[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine August 1959.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Nothing in the world could be happier and
mere serene than a man who loves his work--but
what happens when it loves him back?
Keep your nerve, Peter Manners told himself; it's only a job. But nerve
has to rest on a sturdier foundation than cash reserves just above zero
and eviction if he came away from this interview still unemployed.
Clay, at the Association of Professional Engineers, who had set up the
appointment, hadn't eased Peter's nervousness by admitting, "I don't
know what in hell he's looking for. He's turned down every man we've
sent him."
The interview was at three. Fifteen minutes to go. Coming early would
betray overeagerness. Peter stood in front of the Lex Industries plant
and studied it to kill time. Plain, featureless concrete walls, not
large for a manufacturing plant--it took a scant minute to exhaust its
sightseeing potential. If he walked around the building, he could, if
he ambled, come back to the front entrance just before three.
He turned the corner, stopped, frowned, wondering what there was about
the building that seemed so puzzling. It could not have been plainer,
more ordinary. It was in fact, he only gradually realized, so plain and
ordinary that it was like no other building he had ever seen.
There had been windows at the front. There were none at the side, and
none at the rear. Then how were the working areas lit? He looked for
the electric service lines and found them at one of the rear corners.
They jolted him. The distribution transformers were ten times as large
as they should have been for a plant this size.
Something else was wrong. Peter looked for minutes before he found out
what it was. Factories usually have large side doorways for employees
changing shifts. This building had one small office entrance facing the
street, and the only other door was at the loading bay--big enough to
handle employee traffic, but four feet above the ground. Without any
stairs, it could be used only by trucks backing up to it. Maybe the
employees' entrance was on the third side.
It wasn't.
* * * * *
Staring back at the last blank wall, Peter suddenly remembered the time
he had set out to kill. He looked at his watch and gasped. At a run,
set to straight-arm the door, he almost fell on his face. The door had
opened by itself. He stopped and looked for a photo-electric eye, but
a soft voice said through a loudspeaker in the anteroom wall: "Mr.
Manners?"
"What?" he panted. "Who--?"
"You _are_ Mr. Manners?" the voice asked.
He nodded, then realized he had to answer aloud if there was a
microphone around; but the soft voice said: "Follow the open doors down
the hall. Mr. Lexington is expecting you."
"Thanks," Peter said, and a door at one side of the anteroom swung open
for him.
He went through it with his composure slipping still further from his
grip. This was no way to go into an interview, but doors kept opening
before and shutting after him, until only one was left, and the last of
his calm was blasted away by a bellow from within.
"Don't stand out there like a jackass! Either come in or go away!"
Peter found himself leaping obediently toward the doorway. He stopped
just short of it, took a deep breath and huffed it out, took another,
all the while thinking, Hold on now; you're in no shape for an
interview--and it's not your fault--this whole setup is geared to
unnerve you: the kindergarten kid called in to see the principal.
He let another bellow bounce off him as he blew out the second breath,
straightened his jacket and tie, and walked in as an engineer applying
for a position should.
"Mr. Lexington?" he said. "I'm Peter Manners. The Association--"
"Sit down," said the man at the desk. "Let's look you over."
He was a huge man behind an even huger desk. Peter took a chair in
front of the desk and let himself be inspected. It wasn't comfortable.
He did some looking over of his own to ease the tension.
The room was more than merely large, carpeted throughout with
a high-pile, rich, sound-deadening rug. The oversized desk and
massive leather chairs, heavy patterned drapes, ornately framed
paintings--by God, even a glass-brick manteled fireplace and bowls with
flowers!--made him feel as if he had walked down a hospital corridor
into Hollywood's idea of an office.
His eyes eventually had to move to Lexington, and they were daunted
for another instant. This was a citadel of a man--great girders of
frame supporting buttresses of muscle--with a vaulting head and
drawbridge chin and a steel gaze that defied any attempt to storm it.
But then Peter came out of his momentary flinch, and there was an age
to the man, about 65, and he saw the muscles had turned to fat, the
complexion ashen, the eyes set deep as though retreating from pain, and
this was a citadel of a man, yes, but beginning to crumble.
"What can you do?" asked Lexington abruptly.
* * * * *
Peter started, opened his mouth to answer, closed it again. He'd been
jolted too often in too short a time to be stampeded into blurting a
reply that would cost him this job.
"Good," said Lexington. "Only a fool would try to answer that. Do you
have any knowledge of medicine?"
"Not enough to matter," Peter said, stung by the compliment.
"I don't mean how to bandage a cut or splint a broken arm. I mean
things like cell structure, neural communication--the _basics_ of how
we live."
"I'm applying for a job as engineer."
"I know. Are you interested in the basics of how we live?"