Robert Bennett - The Company Man

The car came to a stop. She and Evans looked around, surprised. Samantha found they were in front of a large, unmarked warehouse. “Oh, dear,” said Evans. “We’re here. I forgot to tell Wilford to drop you off. We’ll have to cut our conversation short, I’m afraid.”

“No, no,” she said. “No, please. Go on, if you have a bit more time.”

He considered it, then smiled. “Here. Come. Walk with me. You’ll accompany me inside and then Wilford can drop you off.”

“What meeting do you have to go to?”

“Oh, it’s a demonstration,” he said. He stepped out of the car and unfolded his umbrella. “This is one of our test facilities. It’s a basic meeting, I have them once every few months. About what’s next on the regional agenda.”

He gave instructions to Wilford and offered Samantha his arm. They walked together, past the barbed wire fence and the guards out front, to whom Evans explained that Samantha was only there to help him in. The guards grudgingly let her pass and they crossed the lot together.

“Tell me,” said Evans. “Why should I allow you and Mr. Hayes to continue on this tangent?”

“I’m sorry?” she asked.

“Why should I let you go on running amok in the Porter neighborhoods? Instead of chastising you, I mean. Humor me, please.”

“We have a chance of finding out who’s behind the Bridgedale trolley and the Newton murders,” she said. “We can tell everyone the truth. That it’s not our company. That it’s someone else.”

“Hm. Yes. That’s a goal, yes. But why do you want to do it?”

“To do it?”

“Yes. You worked quite a bit when it was just you, preparing the day for Hayes. But now you work overnight, and never even mention overtime. It’s not business, then. It seems personal now. Why is that?”

She thought as they walked to the front doors. More guards nodded and let them by, twirling their truncheons.

“There’s a boy,” she said quietly. “A little boy. Skiller was his father. He was the canal man they found with his throat cut.”

Evans’s walk slowed. He nodded. “I see,” he said faintly.

“We don’t know where he is. There was a letter his father wrote to him. A goodbye.”

“Yes,” said Evans.

“And there’s more. There’s more and, and… I don’t know,” she said. She found she was suddenly fighting back tears. “I don’t know. I stood in that little boy’s room and I looked through their things and they won’t ever be the same again. Won’t ever be touched. It won’t ever be a home again. And there’s Garvey. And Hayes. And this, this means something to them. I don’t know what it is but it gives them something I haven’t ever seen before. Something real. And I want it. I want it to do the same to me as it does to them.”

“Here, here,” Evans said softly. “Here. Calm down. Calm down. We can’t go in with you upset.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m usually not like this. It’s just, I saw their home and there was this little girl with flies all over her head and she was crying, she was crying and waiting for someone to come, and what Garvey and Hayes are doing… It’s like they think if they fix this one thing it’ll fix everything else. Even Hayes seems to think so, in some perverted way. And maybe it will. Maybe it will.”

“Yes,” Evans said. “Maybe it will.” He sighed and wiped the rain off his glasses. “I just wanted to see if there would be a good reason for me to explain all this to Brightly,” he said. “That’s all. And there is. Now come,” he said, offering her his arm again. “Come and see me in safely.”

She sniffed and dried her eyes. Then she took up his arm again and they walked in the front door. Inside was a long, low cement hallway with closed metal doors at the end.

“Do you think Mr. Hayes is of sound mind, sir?” she asked quietly as they walked.

“Oh, I’d say Mr. Hayes is of exceptionally sound mind, considering the things he’s seen,” said Evans, and pushed open the other set of doors.

Samantha nearly gasped. Before them was the largest room she had ever seen, or maybe it seemed that way because it was completely empty. The walls were gray and blank and made of enormous cement slabs so well put together that the seams were mere hairlines. The opposite wall had no markings at all except for a small door, beside which was a guard posted in a chair, reading a book.

“This is where you’re having your meeting?” asked Samantha, awed.

“Yes,” said Evans delightedly. “I told you, we’re making things here.”

They crossed to the small doorway. It took nearly a minute. She was reminded of Hayes’s warehouse, which was no more than a third of the size of this place. Then she realized it and this place and the common McNaughton facility schematics were similar. There was the warehouse portion, then something sunk down in the back, and then much, much more below…

The guard stood up and smiled at them. “How are you today, Mr. Evans?”

“Fine, thank you. How is Little Women?”

“Oh, it’s excellent. Thank you for recommending it to me.”

“Well, I want to make sure the time passes for you, Henry. Metal as usual?”

“Yes, sir,” said the guard. “And, she, uh…”

“Oh, nonsense, Henry. Miss Fairbanks just wanted to make sure I made it in all right,” said Evans. “She won’t be going down to see.” He winked at her, then took out his watch and his wallet and handed them over, and then removed his spectacles and put on a pair whose frames were made of wood. He removed his keys, the change he had, and then his belt. Henry took them all and stored them on a nearby table.

“Keep an eye on them, Henry,” said Evans.

“Oh, I will, sir. Always do.”

Samantha found herself staring at the wall. Then she looked down at her hands and her arms. She could not explain it, but she felt some strange prickliness standing here, like an electrical field, but somehow deeper. It was as though this section of the building was different from what she had passed through, and perhaps different from any other place she had ever been. She felt she was in some boundary or somehow soft place, a border beyond which things changed imperceptibly.

She looked up to find Evans smiling at her. “This is where we part,” he said. “I had a lovely chat with you.” He leaned close and whispered, “You feel it, don’t you? Don’t you?”

“Yes. What is it?”

He shrugged, then laughed. “I can’t say. Company policy. Let me know how your inquiry goes, Miss Fairbanks! I’ll watch it with interest.” Then the little old man waved and walked off into the dark hallway. She watched as he vanished into the shadows and the sounds of his footsteps faded into nothing. Then she stood there, unmoving.

“Are you all right, miss?” asked Henry.

“What? Yes. Yes, I…” She trailed off, then took a step forward. Henry stood to block her way.

“No, no,” she said. “I don’t want to go in, I just wondered if you’d mind if I…” She gestured at the walls.

Henry looked at the wall and smiled. “Sure. I do it all the time.”

Samantha nodded faintly and walked to the towering cement walls. She placed one hand on the stone and for a moment was disappointed. There was nothing. It was just cool cement, like the street outside. But then she felt it, very faintly…

Vibrations. So low and deep they could barely be felt at all. She paused, then put her ear to the wall. She heard a low, steady, measured pounding, like some enormous machinery operating somewhere nearby, behind the wall or below the floor, something moving to a tempo she could not identify but felt she had known her entire life.

Then she sensed it. The flow around her. Something moving. Changing. As if whatever operated below was bending and changing the very structure of the world as though it were no stronger than any other metal found in the hills.