What Thin Partitions (11 page)

"You want to go out and find a nice soft tree crotch to sleep in because investigating the idea of a cave is too radical?” I asked sourly.

I shoved the little gadget over to one side of my desk beside another one that had, instead of numbers, the brief answers to questions written on it. Such as “Yes,” “No,” “Tomorrow,” things like that. In a fit of whimsy I'd filled in one space with “Don't do it, Ralph!"

"What did you want, Sara?” I asked with one more glance at the psi machines. “You didn't come in here just to browbeat me."

"There's an applicant by the name of George to see you,” she answered.

"George? George Who?” I asked, automatically.

"Just George,” she shrugged. “That's all the interviewer told me.

"What's the matter with the interviewers? Why can't they talk to this George? Why should I have to take my attention away from important things-"

Her eyes swiveled over to my psi gadgets, and she couldn't help grinning.

"All right,” I agreed. “Maybe not so important, but how are we to know? Anyway, why should I interview raw applicants when we've got a whole staff for that purpose?"

"This George seems to be something special, and you gave orders that you, personally, wanted to see anybody with-anybody like that. Who knows? Maybe you'll turn up another fake Swami, or another little poltergeist girl like Jennie Malasek."

I looked at her, grimaced wryly, and sighed.

"Not again,” I said. “That was when the heat was on from the Military. They've cooled down now, and so have I. I've had my fill of screwballs. I—” I sighed again at her patient certainty I'd see the applicant as soon as I'd grumbled enough. “All right,” I agreed. “Send him in. If the interviewers can't handle him, well, I'd better do something to keep from asking myself on the way home, ‘And what bright hope did you give to the World today, Ralph Kennedy?’ Send him in."

"Yes, sir,” she said formally, and stood up. She still says “sir” to me now and then. I'm never sure if it is respect, derision, or just an old habit hanging on from young and hopeful days when she dreamed of being secretary to a dynamic tycoon of industry. Was it ever possible she might have thought the Director of Industrial Relations at Computer Research Corporation was a dynamic tycoon? If so, I may have let her down.

While she was out of the office I started to ditch my psi machines into a desk drawer, then decided to let them stay. After all, it was only an applicant I'd be interviewing.

"Is George going to be something special-more trouble?” I asked the answer machine. The arrow pointed to “Yes.” This was not so remarkable, since the arrow had been pointing there before I'd asked. I could have made precognition out of that if I wanted to.

I lit a cigarette.

My door opened again to gust the number arrow off its moorings and send the answer arrow swirling around. Five young men came in, single file, through the doorway. Behind them Sara was making signs with her eyes and shoulders that she hadn't known it was to be a convention. She made wide eyes, and closed the door.

At first glance they were easily classified as fresh, young college grads. A couple were big and bulky, a couple were medium and one was a wiry little guy. They were assorted blondes, brunettes and betweens. Each had two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and assorted ears. They didn't exactly have the trademark “Made At Stanford” stamped on their foreheads, but it was pretty apparent they'd all been turned out by the same mass production education machine.

I waved to conference chairs grouped together over in one corner of the office.

"Have seats, fellows,” I said.

They all sat down, as close to one another as the chairs permitted, as if to draw reassurance and warmth from one another. Their movement was just enough off beat not to be the precision of a drill team. I sighed silently: Young grads always made such a big thing out of a Job Interview. I hoped I wouldn't be a disappointment to them.

"Before we begin,” I said, and put a little of the classroom lecture tone in my voice to make them feel at ease, “I should check you fellows out on something. It's a bad idea to go job hunting in a gang, or even in pairs. When you become adult you're supposed to be able to walk into an office all by yourself, without your gang to hold you up. All right, which one of you is looking for work? Which one is ... er ... George?"

They looked at one another with something like a secret smile, then they looked at me. And there was pity for me in their faces. That was normal enough. The young grad naturally assumes that no one, before his time, ever cracked a textbook, or even learned how to read. And at that time I was still secure enough in my mature ascendancy not to realize I might need their pity.

"Sir,” Chair Number One said boldly. Then his immaturity got the best of him. He gulped and swallowed. But the sentence wasn't interrupted, because Chair Number Two picked it up without a pause.

"Word has got around that this company hires oddballs!” He used the term with a certain pride, then felt he should define it for me. “People with unusual talents."

I made a wry grimace.

"I hope such word doesn't filter through to Management,” I said ruefully. “I've got enough troubles already."

"You should be proud of it,” Number Four, the wiry little guy, spoke up. “Unusual achievements require unusual people!” Somehow I could picture a framed motto of those words hanging on his study wall. If so, it would be a cultural step forward from Kipling's “If."

"Let's get down to cases,” I said. “What's the pitch? Which one is George?"

"We're all George,” Number Three said. Their little secret smile was more apparent now, and had a touch of delight in it.

"Great,” I answered dryly. “A valuable asset. Just what industry needs. Your first names are all George."

"Not exactly, sir,” Number Five said, as if he wished I weren't quite so slow in comprehension. “None of our names is George. That's just the name we adopted. He's the only one who really counts. You might say he's the sixth one of us, only that wouldn't be quite right."

"Oh,” I said, and began to realize why the interviewer had passed these guys on to me. “There's a sixth one, and he's the only one who counts. All you fellows are just here to pave the way for his interview. Must be quite a man to get all you fellows to strew rose petals in his path."

"You're close,” Number One said, and his grin grew wider.

"Closer than you know,” Number Two agreed.

"Although you couldn't accurately call him a man,” Number Three qualified.

Numbers Four and Five nodded approvingly.

"All right, guys,” I said. “I know when I'm getting the needle. But this is your job interview, not mine. I've already got a job, such as it is. It's up to you to make the pitch, not me. So trot on out and tell George to come in and speak for himself."

"George is already here,” Number Four said.

"He's been here all the time,” Two agreed.

"Certainly,” One said. “Otherwise this conversation wouldn't make sense."

I felt the first twinge of uncertainty. It wasn't making any sense to me-and it was, to them. They were quite serious, too. I bit down on my lower lip, and glanced over at the psi machine. The arrow was pointing to “Don't do it, Ralph!"

Somehow it failed to satisfy me. Don't get mad? Don't throw ’em out? Don't talk to ’em any more at all? Don't pass up this wonderful opportunity? Nicely ambiguous, it could mean anything.

"Maybe you fellows had better start explaining,” I said mildly. I wasn't taking the lead in the interview any longer.

"Sir,” Two said, and appeared ready to launch into a prepared speech. “You've no doubt noticed that individualism is being replaced in our times with collective effort, teamwork, group activity?"

I nodded affirmatively that I had noticed it. I'd also observed something else just now. Number Two had started the sentence, but Number Three had finished it. The switch was so smooth that I hadn't quite noticed just which word had been used as the pivot.

"I've got some reservations about group effort,” I said, and pretended I hadn't noticed the switch. If it were a gag, I wouldn't give them the satisfaction of being impressed with their drill precision. “I've noticed a group can better develop an old idea, but it still takes an individual to come up with a new one."

They looked at me with pity again. I was in my late thirties, and to them doddering with age. Their faces showed they thought I was ready to turn out to pasture. Suddenly I remembered reading about experiments of free-wheeling idea association groups and the remarkable new ideas that came out of it. Maybe they were right, maybe I was doddering and should be turned out to pasture. But apparently they somehow agreed among themselves to overlook my lapse, which had definitely placed me in a former generation.

"And have you observed,” Number Four smoothly picked up at the point where I'd inanely interrupted, but he transferred the rest of the question to One, “that sometimes a group or a crowd seems to take on a definite mass Personality?"

"Theater entertainers talk about-"

"A hot audience or a cold audience. Rabble rousers can make-"

"Some audiences turn handsprings, and fall flat with others. In a mob-"

"Something seems to take possession of the people, causing-"

"Them to do things they wouldn't dream of doing as separate individuals. Or you take a delinquent gang in a no-reason assault. Afterwards, they don't seem to realize what they did, or why they did-"

"It. Some kind of an interplay and mental feedback takes place, transforming the mental current into a palpable power-"

"Something seems to come into being-"

"A mass entity-"

"A thing-"

"A personality-"

"A being-"

"It exists, and the people in the mob or group are just its parts, its extensions, its senses, hands, feet, eyes, ears-pseudopods!"

"Well, sir, our entity is-"

"GEORGE!"

They all sat there, beaming at me, pleased with themselves-or pleased with George. They seemed to realize I needed a moment to absorb what they had told me. And I did. I was trying to figure out what kind of a con game they were trying to pull. It wasn't anything vicious. I was pretty confident of that. I'd seen my share of angelfaced sadists, but these kids were fine lads, I'd bet on it. I found an explanation which seemed rational.

It was what they'd call an interest catcher. Their vocational counselors would have given them the same old line, “Now when you go out to look for that very special niche in life you deserve, you've got to think of something special, something to catch the employer's interest, make him see you as a person instead of just another applicant.” It was a good theory, and sometimes it worked. They'd tried. They'd offered something very special, with drilled precision that must have cost many hours of rehearsal.

But this time it had failed, because I didn't see them as individuals at all, just as a group. I didn't even know their names, or care to know them. One, Two, Three, Four and Five was quite good enough. So their con game, innocent and harmless but still a con game, had failed.

Or had it? Was that the whole point? That they didn't want me to see them as individuals, but only as a group? A group called George?

"These ordinary mob entities,” Two began the conversation again, but the phrases were tossed from one to another like a basketball. “-are just flash existences. They come into reality for a while, and then they don't exist any longer. After they go they leave their pseudopods, the people involved, bewildered and ashamed if the entity was an evil thing which made them do evil deeds. Or, if it was something good, like a music jam session, or a football rally, or a panty raid, or maybe just a quiet talk about what is life, then the people remember it. They remember it as one of the deep and lasting experiences of their lives, they long for it to happen again; like army buddies who have been under fire together, there's a kinship deeper than blood, they never forget, they get together again and again trying to make the entity come alive once more so they can enjoy, really enjoy, living in the fullest sense."

All of them had contributed to the speech, but I found it easier to follow the thread of their argument if I half closed my eyes and made no effort to keep track of the rapid shunting of the conversational ball from one to the other. Ridiculous though it seemed, it was easier to accept George as the real entity and these lads as merely his parts, than attempt to keep them separate; easier to conclude it was George speaking without any discrimination as to whose mouth he was using.

"We've been together ever since we were kids living in the same block,” they said, or George said, and I gave up trying to make that distinction, too. “We grew up together. It got so our parents hardly knew which of us was whose. We've always stayed together, even managed to keep in the same company during our military hitch. We don't remember when George became into being, when we stopped being separate boys and all became a part of George. Other entities, bad and good ones, come and go; but as long as we can stay together, and we will, George stays with us."

"So we think there ought to be some kind of a job in your Company for George-"

"Something that five unconnected guys couldn't do, but George could do-"

"Something unusual-"

"And as long as you hire oddballs anyway-"

"Well, unusual achievements require unusual people!"

I wasn't buying any of this, of course. It was clever, and marvelously executed. I was intrigued in spite of my years of being subjected to the tricks the brighter applicants could dream up. And of course it would all fall to pieces if I switched the conversation onto a subject they couldn't have rehearsed in advance.

Yet I found myself reluctant to do that. I liked these kids, and behind my expression which I hoped was noncommittal, I was applauding them. If anybody ever deserved A for effort-I'd long ago realized that an applicant didn't stand a chance if I really wanted to take him apart, that my years of experience with every kind of a human dodge and gimmick made it like turning a machine gun on a kid with a toy bow and arrow. Unless something vital was at stake, I usually let people get away with their carefully contrived frameworks simply because destroying them would give me no pleasure.