Dead End

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘Dubette expect the biggest commitment to be to them. Total loyalty. You signed the confidentiality contract, didn’t you?’

  ‘Of course I did. It’s pretty standard commercial practice, according to the lawyer who negotiated for me. I don’t see how it alters my argument. Or affects yours.’

  ‘I think you might have given the impression that you’re too independent … that you’re … oh I don’t know, not respectful enough.’ A flush came briefly to her face, showing up freckles around her nose.

  ‘Because I got my laboratory where it should have been in the first place and didn’t wear a jacket and tie to Edward C. Grant’s party! Come on, Rebecca!’

  ‘I was just offering a thought. What about the laboratory? You get included in this afternoon’s tour?’

  Parnell shook his head. ‘Passed me by.’

  ‘How do you read that?’

  ‘I don’t. And won’t,’ said Parnell. ‘But who were the bastards you kept on about this morning?’

  ‘You were set up, to go into the seminar like you did. Newton should have told you. Or Benn. Or someone.’

  ‘Someone like you.’

  ‘Someone like me,’ she accepted. ‘Only I didn’t think I’d have to.’

  ‘I already told you, I’m not going to become part of it.’ He had asked enough questions to indicate otherwise, Parnell conceded.

  ‘Don’t you think we’ve talked enough shop?’ she suddenly demanded.

  ‘More than enough,’ agreed Parnell.

  Rebecca had used her own car to get in from Bethesda, so she drove him home, refusing to start the car until he had fastened his seat belt. ‘That’s how Mom and Dad died, driving without their belts done up.’

  He didn’t suggest she come up to his apartment for a final nightcap, which she didn’t appear to expect. She kept the engine running and said she’d probably see him the following day – in a voice from which he inferred she wouldn’t be particularly concerned if she didn’t.

  When he did arrive that following day at the office he’d allocated to himself, adjoining the main, general research area, there were four responses to his genetics specialists advertisements and three for the secretarial vacancy.

  There was also an email from the personnel director, saying that a psychological assessment appointment had been made for him for three o’clock that afternoon at Dubette’s fully staffed medical centre.

  Four

  ‘What psychological assessment?’ demanded Parnell.

  ‘It’s a provision, under the employment contract,’ reminded the personnel director. His name was Wayne Denny. From their one previous encounter, when the man had been one of the selection panel, Parnell remembered a small, almost diminutive man who blinked a lot through thick-lensed glasses and found it necessary to consult papers and documents he never appeared able to locate.

  Parnell knew such assessments were contractual provisions from the earlier guidance given by his lawyer when he’d seriously considered terminating his appointment before it had even begun. ‘Psychological assessments come before employment, not after. If I flunk it – although not having transgressed any company policy – you going to pay me off with a two-year salary compensation? That’s the severance term, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is there something medical – or mental – you haven’t been totally forthcoming about?’ asked the man from the other end of the telephone.

  ‘What’s the real question behind that question?’ refused Parnell.

  ‘You seem very uptight: resistant.’

  ‘I’ve got a job to do, a department to set up. I want to get on with it.’

  ‘So, there’s nothing you have withheld?’

  ‘Honesty is a legal requirement in the contract,’ said Parnell, a reminder of his own.

  ‘Yes it is,’ agreed the man.

  Surely they weren’t, for whatever reason, legally seeking cause to get rid of him! Paranoia, he thought at once. ‘Why not invoke it?’

  ‘Why oppose the assessment?’

  ‘I’m not opposing any assessment. Just any further unnecessary time-wasting.’

  ‘I should have talked to you about your diary convenience. I’m sorry. But things have been moving slowly, haven’t they? You want a postponement?’

  He’d be conforming, becoming one of the unprotesting herd, if he agreed. But making an equally meaningless gesture if he demanded a rescheduling. ‘I’ll be there as close to three as I can manage. Better warn him I could be late, if he’s got other appointments.’

  ‘She,’ corrected Denny.

  ‘What?’

  ‘She,’ repeated the man. ‘The psychologist is a woman, Barbara Spacey. And it’ll be OK if you’re late. She’s blocked out her diary for the whole afternoon.’

  Parnell remained unmoving for a long time after replacing – gently, holding back from slamming down – the receiver. It would be very easy to become paranoid: do something – behave somehow – to draw more attention to himself than he appeared already to have done. Maybe he was expected to, he thought, and at once recognized that that was paranoid. But why? Why in God’s name was all this idiocy happening? Could it actually be psychological, trying to fit him into a convenient mental mould, another in the obedient flock? Why not go with the flow – very definitely not join the herd, but just as definitely not emerge the maverick – until he worked out the silly process in which he’d become embroiled, exasperating though the distraction was.

  Parnell asked for and immediately got a temporary secretary, a matronly, grey-haired woman from the pool, and replied to all the applications so far, staggering his interviews over the following week, which gave him the intervening weekend fully to go through the geneticists’ submissions, all of which looked impressive. While his responses were being typed, he referenced the three applicants on the Internet and discovered two had submitted papers to scientific journals. He printed off both. One was on the possible application of genetics to the treatment of hepatitis B, the other to the prevalence of genetic inheritance of Down’s Syndrome. He judged both to be sound – certainly indicating a strong basic genetic knowledge – but lacking any substantive rethinking.

  Both the secretarial replies, one from a medical secretary at Johns Hopkins, the other from the George Washington Hospital, listed DC addresses, and Parnell arranged appointments for the following day.

  Parnell considered calling Rebecca on her internal extension but decided against it. He decided, too, against eating in the commissary, going instead for the first time to the staff health centre. The gymnasium had every piece of equipment he’d ever seen, anywhere, and some weight-training apparatus he hadn’t. There was a bank of rowing machines, three in use, far superior to any upon which he’d ever trained. Parnell counted five logo-identified personal trainers, all working with individual clients. The sauna and steam room matched the Olympic-proportioned swimming pool and Parnell thought it would be easy – and good – getting back to the rowing fitness he’d once known but let lapse for far too long. When he returned to his office all his mail was immaculately prepared for signature and there was an email from Rebecca thanking him for the previous evening. It was still only two thirty but Parnell set out to be early, not late, wondering how Barbara Spacey would assess that psychologically.

  She was a large, neglected woman who could have shed at least 20 lb in the sports centre he’d just left without it even showing. The straggly hair had deposited a snowfall of dandruff over a hand-knitted cardigan with odd buttons, two of which were missing, and the ashtray on her desk was mountained with butts, although she wasn’t smoking when he entered. She sat in front of, not behind, her desk, so there would be no separation between them. His positioned chair was just a little over a metre from hers, in a direct line.

  She smiled briefly, showing nicotine-yellowed teeth. ‘I was warned you might be late.’ She had a hoarse smoker’s voice, too.

  ‘I got through earlier than I expected.’

  ‘You think this is
going to be a waste of time, just bullshit?’

  Parnell didn’t think he showed surprise at the abruptness of the question. ‘Isn’t that for you to decide?’

  ‘Isn’t that your avoiding the question?’

  ‘I understand it’s a common employment process, although, as I am already employed, it seems a little out of sequence. I haven’t undergone the process before, so I’ve no criteria to judge if it’s worthwhile or not. So, it really is for you to decide.’

  ‘You smoke?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you mind if I do?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I shouldn’t, of course. There’s a strict non-smoking policy within the building’ She lit her cigarette from a battered Zippo.

  Parnell shrugged, unsure if there was a point to the admission.

  ‘What about you, Richard?’

  ‘What about me?’ He frowned.

  ‘You buck the system? Get impatient with rules and regulations you can’t see the purpose of?’

  So there was a point. ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘What about here? You found things you don’t see the purpose of here?’

  Parnell wished he wasn’t so close to the cigarette smoke. ‘I haven’t been here long enough.’ It was becoming an escape cliché, he recognized.

  ‘You were quite a presence at the seminar.’

  There was very definitely an intention behind this belated interview. Uncaring of the impatience, he said: ‘It wasn’t intended as any sort of statement. I simply didn’t know.’

  ‘You’d have conformed if you had known?’

  ‘Certainly to have avoided all the nonsense that’s followed.’

  ‘No one told you?’

  Parnell sighed. ‘No, no one told me.’

  ‘You resent that?’

  ‘I think it was childish and therefore totally irrelevant.’

  ‘So, you did resent it?’

  ‘Something else for you to judge.’ It seemed more like-cross-examination from a courtroom soap opera than what he’d expected a psychological assessment to be.

  ‘How you liking America?’

  ‘Very much.’

  ‘No homesickness, adjustment difficulties?’

  Parnell snorted a laugh. ‘No homesickness, no adjustment difficulties.’

  ‘No overhanging relationships then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re not married?’

  ‘No.’ He nodded sideways to her desk. ‘It says I’m not on my personnel file there.’

  Barbara Spacey gave no response. ‘Divorced?’

  ‘No. It says that on the personnel file, too.’

  ‘Children?’

  ‘No. Also in the file.’

  ‘Parents alive?’

  ‘My mother.’

  ‘What about your father?’

  ‘I never knew a father. Whoever he was, he left my mother unmarried when she became pregnant.’

  ‘You hate him for doing that, walking out on her?’

  ‘No.’

  The psychologist used the act of stubbing out her cigarette to cover the doubtful pause. ‘I find that hard to believe. Makes her pregnant and then turns his back on his responsibility?’

  ‘Wasn’t that better than doing his duty and spending the rest of their lives unhappy or later going through the trauma of a divorce?’

  ‘They might have become happy, in time.’

  ‘That’s hypothetical.’

  ‘What about your mother? You despise her for becoming pregnant?’

  ‘That’s an absurd question!’ erupted Parnell, discarding the determination not to lose his temper. ‘She didn’t abandon me. She worked her way through college, qualified as a lawyer, took me through school and college. I love her. Admire her. She’s a fantastic woman.’

  ‘So, you despise me for asking an absurd question?’

  ‘Yes,’ answered Parnell. Fuck you, he thought.

  ‘How would you feel about a word-association test? You know, day–night, black–white? The first word that enters your head …’ She clicked her stained fingers. ‘Quick as that.’

  ‘I’ve never played one before. But if you want to, let’s do it.’

  ‘To get it over with?’

  She was very definitely goading him. ‘You’ve allocated all afternoon to me. So, we’re in no hurry, are we?’

  ‘Night?’ she suddenly demanded.

  ‘Black,’ he said at once, not caught out.

  ‘Sea?’

  ‘Boat.’

  ‘Woman?’

  ‘Mother.’

  ‘God?’

  ‘Philosophy.’

  ‘War?’

  ‘Death.’

  ‘Medicine?’

  ‘Cure.’

  ‘Disease?’

  ‘Pestilence.’

  ‘King?’

  ‘Exalted.’

  ‘President?’

  Parnell hesitated. ‘America.’

  ‘Tyranny?’

  ‘Overthrow.’

  ‘Sermon?’

  ‘Speech.’

  ‘Church?’

  ‘House.’

  ‘Choir?’

  ‘Song.’

  ‘Failure?’

  ‘Mistake.’

  Barbara Spacey sat back in her chair, a fresh cigarette adding to the room’s fug. ‘I expected you to cheat. Reply with a word you thought I’d want to hear.’

  ‘How do you know I didn’t?’

  ‘It’s my job to know. On your application and CV you put yourself down as a Protestant. But you don’t believe in God, do you?’

  Parnell shifted, uncomfortable with the analysis. ‘A lot of scientists don’t.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say so, on your personal application?’

  ‘I thought Protestant would look better than agnostic or atheist. America’s a pretty religious country, isn’t it?’

  ‘Honest now but not then?’

  ‘I’ve got the job now. I didn’t have it then.’

  ‘Which is it?’

  ‘Agnostic, I suppose.’

  ‘You did cheat once in the test, didn’t you?’

  Parnell accepted that Barbara Spacey was unsettling him more with her analysis than she had done by provocation. Perhaps one was a professional precursor of the other. ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what was the word you really thought of when I said “President”?’

  ‘Exalted.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say it?’

  ‘I had, once already.’

  ‘You could have used it again.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it have meant the same?’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘I’ll remember next time.’

  ‘You expect there to be a next time?’

  ‘Something else for you to decide.’

  ‘You have any problem with authority?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t understand the question.’

  ‘Accepting it.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘How do you feel about exercising it?’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand that question, either.’

  ‘You ever been in a position of authority before, have power over a bunch of people?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It frighten you?’

  ‘I haven’t thought about it.’

  ‘Think about it now. You take on someone with an impressive CV but he turns out not to be so good: makes mistakes, affects your whole division. What do you do?’

  ‘Tell him he’s screwing up. That if he doesn’t shape up his job’s on the line.’

  ‘He makes an effort but it isn’t any good.’

  ‘I give him the mandatory warnings and then tell him he’s got to go.’

  ‘He’s got a kid with a permanent illness that needs the medical cover that comes with his job here. That’s why he’s screwing up. He’s distracted.’

  ‘It would have been on his personnel file.’

  Barbara Spacey frowned, off-balanced by the reply
. ‘So?’

  ‘I would have asked early on to look at the kid’s case notes. Tried to find out if there’d been any genetic exploration.’

  ‘Personal involvement like that would be against company policy.’

  ‘So’s smoking on the premises. If our distracted father was willing and the case notes indicated the slightest benefit from genetic exploration, I’d say we’d have a situation everyone should take advantage of …’ Parnell saw the woman was about to speak. ‘But everything would be legally consensual, with signed documents and agreements. Nothing that would lay myself or Dubette open to any legal or ethical challenges.’

  The psychologist didn’t try to speak after all, seemingly thinking. Then she said: ‘You do your genetics exploration. It doesn’t help. The guy’s work doesn’t improve.’

  ‘Then he has to go.’

  ‘You think you could do that?’

  ‘If the department was being continually undermined, yes.’

  ‘And you? If you were being continually undermined?’

  ‘I’m going to be its director. The department’s failures and weaknesses will be my failures and weaknesses.’

  Barbara Spacey finally moved her head towards the personnel file on her desk. ‘You haven’t failed much so far, have you, Richard? It’s been a pretty uninterrupted upwards climb.’

  ‘I’ve worked hard to make it so.’

  ‘So, you deserve it?’

  Parnell considered his answer. ‘Yes, I think I’ve deserved it.’

  The Zippo flared again. ‘We’ve used all our afternoon up.’

  ‘How’d I do?’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘That’s what scientists say when they’re confronted by something they don’t recognize or understand.’

  The woman dutifully laughed. ‘As do a lot of other confused people as well. I’m intrigued by your word responses. They didn’t fit a pattern.’

  ‘Were they supposed to?’

  Barbara Spacey shook her head, positively. ‘That’s what’s intriguing.’

  ‘Do I get a copy of the assessment?’

  ‘It’s a legal requirement.’

  ‘I’ll look forward to it.’

  ‘Try to avoid being too independent,’ advised the psychologist. ‘People need people. It’s what’s called human nature.’