“There was a table in the middle, and at the table was this little man. A towheaded little man with an immense beard and his hands and ankles all done up in chains. Slight as a blade of grass and still as a monk. And for some reason, I felt sad for the little prisoner. He seemed so alone. So alone in that awful place.
“So I said I would do it. Brightly congratulated me and gave me this enormous interview file. I said it would take hours to get through and he said that was fine, fine, just fine. And he smiled at me. I remember that.
“I went in there and I sat down with the little man and, well, I started talking. Hullo, I’m Jim, you seem to be in a difficult situation and I’m here to help, so on and so forth. Just like bargaining with any of the locals, you see. And for a long while the little man didn’t speak. Just stared at me, dead-eyed. Eyes like glaciers. Only way I could get him to talk was by offering him a cigarette. He almost ate the thing, he was so happy to have it. And then we started our discussion.
“I asked him what he was here for. And he said, ‘Robbery.’ And I said, ‘Oh, and you’re innocent, of course,’ and he said, ‘No.’ And I looked at him. Let him think it over. I asked, ‘You’re guilty of robbery?’ and he said, ‘Yes.’ I asked him who he had robbed and what he had stolen. He said he had stolen fifteen cases of pistol rounds from a McNaughton shipment. Us. He had robbed us. He had stolen our goods to sell to some warlord or another, and he didn’t give a damn, it seemed. That was a bit of a nasty shock. I couldn’t imagine why we would want such a man. But, well, I recovered and we went along.
“But as we spoke he seemed to change. It took place gradually, over a few hours, but I noticed after a while. His accent changed. Became American, Southwestern, like mine. He loosened up. And then we started talking. Not talking about work or prison or his past, but about me. About becoming Presbyterian. About Nap Lajoie and horses and Kipling. Things I loved. And we talked for hours. Hours and hours.
“And suddenly I had no idea why I had been so worried about this prisoner. He was a great fellow, smart and cheery. Like a kindred spirit. I told him so, told him I was astonished to find him here in prison. And that was when he cracked a little. Just a little. He looked at me, so sad, and asked if maybe he didn’t belong there. Maybe prison was where he should be. I told him no, no, a man like you is made for great things. Prison is no place for a man with such potential. And he nodded like he was agreeing. But, you know, I don’t think he ever really believed me. I think he would always believe that he belonged in that prison. That he deserved it, somehow.
“But I signed him. And when I came up I found Brightly and his men busy as bees, writing down this and talking about that. They had been watching, you see. I told them I had no idea why such a man was in prison, he seemed like a worthy man to me. Surely he must have had understandable reasons for his actions. And Brightly smiled at me and he said, ‘Evans, did you even get that man’s name?’
“Well, I was astounded. I’d forgotten, and I couldn’t believe it. I started to tear open the briefcase to see what he’d signed on all the forms when Brightly told me not to bother. They knew who he was. He was a smuggler and raider out of India, ex-British colonial. Son of an ambassador, they figured, been living off our shipping lines for years. They’d tried to catch him but, well, he always seemed to know when we were coming. It was like trying to catch a ghost. When they caught him it wasn’t out of any cleverness of their own, he was raving drunk in some bar and bragging. Then they tossed him in prison, and… and he survived. Which, really, was remarkable. Do you know, by any chance, how long a white man survives in a prison over there? Or any man? I can guarantee it’s not long. But he survived. Like he just knew when trouble was heading his way.
“And then, Brightly said, there was what he’d done in the cell in there. Hadn’t he changed? Hadn’t he somehow turned into the man I wanted to meet, the man I’d most like to talk to? And made me a friend. Did it in less than four hours, too. Said he’d done it to three other inquisitors. Turned them around and made them his. And then Brightly explained.” Evans frowned, thinking. “He said… Well. Child, you may think I’m mad for saying this, but-”
“I know what he can do,” Samantha said quietly.
Evans looked at her, stunned. “You do?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Just from watching him. And from things he said. Then I asked and he explained it to me himself. It doesn’t seem like a gift too often. It seems more like a disease.”
“Yes,” said Evans, still shaken. “Yes, I rather expect it does. You’re cleverer than me, my girl. Cleverer by far. Were you mad? Angry?”
“I was. At first.” She paused. “I do wish you had told me,” she said, stiffly.
He smiled feebly. “I wished I could have. Believe me, I know the anger you felt. I was furious at him. And at Brightly. I was furious he had exposed me to that man, but he said he had to see what would happen, just to see if what the prisoner had done to the other interrogators was coincidence. He’d been doing it all day, you see. And they needed a real signature on that paper, he said. A real executive. I didn’t know that was a load of hooey at the time, of course Brightly outranked me, he always has. But I believed it, and Brightly told me how a man like that might be useful. Might be useful for the company in these dangerous times. ‘Come on, man,’ he said. ‘Think of the company. Think of Willie, do it for Willie.’ Willie being William McNaughton, you see. And I said, ‘Do what, exactly?’
“And then he asked me if I was happy. Happy there in Pakistan. Using outhouses and riding horses everywhere and having to learn a new damn language every ten miles, he said. Asked me if I’d like to take up a job here, at Evesden Central Control. In the Nail itself.
“Well, I was stunned. I’d only been here once for a geology conference. Put on a presentation for a bunch of keen, clever young men who tore me apart. I asked him what I would do. And he said all I had to do was take care of their new man. The man downstairs. They didn’t really even know his name or how old he was. Said I had to learn that and then it was up to me to control him. To be his better. To make him useful for Willie and the company.
“And so I went downstairs. And he introduced himself for the first time. And that’s how I met Hayes. We talked some more and he signed on and laughed like it was all some grand joke. Maybe it was. I’m not sure.”
Evans sat in silence for a great while. Then he sighed and adjusted his glasses. “I’m not stupid. I know Brightly handpicked me as a go-between. Between himself and Hayes. Brightly doesn’t want anything in his head to get into Hayes’s, that’s for sure. Hayes was and is his star pupil, his big find. How he found him in Nalpur is beyond me, but he engineered it and he got us both from there to here, me dragging this mad dog by the leash. I suppose you’re wondering why I’m telling you this silly story,” he said, smiling weakly again.
“Well, I’m not sure, no.”
“My point is, I was a tool to them. To the higher-ups. As Hayes is. As you are. And I knew it. I did, I knew it. When I bought in I knew what they wanted me to be, and I still know now. Now that I’ve paid. But, you see, I know that it’s been worth something. In these past four years, well, we’ve made marvels. Things you wouldn’t believe. Things that may…” He paused, smiled, and said, “Well, I shouldn’t tell you this. We’re working to make things that may one day leave here and land in Europe in only a few hours. And more. They say these same devices may one day touch the sun and the moon and maybe beyond. The very stars, Miss Fairbanks. We’d reach the stars themselves. It’s very primitive right now, very primitive stages, as, well, I think we’ve made apparent through some recent mishaps, but it’s growing. And there’s more than that, child. I don’t know all the mechanics, but there’s one thing…” He trailed off, then shook his head as if he couldn’t believe it himself. “You know the Earth turns, Miss Fairbanks?” he asked.
Samantha nodded.
“Turns like a top, in space?”
&nbs
p; “Yes.”
“What if you could somehow harness that power? Develop something that was sensitive to that turning… and began to turn the other way as a reaction? What sort of power would that generate?”
She thought about it. It seemed like a simple enough suggestion but then as she put more thought into it she realized the enormity of the idea.
Evans chuckled. “Yes,” he said. “Everyone thinks of, oh, the trolleys and the phones and trains and airships. The conduits and the cranes. But there’s more. The bigger things are still being developed. How they come up with them, I don’t know. It’s like they pull these ideas from another world entirely. But we’re making a new age, Miss Fairbanks, right now. And we are but a part. Hayes is a part. I am a part. You. This city, even those in the slums and those in Newton and, yes, those in the Bridgedale neighborhood. We are all parts in a greater mechanism. Hayes alone has done more to protect the development of these ideas than he could ever know. The men he’s turned and bought and sold… He didn’t even care what he was doing it for. He just thought it was great sport. But he’s changed this company. One man has changed this company. And we will change the world in turn, in ways it can’t even expect.”
The car came to a stop. She and Evans looked around, surprised. Samantha found they were in front of a large, unmarked warehouse. “Oh, dear,” said Evans. “We’re here. I forgot to tell Wilford to drop you off. We’ll have to cut our conversation short, I’m afraid.”
“No, no,” she said. “No, please. Go on, if you have a bit more time.”
He considered it, then smiled. “Here. Come. Walk with me. You’ll accompany me inside and then Wilford can drop you off.”
“What meeting do you have to go to?”
“Oh, it’s a demonstration,” he said. He stepped out of the car and unfolded his umbrella. “This is one of our test facilities. It’s a basic meeting, I have them once every few months. About what’s next on the regional agenda.”
He gave instructions to Wilford and offered Samantha his arm. They walked together, past the barbed wire fence and the guards out front, to whom Evans explained that Samantha was only there to help him in. The guards grudgingly let her pass and they crossed the lot together.
“Tell me,” said Evans. “Why should I allow you and Mr. Hayes to continue on this tangent?”
“I’m sorry?” she asked.
“Why should I let you go on running amok in the Porter neighborhoods? Instead of chastising you, I mean. Humor me, please.”
“We have a chance of finding out who’s behind the Bridgedale trolley and the Newton murders,” she said. “We can tell everyone the truth. That it’s not our company. That it’s someone else.”
“Hm. Yes. That’s a goal, yes. But why do you want to do it?”
“To do it?”
“Yes. You worked quite a bit when it was just you, preparing the day for Hayes. But now you work overnight, and never even mention overtime. It’s not business, then. It seems personal now. Why is that?”
She thought as they walked to the front doors. More guards nodded and let them by, twirling their truncheons.
“There’s a boy,” she said quietly. “A little boy. Skiller was his father. He was the canal man they found with his throat cut.”
Evans’s walk slowed. He nodded. “I see,” he said faintly.
“We don’t know where he is. There was a letter his father wrote to him. A goodbye.”
“Yes,” said Evans.
“And there’s more. There’s more and, and… I don’t know,” she said. She found she was suddenly fighting back tears. “I don’t know. I stood in that little boy’s room and I looked through their things and they won’t ever be the same again. Won’t ever be touched. It won’t ever be a home again. And there’s Garvey. And Hayes. And this, this means something to them. I don’t know what it is but it gives them something I haven’t ever seen before. Something real. And I want it. I want it to do the same to me as it does to them.”
“Here, here,” Evans said softly. “Here. Calm down. Calm down. We can’t go in with you upset.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m usually not like this. It’s just, I saw their home and there was this little girl with flies all over her head and she was crying, she was crying and waiting for someone to come, and what Garvey and Hayes are doing… It’s like they think if they fix this one thing it’ll fix everything else. Even Hayes seems to think so, in some perverted way. And maybe it will. Maybe it will.”
“Yes,” Evans said. “Maybe it will.” He sighed and wiped the rain off his glasses. “I just wanted to see if there would be a good reason for me to explain all this to Brightly,” he said. “That’s all. And there is. Now come,” he said, offering her his arm again. “Come and see me in safely.”
She sniffed and dried her eyes. Then she took up his arm again and they walked in the front door. Inside was a long, low cement hallway with closed metal doors at the end.
“Do you think Mr. Hayes is of sound mind, sir?” she asked quietly as they walked.
“Oh, I’d say Mr. Hayes is of exceptionally sound mind, considering the things he’s seen,” said Evans, and pushed open the other set of doors.
Samantha nearly gasped. Before them was the largest room she had ever seen, or maybe it seemed that way because it was completely empty. The walls were gray and blank and made of enormous cement slabs so well put together that the seams were mere hairlines. The opposite wall had no markings at all except for a small door, beside which was a guard posted in a chair, reading a book.
“This is where you’re having your meeting?” asked Samantha, awed.
“Yes,” said Evans delightedly. “I told you, we’re making things here.”
They crossed to the small doorway. It took nearly a minute. She was reminded of Hayes’s warehouse, which was no more than a third of the size of this place. Then she realized it and this place and the common McNaughton facility schematics were similar. There was the warehouse portion, then something sunk down in the back, and then much, much more below…
The guard stood up and smiled at them. “How are you today, Mr. Evans?”
“Fine, thank you. How is Little Women?”
“Oh, it’s excellent. Thank you for recommending it to me.”
“Well, I want to make sure the time passes for you, Henry. Metal as usual?”
“Yes, sir,” said the guard. “And, she, uh…”
“Oh, nonsense, Henry. Miss Fairbanks just wanted to make sure I made it in all right,” said Evans. “She won’t be going down to see.” He winked at her, then took out his watch and his wallet and handed them over, and then removed his spectacles and put on a pair whose frames were made of wood. He removed his keys, the change he had, and then his belt. Henry took them all and stored them on a nearby table.
“Keep an eye on them, Henry,” said Evans.
“Oh, I will, sir. Always do.”
Samantha found herself staring at the wall. Then she looked down at her hands and her arms. She could not explain it, but she felt some strange prickliness standing here, like an electrical field, but somehow deeper. It was as though this section of the building was different from what she had passed through, and perhaps different from any other place she had ever been. She felt she was in some boundary or somehow soft place, a border beyond which things changed imperceptibly.
She looked up to find Evans smiling at her. “This is where we part,” he said. “I had a lovely chat with you.” He leaned close and whispered, “You feel it, don’t you? Don’t you?”
“Yes. What is it?”
He shrugged, then laughed. “I can’t say. Company policy. Let me know how your inquiry goes, Miss Fairbanks! I’ll watch it with interest.” Then the little old man waved and walked off into the dark hallway. She watched as he vanished into the shadows and the sounds of his footsteps faded into nothing. Then she stood there, unmoving.
“Are you all right, miss?” asked Henry.
“What? Ye
s. Yes, I…” She trailed off, then took a step forward. Henry stood to block her way.
“No, no,” she said. “I don’t want to go in, I just wondered if you’d mind if I…” She gestured at the walls.
Henry looked at the wall and smiled. “Sure. I do it all the time.”
Samantha nodded faintly and walked to the towering cement walls. She placed one hand on the stone and for a moment was disappointed. There was nothing. It was just cool cement, like the street outside. But then she felt it, very faintly…
Vibrations. So low and deep they could barely be felt at all. She paused, then put her ear to the wall. She heard a low, steady, measured pounding, like some enormous machinery operating somewhere nearby, behind the wall or below the floor, something moving to a tempo she could not identify but felt she had known her entire life.
Then she sensed it. The flow around her. Something moving. Changing. As if whatever operated below was bending and changing the very structure of the world as though it were no stronger than any other metal found in the hills.
She listened for some time. Maybe hours, maybe minutes. Then Henry coughed and she awoke from her trance. She walked away, head held high, and went and had a coffee before delivering her package to the Evesden Police Department and returning home. But for some reason she avoided sewer grates and street vents, and would not go near the trolley stations.
The Company Man Page 22
