_Mechanical brains are all the
rage these days, so General
Products just had to have one.
But the blamed thing almost
put them out of business. Why?
It had no tact. It insisted
upon telling the truth!_
The Personnelovac winked, chittered, chortled, chuckled, and burped a
card into the slot. Colihan picked it up and closed his eyes in prayer.
"Oh, Lord. Let this one be all right!"
He read the card. It was pink.
"_Subject #34580. Apt. Rat. 34577. Psych. Clas. 45. Last Per. Vac._
"_An. 3/5/98. Rat. 19. Cur. Rat. 14._
"_Analysis: Subject demonstrates decreased mechanical coordination.
Decrease in work-energy per man-hour. Marked increase in waste-motion
due to subject's interest in non-essential activities such as
horseracing. Indication of hostility towards superiors._
"_Recommendation: Fire him._"
Colihan's legs went weak. He sat down and placed the card in front of
him. Then, making sure he was unobserved, he broke a company rule and
began to Think.
_Something's wrong_, he thought. _Something is terribly wrong.
Twenty-four pink cards in the last month. Twenty-four out of forty.
That's a batting average of_--He tried to figure it out with a pencil,
but gave it up as a bad job. _Maybe I'll run it through the Averagovac_,
he thought. _But why bother? It's obvious that it's high. There's
obviously SOMETHING WRONG._
The inter-com beeped.
"Ten o'clock department head meeting, Mr. Colihan."
[Illustration: The steel brain was having more fun than people.]
"All right, Miss Blanche."
He rose from his chair and took the pink card with him. He stood before
the Action Chute for a moment, tapping the card against his teeth. Then,
his back stiffened with a sense of duty, and he slipped the card inside.
* * * * *
The meeting had already begun when Colihan took his appointed place.
Grimswitch, the Materielovac operator looked at him quizzically. _Damn
your eyes, Grimswitch_, he thought. _It's no crime to be three minutes
late. Nothing but a lot of pep talk first five minutes anyway._
"PEP!" said President Moss at the end of the room. He slammed his little
white fist into the palm of his other hand. "It's only a little word. It
only has three little letters. P-E-P. Pep!"
Moss, standing at the head of the impressive conference table, leaned
forward and eyed them fixedly. "But those three little letters, my
friends, spell out a much bigger word. A _much_ bigger word for General
Products, Incorporated. They spell PROFIT! And if you don't know how
_profit_ is spelled, it's M-O-N-N-E-Y!"
There was an appreciative laugh from the assembled department heads.
Colihan, however, was still brooding on the parade of pink cards which
had been emerging with frightening regularity from his think-machine,
and he failed to get the point.
"Naughty, naughty," Grimswitch whispered to him archly. "Boss made a
funny. Don't forget to laugh, old boy."
Colihan threw him a sub-zero look.
"Now let's be serious," said the boss. "Because things _are_ serious.
Mighty serious. Somewhere, somehow, _somebody's_ letting us down!"
The department heads looked uneasily at each other. Only Grimswitch
continued to smile vacantly at the little old man up front, drumming his
fingers on the glass table top. When the President's machine-gunning
glance caught his eyes, Colihan went white. _Does he know about it?_ he
thought.
"I'm not making accusations," said Moss. "But there is a let-down
someplace. Douglas!" he snapped.
Douglas, the Treasurer, did a jack-in-the-box.
"Read the statement," said the President.
"First quarter fiscal year," said Douglas dryly. "Investment capital,
$17,836,975,238.96. Assets, $84,967,442,279.55. Liabilities,
$83,964,283,774.60. Production costs are--"
Moss waved his hand impatiently. "The meat, the meat," he said.