Herbie never really understood why he had been allocated a parking space only twenty-five yards from his office when the usual distance between parking slot and place of employment was nearer half a mile, but it had made him Carson’s friend for life.
Taking advantages of that friendship made Carson feel like a particularly obnoxious form of ghoul.
‘... The material wasted, made up to wrong specs and scrapped during the past few years … You just wouldn’t believe it, Joe.’
‘Try me,’ said Carson.
‘It’s a complicated business. To understand what has been going on you would really have had to observe the temporary bouts of insanity which periodically overtakes our masters--some of our masters, that is. The ones who spend fifty-one weeks in the year counting pennies and one week chucking thousands down the drain!‘
‘Are you bitching about your immediate lord and master, or lords and masters generally?’ said Carson, forcing a tone of indifference into his voice. Herbie’s immediate superior was Reg Saunderson, the company’s chief accountant.
‘I’m talking about one in particular,’ Herbie replied, He shook his head and went on, ‘Could you believe that somebody at the top could make a mistake and, apparently to save face, let the error go down through planning, tooling, estimating and production not only to the point where metal was cut but to the major sub-assembly stage? Could you also believe that the sub-assemblies concerned, which in one case had been intended for the Panda module if they had been properly dimensioned, did not reach the scrap pile? They were dumped somewhere out of sight for a while and eventually sold or written off in such a way that on paper, at least, we did not show a loss.’
‘Incredible...’ said Carson.
By the time he left Patterson’s office he was in possession of a great deal of information on clerical trace-covering but knew very little about what it was that was being covered up. He had done about as much prying into Reg Saunderson’s department as it was possible for him to do without making his interest too obvious, but there was the module final assembly and inspection area which was the joint responsibility of the project members Brady and Soames. He had time to get there with a few minutes to spare before lunch.
George Long was a big, soft-spoken man who smiled a lot, but it put an unfair strain on his good humour when someone like Carson started a complicated and seemingly pointless conversation with him just a few minutes before lunch break.
The timing had been deliberate, however. Carson did not want to give the impression that he was interested in anything in particular, and he had a theory that a man in a hurry somewhere told more and remembered less than one with plenty of time to talk.
‘This is not a security matter, George, but I worry about it sometimes,’ said Carson, worriedly. ‘The stuff is scrap--very expensive scrap, I admit--but of little or no value to the company. At the same time it would be wrong for people to take it home ...’
‘I take your point, Joe,’ said George, shaking his head in awe. ‘Gawd, just imagine a rabbit hutch made from part of a Panda nose-cone! That really would be getting one up on the neighbours. But don’t worry yourself about it. We are forced to reject components, even major sub-assemblies, for various reasons and they are either modified or scrapped. But we do not allow the men to take them away. As a matter of fact, in some cases we don’t even sell them to the scrap metal dealers. I don’t know what happens to them ultimately but I believe some of them can be used for structural testing or for ground training purposes ...’
‘George,’ said Carson suddenly. ‘Don’t let me make you late for lunch ...’
The end of shift siren was not loud enough to drown the hypothetical sound of another piece of the puzzle falling into place.
During lunch Carson thought that it was a ridiculous way to carry out an investigation. His only consolation was that the people engaged on this project-that-never-was had to be similarly circumspect in everything they did and said. They had to be especially careful how they used people, people like Pebbles. Was it possible that his promotion to the EH93 test programme had been planned by the project members because they had in mind a more important use for him than moving waste paper? The EH93 was not sensitive, of course, but once into a structural test area it was very much easier to move across ladders of promotion than it was to move up. He would not have minded betting that Pebbles would apply for another transfer in the not too distant future.
He would have to find out a lot more about the man. It was a good thing that he had good, acceptable reasons--as well as the real ones--for the questions he was going to ask Dr Marshall.
Like Herbie Patterson, Dr Marshall also felt indebted to Carson--although in her case the parking slot was forty yards from her office and it had been given to her simply because, in Carson’s opinion, she was the best-looking girl in the company ...
As assistant to the company medical officer, Dr Marshall had a small, neat office which was almost filled by a well-worn desk, filing cabinets, bookshelves and framed diplomas. She was responsible for a good deal of the medical department’s administration as well as performing the usual medical duties. An air of spaciousness was given to the tiny room by the single glass wall which looked down across the cubicles, examination tables and fittings of the main treatments room. A casualty was having some foreign body washed out of his eye by one of the nurses, so it looked as if he would be able to talk to the doctor without fear of interruption.
‘Good afternoon, Doctor,’ said Carson. ‘I wonder if you can help me.’
She gave him a brief, intent, wholly professional look, then seeing no indications of physical or mental distress, she relaxed and said, ‘If I can, Mr Carson. Please sit down.’
‘Thank you,’ said Carson. ‘I’m trying to find out as-much as I can about a man called Pebbles.,’
It was obvious that she was not too happy about this one, even if she did feel obliged to him.
‘I don’t want you to betray a medical confidence or anything like that,’ Carson went on. ‘This is not idle curiosity. You may have heard about a small fire we had a few days ago. Someone--perhaps as a joke--used Mr Pebbles to transport the combustibles to the site of the fire. As you probably know he is a very impressionable type, easily led but not, so far as I could judge from only a few minutes’ conversation with him, a moron.
‘If I knew something about his background,’ Carson concluded, ‘I might be able to stop people making use of him like this.’
‘In that case,’ she said, smiling. ‘I don’t mind discussing him with you. Physically he is A-1--no sick leave since he joined us, no industrial accidents or injuries. Since the pre-employment medical we haven’t seen him here. I’m afraid there isn’t much to tell.’
Carson nodded. ‘Nevertheless I can’t help feeling impressed by the way you reel off his medical history--or lack of it--without reference to the records. Can you do that with all twelve thousand of us, Doctor?’
Marshall laughed. ‘Only the memorable ones.’
Carson said seriously. ‘I’m more interested in his mental condition. Bill Savage showed me his dossier, but it said nothing beyond the fact that he was retarded and classified as disabled. It did not go into his handicap in detail, and I’ll need to know about that if I’m to talk to him without making him nervous and stop people playing dangerous jokes on him.
‘Would you mind,’ he added, ‘telling me everything you can remember about the behaviour of this memorable employee?’
She did not reply at once. Looking at her Carson thought that she was one of the most vital and attractive girls he had ever seen. Her wonderful complexion and skin was probably the result of her being light on cosmetics and heavy on the soap and water and not, as Carson had once believed as a very young man, because the things female doctors and nurses had to do caused a permanent blush. He wondered why she had not been married years ago, and whether she was really the iceberg everyone said she was; or was she simply too dedicated to her profession? ’I wasn’t present at his pre-employment physical, you understand,’ she said suddenly. ‘My only direct contact with him was while I was administering the visual acuity tests...’
Considering the man’s disability and the job he was intended to fill the tests had been a formality. If he could have distinguished the outline of the chart he was through! But it was obvious from the start that the test was worrying Pebbles. He looked confused and frightened and oddly helpless. He stammered and sweated and could not even make an attempt at reading the chart. At one point she had been afraid that he would break down and cry.
She had explained to him that it was only necessary to read the first three lines, she pointed to the three lines he had to read and then she had left him alone in the room for a few minutes expecting that he would cheat by moving closer and memorising the lines she had indicated. But when she had returned he was still staring at the chart, moving his lips and looking puzzled. She thought that nobody could be that stupid but she wanted to be sure.
It was rather like trying to draw out a shy and emotionally disturbed child---she already had had some experience in that area--except that the child was six feet tall and built like Tarzan.
His trouble, it had gradually become clear, stemmed from the fact he was only just learning to read. Proudly he had shown her a magazine he had in his hip pocket. It was the first part of a children’s encyclopaedia of the type published in a series of weekly instalments. There was a big, garish letter ‘A’ on the cover surrounded by pictures of animals, amphibians, aeroplanes, astronomical telescopes and so on. The interior illustrations were very simple and the type-face large and open. Pebbles had said that the doctor at the clinic had given him the book when he had left to come to the aircraft factory. He had shown her the three pictures of different kinds of aeroplanes in the book and the fifty or so short, simple words describing what they were and how they worked, and he told her proudly that he had been studying the book to help him do his job better when he started work here. The reason he could not read the chart was because the letters on the chart were made differently.
He had asked if it would be all right if he drew pictures of the letters he could see. She had said yes and handed him a pencil and scratch pad ...
‘ ... It took a long time,’ she concluded in the tone of one not expecting to be believed, ‘but he copied down every blasted letter on the chart, right down to the last line ...!‘
She stopped but it was obvious that she wanted to say much more. Carson nodded and said quietly, ‘So he had perfect eyesight as well as muscles. But how did he impress you as a person ...?’
‘He made me furious! ‘ she said, her healthy colour deepening with remembered emotion. ‘There he stood, as perfect a physical specimen as I’m ever likely to see, but looking at me the way a kid looks at the teacher on his first day at school! He was so childish, so ... so innocent ... I wanted to spit or maybe burst into tears at the injustice of it all.’ She tried, not very successfully, to laugh. ‘Of course, professional etiquette forbade me doing either.’
‘Of course.’
‘As a fairly normal, healthy, twenty-eight-year-old spinster of this parish,’ she went on, still trying not to be serious, ‘I have the usual maternal and other instincts. Seeing him standing there, he was such a baby as well as being a man--it hit me a double wallop above and below the belt, if you know what I mean. All I can say is that when that overgrown baby reaches the age, if he ever does, of taking an interest in girls, he’ll be irresistible and I’ll envy every single one of them . . .!‘
She took a deep breath, then ended, ‘That is how Mr Pebbles impressed me, Mr Carson. I have the qualifications to undertake an even deeper and more searching self-analysis, but probably I’ve shocked you enough for one day. Do you want to talk to my chief about this?’ Carson shook his head and stood up. ‘You’ve been very helpful, Doctor, thank you. Well, I’ll be seeing you.’
She looked up at him--not very far up because she was a tall girl--and he had the uncomfortable feeling that he was being analysed now. Suddenly she smiled and said, ‘I doubt that, Mr Carson. You’re like John Pebbles, you never take sick ...’
That night Carson worked later than usual. He was spending so much time on his unofficial enquiries that burning the midnight fluorescents was the only way he could move the routine paperwork which was piling up. But tonight his mind refused to stay permanently in focus even on the simple jobs. It kept wandering, always in the same direction.
While processing parking space applications he found himself wondering if Pebbles could drive. If he had ever applied for a parking slot, that would be the obvious way of making friends with him by putting him under an obligation...
Meanwhile, Bill Savage had sent him an urgent memo. His problem was that several department heads were crying out for staff. The staff in question had been interviewed and accepted, their starting notices were ready and waiting to go out to them, but they had not yet been cleared by Security. Bill would be most grateful if the matter could be expedited.
There was very little Carson could do about that one. Security clearance of new employees--unless they were starting fairly high on the ladder--was simply a matter of checking nationality, place of birth, nationality of parents and relatives, political activities and police record if any, and seeing whether the person concerned travelled a lot or had spent a good part of his life in another country. The local police did most of the work and all too often they, with their quota of villains to catch, had ideas regarding the priorities which were not shared by Bill Savage.
It occurred to Carson that he should check on Pebbles’s clearance. For several seconds he dithered between doing it there and then or leaving it until Monday, but the top-heavy aspect of his in tray kept him in his seat.
There was an unusually large number of reclassifications in the pile. Hart-Ewing’s had no Top Secret projects going--not officially, that was--but there were a few hoary old Secrets and Restricteds connected with the HE93 missile guidance system which had been fighting a losing battle with the more speculative technical journals for several months. These had finally been declassified and they included technical material and strike photographs which Simpson had recently been seeking permission to publish.