The Black Corridor

CHAPTER SEVEN

When he has read his report into the machine Ryan goes to the desk beneath the screen and opens the drawer where his red log-book is lying ready for his remarks.

First he sits down at his desk and hums a song as he completes some calculations. He works quickly and mechanically to complete his task. He lays it aside, satisfied.

He has fifteen minutes free now. He produces the red log-book from the drawer again, rules a line under his formal report and writes: Alone in the craft I experience the heights and depths of emotion untempered by the needs of less mechanical work than I do now, uninterrupted by the presence of others.

He reads this over, frowns, shrugs, continues: This means deep pain and being a prey to my own feelings. It also means great joy. An hour ago I stared out of my porthole at the enormous vista and recollected what I—what we as a group— have done to save ourselves. My mind goes back to how we were, and forward to what we will be.

Ryan's stylus hovers over the page. He makes writing motions over the book, but he cannot phrase his thoughts.

At length he gives up, rules another line under his entry, shuts the book and replaces it in the drawer.

He changes his mind, gets the book out again and begins to write rapidly: The world was sick and even our group was tinged with unhealthiness. We were not lilywhite. We sold out some of our ideals. But perhaps the difference was that we knew we were selling out. We admitted what we were doing and so remained rational when almost everyone else had gone insane.

It is true, too, that we became somewhat hardened to the horrors around us, shut them out—even condoned some of them—even fell in with the herd from time to time. But we had our objectives— our sense of purpose. It kept us going. However, I don't deny that we dirtied our hands sometimes. I don't deny that I got carried away sometimes and did things that I now am inclined to regret.

But perhaps it was worth it. After all, we survived!

Perhaps that is all the justification needed.

We kept our heads and we are now on our way to colonise a new planet. Start a new society on cleaner, more decent, more rational lines.

Cynics might think that an impossible ideal. It will all get just as bad in time, they'd say. Well, maybe it won't. Maybe this time we really can build a sane society!

None of us is perfect. Especially this crew! We all have our rows and we all have qualities that the others find annoying. But the point is that we are a family. Being a family, we can have our arguments, our strong disagreements—even our hatreds, to a degree— and still survive.

That is our strength.

Ryan yawns and checks the time. He still has a few minutes free time to spare. He looks at the paper and begins to write again: When I look back to our days on Earth, particularly towards the end, I realise just how tense we were. The ship routine has relaxed me, allowed me to realise just what I had become. I don't like what I became. Perhaps one has to become a wolf, however, to fight wolves. It will never happen again. There were times, I cannot deny, when I lost hold of my ideals—even my senses. Some of the events are hazy—some are almost completely forgotten (though doubtless one of my relatives or friends will be able to remind me). I can hardly believe that it took such a short time for society to collapse.

That was what caused the trauma, of course—the suddenness of it all. Obviously, there were signs of the coming crises, and perhaps I should have taken more heed of those signs—but then all chaos suddenly broke loose throughout the world! What we tut-tutted at in the manner of older people slightly disconcerted by the changing times I now realise were much more serious indications of social unrest. Sudden increases in population, decreases in food production —they were the old problems that the Jeremiah had been going on about for years—but they were suddenly with us. Perhaps we had been deliberately refusing to face the problem, just as people had refused to consider the possibility of war with Germany in the late thirties. We homo sapiens have a great capacity for burying our heads in the sand while pretending to face out the issues.

Ryan smiles grimly. It's true, he thinks. People under stress usually start dealing with half a dozen surrogate issues, leaving the real issues completely untouched because they're too difficult to cope with. Like the man who lost the sixpence in the house but decided to look for it outside because the light was better and he would thus save his candles.

He adds in his log: And there's always some bloody messiah to answer their needs— someone whom they will follow blindly because they are too fearful to rely on their own good sense. It's like Don Quixote leading the Gadarene Swine!

Ryan chuckles aloud.

Leaders, fuhrers, duces, prophets, visionaries, gurus... For a hundred years the world was ruled by bad poets. A good politician is only something of a visionary-essentially he must be a man who sees the needs of people in practical and immediate terms and tries to do something about it. Visionaries are fine for inspiring people— but they are the worst choice as leaders—they attempt to impose their rather simple visions on an extremely complicated world! Why have politics and art become so mixed up together in the last hundred years? Why have bad artists been given nations as canvases on which to paint their tatty, sketchy, rubbish? Perhaps because politics, like religion before it, was dead as an effective force and something new had to be found. And art stood in until whatever it was turned up.

Will something turn up? It's hard to say. We'll probably never know on Munich 15040 if the world survives or not.

Thank God we had the initiative to get this ship on her way to the stars!

No more time for writing. Ryan puts the log-book away quickly and begins his regular check of the ship's nuclear drive, running a check on virtually every separate component.

He taught himself the procedure for running the ship. He was not trained as an astronaut. No one planned that he should be the man standing in the control cabin at that particular moment.

Until comparatively recently Ryan was, in fact, a business man.

A pretty successful business man.

As he does the routine checking, he thinks about himself before he even conceived the idea of travelling into space.

He sees himself, a strongly built man of forty, standing with his back to the vast plate glass window of his large, thickly carpeted office. His heavy, healthy face was pugnacious, his back was broad, his thick, stubby-fingered hands were clasped behind his back.

Where Ryan is now a monk—a man dedicated to his ship and his unconscious companions—a man charged, like a cleric in the Dark Ages, with preserving the knowledge and lives contained in this moving monastery—then he was a man almost perpetually in a state of combat.

Ten thousand years before he would have been a savage standing in front of his pack, hair bristling, teeth bared, bone club in hand.

Instead, Ryan had been a toymaker.

Not a kindly old peasant whittling puppets in a pretty little cottage. Ryan had owned a firm averaging a million pounds a year in profits, producing toy videophones, plastic hammers, miniature miracles of rocketry, talking life-size dolls, knee-high cars with automatic gear changes, genuine all electric cooking machines, real baaing sheep, things which jumped, sped, made noises and broke when their calculated life-span was over and were thrown secretly and with curses by parents into the rapid waste disposal units of cities all over the western world.

Ryan pressed the button which connected him with the office of his manager, Owen Powell.

Powell appeared on the screen. He was on his hands and knees on the office floor watching two dolls, three foot high, walk about the carpet. As he heard the buzz of the interoffice communicator he was saying to one of the dolls: 'Hello, Gwendolen.' As he said 'Hello, Ryan,' the doll replied, in a beautifully modulated voice, 'Hello, Owen.'

'That's the personalised doll you were talking about, is it?"

Ryan said.

"That's it.' Powell straightened up. 'I knew they could do it if they tried. Lovely, isn't she? The child voice-prints her in the shop on its birthday, say. After that she can give any one of twenty five responses to its questions—but only to the child. Imagine that— a doll which can speak, apparently intelligently, but only to you.

The kids go mad about it.'

'If the price 'is right,' Ryan said.

Powell was an enthusiast, a man who would really, if he had not had a twenty thousand pound a year job with Ryan, have been perfectly happy carving toys in an old peasant's hut. He looked disconcerted by Ryan's discouraging remark.

'Well, maybe we can get the price down to twenty pounds retail. What would you say to that?'

'Not bad.' Ryan deliberately gave Powell no encouragement.

Powell was a man who would work hard for a smile and stop working when you gave it, reasoned Ryan. Therefore it was better to smile seldom in his direction.

'Never mind all that now.' Ryan rubbed his eyebrows. 'There's plenty of time to get it right before Christmas when we'll try a few out, see how they go and produce a big line by spring for the following Christmas.'

Powell nodded. 'Agreed.'

'Now,' said Ryan, 'I want you to do two things for me. One— get in touch with the factory and tell Ames to use the Mark IV pin on the Queen of Dolls. Two—ring Davies and tell him we're stopping all deliveries until he pays.'

'He'll never keep going during August if we do that,' objected Powell. 'If we stop delivering, he'll have to close down, man.

We'll only get a fraction of what he owes us!'

'I don't care.' Ryan gestured dismissively. 'I'm not letting Davies get away with another ten thousand pounds worth of goods so that he'll pay us in the end, if we're lucky. I will not do business on that basis, That's final.'

'All right.' Powell shrugged. 'That's reasonable enough.'

'I think so.' Ryan broke the connection.

He reached into his desk and took out a bottle of green pills.

He poured water into a glass from an old-fashioned carafe on his immaculate desk. He swallowed the pills and put the glass down.

Unconsciously he resumed his stance, head jutting slightly forward, hands behind back. He had a decision to make.

Powell was a good manager.

A bit sloppy sometimes. Forgetful. But on the whole efficient.

He was not quarrelsome, like the ambitious Conroy, or withdrawn, like his last manager, Evers.

What he had mistaken at first for decent behaviour, respect for another man's privacy, had gone beyond reason in Evers.

When a manager refused to speak to the firm's managing director on the interoffice communicator—broke the connection consistently in fact—business became impossible.

Ryan could certainly respect his feelings, sympathise with them as it happened—so would any other self-respecting person. But facts were facts. You could not run a business without talking to other people. Strangers they might be, uncongenial they might be, but if you couldn't stand a brief conversation on the communicator, then you were no use to a firm.

Ryan reflected that he himself was finding it increasingly distasteful to get in touch with many of his key workers but, since it was that or go under, he forced himself to do so.

Powell was certainly a good manager.

Inventive and clever, too.

On the other hand, Ryan thought, he had come to hate him.

He was—childish. There was no other word for it. That open countenance, that smile, a smile which said that he would take to anybody who took to him. There was something doglike about it. Just pat him on the head and he would wag his tail to and fro, jump up and lick your face. Sickening, really, Ryan thought to himself. It made you feel sick to think about it. He had no reticences, no reserves. A man shouldn't be so friendly.

And, of course, Ryan thought, when you looked at the facts, it all came down to Powell's being Welsh. That was the Welshman for you—openfaced and friendly when they spoke to you and clannishly against you behind your back.

The Welsh gangs were some of the worst in the city. Ryan reflected that he had not bought his machine gun, and taught his wife and elder son how to use it, just for fun. That was the Welsh— all handshakes and smiles when you met them, and all the time their sons were stoning your relatives three streets away.

Ryan tapped his teeth together. Old Saunders of Happyvoice had shaken him a bit when he had got on the communicator just to warn him about Powell.

'It might help,' he had said, 'if that manager of yours, Powell, changed his name. You can't deny it sounds Welsh and there's been an awful lot of trouble with those Welsh Nationalists recently.

Between ourselves, it only needs one word from a competitor of yours—say Moonbeam Toys—via their PRO, and you'll be branded in the press as an employer of Welsh labour. And that's never likely to help sales—because people remember. Just at that critical moment when they're choosing between one of your products and one of another firm's—they remember. And then they don't buy a Ryan Toy. See what I mean? One word from you to old Powell and he'll change his name to Smith and you're in the clear.'

Ryan had smiled bluffly and made assurances. When he had cut off the communicator two thoughts came to him.

One, he knew Powell would be first confused and then obstinate about changing his name.

Two, and worse, that Saunders did not think for one instant that Powell was a Welshman. He just thought he had an unfortunate name.

Ryan realised that he was right out on a limb. Where his competitors refused to take on employees with suspect names, however impeccable their backgrounds, Ryan had an actual living, breathing Welshman working for him. Someone who could quite easily be a Nationalist, working for the Welsh Cause (a somewhat obscure Cause as Ryan saw it). It was bloody ridiculous. How could he have got so out of touch? Why hadn't he thought of it?

Ryan frowned. No—it was stupid. Powell was too absorbed in his work to worry about politics. He was the last person to get involved in anything like that.

Still, a name was a name. The Nationalists had been causing quite a bit of trouble lately and things had really got bad with the assassination of the King. The Welsh Nationalists had claimed it was their work. But other groups of extremists had also made the same claim.

From a practical point of view, Ryan thought, Powell was an embarrassment. No question of it. Yet he couldn't fire a man on suspicion.

Ryan's face took on an over-rosy tinge and his thick hands gripped each other a little more firmly behind his back.

I'm in fucking trouble here, he thought.

He pinched his nose and then reached out to buzz for his personnel manager.

Frederick Masterson was sitting at his desk working on a graph.

Masterson was, in physical terms, the exact complement to Ryan.

Where Ryan was thickset and ruddy, Masterson was tall, thin and pale. As the communicator buzzed in his office he dropped the pencil from his long, thin hand and looked at the screen in alarm.

Seeing Ryan, a thin smile came to his lips.

'Oh, it's you,' he said.

'Fred. I want details of any staff we employ with foreign or strange-sounding names—or foreign backgrounds of any kind.

Just to be on the safe side, you realise. I'm not planning a purge!'

He laughed briefly.

'Just as well,' Masterson grinned. 'Your name's Irish isn't it, begorrah!'

Ryan said: 'Come off it, Fred. I'm no more Irish than you are.

Not a single relative or ancestor for the past hundred years has even seen Ireland, let alone come from it.'

'I know, I know,' said Fred. 'Call me Oirish agin and Oi'll knock ye over the hade wid me shillelegh.'

'Skip the funny imitations, Fred,' Ryan said shortly. 'The firm's at stake. You know how bloody small-minded a lot of people are.

Well it seems to be getting worse. I just don't want to take any chances. I want you to probe. If necessary turn the whole department over to examining personnel records for the slightest hint of anything peculiar. Examine marriages, family background, schooling, previous places of employment. No action at this stage. I'm not planning to victimise anyone.'

'Not at the moment,' said Masterson, a funny note in his voice.

'Oh, come off it, Fred. I just want to be prepared. In case any competitors start going for us. Naturally I'll protect my employees to the hilt. This is one way of making sure I can protect them— against any scandal, for a start.'

Masterson sighed. 'What about those with Negro blood? I mean the West Indians got around a bit before they were all sent back.'

'Okay. I don't think anyone's got anything against blacks at the moment have they?'

'Not at the moment.'

'Fine.'

'But you never know...'

'No.'

'I want to protect them, Fred.'

'Of course.'

Ryan cut the communicator and sighed.

An image flashed into his mind and with a start he remembered a dream he had had the previous night. It was funny, the way you suddenly remembered dreams long after you had dreamt them.

It had been to do with a cat. His old house where he had lived with his parents. It had had a big, overgrown back garden and they had kept several cats. The dream was to do with the air rifle he had had and a white and ginger cat—an interloper—that had entered the garden. Someone—not himself, as he remembered the dream —had shot the cat. He had not wanted to shoot the cat himself, but had gone along with this other person. They had shot the cat once and it had been patched up by neighbours. There had been a piece of sticking plaster on its left flank. The person had fired the gun and badly wounded the cat but the animal had not appeared to notice. It had still come confidently along the wall, tail up and purring, towards the French windows. It had had a big, bloody wound in its side, but it hadn't seemed to be aware of it.

The cat had entered the house and come into the kitchen, still purring, and eaten from the bowl of one of the resident cats.

Ryan had not known whether to kill it to put it out of its misery or whether to let it be. It hadn't actually seemed to be in any misery, that was the strange thing.

Ryan shook his head. A disturbing dream. Why should he remember it now?

He had never, after all, owned a white and ginger cat.

Ryan shrugged. Good God, this was no time for worrying about silly dreams. He would have to do some hard thinking. Some realistic thinking. He prided himself that if he was nothing else he was a pragmatist. Not an ogre. He was well-known for his good qualities as an employer. He had the best staff in the toy industry.

People were only too eager to come and work for Ryan Toys. The pay was better. The conditions were better. Ryan was much respected by his fellow employers and by the trades unions. There had never been any trouble at Ryan Toys.

But he had the business to consider. And, of course ultimately the country, for Ryan's exports were high.

Or had been, thought Ryan, before the massive wave of nationalism had swept the world and all but frozen trade, save for the basic necessities.

Still, it would pass. A bit of a shake-up for everybody. It wasn't a bad thing. Made people keep their feet on the ground. One had to know how to ride these peculiar political crises that came and went. He wasn't particularly politically minded himself. A liberal with a small l was how he liked to describe himself. He had an excellent profit-sharing scheme in the factory, lots of fringe benefits, and an agreement with the unions that on his death the workers would take over control of the factory, paying a certain percentage of profits to his dependants. He was all for socialism so long as it was phased in painlessly. He steadfastly refused to have a private doctor and took his chances with the National Health Service along with everybody else. While he was not over-friendly with his workers, he was on good terms with them and they liked him. This silly racialistic stuff would come and go.

The odds were that it wouldn't affect the factory at all.

Ryan took a deep breath. He was getting over-anxious, that was his trouble. Probably that bloody Davies account preying on his mind. It was just as well to take a stiff line with Davies, even if it meant losing a few thousand. He would rather kiss the money goodbye if it meant kissing goodbye to the worries that went with it.

He buzzed through to Powell again.

Powell was once again on his knees, fiddling with a doll.

'Ah,' said Powell straightening up.

'Did you take care of those couple of items, Powell?'

'Yes. I spoke to Ames and I phoned Davies. He said he'd do his best.'

'Good man,' Ryan said and switched off hastily as a delighted grin spread over Powell's face.