“I don’t plan to stay around.”
“Going back to Florida?”
“That’s the general idea.”
“Niki told me she hopes you’ll stay in Arland.”
He was working on his pipe again. I couldn’t read him. He seemed too amiable, too pleasant. It was the way perfectly good money seems to change in appearance the moment you begin to suspect it is counterfeit.
“You two are real chummy, I guess.”
He glanced at me. His eye looked cold. “She’s a good friend. Your brother was a good friend.”
I was remembering his manner in the Lime Ridge house, his way of seeming completely familiar with the house, and at ease there. It seemed odd to me that I could handle Dolson in what could have been a most difficult situation, remembering the techniques of four years ago, yet if any personal equation contained the factor named Niki, confidence was gone. It was because the handling of men is a hypocritical operation. You must tailor your approach to the weakness you detect. Jolly some of them along, bully others, alternating fact with fancy. Appeal to fear, competence, loyalty, ambition. But when Niki became a factor, objectivity was lost. That, of all reasons, seemed the most valid one for my having left, four years ago. The loss of her had weak-end my most valid function — that of getting the maximum return from the men I employed.
It was time for a neutral mask. I smiled at Mottling. “Niki needs her friends now,” I said.
“Yes. I think she should take an interest in the company. I’ve tried to — well, indoctrinate seems to be the best word. She’s intelligent. And, of course, she does have at least the secretarial slant to begin with.”
“I think I’ll take a look around.”
“I guess you don’t want a licensed guide,” he said smiling.
I saw the cleverness of that. Had he tried to come along with me it would have implied that he was steering me toward what I should see, and away from what I shouldn’t. Letting me ramble around on my own was a good expression of self-confidence.
“You’ll have to get a shop pass from Dolson’s office,” he said.
“In the old office building, I suppose?”
“Right. If you have any questions afterward, come on back.”
We smiled at each other and I left. Among any group of chickens there is what the behavior specialists call “the pecking order.” Put any batch of chickens together, and within a day or so, after considerable bickering, they will work it out. It is a rigid social system. Chicken number eight can peck chicken number nine without fear of retaliation. And chicken number seven can peck just as freely at chicken number eight. And, in the order, should any chicken develop an illness, an unexpected weakness, the formal caste system will be suspended just long enough for all the others to peck it to death.
You can watch the pecking order in operation among architects, plumbers, union officials, housewives, editors. It is fierce, formal, and ruthless. That clever book Gamesmanship describes a few of the more civilized methods of pecking. The tension between Mottling and me was based on our not having established precedence in the pecking order. It was necessary to us, as two highly competitive organisms, that it be established. And it would be. He was an able opponent. And I was carrying Niki on my back.
Chapter 9
Colonel Dolson was out in the shop but a Captain Corning was there, a big, blond, lip-biting guy, guileless as a child. He told me the colonel had directed that I be given a pass to all areas. He filled it out carefully, rolled my right thumbprint onto it, and sent me over to a sink to wash. With the written pass went a gay red lapel button as big as a silver dollar, with “Special Pass” printed on it in black. He offered one of the guards or inspectors as a guide, but I told him I knew my way around.
There were many familiar faces out in the production areas — men who had been hired by my father, and some who had been hired by my grandfather. The older ones could remember, of course, when Kendall and I had been kids, and had been brought down there by Dad, and turned loose with warnings about not getting too close to the equipment. In those days the overhead shafts had whirred and rattled, and the big drive belts had slapped, and the shops had been dim and oily.
Now, in the production areas, each machine tool had its own power unit, and there were wide aisles, and light and air. It was a land of pale gray housings and Chinese red moving parts, and foremen in smocks, a place of panel-board controls. It was a place where the micro-exactitude of gauges was checked against the Johansson blocks in their temperature-controlled storage. But the oil-smell was the same, and the shriek of a high-speed cutting edge, and the reek of hot metal.
I could feel the hot, fast tempo of the work, and I could also sense the strain that always seems to permeate a plant when there is trouble upstairs. I caught the sidelong looks, the speculative glances. I could sense criticism. The deep Florida tan was something that spoke of indolence and fat living — and I suppose a great many of them who knew my name felt that the money for my four-year vacation had come from the value added to raw materials by them during their forty-hour weeks. “See that guy Dean roaming around today? Like he owned the place. He inherited a big chunk of the outfit and the son of a bitch has been sitting on his ass for four years. Pretty damn soft.”
I could not forget my guilt as I acknowledged greetings from the men I knew. I had been trained to do a job as an executive. I had grown up with the knowledge of the responsibilities ahead of me. Then I had walked out, telling myself that if I didn’t do the job somebody else would.
So I roamed through the old familiar places, and nodded at the ones I knew, and tried to come up with the right names. The regular commercial lines looked fat and happy. I saw new inroads automation had made, with whole banks of automatic equipment phased and scheduled on electronic tape and operated off master panel boards by men who never had to dirty their hands. I wondered if the very complexity of such a continuous production setup tended to freeze design to the extent of losing competitive standing in the marketplace. I saw some routine items for the military, made to the typical semi-obsolete designs, overspecified, asininely expensive to produce. I saw the hundred per cent inspection on those military items, required, yet both more expensive and less reliable than the statistical quality control methods I had installed long ago.
I was stopped at the door to C Building by guards who checked back with Captain Corning regarding the validity of my pass. They let me pass, and when I went in I found Miles Bennett in a small office just inside the door. He was a square blond man, a reliable, unimaginative production engineer. He shook hands warmly, and I saw new lines of strain in his face. I asked him about Molly and the kids, and he asked me if I could find him a job in Florida like washing cars. He was trying to appear calm, but he seemed jittery to me.
“Your security is really tight, Miles,” I said.
“It’s so tight, Gev, I don’t even know what the hell I’m making here.” When I stared at him, not comprehending what he meant, he took me down the widest aisle of the production floor to where a new wall had been built that cut off the final third of the huge room. Armed guards lounged by a massive door.
“Who can get through that door?” I asked.
“I can’t. You can’t. Mottling can. The Colonel and the Captain can. Your brother could, until they took away his clearance. You got to have something called a Special Q Clearance, Gev.”
“What goes on back there?”
“We make this thing called a D4D. When we finish one, which isn’t very damn often, believe me, it goes into that area. The guys in there all work for the government. Stuff is flown in from other sources. Some kind of final assembly goes on in there. Most of those guys have fancy degrees. Their testing equipment uses a lot of juice. When they have maybe a half dozen, which is just a guess based on my production here, they roll them out in a military truck, usually at night, with a convoy of jeeps with troops with automatic weapons.”