“You can’t be serious.” Paul stared at him. “You are serious. Crenshaw’s trying to bully Category Six-fourteen-point-eleven employees into stage-one human trials on something like that? It’s asking for a publicity nightmare; it could cost the company billions—”
“You know that and I know that, but Crenshaw… has his own way of looking at things.”
“So — who signed off on it upstairs?”
“Nobody that I know of,” Aldrin said, crossing mental fingers. That was the literal truth, because he hadn’t asked.
Paul no longer looked sour and sulky. “That power-mad idiot,” he said. “He thinks he can pull this off and gain ground on Samuelson.”
“Samuelson?”
“Another one of the new brooms. Don’t you keep up with what’s going on?”
“No,” Aldrin said. “I’m not any good at that sort of thing.”
Paul nodded. “I used to think I was, but this pink slip proves I’m not. But anyway, Samuelson and Crenshaw came in as rivals. Samuelson’s cut manufacturing costs without raising a ripple in the press — though that’s going to change soon, I think. Anyway, Crenshaw must think he can pull a triple play — get some volunteers who’ll be too scared for their jobs to complain about it if something goes wrong, push it through all on his own without letting anyone else know, and then take the credit. And you’ll go down with him, Pete, if you don’t do something.”
“He’ll fire me in a second if I do,” Aldrin said.
“There’s always the ombudsman. They haven’t cut that position yet, though Laurie’s feeling pretty shaky.”
“I can’t trust it,” Aldrin said, but he filed it away. Meanwhile he had other questions. “Look — I don’t know how he’s going to account for their time, if they do this. I was hoping to find out more about the law — can he make them put their sick leave and vacation time into it? What’s the rule for special employees?”
“Well, basically, what he’s proposing is illegal as hell. First off, if Research gets a whiff that they’re not genuine volunteers, they’ll stomp all over it. They have to report to NIH, and they don’t want the feds down on them for half a dozen breaches of medical ethics and the fair employment laws. Then, if it’ll put ’em out of the office more than thirty days — will it?” Aldrin nodded and Paul went on. “Then it can’t be classed as vacation time, and there are special rules for leave and sabbatical, especially regarding special-category employees. They can’t be made to lose seniority. Or salary for that matter.” He ran his finger around the rim of his mug. “Which is not going to make Accounting happy. Except for senior scientists on sabbatical in other institutions, we have no accounting category for employees not actually on the job who are receiving full salary. Oh, and it’ll shoot your productivity to hell and gone, too.”
“I thought of that,” Aldrin murmured.
Paul’s mouth quirked. “You can really nail this guy,” he said. “I know I can’t get my job back, not the way things are, but… I’ll enjoy knowing what’s going on.”
“I’d like to do it subtly,” Aldrin said. “I mean — of course I’m worried about my job, but that’s not all of it. He thinks I’m stupid and cowardly and lazy, except when I lick his boots, and then he only thinks I’m a natural-born bootlicker. I thought of sort of blundering along, trying to help in a way that exposes him—”
Paul shrugged. “Not my style. I’d stand up and yell, myself. But you’re you, and if that’s what rocks your boat…”
“So — who can I talk to in Human Resources to arrange leave time for them? And what about Legal?”
“That’s awfully roundabout. It’ll take longer. Why not talk to the ombudsman while we have one or, if you’re feeling heroic, go make an appointment with the top guns? Bring all your little retards or whatever they are along; make it really dramatic.”
“They aren’t retards,” Aldrin said automatically. “They’re autists. And I don’t know what would happen if they had a clue how illegal this all was. They should know, by rights, but what if they called a reporter or something? Then the shit really would be in the fire.”
“So go by yourself. You might even like the rarefied heights of the managerial pyramid.” Paul laughed a little too loudly, and Aldrin wondered if Paul had put something in his coffee.
“I dunno,” he said. “I don’t think they’ll let me get far enough up. Crenshaw would find out I was making an appointment, and you remember that memo about chain of command.”
“ ’Swhat we get for hiring a retired general as CEO,” Paul said.
But now the lunch crowd was thinning out, and Aldrin knew he had to go.
He wasn’t sure what to do next, which approach would be most fruitful. He still wished that maybe Research would put the lid back on the box and he wouldn’t have to do anything.
Crenshaw disposed of that idea in late afternoon. “Okay, here’s the research protocol,” he said, slamming a data cube and some printouts on Aldrin’s desk. “I do not understand why they need all these preliminary tests — PET scans, for God’s sake, and MRIs and all the rest of it — but they say they do, and I don’t run Research.” The yet of Crenshaw’s ambition did not have to be spoken to be heard.
“Get your people scheduled in for the meetings, and liaise with Bart in Research about the test schedules.”
“Test schedules?” Aldrin asked. “What about when tests conflict with normal working hours?”
Crenshaw scowled, then shrugged. “Hell, we’ll be generous — they don’t have to make up the time.”
“And what about the accounting end? Whose budget-?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Pete, just take care of it!” Crenshaw had turned an ugly puce. “Get your thumb out and start solving problems, not finding them. Run it past me; I’ll sign off on it; in the meantime use the authorization code on those.” He nodded at the pile of paper.
“Right, sir,” Aldrin said. He couldn’t back away — he was standing behind his desk — but after a moment Crenshaw turned and went back to his own office.
Solve problems. He would solve problems, but they wouldn’t be Crenshaw’s problems.
I do not know what I can understand and what I misunderstand while thinking I understand it. I look up the lowest-level text in neurobiology that I can find on the ’net, looking first at the glossary. I do not like to waste time linking to definitions if I can learn them first. The glossary is full of words I never saw before, hundreds of them. I do not understand the definitions, either.
I need to start further back, find light from a star further away, deeper in the past.
A text on biology for high school students: that might be at my level. I glance at the glossary: I know these words, though I have not seen some of them in years. Only perhaps a tenth are new to me.
When I start the first chapter, it makes sense, though some of it is different than I remember. I expect that. It does not bother me. I finish the book before midnight.
The next night, I do not watch my usual show. I look up a college text. It is too simple; it must have been written for college students who had not studied biology in high school. I move on to the next level, guessing at what I need. The biochemistry text confuses me; I need to know organic chemistry. I look up organic chemistry on the Internet and download the first chapters of a text. I read late into the night again and before and after work on Friday and while I am doing my laundry.
On Saturday we have the meeting at the campus; I want to stay home and read, but I must not. The book fizzes in my head as I drive; little jumbled molecules wriggle in patterns I can’t quite grasp yet. I have never been to the campus on a weekend; I did not know that it would be almost as busy as on a weekday.