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  “The answer is no. The catalyst should contain silica.”

  Paul looked at Serane in bewilderment. “What else is there?” he muttered to the scientist.

  But Serane was unperturbed. He spoke into the handset again. “Serane here. Would a minor—I repeat, minor—change in temperature, reaction time, or catalyst improve yield at atmospheric pressure?”

  “Yes, Dr. Serane.”

  “Which?”

  “The catalyst.”

  “Should the silica be modified?”

  “Yes.”

  “In what way?”

  “Sorry, data insufficient.”

  “Should we activate the silica?”

  “Yes ”

  “How?”

  “Sorry, data insufficient.”

  They had come to a dead end. Paul pointed to the visi, which had been blank so far.

  “Is your holo screen operative?” Paul asked the machine.

  “Of course.”

  “Show me an optimum flow sheet for a high-pressure urea-to-trialine plant.”

  Instantly a three-dimensional holo formed in front of the screen.

  Serane leaned forward and studied the arrangement. Finally he sat back. “No change since last week.” He whispered to Paul: “Very close to what I recommended for our own commercial high-pressure plant, but we still have a couple of tricks that even this creature hasn’t put together yet.”

  Paul turned back to the screen. “Do you have a three-D of Dr. Peter Lindstrom?”

  The smiling face of a man in his sixties flooded the visi. It was a holo in full color. “Hello. Peter Lindstrom here.” The eyes sparkled, the mouth wrinkled and showed an even row of well-kept teeth. “Can I serve you?”

  “You already have,” said Paul. “And thank you.”

  “You are welcome,” said the face. “I hope I have helped you.”

  Paul turned off the switches.

  “What do you think?” asked Serane.

  “An atmospheric trialine process—at nearly five times your present high-pressure yield?” Paul shook his head.

  “I don’t know, Paul. I think it can be done. My people think it can be done. And now the computer confirms us. We’ve got to find a different kind of silica, and we’ve got to activate it. Interesting. Forty subscribers to the Lindstrom know this, the same as we do. And they’ve known it longer. And still nobody has hit the right combination. When they do, it’ll make Kussman’s trialine plant obsolete overnight. The right combination is going to be discovered. The question is, who will get the patent?”

  8

  Symposium

  The gathering began as a formless thing, like the opening bars of Donnator’s Song. It was at Serane’s house. Most of his staff were there, as well as various “outsiders,” including Paul. These people were there because they had a terrible feeling that tonight the word would come down from New York that Kussman had got the promotion. There had been rumors of it all week, that tonight, this Friday, would be Decision Day. There was nothing anybody could do about it, except be with Serane.

  The walls of the Serane living room were largely overlaid with Luminex panels, and tonight, Paul noted, almost as soon as Alessa took his coat, the panels portrayed a full orchestra, rendering a muted selection from the opening scenes of the Song: The Council of Elders was in the process of selecting the most promising and gifted of the young men of the village. The youth selected would then be slain and become the Prophet, and the sacrifice would give renewed life and prosperity to the community. The orchestral rendition, thought Paul, might well turn out to be ironically apropos. He wondered if Serane had deliberately chosen the piece.

  Vincent Viturate, the Fiber chief, was arguing with Carter Scott, the polymer attorney. Paul joined them, followed by Marggold.

  “Well,” said Scott, “we’ve got to have some one.”

  “Do we?” said Viturate. “Even if it’s this s.o.b.? Ah, you might think that the Kisser is not an absolute bastard. You might think that he has redeeming qualities that must come to light once you get to know him.

  Such speculation is footless, gentlemen. It will lead you nowhere. Beneath that slimy exterior beats a heart of ice. And it beats with slow calculation at zero degrees absolute.”

  Paul studied the slow, infinitely varied gyrations of the holo-goldfish in the holo-fish-tank that illuminated a nearby comer. He smiled uneasily. He did not know exactly how to take the filament expert.

  Viturate plunged on. “The Kisser’s history goes way back. He used to have all kinds of trouble with the lab mail room when he was younger. His pneumatic was surrounded by the Patent Section pneumatics. At first, he’d get the weekly tear sheets from the West Publishing Company reports. Alphabetically, the first thing on the sheets was Attorneys, but very often there weren’t any entries under Attorneys. The next entry was Key Twenty-one, Bastards. Kussman seemed to pick up every West sheet that started with Bastards. He knew they were out to get him. He actually wrote the West Company, threatening a libel suit if they didn’t stop mailing things to him. I have a copy of the letter and their reply.”

  Paul was fascinated. “What did they say?”

  “They suggested he either change his name or transfer to a different pigeonhole. He could see their point. He got the mail room to give him a new slot next to the Sandusky Branch drop.”

  “So?”

  “Sandusky, Ohio Branch. But nobody ever used the full name. Just the initials.”

  “Oh. So he moved his pneumatic again?”

  “Yeah, third and last time. Next to me—FU—Fiber Unit. He still blames me personally.” He drained his cup of coffee. “And now, fellows, I’ve got to dash along. We have a critical pyropolymer fiber run scheduled at the pilot plant tonight.” He vanished toward the kitchen.

  Marggold looked at Paul quizzically. “You were about to ask how much truth there is in all that?” “Well—yes…”

  “Don’t. Suppose we rejoin the other neurotics.”

  Somewhat before eleven o’clock Paul went back to Serane’s master bedroom with Mary Derringer to look for a book about Lincoln. He was not surprised at what he saw.

  As he sat tentatively on the edge of the shadowy force-field bed, by the temperature control panel, Brahms’s “Lullaby” began to chime from somewhere. Overhead, Luminex panels in the ceiling began a hypnotic color-pattern display. He suppressed a yawn.

  Mary was wandering around the room. She stopped at the far wall, where she studied a holo portrait of a few-months-old baby. It smiled and gurgled at her as she moved her head from side to side to catch the full tri-di effect. Paul watched her as she put her hand on her stomach. She wants a child, he thought. And then another thought nibbled at him: Or—is she a clone? Touching her birth patch? And if it is so, does it matter?

  Mary’s eyes turned next to a group holo: Serane; his wife, Alessa; two children; and two older people, perhaps grandparents. The girl touched the frame lightly. Paul caught intimations of some abyssal vacuum in her life, perhaps some continuing childhood catastrophe. She also wants (he thought) a family around her, tribal acceptance. That’s why she chose Serane. Serane and his group enfolded her. And now the whole thing was in jeopardy. He sensed her vulnerability. A clone might react this way.. ..

  She joined him on the bed and they forgot about the Lincoln book.

  Paul found himself talking about Billy. He wanted her to understand about his brother. “Billy’s big walnut desk stood in a comer by the windows. It was an ancient thing, but solid. It was rather like Johnnie’s here. The front panel folds down to become a writing surface. He did his homework there. It was big enough for his drawing board, and strong enough for his little electric typewriter. It was loaded with pigeonholes, and each one had just the right amount of things in it. The bed was a plain iron-rod affair, next to the windows. It had a bed lamp—the only one in the house. And then there was the highboy, for his shirts, socks, and underwear. On top was a ceramic tray for his two hairbrushes. These were for his Donnator pompadour. It was a common style in the nineties.”

  “And then he died?”

  “Yes, and I moved into his room.”

  “Did you want to move?”

  “Not really. But there it was—empty. Mommee said I should move in. There wasn’t much to move. A couple of shirts, a few socks, and some underwear. I inherited all of his things. Even things I couldn’t wear, because they were two sizes too small. I just left them there.”

  “How do you think he would have felt about your moving in—taking over?”

  “He would have been logical about it.”

  “How did you feel?”

  “Uneasy, at first.”

  “Classical,” mused Mary, the psychologist. “A textbook case.” She swirled her Scotch thoughtfully, then made her pronouncement. “What you have, is a big brother complex.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “It’s part of a family complex. A lot of the Ashkettles’s people have it. Very useful if you don’t overdo it. Everything becomes a repetition of childhood. We play it out as variations on the same theme. Mother and father. Brothers and sisters. We assign parts, and it becomes a play. The great mother figure now becomes the lab. Or the ship. Or the office. The father is the lab director.”

  She knows, thought Paul, that I equate Serane with Billy.

  Mary was quiet for a time. She was indulging in a rapid dreamlike fantasy. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. She married Paul, but without his brother’s approval. Billy appeared on the scene with thunderbolts in both hands and drove her from the marriage bed. Oh, too bad. But there was no way to become seriously involved with this earnest young man. Even though he had a proper stricken look. Not with his dead brother standing watch over his subconscious.

/>   She sighed. Well, at least she had Dr. Serane and Dr. Serane’s group. Except that she knew it could all come to an end—just as, when she was a little girl, one foster home after another had come to an end.

  Paul was saying something to her. He smiled and repeated his question. “You should have stayed with your psychology major. Why didn’t you?”

  She said simply, “After I got involved with him, it didn’t seem important anymore. He and the people in his group—they were all just right for me. I could not ask for more.”

  What, thought Paul, are. the right things to ask of life? He considered the Priestess’s Petition in the Song. Should he mention it? Or would a knowledge of Donnator be too much to require of her?

  But she was ahead of him. She read him. “I saw you watching the Luminex panels in the living room. You know the Song, of course. It is important to ask for the right things: just so much, but no more. My mother, the original Derringer, was a famous holo-TV-actress. Her last show was a presentation of the Song. The producer had written out her lines for her. What they were, nobody knows anymore. The record wasn’t preserved. But in the midst of her Petition she had a heart attack. Coincidence, of course, but it was eerie.”

  At this point they both realized that something required their attention.

  A sound—incessant, insistent—demanded silence from the room and the house and from all that were in it.

  The phone was ringing. There was one more ring, then an interval, and then the silence was complete.

  They left the bedroom together and walked softly back into the hall. Serane had picked up the phone and was listening, uttering an occasional monosyllable.

  And then it was over, and he slowly replaced the phone. He looked up. “That was Bert Gorman in Public Relations. The executive committee selected Kuss-man.” By now the hall was full. Serane turned and looked in sad apology at the faces. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  One by one the guests mumbled their farewells and left.

  Paul looked around for Mary Derringer, but she had already gone.

  As he drove back to Rhoda Street, gloomy thoughts of Serane’s future slowly faded, and he found himself considering a matter passing strange. He had discussed Billy for half an hour freely and openly with a near stranger. And Mary Derringer had understood him— everything. It was most astonishing. Not for a moment had he debated whether he could tell her about his brother. It had been all so natural. He shook his head as he drove. Sheila was so different. In her own polished way she was probably prettier than Mary. But Sheila didn’t know he had ever had a brother. The subject had never come up, in or out of bed. And how had it come up with Mary? Thinking back, he couldn’t reconstruct it.

  9

  The New Director

  The automatic machinery in the base of the laboratory flagpole turned itself on every morning at seven o’clock, and the fifty-one-starred flag was hoisted promptly and efficiently. At seven in the evening the process was routinely reversed. Today, however, the mechanism had jammed with the flag only halfway up the mast, and there it fluttered in forlorn greeting to the incoming employees.

  And when Dr. Compton, the librarian, arrived, he found the computer carrels festooned with black crepe.

  The day was starting badly.

  All during the morning uneasy little knots of people gathered in the corridors to review the matter. Paul caught snatches of comment.

  “Goody-bye, Johnnie Serane.”

  He felt a cold fist closing about his heart.

  Frederick Kussman

  Laboratory Director

  The raptured legend emblazoned his outer door. He couldn’t see it just now, but he knew it was there.

  He had been ennobled by corporate fiat, which is to say, by resolution of the executive committee, and had thereby been duly and indelibly recorded into the peerage.

  Success required that he do something about his enemies.

  Serane, of course. But not just Serane. There were others. He might have to get rid of several people. The thought comforted him in the face of the many uncertainties that lay ahead.

  Through the door to his outer office he could see Mrs. Pinkster. She was leaning forward in her chair. The sunlight came through the windows and past her inclined body. Her shadow made a K on the wall. Kussman was momentarily awed. It was a divine omen. Even God was impressed with him.

  The hour was near.

  Serane? Not yet. Not yet.

  First he would have to consider Vincent Viturate. He had asked the Fiber chief months ago, and in a very nice and polite way, as one group director to another, not to work so hard on his new fire-resistant fiber. The time was not right for a Fiber success. It would divert the board’s attention from the fifty-million-dollar appropriation he had asked for the high-pressure trialine plant. But Viturate had ignored him. The Fiber Unit was working harder than ever.

  It was rumored they were now gearing up for pilot plant production.

  If Viturate had any sense he would cancel those runs.

  Vincent Viturate got several interesting presents during the week of his sixtieth birthday.

  On Monday, the Fiber Unit made its long expected breakthrough. They successfully extruded half a mile of the new miracle fiber (they now called it Pyropol) through the pilot spinneret. Viturate left samples with Kussman (who did not seem greatly pleased) and then went out with the group to celebrate at the local pub.

  On Tuesday, Humbert called Viturate into his office and told him he was fired.

  Viturate, white-faced and horrified, remonstrated. “But this is crazy! I didn’t fail—I succeeded! We did make a fiber! Here—” he pulled out a coil of monofilament from his pocket and tossed it at Humbert, “there it is! Pyropol.”

  “Vince, old friend,” said Humbert sadly. “Please don’t take it this way. We know it was successful. That’s part of the problem. We weren’t quite ready for it. It may well detract attention from more important projects—such as the trialine plant.”

  “I’ll see Kussman—”

  “Fred asked me to handle this in exactly this way, Vince.”

  The polymer scientist was silent for a time. Then he began to talk softly. Not to Humbert. Not to himself. Just talking. “I heard later, in ’ninety-eight, I had almost made the Nobel list, for contributions to polymer chemistry. Just like Ziegler, for polyethylene, and Natta, for polypropylene. This time, Pyropol would have made it, for the team, for the company, for me.”

  As Viturate walked out, Humbert sagged in relief.

  The dismissal was thoroughly analyzed at the lunch table.

  “How,” asked Paul, “can you fire a man for succeeding?”

  “One of the bromides floating around the halls,” said Marggold glumly, “is that there are only two reasons for leaving Ashkettles. One is failure; the other is success.”

  During the night following Viturate’s farewell banquet there was a considerable blaze in the Pyropol pilot plant. The lab fire-fighting crew eventually had to call on the local municipal fire department for help before the flames were brought under control and they could get inside the cinder-block building. In the office, they found a body, soon verified by the county dental data bank as that of Vincent Viturate.

  The fire chief put it all together for the reporter who braved the wet smoking floor and walls. “Hanged himself from the door hinge, with this sort of filamentary thing. Real strong. He flailed around a bit, knocked over the wastebasket. It must have already been burning. Perhaps a cigarette. Then there was this hundred-liter drum of pentane. God knows what it was doing in the office here. It caught. And that was it. He’s a mess. Funny thing—that filament didn’t melt. It didn’t even stretch.”

  The reactions were various. His friends genuinely mourned him and turned out for the funeral in large numbers. They blamed Kussman and avoided the new director as much as possible. Kussman felt unjustly accused. “The poor guy was plainly psycho,” he explained to Tom Oldham. “It was just a question of time.”

  The higher echelons of the company took a considerable interest in the case, especially after they began getting calls from NASA and the Pentagon. Vice-President Hedgewick made searching inquiries about the new filament, a twenty-five-micron strand of which could support 165 pounds at 1500 degrees centigrade. Before the month was out, the board had voted to borrow twenty million dollars to build a small commercial plant. PR picked a catchy name for the new fiber—Kusslon, in honor of the man who had nursed it to fruition.