Prescription for Chaos (44 page)

He laughed, "Yes, and I could always reduce that bunch by three-quarters, at least."

"And we ate lunch in terrible places, or brought it in with us."

"True," he said, "and what is this leading up to?"

"We're here," she said.

A messenger threaded his way among the tables to Mike's place at the window, apologized for interrupting, and handed him a brown envelope about twelve inches by eight. Mike opened it up, and took out two large photographs, one of a blue sedan, and one of a pale man wearing dark glasses and a gray felt hat. Two smaller photos showed the mud-splashed license plates. Mike studied them carefully, then slid them across to Sue.

"Not much," he said. "That's a popular car, and those license plates are probably inside the car trunk by now."

"If we ever see this man," said Sue exasperatedly, "we can recognize him by the nondescript appearance of the lower half of his face. Plus that mole just to the left of his nose."

"I know. The mole is the only distinguishing feature. And it could possibly be a fake."

They ate in silence for a moment, then Mike said, "What did you mean when you said, 'We're here'?"

"I mean, we've arrived. You've done it, and we've reached the goal." She glanced at him with a trace of exasperation. "What I'm trying to say is, here you are, a success. We are now eating in a dining room
that you own
, rather than in a scrubby joint. But somehow, I don't think it really means anything to you."

He looked at her earnest expression and laughed suddenly.

"Why is it funny?" she said. "What I said is true. Not one man out of a hundred thousand has done what you've done in so short a time. And what do you do? You don't like the view." For an instant, she looked as if she might cry.

"The view," said Mike quietly, "stinks. Now let me tell you something. I am very grateful that things have worked out as they have, because it gives me a limited power to do things the way they ought to be done. There's nothing I know of that's much more painful, mentally, then to know what's the right thing to do, and to have to stand by powerlessly while some self-assured fool does things in exactly the wrong way. But you have to be careful, because the odds are good that this self-assured fool wasn't always a fool. He got there by a natural process. And one of the steps in that process can be what people call 'success'."

"What do you mean?"

"There are two ways to look at success. One is to look at the outward result, an accumulation of goods and power. The other is to consider the cause, the combination of work, thought, and good fortune that brings about the outer success. The outward things are subject to loss anytime. A war, a change in business conditions, or a natural disaster, can wipe them out, either in a flash or by slow stages. A new technological innovation could make this place, for instance, as obsolete as the four-horse chariot.

"Put your faith in outward signs of success, and you're in about the position of the owner of a sand dune. It may last quite a while, or it may blow away, and leave you with nothing but a gritty taste in your mouth. The man who achieves success is confronted with this problem. What will he do? If he doesn't see the problem at all, he is likely to get a rude shock. If he sees it and tries to ignore it, he has the mental strain this creates in his own thinking. If he sees it and recognizes it, he may fall into the trap of thinking, 'All things are impermanent. So what's the use?' Or, on the other hand, he may decide to
not
put his faith in outward signs of success, and then the whole problem vanishes. Instead of priding himself on something out of his control, he is free to concentrate on the attitudes of thought and work that he
can
largely control, and that helped bring success in the first place."

Another messenger was at Mike's elbow, and apologetically handed him a small envelope. Mike thanked him, opened it up, and pulled out a slip of paper. He read the message, wrote briefly on the margin, and sent it back.

"The license plates," he said, "are a blind alley." He glanced at Sue, who was looking at him with an unreadable expression. He decided that she thought she had been lectured. He said defensively, "Well, you brought up a philosophical point. I say outward success can be a trap, if you forget the part that inner attitudes and the Grace of God play in bringing it about. There are a lot of people with one foot in this trap wondering what it is that hurts."

Sue laughed. "I wasn't criticizing you. Do you remember what we used to talk about over day-old doughnuts and tap water?"

"Well," he said, "I guess a lot of things."

"Yes," she said, "and this very thing was one of them. I thought at the time that you had that idea because of circumstances. Certain ideas, you know, naturally go with day-old doughnuts out of a bag, and others with cake on a tray."

"True," he said, "but those ideas are moochers, not friends. When you need them, they're just on their way out. It's better to have ideas that stick with you when things got rough."

She looked thoughtfully out the window for a moment, and then said, "You know, as a matter of fact that view
does
stink."

"It sure does," said Mike, "and there's no escaping it. Well, suppose we go on down and take a look in at the tanks."

"You go ahead," she said. "I'll be down in a few minutes—if I don't lose my courage."

"Still uneasy about it?" he said. "Why?"

"I don't know," she said, as they stood up to leave. "Somehow, there seems to be something horribly fundamental about it. But I can't say what."

The "tanks" were located in the subbasement of the building, and even though Mike had planned the layout, he was always surprised when he saw it at close range. He had started out in three rooms, after a blowup with stubborn-minded superiors in a giant corporation. It now struck him as a sort of grim poetic justice that his own business had flourished and as a result was coming to take on some of the characteristics of the monster corporation he had detested. The only compensating features were that
he
owned this business, and he had such a long technical lead that there was comparatively little sense of the competition breathing down his neck. This might change overnight. But until it changed, he was able to run things as he thought they ought to be run.

He stepped around a raised, heavy glass tank about eight feet long by four wide, with a framework of rods and levers above it, and clusters of waterproof wires and hoses growing out of it like the roots and stems of some ominous jungle plant. He glanced up, to note where the wires and hoses were gathered into clusters, then spread out again to lead into massive white boxes in the ceiling overhead. On the floors above, he knew, were labyrinths of complex equipment, arranged by types in separate layers one above the other, with specialized technicians working at each level of the central core of the building. But down here was where it all added up. He glanced around at the blocks of tanks, with an intent technician seated at the head end of each tank in use and alternating his gaze between a monitor screen and a bank of gauges.

Sue Lathrop, wearing the white smock that was customary down here, threaded her way through a block of tanks, then walked swiftly down the aisle toward him. She looked a little pale, and shivered as she reached him.

"This place," she said, in a low voice, "gives me the creeps. Take my hand, will you?"

He took her hand, which felt very small in his, and looked at her quizzically.

She said, "I just want a little human contact. This place is so horribly impersonal."

"It's functional," said Mike smiling. "Or would you like us to paint everything pink, put murals on the walls, and pipe music in through loudspeakers?"

"No matter what you did, it would still be like having a morgue in the basement."

Mike laughed. Then he took another look around, and he wasn't so sure.

They were walking down the aisle toward a block of twelve tanks with a large placard suspended overhead, and numbered "1". This was the set of tanks Mike intended to use for Johnston's case, and he was glad to see that Martin, the chunky man in charge, was already well along with the work. Four of the tanks were horizontal, with the yellow lights lit that signaled that they were in use. Two other tanks were slowly lowering from vertical to horizontal, and two of the remaining tanks were hidden by the circular white screens that were put in place as the operators got into their suits.

Sue's hand tightened in Mike's. Then she took a deep breath and released her hand.

"Can't go walking around holding hands with the boss," she said. "It just isn't done."

They had reached the No. 1 block of tanks, and Martin looked up to nod to Mike and grin as he saw Sue. "Worked up your courage, again?"

"No," she said, "I just had the silly idea I wanted to see how this case worked out. Now I'm here, I know I'll have nightmare material for a month."

Martin said cheerfully, "There's nothing nightmarish here. Everything just looks like what it is."

"I think that's the trouble."

Mike said, "Maybe if we'd do the place over in Early American, and stick a few fireplaces around here and there—"

"Just the thing," said Martin. "We could have special workmen to trundle in the cherry logs, and we could hide the tanks here in secret passages."

"Just like the House of Seven Gables," said Sue, shivering. "Well, I don't mean to get in the way of business. After all, no one dragged me here."

Mike glanced at Martin. "Where's Johnston now?"

"In his office," said Martin.

"Any trouble on the way back?"

"No. The only unusual feature was that he slowed down well in advance for every stoplight. That brake failure must have made him uneasy."

"Any signs of that blue car?"

"None at all."

"How are things going out at his house?"

"Nothing unusual as yet. We're just getting started out there." He glanced around. "Here, it's just coming onto the big screen."

Mike glanced at the composite screen, that reproduced the scenes of each tank's monitor screen. A section of the composite screen showed a big white villa-type house, set in a broad lawn planted with many shrubs and trees. The screen showed it as from a slowly-moving camera about forty feet above the ground. There was noticeable fuzziness, particularly of distant objects, but aside from that the view was satisfactory. Mike was studying this scene, noting the drive that curved back past the house, and trees along the drive, when he overheard Martin saying to Sue, "Here's something pretty for you. How do you like this?"

Mike glanced around to see Martin holding out what appeared to be a hummingbird moth. Sue took it, and smiled. "It's awfully pretty. Is that a receptor?"

"One of the newest," said Martin. "Here's one that looks like a bumblebee."

Mike turned back to the view on the composite screen. The house was much closer now, and as Mike looked at it, he saw a man come around the side of the house carrying a set of electric hedge shears. The man's face had a slightly odd look, and after a moment, Mike realized what it was.

"Mart," said Mike.

Martin was saying, "Got them down to the size of large mosquitoes now, but below that, we're licked. There must be some way—" He stopped abruptly, "Yes, Chief?"

"Look at this man."

Martin came over. After a moment, he said, "I don't see anything."

Sue said suddenly, "I do. Look at the left side of his face."

Just before the man passed out of sight at the lower edge of the screen, it was possible to see that the left side of the man's face was a little pinker than his right. And the pinkness was in the form of an outline around a paler area that ringed his eye. There was a small mole just to the left of his nose.

Martin said, "I see it. He's been wearing sunglasses. And he's driven around long enough to get a little sunburn. The left side of his face, on the driver's side of the car, is more exposed to the sun than his right."

Mike said, "I'd like to get a closer look at that house."

"We've got a spare tank with a suit your size, if you'd like to use it."

"Yes, I think I would." He glanced at Sue. "Care to monitor for me?"

"Just like old times," she said with a smile. "Yes, I'll monitor. As long as I don't have to get in it."

Mike pulled a screen around an unused tank, stepped inside, stripped, put on a clear suit liner Martin handed in to him, and then stepped over to the black suit with its color-coded wires and hoses sprouting from it like limbs from an untrimmed tree. The suit hung inside the uptilted tank, and, as usual, Mike had great difficulty getting into it. When he had it on, he could neither see nor hear, and he still had the supreme awkwardness of making sure that it was properly fastened. The multiple cables that branched from the suit dragged at his every movement, and the sense of confinement brought on a claustrophobic sensation he had forgotten about. But he went through the necessary motions without help, because if trouble ever developed inside the suit, he wanted to be able to get out of it without waiting for help.

When he was satisfied, he said, "Sue?"

"Right here," came a voice at his ears.

"Tilt the tank up, check the fastening, and then we can start."

He felt himself slowly shifted backward, then his weight and the weight of the suit came to rest heavily on his back and shoulder blades. After a moment, Sue's voice said "Fastenings checked. I'm going to flood the tank and lower the control frame."

"Ready."

Gradually, the pressure on his shoulder blades eased. He heard a very faint rumble, groped with his hands and feet, slipped his hands into two sets of grips, one at each side, and raised his legs so that the slots in the bootheels of the suit slid down over the studs of the control levers.

"O.K." he said.

"Ready for test?"

"Ready."

A vague brightness appeared before his eyes, seemed to move closer like two separate movie screens approaching on trolleys, then merged, and after an instant of painful disorientation, formed into a faintly fuzzy view of the tank room. He could see Martin looking at the composite screen, and slipping on a headset. Sue was seated at a monitor screen, glancing from the screen to a set of gauges.