Player Piano

by Kurt Vonnegut

  The door opened.

  The three waiting men stood.

  In came Doctor Francis Eldgrin Gelhorne, National Industrial, Commercial, Communications, Foodstuffs, and Resources Director. His spherical bulk was enclosed in a double-breasted, dark-blue suit. His single concession to the Meadows' tradition of informality was an unbuttoned collar and the sliding of his necktie knot a fraction of an inch below where it should have been. Though he was seventy, his hair was as thick and black as a twenty-year-old Mexican's. His fatness was turned into something impressive rather than comical by his perpetual I-smell-excrement expression.

  He seemed to be the end of a race, as, Paul reflected, so many leaders seemed to be. It was hard to believe that when Gelhorne was gone there would ever be another man as wonderfully old, shrewd, and unafraid as he.

  He cleared his throat. "We're here because somebody wants to kill us, wreck the plants, and take over the country. That plain enough for you?"

  Everyone nodded.

  "The Ghost Shirt Society," said Doctor Lou MacCleary, Executive Manager of National Industrial Security.

  "The Ghost Shirt Society," said Director Gelhorne acidly. "Give a name to something, and you think you've got it. But you haven't got it. All you've got's the name. That's why we're here. All we've got is the name."

  "Yessir," said Lou. "The Ghost Shirt Society. And we think the headquarters is in Ilium."

  "We think," said Doctor Gelhorne. "We don't know anything."

  "Yessir," said Lou.

  Gelhorne fidgeted for a moment and looked about the room. His eyes fell on Paul. "How are you, Doctor Proteus?"

  "Fine, thank you, sir."

  "Uh-huh. Good. That's good." He turned to Lou MacCleary. "Let's see that report of yours that tells everything we don't know about the Ghost Shirt Society."

  MacCleary gave him a thick typewritten manuscript.

  Gelhorne, his lips moving, leafed through it, frowning. No one spoke or smiled or looked at anyone else.

  Paul considered the notion of Doctor Gelhorne's being the last of a race, and decided it was true. He had got to the top through a disorderly route that the personnel machines would never tolerate. Had machines been watching things when Gelhorne started his climb to the top, his classification card would have come flying out of the card files like an old Wheaties box top.

  He had no college degree of any kind, other than bouquets of honorary doctorates that had come to him in his late fifties and sixties.

  He'd had nothing to do with industry, in fact, until he was thirty. Before that, he'd pulled a mail-order taxidermy business out of bankruptcy, sold his interest in it, and bought a trailer truck. He'd built his fleet to five trucks when he received a hot market tip, sold his business, invested the proceeds, and tripled his wealth. With this bonanza, he'd bought the largest, yet failing, ice-cream plant in Indianapolis, and put the business in the black inside of a year by building ice-cream routes servicing Indianapolis manufacturing plants during the lunch hour. In another year, he had his trucks carrying sandwiches and coffee along with ice cream. In another year, he was running plant cafeterias all over town, and the ice-cream business had become a minor division of Gelhorne Enterprises.

  He'd found that many of the manufacturing firms were owned by third-or fourth-generation heirs who, by some seeming law of decay, didn't have the nerve or interest the plants' founders had had. Gelhorne, half playfully at first, had offered these heirs advice, and found them amazingly eager to surrender responsibility. He'd bought in, watched and learned, and, discovering nerve was as valuable as special knowledge, he'd become manager and part owner of a dozen small plants.

  When war became certain and the largest corporations were looking about for new manufacturing facilities, Gelhorne had delivered his prosperous community of plants to General Steel, and become an officer of that corporation. The rule-of-thumb familiarity he had with many different industries, as represented by the plants he'd taken over, had been broader than that of any executives General Steel had developed within its own organization, and Gelhorne was soon spending all his time at the side of the corporation's war-rattled president.

  There he'd come to the attention of Paul's father in Washington, and Paul's father had made Gelhorne his general executive manager when the whole economy had been made one flesh. When Paul's father died, Gelhorne had taken over.

  It could never happen again. The machines would never stand for it.

  Paul remembered a week end long ago, when he had been a tall, skinny, polite, and easily embarrassed youth, and Gelhorne had paid a call. Gelhorne had suddenly reached out and caught Paul by the arm as Paul passed his chair. "Paul, boy."

  "Yessir?"

  "Paul, your father tells me you're real smart."

  Paul had nodded uncomfortably.

  "That's good, Paul, but that isn't enough."

  "No, sir."

  "Don't be bluffed."

  "No, sir, I won't."

  "Everybody's shaking in his boots, so don't be bluffed."

  "No, sir."

  "Nobody's so damn well educated that you can't learn ninety per cent of what he knows in six weeks. The other ten per cent is decoration."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Show me a specialist, and I'll show you a man who's so scared he's dug a hole for himself to hide in."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Almost nobody's competent, Paul. It's enough to make you cry to see how bad most people are at their jobs. If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Want to be rich, Paul?"

  "Yes, sir--I guess so. Yes, sir."

  "All right. I got rich, and I told you ninety per cent of what I know about it. The rest is decoration. All right?"

  "Yes, sir."

  Now, after many years, Paul and Doctor Francis Eldgrin Gelhorne were looking at each other over the long table in the Council House at the Meadows. They weren't close friends, and there was none of Kroner's aromatic paternalism about Gelhorne. This was business.

  "There's nothing new about the Society in this report," said Gelhorne.

  "Only the part about Finnerty," said Lou MacCleary. "It's been slow going."

  "It certainly has," said Doctor Gelhorne. "Well, Doctor Proteus and Doctor Kroner, the point is that this Ghost Shirt nonsense might turn out to be something pretty big. And Lou, here, hasn't been able to get an agent into it to find out what they're up to or who's running it."

  "This bunch is smart," said Lou. "They're being pretty selective about who gets in."

  "But we think we know how to get a man into it," said Gelhorne. "We think they'd be very tempted by a discontented manager and engineer. We think they've already recruited at least one."

  "Finnerty," said Kroner heavily. "He finally registered with the police, incidentally."

  "Oh?" said MacCleary. "What did he say he was doing with his time?"

  "Says he's getting out Braille editions of pornography."

  "He's being pretty cute now," said Gelhorne, "but I think we'll fix his wagon all right. But that's a side issue. The point we're getting at, Paul, is that I think they'll take you into the Ghost Shirt Society under the right conditions."

  "Conditions, sir?"

  "If we fire you. As of now, as far as anyone outside this room knows, you're through. The rumor's already circulating at the saloon, isn't it, Lou?"

  "Yes, sir. I let it slip in front of Shepherd at dinner."

  "Good boy," said Gelhorne. "He'll be taking over Ilium, by the way."

  "Sir, about Pittsburgh--" said Kroner worriedly. "I promised Paul that he was slated for that job when he was finished with the investigation."

  "That's right. In the meanwhile, Garth will run the works there." Gelhorne stood briskly. "All right, Paul? Everything clear? You're to get off the island tonight and back to Ilium." He smiled. "It's really a break for you, Paul. It gives you a chance to clear up your record."

 
; "Record, sir?" Things were happening so quickly now that Paul could only seize upon a word and repeat it as a question in order to keep in the conversation.

  "That business of letting Finnerty go through the plant unescorted, and the pistol affair."

  "The pistol affair," said Paul. "Can I tell my wife?"

  "I'm afraid not," said Lou. "The plan is that nobody outside this room is to know."

  "It'll be hard, I know," said Gelhorne sympathetically. "But just now I'm remembering a young boy who told me he didn't want to be an engineer when he grew up, he wanted to be a soldier. You know who that boy was, Paul?"

  "Me?" said Paul bleakly.

  "You. Well, now you're in the front lines, and we're proud of you."

  "Your father would be proud of you, Paul," said Kroner.

  "I guess he would. He really would be, wouldn't he," said Paul. Gratefully he was welcoming the blind, invigorating heat of anger. "Sir, Doctor Gelhorne, may I say one more thing before you leave?"

  Kroner was holding the door open for the Old Man. "All right, by all means."

  "I quit."

  Gelhorne, Kroner, and MacCleary laughed. "Wonderful," said the Old Man. "That's the spirit. Keep that up, and you'll fool the hell out of them."

  "I mean it! I'm sick of the whole childish, stupid, blind operation."

  "Attaboy," said Kroner, smiling encouragingly.

  "Give us two minutes to get to the saloon before you leave," said MacCleary. "Wouldn't do for us to be seen together now. And don't worry about packing. Your stuff is being packed right now, and it'll be down at the dock in time for the last boat."

  He shut the door behind himself, Gelhorne, and Kroner.

  Paul sank heavily back into his chair. "I quit, I quit, I quit," he said. "Do you hear me? I quit!"

  "What a night," he heard Lou say on the porch.

  "God smiles on the Meadows," said Doctor Gelhorne.

  "Look!" said Kroner.

  "The moon?" said Lou. "It is beautiful."

  "The moon, yes--but look at the Oak."

  "Oh--and the man," said Doctor Gelhorne. "What do you know about that!"

  "A man, standing there alone with the Oak, with God and the Oak," said Kroner.

  "Is the photographer around?" said Lou.

  "Too late--he's going away now," said Kroner.

  "Who was he?" said Doctor Gelhorne.

  "We'll never know," said Lou.

  "I don't want to know," said Kroner. "I want to remember this scene and think of him as a little bit of all of us."

  "You're talking poetry," said the Old Man. "That's good, that's good."

  Paul, alone inside, exhaled a puff of smoke with too much force, and coughed.

  The men on the porch whispered something.

  "Well, gentlemen," said Doctor Gelhorne, "shall we go?"

  23

  IF DOCTOR PAUL PROTEUS, former manager of the Ilium Works, hadn't found reality disquieting at all points, he wouldn't have shown himself in the saloon before boarding the last boat for the Mainland. As he made his way along the gravel path toward the noise and light of the saloon, however, the field of his consciousness narrowed down to a pinprick, and filling the field was a twinkling shot-glass.

  The crowd fell silent as he entered, and then exploded into even greater excesses of happy noise. Quickly as Paul glanced about the room, he didn't catch a single man looking at him, nor, in the blurred vision of excitement, did he recognize a single face among these old friends.

  "Bourbon and water," he said to the bartender.

  "Sorry, sir."

  "Sorry about what?"

  "I can't serve you."

  "Why not?"

  "I've been told you're no longer a guest at the Meadows, sir." There was a prim satisfaction in the bartender's voice.

  A number of people observed the incident, Kroner among them, but no one made a move to change the bartender's ruling.

  It was a crude moment, and in its fetid atmosphere Paul made an ultimately crude suggestion to the bartender, and turned to leave with dignity.

  What he still had to learn was that without rank, without guest privileges, he lived on a primitive level of social justice. He wasn't prepared when the bartender vaulted the bar and spun him around.

  "Nobody says that to me, sonny Jim," said the bartender.

  "Who the hell do you think you are?" said Paul.

  "I'm no goddamn saboteur," said the bartender hotly. Everyone heard it, the ugliest word in the language, one that permitted no muttering withdrawal, no shaking of hands and forgetting it. Son-of-a-bitch could be softened with a smile, but not saboteur.

  Somehow the idea of a wrecker of machines had become the smallest part of the word, like the crown of an iceberg. The greatest part of its mass, the part that called forth such poisonous emotions, was undefined: an amalgam of perversions, filth, disease, a galaxy of traits, any one of which would make a man a despicable outcast. The saboteur wasn't a wrecker of machines but an image every man prided himself on being unlike. The saboteur was the man who, if dead, would no longer make the world a trying place to live in.

  "You want me to say it again?" said the bartender. "Saboteur. You're a stinking saboteur."

  It was an electrifying situation, an elemental situation. Here one big man had offered the ultimate insult to another big man. No one looked as though he were willing to bring the drama to an end, or as though he thought he could. It was like seeing a man caught in a threshing machine, beyond saving. As long as God had precipitated the tragedy, the onlookers might as well watch and learn what a threshing machine would do to a man once it caught him.

  Paul hadn't hit anyone since his sophomore year in high school. He had none of what bayonet instructors hoped to instill in their pupils, the will to close with the enemy. It was an unpromising sort of will, he thought. Still, obedient to some system of involuntary nerves and glands, his hands tightened into fists, and his feet spaced themselves to form a solid bipod from which to swing.

  Just as there is no encore for the 1812 Overture save "The Stars and Stripes Forever," so Paul had no choice of rejoinders. "Saboteur yourself," he said evenly, and swung at the bartender's nose.

  Absurdly, the bartender collapsed, snuffling and snorting. Paul walked out into the night, like Wild Bill Hickock, like Dan'l Boone, like the bargeman on the book jacket, like--He was suddenly spun around again. For a split second, he saw the bartender's red nose, white face, white apron, and white fist. A brilliant flash illuminated the inside of his skull, and then midnight.

  "Doctor Proteus--Paul."

  Paul opened his eyes to find himself staring up at the Big Dipper. A cool breeze played across his aching head, and he couldn't see where the voice was coming from. Someone had stretched him out on the cement bench that ran the length of the dock, to be loaded with the band and the outgoing mail aboard the last boat for the Mainland.

  "Doctor Proteus--"

  Paul sat up. His lower lip was shredded and puffed, and his mouth tasted of blood.

  "Paul, sir--"

  The voice seemed to be coming from behind the spiraea hedge at the foot of the dock. "Who's that?"

  Young Doctor Edmund Harrison emerged from the shrubbery furtively, a highball in his hand. "I thought you might want this."

  "That's real Christian of you, Doctor Harrison. Guess I'm well enough to sit up and take nourishment now."

  "Wish I'd thought of it. It was Kroner's idea."

  "Oh? Any message?"

  "Yes--but I don't think you'll want it. I wouldn't, if I were in your spot."

  "Go ahead."

  "He says to tell you it's always darkest before the dawn, and every cloud has a silver lining."

  "Urn."

  "But you ought to see the bartender," said Harrison brightly.

  "Aaaaaah. Tell me all."

  "He's got a nosebleed that won't stop because he can't stop sneezing. Looks like a vicious circle that with luck could last for years."

  "Wonderful." P
aul felt better. "Look, you'd better beat it before your luck runs out and somebody sees you with me."

  "Mind telling me what on earth you did?"

  "It's a long, sordid story."

  "I guess. Boy! one day you're king, the next day you're out on your tail. What're you going to do?"

  Talking softly there in the dark, Paul began to appreciate what a remarkable young man he'd picked to sit down beside the first day--this Ed Harrison. Harrison had apparently taken a liking to Paul, and now, with no personal reasons for turning against Paul, he was sticking with him as a friend. This was integrity, all right, and a rare variety, because it often amounted, as it might amount now, to career suicide.

  "What am I going to do? Farm, maybe. I've got a nice little farm."

  "Farm, eh?" Harrison clucked his tongue reflectively. "Farm. Sounds wonderful. I've thought of that: up in the morning with the sun; working out there with your hands in the earth, just you and nature. If I had the money, sometimes I think maybe I'd throw this--"

  "You want a piece of advice from a tired old man?"

  "Depends on which tired old man. You?"

  "Me. Don't put one foot in your job and the other in your dreams, Ed. Go ahead and quit, or resign yourself to this life. It's just too much of a temptation for fate to split you right up the middle before you've made up your mind which way to go."

  "That's what happened to you?"

  "Something like that." He handed Harrison the empty glass. "Thanks, better beat it. Tell Doctor Kroner it never rains but what it pours."

  The cabin cruiser, Spirit of the Meadows, grumbled into her slip, and Paul climbed aboard. A few minutes later the band got on with their instruments, and a last call was put out over the loudspeakers. The lights in the saloon blinked off, and knots of remarkably sobered roisterers crossed the parade ground to their tents.

  The rattle of the switch, the scratch of a needle, and the loudspeakers sang for the last time that night:

  "Fare thee well, for I must leave you,

  Please don't let this parting grieve you;

  Fare thee well, the time has come for us to say goodbye.

  Adieu, adieu, kind friends, adieu, yes, adieu! ..."

  And Paul waved wanly, apathetically. This was goodbye to his life so far, to the whole of his father's life. He hadn't had the satisfaction of telling someone he'd quit, of being believed; but he'd quit. Goodbye. None of this had anything to do with him any more. Better to be nothing than a blind doorman at the head of civilization's parade.