Mutant 59

by Kit Pedler

  ‘I’ll try it on Holland for size,’ Slayter said. ‘He’s the chairman of my so-called inquiry.’ He rose, glanced at his watch. ‘He always lunches in his office. If you’d like to wait?’

  ‘I’ll wait,’ said Gerrard. After Slayter had gone, shouldering his way through to the telephone, Gerrard momentarily regretted his action in contacting him. It was like throwing a pebble into a lake – no one knew how far the ripples would extend or what they would wash up when they reached the shoreline.

  When Slayter returned he was a little less anxious. ‘He says he’ll take it up.’

  ‘And?’ queried Gerrard.

  Slayter shrugged: ‘Just that! He’ll investigate further. Probably a big concession on his part.’

  ‘But will he really do anything?’

  ‘Matter of fact I think he will. He’ll probably take it up with Tom Myers. I think we’ve set the ball in motion, now we can only wait and see.’

  And that, Gerrard reflected, finishing his drink, was the way things were done over here. Nothing public. Nothing ever on paper – just the right word to the right man at the right time and, if you were very lucky, something got done.

  Five

  Myers pushed the model hovertrain along the length of track on the desk. He studied Holland waiting on the phone, then looked around the cluttered room. On the wall was a faded lithograph of one of the first steam underground trains belching smoke up to the roof of a high vaulted tunnel. On another was a multi-coloured map of England showing the criss-crossed air corridors covering the land mass.

  There were rows of books with abstruse titles: ‘Systems analysis of subway design’, ‘Negative feedback theory and the flow of rolling stock’. He looked back at Holland. Poor old Bernard got the hunted look – too much paper pushing, not enough time to follow his own nose and be creative … Something about his wife being ill, probably the last straw, poor devil. He listened as Holland spoke irritably into the phone:

  ‘Yes – no I don’t want sales – I want Mr Hinton in R & D – yes I’ll hold – thank you.’

  He gestured impatiently at Myers. Myers smiled. ‘Somebody should write a paper on: the impossibility of succesful communication in large organizations!’

  Holland raised his eyes: ‘I remember once— Oh hello, Hinton? Bernard Holland here – yes that’s right – I was wondering if you’d made any progress on the faulty component – Good, what did you find? Most interesting – you sure? – I see. Tell me, do you know who actually supplied the wire – yes of course.’

  He put his hand over the phone. ‘He’s looking it up.’ ‘Hello – yes – it was! Now tell me, was it the new stuff: Aminostyrene covered?’ He nodded over at Myers. ‘Thanks so much – sorry to bother you – we shall meet on Tuesday when we reconvene – good – yes – goodbye.’ He put the receiver down.

  ‘The fault was caused by wire covered by Aminostyrene.’

  Myers shoved the model train violently against the buffers: ‘Right! One plus one equals a possible three – who makes it?’

  Holland thought for a second – ‘It’s a Neoplas product – the plastic whizz-kids out in Essex.’

  Myers frowned: ‘I know them, don’t know much about the technology of the stuff, do you?’

  ‘Not a great deal. Apparently it’s cheap, doesn’t burn, its plasticity doesn’t alter with age and it’s foamed with nitrogen. Good insulation …’

  Myers interrupted: ‘I remember, it was Harold Wright. You remember him, don’t you?’

  ‘Vaguely. Tall, austere ascetic character!’

  ‘You must be joking! I remember him at Sheffield. Humped practically everything female in his year. Funny – looking at him now he’s pure as a priest, wouldn’t think he even knew how to do it! Good chemist though. Didn’t he join that professional egghead lot down at Mitcham?’

  ‘That’s right, the Kramer group – the American west-coast idea. You put a lot of bright young PhD’s together – form a company, corner the market in some special technology and then set up as expensive consultants.’

  ‘In their case … The biodegradable bottle.’

  ‘Tropic Delight … Don’t mind me, I’m just jealous. They made an absolute packet out of it. Now they’re searching round for new ideas.’

  ‘With the Aminostyrene patent and the biodegradable bottle I’d hardly think they need any.’

  ‘It’ll be interesting to see just how long it takes before Neoplas pass it back along the line to Kramer.’ Holland paused. ‘Sometimes, you know, I quite enjoy my work!’

  Kramer was in full swing. ‘I’ve got Neoplas sitting right down on my neck, they said it’s our problem and what are we going to do about it.’

  Wright’s narrow expressionless eyes watched the snowflakes sliding down the panes of the arched window:

  ‘Just what are we being accused of exactly?’

  ‘Nothing specific yet. Look, you know the Isleworth smash.’

  ‘I read about it.’

  ‘And the Knightsbridge foul-up?’

  ‘I must say I considered that inevitable, it was …’

  ‘Forget the details. There was a massive failure in a computerized traffic control experiment, OK?’

  ‘I don’t see …’

  ‘The guy in charge of the air crash rang me … he talked to the Knightsbridge people, and they found that insulation failure was maybe behind both accidents.’

  Wright went on doodling.

  Kramer spat: ‘Don’t say you don’t get it! Insulation – wire – death – Aminostyrene! They’re saying it’s the plastic – insulation failure leading to short circuits. The wires were covered in Aminostyrene.’

  Wright turned to him: ‘They’ll need to be somewhat more exact than that. What you’re saying as far as I can gather is that: two accidents happen separately and two groups of people – probably absolutely destitute for a good idea, settle for a common factor – any common factor so that they can look intelligent in time for their masters.’

  ‘Harold,’ Kramer was icy. ‘That’s not good enough. I pulled you out of Neoplas – I funded you, gave you facilities – you pulled the method out of your head – it worked, we made some money.’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that.’

  ‘OK, we’ve both gained. It became our patent. Neoplas bitched about piracy and so on but they knew they couldn’t do anything.’

  Wright stared.

  ‘Now perhaps they can! Just how much of the truth did you tell us? Those ministry bastards are going to get up and say we fudged our tests – that we conned them about Aminostyrene. Harold, they’re going to sink you – unless you’ve got all the data – unless you can produce all the test sheets – change of resistivity with age, effect of nitrogen foaming on plasticity, every last goddam fact!’

  ‘Do you doubt it? You saw all the test sheets – everything I reported was true.’

  ‘I hope for your sake it was.’

  Wright eyed him coolly: ‘You’re lashing about – looking for a victim. You know what happened just as well as I do. I didn’t cut corners, I didn’t need to.’

  Kramer glanced at him, his mouth pursed, there was sprung menace in every movement of his body: ‘Don’t fool about with me, Harold, what are you telling me?’

  Wright’s expression was set, immobile. He eyed each part of Kramer’s face before replying:

  ‘It was you who couldn’t wait – never mind that you said, that’s enough on that, leave it … I’ll do the selling! You pushed me hard, harder than I’ve ever been pushed in my life. What was I supposed to do? Calculate standard deviations on every damned titration. Of course I rushed it! You couldn’t wait!’

  Wright stopped, frozen, angry with himself at his outburst. Kramer held his eyes for a moment then laughed briefly.

  ‘Just what I’ve been trying to tell you. The buck stops here with both of us.’

  Wright looked at him suspiciously, sensing a new attack, then smiled tightly, the tension slowly going out of him:
>
  ‘There’s nothing they can sue us for, even the first batches we made exceeded what we promised. We found no evidence of failure. No depolymerization – nothing. We did have some trouble with the early foaming experiments – low elasticity – but nothing to do with the actual molecular architecture – that’s absolutely copper-bottomed …’

  Kramer interjected: ‘You’ll stand up on that?’

  Buchan came in and draped his great angular frame comfortably on a lab bench. He listened in silence.

  Wright went on: ‘You know better than to ask that. You went through the MIT brain factory, didn’t you. Well I had the same sort of conditioning at Sheffield. For better or for worse, and it’s no credit to me, I can’t fake a test schedule. Not because I might get found out, not because I think it would be morally wrong, but because I would feel uncomfortable if I did. I’m a technological animal – brainwashed, if you like – but for me the only bad technology is technology which doesn’t work!’

  Buchan protested: ‘I’ll take you up on that sometime.’

  Kramer waved him to silence: ‘Not now, Buck, you’ve got the picture?’

  Buchan nodded: ‘I was looking up the total number of sub-contracts for Aminostyrene. There are over three hundred. It’s almost everywhere.’

  Kramer looked up: ‘What’s your point?’

  Buchan replied slowly: ‘Well, if there is any fault in the material, we shall bear an enormous responsibility, won’t we?’

  ‘Why?’ Wright said. ‘We develop a product, we produce a specification, we sell the method and the material on the specification as stated.’

  ‘Aye, but supposing there is some aspect of its ageing we didn’t spot. Insulation failure – think of it – you know where it’s used, it would be tremendously dangerous. If it can cause accidents, death, and if we’ve missed something, then we’re responsible.’

  Kramer stood up: ‘What are you trying to say … We made a commercial deal, people buy after examining the product, we didn’t keep anything back – they got all the data. What more can we do?’

  Buchan persisted: ‘I think it’s our duty to take a long hard look at it again.’

  Kramer laughed. ‘Duty, what’s duty? To what? Reckon we call you Buckman not Buchan.’

  Buchan flushed angrily at the jibe: ‘That’s a rotten thing to …’

  ‘OK. I’m sorry, but you asked for it. All I meant to say was that we can’t afford – and I do mean afford – to do everybody’s development work for them, we sold a method at a particular stage – openly and without concealment – we made no guarantees beyond what we had actually measured.’

  ‘Well, let me go and talk to them.’

  ‘Buck, not you, I’m sorry. You’ll go into their place wringing your hands with guilt, and we’ll be nailed before you’ve started.’

  Buchan started to protest, but Kramer turned to the intercom and pressed down the key. Betty’s voice answered.

  Kramer said: ‘Is Dr Gerrard in?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him.’

  ‘Get him on the phone at home, will you?’

  As the phone rang Gerrard was sniffing the closed lid of the electric coffee grinder, savouring the brown tang of freshly ground blue mountain beans.

  The flat had a general air of home-made but elegant comfort. Situated in a Kensington mews, over a garage selling vintage racing machinery, it consisted of one large, low room and a bathroom and microscopic kitchen.

  The main living-room floor was varnished pine, partly covered by a large hairy white rug. Along one wall were shelves made of thick, chunky wood supported on piles of bricks. On the shelves were piles of books, bits of driftwood, a dark green glass float from a fishnet and an alarmingly dangerous-looking Hi-Fi system. Instead of the usual sleek wood modules, there was a large sheet of perspex with holes cut in it. In the holes were bare printed circuit boards, linked, in what looked like total confusion, by means of multi-coloured wires. To Gerrard it was beautiful.

  On another wall hung two large electrostatic speakers and scattered round the floor were large square blocks of plastic foam, hand covered by coarse woven material. There was only one real chair, which had cost him far too much money. It was a satin-chrome and black leather copy of the famous Bauhaus original. The room was lit by home-made spot lights, made out of aluminium sheet and pointing at the wall, giving a soft reflected glow. In the kitchen there were rows of copper saucepans neatly stacked, bottles of herbs and a fearsome array of steel cooking knives on the wall. There was a faint aroma of black pepper and garlic.

  Gerrard put the coffee mill down, walked through, picked up the receiver.

  Kramer talked rapidly on the phone: ‘… yes, that’s right, just go and see how much they’ve got, don’t commit yourself. There are two of them, one’s called Holland, I don’t know him – he’s a Ministry of Transport scientist, the other’s Tom Myers. Now Luke, watch that character, he’s one of your “old chap” people – beer and a bulldog face – that’s it – but he thinks – he’s bright, so play along slowly. Where? … hold on … Room 242 Min of Tech.’

  Six

  The air in the tube train was humid and stale and emanating from the dense mass of weary homebound commuters there was a smell of day-old aftershave and wet clothing. As the train rocked and clattered through the tunnel, the passengers swung from side to side like vertically stacked dolls in a box. There was no room to fall and confusion was prevented by those who were lucky enough to have found a roof strap to hold.

  The uneven roar of the train almost obliterated conversation – eyes stared into shoulders without seeing.

  One tall man bent down by the roof to the level of the other heads, vainly tried to read the Financial Times propped against someone’s back jammed against him. An obese woman, breathing stertorously, stood, legs apart, in front of a shaggy, bearded youth sitting comfortably. She glared angrily down at him for not giving up his seat. Farther down the carriage a young mother sat trying to comfort her baby against the noise.

  Gradually, the train groaned down to a halt. Voices raised against the noise died away to an embarrassed whisper as the almost hypnotic rhythm of the train stopped. Then, with a sudden jerk, the carriages started to move again, followed almost immediately by a loud popping noise, then, once again, the train creaked to a halt.

  There was a hot, anxious silence.

  The minutes ticked by, and the shuffling noises made by the fidgeting passengers began to sound harsh and artificially loud. A pair of young office girls, huddled in a corner near the door, began to giggle – sharing some secret joke.

  There was a sharp crackling rustle as the tall man folded away his paper and began to study the advertisements spread out along the panels over the seat. One caught his eye – it told of the advantages of moving offices out of London. He smiled wryly to himself.

  The seated youth tapped his foot to a tune he was half whistling and every so often he looked up at the woman standing over him, he winked at her – she glared back.

  Suddenly, a compressor motor started under the floor – its cavernous hammering noise provided a momentary relief in the tense silence. It snapped off and once again, in the uneasy silence, there was only the regular clicking of hot metal shrinking as it cooled, somewhere in the mechanism of the coach.

  Fifteen minutes went by and passengers began to look at watches imagining burnt dinners and suspicious wives. A thin, bird-like man took a religious tract out of his pocket and began to read it, mouthing the words to himself. The air grew hotter. The youth pulled out a cigarette and lit it. The fat woman angrily pointed at the ‘no smoking’ sign on the window. As slowly as he could, staring straight at her, he nipped out the cigarette and spilled the hot ash down the hem of her overcoat.

  The glass-panelled door connecting the carriages abruptly swung open and a cheerful florid motorman in blue denim pushed his way into the packed coach. The tension broke at once and questions came at him from all sides.

  ‘What’s going
on?’

  ‘How long’s it going to be?’

  ‘Want a push?’

  He raised his hands placatingly: ‘Nothing to worry about, ladies and gents, we’ve had a little signal failure, that’s all.’ Above the groan that followed, he went on: ‘We’re going to get you off down the tunnel into the next station.’

  ‘What about the rails? We’ll get electrified.’

  ‘How far is it?’

  ‘Now, now, now.’ He was enjoying the role of being fully in command. ‘There’s nothing to worry about, we’ve turned off the current. A little walk, that’s all, it’s a bit dusty, that’s the worst you’ll find. Now come along, just move along into the coach ahead and you’ll be all right.’

  Gently shoving people towards the open door behind him, he moved on towards the next coach as the passengers began to file protestingly out through the door into the next carriage. As they stepped across the gap, they glanced uneasily into the darkness between the two coaches. It seemed dangerous to be even, for a moment, outside the lit security of the interior. The air in the tunnel smelt of musty damp and hot electrical windings.

  In the tunnel, anxious faces peered into the gloom, lit harshly by solitary naked light bulbs. The effect of the black circular ribs of the tunnel holding the great mass of earth away from the frailty of their bodies stopped all conversation.

  Somebody whistled a single note, to see whether it echoed. The sound was instantly sucked away to thick silence in the stale air. As they picked their way gingerly along to the bright circle of the station lights, the tall man drawled almost to himself: ‘On the third day out we struck water.’ There was nervous laughter from people around him, breaking the tension as they looked ahead and saw the first passengers clamber awkwardly up onto the station platform. There was murder in the eyes of the fat woman as the youth jumped lightly up ahead of her.