“You know, it wasn’t so long ago, when every home lighted and heated itself, and every little industry was a self-contained unit, that a fool couldn’t do great damage unless he inherited a throne or was placed in command of an army, and that didn’t happen nearly as often as our leftist social historians would like us to think. But today, everything we depend upon is centralized, and vulnerable to blunder-damage. Even our food—remember that poisoned soft-drink horror in Chicago, in 1963; three thousand hospitalized and six hundred dead because of one man’s stupid mistake at a bottling plant.” He shook himself slightly, as though to throw off some shadow that had fallen over him, and looked at his watch. “Sixteen hundred. How did you get here? Fly your own plane?”
“No; I came by T.W.A. from Pittsburgh. I have a room at the new Midtown City hotel, on Forty-seventh Street: I had my luggage sent on there from the airport and came out on the Long Island subway.”
“Fine. I have a room at Midtown City, myself, though I sleep here about half the time.” He nodded toward a door on the left. “Suppose we go in and have dinner together. This cafeteria, here, is a horrible place. It’s run by a dietitian instead of a chef, and everything’s so white-enamel antiseptic that I swear I smell belladonna-icthyol ointment every time I go in the place. Wait here till I change clothes.”
* * * *
At the Long Island plant, no one was concerned about espionage—neither the processes nor the equipment used there were secret—but the countersabotage security was fantastically thorough. Every person or scrap of material entering the reactor area was searched; the life-history of every man and woman employed there was known back to the cradle. A broad highway encircled it outside the fence, patrolled night and day by twenty General Stuart cavalry-tanks. There were a thousand soldiers, and three hundred Atomic Power Authority police, and only God knew how many F.B.I, and Central Intelligence undercover agents. Every supervisor and inspector and salaried technician was an armed United States deputy marshal. And nobody, outside the Department of Defense, knew how much radar and counter-rocket and fighter protection the place had, but the air-defense zone extended from Boston to Philadelphia and as far inland as Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
The Long Island Nuclear Power Plant, Melroy thought, had all the invulnerability of Achilles—and no more.
The six new Doernberg-Giardano breeder-reactors clustered in a circle inside a windowless concrete building at the center of the plant. Beside their primary purpose of plutonium production, they furnished heat for the sea-water distillation and chemical extraction system, processing the water that was run through the steam boilers at the main power reactors, condensed, redistilled, and finally pumped, pure, into the water mains of New York. Safe outside the shielding, in a corner of a high-ceilinged room, was the plyboard-screened on-the-job office of the Melroy Engineering Corporation’s timekeepers and foremen. Beyond, along the far wall, were the washroom and locker room and lunch room of the workmen.
Sixty or seventy men, mostly in white coveralls and all wearing identification badges and carrying dosimeters in their breast pockets and midget Geigers strapped to their wrists, were crowded about the bulletin-board in front of the makeshift office. There was a hum of voices—some perplexed or angry, but mostly good-humored and bantering. As Melroy and Doris Rives approached, the talking died out and the men turned. In the sudden silence, one voice, harshly strident, continued:
“…do they think this is, anyhow? We don’t hafta take none of that.”
Somebody must have nudged the speaker, trying without success to hush him. The bellicose voice continued, and Melroy spotted the speaker—short, thick-set, his arms jutting out at an angle from his body, his heavy features soured with anger.
“Like we was a lotta halfwits, ’r nuts, ’r some’n! Well, we don’t hafta stand for this. They ain’t got no right—”
Doris Rives clung tighter to Melroy’s arm as he pushed a way for himself and her through the crowd and into the temporary office. Inside, they were met by a young man with a deputy marshal’s badge on his flannel shirt and a .38 revolver on his hip.
“Ben Puryear: Dr. Rives,” Melroy introduced. “Who’s the mouthy character outside?”
“One of the roustabouts; name’s Burris,” Puryear replied. “Wash-room lawyer.”
Melroy nodded. “You always get one or two like that. How’re the rest taking it?”
Puryear shrugged. “About how you’d expect. A lot of kidding about who’s got any intelligence to test. Burris seems to be the only one who’s trying to make an issue out of it.”
“Well, what are they doing ganged up here?” Melroy wanted to know. “It’s past oh-eight-hundred; why aren’t they at work?”
“Reactor’s still too hot. Temperature and radioactivity both too high; radioactivity’s still up around eight hundred REM’s.”
“Well, then, we’ll give them all the written portion of the test together, and start the personal interviews and oral tests as soon as they’re through.” He turned to Doris Rives. “Can you give all of them the written test together?” he asked. “And can Ben help you—distributing forms, timing the test, seeing that there’s no fudging, and collecting the forms when they’re done?”
“Oh, yes; all they’ll have to do is follow the printed instructions.” She looked around. “I’ll need a desk, and an extra chair for the interview subject.”
“Right over here, doctor.” Puryear said. “And here are the forms and cards, and the sound-recorder, and blank sound disks.”
“Yes,” Melroy added. “Be sure you get a recording of every interview and oral test; we may need them for evidence.”
He broke off as a man in white coveralls came pushing into the office. He was a scrawny little fellow with a wide, loose-lipped mouth and a protuberant Adam’s apple; beside his identity badge, he wore a two-inch celluloid button lettered: I.F.A.W. STEWARD.
“Wanta use the phone,” he said. “Union business.”
Melroy gestured toward a telephone on the desk beside him. The newcomer shook his head, twisting his mouth into a smirk.
“Not that one; the one with the whisper mouthpiece,” he said. “This is private union business.”
* * * *
Melroy shrugged and indicated another phone. The man with the union steward’s badge picked it up, dialed, and held a lengthy conversation into it, turning his head away in case Melroy might happen to be a lip reader. Finally he turned.
“Mr. Crandall wants to talk to you,” he said, grinning triumphantly, the phone extended to Melroy.
The engineer picked up another phone, snapping a button on the base of it.
“Melroy here,” he said.
Something on the line started going bee-beep-beep softly.
“Crandall, executive secretary, I.F.A.W.,” the man on the other end of the line identified himself. “Is there a recorder going on this line?”
“Naturally,” Melroy replied. “I record all business conversations; office routine.”
“Mr. Melroy, I’ve been informed that you propose forcing our members in your employ to submit to some kind of a mental test. Is that correct?”
“Not exactly. I’m not able to force anybody to submit to anything against his will. If anybody objects to taking these tests, he can say so, and I’ll have his time made out and pay him off.”
“That’s the same thing. A threat of dismissal is coercion, and if these men want to keep their jobs they’ll have to take this test.”
“Well, that’s stated more or less correctly,” Melroy conceded. “Let’s just put it that taking—and passing—this test is a condition of employment. My contract with your union recognizes my right to establish standards of intelligence; that’s implied by my recognized right to dismiss any person of ‘unsound mind, deficient mentality or emotional instability.’ Psychological testing is the only means of determining whether or not a person is classifiable in those terms.”
“Then, in case the test purports to show tha
t one of these men is, let’s say, mentally deficient, you intend dismissing him?”
“With the customary two weeks’ severance-pay, yes.”
“Well, if you do dismiss anybody on those grounds, the union will have to insist on reviewing the grounds for dismissal.”
“My contract with your union says nothing whatever about any right of review being reserved by the union in such cases. Only in cases of disciplinary dismissal, which this is not. I take the position that certain minimum standards of intelligence and mental stability are essentials in this sort of work, just as, say, certain minimum standards of literacy are essential in clerical work.”
“Then you’re going to make these men take these tests, whatever they are?”
“If they want to work for me, yes. And anybody who fails to pass them will be dropped from my payroll.”
“And who’s going to decide whether or not these men have successfully passed these tests?” Crandall asked. “You?”
“Good Lord, no! I’m an electronics engineer, not a psychologist. The tests are being given, and will be evaluated, by a graduate psychologist, Dr. D. Warren Rives, who has a diploma from the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and is a member of the American Psychological Association. Dr. Rives will be the final arbiter on who is or is not disqualified by these tests.”
“Well, our man Koffler says you have some girl there to give the tests,” Crandall accused.
“I suppose he means Dr. Rives,” Melroy replied. “I can assure you, she is an extremely competent psychologist, however. She came to me most highly recommended by Dr. Karl von Heydenreich, who is not inclined to be careless with his recommendations.”
“Well, Mr. Melroy, we don’t want any more trouble with you than we have to have,” Crandall told him, “but we will insist on reviewing any dismissals which occur as a result of these tests.”
“You can do that. I’d advise, first, that you read over the contract you signed with me. Get a qualified lawyer to tell you what we’ve agreed to and what we haven’t. Was there anything else you wanted to talk about?… No?… Then good morning, Mr. Crandall.”
He hung up. “All right; let’s get on with it,” he said. “Ben, you get them into the lunch room; there are enough tables and benches in there for everybody to take the written test in two relays.”
“The union’s gotta be represented while these tests is going on,” the union steward announced. “Mr. Crandall says I’m to stay here an’ watch what you do to these guys.”
“This man working for us?” Melroy asked Puryear.
“Yes. Koffler, Julius. Electrical fitter; Joe Ricci’s gang.”
“All right. See to it that he gets placed in the first relay for the written test, and gets first turn for the orals. That way he can spend the rest of his time on duty here for the union, and will know in advance what the test is like.” He turned to Koffler. “But understand this. You keep your mouth out of it. If you see anything that looks objectionable, make a note of it, but don’t try to interfere.”
The written tests, done on printed forms, required about twenty minutes. Melroy watched the process of oral testing and personal interviewing for a while, then picked up a big flashlight and dropped it into his overcoat pocket, preparatory to going out to inspect some equipment that had been assembled outside the reactor area and brought in. As he went out, Koffler was straddling a chair, glowering at Doris Rives and making occasional ostentatious notes on a pad.
* * * *
For about an hour, he poked around the newly assembled apparatus, checking the wiring, and peering into it. When he returned to the temporary office, the oral testing was still going on; Koffler was still on duty as watcher for the union, but the sport had evidently palled on him, for he was now studying a comic book.
Melroy left the reactor area and returned to the office in the converted area. During the midafternoon, somebody named Leighton called him from the Atomic Power Authority executive office, wanting to know what was the trouble between him and the I.F.A.W. and saying that a protest against his alleged high-handed and arbitrary conduct had been received from the union.
Melroy explained, at length. He finished: “You people have twenty Stuart tanks, and a couple of thousand soldiers and cops and undercover-men, here, guarding against sabotage. Don’t you realize that a workman who makes stupid or careless or impulsive mistakes is just as dangerous to the plant as any saboteur? If somebody shoots you through the head, it doesn’t matter whether he planned to murder you for a year or just didn’t know the gun was loaded; you’re as dead one way as the other. I should think you’d thank me for trying to eliminate a serious source of danger.”
“Now, don’t misunderstand my position, Mr. Melroy,” the other man hastened to say. “I sympathize with your attitude, entirely. But these people are going to make trouble.”
“If they do, it’ll be my trouble. I’m under contract to install this cybernetic system for you; you aren’t responsible for my labor policy,” Melroy replied. “Oh, have you had much to do with this man Crandall, yourself?”
“Have I had—!” Leighton sputtered for a moment. “I’m in charge of personnel, here; that makes me his top-priority target, all the time.”
“Well, what sort of a character is he, anyhow? When I contracted with the I.F.A.W., my lawyer and their lawyer handled everything; I never even met him.”
“Well—He has his job to do, the same as I have,” Leighton said. “He does it conscientiously. But it’s like this—anything a workman tells him is the truth, and anything an employer tells him is a dirty lie. Until proven differently, of course, but that takes a lot of doing. And he goes off half-cocked a lot of times. He doesn’t stop to analyze situations very closely.”
“That’s what I was afraid of. Well, you tell him you don’t have any control over my labor relations. Tell him to bring his gripes to me.”
* * * *
At sixteen-thirty, Doris Rives came in, finding him still at his desk.
“I have the written tests all finished, and I have about twenty of the tests and interviews completed,” she said. “I’ll have to evaluate the results, though. I wonder if there’s a vacant desk around here, anywhere, and a record player.”
“Yes, sure. Ask Joan to fix you up; she’ll find a place for you to work. And if you’re going to be working late, I’ll order some dinner for you from the cafeteria. I’m going to be here all evening, myself.”
Sid Keating came in, a short while later, peeling out of his overcoat, jacket and shoulder holster.
“I don’t think they got everything out of that reactor,” he said. “Radioactivity’s still almost active-normal—about eight hundred REM’s—and the temperature’s away up, too. That isn’t lingering radiation; that’s prompt radiation.”
“Radioactivity hasn’t dropped since morning; I’d think so, too,” Melroy said. “What are they getting on the breakdown counter?”
“Mostly neutrons and alpha-particles. I talked to Fred Hausinger, the maintenance boss; he doesn’t like it, either.”
“Well, I’m no nuclear physicist,” Melroy disclaimed, “but all that alpha stuff looks like a big chunk of Pu-239 left inside. What’s Fred doing about it?”
“Oh, poking around inside the reactor with telemetered scanners and remote-control equipment. When I left, he had a gang pulling out graphite blocks with RC-tongs. We probably won’t get a chance to work on it much before thirteen-hundred tomorrow.” He unzipped a bulky brief case he had brought in under his arm and dumped papers onto his desk. “I still have this stuff to get straightened out, too.”
“Had anything to eat? Then call the cafeteria and have them send up three dinners. Dr. Rives is eating here, too. Find out what she wants; I want pork chops.”
“Uh-huh; Li’l Abner Melroy; po’k chops unless otherwise specified.” Keating got up and went out into the middle office. As he opened the door. Melroy could hear a recording of somebody being given a word-association test.
>
* * * *
Half an hour later, when the food arrived, they spread their table on a relatively clear desk in the middle office. Doris Rives had finished evaluating the completed tests; after dinner, she intended going over the written portions of the uncompleted tests.
“How’d the finished tests come out?” Melroy asked her.
“Better than I’d expected. Only two washouts,” she replied. “Harvey Burris and Julius Koffler.”
“Oh, no!” Keating wailed. “The I.F.A.W. steward, and the loudest-mouthed I-know-my-rights boy on the job!”
“Well, wasn’t that to be expected?” Melroy asked. “If you’d seen the act those two put on—”
“They’re both inherently stupid, infantile, and deficient in reasoning ability and judgment,” Doris said. “Koffler is a typical adolescent problem-child show-off type, and Burris is an almost perfect twelve-year-old schoolyard bully. They both have inferiority complexes long enough to step on. If the purpose of this test is what I’m led to believe it is, I can’t, in professional good conscience, recommend anything but that you get rid of both of them.”
“What Bob’s getting at is that they’re the very ones who can claim, with the best show of plausibility, that the test is just a pretext to fire them for union activities,” Melroy explained. “And the worst of it is, they’re the only ones.”
The H. Beam Piper Megapack Page 33
