The Year's Best Science Fiction 9

THE NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS W. J. J. Gordon

We were due in Portland, Oregon, at 9:00 a.m. their time, so I made a point of getting into the diner for breakfast by 8:00. I ordered prunes, poached eggs, and coffee. Then I looked out the window and thought about last night. What had Dr. Hurlbet called his research division? Research-O-Rama? He was the boss of it—I guess he could call it whatever he wanted; but when you’re in my line you have to be more careful. No one wants a metal-fatigue expert to make jokes. I play it very no-jokes, with the pipe and the oracle-type delivery that make a client figure he’s getting his consultant service straight from God. Hurlbet is the biggest man in American industrial research, so he can get away with anything. But last night he really took off like a bird. If his picture of industrial research was true, what an indictment! Maybe he’d been fried out of shape last night and would feel like a fool this morning. Or perhaps he wouldn’t even remember. I lifted my arm to let the waiter put a clean napkin over my side of the table. It wasn’t a napkin. It rustled like paper. Hurlbet! Honest to God, I was embarrassed for him. I didn’t look up. I just pulled the piece of paper under my eyes.

It was a funny limerick—”calculus on her toes”—a little bitter, though. Still without looking up, I said, “Good morning, Dr. Hurlbet.” I heard him pull out the chair at my table and sit down.

“Good morning, Fairley.” He was cheery as anything. I sneaked a look at him. There he was, smiling. He remembered last night all right, and he couldn’t have cared less. “Perhaps you like this one better,” he said:

I really didn’t plug in, but the sound of it made me laugh out loud. Hurlbet glanced at the menu.

“The tyranny of the egg,” he said. He was off again, same as last night. He still had a hex on me.

“The tyranny of what?” There I was, playing straight man for him right off the bat.

“This is a free country, isn’t it?” he asked. I got very interested in the prunes and didn’t answer. “They say this is a free country, but every morning millions of good citizens are bullied by eggy despotism. What are you having for breakfast?”

“Eggs. Two. Poached. On toast,” I said. I wished I had ordered the trout they have on the Northern Pacific.

“See?” said Hurlbet. “You’re tyrannized.” The waiter came with my eggs and took Hurlbet’s order—orange juice, tea, and two boiled eggs. He winked at me. “Me too,” he said. “Egg-O-Rama!” That “Me too” of his got me thinking. Last night Hurlbet had told me all about how lousy his research people were, a bunch of nine-to-fivers. Then he said he was sucked up in it himself. And now “Me too” on the eggs. I wondered whether he’d thrown in the sponge and all that was left was cynical jokes.

“I better hurry,” I said. “We’re nearly there—”

“What time are you due at your first appointment?” asked Hurlbet. I explained that I was expected after lunch. “I’d like to hire you for a half day,” he said. “How much?” I go at three hundred and fifty a day and two hundred a half day. I told him. “Fine,” he said.

“Have you got a metal-fatigue problem?” I asked him. He shook his head.

“Do you think I don’t remember last night?” I had a little trouble getting rid of a prune pit, so he went on. “I told you all about my research laboratory, right?” I was still tonguing around my mouth for the prune pit. I kept nodding like a lunatic. “Did I mention the toilets in the new lab—how elegant they were?” I found the prune pit and bootlegged it onto my plate.

“Have you got a metals problem?” I repeated. Was this one of those no-fee lab visits?

“We must have a metals problem somewhere, but that’s not why I’m hiring you. I want to show you around and get your reactions,” Hurlbet said.

“Dr. Hurlbet, you know very well there are consulting companies who do nothing but help increase personnel efficiency.”

“Dr. Fairley.” He copied my tone, but it was all right, not nasty. “I just finished with the biggest in the business. They sent me a high-powered ‘task force.’ There was a fat man who claimed to be a physicist and talked like Sigmund Freud. He was very intense about ‘research operations in terms of the psychoanalytical model.’ There was a sociologist who talked like a mathematician. He kept giving me the statistical probabilities of an immigrant inventing the atomic bomb. And there was another man who said he was a chemist, but I couldn’t pilsh him beyond expressions like ‘in-group,’ ‘out-group,’ and ‘the dynamics of innovation.’ Do you know how these sophisticated consultants operate, Dr. Fairley?” I didn’t know. “They come in and talk to everybody—to me, to my deputies, to group leaders. They’re smart, very smart, but they believe everything my people tell them. And you know what’s worse? These men on the task forced—they never call each other anything but ‘Doctor,’ by the way—these men are as bad as my people. They’re all part of the Research-O-Rama Guild, and they have an agreement about not showing each other up. After about six months of this they presented me with a report eighty pages long, in three parts.” I was getting fidgety. We were in the outskirts of Portland already. Dr. Hurlbet let his eggs get cold. “Three parts. Part one said how morale was good, how comfortable the lab was, how everybody loved me. In fact, except for the parking place, everything was perfect.”

“I better get back to my compartment,” I said.

“They told me there should be a ‘status-oriented’ parking space—that’s how they talk! Status-oriented, so that senior staff people could leave their cars nearest the lab, with the shortest distance to walk. If I would see to this, I wouldn’t have a thing to worry about. Can you meet me on the platform?” I said O.K., I would, and hurried back to my compartment to pack.

The porter had put away my stuff, so all I did was shut the bag. When we pulled in, I overtipped the porter and jumped down onto the platform. There was Dr. Hurlbet. He started right out where he had left off a few minutes back. As we walked down the platform he put his non-bag arm through mine. He had a stride like a Maine guide. I had to hop a couple of times to keep up.

“These personnel consultants made me feel that they were really working for the FBI, that if they cleared me, I should feel good—and I was paying them. Part two of their report said there should be more communication between basic research and development and engineering. It took forty pages to give me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Let me tell you something, Dr. Fairley. Once the Consult-O-Rama boys zone in on the communication problem, they’ve got you! And they told me what to do about it. ‘Make it better,’ they told me.” He squinted into the morning sun. Way down the street was a big, low sports car. “There’s Mother,” he said. That was like him, I thought, calling his wife “Mother.” I wondered what she’d be like. He was lean and tough. She ought to be on the plump side. What the hell! I know my Rockwell Kent.

“But part three was lovely.” He took a step out in front of me. I had to stop quickly to avoid bumping into him. “They suggested I remove one particular person because he didn’t have ‘growth potential,’ because he was not ‘scientifically sophisticated.’ They wanted to be sure that a ‘certain level of technical competence’ was maintained. The person they wanted me to get rid of is the only man in the lab who really pushes his nose right down there and produces. But he isn’t a guild member, no Ph.D., so they dared attack him. Here we are.” Dr. Hurlbet opened the trunk of the snappy car. He threw in his bag and reached for mine, gently. He smiled at me. He was asking whether I’d come out to his lab with him. I let him take my bag, and he said, “Good.”

When two people who are fond of each other meet after a considerable separation it makes me nervous to be around. Dr. Hurlbet hadn’t seen his wife for quite a while, so I fiddled in the trunk, giving them time to say hello. But he hailed me from up front. “They’ll ride all right, Dr. Fairley. The lab’s only a couple of miles from here.”

I slammed shut the trunk and stepped around to the front. “This is Mother. Dr. Fairley—Mother.” The car was so low that I simply stuck my arm in the window and waited for a handshake.

“How do you do, Mrs. Hurlbet?” I couldn’t find her. I was waving my hand around inside hoping she’d grab it before I hit her in the teeth. She did. For an older woman, she had quite a grip. I couldn’t get a look at her until I fitted myself into the little buckboard seat in the back. Dr. Hurlbet got in the front alongside Mother, who stayed behind the wheel. He put his arm around her and drew her close. They kissed. Man! It was like an old movie. A real kiss. Not just hello. It was sexy. I squirmed a little. Then I got a good look at ‘Mother.’ What a bimbo! About forty, full lips and everything. Hurlbet was at least sixty, but these two had what they call a Relationship.

She put the car in gear, and they held hands—not a la St. Petersburg, Florida; shuffleboard; retirement for older citizens. I mean they held hands. The old man and the bimbo. She was fine. A nice laugh and easy way. She was wearing a big diamond bracelet and driving the fancy car. Maybe Dr. Hurlbet was disgusted with his research personnel, but he wasn’t starving. And with Mother to support, he had better not throw up the whole thing and go back to inventing in a cellar. They talked about kids and ponies till we got to the lab.

The lab! It was out in the country. A lot of lawn to cut. A monument to research. Out in front some sculptor had nailed together a thing about thirty feet tall—big balls, all connected with rods. Great! It was an outsize molecular model. Mother let us off in front of a glass-and-aluminum entrance. I gathered up my bag and said good-bye to her. There was a man who opened the door for us and touched his hat to Hurlbet. Like El Morocco. We hurried down the hall to Hurlbet’s office. His secretary swarmed all over him, wanting to know if he had a good trip and how things were in Washington, and had he given her regards to the President, hah, hah. No joke, by the way. He sees the President all the time. He hung up my coat and said, “Follow me.” Out we went and turned in at a men sign. Hurlbet led me up to a row of W.C.’s.

“Look at the doors,” he said. “See? No measly half doors! Down to the floor and up to the ceiling.” He knocked on one to show how solid it was, then he went over to the washbasins. “Look at the towels—it’s the Ritz! No paper towels in Research-O-Rama. Last night you thought I was exaggerating, didn’t you? Come on, I’ll show you around.” And we left the ritzy men’s room.

We were going down the corridor. “I told them we needed a research center, and we’ve got one—from Cartier’s!” Hurlbet waved his hand down the hall. It was spotless and quiet, like a hospital. As we walked along I looked into the open doors. The people were nice and clean in their lab smocks, very serious and busy-busy, and they whispered together. Over each door was the group name: Operations Research, Physics, Organic Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering—the works!

“Each group has its own warren, like special rabbits,” Hurlbet said. “We keep the strains pure here—and you know what happened to the collie. Its nose got sharper and its head thinner till its brains were pushed out through its ears. A terrible, terrible thing. But what can I do? They’ve all got families to support.”

An intense young man stopped Hurlbet. He was very excited. “Guess what?” he said, like a kid.

“What?” said Hurlbet.

“You’ll never guess,” the young man said.

“What?” said Hurlbet.

“We’ve got the apparatus in the lab set up so we can run six hundred tests a day.” The young man’s eyes gleamed.

“That’s nice. This is Dr. Fairley. Dr. Letter. He’s in charge of our Pure Research.” I said hello, and Letter kept going.

“We used to squeeze out a measly two hundred tests a day using the old spectrograph,” said Letter. “Now we’re up to six hundred a day. Beautiful data. Beautiful.”

“Very nice,” said Hurlbet. “Do you suppose you could ever get up to a thousand tests a day? It would make an interesting paper.” The thought of so many beautiful data threw Letter, and he went mumbling down the hall.

Hurlbet turned on me. “It’s the equipment,” he said. “The damn Research-O-Rama equipment! The minute they’re in a jam, my people scream for fancy instruments and tools, big enough to hide behind.” I laughed because I thought that was what he was after.

“Don’t laugh,” Hurlbet said. “That’s how we get the big government research jobs. Monumental cyclotrons and well-behaved, competent people to use them. God save us from competence! Isn’t there one nut around? I gave a lecture last summer to my staff on the importance of individuality in research. The next morning seven of my people showed up in yachting blazers.” He shut his eyes tight the way he does and led me back into the office.

“Who’s your best man?” I asked. “The hottest?”

“You mean best-known?”

“All right, best-known.”

“Oh, oh! Dr. Fairley, so you don’t think we’ve got any big names?”

I happened to be looking at Hurlbet’s desk. It didn’t have a paper on it. The ashtray was a pond lily sitting on a spotless lake. He noticed my sudden interest in the desk.

“Oh, yes, my secretary read in Fortune that top executives—she loves that word ‘top’—should never look messy-busy.” He leaned over his desk to get nearer me. “About the big names. A couple of years ago at a board of directors meeting— I’m on the board. I’m the dean of research directors, don’t you know that?” I said that I knew that, and he said that was better, because he hoped he hadn’t worked forty years for nothing. After all, what other research director had a clean desk? He winked at me again in that warm style of his, and I would have signed anything.

“At the board meeting,” he went on, “they asked me why I didn’t have any great men around to sort of dress up the lab a bit. They wanted the star system, like the movies. So I hired Cole and Hart, the Nobel Prize winners. Now we have our own private Nobel Prize winners in residence.”

I’d heard of Cole and Hart, About twenty years ago the two of them had done some great hormone work. I remembered seeing their pictures. Beards and vests. Old-school Nobel Prize winners! Venerable—not the young crew cuts you see today. But what the hell were they doing here?

“Aren’t Cole and Hart old men?” I asked.

“They have a little age on them, yes,” said Hurlbet.

“And aren’t they biologists—in this lab?”

“Certainly they’re biologists!” said Hurlbet. “In the first place, what does the board of directors know? In the second place, Cole and Hart were way past their prime, so I got what you might term a good buy. But a funny thing happened, Fairley. The two old codgers are a gold mine.”

I pointed out that Cole and Hart hadn’t published anything in twenty years and wanted to know if they were about to make a breakthrough.

“Of course not,” said Hurlbet. “But look here. This lab is funded from the Defense Department—almost all of it, that is. You must show competence—not brilliance, not commitment, but competence. ‘Competence’ means that in your research stable you have personnel with academic backgrounds in the technical areas implied by a research contract. Never mind whether these personnel bother to roll out of bed in the morning. Their degrees must appear on a laundry list of people who will make up the task force. The Defense Department loves the expression ‘task force.’ They eat it up.”

Hurlbet was climbing away from me again. He kept doing that. “I still don’t see what you need biologists for,” I said.

“Ah, ah!” he said. He put his finger alongside his nose like a mock Santa. “Up there”—he raised his eyes—”there’s the moon. Right?”

“Right,” I said. I really loved this guy.

“Right,” he said. “It’s going to take a long time to get there. Right?”

“Right,” I said. Hurlbet was great. Even if he did have me playing straight man again.

“Right,” he said. “And people have to live, survive, endure. Right?”

I nodded. He lifted his arm. “That’s what I mean. Biology. Those two old Nobel-O-Rama gentlemen have put me over the top on contracts more than once. Star system.” It turns out that with Nobel Prize winners’ names on the billing, Hurlbet snatches the front money. He looked at me hard. “It’s a terrible thing, technical competence. Come on down and meet them, they’re a grand pair.”

Dr. Hurlbet led me out of the office and down the hall. There were loudspeakers squeaking people’s names, but I noticed some men had little units in the breast pockets of their Hollywood white lab jackets.

“What are those little things?” I pointed to a guy with one.

“That’s the latest thing in status around here,” Hurlbet said. “My deputies just sold me on the idea. Research personnel rating as senior staff and above don’t get called on the loudspeaker. They get contacted by their own private intercom. Honest to God, Fairley! They’ve got me. I can’t stop it. You tell me how, and I’ll stop it, but I don’t know how.” He shook his head. I felt sorry for him again, like last night. Here he was, the biggest in his field. He put his hand on a knob of a door with an opaque glass top.

“Get ready. Here are Cole and Hart.”

He opened the door into a room about sixty by thirty feet. Spotless. Ready for an appendectomy. That sterile. And the equipment. A vacuum pump was going phoom, phoom, phoom. And green liquid was having a hell of a trip for itself up and down a row of glass tubes. There was more damn bubbling and complicated splashing than in Jekyll and Hyde. A long row of stainless steel animal cages, doors open. The floor was covered with white mice, a few dogs, and some rabbits.

“Follow me,” said Hurlbet. He waded through the animals to the end of the lab, where there was a kind of tiny living room. A pipe rack, bookcases, easy chairs, and a fireplace. Two old men were sitting next to each other; they both had canes. One of them had a lapful of bread, and he was feeding the animals.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” said Hurlbet.

The old man with the bread jumped. His body was obese, little and fat, but long, thin legs stuck out from him stiffly. Like a drugged spider.

“Dr. Cole,” said Hurlbet, “I’d like you to meet Dr. Fairley.”

I shook hands with Dr. Cole, who leaned forward but didn’t get up. “And this is Dr. Hart.” A guy about seven feet tall wound out of his armchair with lots of cane work. He didn’t weigh a hundred and thirty pounds.

“A pleasure to have you here, Dr. Fairley,” said Dr. Hart.

Dr. Cole didn’t even turn around. “Sam,” he said to Hurlbet. “Is this young man with us?” I thought he wondered if I was on the staff, but Hurlbet’s answer made me see they had a code going.

“He’s all right,” said Hurlbet.

“Thank God!” said Dr. Cole. “I really didn’t feel like a floor show this morning. Besides, I let everybody out for a romp.” He fed a piece of bread to a fat dog. Dr. Hart sat down again. Hurlbet and I went around and used chairs alongside the fire. The old men with the canes were sitting facing directly into the fire.

“Did you like yesterday’s performance? It started slowly, but how about the finish? How about that nonsense on “The Mathematics of Life-from-not-life’?” Dr. Cole’s feet were hidden in a swirl of animals. The mice piled themselves up in mounds that kept toppling when the dogs nuzzled them. The rabbits hopped around, absentmindedly bumping into the chairs and other rabbits and mice and dogs. But there was no squeaking or barking. Just a lot of scuffling. Suddenly one of the dogs separated his back legs and raised his tail. In a flash Dr. Hart snatched a big glass ashtray off a table and caught the droppings. He moved like an outfielder. But his face squeezed with pain, and I knew his sudden movement hurt. Still, he was proud he had made the play. He put the ashtray back on the table with a professional flourish.

“Dr. Hart, I’ve never seen you in better form,” said Hurlbet, “but let me tell you something funny.” He turned to Dr. Cole. “You made a little trouble for me. The space people want a rush proposal for research based on your ‘Mathematics of Life-from-not-life.’ “

“See, Cole, I’ve warned you and warned you and warned you.” Dr. Hart leaned over to give Dr. Cole’s cane a sharp rap with the tip of his cane. The nearest-animals were startled. Two mounds of white mice fell. Dr. Cole tapped back with his cane.

“Your jokes have gotten us in trouble at last. You’ve lost your dignity, sir. We are Nobel men, after all!” And Dr. Hart returned Dr. Cole’s tap.

“The trouble with you, Hart”—another sharp tap, cane tip against cane tip—”is that you’ve no feel for show business.”

“That’s just cheap!” said Dr. Hart, and he gave Dr. Cole’s cane a good sharp crack. “Cheap! Both of us!” Now the tapping was continuous, with canes scraping back and forth in battle, never getting off the floor. Only the tips in action. I looked over at Hurlbet to see how he was taking all this. He was wearing that sad smile of his, but he was relaxed. So I sat back.

“What would you rather have us do?” asked Dr. Cole with a long sigh. “Look here, Hart. I’m seventy-six and you’re sixty-nine. Do you think we’ve got another Nobel Prize in us?” The cane tapping stopped. “What bothers you the most? Please tell me!”

Without looking around, Dr. Hart put his cane over his shoulder and jabbed it at the colored liquid bubbling in the big glass tubes. “That fake stage set,” he said.

“Don’t you think it’s pretty?” asked Dr. Cole.

“It’s a fake, it just bubbles around and around. It’s a damn lie.” Dr. Hart was yelling. “The same with the animals. They’re just pets. Not one of them has served science.”

“All right,” said Dr. Cole. “Do you know of a home for old Nobel Prize winners?”

“Very funny, Dr. Cole. Very funny. Have you no sense of form?” He banged his cane tip down on his partner’s. A good whack this time. “No dignity?”

That was the ball game, right there! Cole returned the whack, and the two old men went at it, never leaving their armchairs. Crack! Crack! Crack! Hurlbet didn’t move a muscle even when it really got bad. By now the canes were flashing through the air. Wham! Wham! The two old men started to have trouble breathing. Dr. Hart had the reach, but Dr. Cole was pretty cute at that, catching Hart a couple of good ones up near the hand. They never touched each other—the whole fight was with canes. A flurry, then things slowed down. They were puffing. Finally Cole dropped his cane arm to his side and closed his eyes. He put a hand over his left side. Hart kept his cane at the ready. Cole had probably played possum before. In a minute Hart dropped his arm also. The two old men just sat there, pooped. With his eyes still closed, Cole turned his head toward Hurlbet.

“They are too fat,” said Dr. Cole, pushing his cane under a mouse hill, “too fat to serve science.” And he threw the rest of the bread at the animals. “When’s the next floor show, Hurlbet? How about doing the whole thing in blackface? Sort of research in Mississippi riverboat style. A period piece.”

“God!” said Dr. Hart.

“Oh, Hart,” said Cole. “I’m sorry.” His cane touched Hart’s cane very softly—a kiss. Hart just sat there. The two canes lay on the floor quietly, one tip lying over the other.

“The chairman of the board is flying out here next week,” said Hurlbet.

“What does he like?” asked Cole. “Does he like smells?” Hart shook his head. “No class, eh? Well, I guess you’re right. Something new. Let me think. Come on, Hart. What’ll we give him?”

Hart shook his head. Opened his mouth, then closed it again. No words.

“How about another technical paper—you know, the stuff these young government consultants put out. How’s this? “The Arithmetic of Animal Claustrophobia.’ I’ll tell you what we’ll do for the chairman of the board. Oh, boy, he’ll love it. We’ll put all the animals in the cages, but the cages will have shades on them. No light. We’ll open the cages, and of course the animals will stagger out. Then I’ll read a few paragraphs from “The Arithmetic of Animal Claustrophobia.’ How’s that for dignity, Hart?” Dr. Hart’s hands were clenching and unclenching. Hurlbet broke in as he got to his feet.

“Gentlemen. Dr. Fairley has an appointment crosstown.” Cole shook hands sitting down. Hart got up, but he had to push his cane right down between his feet to make it.

“Delighted to meet you, Dr. Fairley,” said Hart. “Please excuse us. We’re old men, you know.” I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t even look him in the eye.

We went out and up the hall. At a bulletin board, Hurlbet stopped. “Hey, look at this,” he said. I glanced along to where I could read a thumbtacked memorandum. It said:

TILL FURTHER NOTICE NO MORE THAN 10 MINUTES WILL BE PERMITTED FOR COFFEE BREAKS. THIS APPLIES TO ALL RESEARCH PERSONNEL.

Signed: Dr. Hurlbet

Dr. Hurlbet took my arm, sighed, and we went back to his office. I didn’t say a word as he helped me on with my coat.

“Some edict, eh?” said Hurlbet. I carefully fitted my scarf around my neck. “But that’s what it’s come to. The mass approach. No coffee and discovery-making talk for these peasants. They wouldn’t know what to do with it.” He grabbed my arm. “The Russians have done it again.”

“And what does that mean?” My coat was on by now. It was warm in there, but when Hurlbet pulled a statement like that, I was a goner.

“What’s our biggest effort—research effort, I mean?” he asked.

“The moon shot?” I was guessing, but it had a Washington in-the-know ring to it.

“Right,” said Hurlbet. “That means that all the science graduates for the next four years must be dragged into the program. It’s that big. You know what I think? I think the Russians aren’t ever going for the moon. While we’re going broke on the moon shot they’ll pick up three dozen more small countries.”

“Are you sure—dead sure?” I asked.

“Of course not, but it could be. Not only that, but look at how we attack a research problem. We put an army into it. We hope that enough mediocrity will add up to talent. Me too, by God. I cancel coffee breaks because my people don’t know how to use them. So I’m banking on the mass mediocrity too.”

“What do you think the Russians are doing?”

“They pretend to use the mass approach, but I bet they work in little competitive teams, the way invention used to work in America in the early days. I tell you, they’re making fools out of us.”

“Well, thank you for showing me around, sir. I don’t feel I earned any fee.”

“You see what we’ve come to, and I don’t know how to stop it.” He hadn’t even heard me. He waved an arm around to take in the whole building, toilets and all. “One of these days,” he said, “I’ll set it on fire and run by the light of it.” I certainly wasn’t earning any fee. “Perhaps I’ve lost the quality of courage,” Hurlbet said. “But I’ve got responsibilities, too, you know.” I thought of Mother and the sports car. I looked at my watch. “I’ve got to get going, sir,” I said.

Hurlbet grabbed my hand and shook it a long while. “Think about it. What can I do? I’ll try anything!” I nodded and went out.

I went down the hall till I got blocked by a cleaning wagon. It was parked in the middle. A janitor took out a mop and went along the corners. A sign on the wagon said “Maintenance Engineering,” and there was the Maintenance Engineer himself with the mop.