by Gene Wolfe
Forlesen, who could not see how anything could be both, nodded.
Fields glanced at his watch. “Nearly oh seventy-one already, and I got an appointment. Listen, I’m gonna leave you to find your way around.”
Forlesen seated himself at his desk. “I was hoping you’d tell me what I’m supposed to do here before you left.”
Fields was already outside the cubicle. “You mean your responsibilities; there’s a list around somewhere.”
Forlesen had intended to protest further, but as he started to speak he noticed an optical illusion so astonishing that for the brief period it was visible he could only stare. As Fields passed behind one of the rippled glass partitions on his way to the door, the distortions in the glass caused his image to change from that of the somewhat dumpy and rumpled man with whom Forlesen was now slightly familiar; behind the glass he was taller, exceedingly neat, and blank faced. And he wore glasses.
When he was gone Forlesen got up and examined the partitions carefully; they seemed ordinary enough, one surface rippled, the other smooth, the tops slightly dusty. He looked at his empty desk through the glass; it was a vague blur. He sat down again, and the telephone rang. “Cappy?”
“This is Emanuel Forlesen.” At the last moment it occurred to Forlesen that it might have been better to call himself Manny as Fields had—that it might seem more friendly and less formal, particularly to someone who was looking for someone he addressed so casually—but, as the thought entered his mind, something else, not a thought but one of those deeper feelings from which our thoughts have, perhaps, evolved contradicted it, so he repeated his name, bearing down on the first syllable: “Ee-manuel Forlesen.”
“Isn’t Cappy Dillingham there?”
“He may be in this office,” Forlesen said, “that is, his desk may be here, but he’s not here himself, and this is my telephone—I just moved into the office.”
“Take a message for him, will you? Tell him the Creativity Group meeting is moved up to oh seventy-eight sharp. I’m sorry it had to be so early, but Gene Fine has got a bunch of other stuff and we couldn’t figure out anything else to do short of canceling. And we couldn’t get a room, so we’re meeting in the hall outside the drilling and boring shop. There’s definitely going to be a film. Have you got that?”
“I think so,” Forlesen said. “Oh seventy-eight, hall outside the drill room, movie.” He heard someone behind him and turned to look. It was Miss Fawn, so he said, “Do you know where Mr. Dillingham is? I’m taking a call for him.”
“He died,” Miss Fawn said. “Let me talk to them.” She took the receiver. “Who’s calling, please? . . . Mr. Franklin, Mr. Dillingham died. . . . Lastnight . . . Yes, it is. Mr. Forlesen is taking his place in your group—you should have gotten a memo on it. . . . On Mr. Dillingham’s old number; you were just talking to him. He’s right here. Wait a moment.” She turned back to Forlesen: “It’s for you.”
He took the telephone and a voice in the earpiece said, “Are you Forlesen? Listen, this is Ned Franklin. You may not have been notified yet, but you’re in our Creativity Group, and we’re meeting—Wait a minute; I’ve got a memo on it under all this crap somewhere.”
“Oh seventy-eight,” Forlesen said.
“Right. I realize that’s pretty early—”
“We wouldn’t want to try to get along without Gene Fine,” Forlesen said.
“Right. Try to be there.”
Miss Fawn seemed to be leaving. Forlesen turned to see how she would appear in the rippled glass as he said, “What are we going to try and create?”
“Creativity. We create creativity itself—we learn to be creative.”
“I see,” Forlesen said. He watched Miss Fawn become pretty while remaining sexless, like a mannequin. He said, “I thought we’d just take some clay or something and start in.”
“Not that sort of creativity, for crap’s sake!”
“All right,” Forlesen said.
“Just show up, okay? Mr. Frick is solidly behind this and he gets upset when we have less than full attendance.”
“Maybe he could get us a meeting room then,” Forlesen suggested. He had no idea who “Mr. Frick” was, but he was obviously important.
“Hell, I couldn’t ask Mr. Frick that. Anyway, he never asks where we had the meeting—just how many came and what we discussed, and whether we feel we’re making progress.”
“He could be saving it.”
“Yeah, I guess he could. Listen, Cappy, if I can get us a room I’ll call you, okay?”
“Right,” said Forlesen. He hung up, wondered vaguely why Miss Fawn had come, then saw that she had left a stack of papers on a corner of his desk. “Well, the hell with you,” he said, and pushed them toward the wall. “I haven’t even looked at this desk yet.”
It was a metal desk, and somewhat smaller, older, and shabbier than the one in Fields’s office. It seemed odd to Forlesen that he should find old furniture in a part of the building which was still—judging from the sounds that occasionally drifted through the walls and window boards—under construction; but the desk and his chair as well were unquestionably nearing the end of their useful lives. The center desk drawer held a dead insect, a penknife with yellowed imitation ivory sides and a broken blade, a drawing of a bracket (very neatly lettered, Forlesen noticed) on crumpled tracing paper, and a dirty stomach mint. He threw this last away (his wastebasket was new, made of plastic, and did not seem to fit in with the other furnishings of the office) and opened the right-hand side drawer. It contained an assortment of pencils (all more or less chewed), a cube of art gum with the corners worn off, and some sheets of blank paper with one corner folded. The next drawer down yielded a wrinkled brown paper bag that disgorged a wad of wax paper, a stale half cookie, and the sharp smell of apples; the last two drawers proved to be a single file drawer in masquerade; there were five empty file folders in it, including one with a column of twenty-seven figures written on it in pencil, the first and lowest being 8,750 and the last and highest 12,500; they were not totaled. On the left side of the desk what looked like the ends of four more drawers proved to be a device for concealing a typewriter; there was no typewriter.
Forlesen closed it and leaned back in his chair, aware that inventorying the desk had depressed him. After a moment he remembered Fields’s saying that he would find a list of his responsibilities in the office, and discovered it on the top of the stack of papers Miss Fawn had left with him. It read:
MANAGEMENT PERSONNEL
Make M.P.P. Co. profitable and keep it profitable.
Assist in carrying out corporate goals.
Maintain employee discipline by reporting violators’ names to their superiors.
Help keep costs down.
If any problems come up help to deal with them in accord with company policy.
Training, production, sales, and public relations are all supervised by management personnel.
Forlesen threw the paper in the wastebasket.
The second paper in the stack was headed “Sample Leadership Problem #105” and read:
A young woman named Enid Fenton was hired recently as clerical help. Her work has not been satisfactory, but because clerical help has been in short supply she has not been told this. Recently a reduction in the workload in her department made it possible to transfer three girls to another department. Miss Fenton asked for one of the transfers and when told that they had already been assigned to others behaved in such a manner as to suggest (though nothing was actually said) that she was considering resignation. Her work consists of keypunching, typing, and filing. Should her supervisor:
Discharge her.
Indicate to her that her work has been satisfactory but hint that she may be laid off.
Offer her a six-week leave of absence (without pay) during which she may obtain further training.
Threaten her with a disciplinary fine.
Assign her to assist one of the older women.
Ask the advice of t
he other members of his Leadership group, following it only if he agrees the group has reached a correct decision in this case.
Reassign her to small-parts assembly.
NOTE: QUESTIONS CONCERNING THIS SAMPLE LEADERSHIP PROBLEM SHOULD BE ADDRESSED TO ERIC FAIRCHILD—EX 8173.
After reading the problem through twice, Forlesen picked up his telephone and dialed the number. A female voice said, “Mr. Fairchild’s office.”
Forlesen identified himself, and a moment later a masculine voice announced, “Eric Fairchild.”
“It’s about the leadership problem—number one oh five?”
“Oh, yes.” (Fairchild’s voice was hearty; Forlesen imagined him slapping backs and challenging people to Indian-wrestle at parties.) “I’ve had quite a few calls about that one. You can check as many answers as you like if they’re not mutually exclusive—okay?”
“That wasn’t what I was going to ask,” Forlesen said. “This girl’s work—”
“Wait a minute,” Fairchild said. And then, much more faintly, “Get me the Leadership file, Miss Fenton.”
“What did you say?” Forlesen asked.
“Wait a minute,” Fairchild said again. “If we’re going to dig into this thing in depth I want to have a copy of the problem in front of me. Thank you. Okay, you can shoot now. What did you say your name was?”
“Forlesen. I meant after you said, ‘Wait a minute,’ the first time. I thought I heard you call your secretary Miss Fenton.”
“Ha ha ha.”
“Didn’t you?”
“My secretary’s name is Mrs. Fairchild, Mr. Forlesen—no, she’s not my wife, if that’s what you’re thinking. Mr. Frick doesn’t approve of nepotism. She’s just a nice lady who happens to be named Mrs. Fairchild, and I was addressing Miss Fetton, who is filling in for her today.”
“Sorry,” Forlesen said.
“You wanted to ask about problem one hundred and five?”
“Yes, I wanted to ask—Well, for one thing, in what way is the young woman’s work unsatisfactory?”
“Just what it says on the sheet, whatever that is. Wait a minute; here it is. Her work has not been satisfactory, but because clerical help has been in short supply she has not been told this.”
“Yes,” Forlesen said, “but in what way has it been unsatisfactory?”
“I see what you’re getting at now, but I can’t very well answer that, can I? After all, the whole essence of Leadership Training involves presenting the participants with structured problems—you see what I mean? This is a structured problem. Miss Fenton, could I trouble you to go down to the canteen and get me some coffee? Take it out of petty cash. Now if I explained something like that to you, and not to the others, then it would have a different structuring for you than for them. You see?”
“Well, it seemed to me,” Forlesen said, “that one of the first things to do would be to take Miss Fenton aside and explain to her that her work was unsatisfactory and perhaps hear what she had to say.”
“Miss who?”
“Fetton, the girl in the problem.”
“Right, and I see what you mean. However, since it specifically says what I read to you, and nothing else more than that, then if I was to tell you something else it would be structured different for you than for the other fellows. See what I mean?”
After thinking for a moment Forlesen said, “I don’t see how I can check any of the boxes knowing no more than I do now. Is it all right if I write my own solution?”
“You mean, draw a little box for yourself?”
“Yes, and write what I said after it—I mean, what I outlined to you a minute ago. That I’d talk to her.”
“I don’t think there’s room on the paper for all that, fella. I mean, you said quite a bit.”
Forlesen said, “I think I can boil it down.”
“Well, we can’t allow it anyway. These things are scored by a computer and we have to give it an answer—what I’m driving at is the number of your answer. Like the girl codes in the I.D. number of each participant and then the problem number, and then the answer number, like one or two or three. Or then if she puts like twenty-three it knows you answered two AND three. That would be indicate to her that her work has been satisfactory but hint that she may be laid off, and Offer her a six-week leave of absence without pay—during which she may obtain further training. “You get it?”
“You’re telling me that that’s the right answer,” Forlesen said. “Twenty-three.”
“Listen, hell no! I don’t know what the right answer is; only the machine does. Maybe there isn’t any right answer at all. I was just trying to give you a kind of a hint—what I’d do if I was in your shoes. You want to get a good grade, don’t you?”
“Is it important?”
“I would say that it’s important. I think it’s important to any man to know he did something like this and he did good—wouldn’t you say so? But like we said at the start of the course, your grade is your personal thing. We’re going to give grades, sure, on a scale of seven hundred and fifty-seven—that’s the top—to forty-nine, but nobody knows your grade but you. You’re told your own grade and your class standing and your standing among everybody here who’s ever taken the course—naturally that doesn’t mean much; the problems change all the time—but what you do with that information is up to you. You evaluate yourself. I know there have been these rumors about Mr. Frick coming in and asking the computer questions, but it’s not true—frankly, I don’t think Mr. Frick even knows how to program. It doesn’t just talk to you, you know.”
“I didn’t get to attend the first part of the course,” Forlesen said. “I’m filling in for Cappy Dillingham. He died.”
“Sorry to hear that. Old age, I guess.”
“I don’t know.”
“Probably that was it. Hell, it seems like it was only yesterday I was talking to him about his grade after class—he had some question about one oh four; I don’t even remember what it was now. Old Cappy. Wow.”
“How was he doing?” Forlesen asked.
“Not too hot. I had him figured for about a five-fifty, give or take twenty—but listen, if you had seen the earlier stuff you wouldn’t be asking these questions now. You’d of been guided into it—see what I mean?”
Forlesen said, “I just don’t see how I can mark this. I’m going to return the unmarked sheet under protest.”
“I told you, we can’t score something like that.”
Forlesen said, “Well, that’s what I’m going to do,” and hung up.
His desk said, “You’re a sharp one, aren’t you? He’s going to call you back.”
Forlesen looked for the speaker but could not find it.
“I heard you talking to Franklin too, and I saw you throw away the Management Responsibilities list. Do you know that in a lot of the offices here you find that framed and hung on the wall? Some of them hang it where they can see it, and some of them hang it where their visitors can see it.”
“Which kind gets promoted?” Forlesen asked. He had decided the speaker was under the center desk drawer, and was on his hands and knees looking for it.
“The kind that fit in,” the desk said.
Forlesen said, “What kind of an answer is that?” The telephone rang and he answered it.
“Mr. Forlesen, please.” It was Fairchild.
“Speaking.”
“I was wondering about number one oh five—have you sent it back yet?”
“I just put it in my out-box,” Forlesen said. “They haven’t picked it up yet.” Vaguely he wondered if Miss Fawn was supposed to empty the out-box, or if anyone was; perhaps he was supposed to do it himself.
“Good, good. Listen, I’ve been thinking about what you said—do you think that if I told you what was wrong with this girl you’d be able to size her up better? The thing is, she just doesn’t fit in; you know what I mean?”
“No,” Forlesen said.
“Let me give you an example. Guys come in the
office all the time, either to talk to me or just because they haven’t anything better to do. They kid around with the girls, you know? Okay, this girl, you never know how she’s going to take it. Sometimes she gets mad. Sometimes she thinks the guy really wants to get romantic, and she wants to go along with it.”
“I’d think they’d learn to leave her alone,” Forlesen said.
“Believe me, they have. And the other girls don’t like her—they come in to me and say they want to be moved away from her desk.”
“Do they say why?”
“Oh, hell, no. Listen, if you’d ever bossed a bunch of women you’d know better than that; the way they always put it is the light isn’t good there, or it’s too close to the keypunch—too noisy—or it’s too far from the keypunch and they don’t wanna have to walk that far, or they want to be closer to somebody they do like. But you know how it is—I’ve moved her all around the damn office and everybody wants to get away; she’s Typhoid Mary.”
“Make her your permanent secretary,” Forlesen said.
“What?”
“Just for a while. Give your mother a special assignment. That way you can find out what’s wrong with this girl, if anything is, which I doubt.”
“You’re crazy, Forlesen,” Fairchild said, and hung up.
The telephone rang again almost as soon as Forlesen set the receiver down. “This is Miss Fawn,” the telephone said. “Mr. Freeling wants to see you, Mr. Forlesen.”
“Mr. Freeling?”
“Mr. Freeling is Mr. Fields’s chief, Mr. Forlesen, and Mr. Fields is your chief. Mr. Freeling reports to Mr. Flint, and Mr. Flint reports directly to Mr. Frick. I am Mr. Freeling’s secretary.”
“Thank you,” Forlesen said. “I was beginning to wonder where you fit in.”
“Right out of your office, down the hall to the ‘T,’ left, up the stairs, and along the front of the building. Mr. Freeling’s name is on the door.”