television sets and tricycles—the fruits of peace.
Paul raised his eyes above the rooftops of the great triangle to the glare of the sun on the Iroquois River, and beyond—to Homestead, where many of the pioneer names still lived: van Zandt, Cooper, Cortland, Stokes …
“Doctor Proteus?” It was Katharine again.
“Yes, Katharine.”
“It’s on again.”
“Three in Building 58?”
“Yessir—the light’s on again.”
“All right—call Doctor Shepherd and find out what he’s doing about it.”
“He’s sick today. Remember?”
“Then it’s up to me, I guess.” He put on his coat, sighed with ennui, picked up the cat, and walked into Katharine’s office. “Don’t get up, don’t get up,” he said to Bud, who was stretched out on a couch.
“Who was gonna get up?” said Bud.
Three walls of the room were solid with meters from baseboard to molding, unbroken save for the doors leading into the outer hall and into Paul’s office. The fourth wall, as in Paul’s office, was a single pane of glass. The meters were identical, the size of cigarette packages, and stacked like masonry, each labeled with a bright brass plate. Each was connected to a group of machines somewhere in the Works. A glowing red jewel called attention to the seventh meter from the bottom, fifth row to the left, on the east wall.
Paul tapped the meter with his finger. “Uh-huh—here we go again: number three in 58 getting rejects, all right.” He glanced over the rest of the instruments. “Guess that’s all, eh?”
“Just that one.”
“Whatch goin’ do with thet cat?” said Bud.
Paul snapped his fingers. “Say, I’m glad you asked that. I have a project for you, Bud. I want some sort of signaling device that will tell this cat where she can find a mouse.”
“Electronic?”
“I should hope so.”
“You’d need some kind of sensin’ element thet could smell a mouse.”
“Or a rat. I want you to work on it while I’m gone.”
As Paul walked out to his car in the pale March sunlight, he realized that Bud Calhoun would have a mouse alarm designed—one a cat could understand—by the time he got back to the office. Paul sometimes wondered if he wouldn’t have been more content in another period of history, but the Tightness of Bud’s being alive now was beyond question. Bud’s mentality was one that had been remarked upon as being peculiarly American since the nation had been born—the restless, erratic insight and imagination of a gadgeteer. This was the climax, or close to it, of generations of Bud Calhouns, with almost all of American industry integrated into one stupendous Rube Goldberg machine.
Paul stopped by Bud’s car, which was parked next to his. Bud had shown off its special features to him several times, and, playfully, Paul put it through its paces. “Let’s go,” he said to the car.
A whir and a click, and the door flew open. “Hop in,” said a tape recording under the dashboard. The starter spun, the engine caught and idled down, and the radio went on.
Gingerly, Paul pressed a button on the steering column. A motor purred, gears grumbled softly, and the two front seats lay down side by side like sleepy lovers. It struck Paul as shockingly like an operating table for horses he had once seen in a veterinary hospital—where the horse was walked alongside the tipped table, lashed to it, anesthetized, and then toppled into operating position by the gear-driven table top. He could see Katharine Finch sinking, sinking, sinking, as Bud, his hand on the button, crooned. Paul raised the seats with another button. “Goodbye,” he said to the car.
The motor stopped, the radio winked off, and the door slammed. “Don’t take any wooden nickels,” called the car as Paul climbed into his own. “Don’t take any wooden nickels, don’t take any wooden nickels, don’t take any—”
“I won’t!”
Bud’s car fell silent, apparently at peace.
Paul drove down the broad, clean boulevard that split the plant, and watched the building numbers flash by. A station wagon, honking its horn, and its occupants waving to him, shot past in the opposite direction, playfully zigzagging on the deserted street, heading for the main gate. Paul glanced at his watch. That was the second shift just coming off work. It annoyed him that sophomoric high spirits should be correlated with the kind of young men it took to keep the plant going. Cautiously, he assured himself that when he, Finnerty, and Shepherd had come to work in the Ilium Works thirteen years before, they had been a good bit more adult, less cock-sure, and certainly without