by Chan Davis
Dr. H. Chandler Davis is one man. At Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Studies, the doctor delves into more complicated aspects of the higher reaches of mathematics than the rest of us are ever likely to encounter; but inside the body of the mathematician lives another man whose interests are lighter, brighter and well worth the time of any science-fiction reader—for example, this cheerful story of a cheerless future.
I
J. Albert LaRue was nervous, but you couldn’t blame him. It was his big day. He looked up for reassurance at the big, bass-voiced man sitting so stolidly next to him in the hissing subway car, and found what he sought.
There was plenty of reassurance in having a man like Calvin Boersma on your side.
Albert declared mildly but firmly: “One single thought is uppermost in my mind.”
Boersma inclined his ear. “What?”
“Oxidase epsilon!” cried Albert.
Cal Boersma clapped him on the shoulder and answered, like a fight manager rushing last-minute strategies to his boxer: “The one single thought that should be uppermost in your mind is selling oxidase epsilon. Nothing will be done unless The Corporation is sold on it. And when you deal with Corporation executives you’re dealing with experts.”
LaRue thought that over, swaying to the motion of the car.
“We do have something genuinely important to sell, don’t we?” he ventured. He had been studying oxidase epsilon for three years. Boersma, on the other hand, was involved in the matter only because he was LaRue’s lab-assistant’s brother-in-law, an assistant sales manager of a plastics firm . . . and the only businessman LaRue knew.
Still, today—the big day—Cal Boersma was the expert. The promoter. The man who was right in the thick of the hard, practical world outside the University’s cloistered halls—the world that terrified J. Albert LaRue.
Cal was all reassurance. “Oxidase epsilon is important, all right. That’s the only reason we have a chance.”
Their subway car gave a long, loud whoosh, followed by a shrill hissing. They were at their station. J. Albert LaRue felt a twinge of apprehension. This, he told himself, was it! They joined the file of passengers leaving the car for the luxurious escalator.
“Yes, Albert,” Cal rumbled, as they rode up side by side, “we have something big here, if we can reach the top men—say, the Regional Director. Why, Albert, this could get you an assistant section managership in The Corporation itself!”
“Oh, thank you! But of course I wouldn’t want— I mean, my devotion to research—” Albert was flustered.
“But of course I could take care of that end of it for you,” Boersma said reassuringly. “Well, here we are, Albert.”
The escalator fed them into a sunlit square between twenty-story buildings. A blindlingly green mall crossed the square to the Regional Executive Building of The Corporation. Albert could not help being awed. It was a truly impressive structure—a block wide, only three stories high.
Cal said, in a reverent growl: “Putting up a building like that in the most heavily taxed area of Detroit—you know what that symbolizes, Albert? Power. Power and salesmanship! That’s what you’re dealing with when you deal with The Corporation.”
The building was the hub of the Lakes Region, and the architecture was appropriately monumental. Albert murmured a comment, impressed. Cal agreed. “Superbly styled,” he said solemnly.
Glass doors extending the full height of the building opened smoothly at the touch of Albert’s hand. Straight ahead across the cool lobby another set of glass doors equally tall, were a showcase for dramatic exhibits of The Corporation’s activities. Soothing lights rippled through an enchanged twilight. Glowing letters said, “Museum of Progress.”
Several families on holiday wandered delighted among the exhibits, basking in the highest salesmanship the race had produced.
Albert started automatically in that direction. Cal’s hand on his arm stopped him. “This way, Albert. The corridor to the right.”
“Huh? But—I thought you said you couldn’t get an appointment, and we’d have to follow the same channels as any member of the public.” Certainly the “public” was the delighted wanderer through those gorgeous glass doors.
“Oh, sure, that’s what we’re doing. But I didn’t mean that public.”
“Oh.” Apparently the Museum was only for the herd. Albert humbly followed Cal (not without a backward glance) to the relatively unobtrusive door at the end of the lobby—the initiate’s secret passage to power, he thought with deep reverence.
But he noticed that three or four new people just entering the building were turning the same way.
* * * *
A waiting room. But it was not a disappointing one; evidently Cal had directed them right; they had passed to a higher circle. The room was large, yet it looked like a sanctum.
Albert had never seen chairs like these. All of the twenty-five or so men and women who were there ahead of them were distinctly better dressed than Albert. On the other hand Cal’s suit—a one-piece wooly buff-colored outfit, fashionably loose at the elbows and knees—was a match for any of them. Albert took pride in that.
Albert sat and fidgeted. Cal’s bass voice gently reminded him that fidgeting would be fatal, then rehearsed him in his approach. He was to be, basically, a professor of plant metabolism; it was a poor approach, Cal conceded regretfully, but the only one Albert was qualified to make. Salesmanship he was to leave to Cal; his own appeal was to be based on his position—such as it was—as a scientific expert; therefore he was to be, basically, himself. His success in projecting the role might possibly be decisive—although the main responsibility, Cal pointed out, was Cal’s.
While Cal talked, Albert fidgeted and watched the room. The lush chairs, irregularly placed, still managed all to face one wall, and in that wall were three plain doors. From time to time an attendant would appear to call one of the waiting supplicants to one of the doors. The attendants were liveried young men with flowing black hair. Finally, one came their way! He summoned them with a bow—an eye-flashing, head-tossing, flourishing bow, like a dancer rather than a butler.
Albert followed Cal to the door. “Will this be a junior executive? A personal secretary? A—”
But Cal seemed not to hear.
Albert followed Cal through the door and saw the most beautiful girl in the world.
He couldn’t look at her, not by a long way. She was much too beautiful for that. But he knew exactly what she looked like. He could see in his mind her shining, ringleted hair falling gently to her naked shoulders, her dazzling bright expressionless face. He couldn’t even think about her body; it was terrifying.
She sat behind a desk and looked at them.
Cal struck a masterful pose, his arms folded. “We have come on a scientific matter,” he said haughtily, “not familiar to The Corporation, concerning several northern colonial areas.”
She wrote deliberately on a small plain pad. Tonelessly, sweetly, she asked, “Your name?”
“Calvin Boersma.”
Her veiled eyes swung to Albert. He couldn’t possibly speak. His whole consciousness was occupied in not looking at her.
Cal said sonorously: “This is J. Albert LaRue, Professor of Plant Metabolism.” Albert was positively proud of his name, the way Cal said it.
The most beautiful girl in the world whispered meltingly: “Go out this door and down the corridor to Mr. Blick’s office. He’ll be expecting you.”
Albert chose this moment to try to look at her. And she smiled! Albert, completely routed, rushed to the door. He was grateful she hadn’t done that before! Cal, with his greater experience and higher position in life, could linger a moment, leaning on the desk, to leer at her.
But all the same, when they reached the corridor, he was sweating.
Albert said carefully, “She wasn’t an executive, was she?”
“No,” said Cal, a little scornfully. “She’s an Agency Model, what else? Of course, you probably don’t see them much at the University, except at the Corporation Representative’s Office and maybe the President’s Office.” Albert had never been near either. “She doesn’t have much to do except to impress visitors, and of course stop the ones that don’t belong here.”
Albert hesitated. “She was impressive.”
“She’s impressive, all right,” Cal agreed. “When you consider the Agency rates, and then realize that any member of the public who comes to the Regional Executive Building on business sees an Agency Model receptionist —then you know you’re dealing with power, Albert.”
Albert had a sudden idea. He ventured: “Would we have done better to have brought an Agency Model with us?”
Cal stared. “To go through the whole afternoon with us? Impossible, Albert! It’d cost you a year’s salary.”
Albert said eagerly: “No, that’s the beauty of it, Cal! You see, I have a young cousin—I haven’t seen her recently, of course, but she was drafted by the Agency, and I might have been able to get her to—” He faltered. Boersma was looking scandalized.
“Albert— excuse me. If your cousin had so much as walked into any business office with makeup on, she’d have had to collect Agency rates—or she’d have been out of the Agency like that. And owing them plenty.” He finished consolingly, “A Model wouldn’t have done the trick anyway.”
* * * *
II
Mr. Blick looked more like a scientist than a businessman, and his desk was a bit of a laboratory. At his left hand was an elaborate switchboard, curved so all parts would be in easy reach; most of the switches were in rows, the handles color-coded. As he nodded Cal to a seat his fingers flicked over three switches. The earphones and microphone clamped on his head had several switches too, and his right hand quivered beside a stenotype machine of unfamiliar complexity.
He spoke in an undertone into his mike, then his hand whizzed almost invisibily over the stenotype.
“Hello, Mr. Boersma,” he said, flicking one last switch but not removing the earphones. “Please excuse my idiosyncrasies, it seems I actually work better this way.” His voice was firm, resonant and persuasive.
Cal took over again. He opened with a round compliment for Mr. Blick’s battery of gadgets, and then flowed smoothly on to an even more glowing series of compliments—which Albert realized with a qualm of embarrassment referred to him.
After the first minute or so, though, Albert found the talk less interesting than the interruptions. Mr. Blick would raise a forefinger apologetically but fast; switches would tumble; he would listen to the earphones, whisper into the mike, and perform incredibly on the absolutely silent stenotype. Shifting lights touched his face, and Albert realized the desk top contained at least one TV screen, as well as a bank of blinking colored lights. The moment the interruption was disposed of, Mr. Blick’s faultless diction and pleasant voice would return Cal exactly to where he’d been. Albert was impressed.
Cal’s peroration was an urgent appeal that Mr. Blick consider the importance to The Corporation, financially, of what he was about to learn. Then he turned to Albert, a little too abruptly.
“One single thought is uppermost in my mind,” Albert stuttered, caught off guard. “Oxidase epsilon. I am resolved that The Corporation shall be made to see the importance—”
“Just a moment, Professor LaRue,” came Mr. Blick’s smooth Corporation voice. “You’ll have to explain this to me. I don’t have the background or the brains that you people in the academic line have. Now in layman’s terms, just what is oxidase epsilon?” He grinned handsomely.
“Oh, don’t feel bad,” said Albert hastily. “Lots of my colleagues haven’t heard of it, either.” This was only a half-truth. Every one of his colleagues that Albert met at the University in a normal working month had certainly heard of oxidase epsilon—from Albert. “It’s an enzyme found in many plants but recognized only recently. You see, many of the laboratory species created during the last few decades have been unable to produce ordinary oxidase, or oxidase alpha, but surprisingly enough some of these have survived. This is due to the presence of a series of related compounds, of which oxidases beta, gamma, delta, and epsilon have been isolated, and beta and epsilon have been prepared in the laboratory.”
* * * *
Mr. Blick shifted uncertainly in his seat. Albert hurried on so he would see how simple it all was. “I have been studying the reactions catalyzed by oxidase epsilon in several species of Triticum. I found quite unexpectedly that none of them produce the enzyme themselves. Amazing, isn’t it? All the oxidase epsilon in those plants comes from a fungus, Puccinia triticina, which infects them. This, of course, explains the failure of Hinshaw’s group to produce viable Triticum kaci following—”
Mr. Blick smiled handsomely again. “Well now, Professor LaRue, you’ll have to tell me what this means. In my terms—you understand.”
Cal boomed portentously, “It may mean the saving of the economies of three of The Corporation’s richest colonies.” Rather dramatic, Albert thought.
Mr. Blick said appreciatively, “Very good. Very good. Tell me more. Which colonies—and why?” His right hand left its crouch to spring restlessly to the stenotype.
Albert resumed, buoyed by this flattering show of interest. “West Lapland in Europe, and Great Slave and Churchill on this continent. They’re all Corporation colonies, recently opened up for wheat-growing by Triticum witti, and I’ve been told they’re extremely productive.”
“Who is Triticum Witti? One of our vice-presidents?”
Albert, shocked, explained patiently, “Triticum witti is one of the new species of wheat which depend on oxidase epsilon. And if the fungus Puccinia triticina on that wheat becomes a pest, sprays may be used to get rid of it. And a whole year’s wheat crop in those colonies may be destroyed.”
“Destroyed,” Mr. Blick repeated wonderingly. His forefinger silenced Albert like a conductor’s baton; then both his hands danced over keys and switches, and he was muttering into his microphone again.
Another interruption, thought Albert. He felt proper reverence for the undoubted importance of whatever Mr. Blick was settling, still he was bothered a little, too. Actually (he remembered suddenly) he had a reason to be so presumptuous: oxidase epsilon was important, too. Over five hundred million dollars had gone into those three colonies already, and no doubt a good many people.
However, it turned out this particular interruption must have been devoted to West Lapland, Great Slave, and Churchill after all. Mr. Blick abandoned his instrument panel and announced his congratulations to them: “Mr. Boersma, the decision has been made to assign an expediter to your case!” And he smiled heartily.
* * * *
This was a high point for Albert.
He wasn’t sure he knew what an expediter was, but he was sure from Mr. Blick’s manner that an unparalleled honor had been given him. It almost made him dizzy to think of all this glittering building, all the attendants and Models and executives, bowing to him, as Mr. Blick’s manner implied they must.
A red light flicked on and off on Mr. Blick’s desk. As he turned to it he said, “Excuse me, gentlemen.” Of course, Albert pardoned him mentally, you have to work.
He whispered to Cal, “Well, I guess we’re doing pretty well.”
“Huh? Oh, yes, very well,” Cal whispered back. “So far.”
“So far? Doesn’t Mr. Blick understand the problem? All we have to do is give him the details now.”
“Oh, no, Albert! I’m sure he can’t make the decision. He’ll have to send us to someone higher up.”
Higher up? “Why? Do we have to explain it all over again?”
Cal turned in his chair so he could whisper to Albert less conspicuously. “Albert, an enterprise the size of The Corporation can’t give consideration to every crackpot suggestion anyone tries to sell it. There have to be regular channels. Now the Plant Metabolism Department doesn’t have any connections here (maybe we can do something about that), so we have to run a sort of obstacle course. It’s survival of the fittest, Albert! Only the most worthwhile survive to see the Regional Director. Of course the Regional Director selects which of those to accept, but he doesn’t have to sift through a lot of crackpot propositions.”
Albert could see the analogy to natural selection. Still, he asked humbly: “How do you know the best suggestions get through? Doesn’t it depend a lot on how good a salesman is handling them?”
“Very much so. Naturally!”
“But then— Suppose, for instance, I hadn’t happened to know you. My good idea wouldn’t have got past Mr. Blick.”
“It wouldn’t have got past the Model,” Cal corrected. “Maybe not that far. But you see in that case it wouldn’t have been a very important idea, because it wouldn’t have been put into effect.” He said it with a very firm, practical jawline. “Unless of course someone else had had the initiative and resourcefulness to present the same idea better. Do you see now? Really important ideas attract the sales talent to put them across.”
* * * *
Albert didn’t understand the reasoning, he had to admit. It was such an important point, and he was missing it. He reminded himself humbly that a scientist is no expert outside his own field.
So all Mr. Blick had been telling them was that they had not yet been turned down. Albert’s disappointment was sharp.
Still, he was curious. How had such a trivial announcement given him such euphoria? Could you produce that kind of effect just by your delivery? Mr. Blick could, apparently. The architecture, the Model, and all the rest had been build-up for him; and certainly they had helped the effect; but they didn’t explain it.
What was the key? Personality, Albert realized. This was what businessmen meant by their technical term “personality”. Personality was the asset Mr. Blick had exploited to rise to where he was—rather than becoming, say, a scientist.
The Blicks and Boersmas worked hard at it. Wistfully, Albert wondered how it was done. Of course the experts in this field didn’t publish their results, and anyhow he had never studied it. But it was the most important field of human culture, for on it hinged the policy decisions of government—even of The Corporation!
He couldn’t estimate whether Cal was as good as Mr. Blick, because he assumed Cal had never put forth a big effort on him, Albert. He wasn’t worth it.
He had one other question for Cal. “What is an expediter?”
“Oh, I thought you knew,” boomed Cal. “They can be a big help. That’s why we’re doing well to be assigned one. We’re going to get into the top levels, Albert, where only a salesman of true merit can hope to put across an idea. An expediter can do it if anyone can. The expediters are too young to hold Key Executive Positions, but they’re Men On The Way Up. They—”
Mr. Blick turned his head toward a door on his left, putting the force of his personality behind the gesture. “Mr. Demarest,” he announced as the expediter walked into the room,
* * * *
III
Mr. Demarest had captivating red curly sideburns, striking brown eyes, and a one-piece coverall in a somewhat loud pattern of black and beige. He almost trembled with excess energy. It was contagious; it made you feel as if you were as abnormally fit as he was.
He grinned his welcome at Albert and Cal, and chuckled merrily: “How do you do, Mr. Boersma.”
It was as if Mr. Blick had been turned off. Albert hardly knew he was still in the room. Clearly Mr. Demarest was a Man On The Way Up indeed.
They rose and left the room with him—to a new corridor, very different from the last: weirdly lighted from a strip two feet above the floor, and lined with abstract statuary.
This, together with Mr. Demarest, made a formidable challenge.
Albert rose to it recklessly. “Oxidase epsilon,” he proclaimed, “may mean the saving of three of The Corporation’s richest colonies!”
Mr. Demarest responded with enthusiasm. “I agree one hundred percent—our Corporation’s crop of Triticum witti must be saved! Mr. Blick sent me a playback of your explanation by interoffice tube, Professor LaRue. You’ve got me on your side one hundred per cent! I want to assure you both, very sincerely, that I’ll do my utmost to sell Mr. Southfield. Professor, you be ready to fill in the details when I’m through with what I know.”
There was no slightest condescension or reservation in his voice. He would take care of things, Albert knew. What a relief!
Cal came booming in: “Your Mr. Blick seems like a competent man.”
What a way to talk about a Corporation executive! Albert decided it was not just a simple faux pas, though. Apparently Cal had decided he had to be accepted by Mr. Demarest as an equal, and this was his opening. It seemed risky to Albert. In fact, it frightened him.
“There’s just one thing, now, about your Mr. Blick,” Cal was saying to Mr. Demarest, with a tiny wink that Albert was proud of having spotted. “I couldn’t help wondering how he manages to find so much to do with those switches of his.” Albert barely restrained a groan.
But Mr. Demarest grinned! “Frankly, Cal,” he answered, “I’m not just sure how many of old Blick’s switches are dummies.”
Cal had succeeded! That was the main content of. Mr. Demarest’s remark.
But were Mr. Blick’s switches dummies? Things were much simpler back—way back—at the University, where people said what they meant.
They were near the end of the corridor. Mr. Demarest said softly, “Mr. Southfield’s Office.” Clearly Mr. Southfield’s presence was enough to curb even Mr. Demarest’s boyishness.
They turned through an archway into a large room, lighted like the corridor, with statuary wilder still.
Mr. Southfield was at one side, studying papers in a vast easy chair: an elderly man, fantastically dressed but with a surprisingly ordinary face peeping over the crystal ruff on his magenta leotards. He ignored them. Mr. Demarest made it clear they were supposed to wait until they were called on.
Cal and Albert chose two of the bed-sized chairs facing Mr. Southfield, and waited expectantly.
Mr. Demarest whispered, “I’ll be back in time to make the first presentation. Last-minute brush-up, you know.” He grinned and clapped Cal smartly on the shoulder. Albert was relieved that he didn’t do the same to him, but just shook his hand before leaving. It would have been too upsetting.
Albert sank back in his chair, tired from all he’d been through and relaxed by the soft lights.
It was the most comfortable chair he’d ever been in. It was more than comfortable, it was a deliciously irresistible invitation to relax completely. Albert was barely awake enough to notice that the chair was rocking him gently, tenderly massaging his neck and back.
He lay there, ecstatic. He didn’t quite go to sleep. If the chair had been designed just a little differently, no doubt, it could have put him to sleep, but this one just let him rest carefree and mindless.
Cal spoke (and even Cal’s quiet bass sounded harsh and urgent): “Sit up straighter, Albert!”
“Why?”
“Albert, any sales resistance you started with is going to be completely gone if you don’t sit up enough to shut off that chair!”
“Sales resistance?” Albert pondered comfortably. “What have we got to worry about? Mr. Demarest is on our side, isn’t he?”
“Mr. Demarest,” Cal pointed out, “is not the Regional Director.”
So they still might have problems! So the marvelous chair was just another trap where the unfit got lost! Albert resolved to himself: “From now on, one single thought will be uppermost in my mind: defending my sales resistance.”
He repeated this to himself.
He repeated it again....
“Albert!” There was genuine panic in Cal’s voice now.
A fine way to defend his sales resistance! He had let the chair get him again. Regretfully he shifted his weight forward, reaching for the arms of the chair.
“Watch it!” said Cal. “Okay now, but don’t use the arms. Just lean yourself forward. There.” He explained, “The surface on the arms is rough and moist, and I can’t think of any reason it should be—unless it’s to give you narcotic through the skin! Tiny amounts, of course. But we can’t afford any. First time I’ve ever seen that one in actual use,” he admitted.
Albert was astonished, and in a moment he was more so. “Mr. Southfield’s chair is the same as ours, and he’s leaning back in it. Why, he’s even stroking the arm while he reads!”
“I know.” Cal shook his head. “Remarkable man, isn’t he? Remarkable. Remember this, Albert. The true salesman, the man on the very pinnacle of achievement, is also—a connoisseur. Mr. Southfield is a connoisseur. He wants to be presented with the most powerful appeals known, for the sake of the pleasure he gets from the appeal itself. Albert, there is a strong strain of the sensuous, the self-indulgent, in every really successful man like Mr. Southfield. Why? Because to be successful he must have the most profound understanding of self-indulgence.”
Albert noticed in passing that, just the same, Cal wasn’t self-indulgent enough to trust himself to that chair. He didn’t even make a show of doing so. Clearly in Mr. Southfield they had met somebody far above Cal’s level. It was unnerving. Oxidase epsilon seemed a terribly feeble straw to outweigh such a disadvantage.
Cal went on, “This is another reason for the institution of expediters. The top executive can’t work surrounded by inferior salesmanship. He needs the stimulus and the luxury of receiving his data well packaged. The expediters can do it.” He leaned over confidentially. “I’ve heard them called backscratchers for that reason,” he whispered.
Albert was flattered that Cal admitted him to this trade joke.
Mr. Southfield looked up at the archway as someone came in—not Mr. Demarest, but a black-haired young woman. Albert looked inquiringly at Cal.
“Just a minute. I’ll soon know who she is.”
She stood facing Mr. Southfield, against the wall opposite Albert and Cal. Mr. Southfield said in a drowsy half-whisper, “Yes, Miss Drury, the ore-distribution pattern. Go on.”
“She must be another expediter, on some other matter,” Cal decided. “Watch her work, Albert. You won’t get an opportunity like this often.”
Albert studied her. She was not at all like an Agency Model; she was older than most of them (about thirty); she was fully dressed, in a rather sober black and gray business suit, snug around the hips; and she wasn’t wearing makeup. She couldn’t be even an ex-Model, she wasn’t the type. Heavier in build, for one thing, and though she was very pretty it wasn’t that unhuman blinding beauty. On the contrary, Albert enjoyed looking at her (even lacking Mr. Southfield’s connoisseurship). He found Miss Drury’s warm dark eyes and confident posture very pleasant and relaxing.
She began to talk, gently and musically, something about how to compute the most efficient routing of metallic ore traffic in the Great Lakes Region. Her voice became a chant, rising and falling, but with a little catch in it now and then. Lovely!
Her main device, though, sort of snuck up on him, the way the chair had. It had been going on for some time before Albert was conscious of it. It was like the chair.
Miss Drury moved.
Her hips swung. Only a centimeter each way, but very, very sensuously. You could follow the motion in detail, because her dress was more than merely snug around the hips, you could see every muscle on her belly. The motion seemed entirely spontaneous, but Albert knew she must have worked hard on it.
The knowledge, however, didn’t spoil his enjoyment.
“Gee,” he marveled to Cal, “how can Mr. Southfield hear what she’s saying?”
“Huh? Oh—she lowers her voice from time to time on purpose so we won’t overhear Corporation secrets, but he’s much nearer her than we are.”
“That’s not what I mean!”
“You mean why doesn’t her delivery distract him from the message? Albert,” Boersma said wisely, “if you were sitting in his chair you’d be getting the message, too—with crushing force. A superior presentation always directs attention to the message. But in Mr. Southfield’s case it actually stimulates critical consideration as well! Remarkable man. An expert and a connoisseur.”
Meanwhile Albert saw that Miss Drury had finished. Maybe she would stay and discuss her report with Mr. Southfield? No, after just a few words he dismissed her.
* * * *
IV
In a few minutes the glow caused by Miss Drury had changed to a glow of excited pride.
Here was he, plain old Professor LaRue, witnessing the drama of the nerve center of the Lakes Region—the interplay of titanic personalities, deciding the fate of millions. Why, he was even going to be involved in one of the decisions! He hoped the next expediter to see Mr. Southfield would be Mr. Demarest!
Something bothered him. “Cal, how can Mr. Demarest possibly be as—well—persuasive as Miss Drury? I mean—”
“Now, Albert, you leave that to him. Sex is not the only possible vehicle. Experts can make strong appeals to the weakest and subtlest of human drives— even altruism! Oh yes, I know it’s surprising to the layman, but even altruism can be useful.”
“Really?” Albert was grateful for every tidbit.
“Real masters will sometimes prefer such a method out of sheer virtuosity,” whispered Cal.
Mr. Southfield stirred a little in his chair, and Albert snapped to total alertness.
Sure enough, it was Mr. Demarest who came through the archway.
Certainly his entrance was no let down. He strode in even more eagerly than he had into Mr. Blick’s office. His costume glittered, his brown eyes glowed. He stood against the wall beyond Mr. Southfield; not quite straight, but with a slight wrestler’s crouch. A taut spring.
He gave Albert and Cal only half a second’s glance, but that glance was a tingling communication of comradeship and joy of battle. Albert felt himself a participant in something heroic.
Mr. Demarest began releasing all that energy slowly. He gave the background of West Lapland, Great Slave, and Churchill. Maps were flashed on the wall beside him (exactly how, Albert didn’t follow), and the drama of arctic colonization was recreated by Mr. Demarest’s sportscaster’s voice. Albert would have thought Mr. Demarest was the overmodest hero of each project if he hadn’t known all three had been done simultaneously. No, it was hard to believe, but all these vivid facts must have been served to Mr. Demarest by some research flunky within the last few minutes. And yet, how he had transfigured them!
The stirring narrative was reaching Mr. Southfield, too. He had actually sat up out of the easy chair.
Mr. Demarest’s voice, like Miss Drury’s, dropped in volume now and then. Albert and Cal were just a few feet too far away to overhear Corporation secrets.
As the saga advanced, Mr. Demarest changed from Viking to Roman. His voice, by beautifully controlled stages, became bubbling and hedonistic. Now, he was talking about grandiose planned expansions—and, best of all, about how much money The Corporation expected to make from the three colonies. The figures drooled through loose lips. He clapped Mr. Southfield on the shoulder. He stroked Mr. Southfield’s arm; when he came to the estimated trade balances, he tickled his neck. Mr. Southfield showed his appreciation of the change in mood by lying back in his chair again.
This didn’t stop Mr. Demarest.
It seemed almost obscene. Albert covered his embarrassment by whispering, “I see why they call them backscratchers.”
Cal frowned, waved him silent, and went on watching.
Suddenly Mr. Demarest’s tone changed again: it became bleak, bitter, desperate. A threat to the calculated return on The Corporation’s investment—even to the capital investment itself!
Mr. Southfield sat forward attentively to hear about this danger. Was that good? He hadn’t done that with Miss Drury.
What Mr. Demarest said about the danger was, of course, essentially what Albert had told Mr. Blick, but Albert realized that it sounded a lot more frightening Mr. Demarest’s way. When he was through, Albert felt physically chilly. Mr. Southfield sat saying nothing. What was he thinking? Could he fail to see the tragedy that threatened?
After a moment he nodded and said, “Nice presentation.” He hadn’t said that to Miss Drury, Albert exulted!
Mr. Demarest looked dedicated.
Mr. Southfield turned his whole body to face Albert, and looked him straight in the eyes. Albert was too alarmed to look away. Mr. Southfield’s formerly ordinary jaw now jutted, his chest swelled imposingly. “You, I understand, are a well-informed worker on plant metabolism.” His voice seemed to grow too, until it rolled in on Albert from all sides of the room. “Is it your opinion that the danger is great enough to justify taking up the time of the Regional Director?”
It wasn’t fair. Mr. Southfield against J. Albert LaRue was a ridiculous mismatch anyway! And now Albert was taken by surprise—after too long a stretch as an inactive spectator—and hit with the suggestion that he had been wasting Mr. Southfield’s time . . . that his proposition was not only not worth acting on, it was a waste of the Regional Director’s time.
Albert struggled to speak.
Surely, after praising Mr. Demarest’s presentation, Mr. Southfield would be lenient; he would take into account Albert’s limited background; he wouldn’t expect too much. Albert struggled to say anything.
He couldn’t open his mouth.
As he sat staring at Mr. Southfield, he could feel his own shoulders drawing inward and all his muscles going limp.
Cal said, in almost a normal voice, “Yes.”
That was enough, just barely. Albert whispered, “Yes,” terrified at having found the courage.
Mr. Southfield glared down at him a moment more.
Then he said, “Very well, you may see the Regional Director. Mr. Demarest, take them there.”
* * * *
Albert followed Mr. Demarest blindly. His entire attention was concentrated on recovering from Mr. Southfield.
He had been one up, thanks to Mr. Demarest. Now, how could he have stayed one up? How should he have resisted Mr. Southfield’s dizzying display of personality?
He played the episode back mentally over and over, trying to correct it to run as it should have. Finally he succeeded, at least in his mind. He saw what his attitude should have been. He should have kept his shoulders squared and his vocal cords loose, and faced Mr. Southfield confidently. Now he saw how to do it.
He walked erectly and firmly behind Mr. Demarest, and allowed a haughty half-smile to play on his lips.
He felt armed to face Mr. Southfield all by himself— or, since it seemed Mr. Southfield was not the Regional Director after all, even to face the Regional Director!
They stopped in front of a large double door guarded by an absolutely motionless man with a gun.
“Men,” said Mr. Demarest with cheerful innocence, “I wish you luck. I wish you all the luck in the world.”
Cal looked suddenly stricken but said, with casualness that didn’t fool even Albert, “Wouldn’t you like to come in with us?”
“Oh, no. Mr. Southfield told me only to bring you here. I’d be overstepping my bounds if I did any more. But all the good luck in the world, men!”
Cal said hearty goodbyes. But when he turned back to Albert he said, Despairing: “The brushoff.”
Albert could hardly take it in. “But— we get to make our presentation to the Regional Director, don’t we?”
Boersma shrugged hopelessly, “Don’t you see, Albert? Our presentation won’t be good enough, without Demarest. When Mr. Southfield sent us on alone he was giving us the brushoff.”
“Cal—are you going to back out too?”
“I should say not! It’s a feather in our cap to have got this far, Albert. We have to follow up just as far as our abilities will take us!”
Albert went to the double door. He worried about the armed guard for a moment, but they weren’t challenged. The guard hadn’t even blinked, in fact.
Albert asked Cal, “Then we do still have a chance?”
“No, we haven’t got a chance.”
He started to push the door open, then hesitated again. “But you’ll do your best?”
“I should say so! You don’t get to present a proposition to the Regional Director every day.”
With determination, Albert drew himself even straighter, and prepared himself to meet an onslaught twice as overbearing as Mr. Southfield’s. One single thought was uppermost in his mind: defending his sales resistance. He felt inches taller than before; he even slightly looked down at Cal and his pessimism.
Cal pushed the door open and they went in.
* * * *
The Regional Director sat alone in a straight chair, at a plain desk in a very plain office about the size of most offices.
The Regional Director was a woman.
She was dressed about as any businesswoman might dress; as conservatively as Miss Drury. As a matter of fact, she looked like Miss Drury, fifteen years older. Certainly she had the same black hair and gentle oval face.
What a surprise! A pleasant surprise. Albert felt still bigger and more confident than he had outside. He would certainly get on well with this motherly, unthreatening person!
She was reading from a small microfilm viewer on an otherwise bare desk. Obviously she had only a little to do before she would be free. Albert patiently watched her read. She read very conscientiously, that was clear.
After a moment she glanced up at them briefly, with an apologetic smile, then down again. Her shy dark eyes showed so much! You could see how sincerely she welcomed them, and how sorry she was that she had so much work to do—how much she would prefer to be talking with them. Albert pitied her. From the bottom of his heart, he pitied her. Why, that small microfilm viewer, he realized, could perfectly well contain volumes of complicated Corporation reports. Poor woman! The poor woman who happened to be Regional Director read on.
Once in a while she passed one hand, wearily but determinedly, across her face. There was a slight droop to her shoulders. Albert pitied her more all the time. She was not too strong—she had such a big job—and she was so courageously trying to do her best with all those reports in the viewer!
Finally she raised her head.
It was clear she was not through; there was no relief on her face. But she raised her head to them.
Her affection covered them like a warm bath. Albert realized he was in a position to do the kindest thing he had ever done. He felt growing in himself the resolution to do it. He would!
He started toward the door.
Before he left she met his eyes once more, and her smile showed such appreciation for his understanding!
Albert felt there could be no greater reward.
* * * *
Out in the park again he realized for the first time that Cal was right behind him.
They looked at each other for a long time.
Then Cal started walking again, toward the subway. “The brushoff,” he said.
“I thought you said you’d do your best,” said Albert. But he knew that Cal’s “I did” was the truth.
They walked on slowly. Cal said, “Remarkable woman.... A real master. Sheer virtuosity!”
Albert said, “Our society certainly rewards its most deserving members.”
That one single thought was uppermost in his mind, all the long way home.