The Company Man

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “I’m no working man, Princeling.”

  “You work very hard, Charlie. You’re always here.”

  “I don’t think they’re going to make a guild of denners, then. Why you want to know about unions, Princeling? What patch of ground you got your ear to?”

  “All of them. I’m just interested. Just curious.”

  Charlie cocked an eyebrow. “You sniffing for Mickey Tazz?”

  “What?”

  “Mickey Tazz. He’s the union man out of the Shanties, or at least that’s the rumor. He’s the man with the shit-stirring stick.”

  “No. No, I never heard of Mickey Tazz,” said Hayes. The pipegirl gently took his head and maneuvered it, her little fingers like ice. She brought the pipe up and Hayes sucked at it again. Numbing tendrils worked their way into his chest and then deep into his spine and up into the base of his brain. The light shuddered and yellowed like the soles of a man’s feet and the girl’s eyes were swallowed by inky blackness, some beautiful nocturnal creature with moth eyes and a pouting mouth waiting on his every word.

  “I wouldn’t go sniffing for Tazz, Princeling,” said Charlie’s voice from far away. “Tazz is a hard boy. He’ll fuck you up good and proper. Maybe even more than you fuck yourself up, see?”

  Someone began laughing, dry, smoky chuckles that rattled deep down in their chest. It took Hayes a moment to realize it was him.

  “I see,” he said. “I see.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Samantha awoke especially early to take the trolley from Newton down to McNaughton Southern Regional Office in Infield. She had read all she could about the trolley system, not willing to step on until she absolutely trusted it. After she woke she reviewed the stops and the timing, committed the schedule to memory, and then walked down to the station and reluctantly consented to be a passenger. Her planning quickly disintegrated as the malformed lump of machinery trundled up to the platform and released a rush of people that nearly bowled her over. The trolley did not look like a vehicle for transportation as much as it did a decrepit dance hall organ, covered in peeling gilding and bronze pipes. She clapped her hat to her head and squinted through the sea of bobbing heads to see the line number, and dashed aboard at the last moment. Once inside she shrank up against the wall as the vessel shuddered and lurched forward.

  She watched as the dark stone walls began to fly by. It was like they were speeding over black waters. The other passengers took this with no reaction, coughing or fingering newspapers in the low light. From time to time a conductor shambled through the aisle, looking scruffily regal in his porter’s uniform, his epaulettes askew and one brass button missing. A dogend was stuck behind his left ear and he groused and hassled passengers for tickets. When he demanded Samantha’s he studied it and then returned it as though it had personally insulted him.

  She came to Infield at eight minutes past six, fairly late by the schedule she had made for herself, and then headed off toward Southern Office, keeping to the route she had picked out the night before. She had taken the map with her, but the streets resembled the map in name only. What were straight lines on paper were meandering, dilapidated paths in real life. Shop fronts and home expansions tumbled off the sidewalk to squeeze roads into spaces just a few feet wide. In some places the streets ended entirely, without warning or explanation. And as she walked she began to realize there was something else wrong with the streets of Evesden, something more fundamental. After a while she realized it: there were no paving stones or cobblestones here. No seams, no cracks, no worn-down edges. The streets of Evesden were all smooth cement, almost like they were one huge piece, and the curbs were all sharp-cornered, having never seen the years of traffic common to other cities. She wondered what sort of machine could make a whole city block in one piece, especially when they were as tangled as this, and soon gave up, feeling somehow she had to be wrong.

  By the time she arrived at Southern Office she was disoriented and somewhat sweaty, but still forty minutes early for her meeting. She stopped in a small cafe to collect herself, ordered a small cup of coffee that was too hot to sip, and then began to carefully make the proper corrections to her map. She was not sure if it was at all possible to make an accurate map of Evesden, as all those available seemed misinformed to at least some degree, but she was willing to try anyway.

  It had been a strange trip here to Infield, but the journey to Evesden had been even stranger and longer. Samantha had never expected to be here, even under these circumstances. When she had been a child following her father from military base to military base in the East she’d heard of this wondrous city out on the edge of the ocean, but it’d never actually been real to her, at least no more real than Heaven or Fairyland. Then when she’d begun serving in the hospitals it had slowly become more present. Officers and engineers she had met in the service began getting bought out by the famous McNaughton Corporation, forever extending its grasp. “Turning company,” they’d called it, and it was always “the company,” never just “McNaughton.” There simply wasn’t another kind. And then when one once-corporal had mentioned in friendly conversation that she seemed to have a solid head on her shoulders and they could use her sort in the company, she’d found herself agreeing to a position and suddenly she was receiving communications from this mysterious jewel on the other side of the world.

  When she’d been given her new assignment and transferred to Evesden she hadn’t been sure what to expect. To Samantha, McNaughton was synonymous with order and institution. She’d found her true calling in the arms of the company, trawling through their labyrinthine files and setting their information to rights, and they’d greatly appreciated her work. So she had expected the home city to be something new, a place ruled with intelligence, perception, and efficiency, a paragon of the ideals McNaughton valued and rewarded. Yet she’d found something very different. Evesden was the most confusing city she’d seen yet. You couldn’t walk a block and stay on the same street. Not even the maps made any sense. And how disappointed she’d been to find McNaughton treated rude, shabby little men as if they were the most important employees in the world, for no reason she could see.

  Samantha sketched out her latest route but stopped as she questioned one adjustment. Then as she glanced around the cafe she noticed a blond, rumpled figure slouching in a booth by the windows. It was Hayes himself, a mountain of cigarette butts in the ashtray before him and an entire pot of coffee cooling beside it. He wore a curious pair of small blue spectacles that he kept pushing farther and farther up his nose. Stacks of files sat in a heap on the table and in the booth, one open in his lap. She recognized them as the ones she had prepared the day before for their first set of interview subjects.

  Sighing inwardly, she stood and walked over to him and said, “Good morning, Mr. Hayes.”

  He nodded slowly without taking his eyes off the file. He did not seem at all surprised to see her.

  “How are you doing?” she asked.

  Still he did nothing. One of his eyebrows may have twitched a bit, she wasn’t sure. Then he reached forward and salvaged one cigarette from the graveyard on the table and took a smoldering drag. He vanished behind a cloud of foul smoke. Samantha turned her head away as it drifted toward her.

  He said, “These are very good.”

  “Pardon?” she said.

  “These are very good. These files.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Very thorough. They’ll make my job a lot easier.”

  “I’m surprised you got them so quickly,” she said. “I sent them late last night.”

  “Mm.”

  “You must have gotten up early to get them.”

  “I never went to bed,” he said.

  “Oh,” she said, startled.

  “Your coffee’s getting cold.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  He nodded at the other side of the cafe. “Your coffee. At that table over there.”

  “Oh, yes. May I sit with you?”

/>   “If you can find space.”

  She went and got her cup and made a small clearing across from him and sat.

  “How’d you get these so quick?” he asked. “I mean, I learned who we’re supposed to be interviewing just today.”

  “They gave me a day’s head start,” she said.

  “And you managed to pull… what was that, doctors’ records in a day?”

  “Yes. They should be valuable, too.”

  “Doctors’ records? In what way?”

  “In many ways, if you’re, well. Creative.”

  Hayes smirked. “I’ll try my best. But let’s hedge our bets. Please enlighten me.”

  “Well, for example, Mr. McClintock is an alcohol addict.”

  “So? Are we going to tempt him with gin?”

  “Nothing so grotesque,” she said, sliding out the relevant file and flipping it open. “I have him scheduled to be redirected here as soon as he gets in to work, which I think should be about nine, if his time cards are anything to go by.”

  “So he’ll be too exhausted and half-drunk to be much of a liar,” said Hayes. His smirk turned into a smile.

  “That’s the idea. And for tomorrow, Mr. Vanterwerp has significant digestive problems, so-”

  “So I’m going to guess that you have him penciled in right after lunch.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s pretty dirty pool.”

  “It’ll work.”

  “I have no doubt.” He went back to the pile, shaking out one sheaf. Samantha frowned as several papers slid off the table into the opposite booth, but said nothing. Hayes read in silence. As he did she noticed he was wearing the same clothes from the last time she’d seen him. One cuff was trapped far up in his coat sleeve and his tie was barely hanging on. A serious stubble was collecting on the line of his jaw and clouds of black hovered below each red-rimmed eye.

  “Who do you think is the most likely?” she asked.

  “The most likely for what?” he said.

  “To be working for the union. To be a saboteur.”

  He smirked. “None.”

  “What?”

  “None of them are working for the union.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Well, I don’t, for sure. But I can say that these are foremen and overseers with rather high-paying jobs in comparison to others below them. They’ve been working for twenty years to get this sort of security. They don’t want to lose it. Their men, on the other hand, have no security at all,” said Hayes, and flipped over a page. “They work relatively unskilled labor for shit wages, wages that have been undercut twice in the past three months. So it’s their boys who are trouble, and the foremen, as men with much to lose, will probably give a few of them up. Even the alky. What’s his name again?”

  “McClintock.”

  “Right,” he said. “Have some more coffee.”

  At seven they walked down to Southern Office with the mass of files stuffed under Hayes’s arm. The building was very utilitarian, not half as lavish as the Nail. Its cement walls were hastily painted and naked bulbs flickered in the ceiling. Workmen, not clerks, sauntered through the halls, eyeing them suspiciously. Hayes spoke to the front receptionist, a greasy little man named Neal who had half his shirt unbuttoned. Hayes passed the reins over to Samantha, who began scheduling all the interviews at an hour apiece.

  “No,” said Hayes. “Three hours.”

  “Three hours? You’re sure this will take three hours?” she asked.

  “Yes. Three. Apiece.”

  She frowned but then rescheduled them with Neal, who was none too pleased to take orders from a fancy downtown woman, but did it anyway.

  Hayes made only one other request apart from the time. He asked that Neal reserve two rooms for the interviews, small ones isolated from the rest of the building, but next to one another.

  “Put our interview subjects in one room, and I’ll prepare in the other,” he said.

  “You need two rooms?” Neal asked flatly.

  “Yes.”

  “What if we don’t have two rooms?”

  “Then we’ll wait. And when the Nail asks where we are and what the holdup is, you can tell them.”

  “Fine, fine… What’s all this about, anyways?”

  “Promotions,” said Hayes simply. “There are some spots to fill and we’re screening our prospects.”

  They set up in a tiny corner of the building on the third floor, one room a small meeting room and the other practically a broom closet. Hayes dragged a chair into the closet and set the files on the floor.

  “All right. I’ll stay in here and get ready,” he said.

  “You want to stay here?” Samantha asked.

  “Certainly. You sit in the meeting room and wait for Mr. McClintock. When he comes, tell him he’s to be interviewed by, oh”-he thought for a bit-“Mr. Staunton, and then come and tell me he’s here. Then go back in and tell him I’ll be in in a bit.”

  “But why?”

  “I want to make him wait.”

  She went back to the meeting room and sat at the table, confused, but said nothing. At eight forty-five McClintock stumbled in, a short, squat man with a bloodred face and fat butcher’s hands. He looked extremely wary. Samantha wondered if he had ever been in the Southern Office before.

  “Please take a seat,” she said, and gestured to a chair at the little table.

  “Okay,” said McClintock, and sat.

  “I’ll go and tell Mr. Staunton you’re here.”

  “All right.”

  She walked out, shut the door, then walked two feet over and opened the door of the broom closet. Hayes was seated in a chair and was leaning its back up against the wall, hands behind his head, eyes somewhat closed like he was dozing.

  “He’s here,” she said softly.

  “Mmm-hmm.” He did not open his eyes.

  “When will you be in?”

  He shrugged, then waved dismissively.

  Samantha returned to the meeting room. “He’s somewhat delayed,” she told Mr. McClintock. “Please make yourself at home.”

  McClintock blinked his red eyes and settled down in his chair further. His head drooped forward inch by inch and within a few minutes he was asleep. Samantha watched as his shoulders rose and fell, then sighed and checked her watch. After a half-hour she got up and walked back to the broom closet. Hayes was still in the exact same position, gently rocking back and forth on two legs of the chair.

  “Well?” she said.

  “Well what?” he said quietly.

  “He’s asleep. If you’re trying to rattle him he certainly doesn’t know it.”

  “I’m not trying to rattle him.”

  “Then what are you trying to do?”

  “Please go back in and do whatever it is you were doing. Note-taking, or whatever. It’s very important.” He waved her away again.

  More time passed. Samantha slumped in her chair, taking notes every five minutes, mostly out of spite. Twenty minutes later the door burst open, causing her to jump and Mr. McClintock to snort and sit up. Hayes swept in and slammed McClintock’s file down on the table before him, saying, “Sorry I’m late, this place is incredibly confusing. Now give me a minute, if you please, because I’m not entirely sure why I’m here.” He dumped himself in the chair before McClintock and put his feet up on the table with a groan. “You don’t mind, do you?” he asked.

  “No,” said McClintock, bewildered.

  “Great. Grand,” he said, and began studying a report that, if Samantha was right, he had read twice already.

  After several more minutes McClintock asked, “Why am I here, exactly?”

  “Promotion, this says,” Hayes said. He slapped the paper. “You’re up for one, it seems. I’m to screen you.”

  “To what?”

  “To screen you. I’m Staunton, Andrew Staunton, Personnel.” He stuck out his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you,” said McClintock, shaking
.

  “Great,” said Hayes. Samantha noticed he no longer spoke with an English accent. This was harder, American, inner-city.

  “Did you say I’m up for a promotion?” McClintock asked.

  “Seems that way,” said Hayes.

  “To overseer?”

  “That would be the one, it says,” said Hayes. “But there’s just a few general questions we need to ask first. You know, a procedure they send me around to have everyone go through. It’s nothing, just hoops everyone has to jump through. I’ve got a bunch more scheduled for today, very basic stuff. All right?”

  “Sure,” said McClintock, still rubbing sleep from his eyes.

  They did start out basic. They went over his job title, amount of time worked at McNaughton, marriage status, children, current wages, expected wages. Health, date of birth. Output. But eventually they shifted slightly, just slightly. Any issues on the line, Hayes asked. Problems with workers? Accidents, even? When? How long ago? Specific reasons for each? Were you present for these occurrences? McClintock became noticeably perturbed by these questions. He sat up straight in his chair and blinked as he tried to focus on Hayes and insisted that he ran a clean ship, you know, and he wasn’t sure what all these questions were about but he didn’t like them one bit. He’d been working diligently for more than thirty years and he didn’t like having such accusations tossed in his face at the crack of dawn. Hayes immediately understood. Course not, course you don’t, you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t run a clean ship, but no career goes by without a blotch or two. “It’s just for the records,” Hayes explained. “Just for records. I hate record-taking as much as you do.” Then Hayes took a deep, exhausted breath, glanced surreptitiously at Samantha, and leaned forward to softly ask McClintock something. Samantha could not hear what he’d said, but McClintock looked astonished. Then he half-smiled in disbelief and nodded. Hayes produced a small porcelain thermos from his coat and took a sip and passed it to McClintock, who drank deeply. Samantha opened her mouth and wondered if she should say something. Hayes did not look at her to communicate any message and so she chose to stay quiet.