A Reasonable World

27

Three Mexican-looking men were standing beside Hugh Wilkins’ powder-blue BMW when he came out of the mall. “Sir,” one of them said, “this is your car?”

“What’s it to you?”

“It is a very nice car. Will you give it to us?”

“What are you, crazy?”

“No, we are not crazy. I think you should give us this car.” The other two men advanced, one on either side. Wilkins started to back away, but now they were behind him.

“I need the car,” he said. He was beginning to perspire, looking around for help. Nobody seemed to be paying any attention.

“You have two cars,” the man said. He had narrow eyes, and there was a scar on his cheek; he looked dirty, like all of them.

“How do you know that?”

“You live at twenty-four hundred Live Oaks, yes? We saw the two cars.”

“Well, one of them’s my wife’s. She needs a car too.”

“But we have no car, and we also have wives and children.”

Wilkins swallowed, turned, swung desperately at one of the men and missed. Then he tripped somehow, and the men were holding him down while they went through his pockets. They found his keycard, took it off the ring, and tossed the rest of the cards on the concrete beside his head. In a moment he heard the doors slam. The BMW, with the three Mexicans inside, backed out of the space, turned, rolled forward and was gone.

The crazy manager at The Greentree fired one of the waiters just before the evening shift. The waiter’s name was Joe Balter. “I don’t care!” Limoni was yelling. “You’re out, and that’s it!”

Balter turned and went away, stony-faced. The other three waiters followed him into the men’s room. “Hey, Joe, that’s a lousy thing,” Carpenter said.

“He’s a maniac. See you around.” Balter put his overblouse on and went toward the door.

Phillips caught his arm. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Wait, wait.” He beckoned to the others to come nearer. As they bent their heads together, he said, “I just had a crazy thought. Why should he fire us? How about if we fire him?”

“I don’t get it. How are we going to fire him?”

“Shove him out the door and start running the place ourselves. How does that grab you?”

“Well, it would be fun,” said Eckert, with a slow grin. “Hey, I’m game. You, Stan?”

“Why not?”

“You through socializing?” Limoni asked when they returned to the kitchen. Sal Aronica, the chef, was stirring something in the pot; the busboys were standing around.

The three waiters looked at each other. “Okay, Dave, that’s it,” said Phillips. The three of them closed in on him and pushed. Limoni shouted, “What are you doing, you crazy—!” They shoved him through the swinging door. Limoni staggered, regained his balance, and began to flail his arms around.

“Ah-ah, don’t hit,” said Carpenter. They grabbed his arms and kept moving, through the main dining room, past the desk where the hostess and the cashier were looking at them incredulously. One of the busboys opened the door and they pushed him out. When he came in again after a moment, they pushed him out a little harder.

“All right, listen,” said Phillips, “the first thing we have to do is keep Dave from coming in again. Second thing, I’ll manage tonight if you want, but then we’ve got to elect a new manager and revise the work schedules.”

“You’re going to keep on working?” a busboy asked.

“Why not? Who needs him?”

“Who’s going to pay us?”

“Rita will make out the vouchers, okay? Either the front office will honor them or they won’t. If they don’t, hey, we’ll take it out of the till. Listen, that might be a better idea. We take our share out and then deposit the receipts.”

“You’re talking about larceny here,” said Rita.

“I know it. What do you want?”

“About keeping Dave out, he’s got a key.”

“Locksmith,” said Phillips, snapping his fingers. “Harry, will you get on that?”

“Okay.”

“Next, we’ve got to hire a couple of people, one to take the place of whoever we elect for manager, and another to take up the workload. Rita, you want to phone the agency?”

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” she said, and punched the phone.

The door opened and two police officers came in, followed by Limoni. “What seems to be the problem here?” asked the larger policeman.

“Officer, this nut comes in and starts yelling,” said Phillips. “So we threw him out.”

“Who are you?”

“Ed Phillips, the manager.”

“You!” shouted Limoni. “I’m the goddamn manager, and you’re fired!”

“He was fired last week,” said Phillips.

“You son of a bitch, I’ll bust your ass!” Limoni yelled. His eyes were bulging; he started past the officers, but they held him back. “Just take it easy a minute,” one of them said. He looked around. “Who’s the manager, him or him?”

Hands pointed toward Phillips.

“Sorry to bother you,” said the smaller policeman. The two of them turned Limoni around and marched him through the door. Limoni’s voice had turned into a squeak.

“Why is the manager always such a prick?” Carpenter asked.

“Well, there’s a theory about that,” said Balter. “A guy starts out as a busboy, let’s say, he does okay, so he gets promoted to waiter. He does okay as a waiter, so he gets promoted to a manager. Now he stops doing okay, the responsibility is too much for him, so he doesn’t get promoted, and there he is. He’s reached his level of incompetence.”

“Oh-oh. That could be me too.”

“No, because if you’re a lousy manager we’ll make you a waiter again and try somebody else.”

“There’s another thing, too. I went to this encounter group one time when I was working for Gentronics. I always thought these little petty tyrants got off on bossing people around, but it turns out it’s really something else. They know they don’t know enough to hold their jobs, and they’re deathly afraid somebody will show them up. So they have to keep putting everybody down. It isn’t power, it’s fear.”

“Oh-ho. All right, let me ask you this. Suppose one of you guys goofs off and I have to fire them. Then what, do you throw me out the door and start over?”

“Goofs off how?”

“Insults a customer. Screws up the orders. General pain in the ass.”

“Maybe we take a vote?”

“Listen, I see a problem here. Suppose we do fire somebody, aren’t they going to go straight to the police and spill the whole thing?”

“Akh. Maybe we should give this up.”

“No, wait a minute. Right now, we haven’t got anybody that’s going to screw up that badly, so it isn’t a problem. But let’s swear an oath. No matter what happens, I mean, unless somebody murders somebody, we don’t go to the police. One for all and all for one.”

“I don’t see it. The manager, never mind if it’s me or not, he has to hire and fire. Otherwise you’ve got committee meetings all the time and nobody knows' where they are. I wouldn’t take the job that way, I’d go somewhere else and the hell with it. If you’re right, if nobody here is going to screw up and have to get fired, okay, you’re right. If you’re wrong, then I have to fire them. If you don’t like that, then you can elect a new manager. That’s okay with me, but until then, I’m the manager, I manage.”

“Is he turning into a prick already?”

“Maybe. Let’s watch him and see.”

Everybody was in a good mood that night, and they were playful and solicitous with the customers. The ambience was great; the candles on the tables had never looked so good. When the waiters went around and asked, “Everything okay?” the response they got was enthusiastic. “Listen,” said Phillips to Carpenter in the kitchen, “if we keep this up, we got a gold mine.”

“Sure, but whose?”

“Trust me.”

The next morning Phillips wrote a net message to the home office: LIMONI RAN AMOK, TRIED TO DESTROY KITCHEN. STAFF CHOSE PHILLIPS TO TAKE OVER. PLEASE CONFIRM.

“What if they don’t?” Balter asked.

“Well, fine, if they send in another manager and he’s an asshole, we throw him out too. Listen, we can keep this up till Christmas.”

President Otis took office in January, 2009. In his inaugural address he said in ringing tones, “I did not come here to preside over the dissolution of the Union. Stand tall, America!” Only about half the senators and a third of the representatives were present to hear him. Two of the major holo networks carried his address live; one of the others was covering a solar sled race in Finland, another a nude performance of La Boheme live from La Scala; a third was in the middle of a marathon James Bond festival.

Harriet Owen had seen it coming. Her contacts at Peace and Justice had warned her not to expect her funding to be renewed. “Otis’s people have other priorities,” they said, “and besides, the money just isn’t there.” Hank Harmon had wept openly on the holo. “I don’t even know if there’s going to be a two hundred twentieth Congress,” he said. “It’s the end of the world, Harriet.”

Almost a quarter of CV’s support staff melted away at Honolulu. Owen gave notice of dismissal to the rest, except for a skeleton crew, and delivered the children into the custody of the Philippine Child Services Division to await pickup by their parents or other relatives. She turned over the laboratory animals to the University of Manila, and gave the department of psychology as much equipment as they were willing to take.

She said good-bye to her staff one by one. She noticed that there was a distant look in their eyes when she spoke to them; they were already thinking of where they were going next. Although they said some conventional things, it was apparent to her that leaving CV was just an incident to them, not a calamity. She took a last look at Sea Venture, lying at anchor in the harbor: the white hull was streaked and shabby; it looked obsolete already.

When she got home, she found that the storage shed in which she had left all her furniture had been burglarized. Most of her friends had left the Centers for Disease Control; those few who remained did not seem especially glad to see her. She sent out resumes to several public-sector research institutions, but nobody called her in for an interview.

When Geoffrey got home, the voices in his head had stopped. They took him to a hospital and had the implant removed, but he was still a difficult, moody child. He took a dislike to his sister Victoria, then a year old. He stole things, told lies, and was insolent to his parents. “I hate the whole world,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because it’s stupid.”

How could we have prevented this?

Impossible; we didn’t know enough.

We stopped as soon as we saw what was happening.

Yes, but it was too late for these few.

They will always yearn for the sibs we couldn’t give them. * Sorrow.*