Michael Moorcock - The Black Corridor

He isn't proud of everything he did on Earth. Some of those decisions would not have been made under different circumstances.

But he didn't go mad.

Not the way so many of the others did.

He stayed sane. Just barely, sometimes, but he made it through to the other side. He kept his eyes clear and saw things as they really were while a lot of other people were chasing wild geese or phantom tigers. It was a struggle, naturally. And sometimes he had made mistakes. But his common sense hadn't let him down—not in the long run.

What had someone once said to him?

He nodded to himself. That was it. You're a survivor, Ryan. A natural bloody survivor.

It was truer now, of course, than ever before.

He was a survivor. The survivor. He and his friends and relatives.

He was making for the clean, fresh world untainted by mankind, leaving the rest of them to rot in the shit heap they had created.

Yet he mustn't feel proud. Pride goeth before a fall... Mustn't get egocentric. There had been a good deal of luck involved. It wasn't such a bad idea to test himself from time to time, run through that Old Time Religion stuff. The seven deadly sins.

Check his own psyche out the way he checked the ship.

CHECK FOR PRIDE.

CHECK FOR ENVY.

CHECK FOR SLOTH.

CHECK FOR GLUTTONY.

... and so forth. It didn't do any harm. It kept him sane. And he didn't reject the possibility that he could go insane. There was always a chance. He had to watch for the signs. Check them in time. A stitch in time saves nine.

That was how he had always operated.

And he hadn't done badly, after all.

REPAIR COMPLETED reports the computer. Ryan is satisfied.

'Congratulations,' he says cheerfully. 'Keep up the good work, chum.'

The point was, he thinks, that he, unlike so many of the rest, had never been to a psychiatrist in his life. He'd been his own psychiatrist. Gluttony, for instance, could indicate some kind of disturbance that came out in obsessive eating. Therefore if he found himself overeating, he searched for a reason, hunted out the cause of the problem. It was the same with work. If it started to get on top of you, then stop—take a holiday. It meant you could work better when you got back and didn't spend all your time bawling out your staff for mistakes that were essentially your own creation.

He presses a faucet button and samples the water. He smacks his lips. It's fine.

He is relaxing. The disturbing dreams, the sense of depression have been replaced by a feeling of well-being. He has compensated in time. Instead of looking back at the bad times, he is looking back at the good times. That is how it should be.

Masterson flashed Ryan about a week after he had begun his check-up.

Ryan had been feeling good for days. The Davies matter was settled. Davies had paid up two-thirds of the amount and they had called it quits. To show no hard feelings Ryan had even paid off the mortgage on Davies' apartment so that he would have somewhere secure to live after he had sold up his business.

'Morning, Fred. What's new?'

'I've been doing that work you asked for.'

'Any results?'

'I think all the results are in. I've drawn up a graph of our findings on the subject.'

'How does the graph look?'

'It'll come as a shock to you.' Masterson pursed his lips. 'I think I'd better come and talk to you personally. Show you the stuff I've got. Okay?'

'Well—of course—yes. Okay, Fred. When do you want to come here?'

'Right away?'

'Give me half an hour.'

'Fine.'

Ryan used the half hour to prepare himself for Masterson's visit, tidying his desk, putting everything away that could be put away, straightening the chairs.

When Masterson arrived he was sitting at his desk smiling.

Masterson spread out the graph.

'I see what you mean,' said Ryan. 'Good heavens! Just as well we decided to do this, eh?'

'It confirms what I already believed,' said Masterson. 'Ten per cent of your employees, chiefly from the factories in the North, are actually of wholly foreign parentage—Australian and Irish in the main. Another ten per cent had parents born outside England itself, i. e. in Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland. Three per cent of your staff, although born and educated in England, are Jewish. About half a per cent have Negro or Asiatic blood. That's the general picture.'

Ryan rubbed his nose. 'Bloody difficult, eh, Masterson?'

Masterson shrugged. 'It could be used against us. There are a number of ways. If the government offers tax relief to firms employing one hundred per cent English labour, as they're talking of doing, then we aren't going to benefit from the tax relief. Then there are wholesaler's and retailer's embargos if our rivals release this information. Lastly there's the customers.'

Ryan licked his lips thoughtfully. 'It's a tricky one, Fred.'

'Yes. Tricky.'

'Oh, fuck, Fred.' Ryan scratched his head. 'There's only one assumption, isn't there?'

'If you want to survive,' said Fred, 'yes.'

'It means sacrificing a few in order to protect the many. We'll pay them generous severance pay, of course.'

'It's something like thirty-five per cent of your employees.'

'We'll phase them out gradually, of course.' Ryan sighed. 'I'll have to have a talk with the unions. I don't think they'll give us any trouble. They'll see the sense of it. They always have.'

'Make sure of it,' said Masterson, 'first.'

'Naturally. What's up, Fred? You seem fed up about something.'

'Well, you know as well as I do what this means. You'll have to get rid of Powell, too.'

'He won't suffer from it. I'm not a bloody monster, Fred. You've got to adjust though. It's the only way to survive. We've got to be realistic. If I stood on some abstract ideal, the whole firm would collapse within six months. You know that. The one thing all political parties are agreed on is that many of our troubles stem from an over-indulgent attitude towards foreign labour. Whichever way the wind blows in the near future, there's no escaping that one. And the way our rivals are fighting these days, we can't afford to go around wearing kid gloves and sniffing bloody daffodils.'

'I realise that,' said Masterson. 'Of course.'

'Powell won't feel a thing. He'd rather be running a doll's hospital or a toyshop, anyway. I'll do that. I'll buy him a bloody toyshop. What do you say? That way everybody's happy.'

'Okay,' said Masterson. 'Sounds a good idea.' He rolled up the charts. 'I'll leave the breakdown with you to go over.' He made for the door.

'Thanks a lot, Fred,' Ryan said gratefully. 'A lot of hard work.

Very useful. Thanks.'

'It's my job,' said Masterson. 'Cheerio. Keep smiling.' He left the office.

Ryan was relieved that he had gone. He couldn't help the irrational feeling of invasion he had whenever anyone came into his office. He sat back, humming, and studied Masterson's figures.

You had to stay ahead of the game.

But Masterson had put his finger on the only real problem. He disliked the idea of firing Powell in spite of the man's unbearable friendliness, his nauseating candour, his stupid assumption that you only bad to give one happy grin to open the great dam of smiles swirling about in everyone.

Ryan grinned in spite of himself. That summed up poor old Powell all right.

As a manager, as a creative man, Powell was first class. Ryan could think of no one in the business who could more than half fill his place. He wasn't any trouble. He was content. A willing worker putting in much longer hours than were expected of him.

But was that just his good-heartedness? Ryan wondered. A light was dawning. Now he could see it. Powell was probably just grateful to have a job! He knew that no one in any business would employ him.