But even as a child Carson had never been comfortable in the dark.
‘This is ridiculous! ‘ said Carson irritably to Chief Patrol Officer Donovan, who was standing at attention on the other side of the desk. ‘What made you think it important enough to warrant an S-Eight form and what the blazes did the man do--what
could
he do in that place!--to make his department head want us to run a second security check on him? And sit down, George. Relax. Is the new job he applied for in an unusually sensitive area?’
‘Airframe fatigue testing on the stretched EH93, sir,’ said Donovan quickly, using Carson’s pause for breath to dispose of one of the questions. He sat, arms and legs arranged neatly, erect, comfortable and somehow still at attention. The late morning sunlight struck down at him like a golden spotlight, its light and heat almost completely absorbed by the thick, dark serge of his uniform.
‘There is nothing secret about the EH93,’ said Carson drily. ‘Their paperwork isn’t even Restricted. Why the S-Eight?’
Donovan blinked steadily for a few seconds, a sure sign that he was marshalling facts, then said, ‘Three days ago I was stopped by Mr Silverman. Among other things he mentioned that one of his men, Mr Pebbles, had applied for a job in another department. He seemed to treat this as a great joke, but suggested that a man like Pebbles should not be allowed to move freely within the company because he was God’s gift to Russian agents. Mr Silverman laughed a lot at his own suggestion. As you know, sir, he laughs practically all the time.
‘Yesterday he stopped me again and talked for about twenty minutes,’ Donovan went on. ‘During this period he mentioned Pebbles on five separate occasions, repeating what he had said earlier and adding that while Pebbles was one of the nicest people you could meet he was incapable of keeping his mouth shut. Mr Silverman made it plain that he did not think Pebbles was a security risk, but the man was little more than an organic tape-recorder who played back to anyone on request, and the security department should be officially notified of the situation.
‘That is why I made out the S-Eight, sir,’ Donovan concluded. ‘I think it’s ridiculous, too.’
Carson was silent for a moment while he stared at Donovan and thought. The office window had jammed again and the place was like an oven, but the other man sat there in his impossibly neat uniform with its quietly impressive rows of service ribbons, steady-eyed, firm-jawed and without a visible drop of perspiration on him. Probably he had a grown family, a fondness for gardening and a pair of comfortable old slacks at home, but Carson could not imagine him in anything else but a uniform or doing anything which was not strictly according to regulations.
‘You did the right thing, George,’ he said finally. ‘Since the matter has been brought officially to my attention I must do, or at least appear to do, something about it. Was there anything else...?’
When the senior patrol officer had gone the thought occurred to him that all this might simply be a build-up to one of Silverman’s jokes--an unusually elaborate one designed, perhaps, to make Carson look ridiculous. But initiating proceedings to carry out a security re-check on any employee was not something to be done as a joke. The procedure was much more thorough and wide-ranging than that carried out for a simple pre-employment check. As well as the long and costly investigation with its intensive surveillance and invasion of privacy, the implications for the man concerned were, to say the very least, serious...
The telephone derailed his train of thought, but only temporarily because it was Silverman.
‘Think of the Devil,’ said Carson drily, then went on, ‘Ted, I want to talk to you about the master-spy you’re harbouring in your department...’
Silverman laughed uproariously for several seconds before gaining control of the paroxysm with evident difficulty. ‘Joe, you’ll be the death of me! Master-spy, ha-ha. Obviously Donovan has been talking to you. Donovan is a good man, Joe, seriously. Conscientious, keen--maybe too keen, but that really isn’t a fault now, is it? I barely mentioned Pebbles to him, you know, but he jumped at it--practically bayed like a bloodhound--and insisted on making out an official report. Wish I had a few keen people like that in my department...’
Carson tried to imagine Donovan baying like a bloodhound or telling a lie and could do neither. Somebody was bending the truth.
‘ .. But I didn’t mean him to take it that seriously,’ Silverman was saying. ‘Pebbles is a good man, Joe. Hardworking. If he gets this new job I’ll be sorry to lose him, but I like to see people of his kind bettering themselves. Within limits, of course … ‘
‘Is he coloured?’
Silverman laughed again. ‘Are you suggesting I’m a racialist, Joe? No, he’s white, and the matter isn’t all that important. But I don’t think we should discuss it over the phone. Security, you know.’ He had another paroxysm of mirth which he switched off suddenly to add, ‘I’ll see you at lunch. And Joe, don’t forget to bring your cigarette-lighter-shaped tape-recorder...’
‘Lunch it is,’ said Carson, hanging up on the inevitable laughter.
Before returning to his paperwork Carson paused for a few minutes to wonder what it was about Pebbles that was so unimportant yet urgent. Was it possible that Silverman was on to something--something so tenuous or circumstantial that he risked making a fool of himself by reporting it directly? Carson doubted it. At the same time he could not help thinking that it would be nice if, just once, he could catch himself a spy.
Carson stared at his heaped IN tray without seeing it, sighed and slipped into his favourite day-dream.
It need not be a Fuchs or a Pontecorvo or even one of the professionals for whom the other side would be willing to swap a couple of imprisoned amateurs. He would settle for a simple case of passing on classified information for sale to the newspapers or another company. If he could even interrupt a minor act of sabotage and apprehend the culprit, that would satisfy him and serve to make people take his department and himself just a little more seriously.
Carson knew that he was not taken seriously, and neither was his department. That, of course, was nobody’s fault but his own. When he had first come to Hart-Ewing’s he had been very keen and just a little too smart--he had decided that to be a really efficient security officer he should project the image, not of an energetic new broom but of a rather average, bumbling character who was something of a fussy old woman. This meant that he could not take part in the many after-hours social and sporting activities sponsored by Hart-Ewing’s, that he could make a few if any close friends within the company and that he would probably grow fat through lack of strenuous exercise.
He had told himself that being popular or even well-liked was not everything and, for the first year or so in the job, Carson had actually believed it. He had worked very hard to establish his ineffectual, milk-and-watery character, telling himself that he had, after all, a very responsible job and that it did not really matter if his Superman rig was permanently hidden under a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows.
As a result he was now treated by the majority of the company’s twelve thousand-odd personnel with a mixture of amusement, irritation and dislike--the ingredients varying in strength and quantity in direct relation to his activities at the time--while his men were looked on as something between members of the company Gestapo and characters out of Gilbert and Sullivan.
They were the stupid, petty-minded officials who refused to allow a boy who had scarcely begun to shave to visit his girl during lunch-break in another part of the factory, just because his identity tag did not have the proper endorsements. When the level of pilfering rose above acceptable limits they subjected the workers to the monstrous indignity of opening the boots of their cars, causing a traffic pile-up at the gates and making everyone late for tea. And if a couple of windows were left open or a door left unlocked or, best of all, a cigarette left smouldering, the members of Carson’s Gestapo would become quite shrewish and a memo dripping with verbal acid would arrive on the department head’s desk first thing next morning...
As usual, Carson thought angrily, his day-dream was turning into a nightmare. The real source of his trouble lay in the fact that, despite the aura of authority, danger and intrigue which was supposed to surround a chief security officer, he had one of the most boring jobs imaginable. He knew this and accepted it most of the time.
But was he now finding it necessary to manufacture and chase will-o’-the-wisps like the ultra-secret space-drive project he had uncovered? Probably there was a simple explanation for the evidence he had found--provided it was considered separately, item by item, and not twisted into fantastic shapes to make it all fit together.
Angrily he reached for the first item in his tray, determined to tranquillise himself with an overdose of routine. It was an application for permission to visit the guided weapons production line, the rocket engine test area and the module assembly building by a reporter and photographer from one of the dailies. The purpose of the visit was stated as gathering material for an illustrated feature on the Hart-Ewing contribution to the nation’s aerospace industry. Simpson of the publicity department would escort the two newsmen during the visit.
The missile which they wanted to see being produced had been sold to so many different countries that the only thing secret about it was the name of the next customer, and the country concerned had already leaked even that for political reasons. The rocket engine test area did not worry him either--there was nothing to see but a lot of unclassified smoke and flames. In the module assembly area there were a few places which would have to be avoided for reasons of commercial rather than military security, certain processes which should not be photographed.
Simpson was aware of these places and would co-operate by avoiding them. Unlike Simpson, the majority of people at Hart-Ewing’s did not co-operate or volunteer information or offer helpful advice to the security department. That was why Carson was becoming so curious about the Pebbles business.
Curious but not suspicious.
When he arrived for lunch Silverman was nowhere in sight, but Bill Savage was sitting at an otherwise empty table for four so he joined him. A few moments later Savage said, ‘Please do.’
Carson grinned and said, ‘Thank you. I’m expecting company but before he comes I wonder if you could give me some information about an employee. I should ask one of your clerks instead of bothering you with it, but this isn’t official--I’m simply curious. The man’s name is Pebbles.’
Savage had been watching Carson’s face while he spoke but suddenly he looked down at his plate. From experience Carson knew that the personnel officer was not avoiding his eyes through embarrassment or guilt or because he was about to tell a lie--Savage was not that kind of man. It was just that when a person or thing offended him he tried not to look at it. Carson, apparently, had become offensive.
‘This seems to be my week,’ he said finally, ‘for being asked unofficial questions about Mr Pebbles. What do you want to know, and whose side are you on?’
‘I don’t know to both questions,’ Carson replied. ‘I’d just like to know what all the fuss is about.’
Savage nodded and looked up. He said, ‘His name is John Pebbles. Unmarried. Age about thirty. Medically fit but mentally somewhat retarded. We accepted him because it is company policy to employ a proportion of disabled persons on our work force. For the past three years he has been doing odd jobs, mostly fetching and carrying and sweeping floors in various factories. Now he has applied for a clerical position in another department and unless something happens to mess things up for him the grapevine says he’ll get it.’
‘I see,’ said Carson. ‘Is his present job difficult or unpleasant ...?’
‘Let’s say it lacks status,’ said Silverman, laughing as he joined them. Savage stared silently at the remains of his steak.
‘Seriously, Bill,’ Silverman went on, ‘you really should go a bit easier on your “Opportunities for Advancement” speech when you’re processing new employees--especially an obvious half-wit like Pebbles. Probably you feel sorry for him and would like to see him get on. The feeling does you credit, but let’s face it, Bill, Pebbles is not quite right in the head. You are in danger of making a simple-minded, basically happy man thoroughly discontented and unhappy ...’
Silverman was fairly radiating sincerity, but he rather spoiled the effect by addressing Carson as if he were a member of a jury, rather than Savage.
‘ ... With me he is doing a job well within his capabilities. Now, that is. In the early days he pulled some really stupid stunts like trying to ride an electric truck down two flights of stairs just because some other nitwit dared him to do it. Only I was sorry for him and he had managed to make friends in high places who asked me to let him stay … ‘
‘Who,’ said Carson suddenly, ‘asked you to let him stay?’
Silverman became less genial at being put off his stride. ‘Oh, Tillotson, Reece, a couple of people from the design office--until then I didn’t know they knew he existed. Maybe they were sorry for him, too, or maybe he isn’t as half-witted as he pretends. He certainly isn’t grateful--I gave him the job in the first place, kept him when he didn’t know left from right, trained him until he has become completely dependable and now I’m going to lose one of my best men because you, Bill, are too soft-hearted to treat men the way they should be treated in a big organisation like this, as productive units to be deployed with the greatest possible efficiency.
‘You know, Bill,’ Silverman ended with a great, bellowing laugh, ‘I sometimes think you should get a job in the MacNaughton Clinic where you can help handicapped people all the time … What’s wrong, Bill?’
‘I think I’ll skip dessert,’ said Savage, throwing his paper napkin at his half-finished lunch.
When he had gone Silverman laughed and said, ‘I think Bill takes things too seriously. Pebbles isn’t so important that people in our position should quarrel about him. At the same time I don’t think he should move to another department … ‘