Player Piano (26 page)

Garth looked out of the window abstractedly. “It is, isn’t it. God smiles on the Meadows.”

“Probably did before we occupied it.”

“I didn’t make that up.”

“Make what up?”

“About God smiling. That’s from Doctor Gelhorne, of course. Remember? He said that last year on the closing day.”

“Yep.” Doctor Gelhorne said so many memorable things, it was hard for a person to stow them all away in his treasure house of souvenirs.

“Lunch!” said the loudspeakers. “Lunch! Remember the rule: get to know somebody new at each meal. Have your buddy on one side, but a stranger on the other. Lunch! Lunch!” Irrelevantly, the speakers blared “Oh How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning.” Paul and Garth and five hundred other pairs walked across the parade ground to the dining hall.

As the crowd bore Paul and his buddy through the swinging screen doors, Kroner caught his arm and drew him to one side. Garth, like the good buddy he wanted to be, stepped out of line and waited.

“Tomorrow night,” said Kroner. “The big meeting is tomorrow night—after the keynote play and bonfire.”

“Fine.”

“I told you the Old Man himself is coming. It’s going to be that important.
You’re
going to be that important. I don’t quite know what’s up, but I’ve a hunch it’s going to be the biggest thing in your career.”

“Gosh.”

“Don’t worry. With the blood you’ve got in your veins,
you’ve got more than what it’ll take to do the job—whatever it is.”

“Thanks.”

Paul got back in line with Garth. “He certainly likes you, doesn’t he?” said Garth.

“Old friend of my father’s. Said it was good to have me aboard.”

“Oh.” Garth looked a little embarrassed. Paul’s bald lie had pointed up for the first time their competitive situation. He let the lie pass. Shepherd would have hounded Paul, and, more subtly, Kroner, until he’d learned every word that had passed between them.

Paul felt real warmth for Garth. “Come on, buddy, let’s find a couple of strangers.”

“It’s going to be tough. We’ve been around a long time, Paul.”

“Look for some apple-cheeked youngster fresh out of school.”

“There’s one.”

“Berringer!” said Paul, amazed. When the machines had made a list of Ilium men eligible for the Meadows, Berringer’s card had stayed in its slot. He was the last man in the whole Works who deserved an invitation. Yet, here he was.

Berringer seemed to know what was going through Paul’s head, and he returned Paul’s gaze with an insolent smile.

Baer stepped between them. “Forgot, forgot—supposed to tell you,” he said. “Berringer, about Berringer. Kroner said to tell you, and I forgot, forgot.”

“How the hell did he get up here?”

“Kroner brought him up. Last minute thing, see? Hmm? Kroner thought it’d break his father’s heart if the boy wasn’t asked, and after what happened to Checker Charley and all.”

“There goes the merit system,” said Paul.

Baer nodded. “Yep—there it goes, there it goes, all
right.” He shrugged and raised his eyebrows quizzically. “Zip zip, out the window.”

Paul reflected that Baer was possibly the most just, reasonable, and candid person he’d ever known—remarkably machine-like in that the only problems he interested himself in were those brought to him, and in that he went to work on all problems with equal energy and interest, insensitive to quality and scale.

Paul glanced once more at Berringer, saw his luncheon companion was Shepherd and that his shirt was green, and forgot about him.

He and Garth finally found a pair of very young strangers with two empty seats between them, and sat down.

The redheaded youngster next to Paul looked at his badge. “Oh, Doctor Proteus. I’ve heard of you. How are you, sir?”

“Paul, not Doctor. Fine, how are you—” he studied his companion’s badge—“Doctor Edmund L. Harrison, of the Ithaca Works?”

“Get to know the man next to you,” said the loudspeaker. “Don’t talk to anyone you know.”

“Married?” said Paul.

“That’s what you’re here for, to get to know new people, to broaden your horizons,” said the loudspeaker.

“Nossir, I’m en—”

“The more contacts you make here at the Meadows,” said the loudspeaker, “the more smoothly industry will function, co-operationwise.”

“I’m engaged,” said Doctor Harrison.

“An Ithaca girl?”

“Two seats right over here, gentlemen—over in the corner. Right over there. Let’s get our seats quickly, because there’s a full program, and everybody wants to get down to knowing everybody else,” said the loudspeaker.

“Nossir,” said Doctor Harrison. “Atlanta.” He looked at Paul’s badge again. “Aren’t you the son of—”

“Now that we’re all seated and getting to know one another, how about a little song to pull us all together?” said the loudspeaker.

“Yes, he was my father,” said Paul.

“Turn to page twenty-eight of the
Song Book,”
said the loudspeaker. “Twenty-eight, twenty-eight!”

“He was quite a man,” said Harrison.

“Yes,” said Paul.

“ ‘Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie!’ ” shouted the loudspeaker. “Find it? Twenty-eight! All right, now, let’s go!”

The band at the far end of the hall, amplified to the din of an elephant charge, smashed and hewed at the tune as though in a holy war against silence. It was impossible even to be cordial to oneself in the midst of the uproar. Paul’s stomach knotted and his tastebuds went dead, and the delicious, expensive food went down his gullet like boiled horsemeat and hominy grits.

“Paul, Paul, Paul, oh Paul!” shouted Baer from across the table. “Paul!”

“What?”

“That’s you—you they’re calling for; they’re calling for you!”

“Don’t tell me the captain of the Blue Team is such a coward he ran out at the last minute,” the loudspeaker was saying sarcastically. “Come on! Where’s that Blue captain?”

Paul stood, and held up his hand. “Here,” he said in a voice inaudible even to himself.

Cheers and boos greeted him, in a proportion of one to three. He was pelted by wadded paper napkins and maraschino cherries from the tops of salads.

“Well,” said the loudspeaker tauntingly, “let’s hear your song.”

Hands gripped Paul and hoisted him into the air, and he was borne down the aisle toward the bandstand by a flying wedge of blue-shirted men. They dumped him on the band-stand
and formed a cordon about him. The master of ceremonies, a fat, red old man with breasts like a woman’s sticking through his wet T-shirt, thrust a
Song Book
into his hands. The band blasted out the fight song of the Blue Team.

“Oh you Blue Team, you tried and true team,” said Paul. His voice came back at him, strange and frightening, amplified electronically to fierce defiance and determination. “There are no teams as good as you!”

At this point he was completely drowned out by the stamping of feet, whistles, catcalls, and the clank of spoons on glasses. The master of ceremonies, delighted with the high spirits he was evoking, handed Paul a blue banner to wave. No sooner were Paul’s hands on the staff than he saw the ranks of his protectors split wide open. Berringer, his head lowered, his thick legs driving, charged him.

In the scuffle, Paul swung at the informality-maddened Berringer, missed, and was knocked,
hors de combat
, off the bandstand and halfway through the kitchen doors.

“Please! Please!” the loudspeaker was pleading. “There are very few rules at the Meadows, but the few that there are
must
be observed! Get back to your seat, now, you in the green shirt. There’s to be no rough stuff indoors. Do you understand?”

Laughter was general.

“One more outburst like this one, and you’ll be asked to leave the island!”

Kind hands picked up Paul, and he found himself looking into the grave, dull face of Luke Lubbock, the perennial joiner, who wore a busboy’s uniform. One of the cooks, who had been watching with disdain, turned away quickly when Paul looked at him, and disappeared into the big meat locker.

As Paul’s teammates carried him back to his seat, he realized fleetingly, as a fragment of a nightmare, that the cook had been Alfy, the master of silent television.

“Now, now,” said the loudspeaker. “No more rough
stuff, or well have to call off the rest of the fun. Now, where’s the captain of the White Team?”

When the fun was over, Paul and Doctor Harrison of Ithaca walked out together.

“You have ten minutes of free time until the memorial service,” said the loudspeaker. “Ten minutes to make new contacts before the memorial service.”

“Nice meeting you, sir,” said Doctor Harrison.

“I enj—”

“My wild Irish rose,” howled the loudspeaker, “the sweetest flow’r that grows—” The refrain ended in a clatter. “Your attention, please. The Program Committee has just informed me that we’re running seven minutes behind schedule, so would you please form up at the Oak right away, please. The memorial service will take place right away.”

A reverent hush settled like smog over the perspiring crowd that had dispersed over the shuffleboard courts and around the ping-pong tables near the dining hall. Now they began to form about the Oak, the official symbol for the entire national organization. Its image was on every letter-head, and, stitched in a rectangle of white silk, its image snapped in the breeze, just below the American Flag on the parade-ground mast.

The youngsters imitated the oldsters’ uniform stances of piety: eyes fixed on the lower branches of the magnificent old tree, hands folded before their genitals.

“White’s going to win!” cried a short, thin youngster with big teeth.

The older men looked at him with sadness, with melancholy rebuke. Now was not the time for such horseplay. Now was almost the only time that was not the time. The youngster’s outburst of infinite bad taste would poison his next two weeks, and probably his career. He had in an instant become “the boy who yelled at memorial service.” That described him, and nobody would care to investigate him any further. Now, if he turned out to be a spectacular athlete
… No. His flaccid physique and pale skin indicated that this avenue to forgiveness was closed to him.

Paul looked at him sympathetically, and recalled similar bad starts from the past. The man would be terribly lonely, turn to a career of surly drinking, and never be invited again.

The only sounds now were the rustling of leaves and the fluttering of the flags, and now and then the clatter of dishes and silverware from the dining hall.

A harried-looking photographer ran in front of the group, dropped to one knee, fired a flashbulb, and ran away again.

“Vuuuuzzzzzip!”
went a rocket.
“Kabloooom!”
A parachuted American Flag was flung from the bomb to drift lazily to the river.

Kroner detached himself from the crowd and walked soberly to the thick tree trunk. He turned and looked down at his hands thoughtfully. His first words were so soft, so choked with emotion, that few heard them. He inhaled deeply, threw back his shoulders, raised his eyes, and gathered strength to say them again.

In the brief moment before Kroner spoke again, Paul looked about himself. His eyes met those of Shepherd and Berringer, and what passed between them was tender and sweet. The crowd had miraculously become a sort of homogenized pudding. It was impossible to tell where one ego left off and the next began.

“It is our custom,” said Kroner; “it is the custom here at the Meadows—our custom, our Meadows—to meet here under our tree, our symbol of strong roots, trunk, and branches, our symbol of courage, integrity, perseverance, beauty. It is our custom to meet here to remember our departed friends and co-workers.”

And now he forgot the crowd, and talked to the fat cumulus clouds scudding over the blue sky. “Since last we met, Doctor Ernest S. Bassett has left our world for his reward in a better one. Ernie, as you all know, was—”

The photographer ran out, flashed a bulb in Kroner’s face, and disappeared again.

“Ernie was manager of the Philadelphia Works for five years, of the Pittsburgh Works for seven. He was my friend; he was
our
friend: a great American, a great engineer, a great manager, a great pioneer at the head of the procession of civilization, opening new, undreamed-of doors to better things, for better living, for more people, at less cost.”

Now and then brokenly, Kroner told of Ernie Bassett as a young engineer, and he traced his career from works to works.

“He gave himself unstintingly engineeringwise, managershipwise, personalitywise, Americanwise, and—” Kroner paused to look impressively from face to face. Again he talked to the clouds—“heartwise.”

A man stepped from the crowd to hand Kroner a long white box. Kroner opened it slowly and studied it thoughtfully before showing its contents to anyone else. At last he reached in and unfurled a blue and white pennant, the Armed Forces “E” that Bassett had won during the war as manager of the Philadelphia Works.

A muted bugle played taps.

Kroner knelt at the foot of the tree and placed Ernie Bassett’s pennant there.

The photographer dashed up, got the picture, and dashed away.

“Vuuuuzzzzzip! Kablooom!
”

A male choir, concealed in the shrubbery, sang ever so softly—to the tune of “Love’s Sweet Song”:

“A minute of silence in unspoken prayer for departed friends,” said the loudspeaker.

All through the minute of silence, Paul was aware of a snuffling in the background. Someone’s dam of reserve had broken under the impact of the ceremony—someone who must have been awfully close to Bassett. There were tears standing in many eyes, and here and there teeth were sunk in unstable lips, but nowhere could Paul see the sobber. Suddenly he spotted him, not in the crowd, but in the dining hall. Luke Lubbock, a pile of dirty dishes in his arms, had been completely carried away. Big, honest tears for the manager of the Pittsburgh Works flooded his cheeks. Rather roughly, the headwaiter hustled him away from the screen door.