What Thin Partitions (17 page)

"I can't complain about production quantity or quality,” he conceded. Which, for him, was like saying that output was exceeding his wildest dreams.

"I'm borrowing trouble, I know,” I said. “But somehow I'm a little uneasy."

I could see by the disappearance of the crack in the granite cliff that he was getting ready for the bad news. He didn't say anything.

"You know, Henry.” I said hesitantly, “I get the feeling of a little boy absorbed with playing train. I sometimes wonder what's going to happen if he gets bored with the gadgets, and starts looking around to see what else might be interesting. Anyhow,” I said idly, “Playing train belongs to an older generation. I get the feeling that George is still a very small boy, and today's small boys are interested in spaceships."

He flashed me a quick look from under his craggy brows to see if there was guile behind my words, thereby revealing the guile behind his.

"If the government made those boys a good offer, you think they'd leave us-and take George with them?"

"I'm not close to the boys,” I said. “But I doubt it. Not if we had anything comparable. The government is killing the goose that lays the golden egg with its security attempts to make unusual people conform to mediocre standards. Scientists don't like to work for government, and wouldn't if they could get comparable deals in private industry. If we lose George it will be our own fault."

"Thank you, Ralph,” he said absently, as if he had got the information he wanted.

"Have a good trip,” I said as I went out the door. I doubt he heard me.

The other straw in the wind came from an unexpected direction. Sara set up an appointment for me to see Annie Malasek.

Annie Malasek, P-1 Assembler, had been with us a number of years now. She was the mother of Jennie Malasek, the little poltergeist girl who had first activated the Auerbach cylinders and made them into antigrav units. I'd cut my own feet out from under me by helping Jennie to get out of the psi framework and over into normalcy-thereby winning the undying gratitude of her mother, Annie. In turn, Annie had helped me to pull a stunt on the fake Swami, who had been claiming psi powers, which proved he really had them, even though he had thought he was faking.

A little to my surprise, when Sara ushered Annie into my office, the Swami came with her. There was that intangible something surrounding the two of them that told me their news before he had finished seating her and found his own chair.

"We wanted you to be the first to know, Mr. Kennedy,” Annie said, and simpered. “We're going to get married, Swami and me."

I stood up and came around from behind my desk.

"One look at the pair of you and anybody would know,” I said as I crossed the room. I took her hand in my left and his hand in my right, squeezed them, and brought their hands together. Swami was grinning like a foolish boy, and Annie began to cry like a foolish girl. I went back to my desk, opened a top drawer, fished out a clean handkerchief, and took it over to Annie. It wasn't the first time. Only this time her tears were not troubled. While Swami was wiping away her tears with tender care, I went back and sat down behind my desk.

I didn't know which to congratulate. By my standards the Swami was a pretty worthless catch, while Annie was a hard-working, faithful, loyal woman worth her weight in gold. Yet it wasn't my standards that had to be satisfied. Hers had been the drab, gray life of a poor factory worker, always struggling to make ends meet-and to her the Swami must have been all that was mysterious, romantic, wonderful. Perhaps his very worthlessness made him all the more precious. Certainly in the eyes of the various factory women who went in heavily for mysticism, she had walked off with the prize catch. Who was I to say that she should not have this triumph? Or that each of them should not have what was most needed-she to be folded in the physical arms of the mysterious infinite; he to have a woman who would joyfully work hard for him, keep him well fed.

I glanced at his white turban. Already she seemed to be doing his laundry. The customary dark grease mark around the edges had disappeared; and come to think of it I hadn't got that faint whiff of malodor from his heavy red-and-gold robe when I'd gone near him.

"Fine, fine,” I said heartily, and meant it. “I can't think of anybody more suited to each other."

The faint look of wary apprehension behind the Swami's huge, liquid black eyes disappeared, and was replaced by real gratitude. Annie was melting all over. My approval had meant a great deal to them. But Annie was Annie, and her character shapelessness didn't last long.

"There was two things we had to see you about, Mr. Kennedy,” she said. “The other was about Jennie."

"Oh?” I questioned. “I understood she was in grammar school and doing very well. Trouble?"

"No,” she answered. “Not yet, anyhow. It's that new Colonel from Washington. He came to me about Jennie. He knew all about ... about the trouble she used to have. He asked me if I'd let him see her, talk to her."

"Oh, he did?” I said. Apparently Colonel Logart was letting no grass grow under his feet. First those questions from Henry about George must have meant that Logart had talked to the five lads. Now Jennie.

"I don't want Jennie in trouble no more,” Annie was saying. “She wasn't happy when she wasn't like other kids. Now she's like them and she's happy."

"Did Colonel Logart speak to you?” I turned to the Swami.

"Just casually,” the Swami answered in his deep, sonorous tones. “But I agree with my little bride. I wouldn't want my daughter disturbed.” It sounded very authoritative and firm. The term “little bride” didn't seem to sicken Annie the way it did me. She looked at him with adoration.

"Don't worry about it,” I told the both of them. “If Colonel Logart brings up the subject again, send him to me."

"That's what I already did,” Annie said, and stood up. Hastily the Swami jumped to his feet.

When they had gone, I picked up the phone and got young Jim Bellows in the Engineering Department.

"Did Colonel Logart approach you fellows about going to work for the government while he was here?” I asked.

"Yes, sir,” he answered readily. “We told him to see you. We wouldn't make a move without letting you know-not after all you've done for us and George."

"Thanks,” I said, and hung up. Thanks, too, for loyalty. I sent off a wire to Henry's hotel in Washington:

HAVE LEARNED LOGART TRIED TO SHANGHAI OUR SPECIAL EMPLOYEES, REPEAT SPECIAL EMPLOYEES, BEHIND MY BACK. POUR IT ON, HENRY.

KENNEDY

His wire came back in a few hours.

JUST WHAT I NEEDED TO BEAR DOWN HARD. THANKS, RALPH.

OLD STONE FACE

I looked at the telegram for several minutes before I found what was disturbing me. I was so used to thinking in that term that it merely bothered me, but didn't strike me.

I picked up the phone and called the mail room.

"Check the telegraph company for the accuracy of the signature on that message I just received,” I said.

"I already did, Mr. Kennedy,” the girl answered. “They insist he signed it that way himself."

"Oh well,” I sighed. “I suppose that sooner or later he had to learn what we call him."

Colonel Logart came in to see me as soon as he and Henry got back from Washington. He stood before my desk and I didn't ask him to sit down.

"I want you to know,” he said through thinned lips, “that in talking to your special employees, I was merely following orders."

My lips were equally thin. The common practice of pirating valuable employees is one in which I will not indulge and which I do not appreciate when others try it with me.

"You militarists,” I said coldly, “seem to think that following orders justifies anything from a mild indignity to an outright criminal action. Talk about hypnotic frameworks! We may have become a militarist nation, but we're not under martial law just yet."

He sat down on the edge of the crying chair, without invitation, and pursed his lips as if to hide the twitch of amusement. He made no effort to hide the twinkle in his eyes.

"Oh, I don't know,” he said speculatively. “In the life of an individual don't you find he spends the most of his money on what he wants most? So take a look at our national budget."

"There are such things as necessities of life,” I said, “that determine how a person or a nation spends income."

"Well, Mr. Kennedy,” he argued, soberly now, “don't you find, particularly in those whose thought stream runs shallow, that what one person considers to be a dire necessity he couldn't live without is something another person doesn't want and feels no need of whatever?"

"Goes back to group mores,” I said. “If everybody..."

"Exactly,” he agreed.

"I hardly think we can solve national policy, militaristic or otherwise,” I said drily. “Not just between the two of us."

"No,” he answered. “We can't. And that's something of enormous importance. Will you remember that, Mr. Kennedy? It will help you to understand, when..."

He trailed the sentence off and was silent. God help us, I classified it as more attempts to say startling things, that puny pattern of trying to be something special.

"I believe we're off the subject,” I reminded him. “We were discussing your action of coming out here and trying to steal away some special employees behind my back."

"It's all part of the same big picture,” he said.

"I'm sure it is. Did you bring along your ordnance maps and your pretty little colored pins to demonstrate the big picture?

He ignored my sarcasm.

"Working on a certain government project would have been a long step upward for Jennie's mother, for example,” he said, without responsive anger. “She'd never have to work again. Meantime, with her consent, and with Jennie's willing consent, we could try to restore Jennie's ability to activate antigrav cylinders. Not the little toy things you have stored in your bolted-down vault here, but the real thing-big ones."

"Assuming you could do it,” I qualified. I lit a cigarette and pushed the box across the desk toward him. He took it as an invitation to slide down into a more comfortable position in the chair. He lit a cigarette.

"As for George,” he continued through a puff of smoke, “how long do you think he will be content to play factory operation? One thing you seem to have overlooked, Kennedy. Jennie, Swami, George-they're all just children. Oh sure, the lads that make up George are mature young men, and Swami won't see thirty again, but as far as their psi development is concerned they're children. Children need to grow, and to grow they must have the kind of food they need to grow on."

"Assuming you know what psi food is,” I said.

"Working on this certain government project would have given those young men real stature, and George something to challenge his growing mentality. Because, Kennedy,” he said quietly, “we were able to think of something that only a George could do."

My arm froze with my cigarette lifted half way to my lips. I stared at him for a full minute, then, without taking another puff, I crushed out my cigarette in the tray.

"It was the way you went about it,” I said slowly. “I've never stood in the way of an employee's chance at a real opportunity in my life."

He lifted an eyebrow, because it was a rash statement for any industry man to make.

"I know,” I said. “Most companies operate on the policy of keeping a man where he can do them the most good, without much thought for what is good for the man. I don't. I operate on the policy that I'd rather have an ambitious, intelligent man for a short while than a stupid one forever. I've built a reputation around that. That's why the brightest and best are eager to come to work for us, because they know I'll try to push them upward, either in or out of the company. If you had come to me, instead of going behind my back-"'

"You'd have given me your special employees,” he said. “I knew that. So I made a mistake in the way I went about carrying out my orders. The mistake came to light when you sent that wire to Grenoble. So we didn't bring the psi children under government control with all its spying on employees, informing, watching them through little peekholes in false walls the way we watch the scientists. You think psi talented people could stand up under that?"

"Or,” I said slowly, “having failed in your objective, you've been given a new set of orders to put the best possible interpretation on your mistake."

He shrugged his shoulders and grinned.

"Whatever you prefer to think, Kennedy,” he said easily. “The fact remains that Computer Research has the job which, heretofore, has been one of the most carefully guarded secrets under direct government operation."

"Because,” I said, “George is necessary to it."

"George is necessary,” he agreed. “Only a George could do it. Ever see the inside of the control cabin in one of the big, modem flying superforts, Kennedy?"

I nodded.

"No human mind can see all those instruments simultaneously and take the necessary actions, so we try to divide up the work and responsibility among various members of the flight crew. It works all right as long as everything goes all right, but when it doesn't we read about it in the papers. Almost every day, in fact, we read about it in the papers. And that's just the simple little problem of flying along over the Earth's surface, where all the factors are known and precalculated."

I waited. I gave him the benefit of my assumption that he didn't mean to make an ordinary flight crew out of George.

"If the problems of coordination are becoming more and more insurmountable in just flying through the air,” he said, “think what the problems would be in traveling through space to another body."

"Sure,” he went on, “we've been making progress with guided missiles, putting in servomechanisms to handle specific and known factors, but what about unknown factors? Or even a complexity of known factors would require a huge hall full of servomechanisms. Marvelous though it may be, the guided missile is a one-track mind, equipped to do one thing, equipped to make only one choice when a given condition arises. And even there, the accuracy leaves much to be desired."