Finnerty was probably still lying in the bedroom, staring at the ceiling, perhaps talking to himself. Maybe he'd left soon after they had and gone on a bender or whoring expedition in Homestead. Paul hoped they'd seen the last of him for another few years. The brilliant liberal, the iconoclast, the freethinker he had admired in his youth now proved to be no more than sick, repellent. The quitting, the uninvited attack on Anita, the glorying in neuroses - all had a frightening cast to them. It was an awful disappointment. Paul had expected that Finnerty would be able to give him something - what, he didn't know - to assuage the nameless, aching need that had been nagging him almost, as Shepherd had apparently told Kroner, to the point of distraction.
As for Shepherd, Paul felt completely charitable, and even embarrassed that the man should be so upset at having been discovered as an informer. Paul stood.
"Where are you going, dear?" said Anita.
"To get Shepherd."
"He didn't say you were having a breakdown," said Baer.
Kroner frowned at Baer. "No, really he didn't, Paul. If you like, I'll go after him. It was my fault, bringing up the subject. It wasn't Shepherd, and the poor boy -"
"I just thought it was Shepherd," said Baer.
"I think it's up to me," said Paul.
"I'll come, too," said Anita. There was a promise of vengeance in her voice.
"No, I'd rather you wouldn't."
Paul headed through the bar quickly, and heard her coming after him.
"I wouldn't miss this for anything."
"There isn't going to be anything to miss," said Paul. "I'm simply going to tell him everything's O.K., I understand. And I do understand."
"He wants that Pittsburgh job, Paul. That's why he told Kroner you were having a breakdown. Now he's scared stiff for fear of losing his job. Good!"
"I'm not going to get him fired."
"You could keep him worrying for a while. It'd serve him right."
"Please, Anita - this is between Shepherd and me."
They stood on the turf of the golf course now, in a muffled world of blues and blacks under the frail light of a new moon. Seated on the bench by the first tee, his legs stretched out and far apart, was Shepherd, with three cocktail glasses lined up beside him.
"Shep," called Paul softly.
"Hello." It was flat, with nothing behind it.
"Beat it," whispered Paul to Anita. She stayed, clenching and unclenching her hands.
"Soup's getting cold," said Paul, as kindly as possible. He sat down on the bench, with the three glasses between them. "I don't give a damn whether you told them I was going to pieces or not." Anita stood a dozen yards away, silhouetted against the French doors.
"I'd rather you'd get sore as hell about it," said Sheperd. "I told them, all right. Go ahead and can me."
"Oh, for Christ's sake, Shep, nobody's going to can you."
Paul had never known what to make of Shepherd, had found it hard to believe that any man really thought as Shepherd did. When Shepherd had first arrived in Ilium, he had announced to his fellow new arrivals, Paul and Finnerty, that he intended to compete with them. Baldly, ridiculously, he talked of competitiveness and rehashed with anyone who would listen various crises where there had been a showdown between his abilities and those of someone else, crises that the other participants had looked upon as being routine, unremarkable, and generally formless. But, to Shepherd, life seemed to be laid out like a golf course, with a series of beginnings, hazards, and ends, and with a definite summing up - for comparison with others scores - after each hole. He was variously grim or elated over triumphs or failures no one else seemed to notice, but always stoical about the laws that governed the game. He asked no quarter, gave no quarter, and made very little difference to Paul, Finnerty, or any of his other associates. He was a fine engineer, dull company, and doggedly master of his fate and not his brother's keeper.
Paul, fidgeting silently on the bench, tried to put himself in Shepherd's place. Shepherd had lost a round, and now, grimly respectful of the mechanics of the competitive system, he wanted to pay the forfeit for losing and get on to the next episode, which he was, as always, determined to win. It was a hard world he lived in, but he wouldn't have it any other way. God knows why.
"Wanted to do me out of the Pittsburgh job, eh?" said Paul.
"I think I'm a better man for it," said Shepherd. "But what difference does that make now? I'm out of it."
"You lost."
"I tried and lost," said Shepherd. It was a vital distinction. "Go ahead and fire me."
The surest way to needle Shepherd was to refuse to compete. "I don't know," said Paul, "I think you'd be a good man for the Pittsburgh spot. If you like, I'll write a recommendation."
"Paul!" said Anita.
"Go back in, Anita," said Paul. "We'll be back in a minute." Anita seemed to be itching to give Shepherd just what he wanted, a rousing fight, something he could use as a starting point for another, as he saw it, cycle of play.
"I forgive you," said Paul. "I want you to go on working for me, if you will. There isn't a better man in the world for your job."
"You'd like to keep me right under your thumb, wouldn't you?"
Paul laughed bleakly. "No. It'd be just as before. Under my thumb? How could -"
"If you won't fire me, I want a transfer."
"All right. You know that isn't up to me. But let's go inside, shall we?" He held out his hand as Shepherd stood. Shepherd refused it, and brushed by.
Anita stopped him. "If you have any opinions on my husband's health, perhaps he or his doctor should be the first to hear them," she said huskily.
"Your husband and his doctor have known for months what I told Kroner and Baer. He isn't in any shape to be trusted with a foot-treadle sewing machine, let alone Pittsburgh." He was warming up now, getting his spirit back, and perhaps seeing the possibilities of having their voices carry into the dining room.
Paul seized them both by their arms and propelled them into the bar and in view of the dinner party. All were looking questioningly in their direction. Paul, Anita, and Shepherd smiled, and crossed the bar to the dining room, arm in arm.
"Under the weather?" said Kroner to Shepherd kindly.
"Yessir. Scallops for lunch did it, I think."
Kroner nodded sympathetically and turned to the waiter. "Could the boy have milk toast, do you suppose?" Kroner was willing to go to any lengths to preserve harmony in his family, to give a man in a tight spot a way out. For the rest of the evening, Paul supposed, Kroner would be keeping alive - as with the milk toast now - the polite fiction of Shepherd's illness.
After coffee and a liqueur, Paul gave a brief talk on the integration of the Ilium Works with other industry under the National Manufacturing Council fourteen years before. And then he went into the more general subject of what he called the Second Industrial Revolution. He read the talk, rather, taking pains to look up from his manuscript at regular intervals. It was, as he had told Katharine Finch in the office that afternoon, old stuff - a progress report, a reaffirmation of faith in what they were doing and had done with industry. Machines were doing America's work far better than Americans had ever done it. There were better goods for more people at less cost, and who could deny that that was magnificent and gratifying? It was what everyone said when he had to make a talk.
At one point, Kroner raised his big hand and asked if he might make a comment. "Just to sort of underline what you're saying, Paul, I'd like to point out something I thought was rather interesting. One horsepower equals about twenty-two manpower - big manpower. If you convert the horsepower of one of the bigger steel-mill motors into terms of manpower, you'll find that the motor does more work than the entire slave population of the United States at the time of the Civil War could do - and do it twenty-four hours a day." He smiled beatifically. Kroner was the rock, the fountainhead of faith and pride for all in the Eastern Division.