Welcome to the Monkey House: The Special Edition (29 page)

He stopped a passerby who was in less of a desperate hurry than the rest. “Could you tell me, please, how to find Building 31, Mr. Flammer’s office?”

The man he asked was old and bright-eyed, apparently getting as much pleasure from the clangor and smells and nervous activity of the Works as David would have gotten from April in Paris. He squinted at David’s badge and then at his face. “Just starting out, are you?”

“Yes sir. My first day.”

“What do you know about that?” The old man shook his head wonderingly, and winked. “Just starting out. Building 31? Well, sir, when I first came to work here in 1899, you could see Building 31 from here, with nothing between us and it but mud. Now it’s all built up. See that water tank up there, about a quarter of a mile? Well, Avenue 17 branches off there, and you follow that almost to the end, then cut across the tracks, and—Just starting out, eh? Well, I’d better walk you up there. Came here for just a minute to talk to the pension folks, but that can wait. I’d enjoy the walk.”

“Thank you.”

“Fifty-year man, I was,” he said proudly, and he led David up avenues and alleys, across tracks, over ramps and through tunnels, through buildings filled with spitting, whining,
grumbling machinery, and down corridors with green walls and numbered black doors.

“Can’t be a fifty-year man no more,” said the old man pityingly. “Can’t come to work until you’re eighteen nowadays, and you got to retire when you’re sixty-five.” He poked his thumb under his lapel to make a small gold button protrude. On it was the number “50” superimposed on the company trademark. “Something none of you youngsters can look forward to wearing some day, no matter how much you want one.”

“Very nice button,” said David.

The old man pointed out a door. “Here’s Flammer’s office. Keep your mouth shut till you find out who’s who and what
they
think. Good luck.”

Lou Flammer’s secretary was not at her desk, so David walked to the door of the inner office and knocked.

“Yes?” said a man’s voice sweetly. “Please come in.”

David opened the door. “Mr. Flammer?”

Lou Flammer was a short, fat man in his early thirties. He beamed at David. “What can I do to help you?”

“I’m David Potter, Mr. Flammer.”

Flammer’s Santa-Claus-like demeanor decayed. He leaned back, propped his feet on his desk top, and stuffed a cigar, which he’d concealed in his cupped hand, into his large mouth. “Hell—thought you were a scoutmaster.” He looked at his desk clock, which was mounted in a miniature of the company’s newest automatic dishwasher. “Boy scouts touring the Works. Supposed to stop in here fifteen minutes ago for me to give ’em a talk on scouting and industry. Fifty-six per cent of Federal Apparatus’ executives were eagle scouts.”

David started to laugh, but found himself doing it all alone, and he stopped. “Amazing figure,” he said.

“It
is,
” said Flammer judiciously. “Says something for scouting and something for industry. Now, before I tell you where your desk is, I’m supposed to explain the rating-sheet
system. That’s what the Manual says. Dilling tell you about that?”

“Not that I recall. There was an awful lot of information all at once.”

“Well, there’s nothing much to it,” said Flammer. “Every six months a rating sheet is made out on you, to let you and to let us know just where you stand, and what sort of progress you’ve been making. Three people who’ve been close to your work make out independent ratings of you, and then all the information is brought together on a master copy—with carbons for you, me, and Personnel, and the original for the head of the Advertising and Sales Promotion Division. It’s very helpful for everybody, you most of all, if you take it the right way.” He waved a rating sheet before David. “See? Blanks for appearance, loyalty, promptness, initiative, cooperativeness—things like that. You’ll make out rating sheets on other people, too, and whoever does the rating is anonymous.”

“I see.” David felt himself reddening with resentment. He fought the emotion, telling himself his reaction was a small-town man’s—and that it would do him good to learn to think as a member of a great, efficient team.

“Now about pay, Potter,” said Flammer, “there’ll never be any point in coming in to ask me for a raise. That’s all done on the basis of the rating sheets and the salary curve.” He rummaged through his drawers and found a graph, which he spread out on his desk. “Here—now you see this curve? Well, it’s the average salary curve for men with college educations in the company. See—you can follow it on up. At thirty, the average man makes this much; at forty, this much—and so on. Now, this curve above it shows what men with real growth potential can make. See? It’s a little higher and curves upward a little faster. You’re how old?”

“Twenty-nine,” said David, trying to see what the salary figures were that ran along one side of the graph. Flammer saw him doing it, and pointedly kept them hidden with his forearm.

“Uh-huh.” Flammer wet the tip of a pencil with his
tongue, and drew a small “x” on the graph, squarely astride the average man’s curve. “There
you
are!”

David looked at the mark, and then followed the curve with his eyes across the paper, over little bumps, up gentle slopes, along desolate plateaus, until it died abruptly at the margin which represented age sixty-five. The graph left no questions to be asked and was deaf to argument. David looked from it to the human being he would also be dealing with. “You had a weekly once, did you, Mr. Flammer?”

Flammer laughed. “In my naïve, idealistic youth, Potter, I sold ads to feed stores, gathered gossip, set type, and wrote editorials that were going to save the world, by God.”

David smiled admiringly. “What a circus, eh?”

“Circus?” said Flammer. “Freak show, maybe. It’s a good way to grow up fast. Took me about six months to find out I was killing myself for peanuts, that a little guy couldn’t even save a village three blocks long, and that the world wasn’t worth saving anyway. So I started looking out for Number One. Sold out to a chain, came down here, and here I am.”

The telephone rang. “Yes?” said Flammer sweetly. “Puh-
bliss
-itee.” His benign smile faded. “No. You’re kidding, aren’t you? Where? Really—this is no gag? All right, all right. Lord! What a time for this to happen. I haven’t got anybody here, and I can’t get away on account of the goddam boy scouts.” He hung up. “Potter—you’ve got your first assignment. There’s a deer loose in the Works!”

“Deer?”

“Don’t know how he got in, but he’s in. Plumber went to fix a drinking fountain out at the Softball diamond across from Building 217, and flushed a deer out from under the bleachers. Now they got him cornered up around the metallurgy lab.” He stood and hammered on his desk. “Murder! The story will go all over the country, Potter. Talk about human interest. Front page! Of all the times for Al Tappin to be out at the Ashtabula Works, taking pictures of a new viscometer they cooked up out there! All right—I’ll call up a hack photographer downtown,
Potter, and get him to meet you out by the metallurgy lab. You get the story and see that he gets the right shots. Okay?”

He led David into the hallway. “Just go back the way you came, turn left instead of right at fractional horsepower motors, cut through hydraulic engineering, catch bus eleven on Avenue 9, and it’ll take you right there. After you get the story and pictures, we’ll get them cleared by the law division, the plant security officer, our department head and buildings and grounds, and shoot them right out. Now get going. That deer isn’t on the payroll—he isn’t going to wait for you. Come to work today—tomorrow your work will be on every front page in the country, if we can get it approved. The name of the photographer you’re going to meet is McGarvey. Got it? You’re in the big time now, Potter. We’ll all be watching.” He shut the door behind David.

David found himself trotting down the hall, down a stairway, and into an alley, brushing roughly past persons in a race against time. Many turned to watch the purposeful young man with admiration.

On and on he strode, his mind seething with information:
Flammer, Building 31; deer, metallurgy lab; photographer, Al Tappin. No. Al Tappin in Ashtabula
. Flenny
the hack photographer. No
. McCammer.
No. McCammer is new supervisor. Fifty-six per cent eagle scouts. Deer by viscometer laboratory. No. Viscometer in Ashtabula. Call Danner, new supervisor, and get instructions right. Three weeks’ vacation after fifteen years. Danner not new supervisor. Anyway, new supervisor in Building 319. No. Fanner in Building 39981983319
.

David stopped, blocked by a grimy window at the end of a blind alley. All he knew was that he’d never been there before, that his memory had blown a gasket, and that the deer was not on the payroll. The air in the alley was thick with tango music and the stench of scorched insulation. David scrubbed away some of the crust on the window with his handkerchief, praying for a glimpse of something that made sense.

Inside were ranks of women at benches, rocking their heads in time to the music, and dipping soldering irons into great nests of colored wires that crept past them on endless belts. One of them looked up and saw David, and winked in tango rhythm. David fled.

At the mouth of the alley, he stopped a man and asked him if he’d heard anything about a deer in the Works. The man shook his head and looked at David oddly, making David aware of how frantic he must look. “I heard it was out by the lab,” David said more calmly.

“Which lab?” said the man.

“That’s what I’m not sure of,” said David. “There’s more than one?”

“Chemical lab?” said the man. “Materials testing lab? Paint lab? Insulation lab?”

“No—I don’t think it’s any of those,” said David.

“Well, I could stand here all afternoon naming labs, and probably not hit the right one. Sorry, I’ve got to go. You don’t know what building they’ve got the differential analyzer in, do you?”

“Sorry,” said David. He stopped several other people, none of whom knew anything about the deer, and he tried to retrace his steps to the office of his supervisor, whatever his name was. He was swept this way and that by the currents of the Works, stranded in backwaters, sucked back into the main stream, and his mind was more and more numbed, and the mere reflexes of self-preservation were more and more in charge.

He chose a building at random, and walked inside for a momentary respite from the summer heat, and was deafened by the clangor of steel sheets being cut and punched, being smashed into strange shapes by great hammers that dropped out of the smoke and dust overhead. A hairy, heavily muscled man was seated near the door on a wooden stool, watching a giant lathe turn a bar of steel the size of a silo.

David now had the idea of going through a company phone directory until he recognized his supervisor’s name. He called to the machinist from a few feet away, but his voice was lost in the din. He tapped the man’s shoulder. “Telephone around here?”

The man nodded. He cupped his hands around David’s ear, and shouted. “Up that, and through the—” Down crashed a hammer. “Turn left and keep going until you—” An overhead crane dropped a stack of steel plates. “Four doors down from there is it. Can’t miss it.”

David, his ears ringing and his head aching, walked into the street again and chose another door. Here was peace and air conditioning. He was in the lobby of an auditorium, where a group of men were examining a box studded with dials and switches that was spotlighted and mounted on a revolving platform.

“Please, miss,” he said to a receptionist by the door, “could you tell me where I could find a telephone?”

“It’s right around the corner, sir,” she said. “But I’m afraid no one is permitted here today but the crystallographers. Are you with them?”

“Yes,” said David.

“Oh—well, come right in. Name?”

He told her, and a man sitting next to her lettered it on a badge. The badge was hung on his chest, and David headed for the telephone. A grinning, bald, big-toothed man, wearing a badge that said, “Stan Dunkel, Sales,” caught him and steered him to the display.

“Dr. Potter,” said Dunkel, “I ask you: is that the way to build an X-ray spectrogoniometer, or is that the way to build an X-ray spectrogoniometer?”

“Yes,” said David. “That’s the way, all right.”

“Martini, Dr. Potter?” said a maid, offering a tray.

David emptied a Martini in one gloriously hot, stinging gulp.

“What features do you want in an X-ray spectrogoniometer, Doctor?” said Dunkel.

“It should be sturdy, Mr. Dunkel,” said David, and he left Dunkel there, pledging his reputation that there wasn’t a sturdier one on earth.

In the phone booth, David had barely got through the telephone directory’s A’s before the name of his supervisor miraculously returned to his consciousness:
Flammer!
He found the number and dialed.

“Mr. Flammer’s office,” said a woman.

“Could I speak to him, please? This is David Potter.”

“Oh—Mr. Potter. Well, Mr. Flammer is somewhere out in the Works now, but he left a message for you. He said there’s an added twist on the deer story. When they catch the deer, the venison is going to be used at the Quarter-Century Club picnic.”

“Quarter-Century Club?” said David.

“Oh, that’s really something, Mr. Potter. It’s for people who’ve been with the company twenty-five years or more. Free drinks and cigars, and just the best of everything. They have a wonderful time.”

“Anything else about the deer?”

“Nothing he hasn’t already told you,” she said, and she hung up.

David Potter, with a third Martini in his otherwise empty stomach, stood in front of the auditorium and looked both ways for a deer.

“But our X-ray spectrogoniometer
is
sturdy, Dr. Potter,” Stan Dunkel called to him from the auditorium steps.

Across the street was a patch of green, bordered by hedges. David pushed through the hedges into the outfield of a softball diamond. He crossed it and went behind the bleachers, where there was cool shade, and he sat down with his back to a wire-mesh fence which separated one end of the Works from a deep pine woods. There were two gates in the fence, but both were wired shut.