bank of EPICAC’s tubes and cried in a piping singsong voice:

“The crazy bastard’s talking to the machine,” whispered Lynn.

“Ssssh!” said Halyard, strangely moved by the scene.

“Siki?”
cried the Shah. He cocked his head, listening.
“Siki?”
The word echoed and died—lonely, lost.

“Mmmmmm,”
said EPICAC softly.
“Dit, dit. Mmmmm. Dit.
”

The Shah sighed and stood, and shook his head sadly, terribly let down.
“Nibo,”
he murmured.
“Nibo
.”

“What’s he say?” said the President.

“
‘Nibo’
—‘nothing.’ He asked the machine a question, and the machine didn’t answer,” said Halyard.
“Nibo.”

“Nuttiest thing I ever heard of,” said the President. “You have to punch out the questions on that thingamajig, and the answers come out on tape from the whatchamacallits. You can’t just talk to it.” A doubt crossed his fine face. “I mean, you can’t, can you?”

“No sir,” said the chief engineer of the project. “As you say, not without the thingamajigs and whatchamacallits.”

“What’d he say?” said Lynn, catching Khashdrahr’s sleeve.

“An ancient riddle,” said Khashdrahr, and it was plain that he didn’t want to go on, that something sacred was involved. But he was also a polite man, and the inquiring eyes of the crowd demanded more of an explanation. “Our people believe,” he said shyly, “that a great, all-wise god will come among us one day, and we shall know him, for he shall be able to answer the riddle, which EPICAC could not answer. When he comes,” said Khashdrahr simply, “there will be no more suffering on earth.”

“All-wise god, eh?” said Lynn. He licked his lips and patted down his unruly forelock. “How’s the riddle go?”

Khashdrahr recited:

President Lynn squinted at the cavern roof thoughtfully. “Mmm. Silver bells, eh?” He shook his head. “That’s a stinker, you know? A real stinker. I give up.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Khashdrahr. “I’m not surprised. I expect you do.”

Halyard helped the Shah, who seemed to have been aged and exhausted by the emotional ordeal, into the electric car.

As they rode to the foot of the elevator, the Shah came back to life somewhat and curled his lip at the array of electronics about them.
“Baku!”
he said.

“That’s a new one on me,” said Halyard to Khashdrahr, feeling warmly toward the little interpreter, who had squared away Jonathan Lynn so beautifully. “What’s
Baku?
”

“Little mud and straw figures made by the Surrasi, a small infidel tribe in the Shah’s land.”

“This looks like mud and straw to him?”

“He was using it in the broader sense, I think, of false god.”

“Um,” said Halyard. “Well, how are the Surrasi doing?”

“They all died of cholera last spring.” He added after a moment, “Of course.” He shrugged, as though to ask what else people like that could possibly expect.
“Baku.
”

T
HE
K
RONER HOME
, just outside Albany, was a Victorian mansion, perfectly restored and maintained down to the filigree along the eaves, and the iron spikes along the roof peak. The archprophet of efficiency, Kroner, preferred it to
the gracile, wipe-clean-with-a-damp-cloth steel and glass machines almost all of the engineers and managers lived in. Though Kroner had never accounted for his having bought the place—beyond saying that he liked lots of room—it was so in keeping with him that no one gave the anachronism more than passing thought.

A portrait painter had sensed the rightness of the setting, with no clues other than Kroner’s face. The painter had been commissioned to do portraits of all the district managers. He did them from photographs, since the managers were too busy—or prudently claimed to be—to sit. Intuitively, the painter had depicted Kroner in a red plush chair, with a massive wedding ring prominently displayed, and with a background of heavy velvet drapes.

The mansion was one more affirmation of Kroner’s belief that nothing of value changed; that what was once true is always true; that truths were few and simple; and that a man needed no knowledge beyond these truths to deal wisely and justly with any problem whatsoever.

“Come in,” rumbled Kroner gently, answering the door himself. He seemed to fill the whole house with his slow strength and rock-bound calm. He was as informal as he ever became, having replaced his double-breasted suit coat with a single-breasted one of a slightly lighter shade and with suede patches at the elbows. The coat, he explained to visitors, was something his wife had given him years ago, something which he’d only recently mustered nerve enough to wear.

“I love your house more every time I see it,” said Anita.

“You must tell Janice that.” Janice was Mrs. Kroner, who smiled sweetly from the living room. She was a fat repository of truisms, adages, and homilies, and was usually addressed by the young engineers and managers as “Mom.”

Mom, Paul recalled, had never liked that Finnerty boy, who would never call her Mom nor confide in her. Once, after she’d prodded him to unburden himself and feel better,
he’d rather testily told her that he’d already fled one mother. Paul she liked, because Paul, as a youngster,
had
confided in her now and then. He would never do it again, but his demeanor before her conveyed that his failure to confide recently wasn’t due to revulsion, but to a lack of problems.

“Hello, Mom,” said Paul.

“Hello, Mom,” said Anita.

“You children take a load off your feet,” said Mom. “Now just tell me all about yourselves.”

“Well, we’ve redone the kitchen,” said Anita.

Mom was thrilled, eager for details.

Kroner hung his huge head, as though listening intently to the small talk, or, more likely, Paul thought, counting away the seconds before it would be polite to separate the men and women—a custom of the house.

As Anita paused for breath, Kroner stood, beamed, and suggested that Paul come into his study to see the guns. It was the same gambit every time—the men were to see the guns. Years ago, Anita had made the mistake of saying she was interested in guns, too. Kroner had politely told her that his weren’t the kind women liked.

Mom’s response was always the same, too: “Oh guns—I hate them. I can’t see why men want to go around shooting sweet little animals.”

The fact was, Kroner never fired his guns. His pleasure seemed to be in owning and handling them. He also used them for props, to give an air of informality to his man-to-man talks. He announced raises and promotions, demotions and firings, and praised or warned, always in seemingly casual asides made while swabbing a bore.

Paul followed him into the dark-paneled study, and waited for him to choose his weapon from the gunrack that filled one wall. Kroner ran his index finger along the collection, like a stick along a picket fence. It had been a matter of speculation among Kroner’s underlings as to whether there was any significance in the guns he chose for a particular
discussion. For a while the rumor was current that shotguns were bad news, rifles were good news. But it hadn’t withstood the test of time. Kroner finally chose a ten-gauge shot-gun, broke open the breach, and squinted through the bore at a streetlight outside.

“Wouldn’t dare shoot modern ammunition in this one,” said Kroner. “Twist barrel—thing’d go all to pieces. But look at that inlay work, Paul.”

“Beautiful. Priceless.”

“Some man spent maybe two years on it. Time didn’t mean anything in those days. The industrial dark ages, Paul.”

“Yessir.”

He selected a cleaning rod and lined up on his desk top a can of oil, a jar of grease, and several cloth patches. “Got to keep after a bore, or it’ll pit on you just like that.” He snapped his fingers. He oiled a patch, twisted it about the tip of the cleaning rod. “Especially
in
this climate.”

“Yessir.” Paul started to light a cigarette, and then remembered Anita’s warning in the outline.

Kroner drove the cleaning rod downward. “Where’s Ed Finnerty, by the way?”

“Don’t know, sir.”

“Police are looking for him.”

“Really?”

Kroner slid the patch back and forth and didn’t look at Paul. “Uh-huh. Now that he’s out of a job, he’s got to register with the police, and he hasn’t.”

“I left him downtown in Homestead last night.”

“I know that. I thought maybe you knew where he went.”

Kroner had a habit of saying he already knew what he’d just been told. Paul was sure the old man didn’t really know anything about the night before. “I haven’t any idea.” He didn’t want to make trouble for anyone. Let the police find out that Finnerty was with Lasher, if they could.

“Umm hmmm. See that pit right there?” He held the
muzzle of the gun a few inches from Paul’s face and pointed out a tiny flaw. “That’s what happens if you let a bore go for even a month. They’ll run right away with you.”

“Yessir.”

“He isn’t to be trusted any more, Paul. He isn’t right in his head, and it wouldn’t do to take chances with him, would it?”

“Nossir.”

Kroner dabbed at the pit with the corner of a patch. “I supposed you saw it that way. That’s why it’s a little difficult for me to understand why you let him wander around the plant unescorted.”

Paul reddened. No words came.

“Or why you’d let him have your gun. He isn’t authorized for firearms any more, you know. Yet they tell me they found your pistol covered with his fingerprints.”

Before Paul could order his thoughts, Kroner clapped him on his knee and laughed like Santa Claus. “I’m so sure you’ve got a good explanation, I don’t even want to hear it. Got a lot of faith in you, my boy. Don’t want to see you get into any trouble. Now that your father’s gone, I feel it’s sort of up to me to watch out for you.”

“That’s nice of you, sir.”

Kroner turned his back to Paul, assumed a ready stance with the shotgun, and picked off an imaginary bird flushed from behind the desk. “Kaplowie!” He ejected an imaginary shell. “These are dangerous times—more dangerous than you’d suspect from the surface. Kaplowie! But it’s also the Golden Age, isn’t it, Paul?”

Paul nodded.

Kroner turned to look at him. “I said, isn’t this the Golden Age?”

“Yessir. I nodded.”

“Pull!” said Kroner, apparently imagining clay pigeons now. “Kaboom! There have always been doubters, criers of doom, stoppers of progress.”

“Yessir. About Finnerty and the pistol, I—”

“Behind us now, forgotten,” said Kroner impatiently. “The slate is clean. As I was about to say, look where we are now, because men went right ahead and took forward steps with stout hearts, in spite of the people telling them not to.”

“Yessir.”

“Kaplowie! Some men try to make light of what we’re doing, what men like your father did, by saying it’s just gadgeteering, blind tinkering. It’s more than that, Paul.”

Paul leaned forward, eager to hear what this extra quality might be. He’d felt for some time that everyone else in the system must be seeing something he was missing. Perhaps this was it, perhaps the beginning of an overwhelming fervor like his father’s.

“It’s a sight more than gadgeteering, I’ll tell you, Paul.”

“Yessir?”

“It’s strength and faith and determination. Our job is to open new doors at the head of the procession of civilization. That’s what the engineer, the manager does. There is no higher calling.”

Dejectedly, Paul let his spine sag back in the chair.

Kroner put a fresh patch on the cleaning rod and began swabbing the bore again. “Paul—Pittsburgh is still open. The field has been narrowed down to two men.”

It was somewhat startling that he said it just that way, the way Anita had said he would. He wondered what it was she thought he should say in response. He’d never given her a chance to say, and hadn’t read the outline. “It’s a wonderful chance to be of real service,” he said. He supposed that was pretty close to what she had in mind.

Paul felt lightheaded, having borrowed Anita’s thoughts for want of enthusiasm of his own. He was being offered the Pittsburgh job, lots more money, and, since he would have risen so high with the greater portion of his life still ahead, the assurance that he would almost certainly go clear to the top. The moment of his arrival at this point of immense good
fortune was curiously bland. He had known it was coming for a long time. Kroner had wanted it for him and had come close to promising it to him often—always in the name of his father. When advances had come, as now, there had been a vestigal sort of ritual of surprise and congratulation, as though Paul, like his ancestors, had arrived by cunning, tenacity, and God’s will or the Devil’s laxness.