The real situation was reflected in the staffers who whispered together in corners, in the refusal of a board member heading for the exit to even smile at a foreign journalist, in the scent of tension Norman could practically take a grip on with his hands.
Down, directly to the lower level of the Shalmaneser vault. Someone must have called to warn Rex that Norman had arrived, for the man’s agitated face was the first thing revealed when the elevator door slid back.
“Norman! Have you any idea of the trouble you’ve—?”
“Did you do as I asked?” Norman cut in.
“What? Well, yes, but the trouble it’s cost to do it, and the money! Why, we had to postpone contracted time worth half a million on your say-so!”
“A little trouble is a fair exchange for a disaster, isn’t it? And how much does the Beninia project involve?”
Rex wiped his face with the back of his hand. “Norman, I know you’re pretty well in charge of that, but—”
“The hole! I am in charge of it, Rex, and I have more to win or lose on it than anybody except the Beninians themselves and maybe Elihu Masters. What have you arranged for us?”
Rex swallowed and let his hand fall to his side. “He’s due to clear for direct vocal interrogation in about—ah—six minutes. But fifteen minutes was the most I could fix for you; after that there’s the regular SCANALYZER contract time and that I dare not monkey with.”
“And I see you’re keeping the tourists away for the moment.”
“It’s driving your old dept out of their skulls, but what else could I do? I don’t know what company secrets are going to be idly chatted about, do I?”
“Chad!” Norman turned. “Fifteen minutes be enough, or do you want me to go up to Rankin and cancel the SCANALYZER slot?”
Chad had walked forward as curious as any casual sightseer off the street and was surveying the whole apparatus of Shalmaneser from one end to the other. Some of the staffers at work on the equipment looked uncomfortable at his intense interest in them.
“What? Oh! Yes, if I can’t hit it in a quarter of an hour I obviously didn’t draw the right conclusions.”
“Mr. Mulligan, are you claiming to be able to solve in fifteen minutes a problem that’s been blocking our best technicians for days on end?” Rex sounded as though an affirmative answer would make him explode with sheer fury.
Chad finished his study of Shalmaneser’s exterior and leisurely faced Rex. “And who are you?” he inquired.
“Foster-Stern, VP in charge of projects and planning. This whole scene comes under my dept.”
“Ah-hah. In that case you can spare part of these remaining few minutes to check me out on the data Norman gave me, see if he overlooked anything significant.”
This is a new Chad Mulligan. Norman realised the fact with a start. He’d heard contempt in that voice before, but it had always been searing, edged with the passion born of frustration. Now it seemed cold and deliberate, such as might be used by a man in charge of subordinates whom he could only rule by sarcasm and insult. The overtones rang loud and clear, saying: I’m a better man than you are!
Additionally, Chad’s stance had altered. Gone was the slumped posture of the man resigned to defeat, promising he would debauch himself to death and abandon his ambitions. There was a tension in his body and a light in his eyes as though he were bracing himself for a terrific contest and fifty-one per cent sure of coming out the winner.
As though he has always been trying to make an impression ever since I first met him, and now he’s forgotten about that and gone back to being himself.
And Chad Mulligan being himself was a far more impressive sight. The curled lip, the hands that jabbed the air as if to carve out by the handful the substance of words uttered in his barking voice, the aura of authority gathering around him as one by one he added more staffers to his audience. Question and answer; question misunderstood, answer cut short with a glare; staffers tripping over their own tongues in their eagerness to be helpful …
Norman was barely listening. He felt dazed. He had wagered his entire hopes on a man whom he could scarcely claim to know, and the idea that he was holding a ticket for a won bet was hard to digest.
Where have I seen this kind of transformation before…?
The thought “man I can scarcely claim to know” showed him the association that led to the answer, and it seemed ridiculous: Donald Hogan.
But there was the fact. In just this way Donald had revealed the occasional, much curtailed trace of excitement at a scrap of amusing or potentially significant information, capable of being matched like a missing piece from a jigsaw puzzle into a fascinating new pattern.
And in just that way also Donald had shattered Norman’s view of him as though the real man had reached past him and broken the distorting mirror in which he had always previously preferred to look.
Killed a mucker with his bare hands? Not Donald. Never placid nonentity Donald whose temper I risked a score of times in petty domestic rows!
He shied away from the vision of his body lying on the floor after trying his roomie’s patience too far and forced himself back to the here and now. Chad was saying, “One minute to go, right? Check me out one more time on the procedure, then: I say cue for question and that switches in the gadget which limits the reply to manageable proportions, but if it doesn’t work I have to say either hold or cancel according to whether I want to revert to the same subject or change to another.”
His listeners nodded in unison.
“What do I say if I want to make him accept new data?”
Blank expressions. Eventually Rex said, “Well, Mr. Mulligan, I don’t think you ought really to—”
“Fasten it. What do I say?”
“You say ‘postulate’,” Rex said reluctantly.
“That’s hypothetical! What do I say to make him take it?”
“Well, you see, we didn’t really envisage programming him with fresh material verbally, so—”
“Mr. Foster-Stern! If you keep me hanging about, I’m quite prepared to tell Norman over there he’s got to arrange cancellation of the SCANALYZER slot, and you don’t want that, do you?”
Rex swallowed enormously, Adam’s apple bobbing. He said in a faint voice, “You have to say, ‘I tell you three times.’”
Chad stared, and broke into a grin. “The hole! So someone in this monstrous ziggurat must have had a sense of humour at one time! I bet whoever dreamed that one up didn’t last here, though.”
Someone standing close to Shalmaneser’s printouts called, “Cleared down now, sir—ready for vocal interrogation!”
* * *
I have told you once, I have told you twice—What I tell you three times is true …
That snatch of doggerel from The Hunting of the Snark went around and around in Norman’s head as he watched Chad approach the readin mike with maddening slowness. His comparison of the man to a champion preparing for a fight had been exact, he realised. To Chad, this was a challenge of unique quality—perhaps the only one that would have forced him out of his self-imposed role of disillusioned cynic.
“Shalmaneser?” he said to the mike. “Hi, Shal. My name is Chad Mulligan.”
Norman had heard Shalmaneser’s voice before, but it always made him shiver a little—not because it had any intrinsic eerie quality, but because of the associations it conjured up. In fact it was derived from the speaking voice of a celebrated operatic baritone and was rather pleasantly inflected.