“All this is only speculation, of course. I have no intention of firing you. And you’ve stated quite clearly that you have no intention of resigning. However, that still leaves us with a difficult problem.”
“Does it?” Auberson was impassive.
Dome raised an eyebrow at his coolness. “I think so. What are we going to do about HARLIE?”
“Oh? Not ‘Can HARLIE make money for the company?’ ”
Dome looked pained. “Preferably that,” he conceded.
“Well then, why not say so? Or have you already made up your mind that HARLIE can’t?”
“No, I haven’t. I’m waiting for you to come up with something. That was the deal, wasn’t it? If you can, fine. Then we know where we go from there. If not, well…” Dome shrugged, he didn’t need to finish the sentence.
“Look,” said Auberson. “I want HARLIE to show a profit as much as you do. I’ll agree with that. He’s got to be more than just a high-priced toy.”
Dome looked at him. He fingered the document on his desk thoughtfully. “Okay, Aubie,” he said. “I’ll tell you what we’re going to do—” He paused for effect, picked up the single sheet of paper, opened a desk drawer and dropped it in. “Nothing. At the moment, we’re going to do nothing. Confidentially, I didn’t expect you’d sign it, no matter how I pressured you. I even told Chang that. No matter; it was too easy an answer. If HARLIE’s humanity ever comes to a court issue, it will be a bigger and uglier and stickier mess than that disclaimer can clear up. Or any disclaimer.” He pushed the drawer shut as if it contained something distasteful. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. You’ll continue to work on the HARLIE project. As you said, we’re budgeted for it. If you can produce results, fine; then we can forget this conversation. Oh, we’ll give you a fair chance, we’ll be more than fair; but if HARLIE doesn’t do something to indicate he can be productive — and do it before the next budget session — well,” — Dome hedged; he didn’t want to come right out and say it bluntly — “well, we’d have to do some serious thinking — really serious thinking — I mean, it would be very unlikely that we would continue his appropriation…”
“I understand,” Auberson said.
“Good. I hope you do. I want you to know how we feel. We haven’t cancelled your day of judgment, Aubie. Only postponed it.”
It was a little place, hardly more than a store front. Maybe once it had been a laundry or a shoe store; now it was a restaurant, its latest incarnation in a series that would end only when the shopping center of which it was a part was finally torn down. If ever.
Someone, the owner probably, had made a vague attempt at decorating. Pseudo-Italian wine bottles hung from the ceiling along with clumps of dusty plastic grapes and, unaccountably, fishnets and colored glass spheres. A sepia-toned wallpaper tried vainly to suggest Roman statuary on the southern coast of Italy, but in this light it only made the walls look dirty. Flimsy trellises divided the tables into occasional booths, and the place had that air of impermanence common to small restaurants. A single waitress stood at the back talking quietly to the cook through his bright-lit window.
If one ignored the glare from the kitchen, the rest of the room was dimly lit. Red tableclothes were echoed by red-padded chairs. Scented candles in transparent red fish-bowls augmented the murk with a crimson flicker of their own.
With the exception of one other couple, they were alone in the place. But even had the room been filled with chattering others, they would have still been alone.
“I tell you, Annie,” Auberson was saying, “I knew he was pressuring me, but there was nothing I could do about it.”
She nodded, took a sip of her wine. In the dark her eyes were luminously black. “I know. I know how Dome is.” She set the wineglass down. “His problem is that he’s trying to be boss of too many things. He calls you in to talk even when there’s nothing to say.”
“That’s what this was,” he said. “Logically, he knew it was too early to expect results — but he felt he had to demand them anyway.”
She nodded again. “I’ve long suspected that Mr. Dome has reached his level of incompetency. If he’s ever given any more authority, he’ll be in over his own head.”
“How much higher can you get than Chairman of the Board?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, but he’s working on it. The way he keeps taking over more and more jobs — it’s frightening. You know, don’t you, that he has no intention of hiring a new president?”
“I’d kind of guessed it.”
“I think he’s afraid that he isn’t indispensable, so he’s taking on more and more responsibility to prove the opposite. I don’t think it’s a good idea — it certainly isn’t good for the company.”
“Should you be saying that?” Auberson asked. “After all, you do work for him.”
“With him,” she corrected. “I only work with him. I’m an independent unit in the corporate structure. My job is what I want to make of it.”
“Oh? And what do you want to make of it?”
She was thoughtful. “Well, I interpret my function as being that of a buffer — or a lubricant to minimize the friction between certain departments.”
“I see. Is that why you accepted my dinner invitation? To keep me from chafing against Elzer?”
Annie made a face. “Oh, that awful little man. You would have to bring him up.”
“I take it you don’t like him.”
“I didn’t like him even before I knew him. His family was in my father’s congregation.”
“Oh? I didn’t know that Elzer was—”
“Carl Elzer and I have one thing in common,” she said. “We’re both ashamed that he’s Jewish.”
Auberson had to laugh at that. “You’ve got him pegged, Annie. I hadn’t realized it before, but you’re right.”
“What are you?” she asked.
“Huh? Oh, I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“Oh, well — my family was Episcopalian, but — I guess you could call me an atheist.”
“You don’t believe in God at all.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know if I do or not. I don’t know if there is a God.”
“Then you’re an agnostic, not an atheist.”
“So what’s the difference?”
“The atheist is sure — the agnostic doesn’t know.”
“Is one better than the other?”
“The agnostic,” she said. “At least he’s got an open mind. The atheist doesn’t. The atheist is making a statement every bit as religious as saying there is a God.”
“You sound like an agnostic yourself.”
Her eyes twinkled. “I’m a Jewish agnostic. What about HARLIE? What is he?”
“HARLIE?” Auberson grinned. “He’s an Aquarius.”
“Huh?” She gave him a look.
“I’m not kidding. Ask him yourself.”
“I believe you,” she said. “How did he — realize this?”
“Oh, well, what happened was we were talking about morality, HARLIE and I — I wish I had the printout here to show you, it’s beautiful. Never argue morality — or anything for that matter — with a computer. You’ll lose every time. HARLIE’s got the words and ideas of every philosopher since the dawn of history to draw upon. He’ll have you arguing against yourself within ten minutes. He enjoys doing it — it’s a word game to him.”
“I can imagine,” she said.
“Can you really? You don’t know how devious he can be. He had me agreeing with Ambrose Bierce that morality is an invention of the weak to protect themselves from the strong.”
“Well, of course, you’re only a psychologist. You’re not supposed to be a debater.”
“Ordinarily, I’d be offended at that, but in this case I’ll concede the point. In fact, I know some so-called debaters I’d like to turn him loose on.”
“It wouldn’t be hard to make a list,” she agreed.
“Well, anyway,” he said, getting back to his story, “I thought I finally had him at one point. He’d just finished a complex analysis of the Christian ethos and why it was wrong and was starting in on Buddhism, I think, when I interrupted him. I asked him which was the right morality. What did he believe in?”