by Kris Neville
breaths.
"O.K., that's the way they want it," one of the supervisors said.
"I've brought along the notices for the affected personnel. Please seethey're distributed when you leave."
After the meeting, Forester walked with Eddie back to his desk.
"You be in tomorrow, Eddie?"
"I guess I will, Les. I really don't know, yet."
"I'd hate to lose you."
"It's going to make it pretty rough. A man's fixed expenses don't comedown."
"I'll see what I can do for you, maybe upgrade the classification--"
"Thanks, Les."
Back at his desk, Eddie looked at his watch. Nearly time for theSafety Meeting. Lost-time injuries had been climbing for the last fourmonths.
While waiting, he signed a sixty-three page preliminary reportrecommending a program for the orderly replacement of all transmissionand distribution cable installed prior to 1946. It was estimated thatthe savings, in the long run, would total some quarter of a billiondollars. The initial expense, however, was astronomical.
After the Safety Meeting, Eddie prepared another memorandum indicatingthe acute need for a better training program and an increase inmaintenance personnel. Shortage of qualified technicians was chronic.
At four twenty-five, the night supervisor phoned in to say he washaving engine trouble with his new car and would be delayed untilabout six o'clock. Eddie agreed to wait for him.
Eddie dialed home to let his wife, Lois, know he would be late again.A modulated low-frequency note told him the home phone was out oforder.
Ray Morely, one of the night-shift engineers, came in with coffee."You still here, Eddie?"
"Yeah, until Wheeler makes it. His car's down."
"Market hit a new high."
"Yeah. I guess you heard about the meeting today?"
Ray sipped coffee. "Budget again? I missed the day crew. I got hung upin traffic and was a little late."
"A pay cut goes with it, this time."
"You're kidding?"
"Been by your desk yet?"
"No."
"I'm not kidding. Ten per cent for those making above eight hundred."
"Nobody's going to put up with that," Ray said. "We're in an engineeringshortage. We've got ICBMs rusting in their silos all over the countrybecause we can't afford the engineering maintenance--that's how bad it is.Everybody'll quit."
"I don't think they'll make it stick. Ramon Lopez, one of the truckcrew, was killed today hosing down a high-voltage pothead."
"No kidding?"
Eddie told him about the accident.
"That was a rough one to lose, wasn't it?"
The phone rang.
Ray said, "I'll get it."
He listened for a minute and hung up. "There's an outage in the SilverLake Area. The brakes on a bus failed and took out an overheadsection."
Eddie sat back. "No sense in you going. With work traffic on thesurface streets until the freeway gets fixed, they won't get the truckthere until 6:30 or so."
"Right." Ray drank coffee reflectively. "You going looking?"
"I'm an old-timer. I got a lot of seniority. How about you?"
"I got bills. It's going to cost me near a hundred a month--that's asteep bite."
"I still think they'll back off."
"They'll have to," Ray said. "If not right now, when the pressure getson. You ask me, we've got them by the short hair." He settled into thechair. "I see it as an organic phenomenon. When society gets ascomplex as ours, it has to grow more and more engineers. But there's afeedback circuit in effect. The more engineers we grow, the morecomplex society becomes. Each new one creates the need for two more.I get a sort of feeling of--I don't know--vitality, I guess, when Iwalk into, say, an automated factory. All that machinery and all thatelectronic gear is like a single cell in a living organism--anorganism that's growing every day, multiplying like bacteria. And it'salways sick, and we're the doctors. That's job security. We're ridingthe wave of the future. I don't think they'll make a salary cutstick."
"I hope you're right," Eddie said.
* * * * *
Eddie checked out at 7:15, when the night supervisor finally arrived.As he left the building, he noted that a burglar alarm down the streethad gone off; probably because of a short circuit. The clanking sethis nerves on edge. Apprehensively he felt a rising wind against hischeeks.
At home, he was greeted with a perfunctory kiss at the door.
"Honey," Lois told him, "you took the check book, and I didn't haveany money."
"Something come up? I'm sorry."
"We're all out of milk. The milk man didn't come today. Theirhomogenizing machinery broke down. I phoned the dairy about nine; andthen, of course, the phone has been on the blink since about eleven ora little before, so I couldn't ask you to bring some home."
"I kept trying to get you."
"I figured you had to work late again, when you weren't here at six,and I knew you'd be here when you got here."
Eddie sat down and she sat on the chair arm beside him. "How did it gotoday?"
He started to tell her about the wage cut and Ramon Lopez; but then hedidn't want to talk about it. "So-so," he said. "There was an outageover in the Silver Lake Area just before I left."
"Fixed yet?"
"I doubt it," he said. "Probably a couple of more hours."
"Gee," she said, "when I think of all that meat in the deepfreezer...."
"I wouldn't stock so much," he said. "I really wouldn't."
She twisted away from him. "Honey. I'm jittery. Something's ... Idon't know. In the air, I guess."
The wind rattled the windows.
* * * * *
While Lois was warming dinner, his son came in.
"Hi, Eddie."
"Hi, Larry."
"Eddie, when we gonna get the TV fixed?"
Eddie put down the newspaper. "We just don't have a hundred dollars orso right now." He searched for matches on the table by the chair."Lois, oh, Lois, where're the matches?"
She came in. "They were all out Friday at the store, and I keepforgetting to lay in a supply. Use my lighter over there."
"About the TV--"
Lois was wiping her hands on the paper towel she had brought with her."Replacement parts are hard to find for the older sets," she said."Anyway. I read today Channel Three finally went off the air. Thatleaves only Two and Seven. And the programs aren't any good, now, arethey? All those commercials and all?"
"They do use a lot of old stuff I've already seen," the son admitted,"but every once in a while there's something new."
"Let's talk about it some other time, Larry, O.K.?" Eddie said. "How'sthat? It's almost your bed-time. Studies done?"
"All but the Library report."
"Well, finish it, and--"
"I got to read the book down there. Two classes assigned it and theydon't have the copies to let us check out. And I want to ask you aboutsomething, Eddie."
"Daddy's tired. His dinner's on. Come on, Eddie. I'll set it rightnow. And Larry, you've already eaten...."
* * * * *
After dinner, Eddie got back to the paper, the evening _Times_. It wasdown to eight pages, mostly advertising. There was a front-pageeditorial reluctantly announcing a price increase.
"They raise the price once more, and we'll just quit taking it," Loissaid. "You read about the airplane crash in Florida? Wasn't thatterrible? What do you think caused it?"
"Metal fatigue, probably," Eddie said. "It was a twenty-year-old jet."
"The company said it wasn't that at all."
"They always do," Eddie said.
"I don't guess the payroll check came today or you'd have mentionedit."
"Payroll's still all balled up. Somebody pressed a wrong button on thenew machine and some fifty thousand uncoded cards got scattered allover the office."
"Oh, no! What do the poor people, who don't ha
ve bank accounts, do?"
"Just wait, like we wait."
"You had a bad day," Lois said. "I can tell."
"No...." Eddie said. "Not really, I guess."
"Still working on Saturday?"
"I guess so. Nothing was