“Yes, Sergeant?”
“May I ask, sir—what you needed here?”
“No, Sergeant. Seems it’s not my business to answer.”
“And that’s ‘checked by hand!’” Alice told Pepe, still seething.
“Yeah, well, at least a human being made the decision.”
“The machine should have made it! They’ve got the sensors, they know what’s wrong! We don’t!”
Papa shrugged. “Then they’d just set the machines to only kick out the code red’s, anyway. They can set the warning levels wherever they want, you know. That much is done by hand.”
“And the hand isn’t a checker’s! What good did I do, Pepe? What good?”
“A lot of good.” His voice was soothing—no, admiring. “You did wonderfully, Alice. You found out about it, and you didn’t blow your cover.”
“Oh, yes, I found out!” she exploded. “And I can’t stand it! You’d think they were manufacturing wallets or something!’”
“Wallets made of bad leather, with pockets that would let the cash fall out,” Papa reminded her.
“Any company that did that would go out of business! And I helped them! What good did I do, Pepe?”
“Let me worry about that,” he reassured.
She looked at his face, and saw the grin of a hunting cat. Even as her heart quailed at the sight, she felt buoyed up. Still, she had to demand, “Can you stop those yellow letters from coming on my screen?”
“Sure.” His eyeteeth showed. “All they have to do is code those flaws for red. By the way, what were these ‘items’ you were checking?”
She took a deep breath and said, “Reflectors. For laser cannon. And they know those reflectors are flawed, but they don’t give a damn!”
“Sure,” Papa shrugged. “What difference does it make to them, if the beam doesn’t come out of the muzzle? They’re not the ones who’re going to be standing in front of a raging Hothri.”
“Not even that,” Alice snapped. “I swear they don’t even think that far! All they can see is, sure, this is wrong, but it’s not my job to fix it, and if I say anything, I’ll just get fired. They don’t even think!”
“Not paid to,” Papa murmured.
“But they’re paid to produce weapons! Ones that work!” Alice scowled. “It makes me wonder, now, about that Hothri who got past my shots to take my arm.” Her breath caught. “I could have sworn I had him dead in my sights—at point-blank range!”
“The rifle spat out a slug, didn’t it?”
“I wonder. I was looking at the Hothri, not my rifle.” Alice drew a long, shuddering breath. “I tell you, Peppy, it makes me so mad I wish I‘d never been promoted!”
Oddly, he found his mispronunciation of his name endearing, not irritating. “Sorry to make you go for it,” he murmured.
“Oh, it’s not your fault. Besides,” she grumbled, “I suppose I wouldn’t have forgiven myself if I’d missed a chance to catch this.”
“How did you?” He judged that she had calmed down enough so that it might be safe to ask.
“I saw it myself,” she snapped, “in the test readout from the quality control unit. But the standards are set so low that the program didn’t flag it—and the controller told me if the bosses didn’t care enough to set the specs higher, we shouldn’t, either. Oh!” She jammed her fists into her coat pockets, glaring again. “Just thinking about it makes my blood boil! I tell you, Peppy, if you hadn’t wanted me to take that job, I would have quit right there and then!”
“And they would have just gone right on making more cannons that would quit working in the middle of combat.” Papa shook his head. “No, it’s much better this way. You let me take care of it, angel.”
“Angel!” She stared up at him, the job forgotten.
“Why not? You’re guarding all our kids on the line, out there.”
“But I’m not . . . I can’t . . .”
“Do anything?” Pepe grinned like a wolf. “You already did. But I can’t follow it up until tomorrow, and we both need to eat if we’re going to be able to keep fighting the baddies. What restaurant tonight, Fury?”
She smiled, oddly flattered by the nickname. “How about my place?”
“Oh, no!” Papa grinned. “Don’t trust me in your cottage, Little Red, if I won’t trust myself! Come on, we’ll try Pomona’s!”
And he whirled her away to the high life, or at least as much of it as he could afford. It was a wonderful evening, but she was still disappointed.
The admiral tried again, of course. Papa had figured that he would—after all, he had his orders, too. The fact that they didn’t come from anybody military was only incidental.
And of course Papa met with him—after all, orders were orders, even if they did come in a plain unmarked envelope. Besides, the embankment was beautiful that time of year. Since it was chilly, though, Papa wore his heavy overcoat, with no valuables, and a wet suit.
“Industry’s good is Arista’s good, Colonel,” the admiral said, “and without the profit incentive, industry is never very productive.”
“True.” Papa had read his history, too. “But if the profit motive gets out of hand, sir, industry lowers costs by cutting quality.”
“Competition will take care of that.”
“Only if there really is free competition, sir. And when all the industry is controlled by three companies, it’s very easy for them to watch what the others are doing, and all produce substantially the same goods at the same price. Not that they would, of course.”
“Of course.” The admiral gave him a whetted glance. “If they start showing losses, though, they’ll stop making weapons.”
“But that’s a purely hypothetical case, isn’t it, sir?”
“Not necessarily.” The admiral turned to face him. “We have to make sure they have a decent profit margin, Colonel. After all, even if only five out of ten rifles fire, that’s still five rifles.”
“Would you want to be holding one of the other five, sir?”
“Of course not,” the admiral said impatiently. “The other five, we throw away. It’s worth it, to keep industry producing.”
“Why not just subsidize them, sir?”
“You know the Senate would never stand for that.” Finally, anger began to show. “They couldn’t see any reason to subsidize a profit-making company!”
Neither could Papa. “Doesn’t that depend on their profit margin, sir? I mean, if they have to cut corners to maintain a healthy percentage, they need a subsidy.”
The admiral was reddening. He couldn’t come right out and say Industrial Munitions was raking in a 50 percent profit margin, but he knew that Papa knew it, too. “What the Senate won’t do, we’ll have to do, Colonel—or the factories will close down, and we won’t have any weapons.”
“I wouldn’t mind paying more, sir, for reliable equipment. If they boost quality control, they won’t have any problem.”
“I don’t think that’s for you to say, Colonel. From now on you will accept at least twenty percent of all weapons and equipment that you consider to be defective! Is that understood?”
Papa wondered if the admiral was on Industrial Munitions’ payroll, or just a stockholder. “No, sir. Not clear at all. I can’t believe an admiral of the Navy would order me to accept defectives.”
“You will do as you are commanded, Colonel—for the good of Arista!”
Papa stared straight into the admiral’s reddened eyes and realized he was going to have to play it by the book—for the good of Arista. “Yes, sir.” He pulled a brace. “I will implement the order the moment I receive it, sir.”