Vonnegut, Kurt - Player Piano (v5.0)

by Player Piano [lit]

  Katharine hardly looked up when he came in. She seemed lost in melancholy, and, on the other side of the room, on the couch that was virtually his, Bud Calhoun was staring at the floor.

  "Can I help?" said Paul.

  Katharine sighed. "Bud wants a job."

  "Bud wants a job? He's got the fourth-highest-paid job in Ilium now. I couldn't equal what he gets for running the depot. Bud, you're crazy. When I was your age, I didn't make half -"

  "Ah want a job," said Bud. "Any job."

  "Trying to scare the National Petroleum Council into giving you a raise? Sure, Bud, I'll make you an offer better than what you're getting, but you've got to promise not to take me up on it."

  "Ah haven't got a job any more," said Bud. "Canned."

  Paul was amazed. "Really? What on earth for? Moral turpitude? What about the gadget you invented for -"

  "Thet's it," said Bud with an eerie mixture of pride and remorse. "Works. Does a fine job." He smiled sheepishly. "Does it a whole lot better than Ah did it."

  "It runs the whole operation?"

  "Yup. Some gadget."

  "And so you're out of a job."

  "Seventy-two of us are out of jobs," said Bud. He slumped even lower in the couch. "Ouah job classification has been eliminated. Poof." He snapped his fingers.

  Paul could see the personnel manager pecking out Bud's job code number on a keyboard, and seconds later having the machine deal him seventy-two cards bearing the names of those who did what Bud did for a living - what Bud's machine now did better. Now, personnel machines all over the country would be reset so as no longer to recognize the job as one suited for men. The combination of holes and nicks that Bud had been to personnel machines would no longer be acceptable. If it were to be slipped into a machine, it would come popping right back out.

  "They don't need P-128's any more," said Bud bleakly, "and nothing's open above or below. Ah'd take a cut, and go back to P-129 or even P-130, but it's no dice. Everything's full up."

  "Got any other numbers, Bud?" said Paul. "The only P-numbers we're authorized are -"

  Katharine had the Manual open before her. She'd already looked the numbers up. "P-225 and P-226 - lubrication engineers," she said. "And Doctor Rosenau's got both of those."

  "That's right, he does," said Paul. Bud was in a baffling mess, and Paul didn't see how he could help him. The machines knew the Ilium Works had its one allotted lubrication engineer, and they wouldn't tolerate a second. If Bud were recorded as a lubrication engineer and introduced into the machines, they'd throw him right out again.

  As Kroner often said, eternal vigilance was the price of efficiency. And the machines tirelessly riffled through their decks again and again and again in search of foot draggers, free riders, and misfits.

  "You know it isn't up to me, Bud," said Paul. "I haven't got any real say about who's taken on."

  "He knows that," said Katharine. "But he has to start somewhere, and we thought maybe you'd know of some opening, or who to see."

  "Oh, it makes me sore," said Paul. "Whatever got into them to give you a Petroleum Industries assignment, anyway? You should be in design."

  "Got no aptitude for it," said Bud. "Tests proved that."

  That would be on his ill-fated card, too. All his aptitude-test grades were on it - irrevocably, immutable, and the card knew best. "But you do design," said Paul. "And you do it with a damn sight more imagination than the prima donnas in the Lab." The Lab was the National Research and Development Laboratory, which was actually a war-born conglomeration of all the country's research and development facilities under a single headquarters. "You're not even paid to design, and still you do a better job of it than they do. That telemetering arrangement for the pipeline, your car, and now this monster that runs the depot -"

  "But the test says no," said Bud.

  "So the machines say no," said Katharine.

  "So that's that," said Bud. "Ah guess."

  "You might see Kroner," said Paul.

  "Ah tried, and didn't get past his secretary. Ah told her Ah was after a job, and she called up Personnel. They ran mah card through the machines while she held the phone; and then she hung up, and looked sad, and said Kroner had meetings all month."

  "Maybe your university can help," said Paul. "Maybe the grading machine needed new tubes when it went over your development aptitude test." He spoke without conviction. Bud was beyond help. As an old old joke had it, the machines had all the cards.

  "Ah've written, asking them to check my grades again. No matter what Ah say, Ah get the same thing back." He threw a piece of graph paper on Katharine's desk. "Theah. Ah've written three letters, and gotten three of these back."

  "Uh-huh," said Paul, looking at the familiar graph with distaste. It was a so-called Achievement and Aptitude Profile, and every college graduate got one along with his sheepskin. And the sheepskin was nothing, and the graph was everything. When time for graduation came, a machine took a student's grades and other performances and integrated them into one graph - the profile. Here Bud's graph was high for theory, there low for administration, here low for creativity, and so on, up and down across the page to the last quality - personality. In mysterious, unnamed units of measure, each graduate was credited with having a high, medium, or low personality. Bud, Paul saw, was a strong medium, as the expression went, personality-wise. When the graduate was taken into the economy, all his peaks and valleys were translated into perforations on his personnel card.

  "Well, thanks anyway," said Bud suddenly, gathering up his papers, as though embarrassed at having been so weak as to bother anyone with his troubles.

  "Something will turn up," said Paul. He paused at his office door. "How are you fixed for money?"

  "They're keepin' me on a few more months, until all the new equipment gets installed. And Ah've got the award from the suggestion system."

  "Well, thank God you got something out of it. How much?"

  "Five hundred. It's the biggest one this year."

  "Congratulations. Is that on your card?"

  Bud held the rectangle of cardboard up to the window and squinted at the nicks and perforations. "Think thet little devil raht there's it."

  "That's for your smallpox vaccination," said Katharine, looking over his shoulder. "I've got one of those."

  "No, the little triangle next to thet one."

  Katharine's phone rang. "Yes?" She turned to Paul. "A Doctor Finnerty is at the gate and wants in."

  "If it's just to shoot the bull, tell him to wait until late this afternoon."

  "He says he wants to see the plant, not you."

  "All right; let him in."

  "They're shorthanded at the gate," said Katharine. "One of the guards is down with flu. What'll they do about an escort for him?"

  The few visitors that did get admitted to the Ilium Works were taken about by guides, who only incidentally pointed out the wonders of the place. The guides were armed, and their main job was to see that no one got close enough to vital controls to knock them out. The system was a holdover from the war, and from the postwar riot period, but it still made sense. Every so often, antisabotage laws notwithstanding, someone got it into his head to jimmy something. It hadn't happened in Ilium for years, but Paul had heard reports from other works - reports of a visitor with a crude bomb in a briefcase in Syracuse; of an old lady in Buffalo stepping from a group of sightseers to jam her umbrella into some vital clockwork. . . . Things like that still happened, and Kroner had stipulated that visitors to plants should be watched every second. The saboteurs had come from every walk of life - including, in at least one hushed-up instance, the brass. As Kroner had said, you never could tell who was going to try it next.

  "Oh, what the hell, let Finnerty in without an escort," said Paul. "He's a special case - an old Ilium man."

  "The directive said no exceptions," said Katharine. She knew all of the directives - and there were thousands of them - cold.

  "Let him roam."

&
nbsp; "Yessir."

  Bud Calhoun watched the interchange with far more interest than it merited, Paul thought. It was as though they had been putting on an absorbing drama. When Katharine hung up she mistook his gaze for adoration and returned it warmly.

  "Six minutes," said Bud.

  "Six minutes for what?" said Katharine.

  "Six minutes foah nothin'," said Bud. "It took thet long to get a man in through the gate."

  "Well?"

  "Three of you tied up for six minutes - you two and the guard. Eighteen man minutes in all. Hell, it cost over two bucks to let him in. How many people come to the gate a year?"

  "Ten a day, maybe," said Paul.

  "Twenty-seven hundred and fifty-eight a year," said Katharine.

  "And you pass on each one?"

  "Katharine usually does," said Paul. "That's the biggest part of her job."

  "At a dollah a head, thet's twenty-seven hundred dollahs a year," said Bud reproachfully. He pointed at Katharine. "This is ridiculous! If policy is iron-clad, why not let a machine make the decisions? Policy isn't thinkin', it's a reflex. You could even build a gadget with an exception for Finnerty and still get away foah less than a hundred dollahs."

  "There are all sorts of special decisions I have to make," said Katharine defensively. "I mean, all sorts of things come up that require more than routine thought - more than any old machine could do."

  Bud wasn't listening. He held his palms apart, marking the size of the box being born in his imagination. "Either a visitor is a nonentity, a friend, an employee, small brass, or big brass. The guard presses one of five buttons in the top row on the box. See it? Either the visitor is sight-seein', inspectin', makin' a personal call, or here on business. The guard pushes one of four buttons in thet row. The machine has two lights, a red one for no, and a green one for yes. Whatever the policy is, bingo! - the lights tell him what to do."

  "Or we could tack a memo about policy on the guardhouse wall," said Paul.

  Bud looked startled. "Yes," he said slowly, "you could do thet." It was clear he thought it was a pretty drab man who would think much of that solution.

  "I'm mad," said Katharine, her voice small. "You have no right to go around saying a machine can do what I do."

  "Aw, now honey - there wasn't anything personal in it."

  She was crying now, and Paul slipped into his office and shut the door.

  "Your wife's on the phone," said Katharine brokenly on the intercom set.

  "All right. Yes, Anita?"

  "Have you heard from Kroner?"

  "No. I'll let you know if I do."

  "I hope he had a good time last night."

  "He did - or firmly believes he did."

  "Is Finnerty there?"

  "In the plant somewhere."

  "You should see the bathroom."

  "I saw it in the making."

  "He had four cigarettes going, and forgot about every one of them. One on top of the medicine cabinet, one on the window sill, one on the top of the john, and one on the toothbrush rack. I couldn't eat my breakfast. He's got to go."

  "I'll tell him."

  "What are you going to tell Kroner?"

  "I don't know yet. I don't know what he's going to say."

  "Pretend I'm Kroner and I've just said, sort of casually, 'Well, Paul, the Pittsburgh spot is still open.' Then what do you say?"

  This was the game she never tired of - one that took every bit of Paul's patience to play. She was forever casting herself as a person of influence and making Paul play dialogues with her. There would then be a critique, in which his responses were analyzed, edited, and polished by her. No real dialogues ever came close to her phantasies, which served chiefly to show how primitive a notion she had of men of affairs and of how business was done.

  "Go on," she prodded.

  "Pittsburgh, eh?" said Paul. "Holy smokes! Wow!"

  "No, now, I'm serious," she said firmly. "What will you say?"

  "Darling, I'm busy now."

  "All right; you think it over and call me back. You know what I think you should say?"

  "I'll call you back."

  "All right. Goodbye. I love you."

  "I love you, Anita. Goodbye."

  "Doctor Shepherd is on the phone," said Katharine.

  Paul picked up the now moist instrument again. "What's the matter now, Shep?"

  "There's an unauthorized man in Building 57! Get the guards down here."

  "Is it Finnerty?"

  "An unauthorized man," said Shepherd stubbornly.

  "All right. Is it an unauthorized Finnerty?"

  "Yes - but that's beside the point. It makes no difference what his name is. He's roaming around without an escort, and you know how Kroner feels about that."

  "I gave him permission. I know he's down there."

  "You're putting me in a sweet spot."

  "I don't get you."

  "I mean I'm responsible for these buildings, and now you're telling me to ignore very specific orders from Kroner. Am I supposed to be left holding the bag if word gets out?"

  "Look, just forget it. It's all right. I'll take the responsibility."

  "In other words, you order me to let Finnerty go through unescorted."

  "Yes - that's it. I order you."

  "O.K., I just wanted to make sure I had it straight. Berringer wondered about it, too, so I had him listen in."

  "Berringer?" said Paul.

  "Yeah!" said Berringer.

  "Just keep this under your hat is all."

  "You're the boss," said Berringer flatly.

  "All squared away now, Shepherd?" said Paul.

  "I guess. And are we to understand that you've authorized him to make drawings, too?"

  "Drawings?"

  "Layouts."

  At this point Paul realized that his judgment had been pushed into the background by more emotional matters, but he decided it was too late to do anything about it gracefully. "Let him do what he wants. He may come up with some useful ideas. All right?"

  "You're the boss," said Shepherd. "Isn't that right, Berringer?"

  "He's the boss," said Berringer.

  "I'm the boss," said Paul, and he let the telephone clatter into its cradle.

  Bud Calhoun was still trying to patch things up with Katharine in the next office. His voice had become wheedling and penetrating. Paul could understand snatches of it.

  "As far as thet goes," Bud was saying, "it wouldn't be much of a trick to replace him with a gadget." Paul had a good idea where Bud's stubby index finger was pointing.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Finnerty apparently found plenty to entertain himself with in the Ilium Works. He didn't appear in Paul's office until late in the afternoon. When he did arrive, Katharine Finch gave a small cry of surprise. He'd let himself in through two locked doors with keys he'd presumably failed to turn in when he left the plant for Washington years before.

  Paul's door was ajar, and he heard the conversation.

  "Don't go for your rod, lady. The name's Finnerty."

  Katharine did have a gun somewhere in her desk, though no ammunition. That secretaries should be armed was a regulation held over from the old days, too; one Kroner thought well enough of to revive in a directive.

  "You're not authorized to have those keys," she said coldly.

  "Have you been crying?" said Finnerty.

  "I'll see if Doctor Proteus can see you."

  "What is there to cry about? See - none of the red lights are on, no buzzers going off, so all's well with the world."

  "Send him in, Katharine," called Paul.

  Finnerty walked in and sat on the edge of Paul's desk. "What's the matter with Miss Policy out there?"

  "Broken engagement. What's on your mind?"

  "Thought we'd have a couple of drinks - if you feel like listening."

  "All right. Let me call Anita and tell her we'll be late for supper."

  Katharine got Anita on the line, and Paul told his wife what
he was up to.

  "Have you thought out what you'd say to Kroner if he told you Pittsburgh was still open?"

  "No - it's been a hell of a day."

  "Well, I've been thinking about it, and -"

  "Anita, I've got to go."

  "All right. I love you."

  "I love you, Anita. Goodbye." He looked up at Finnerty. "O.K., let's go." He felt somehow conspiratorial, and got a small lift from the feeling. Being with Finnerty had often had that effect. Finnerty had an air of mysteriousness about him, an implication that he knew of worlds unsuspected by anyone else - a man of unexplained absences and shadowy friends. Actually, Finnerty let Paul in on very little that was surprising, and only gave him the illusion of sharing in mysteries - if, indeed, there were any. The illusion was enough. It filled a need in Paul's life, and he went gladly for a drink with the odd man.

  "Is there somewhere I can reach you?" said Katharine.

  "No, I'm afraid not," said Paul. He planned to go to the Country Club, where he could be reached easily enough. But, on an impulse, he indulged his appetite for secretiveness.

  Finnerty had come over in Paul's station wagon. They left it at the Works and took Paul's old car.

  "Across the bridge," said Finnerty.

  "I thought we'd go to the club."

  "This is Thursday, isn't it? Do the civic managers still have their big dinner there on Thursdays?"

  The civic managers were the career administrators who ran the city. They lived on the same side of the river as the managers and engineers of the Ilium Works, but the contact between the two groups was little more than perfunctory and, traditionally, suspicious. The schism, like so many things, dated back to the war, when the economy had, for efficiency's sake, become monolithic. The question had arisen: who was to run it, the bureaucrats, the heads of business and industry, or the military? Business and bureaucracy had stuck together long enough to overwhelm the military and had since then worked side by side, abusively and suspiciously, but, like Kroner and Baer, each unable to do a whole job without the other.

  "Not much changes in Ilium," said Paul. "The civic managers will be there all right. But if we get over there this early, we can get a booth in the bar."