Easy and Hard Ways Out (22 page)

Pat nodded. “So?”

“That's it,” said Brank.

“What is this, a riddle?” said Pat. “So what? Did you tell Steinberg?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“He told me not to say anything about it.”

“So don't say anything.”

Brank nodded. “Okay.” He began to walk away.

“Pat,” said LoParino.

“You nudged him into this,” said Pat.

“No, he said—”

Brank stopped.

“And then backed out.”

“I didn't back out,” said LoParino.

“Why did you tell me?” said Pat, looking at Brank.

“Well,” said Brank, “it just seemed to me that someone ought to be told, that's all. I mean I don't really care about it that much.”

“Then why say anything?”

“I don't know. Look, let's forget it.”

“Would you like me to mention it to Ardway?” said Pat.

“Well,” said Brank, “that might be the right thing to do.”

“It might stir up a terrific hornet's nest,” said Pat. “People might be hurt. Fired. Jobs could be lost. It might raise hell.”

“Then maybe let's just forget it,” said Brank.

“On the other hand, something really good might come out of it, with no trouble for anyone.”

Brank shook his head. She was toying with him.

“Should I talk to Steinberg about it?” asked Pat.

“That would seem to be the best thing.”

“That's the worst thing,” said Pat, “if you really want to accomplish something. He'll deny everything and blame you for not telling him. He'll do that anyway, but you needn't give him advance notice.”

It seemed, Brank thought, that she might be on his side after all.

“No, the best one to see is probably Ardway. And you should see him yourself if you have something to say.” She looked at Brank expectantly, awaiting a response.

“I guess you're right, unfortunately.” She wasn't on his side.

“No, I'm wrong. Fortunately. Ardway, by this time, must either know or suspect. I mean, he's seen your progress reports, right? Right. Therefore, he must approve of Steinberg's instructions.”

“Pat,” said LoParino. “We yield. You're right. It was wrong to bring you into this.”

Pat nodded slowly. She brushed a strand of hair back from her eyes, squinted slightly. “You know,” she said, “when I was a little girl I used to knit tiny socks for sparrows' feet.”

LoParino and Brank glanced at each other quickly.

“So they wouldn't be cold in the winter,” said Pat. “So they wouldn't be cold. Only I never got near enough to a sparrow to ever put them on.”

The men stared at her dumbly.

“I'll speak to Rupp in the morning,” she said, and began to write in her notebook.

THE DILBERT DUNKER

The thing was called a Dilbert Dunker; it was borrowed from the Navy, and it simulated how it felt to crash your plane upside down into the water.

“An F4 sinks at six feet per second,” Captain Hager had told them. “If it takes you a minute to get out, you'll be three hundred sixty feet below the surface. This will have an unfavorable effect on your insurance rates.”

Buchfarer sat in the simulated cockpit and stared down the thirty-foot ramp at the water. As a child he'd often played a game with himself in which he'd tried to imagine the worst way to die. The choices had been burning, hanging, drowning, poison gas, and electrocution. Burning had usually come in first, which was the only comfort he took, now that he was going to drown. Drowning was generally second. He hoped he would not see his whole life go by before him, mainly because it would be boring; if his life had been a TV show, he would probably have changed the channel. He thought of the irony of the situation; they were going to simulate a situation in which he might die—by killing him. Let it never be said that the Air Force didn't train its men well. Death was excellent preparation for dying. He had always been a lousy swimmer—too lean and muscular to be buoyant, and afraid of the water.

“If God had intended man to swim,” he'd told his wife, “He would have covered him with scales and sold him in stores for a dollar twenty-nine a pound.”

“I thought you didn't believe in God,” his wife had said.

“I don't,” said Buchfarer. “That's why I joined the Air Force.”

The officer running the simulation raised his arm. Buchfarer sucked a last, deep breath from his oxygen mask.

I love you, he telepathed his wife, although more as a dramatic gesture than anything else; what he really felt was a kind of dull ache to be leaving earthly things, seeing movies, eating hash brown potatoes, slipping his hands into blouses, up dresses. He tried to imagine the details of his drowning, tried to feel the water inhaled through his mouth and nose; the gagging as it filled his lungs; choking and inhaling more; his eyes rolling back; gagging, convulsing, choking, hands clawing. He held his breath. It had always seemed to him that he loved his wife insufficiently; that great loves he'd read about, or heard about, or had seen in movies, were much more intense than his own; more spiritual, more all-sacrificing and consuming. He'd often placed himself in the last scene of
A Farewell to Arms
and felt sure that, though feeling terrible, he'd have taken a taxi instead of walking in the rain. Possibly even stopped off for a hamburger somewhere. No, his was a stroking-Michelle's-hairwhile-they-watched-TV kind of love rather than a profound walk-in-the-rain thing. Although she, of course, would remain absolutely devastated by his death for the next eighteen years.

He hit the water with shattering speed and for a fleeting instant lost consciousness as his cockpit turned upside down. “You will be extremely disoriented,” Hager had told them. Buchfarer was disoriented, but surprisingly, very calm. Up is down, he thought. Up is down. You have an oxygen mask, use it to breathe. Water poured in around him, covering his shoulders, his legs. Don't panic. Above all, stay calm. You have an oxygen mask, and you're doing something that's been done thousands of times before. Be patient, let the cockpit fill with water, then release your seat belt. Despite his earlier reservations, Buchfarer tried to make his life go by before him, tried to picture the cities he'd lived in while his father, an airplane mechanic, made the rounds of the aircraft companies, scrounging for work. No good, no thoughts. It was getting dark. He couldn't see. He couldn't
see!
Don't panic! Don't panic! Cockpit full, seat belt somehow released. He inhaled a last breath, tore off his oxygen mask, then paddled out and swam down at forty-five degrees away from the damn plane or simulated plane or whatever it was. He lost his sense of direction, forgot which way was the surface. Which way? His lungs began to hurt, to plead. Which way was up? Up is down, up is down. He was lost. He turned his head and thought he could see some light. Was it illusion? A reflection? There was no choice; he began to swim toward it. Up, down, whatever it was, he was drowning. He kicked and moved his arms; his rib cage muscles screamed to expand, to draw a fatal breath of water. He began to black out—and broke the surface. He gulped great hunks of air and moaned very softly.

“Almost thought we'd have to go in and get you for a second there,” Hager told him later.

“I could've died,” said Buchfarer.

“A confident aviator is a prepared aviator,” said Hager. “Someday you'll thank the Air Force for this.”

“I could've died,” repeated Buchfarer. “I'm not doing it again.”

Hager smiled.

In the next ten weeks Buchfarer did it four more times.

Each time he lost his bearings, in each test he came up gasping, in some he swallowed water. “I could've died,” he kept telling the smiling Hager, until finally it dawned on him at last that his death or life was really of only minor importance to anyone but himself. That he was but a body in a tank, a name in a squad, some digits in a column of numbers; that he'd be saved if possible but that
training accidents happen;
that statistics take their toll; that the remark about insurance rates was not a joke at all but the way things were. And the way they would always be as long as he was in the Air Force. This, it seemed to Buchfarer, was the real lesson to be learned from the Dilbert Dunker.

THE GUARDS AT THE DOORS HAVE GUNS

The phone rings on Rupp's desk at twenty minutes after ten on Monday evening.

“Saul? Herb. Saul,
A
would like to see you for a few minutes, can you come by?”

Rupp says he'll be right there, and replaces the receiver in its cradle. He breathes deeply, feels a tightness in his neck and chest as he rises.
A
wants to see me, he thinks.
A
.

His footsteps sink silently into the carpeted corridors of the management wing. Recessed spotlights in the ceiling illuminate his way. Although there are other human beings in the building, he is alone. What could
A
conceivably want with him at this time? What?
Be Loyal to the Company You Work For
, says a sign in the hall.
You've Got a Big Stake in It
.

He'd been there more than twenty-four years. He'd come when Auerbach Labs was a converted barber shop in Brooklyn, with Marchese and Lingenfelter techs on the bench, Fish still learning bookkeeping, Redberry a just-graduated engineer, and Auerbach himself pleading over the phone for scraps of business from his former buddies in the Signal Corps. A long time ago, twenty-four years. A long way back, those walkie-talkies for the Army. But though his prestige and power had grown, one fact remained unchanged: he was still the last of the top managers to have joined the company, in his own mind a
lastness
that would last forever, an eternal bar to the inside.

He enters
A
's outer office now, passes the empty desk, and walks through the door into the conference room with the walnut table and centered speaker enclosure. The room is fully lit. But it is empty.

The door leading to
A
's inner office is shut. Rupp stands still for a moment, then draws back one of the leather-covered chairs and sits down at the table. He puts both hands out in front of him, rests the edges of his palms on the walnut, and interlocks his fingers the way he did as a second-grader who earned the most gold stars in his class. He has, from the very beginning, known how to impress people. Ten minutes pass.

Marchese must have put some doubts into
A
's mind on the F24BZ. Marchese or Lingenfelter, Rupp thinks. They'd always tried to discredit him, all through the years. Resented him from the beginning. They must've hinted to
A
that there'd be trouble at the inspection, played on
A
's pathological obsession with the Labs' technical expertise, hinted at embarrassment or worse. Twenty minutes have elapsed. Rupp's palms, still clasped, are wet with perspiration.
Bastards
.

Maybe that's not it at all. Maybe word has gotten out about the work on his boat. A disgruntled draftsman spilling his venom to Redberry, a bitter machinist sending an ungrammatical, oil-stained letter to
A
himself. Rupp shook his head. Could that be it?
A
calling him in for a humiliating dressing down. Or worse, a hearing,
A
listening to his side in a charade of fairness (the way all managers did), and finally, with great regret and much severance pay, letting him go, later issuing a press statement blaming him for the poor fiscal quarter. Whatever the details, he'd be permanently stigmatized. Twenty-two years in one place, and they let him go. He'd never catch on as a highsalaried vice-president again, probably have to work as an ordinary engineer, thirty-thousand-dollar pay cut, disgraced, technically obsolete, sell the house, the boat, divorce.

Or maybe it was worse. Maybe Maddy had discovered his camera-mirror bathroom spy system (the most recent one had failed when she put wallpaper up the day after he'd installed it, covering his tiny precision lens with a colorful flock). Distraught, she'd gone to
A
directly, begging his assistance in dealing with her husband's illness.
A
, lavishing sympathy and reassurance on her, now calling him up to suggest psychiatric care, an indefinite leave of absence (“Of course we'll hold your job, Saul”). Infinite discretion and understanding, later telling Redberry the company could not afford degenerates in high positions. Press statement: medical leave.

Or his daughter seeking out
A
to pay for her abortion. Or her drug habit (God only knew she probably had one). Fourteen pounds of pure heroin found in her padded bra; street value—five billion dollars. DA says biggest haul yet. She can't face her father, asks
A
for legal assistance.
A
calls him in now, talks about company image, ample time to make the change. To the press: overriding personal reasons. The stock rises a point and a half.

Thirty minutes. Sitting there alone. Son of a bitch. Bastard. It must be the F24. Could
A
know about the Yig? If he found out he'd be fuming, fuming in that ice-cold way of his, killer-mad. This F24 was a special interest of
A's;
his personal prestige was on the line with politicians, with the Air Force. And the solemn promises that Rupp had made, the guaranteed-to-be-ready dates that always slipped back, the postponements, the failures, the design errors that weren't caught. Killer-mad. The way he'd been in 1959 when he personally went down the line of engineering offices. “I fired them all,” he'd casually mentioned later. “They were corporate waste products and I eliminated them. Fired them all.” And again in 1963.

“But I've been here fifteen years,” the head of the machine shop had protested. “You just can't come here and do this.”

“The guards at the doors have guns,”
A
had replied calmly. And that had been that. Housecleaning. Elimination.