Michael Moorcock - The Black Corridor

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.

Ryan is working on a small problem that has come up concerning the liquid regeneration unit in the forward part of the ship.

It is malfunctioning slightly and the water has a slight taste of urine in it. A spare part is needed and he is instructing the little servorobot to replace the defunct element.

That was what had saved him, of course, he thought. His pragmatism. He had kept his head while all around people were losing theirs, getting hysterical, making stupid decisions—or worse, making no decisions at all.

He smiles. He had always made quick decisions. Even when those decisions were unpalatable or possibly unfashionable in terms of the current thinking of the time. It was his basic hardheadedness that had kept him going longer than most of them, allowed him to hang on to a lot more, helped him to the point where he was now safely out of the mess that was the disrupted, insane society of Earth.

And that is how he intends to remain. He must keep cool, not let the depression, the aching loneliness, the weaker elements of his character, take him over.

'I'll make it,' he murmurs confidently to himself. 'I'll make it.

Those people are going to get their chance to start all over again."

He yawns. The muscles at the back of his neck are aching. He wriggles his shoulders, hoping to limber the muscles up. But the ache remains. He'll have to do something about that. Must stay fit at all costs. Not just himself to think of.