by Sladek, John
(X) Signed: _________________
Witnessed: ________________
74. Describe your feelings upon reading and signing the above statement: ___________________________
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75. Do you believe you have anything to hide, about your past life? If not, explain: _____________________
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76. Have you anything to add, regarding the answers to questions 11, 21, 33, 39, 51, 72 or 75? _________________
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77. Do you ever have feelings of anxiety? ____________________
I swear that all the statements above are true and complete and that I have not attempted any falsification, on penalty of perjury.
(X) Signed: ____________
Witnessed: ____________
THE COMMUNICANTS
AN ADVENTURE IN MANAGEMENT
The blinds were drawn, the desk lamp glowed.
‘I’ve been having these terrible dreams – locked in an inappropriate box.’
‘Go on.’ The man behind the desk had a heavy, block-salt look. He would gladly give you the time, change, a light, a push when your car was stalled. Probably his seat in the last life-boat.
After a minute, David went on: ‘Just above is this heavy line and the lines “Do not mark below heavy line. For use of lines of Authority only.”’
‘Hmm. And?’
‘I’m printed, see? That’s not the point. The dots are printed all over everything, and they’re – sliding. So the colors change. There’s a bunch of fake clouds around, or something, I’m right in the middle of this big poster.’
The interviewer delved in the pocket of his tweed jacket and brought out a scarred pipe and a small knife.
‘Any more?’ He began to scrape the bowl.
‘Yes, every night – I don’t know why I’m telling you this – every night there’s a woman-thing standing beside my bed. A kind of coke bottle with a woman’s head. She seems to be a poster too. Across the front is a ribbon that says: “Humfrey’s Hollywood Novelties.” That’s all.’
‘Haheh. I see.’ The interviewer stopped scraping and peered at him over the lamp. ‘You realise of course that still does not answer my question: Why do you want to work for Drum, Inc.?’
David did not falter. Raising his chin slightly, he said, ‘Sir, I love my father more than my mother, and I sincerely believe that it just isn’t enough to sprinkle the baptism candidate. That don’t do nothing for the deep-down dirt. You have to immerse …’
‘Thank you.’ As the interviewer hunched forward to mark something on David’s application, light flashed from his lapel.
The Nat Hawthorne Social Club pin: the same red enamel A that David himself wore He began to recall the old songs …
‘Now then, David, we’d like to have you take a few tests. Just follow Miss Bunne to the testing room, will you?’
As soon as the kid was gone, Travers took off the jacket, dumped the junk back in its pocket, and stripped off the plain tie. He removed the Hawthorne pin and tossed it in a drawer. Lighting a cigarette, he sat back and exhaled. Too gloomy in here. The rich mahogany (veneer) and silver (plate) of the office furniture brightened as he opened the blinds. At eye level across the street, the company cafeteria. A line of trim translucent girls in pale colors filed past the pastries and took glasses of jello.
Travers closed the blinds and sat down. Holding up the next application as if it were a hand-mirror, he sighed at what it reflected. The elastic bands across his back were beginning to itch.
‘Have a cigarette?’ he repeated several times to the empty chair across from him. His tone varied from casual to commanding.
Every day at about the same time, Marilyn’s extension would ring. She would pick it up to hear a woman say carefully:
‘Marilyn? He loves you.’
‘Who? Who loves me? Is this supposed to be a joke?’ But there would never be more.
She thought of saying something to the supervisor, Miss Bunne, or someone else in the typing pool – but what to say? What if it were just some joke of Eric’s? Or a mean trick of Ray’s, to lose Marilyn her job? No, better to say nothing.
Marilyn was engaged to a wonderful boy, Raymond, but she realised she didn’t love him. How on earth could she break it off after the party his parents gave them and all the wonderful presents they had been given? She had thought of going away without telling him, but she did not think this would be fair. She was eighteen.
No, it would not be fair, and the newspaper thought it would be on her conscience for a long time. She had to face the disappointment her news was bound to cause, and tell him about her change of mind. She certainly couldn’t let the party and presents alter her decisions. They were nothing compared with marrying someone she didn’t love. So she should go through with telling him, and she would be respected for handling a difficult situation well.
The newspaper gave her an idea of how to go about it. Marilyn went with Eric to the amusement park at Punk Island, where they sold ‘newspapers’ with any headline you wanted.
HE’S NOT FOR ME!
Marilyn Breaks Engagement
She went to visit him, a copy of this paper tucked in her odor-free armpit. They chatted pleasantly over milk and cookies in his Mom’s spacious, easy-to-clean kitchen, while she waited for the right moment.
‘What’s that paper you’ve got there?’ Ray asked. She handed it to him slowly, as if offering her nakedness. He read through the headline several times. Then:
‘Oh, I don’t believe everything I read in the papers.’
‘It’s true, Raymond.’ The refrigerator fell silent, and she could hear the scream of Dad’s wood lathe in the basement.
Ray jumped to his feet. ‘You’ll never get away with this!’ he shouted, and ran off down the basement stairs. It took Marilyn a few minutes to dab the splashes of milk off her face and sweater and by the time she was able to follow him, it was too late.
Someone’s adding machine wasn’t working; he sat in disgrace, the thirty-fourth man in the fifteenth row, quietly weeping. All around him people were adding up feet and inches of cable and wire underneath the city, but old 34/15 just sat there like an unlit bulb in the great rippling sign that burned on the roof by day and by night:
Mr Kravon was superb with tidy rage. He asked Miss Bunne to get him Personnel.
‘Let me talk to Travers … Hello? This is Sam Kravon, Estimates. Yes, look, we’ve a hell of a mess down here. A man whose machine doesn’t work … That’s it, all right. I’ll send him right up, OK?’
Above the Frenzak music, the cool voice of Miss Bunne paged a Mr Eric Bland, asking him to report to the personnel office on the tenth floor. The Frenzak finished a furious medley of Avalon, I want to Hold Your Hand, and Wonderful, Wonderful Copenhagen. The weeping man rose and left the room.
Genial Dad, that furnace of amusement, turned off his lathe and watched Ray fiddling with the table saw.
‘What’s up, son?’
Ray mumbled something about cutting off his arm.
‘Mmm.’ Dad lit his pipe. ‘Mmm. Mmm. Might work, at that. Girl trouble, I s’pose?’
The eighteen-year-old, six-foot-one, husky youth did not reply.
‘Hem. Excuse an old codger for butting in, my boy, but you’ll never do it like that. Get your fingers in the way. Here, let me help you.’
And he showed Ray how to hold his arm and push it towards the blade with a piece of two-by-four. The blade sang.
‘That’s the way to do her! More amateurs have lost more fingers, just by forgetting that one simple trick – statistical fact!’
Travers was standing looking at the jello girls w
hen Miss Bunne entered without knocking.
‘Oh I’m sorry!’ she said. He whipped around and kicked a drawer shut.
‘Don’t ever do that again, Miss Bunne. You know I don’t like to wear this stuff. And now I have no doubt you’ll be going off to laugh about me behind my back, with one of the other Misses Bunne.’
‘Oh no, Mr Travers. You don’t know me very well, or you could never suppose a thing like that!’
‘Well, I’m sorry. Who do we have out there?’
‘A Mr Galt. He’s – handicapped.’
‘Give me ten minutes, then?’ He lent her a special smile.
When she had backed out, he slipped the elastic off his shoulders and the blue-serge-suit-with-TV-blue-shirt-and-maroon-tie outfit fell away from him. After checking the application on his desk, he put on a similar garment, a black-blazer-stiff-white-shirt-regimental-stripe-tie. On the blazer he pinned the crest of the college Galt had attended until recently. Then he whitened half his hair, and added an eye-patch. The applicant had one arm, and Travers kidded himself about not letting him get the upper hand. It was true he hated being at a sympathetic disadvantage.
Ready, he sat back and waited for Raymond Nixon Galt.
Dr Freag of Drum Laboratories addressed the stock-holders, describing a number of new telephone services his department had tested against the day when Drum should replace the Bell System as the nation’s telephone monopoly. Tele fun would connect subscribers to a computer capable of playing over 700 games as diverse as Boccaccio, slapjack, Chinese checkers. Another service would enable users to disguise their voiceprints. An anonymity service, Dialerase, would change a subscriber’s telephone number as often as hourly, signalling each change only to him and to his current register of friends.
Dr Born of Drummer Boy Enterprises addressed the stockholders, describing a number of new computer devices his department was investigating. Scribeauty was intended to change users’ handwriting to conform to any desired standard. One would write on a sensitised slate, and the computer would then ‘correct’ one’s writing and reproduce a finished manuscript on paper. A small, portable jukebox with a fast-response mechanism, Swingit could be used to ‘talk’ in ‘song’ instead of words. Useful in therapy with disturbed adolescents, it could be worn internally without discomfort. Wordfreak was the name of a projected monitor system for security agencies. Its computer would scan quantities of taped conversations, sorting them for high ‘wordfreaks’, or high frequencies of words/phrases of a suspicious nature. He demonstrated.
‘Mind if I call you Ray? Here, have a cigarette.’ The man behind the desk moved only the left side of his face as he spoke. His left hand shoved a silver box across the desk; the right hung down out of sight.
Ray accepted a cigarette and reached for the lighter.
‘No, let me.’ With difficulty, the man forced himself up out of his chair and lunged forward to give Ray a light. When at last he sat, or flopped back, he was sweating. Ray felt moisture running down his own face and neck.
‘I fee you’re handicapped. Well, as you can fee, Ray, Drum Inc. couldn’t care less about that. Got mine, by the way, on Porkchop Hill.’ And you? his left brow asked.
Ray blushed. ‘Oh, just a crazy freak accident. With a table saw. At home.’
The sight of this hopeless cripple, sitting behind his big desk and laughing at Ray’s injury, shocked him. He began to have second thoughts about working here, even as a janitor …
‘Forry, fon, I didn’t mean to laugh at you. It’s just … they fay most accidents happen … at home, ha ha … I’ve never actually feen one … boy o boy, I’ve feen guys shot up fo bad they had to walk ten miles on frozen feet, with their guts in their hands … but you! Hoo hoo hoo, you can’t even faw a sucking piece of board across …’
Ray jumped up. ‘Now just a minute!’
‘… ha ha ha, how ftupid can you …’
‘JUST A MINUTE! IT WASN’T NO ACCIDENT, I DONE IT ON PURPOSE, TO TEACH MY GIRL A LESSON!’
The interviewer wiped his eyes and checked a box on Ray’s card. ‘Now we’re getting fomeplace. Atta boy. Now fuppose you fit down and tell me all about it?’
OBEY YOUR WAY TO SUCCESS
Advice to the management trainee at Drum, Inc.
by H. H. Murd, President
Phil Wang, the art director, stuck his head in the door.
‘OK in here? Any new problems, Marty?’
The fat man at the drawing board shook his head, but not in negation. ‘I can’t get it right, Phil. If I line up things the way they want, the girl’s hair just about has to blow across the guy’s face. How about if I – oh, I don’t know.’
‘Take it easy, guy. Let’s have a look.’
The picture showed a young couple at an amusement park. Other people have turned to stare admiringly at them. The girl’s hair is wind-tossed; the man is dark and ruggedly handsome. They are about to enter a telephone booth.
The caption was roughed in below: ‘Togetherness is the nearest friendly phone booth.’
‘What’s this guy in the background? Is he supposed to have an arm missing or what?’
‘I was, uh …’ Marty paused for a moment, fumbling with his expression, as the electronic pacemaker that controlled his heart seemed to miss. This happened to him about once a week, though the doctor assured him it could not possibly happen at all. ‘… changing perspective a little. I’ll clean that up.’
‘Do that little thing for me, and for Christ’s sake, get the girl’s hair blowing the other way. Come to think of it, I don’t like that face anyway. It isn’t – standard enough, if you get me.’
‘Well, Phil, I thought I’d make her a little bit individual. I mean, well, you and I aren’t exactly standard.’
Phil looked at him a long time. ‘So now it comes, eh? The stab in the back.’
‘What do you mean, Phil?’
‘I’m not standard, eh? You mean I’m not white. I’m Chinese.’
‘No, Phil. Honest, I …’
‘I guess you’ve always felt that way about me, eh, Marty? I guess while I was taking you on here and giving you a job, despite the fact that you might drop dead of a heart attack at any moment and leave me with tons of work to do, while I was giving you a job so you could buy a fancy gadget to save your Caucasian heart, all the time you were just thinking how Chinese I was. Right? Right.’
Marty’s pacemaker missed again; he was unable to answer.
‘I guess maybe you think I look like a “dirty Jap” in some old war comic, right? Eh? With buck teeth and bad eyes, eh? Well thanks for cluing me in, buddy. Thanks for telling me what the score is.’
Marty gasped an irrelevant reply.
‘Well let me tell you something. I fought in the Second World War, risked my life – and on the right side. And as for the Japs, they’re a damned fine bunch of people – did you see Sayonara, with Marlon Brando? – and they make a bunch of clever little products, including that thing in your chest.
‘I’m not going to fire you, and make it easy for you to feel sorry for yourself. But don’t you ever say I’m not standard again, see?’
At the door Phil paused again. ‘And fix up that girl. Don’t draw her, use a few of those expensive sheets of wax faces Drum paid so damned much for.’
Marty opened a file drawer and took out the trembling sheets. Here were row on row of standard faces, admiring crowds, hands holding cigarettes, empty hands ready to hold or point at a product. Here were couples embracing, laughing, dancing, exchanging gifts, pouring champagne, walking in the country, getting into and out of sports cars, throwing beach-balls. Here were office workers comparing notes, talking on the telephone, slipping on overcoats. Here were housewives shopping, cooking, kissing babies, serving something with a delicious aroma that curled around them. And here were the backgrounds to set them against: carpeted offices, TV-equipped living rooms, built-in kitchens, shopping plazas, elegant bistros, neat countryside.
Marty held up a page of
twenty neat countrysides and looked at them with loving eyes. More than anything, even more than going to Hawaii, he wanted to be young and slim and alone with a girl in countryside just like that.
But it was rush time. He chose the most standard-looking blonde, frantically grinning, freckled, and burnished her down on a fresh white page. Beginning with her wax loveliness, with her hair swept to the left by an invisible, presumably wax, wind, he would start all over and build the ad around her.
But he burnished hastily, so that when he peeled up the plastic film, her freckles were still on it, untransferred.
‘Jesus!’
And Phil was sure to ask Why no freckles? Marty washed his sweating hands and cleaned a tiny crow-quill pen. Steadying his right hand with his left, he began the miniature cosmetic surgery.
‘We’ve made up a selection of code or jargon words/phrases used by some imaginary anarchist group,’ said Dr. Freag. ‘These are: “lafodul”, “breughel”, “whee”, “the basic assumption” and “I have the hymnal in the car”. The basic assumption here is that the group will use these words in conversations with sufficient frequency to be detected. And WORDFREAK, scanning vocal patterns at high speed, can do the job.’
Little were any of the stockholders to know that these very words of Dr Freag’s were being selected for scanning, and that one day he would be killed by plant security guards! But that is another story.
Ray was sobbing. ‘… and then the sign on the prescription blank? It turned into something else. Like this.’ He drew two shaky signs:
Travers marked the last box below the heavy line on Ray’s application.
‘And then the …’