Easy and Hard Ways Out (16 page)

“All right,” said Ardway. “All right, calm down, Stanley. Just relax. No need to get upset over this. Just answer me: will you have this filter ready by Monday? Think now. Think. Don't just tell me something because you imagine that's what I want to hear. Tell me the truth.”

Steinberg looked at him through rheumy, allergic eyes. He wanted very much to believe Ardway, but a lifetime of experience told him not to. It was a question of facing the music now or later; he'd choose later. Who knew what could happen in a week?

“We'll make it,” he said hoarsely.

Ardway leaned back and gazed upward. “I'll want signed memos from each of you corroborating what you've just told me,” he said. Suddenly he bent forward and stared at them portentously. “You're aware, of course, that this is probably the most important single act you'll ever perform at Auerbach Labs. The entire country is going to be affected by this. It'll determine,” and he turned his head now to look at one of the charts on his wall, “whether the red line lives—or goes under forever. That's why I sincerely hope you're each giving me your best and most truthful assessment. Once again, if any of you wants to change his mind, tell me now. The truth.”

The three had their heads tilted down again in mute defense. The situation had gone beyond speech. After a minute had passed, Ardway dismissed them, and they left single file without uttering a sound. Ardway sat immobile at his desk, fake anger and fake sincerity quickly draining from him to be replaced by honest fear.

Clearly, they were lying.

c. The World Shits on Your Head

People lie to me and I bear the brunt, he thought. In ten minutes he would have to explain the situation to the vice-presidents. He began a soft humming that gradually became a moan. If he told them Engineering would not be ready, they'd blow up; there was a chance Rupp might even dismiss him then and there. If he told them Engineering would be ready, and then the system failed the inspection, he'd certainly be fired; the whole industry would laugh at him, and also his neighbors whom he never saw. Of course, he'd have the memos from the lab supervisors documenting how it was their fault, how they'd deceived him; perhaps a direct appeal to
A …
He grew angry, real anger this time. Why did he have to be in this situation? Didn't he do
his
job properly, didn't he stay in the office till late at night and always make sure Rupp saw him there? Didn't he come in on weekends? Didn't he handle personnel with rare skill, always taking thirty seconds to discuss football with the engineers before asking them technical questions? It was unfair, that's all. Simply unfair. He was performing a difficult, gutty task and no one appreciated him. No one. The engineers sniggered behind his back, the supervisors lied to him and were after his job.

He rose from his chair and walked over to a chart. Embarrassing, nostalgic memories welled up against his will: himself as a boy, his enthusiasm for science, how he looked forward to discovering things, being admired. And then high school and the math difficulties; the physics teacher who'd returned his mid-term test paper with
Who are you?
written across the top; the biology experiments in which his rats, instead of running the maze, sat adamantly in one spot and crapped. And the dawning, bitter, unstated realization that he was unsuited for science, that it would not work for him. And still he'd persisted and plugged, gone ahead to college, finally gotten his engineering degree despite the odds. He traced his finger wistfully along one of the lines on the chart. Not fair, he thought, and caught himself moaning again just as he turned and saw Sandy, a recently hired secretary, standing in the doorway watching him.

“Are you all right, Mr. Ardway?” she asked.

Ardway gazed at her and said nothing. She was a blond, poetic, miniskirted girl of desperate thinness, but with attractive legs. He sometimes imagined keeping her in a scabbard at his belt, unsheathing her only to take memos and, occasionally, for a quick, emaciated sex act. “I was just musing,” he said, “on how unfair things sometimes are.”

“Oh, I know,” said Sandy sympathetically. “I know. The world truly shits upon one's head.”

Ardway, who did not care for “shits” from a woman, flashed a subliminal smile that went unperceived. He took a notebook and a file of memos from his desk and walked past Sandy through the doorway. If he could remember, he'd fire her when he got back.

d. Documentation

Rupp was there, of course, and Marchese, and, not surprisingly, R. Gary Blevin, the Quality Control or “Q.C.” manager of Auerbach Laboratories, theoretically responsible for the adherence to specifications of all Auerbach products. Blevin was a squat, thick-featured, piglike fellow who in his early days of engineering, instead of doing the jobs assigned him, spent all his time proving that they were impossible. Soon he began proving that his colleagues' assignments were impossible also. Two years and several companies later, the industry had convinced itself that Blevin was impossible and proceeded to deny him further employment in development engineering. Some months afterward, bitter, he managed to slip back into quality control, an ironic last resort. Still a cynical, suspicious type who accepted nothing, he had lately gotten into some kind of desperate, secret financial straits and could often be heard saying over the phone, “I'll get the payment to you this time, Leon. I'll get it, I swear.”

Ardway, who had built up a kind of fatalistic bravado in his walk through the corridor, suddenly felt it disappear as he saw them sitting at the conference table, waiting. Marchese and Blevin stared at him as if he were an insect; Rupp shut the door loudly behind him. Rupp faced him, his cheeks florid, his gray hair in a stiff upward wave, blue eyes charged to a million volts, filled with frightening, profit-making, American Protestant energy.

“Well?” he said to Ardway.

Ardway's stomach made an embarrassing sound and then his mouth began to move, and oiled words began to slither from his throat, a pro performing under pressure, a flamenco dance of the vocal cords. “Well, at this moment in time … with our present staff and setup … conditions being what they are … Brundage can't give me the special attenuators before Thursday … Now I mean the guy promised me—of course, he's been hosed himself—I mean, we all have. My commitment from Steinberg is next Monday. I mean, the tube he has, the mixer he has, the isolator he has, the local oscillator he has, the—”

Marchese snapped a suspender. Rupp had begun to raise a hand.

“—the Yig. That's probably the number-one problem. Highly technical. They're working on it like fiends. Of course, in this current economic climate, at this instant in time, with our present manpower allotment, Pat won't get it till Monday, which makes the whole integration and logic doubtful for the Friday deadline.”

“Henry—” began Rupp.

“But,” said Ardway brightly, “we're not totally bludgeoned here yet. They've raised some welts, they've drawn a little blood, but it's not yet wipe-out land. Not if we shuffle our cards right and modify our game plan just a wee bit. We've gotta get overtime. O.T. Nights. A little extra effort from the troops in the trenches. Look, in the present financial continuum, it's not too much to ask.” He looked around pleadingly.

“After all this time, your solution to this mess is overtime?” said Rupp.

“Saul,” said Ardway, “it's not my mess. Steinberg told me he—”

“Oh, stop it!” said Rupp.

“Well, I'm just tired of bearing the brunt, that's all,” said Ardway, amazed, and yet carried on by his own forwardness. “They don't move, they sit on one spot and they crap, and I'm the one who gets the brunt.”

“It seems to me brunts aren't the issue here,” said Marchese, pounding a meaty hand on a copy of
Iron Age
magazine. “What I would be interested in, that is, the thing I'd like to determine, is when do I get my godd-damn drawings release. That's more im-por-tant than your crap, and your brunt.”

“If I get my O.T., you get your release by Monday,” said Ardway crisply.

“What documentation do we have to support this alleged request for overtime?” said Blevin.

“What're you talking about?” said Ardway. “This is no ‘alleged' request. I'm making it. This is a real request. I'll have an official memo up here in a few hours.”

“Ah,” said Blevin, sitting back. “Then until we get this, shall we say, hypothetical document, all we really have so far is word of mouth, hardly what you'd call hard evidence.”

“I don't understand him,” said Ardway.

“A
hates O.T.,” said Rupp reflectively. “We've got to get him and Redberry to authorize it first. And God help you, Henry, if there's any slip-ups. I mean it, God help you.”

Marchese stood up, and Ardway knew the meeting was ended. This impossibly difficult door-to-door salesman's pitch was the easy part; now he'd have to deliver the encyclopedias. As he slipped out of the office, he heard Blevin whisper to Rupp, “How can we even be sure that this individual, this presumed Henry Ardway, really
is
Henry Ardway? I mean, without documentation …”

COMPLACENCY KILLS

The alarm woke Buchfarer at 0015, just two hours before flight time. He shut it off immediately, and fell back onto the mattress before some automatic neural mechanism caused him to thrust his legs sideways, which made him begin to slide. He was a true rack rat, a super sleeper, someone who could enjoy unconsciousness twenty hours a day. He sat stiffly upward just as his slide carried his behind to the edge of the bunk.

“Damn,” he said.

He shook his head. “Damn.” The underwear in which he slept was, as usual, soaked through with perspiration, the result of 90 degree temperatures and 90 percent humidities. He stood up slowly and stretched, the tips of his fingers nearly touching the low, curved Quonset-hut roof. There were three things to do where Buchfarer was: sleep, sweat, and get the clap. It was spelled Udon on the maps, but the guys all called it “Udorn.” It was in Thailand, and the missions they flew, no matter how dangerous, always seemed better than the heat and the monotony.

Buchfarer slipped into his olive-drab Nomex flight suit and, still barefoot, walked down a corridor to the latrine. He urinated, and tried to remember the last time he'd crapped. He never crapped anymore. His body had grown more efficient, totally using up everything supplied it. Better enjoy the urination; pretty soon that would be gone too. He faced a mirror and ran a comb backward through stiff, wavy hair. His face was lean and lightly bearded, flat planes of shiny, perspiring skin stretched over a bone frame, his expression the drained neuter of perpetual pre-exhaustion. He needed more sleep. All day wasn't enough.

Back in his room he pulled on socks and flight boots, attached his survival knife to his belt, set his garrison cap on his freshly combed hair, and slung his knee board over his right shoulder, then headed for the Air Intelligence room in the adjoining building. Outside, the night air was a bottomless pool of black, tepid water that pressed heavily inward from all directions. Buchfarer felt he was drowning, and began to trot; he imagined soft, living things being crushed underfoot; he imagined the doors of all buildings suddenly locked shut. He was in. He walked down the corridor and saw Lieutenant Kinsella duck into a doorway, then quickly lean his head back out.

“Hey, Mitch, where ya goin'?”

“A.I. room.”

“How 'bout a fat pill?”

“I really don't feel like it.”

“Then come sit with me anyway. I'll let you watch me eat.”

Kinsella disappeared again, and Buchfarer walked down the corridor toward the doorway.
Complacency Kills
, warned a red sign taped to the wall. Buchfarer entered the room and sat down at the crude wood table, opposite Kinsella. An orderly came over and Kinsella ordered juice, bacon and eggs, french fries, and milk. Buchfarer asked for coffee.

“I bought a tape recorder,” said Kinsella. “Twelve bucks. It has automatic level control, records at two speeds, has excellent frequency response, includes microphone, earplug, and an interlock so you can't erase by mistake. Twelve bucks.”

His handsome, boyish, sideburned face beamed. While Buchfarer slept all day, Kinsella shopped at the PX for an endless list of cameras, watches, and radios that he never used. When he wasn't shopping, Kinsella was in the shower, and when he wasn't in the shower, he was getting VD. As far as Buchfarer knew, he never slept.

The orderly brought their breakfasts.

“You don't look so good,” said Kinsella.

“I feel wonderful,” said Buchfarer.

“You look sickly.”

“I'm in perfect health.”

Kinsella gobbled up five french fries at once. “You should eat,” he said. “You'll never get food like this anywhere else.”

“I'm on a diet,” said Buchfarer, patting his lean abdomen.

Kinsella swallowed a forkful of eggs and filled his mouth with milk. Buchfarer wanted to throw up. He thought of his fraternity days at Temple, when the brothers made the pledges eat insects. Buchfarer didn't mind fried worms or chocolate covered bees, but he hated grubs. Grubs were the worst.

“I wish I were back in school,” he said.

“You mean at Kelly? You mean flight school?”

“I mean in college. I liked college. Those were my good days. We used to sit in the back of the class and sing rock-and-roll songs. We used to go bowling.”

“I didn't think they had rock-and-roll in your era,” said Kinsella, just before filling his tan cheeks with milk.

“Your health is beginning to get to me,” said Buchfarer.

Kinsella glanced up impishly. “Hey, Mitch, if you kick off, can I have your wife's number?”

Buchfarer looked at him evenly. “Of course, John. Remind me when we come back, and I'll give you a duplicate key to her chastity belt.”