Player Piano (25 page)

“Descent into the Maelstrom,” he thought wearily, and
closed his eyes, and gave himself over to the one sequence of events that had never failed to provide a beginning, a middle, and a satisfactory end.

“I love you, Paul,” she murmured. “I don’t want my little boy to worry. You’re not going to quit, sweetheart. You’re just awfully tired.”

“Mmmm.”

“Promise not to think any more about it?”

“Mmmm.”

“And, we
are
going to Pittsburgh, aren’t we?”

“Mmmm.”

“And what team is going to win at the Meadows?”

“Mmmm.”

“Paul—”

“Hmmm?”

“What team is going to win?”

“Blue,” he whispered sleepily. “Blue, by God, Blue.”

“That’s my boy. Your father would be awfully proud.”

“Yup.”

He carried her across the wide-board floor into the pine-wainscoted bedroom and laid her down on a patchwork quilt on a bird’s-eye maple bed. There, Mr. Haycox had told him, six independent people had died, and fourteen had been born.

D
OCTOR
P
AUL
P
ROTEUS
, for want of a blow severe enough to knock him off the course dictated by the circumstances of his birth and training, arrived uneventfully at the day when it was time for men whose development was not yet complete to go to the Meadows.

The crisis was coming, he knew, when he would have to quit or turn informer, but its approach was unreal, and, lacking a decisive plan for meeting it, he forced a false tranquillity on himself—a vague notion that everything would come out all right in the end, the way it always had for him.

The big passenger plane, after an hour in the air, circled over the shore, where the pine forest met the waters at the source of the St. Lawrence. The plane dropped lower, and the landing strip in the forest could be seen, and then the cluster of log lodges and dining hall and shuffleboard courts and tennis courts and badminton courts and softball diamonds and swings and slides and bingo pavilion of the Mainland, the camp for women and children. And jutting into the river was a long dock and three white yachts, the port of embarkation for men going to the island called the Meadows.

“I guess this is just about goodbye,” said Paul to Anita, as the plane came to a stop.

“You look wonderful,” said Anita, straightening his blue captain’s shirt for him. “And what team is going to win?”

“Blue,” said Paul.
“Gott mit uns.
”

“Now, I’m going to be working on Mom here, while—”

“Ladies over here!” boomed the public address system.
“Men will assemble over on the dock. Leave your luggage where it is. It will be in your cabins when you arrive.”

“Goodbye, darling,” said Anita.

“Goodbye, Anita.”

“I love you, Paul.”

“I love
you
, Anita.”

“Come on,” said Shepherd, who had arrived on the same plane. “Let’s get going. I’m anxious to see just how hot this Blue Team is.”

“Blue Team, eh?” said Baer. “Worried about the Blue Team, are you, eh? Eh? White. White’s the one to look out for, boy.” He stretched out his white shirt for them to admire. “See? See? That’s the shirt to look out for. See? Aha, aha—”

“Where’s Doctor Kroner?” said Shepherd.

“Went up yesterday,” said Paul. “He’s among the official greeters, so he’s already on the island.” He waved once more to Anita, who was going down a gravel path toward the Mainland’s buildings with a dozen other women, Katharine Finch and Mom Kroner among them, and a handful of children. All day, planes would be bringing more.

Anita sidled up to Mom and took her fat arm.

Concealed loudspeakers in the virgin forest burst into song:

The song died in a clatter in the loudspeaker, a cough, and then a command: “Men with classification numbers from zero to one hundred will please board the
Queen of the Meadows;
those with numbers from one hundred to two hundred and fifty will board the
Meadow Lark;
those with numbers above two hundred and fifty will get on the
Spirit of the Meadows.
”

Paul, Shepherd, Baer, and the rest of the contingent from the Albany-Troy-Schenectady-Ilium area walked out onto the dock where earlier arrivals were waiting. All put on dark glasses, which they would wear during the next two weeks to protect their eyes from the unrelenting glare of the summer sun on the river, and on the whitewashed buildings, white gravel paths, white beach, and white cement courts of the Meadows.

“Green’s going to win!” shouted Shepherd.

“You tell ’em, Cap!”

Everyone shouted and sang, the marine engines burbled and roared, and the three yachts shot toward the island in V-formation.

Squinting through spray, Paul watched the Meadows come closer and closer, hot, bleached, and sanitary. The white serpent stretching the island’s length could now be seen as a row of white cubes, the insulated cement-block structures called, in Meadows parlance dating back to more primitive facilities, tents. The amphitheater on the island’s northernmost tip looked like a dinner plate, and the sports area around it was a geometric patchwork of every imaginable kind of court. Whitewashed rocks everywhere framed the paths and gar—

The air quaked with a sharp, painful crash. And another. Another.
“Blam!
”

Rockets from the island were exploding overhead. In another minute the three yachts were rumbling and fuming into their slips, and the band was playing “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

The bandmaster held up his baton, and the bandsmen paused significantly.

“Vuuuuzzzzzzip!”
went a rocket. “
Kablooooom!
”

After the anthem came a cheery kaleidoscope of “Pack Up Your Troubles,” “I Want a Girl,” “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” “Working on the Railroad.”

The new arrivals scrambled over the decks to catch the hands extended from the wharf by a rank of older men, most of whom were fat, gray, and balding. These were the Grand Old Men—the district managers, the regional managers, the associate vice-presidents and assistant vice-presidents and vice-presidents of the Eastern and Middle-Western divisions.

“Welcome aboard!” was the greeting, and always had been. “Welcome aboard!”

Paul saw that Kroner was reserving his big hand and welcome for him, and he picked his way across the deck until he reached the hand, took it, and stepped to the wharf.

“Good to have you aboard, Paul.”

“Thank you, sir. It’s good to be aboard.” A number of the other older men paused in their greetings to look in friendly fashion at the bright young son of their departed wartime leader.

“Report to the Ad Building for registration, then check into your tents to make sure your luggage is there,” said the public address system. “Get to know your tentmate, then lunch.”

With the band leading them, the new arrivals swung along the gravel walk to the Administration Building.

Across the building’s entrance was a banner declaring: “The Blue Team Welcomes You to the Meadows.”

There were cries of good-natured outrage, and human pyramids were built in a twinkling, with the top men clawing down the infuriating message.

A young member of the Blue Team slapped Paul on the back. “What an idea, Cap’n!” he crowed. “Boy, that really
showed ’em who’s got the wide-awake outfit. And we’ll go on showing these guys, too.”

“Yep,” said Paul, “you bet. That’s the spirit.” Apparently this was the youngster’s first visit to the Meadows. In this state of nature he didn’t know that the banner was the work of a special committee whose sole mission was to stir up team rivalry. There would be more such goads at every turn.

Inside the door was a green placard: “Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Don’t Wear Green Shirts!”

Shepherd whooped delightedly, brandished the placard overhead, and in the next second was thrown to the floor by a wave of Blues, Whites, and Reds.

“No rough-housing indoors!” said the loudspeaker sharply. “You know the rules. No roughhousing indoors. Save your ginger for the playing field. After registration, report to your tents, get to know your buddies, and be back for lunch in fifteen minutes.”

Paul arrived at his tent ahead of his as yet unknown buddy. The two of them, according to the foreword in the
Song Book
, would develop a sort of common-law brotherhood as a result of their having shared so much beauty, excitement, and deep emotion together.

The chill of the air-conditioned room made him feel dizzy. Coming out of this flicker of vertigo, Paul’s eyes focused on a dinner-plate-size badge on the pillow of his bunk. “Dr. Paul Proteus, Wks. Mgr., Ilium, N. Y.,” it said. And, below this, “Call Me Paul or Pay Me $5.” The second part of the legend was on every badge. The only man who was not to be called by his first name at the Meadows was the Old Man himself, the successor of Paul’s father, Doctor Francis Eldgrin Gelhorne. He, National Industrial, Commercial, Communications, Foodstuffs, and Resource Director, was damn well Doctor Gelhorne, sir, at any hour of the night or day, and anywhere he went.

And then Paul saw the badge on his buddy’s pillow:
“Dr. Frederick Garth, Wks. Mgr., Buffalo, N. Y. Call Me Fred or Pay Me $5.”

Paul sat down on the edge of his bed and struggled against the uneasy perplexity the sight of Garth’s badge had precipitated. He had known many men, Shepherd for instance, who were forever seeing omens and worrying about them—omens in a superior’s handshake, in the misspelling of a name in an official document, in the seating arrangement of a banquet table, in a superior’s asking for or offering a cigarette, in the tone of … Paul’s career, until recent weeks, had been graceful and easy all the way, and he’d found omen analysis dull, profitless. For him the omens were all good—or had been until now. Now, he, too, was growing aware of possibly malevolent spooks, revealing themselves in oblique ways.

Was it chance or ignorance or some subtle plot that had put him in the same cell with Garth, the other candidate for Pittsburgh? And why had Shepherd been made a captain, when the honor was reserved for those who were going high and far indeed? And why…. Manfully, Paul turned his thoughts into other channels, superficially, at least, and managed to laugh like a man who didn’t give a damn about the system any more.

His buddy walked in, gray at the temples, tired, pale, and kind. Fred Garth wanted desperately to be liked by everyone, and had achieved a sort of social limbo, affecting no one very much one way or the other. He had risen because of this quality rather than in spite of it. Time and time again two powerful personalities, backed by impressive factions, had aspired for the same job. And the top brass, fearing a split if they chose one faction’s man over the other, had named Garth as an inoffensive compromise candidate. There was a feeling, general enough not to be branded sour grapes, that Garth was all but over his head in the big assignments compromise politics had handed him. Now, though he was only
in his early fifties, he seemed terribly old—willing, good-hearted, but apologetically weak, used up.

“Doctor Proteus! I mean Paul.” Garth shook his head, laughed as though he’d done a comical thing, and offered a five-dollar bill to Paul.

“Forget it, Doctor Garth,” said Paul, and handed it back to him. “I mean Fred. How are you?”

“Fine, fine. Can’t complain. How’s the wife and children?”

“All fine, fine, thanks.”

Garth blushed. “Oh say, I’m sorry.”

“About what?”

“I mean, that was silly of me, asking about your children when you haven’t got any.”

“Silly of me not to have any.”

“Maybe, maybe. It’s a trial, though, watching your kids grow up, wondering if they’ve got what it takes, seeing ’em just about killing themselves before the General Classification Tests, then waiting for the grades—” The sentence ended in a sigh. “I’ve just gone through that GCT business with my oldest, Brud, and I’ve got to live through the whole nightmare twice more still, with Alice and little Ewing.”

“How’d Brud make out?”

“Hmmm? Oh—how’d he make out? His heart’s in the right place. He wants to do well, and he boned up harder for the tests than any kid in the neighborhood. He does the best he can.”

“Oh—I see.”

“Well, he’s going to get another crack at the tests—different ones, of course. He was under the weather when he took them the first time—tail end of some virus business. He didn’t miss by much, and the Appeal Board made a special ruling. He gets his second chance tomorrow, and we’ll have the grades around suppertime.”

“He’ll make it this time,” said Paul.

Garth shook his head. “You’d think they’d give a kid something for trying, wouldn’t you? God, you oughta see the little guy plugging away.”

“Nice day,” said Paul, changing the distressing subject.