Orbit 14

by Damon Knight

  “Sit down,” Mr. Freeling said. “Be with you in a minute.” He was a large, sunburned, squinting man, beginning to go grey. The chair in front of his desk had wooden arms and a vinyl seat made to look like ostrich hide. Forlesen sat down, wondering what Mr. Freeling wanted; and after a time it came to him that what Mr. Freeling wanted was for him to wonder this, and that Mr. Freeling would have been wiser to speak to him sooner. Mr. Freeling had a pen in his hand and was reading a letter—the same letter—over and over; at last he signed it with a scribble and laid it and the pen flat on his desk. “I should have called you in earlier to say welcome aboard,” he said, “but maybe it was better to give you a chance to drop your hook and get your jib in first. Are you finding em pee pee a snug harbor?”

  “I think I would like it better,” Forlesen said, “if I knew what it was I’m supposed to be doing here.”

  Freeling laughed. “Well, that’s easily fixed—Bert Fields is standing watch with you, isn’t he? Ask him for a list of your responsibilities.”

  “It’s Ed Fields,” Forlesen said, “and I already have the list. What I would like to know is what I’m supposed to be doing.”

  “I see what you mean,” Freeling said, “but I’m afraid I can’t tell you. If you were a lathe operator I’d say make that part, but you’re a part of management, and you can’t treat managerial people that way.”

  “Go ahead,” Forlesen told him, “I won’t mind.”

  Freeling cleared his throat. “That isn’t what I meant, and, quite frankly, if you think anyone here is going to feel any compulsion to be polite to you, you’re in for squalls. What I meant was that if I knew what you ought to be doing I’d hire a clerk to do it. You’re where you are because we feel—rightly or wrongly—that you can find your own work, recognize it when you see it, and do it or get somebody else to. Just make damn sure you don’t step on anybody’s toes while you’re doing it, and don’t make more trouble than you fix. Don’t rock the boat.”

  “I see,” Forlesen said.

  “Just make damn sure before you do anything that it’s in line with policy, and remember that if you get the unions down on us we’re going to throw you overboard quick.”

  Forlesen nodded.

  “And keep your hand off the tiller. Look at it this way—your job is fixing leaks. Only the sailor who’s spent most of his life down there in the hold with the oakum and . . . uh . . . fastpatch has the experience necessary to recognize the landmarks and weather signs. But don’t you patch a leak somebody else is already patching, or has been told to patch, or is getting ready to patch. Understand? Don’t come running to me with complaints, and don’t let me get any complaints about you. Now what was it you wanted to see me about?”

  “I don’t,” Forlesen said. “You said you wanted to see me.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m through.”

  Outside Forlesen asked Miss Fawn how he was supposed to know what company policy was. “It’s in the air,” Miss Fawn said tartly, “you breathe it.” Forlesen suggested that it might be useful if it were written down someplace, and she said, “You’ve been here long enough to know better than that, Mr. Forlesen; you’re no kid anymore.” As he left the office she called, “Don’t forget your creativity group.”

  He found the drilling room only after a great deal of difficulty. It was full of drill presses and jig bores—perhaps thirty or more— of which only two were being used. At one a white-haired man was making a hole in a steel plate; he worked slowly, lifting the drill from time to time to fill the cavity with oil from a squirt can beside the machine. At the other a much younger man sang as he worked, an obscene parody of a popular song. Forlesen was about to ask if he knew where the creativity group was meeting when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned and saw Fields, who said, “Looks like you found it. Come on, I’m going to make this one, come hell or high water. Right through the door on the other side there.”

  They threaded their way among the drill presses, most of which seemed to be out of order in some way, and were about to go through the door Fields had indicated when Forlesen heard a yell behind them. The younger man had burned his hand in trying to change the smoking drill in his machine. “That’s a good operator,” Fields said. “He pushed everything right along—you know what I mean?” Forlesen said he did.

  The creativity meeting, as Franklin had told him, was in the corridor. Folding metal chairs had been set up in groupings that looked intentionally disorganized, and a small motion-picture screen stood on an easel. Franklin was wrestling with a projector placed (pretty precariously, Forlesen thought) on the seat of the rearmost chair; he had the look of not being as young as he seemed, and after he had introduced himself they sat down and watched him. From time to time others joined them, and people passing up and down the hall, mostly men in grey work clothing, ignored them all, threading their way among the tin chairs without seeming to see them and stepping skillfully around the screen, on which, from time to time, flashed the faint numerals, 1, 2, and 3, or the legend CREATIVITY MEANS JOBS.

  After a while Fields said, “I think we ought to get started.”

  “You go ahead,” Franklin told him. “I’ll have this going in a minute.”

  Fields walked to the front of the group, beside the screen, and said, “Creativity group twenty-one is now in session. I’m going to ask the man in front to write his name on a piece of paper and pass it back. Everybody sign, and do it so we can read it, please. We’re going to have a movie on creativity—”

  “Creativity Means Jobs,” Franklin put in.

  “Yeah, Creativity Means Jobs, then a free-form critique of the movie. Then what, Ned?”

  “Open discussion on creativity in problem study.”

  “You got the movie yet?”

  “Just a minute.”

  Forlesen looked at his watch. It was 078:45.

  Someone at the front of the group, close to where Fields was now standing, said, “While we have a minute I’d like to get an objection on record to this phrase creativity in problem study. It seems to me that what it implies is that creativity is automatically going to point you toward some solution you didn’t see before, and I feel that anyone who believes that’s going to happen—anyway, in most cases— doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”

  Fields said, “Everybody knows creativity isn’t going to solve your problems for you.”

  “I said point the way,” the man objected.

  Someone else said, “What creativity is going to do for you in the way of problem study is point the way to new ways of seeing your problem.”

  “Not necessarily successful,” the first man said.

  “Not necessarily successful,” the second man said, “if by successful what you mean is permitting you to make a non-trivial elaboration of the problem definition.”

  Someone else said, “Personally I feel problem definitions don’t limit creativity.”

  Fields said, “I think we’re all agreed on that when they’re creative problem definitions. Right, Ned?”

  “Of creative problems.”

  “Right, of creative problems. You know, Ned told me one time when he was talking to somebody about what we do at these meetings this fellow said he thought we’d just each take a lump of clay or something and, you know, start trying to make some kind of shape.” There was laughter, and Fields held up a hand good-naturedly. “Okay, it’s funny, but I think we can all learn something from that. What we can learn is, most people when we talk about our creativity group are thinking the same way this guy was, and that’s why, when we talk about it we got to make certain points, like for one thing creativity isn’t ever what you do alone, right? It’s your creative group that gets things going—hey, Ned, what’s the word I want?”

  “Synergy.”

  “Yeah, and teamwork. And second, creativity isn’t about making new things—like some statue or something nobody wants. What creativity is about is solving company problems—”

  Frankli
n called, “Hey, I’ve got this ready now.”

  “Just a minute. Like you take the problem this company had when Adam Bean that founded it died. The problem was—should we go on making what we used to when he was alive, or should we make something different? That problem was solved by Mr. Dudley, as I guess everybody knows, but he wouldn’t have been able to do it without a lot of good men to help him. I personally feel that a football team is about the most creative thing there is.”

  Someone brushed Forlesen’s sleeve; it was Miss Fawn, and as Fields paused she said in her rather shrill voice, “Mr. Fields! Mr. Fields, you’re wanted on the telephone. It’s quite important.” There was something stilted in the way she delivered her lines, like a poor actress, and after a moment Forlesen realized that there was no telephone call, that she had been instructed by Fields to provide this interruption and thus give him an excuse for escaping the meeting while increasing the other participants’ estimate of his importance. After a moment more he understood that Franklin and the others knew this as well as he, and that the admiration they felt for Fields—and admiration was certainly there, surrounding the stocky man as he followed Miss Fawn out—had its root in the daring Fields had shown, and in the power implied by his securing the cooperation of Miss Fawn, Mr. Freeling’s secretary.

  Someone had dimmed the lights. Creativity Means Jobs flashed on the screen, then a group of men and women in what might have been a classroom in a very exclusive school. One waved his hand, stood up, and spoke. There was no sound, but his eyes flashed with enthusiasm. When he sat down an impressive-looking woman in tweeds rose, and Forlesen felt that whatever she was saying must be unanswerable, the final word on the subject under discussion; she was polite and restrained and as firm as iron, and she clearly had every fact at her fingertips.

  “I can’t get this damn sound working,” Franklin said. “Just a minute.”

  “What are they talking about?” Forlesen asked.

  “Huh?”

  “In the picture. What are they discussing?”

  “Oh, I got you,” Franklin said. “Wait a minute. They’re talking about promoting creativity in the educational system.”

  “Are they teachers?”

  “No, they’re actors—let me alone for a minute, will you? I want to get this sound going.”

  The sound came on, almost coinciding with the end of the picture. While Franklin was rewinding the film Forlesen said, “I suppose actors would have a better understanding of creativity than teachers would, at that.”

  “It’s a re-creation of an actual meeting of real teachers,” Franklin explained. “They photographed it and taped it, then had the actors reproduce the debate.”

  Forlesen decided to go home for lunch. Lunch ours were one hundred twenty to one hundred forty-one—twenty-one ours should be enough, he thought, for him to drive there and return, and to eat. He kept the pedal down all the way, and discovered that the signs with HIDDEN DRIVES on their faces had slow children on their backs.

  The brick house was just as he remembered it. He parked the car on the spot where he had first seen it (there was a black oil stain there) and knocked at the door. Edna answered it, looking not quite as he remembered her. “What do you want?” she said. “Lunch.”

  “Are you crazy? If you’re selling something we don’t want it.” Forlesen said, “Don’t you know who I am?”

  She looked at him more closely. He said, “I’m your husband Emanuel.”

  She seemed uncertain, then smiled, kissed him, and said, “Yes, you are, aren’t you. You look different. Tired.”

  “I am tired,” he said, and realized that it was true.

  “Is it lunchtime already? I don’t have a watch, you know. I haven’t been able to keep track. I thought it was only the middle of the morning.”

  “It seemed long enough to me,” Forlesen said. He wondered where the children were, thinking that he would have liked to see them.

  “What do you want for lunch?”

  “Whatever you have.”

  In the bedroom she got out bread and sliced meat, and plugged in the coffeepot. “How was work?”

  “All right. Fine.”

  “Did you get promoted? Or get a raise?”

  He shook his head.

  “After lunch,” she said. “You’ll get promoted after lunch.”

  He laughed, thinking that she was joking.

  “A woman knows.”

  “Where are the kids?”

  “At school. They eat their lunch at school. There’s a beautiful cafeteria—everything is stainless steel—and they have a dietician who thinks about the best possible lunch for each child and makes them eat it.”

  “Did you see it?” he asked.

  “No, I read about it. In here.” She tapped Food Preparation in the Home.

  “Oh.”

  “They’ll be home at one hundred and thirty—that’s what the book says. Here’s your sandwich.” She poured him a cup of coffee. “What time is it now?”

  He looked at the watch she had given him. “A hundred and twenty-nine thirty.”

  “Eat. You ought to be going back soon.”

  He said, “I was hoping we might have time for more than this.”

  “Tonight, maybe. You don’t want to be late.”

  “All right.” The coffee was good, but tasted slightly oily; the sandwich meat was salty and dry and flavorless. He unstrapped the watch from his wrist and handed it to her. “You keep this,” he said. “I’ve felt badly about wearing it all morning—it really belongs to you.”

  “You need it more than I do,” she said.

  “No, I don’t; they have clocks all over, there. All I have to do is look at them.”

  “You’ll be late getting back to work.”

  “I’m going to drive as fast as I can, anyway—I can’t go any faster than that no matter what a watch says. Besides, there’s a speaker that tells me things, and I’m sure it will tell me if I’m late.”

  Reluctantly she accepted the watch. He chewed the last of his sandwich. “You’ll have to tell me when to go now,” he said, thinking that this would somehow cheer her.

  “It’s time to go already,” she said.

  “Wait a minute—I want to finish my coffee.”

  “How was work?”

  “Fine,” he said.

  “You have a lot to do there?”

  “Oh, God, yes.” He remembered the crowded desk that had been waiting for him when he returned from the creativity meeting, the supervision of workers for whom he had been given responsibility without authority, the hours spent with Fields drawing up the plan which, just before he left, had been vetoed by Mr. Freeling. “I don’t think there’s any purpose in most of it,” he said, “but there’s plenty to do.”

  “You shouldn’t talk like that,” his wife said, “you’ll lose your job.”

  “I don’t, when I’m there.”

  “I’ve got nothing to do,” she said. It was as though the words themselves had forced their way between her lips.

  He said, “That can’t be true.”

  “I made the beds, and I dusted and swept, and it was all finished a couple of hours after you had gone. There’s nothing.”

  “You could read,” he said.

  “I can’t—I’m too nervous.”

  “Well, you could have prepared a better lunch than this.”

  “That’s nothing” she said. “Just nothing.” She was suddenly angry, and it struck him, as he looked at her, that she was a stranger, that he knew Fields and Miss Fawn and even Mr. Freeling better th^n he knew her.

  “The morning’s over,” he said. “I’m sorry I can’t give it back to you, but I can’t; what I did—that was nothing too.”

  “Please,” she said, “won’t you go? Having you here makes me so nervous.”

  He said, “Try and find something to do.”

  “All right.”

  He wiped his mouth on the paper napkin she had given him and took a step toward the
parlor. To his surprise she walked with him, not detaining him, but seeming to savor his company now that she had deprived herself of it. “Do you remember when we woke up?” she said. “You didn’t know at first that you were supposed to dress yourself.”

  “I’m still not sure of it.”

  “Oh, you know what I mean.”

  “Yes,” he said, and knew that he did, but that she did not.

  The parking lot was more rutted than he had remembered; he drove slowly and carefully. The outbuilding had been torn down, and another car, startlingly shiny (Forlesen did not believe his own had ever been that well polished, not even when he had first looked out the window at it), had his old place; he was forced to take another, farther from the plant. Several other people, he noticed, seemed to have gone home for lunch as he had—some he knew, having shared meeting rooms with them. He had never punched out on the beige clock, and did not punch in.

  There was a boy seated at his desk, piling new schoolbooks on it from a cardboard box on the floor. Forlesen said hello, and the boy said that his name was George Howe, and that he worked in Mr. Forlesen’s section.

  Forlesen nodded, feeling that he understood. “Miss Fawn showed you to your desk?”

  The boy shook his head in bewilderment. “A lady named Mrs. Frost—she said she was Mr. Freeling’s secretary; she had glasses.”

  “And a sharp nose.”

  George Howe nodded.

  Forlesen nodded in reply, and made his way to Fields’ old office. As he had expected, Fields was gone, and most of the items from his own desk had made their way to Fields’—he wondered if Fields’ desk sometimes talked too, but before he could ask it Miss Fawn . came in.

  She wore two new rings and touched her hair often with her left hand to show them. Forlesen tried to imagine her pregnant or giving suck and found that he could not, but knew that this was a weakness in himself and not in her. “Ready for orientation?” Miss Fawn asked.

  Forlesen ignored the question and asked what had happened to Fields.

  “He passed on,” Miss Fawn said.