“All right, Ed,” he said immediately. “What is it?”
Hawks pulled one of the over-comfortable armchairs away from the side of the desk a little, and sat down, adjusting the crease in his trousers.
“Something wrong down in the lab, again?” Cobey asked.
“It’s a personnel problem,” Hawks said, looking over Cobey’s left shoulder. “And I have to be back in the laboratory by one o’clock.”
“See Connington about it.”
“I don’t know if he’s in today. It’s not in his province, in any case. What I want to do is make Ted Gersten my top assistant. He’s qualified; he’s been Sam Latourette’s second for a year and a half. He can do Sam’s job. But I need your authorization to do it by tomorrow. We’re set up for a new shot then — the astronomical conditions are already past optimum; I want to get in as many shots as I can this month — and I want Sam off it by then.” His right hand had unconsciously moved to the end of his tie. He clamped the end between his fore and middle fingers, and began working the point of the cloth in under his thumbnail.
Cobey leaned back and folded his hands. His knuckles became mottled with red. “Six months ago,” he said in a low voice, “when I wanted to have Latourette sent home, you pulled that phony business of needing him to help set up your amplifier, or something.”
Hawks took a breath. “Hughes Aircraft needs a project engineer on a short-term research program for the Army. Frank Wasted wants Sam on it, if he can get him. He can get a contingent approval from Hughes’ personnel department.”
Cobey sat forward. “Wasted wouldn’t call you about Sam if he didn’t have an idea he could get him. Look, Hawks,” Cobey said, “I’ll take a lot from you — even more than the Navy makes me take. Don’t kid yourself, if I didn’t respect your brains, I’d have your hide any time I wanted it, and blow the contract; I’ll still be here and the company’ll still be here after this Moon business is over and done.
“Don’t go pussyfooting around behind my back! Don’t tell me about calls from Waxted when I’d lay dollars to dimes he doesn’t know the first thing about it yet! I’m telling you, Hawks.”
Hawks said, “I’m here. I’m telling you what I want. I’ve arranged the situation so all you have to do is make a yes or no decision.”
“I always say you do neat work. What is this, Hawks? Why do you want Latourette off your hands?” Cobey’s eyes narrowed. “Latourette’s been your shadow ever since he came here. If I want ten minutes of lecture on the march of modern electronics, I ask Latourette how you’ve been feeling lately. What’s the matter, Hawks — you and Sam have a falling out?”
Hawks had still not met Cobey’s eyes from the moment he had entered the office.
“Relationships between people are a complicated thing.” Hawks was speaking slowly and distinctly, as if he anticipated a stoppage in his throat. “People lose control of their emotions. The more intelligent they are, the more subtly they do it. Intelligent men pride themselves on their control. They go to elaborate lengths to disguise their impulses — not from the world; they’re not hypocrites — from themselves. They find rational bases for emotional actions, and they present logical excuses for disaster. A man may begin a whole series of errors and pursue it to the brink of the pit, and over the brink, all unaware.”
“What you mean is, you had some kind of set-to with Latourette. He wants to do one thing and you want to do another.”
Hawks said doggedly, “People under emotional stress always resort to violence. Violence doesn’t have to be a fired gun; it can be a slip of a pencil on a chart, or a minor decision that brings an entire program down. No supervisor can watch his assistants continually. If he could, he wouldn’t need help on the job. As long as Latourette’s on the project, I can’t feel I’m in total control of things.”
“And you have to have that? Total control?”
“I have to have that.”
“So Latourette’s got to go. Just like that. Six months ago, he had to stay. Just like that.”
“He’s the best man for the job. I know him better than I know Gersten. That’s why I want Gersten now — he hasn’t been my friend for ten years, the way Sam has.”
Cobey caught his lower lip between his teeth and slowly pulled it free without relaxing the pressure. He leaned forward and tapped a memorandum pad with the end of his pen. “You know, Hawks,” he said, “this can’t go on. This began as a simple Navy research contract. All we were was the hardware supplier, even if you did initiate the deal. Then the government found that thing on the Moon, and then there was all that trouble, and suddenly we’re not just working with a way to transmit people, we’re operating as an actual installation, we’re fooling around with telepathy, we’ve got men dead and men psychotic, and you are in it up to your ears.
“I came in here one morning, and found a letter on my desk informing me you’re all at once a Navy commander and in charge of operating and maintaining the installation. Meaning you’re in a position to demand from us, as a Naval officer, any equipment you, as one of our engineers, decide the installation needs. The Board of Directors won’t tell me the basis for the funds they’ve allocated. The Navy tells me nothing. You’re supposed to be a ConEl employee, and I don’t even know where your authority stops — all I know is ConEl money is being spent against the day when the Navy might pay us back, if Congress doesn’t cut the armed services budget so that they can’t, under the terms of the research contract — which, for all I know, has been superseded under the terms of some obscure paragraph in the National Defense Acts. All I do know is that if I run Continental into the red so deep it can’t get out, I’ll be out on my ear for the stockholders to be happy over.”
Hawks said nothing.
“You didn’t make the system I’ve got to work with,” Cobey said. “But you’ve sure as hell exploited it. I don’t dare give you a direct order. I’m dead sure I couldn’t fire you outright if I wanted to. But my job is running this company. If I decide I can’t run it with you in it, and I can’t fire you, I’m going to have to pull some dirty deal to force you out. Maybe I’ll even make that nice little speech about emotional violence.” He turned sharply and said, “Look at me, God damn you! You’re making this mess — not me!”
Hawks stood up and turned away. He walked slowly toward Cobey’s door. “Can I, or can I not release Sam to Waxted and promote Gersten?”
Cobey scrawled a note on his memo pad with jabbing strokes of his pen. “Yes!”
Hawks’ shoulders slumped. “All right, then,” he said, and closed the door behind him.
4
When he returned to the laboratory, Barker had been fitted with the first of his undersuits and was sitting on the edge of the dressing table, smoothing the porous silk over his skin, with talcum powder showing white at his wristlets and around the turtle neck. The undersuit was bright orange, and as Hawks came up to him Barker said, “I look like a circus acrobat.”
Hawks looked at his wrist watch. “We’ll be ready for the scan in about twenty minutes. I want to be with the transmitter test crew in five. Pay attention to what I’m going to tell you.”
“Lunch disagree with you, Doctor?”
“Let’s concentrate on our work. I want to tell you what’s going to be done to you. I’ll be back later to ask you if you want to go through with this, just before we start.”
“That’s very kind.”