Prescription for Chaos

by Christopher Anvil

Ravagger grinned, creating an unfortunate effect like the surfacing of a shark that is in the process of eating a swimmer. He patted the curving metal top of the object, which was enameled a sickly shade suggestive of dog droppings.

  "This, my dear, is a product of the Cartwright Corporation's Fuels Sciences Division. This is the 'business opportunity of a lifetime.' Specifically, this is a 'solid-fuel converter, designed to eliminate the dependence of our nation on foreign oil producers, and thereby return control of our fuel destiny to these shores.'"

  She stared. "That's a quote?"

  He nodded. "From one of the company's brochures."

  "Is it true?"

  "If you strain out the high-tech wordage, this is a coal stove. And if it's the kind of coal stove I think it is, it's a bomb."

  "Meaning—"

  "That after you install it and use it, it won't be long before you'll do almost anything to never have to use it again."

  "Then, why are you putting it in our living room?"

  He opened a large cardboard box near an elaborately simple white sofa, and pulled out a quivering rectangle of curving black metal—a section of stovepipe not yet locked into a cylinder. He smiled at her.

  "Remember the wood-stove craze?"

  She glanced covertly at her left wrist, where the burn scar had almost disappeared.

  "I couldn't forget that."

  Nelson delivered himself of a grisly chuckle.

  "No. Me, either. But it was educational."

  She glanced up at a small decorative snow scene nearly hidden behind a spray of imitation pussy willows in a tall pearl-colored vase. The snow scene was painted on a circular brass flue cover; the flue openings in the old building had been unplastered and put to use during the time of the Oil Embargo, then thankfully covered up again afterward.

  "Well," she said, "but what connection—"

  "I'm not sure," said Ravagger, "but we just might have a coal-stove craze next. Cartwright is convinced of it. And as it happens, I'm on their board, and the management has a tiny little flaw that we will have to live through somehow, preferably without bankrupting the company in the process."

  Cyrus Cartwright II, at the head of the long table, winced as Nelson Ravagger settled into his chair near the far end. Beside Cartwright, W. W. Sanson of the Machines Division—former head of Superdee Equipment before its near-bankruptcy and merger with Cartwright—growled, "Ravagger doesn't look too cheerful."

  "No," said Cartwright uneasily. "It's nicer when he's just bored."

  "Damn it, he's got that blowtorch look." Sanson dropped his voice to a murmur. "Remember, you're the chairman."

  Cartwright squinted at him side-wise. "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Keep him in line. Use your authority."

  "I'm chairman because he doesn't want to be stuck with the job. If he wanted it, he could take it any time."

  "It's your name on the door. Remember, your granddad founded the company."

  "Granddad isn't here. And just incidentally, which one would be worse to get along with, I don't know." He glanced at his watch. "Well, time to get started."

  The meeting commenced with boring routine, and proceeded in its accustomed groove until, just as Cartwright had almost forgotten Ravagger, the speculator's voice reached across the table. This voice had a peculiar resonance, 10 percent of it made up by the construction of Ravagger's chest and voicebox, and 90 percent by the listeners' awareness of the number of shares of the company the voice represented.

  Ravagger said, "We haven't heard from the head of our new Fuels Division yet."

  On Cartwright's left, R. J. Schwenk of the Fuels Sciences Division said cheerfully, "Nothing to report, Mr. Ravagger. No problems. Everything proceeding according to plan."

  Cartwright smiled. "Nels, Schwenkie is a source of real comfort, but demand for our solid-fuel products, as yet, is just starting to perk up."

  On the other side of Cartwright, W. W. Sanson cleared his throat. "As vice-chairman, Mr. Ravagger, I have made it my job to follow the progress of our new Fuels Sciences Division with particular care. Our statistical analysis shows everything on plot."

  " 'On plot'?"

  "Everything proceeding according to plan."

  "Meaning what?"

  "Aah—meaning that the—ah—that expenses are under control, sales are about where we expected, the market for our products is developing as forecast, we have the appropriate number of dealers signing up. Everything is fine."

  "How about quality?"

  Sanson chuckled. "Well, you know our slogan: 'Quality First, Quality Last—Our Name Is Quality.'"

  "OK, you've made a special study of the Fuels Division's products, then?"

  "Yes, precisely. Ah, no, wait a minute."

  "Of course, you haven't had time to do everything."

  A soothing purr was suddenly present in Ravagger's voice, and Sanson broke out in a sweat. "What I'm saying is, I've studied the results. That's what counts. I haven't examined each individual product. We have quality control experts, inspectors—I wouldn't intrude that far down the ladder. Our people do their jobs."

  Cartwright spoke up hastily. "Nels, if you're thinking of checking up on our workers, the union wouldn't like that."

  Ravagger glanced at Sanson. "Which products have you studied, then?"

  "Well, as I said, it's the overall results that count."

  "You haven't examined any of the products?"

  Sanson said, "What difference—"

  "None at all? Even though you're making it your job to follow the division's progress 'with particular care'?"

  Cartwright stared down the table at Ravagger, then glanced to his left at R. J. Schwenck.

  Schwenck said at once, "That's my job, Mr. Ravagger. I'd be offended if Mr. Sanson felt it necessary to check me up on that."

  "Oh, I see." Ravagger looked back at Sanson. "You were scared to check any products for fear Schwenck might get mad at you?"

  Sanson blew out his breath. "No, I just trust him to do his job."

  "All right. Now, Mr. Schwenck—"

  "Yes, Mr. Ravagger."

  "You've just heard our vice-chairman say he's not afraid of your taking offense. Naturally, I'm not afraid either. As a matter of fact, I don't think there's anyone here who would hesitate to check on anything because someone might take offense."

  "Well, all I meant—" Schwenck hesitated. Before he could find some way around his own comment, Ravagger's words trod on his heels:

  "You meant what?"

  "Oh, we don't want to interfere further down in the hierarchy, or in each other's territory. It's bad manners. It assumes the other man doesn't do his job. An organization is built on mutual trust."

  Ravagger purred, "An excellent defense of your comment, Mr. Schwenck."

  Schwenck looked relieved. Sanson looked alarmed.

  Ravagger said, "So you have checked the products in your own division, then?"

  "No, that's what I just—"

  Ravagger glanced around. "Then who does check on them? Are we selling stuff we don't know anything about?"

  Schwenck said, "As we've said, Mr. Ravagger, we have quality-control inspectors to see to that. Really, you shouldn't criticize what you don't understand."

  Ravagger slowly turned his head to look directly at Schwenck. The effect on Schwenck was like having a machine gun take aim at him. Schwenck began to perspire, but kept his mouth shut.

  Ravagger said quietly, "In the final analysis, Mr. Schwenck, who is the ultimate authority in this company?"

  Schwenck said carefully, "I guess you are, Mr. Ravagger. But that doesn't mean you necessarily understand it."

  Cartwright said nervously, "Gentlemen—"

  Ravagger shook his head. "I'm not the final authority. What I have to do is make you aware who is. And if I have to smash heads or look like a jackass to do it, I will do it anyway. Now, just consider—Who is not in the company, but controls the destiny of the company—any company? Who, because he
can make the company succeed or fail, influences the destiny of everyone in it? Who is below the bottom of the organization and above the chief executive at the top? Whose opinion is often ignored or unknown, and whose favor is almost universally courted?"

  Schwenck stared. "You can only mean the customer."

  "Right. Now, anyone that important is going to have his interests looked after. And since this is your division, you will look after those interests! What do you mean, the quality-control inspector will do it? The quality-control inspector may check the thickness of metal or the finish on the enamel, but there's more to satisfying a customer than that! You can't delegate that job! That job is the most important job you've got! It is your personal responsibility to check that those products are right! The only way you can do that is to become a customer yourself! Mr. Chairman, I move that a special allowance be made to Mr. R. J. Schwenck, head of our Fuels Sciences Division, to enable him to immediately purchase, as a customer, one of our Superheat Solid-Fuel Converters—colloquially known as a 'stove,' preferably Model J616 or J617—and report to us at the next meeting on his personal installation and use of this device."

  Madeleine Schwenck looked on in bafflement as her husband paid the deliverymen and eyed the massive bright-red object they had left. "Richie, what, pray tell, is that?"

  Schwenck exhaled carefully.

  "It's a—it's a stove, Hon."

  "Where are you planning to put it?"

  "Right here. Where I had them leave it."

  "There?"

  "Remember, we had the wood stove here."

  "Richie, look, we agreed to get rid of the wood stove. And the chainsaw. And the pick-up truck. If you had to get another wood stove—"

  "This is not a wood stove."

  "That's true, you only said it's a stove. Well, then, what kind of stove is it?"

  "It's a—ah—a solid-fuels converter. Of—h'm—fossil fuels."

  "It's a what?"

  "It's a coal stove."

  She took a fresh look at him, then at the stove. Then she looked at him again.

  He stood frowning at the curving bulk, and asked himself, exactly why did this thing look like a cross between an old-style fire truck and a juke box when the sketches and presentations had shown it as modern and cheerful. A 1930s aura radiated from it, along with a sense of stubborn intractability.

  She said carefully, "Richie—"

  He said, "Look, Madeleine, this is not necessarily permanent. I—uh—you might look on it as a sort of, well, company homework."

  "Rich, please, I don't know what you have in mind, but please remember that I'm a lawyer, and we don't want another of those arguments where we both forget ourselves. And I can feel it starting to build up already. I do pay part of the costs—a good part of the costs—of this house, and I don't mind it, it's fair, but I like to be consulted about what we do and what we don't do. Now—"

  He groaned, and told her about the directors' meeting.

  "Well," she said, frowning, "I hear it, but I don't understand it. This was the idea of this stock swindler?"

  "Hon," said Schwenck, "I may have put it too strong. This guy cuts things pretty close to the line, but it's not that line he cuts close to. He's opinionated, overbearing, and damned tricky; but he's not a swindler."

  "Then you're saying he's a stock operator?"

  "He sure is. The problem is, for some reason, he's down on this stove; but my whole division is set up to take advantage of an inevitable disruption in the oil industry—this business of upheavals in the Middle East gives us a chance to see what is bound to happen eventually. Now, we are presenting a whole line of these—these solid-fossil-fuel converters, based on products a branch of Superdee Equipment used to make—"

  She said, "So what it boils down to is that the biggest shareholder in the company is on the board of directors, and everybody is afraid of him, and he is making you personally try out one of the products you're planning to sell?"

  He said, "Yeah. I guess that is it."

  She grinned.

  He said aggrievedly, "Damn it, it all makes perfectly good sense! As a country, we're well supplied with coal. Oil, comparatively speaking, is scarce. If there should be a break in the oil supply, the demand for some other source of energy would be fierce. Natural gas can take up part of the slack, but not all. There's going to be a hole there, and something has to fill it. Now, wood stoves produce a lot of smoke; they don't generally burn very long before you have to reload them; there are complicated pollution-control requirements; wood is not a predictable fuel unless you make it into pellets, which costs money; there are environmental objections to the burning of wood on a really large scale; meantime, you have problems storing wood.

  "The obvious answer is coal! There are only a comparatively few companies set up to produce coal stoves on anywhere near the basis that we are. And the others, as far as I know, are all asleep at the switch. And we've got our Combuster, a really effective pollution control device, which is a step ahead of everyone else in this business. If something unexpected happened to oil, we could make a mint! And don't tell me nothing could happen! We import a lot of our oil from a place that's a powder keg!"

  His wife nodded. "OK, you go ahead and get it ready. Are the stovepipes black, like for our wood stove?"

  "They're enameled red. A red stove with black pipes—our market research indicated people wouldn't go for that."

  "Richie, that is quite a vivid shade of red."

  "Yeah, I know. I just noticed that. The color in the sketches looked darker. And the first stoves we made didn't look like this to me. This has an electric effect."

  "It jumps back and forth when you look at it."

  He swallowed, and said nothing. He had just noticed that the stove was not properly centered in front of the flue opening. It would have to be moved, or the stovepipe would be crooked. And the thing weighed, at a conservative estimate, around four hundred pounds, since the dealer had conned him into getting the big model while he was at it.

  His wife sighed.

  "I'll put the frozen glop in the microwave. You set up the fossil-fuel converter. That doesn't have an oven in it?"

  "No, it's got a HydraFlame Combuster to, among other things, fully burn the gases given off in initial combustion of the solid hydrocarbons."

  She said irreverently, "You can't eat that," and went out to the kitchen. He stood, eyes squinted against the electric effect of the red outer metal jacket seen against the pale-green walls of the room. Damn it, how was he going to move this thing?

  W. W. Sanson eyed the trio of blocky-looking objects, and silently asked himself, "These slabs are what we saw the sketches of? What the hell happened?" Aloud, he said, "These are the Cartwright stoves I phoned about?"

  The salesman said, "Yes, sir. As a matter of fact, these are a lot like the standard old Superdee coal stoves we used to carry. Only this model has a tricky gimmick in it that's supposed to turn the coal into gas, and burn it up atomically, with nuclear destruction of the pollution."

  Sanson got a feeling of chills and fever. With that description, the customer could get nervous and look around for another make.

  "H'm, yes," he said, peering into the dark interior.

  The salesman said, "Run you about three thousand for the biggest model. You could heat a church with that one."

  "I wasn't thinking I needed anything that big." Sanson reminded himself he was, after all, paying for the thing, out of a totally natural irritation with Ravagger. Damn it, he asked himself, why should we go out and buy these things when the market research people had handed in their assessment, and everything was going according to plan? On the other hand, he had already discovered that the design, in reality, had all the appeal of a claw-foot bathtub turned inside-out and stood on end. The price, met in reality, not in a report on paper, gave him a fiercely possessive grip on his checkbook. If it did that to him, it was going to hit other customers the same way. And the pale-blue enamel on this batch of
stoves was way too light, as if he were looking at several monster chunks of blue cheese.

  The salesman was saying, "The middle-sized one is $2,200. The little one is $1,600. You can knock half-a-buck or so off all these prices."

  Sanson moodily considered that there went all the crafty calculation of laying out a price line-up of $2998.49, $2198.59, and $1598.69.

  "I'll take the small one," he said.

  The salesman shook his head. "I wouldn't. That spare buoy they stuck in the center to eat the pollution takes too much space. Even in the old Superdees, that little model wouldn't hold a fire overnight unless you damped it way down. Then the fire stays warm, but you freeze. What's the point?"