What Thin Partitions (4 page)

I walked over to a straight chair, put the cylinder down under its seat, and watched the chair float upward toward the ceiling. Old Stone Face watched it, too.

I had the satisfaction of seeing a slight widening of his eyes, a quick breath, and a slight thinning of his lips. Obviously, he thought it cataclysmic. I pulled the chair down by grabbing hold of one of its legs, and retrieved the cylinder.

I stooped down and placed it under one corner of the desk.

"Lift,” I said.

He took hold of the desk corner hesitantly, as if he were reaching for a pen to sign a raise authorization. The desk corner tilted upward and slid some papers off on to the floor. I reached under and pulled out the cylinder. I handed it to him, this time taking care that it didn't shoot out of his hands toward the ceiling. He felt how heavy it was, in reverse. Out of habit, he laid it down on the desk top, but I was ready for that. I grabbed it about two feet up in the air. Too many broken up ceilings would really start gossip in the building maintenance crew.

Old Stone Face reached for it again, and headed for his little private bathroom. I followed him to the door, and watched him step on the scales. He came out, and handed me the cylinder.

"And I've been trying to do it by dieting,” he commented. He sat down at his desk and picked up the phone.

"Get me the Pentagon,” he commanded. “Yes, sure, the one in Washington. I don't suppose anybody's walked away with that in their pocket yet. The last time I was in Washington it was still there.” He put the receiver back on the hook. “She wants to know if I mean the one in Washington,” he commented without expression.

"Now took, Henry,” I said warily, “aren't you jumping the gun a little? You haven't asked any questions. You don't know what this is. You don't know how it was made. You don't know any of the scientific principles behind it. You don't know if we've got legal rights to it. You don't know how it works or why."

"Details,” he said contemptuously. “You've got it, haven't you? A man made it, didn't he? What a man can make once he can make again, can't he? What do I care about the legal details? We got lawyers, haven't we? What do I care about scientific hows and whys? We got experts, haven't we? Why should I ask questions at all? We got antigravity, haven't we? Don't answer. I know the answers.

"They weren't precisely the questions I would have asked, but then, each to his own framework. Then it struck me with a twist of my stomach muscles. I hadn't realized. I'd been so busy thinking about poltergeists and frameworks of different natural law. I'd been thinking in terms of cybernetics, ability to store impulses, even wrong ones.

"Could be antigravity,” I agreed in an awed tone.

"What else did you think it was?” he asked.

"I'd rather not say,” I murmured.

"Who made it?” he asked.

"Auerbach, partly,” I answered.

"Who's he?"

"Research chemist. Works under Boulton."

"Why didn't Boulton bring it to me? Don't answer. Boulton wouldn't believe it would work. What do we keep Boulton around here for? Don't answer. I hired him. Well don't just stand there. Tell Auerbach to get busy. Promote him. Tell him to put them into mass production."

"It's not that simple,” I said, and wondered how to tell him.

"Don't give me alibis.” His face took on an expression which he apparently hoped was conciliatory. “Ralph, don't you start giving me any of this stall about further research, testing, difficulties, all that folderol. Just put it into production."

"It's a custom made job,” I said, trying to slow him down. “Only an experimental model."

"Custom made today, production line tomorrow,” he shook his head in exasperation. “Well, what's holding you up?"

"Money, for one thing,” I clutched at the first excuse I could think of, and wished it were as simple as that.

He grabbed the phone again.

"Get me the controller,” he barked, and waited. “Tim! What took you so long? Give Kennedy all the money he wants!” He listened for a moment and then turned to me. “He wants to know if you'll need more than a hundred dollars. He's got systems, or something.” He turned back to the phone without waiting for my reply. “Well,” he conceded, “I didn't actually mean all the money he wants. Let me know if he draws over a million dollars."

He took the receiver away from his ear and looked at it in puzzlement.

"Must have fainted,” he commented dryly, and hung up.

"But,” I tried to object, thinking how the organization would be split wide open if I went out into the plant and started carrying out his instructions-all the noses out of joint, the toes stepped on. “I'm just the personnel director. I'm not a plant superintendent. I can't go around building buildings, setting up production lines-even if I knew how."

"Get going,” he said. “I don't want any more alibis. All I want is a steady stream of antigravity units. That's not too much to ask for, I'm sure!"

"Maybe a million dollars won't do it,” I said hopefully, and truthfully, as I reached for the door.

"Well, all right,” he almost shouted. “We'll get a billion, then. We'll get a hundred billion. What do you think we got taxpayers for?"

"You've been spending too much time in Washington,” I commented, as I went through the door. “You're beginning to talk like them.

"Maybe Old Stone Face hadn't heard about things which money can't buy-such as a little girl who looks at you from behind strings of black hair. Maybe he hadn't heard about frameworks where money wasn't a consideration. Maybe he hadn't heard about a matrix where the question, “If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?” was on the order of the question, “if it's alive, why don't it breathe air?” Maybe he hadn't heard about frameworks, period.

I hoped I wouldn't have to be the one to tell him about them.

Annie Malasek was waiting for me in the outer personnel waiting room. She had little Jennie by the hand. Annie looked stem, Jennie looked penitent. Annie stopped me as I started past her.

"I just came over to tell you, Mr. Kennedy,” she began, “I found out what Jennie did to your nice office last night. I whipped her good. Tell Mr. Kennedy you're sorry, Jennie.” She looked down at Jennie sternly, and squeezed her hand.

"I'm sorry,” Jennie mumbled.

"Tell Mr. Kennedy you won't do it again,” Annie went on remorselessly.

"I won’ do it again,” Jennie repeated dutifully.

"Tell Mr. Kennedy you're going to be a good little girl from now on, and not burn things up or throw things,” Annie pursued with a determined gleam in her eye.

"Good girl,” Jennie murmured, and rubbed the arch of one foot with the toe of the other.

I looked at them both, and for once I didn't have anything to say.

There were more conferences with Auerbach. Yes, he could produce more cylinders. Some of the synthetic protein strings were a bit tricky, but otherwise it wouldn't be difficult to duplicate the cylinder. No, just an ordinary laboratory would do, at least until we went into mass production. That's nice, he'd always wanted to be a department head. The latter was said absently, and I doubted he had even heard me.

"How are you going to activate the cylinders?” he asked curiously. I noticed the particular use of the second person pronoun, because in everything else it was “we.” Activating them was not his responsibility.

There were conferences with Boulton, whose nose was out of joint that Auerbach had been taken out from under his jurisdiction without consulting him about it. For the sake of organization I had to mollify him. There were conferences with the plant superintendent, who could throw all sorts of petty hazards in my way if he were pulling against me. There were conferences with the controller, the carpenter boss. In short there were people, and therefore there were personal tensions to be unsnarled.

There was another conference in Old Stone Face's office, this time with a pink cheeked colonel, sent out as an advance scout from the Pentagon. From the look of him it was the most dangerous scouting mission he had ever tried. His pink cheeks grew red as he watched me go through my act with the antigrav cylinder. His pink cheeks grew purple when I evaded his questions with something approaching idiocy. He was certainly not one I wished to introduce to frameworks and partitions. He was a rocket man, himself.

Auerbach was at that conference, and where I had been idiotic, the good doctor was a glib double talker. He sounded so impressive that it didn't occur to anybody he wasn't making sense.

Since the colonel didn't believe what he saw, and didn't understand what he heard, the brass staff, deployed well back of the front lines, would have got a very poor report from their advance scout had we not been Computer Research and had not Old Stone Face been a frequent visitor to the Pentagon. In this case the colonel was afraid to embroider what he saw with too much of his own opinion. We were duly notified of an impending visitation from a full dress parade of brass and braid. Stirred to unusual action, no doubt, by the plaintive and public outcry of a country-boy Congressman, “But what do all of them do, over there in that big building?"

During this time my staff, like good boys and girls, took over the burden of my work without complaint. I spent a great deal of my time in Auerbach's new laboratory.

We tried all sorts of attempts to make the antigrav aspect of the first cylinder rub off on others he had made. We let them lay coyly side by side for hours and days. We lashed the first to another and let it zoom up to the now padded ceiling. We tried shocking them, freezing them, heating them. Nothing worked. Either the new cylinders had already learned that down was down-that old tired framework-or more likely hadn't learned anything at all.

We thought at them. We stood there, Auerbach and I, working singly, working in tandem, thinking at them. Apparently our thoughts didn't amount to much; or we had learned too early in life that you can't get any effect on a physical object by just thinking about it. They just lay there, fat, oily, and inert.

Auerbach went back to his test tubes and beakers, trying to see if antigrav wasn't inherent, somehow, in the chemical arrangements. He had accepted the hypothesis of other frameworks as an intellectual exercise, but he still hoped to prove they were not a reality, that the aspect could be accounted for within the framework he knew. He had not accepted the partitions, that his real world condition was circumscribed, confined, limited.

I went back to Jennie.

Obviously, to me, it was the mental force of her fear, hatred, anger, survival potential, whatever it was, acting through whatever framework she had devised for herself, which activated the first cylinder. So I gave up being stubborn, and called for little Jennie Malasek once more.

She came in the door of my office and stood as she had before. This time her hair was pulled back tightly and tied with a ribbon. So she hid behind a glaze over her eyes, instead.

I had about a dozen of the cylinders on the top of my desk, and had a lot of mixed hope and hopelessness within me. I wondered if the admonishments of her mother had had any basic effect upon her. I wondered if the additional attention she was now getting over in the nursery, since the teachers had learned I had taken notice of her, had changed anything in her.

"I didn't tell your mother on you, when you messed up my office that time,” I said as an opening sentence.

She didn't answer, just looked at me impassively. But it did seem that she blushed a little. Had she grown ashamed of throwing things and burning things up?

"Just a secret between you and me,” I said. “I don't think it is wrong to throw things the way you did. I think it was very clever."’ She didn't answer.

"I wish you would do it again. I'd like to see you do it."

"I can't,” she whispered in a very small voice. “I'm a good girl now.

Oh no. Character doesn't change that fast. Maybe she thought she was a good girl, but down underneath-

"I don't think you're a good girl,” I said with a sneer. “I think you're a very naughty girl, a nasty little girl."

I hoped, how I hoped she would flare up in anger, or protection, and hurl the cylinders at me. I hoped to get a face full of ashes, and office full of broken windows and flying cylinders.

Her face still did not change its expression. She still stood there, impassive. Her only reaction was two large, crystal tears which formed in the corners of her eyes and began to roll slowly down her cheeks.

I flipped my intercom and called Sara.

"Take her back to the nursery, Sara,” I said wearily.

Sara came in, saw the tears, and without speaking to me, she took Jennie's hand and led her away.

I sat at my desk and hated myself with contempt and loathing. There were times when I didn't like my job-when I didn't like myself for being skilled enough to do it. There were times when people became a little more than just some material to be shaped and directed into the best use for it.

But my mood did not last. I had a job to do. This was no time to grow soft, sentimental, wavering.

The fact that Jennie was outwardly changing from the strange little creature which excited no sympathy to a bewildered and hurt little girl who very definitely called for compassion changed the facts not at all.

The prime necessity was to activate more of the cylinders. Jennie was the only means at hand by which that could be done. I wasn't sure that even she could do it, but I had to find out. I had to see if down beneath the surface she wasn't still the same wild instrument of an even wilder talent.

Basic character doesn't change that fast, not just because somebody says it ought to change, not unless there is a violent and traumatic shock jolting the individual completely out of his framework and into another.

I had to go ahead and try.

I spent more, quite a bit more, of the funds at my disposal. The controller O.K.'d my vouchers as if the dollars were individual drops of his blood, and read the legends on the vouchers with a firm conviction that I had really lost my mind.