David Wallace - The Pale King - An Unfinished Novel

‘1,829 by 26 by 22 workdays is what, three a day?’

‘3.198 a day by nine-hour shifts minus lunch minus Region average 45.6 minutes for breaks which I’ve got as seven hours 29.4 minutes so 3.2 over 7.5 is.4266 repeating 6 returns per man-hour, which for the Region is so totally average that—’

‘So it’s neither here nor there, as a productivity stat, which hurts our case with Glendenning maybe but also makes 047 Exams a fine test case.’

‘No, Reynolds. I mean totally average. The average for Region 4 for ’82, ’83, and the part of ’84 Internal’s got loads for — get this — is.42 repeating 6 returns per man-hour.’

‘They’re exactly average?’

‘And anticipating just that reaction please tell Mel I checked this twice. All off cards, flowthrough totals, performance reviews, utilizations specs. 42 repeating 6. As if—’

‘As if Glendenning and Rosebury and/or this Yeagle character were somehow cooking the Output books to produce an output so totally average that no one would ever suspect them of cooking the Output books.’

‘I’ll check it again if you like if you’ll let me take just one moment here to discuss the apartment’s water pressure and a commode with the single laziest flush I’ve seen in twelve US—’

The tone now was of Reynolds Jensen Jr. 100 percent focused, intent, which meant that whether sitting or standing he was bent slightly forward at the waist and not blinking at all. ‘Do. Check. He’ll want you to, you — or as if somehow Glendenning’s been able to structure manpower and flow and morale in just such a way that he gets precisely the average out of Exams.’

‘Meaning if and when he wants it to go up he just waves his wand and presto.’

‘Could he be that good?’

‘It would make him and/or the team of him and Rosebury a genius, a Mozart of production, whose management methods, if quantified and taught or if the other District Directors convinced DC it could be taught—’

‘Could kill the project.’

‘Especially if you could see these examiners. This is not an elite force, Reynolds. Not one over a GS-11 paygrade. Tics, spasms, eccentricities. Trembling hands. They’re all in the men’s room brushing their teeth after lunch. Whole lot of brushing going on. One has a violin on his desk. No reason. Just a violin. Another has a Doberman hand puppet on his hand without the rubber, which he talks to.’

‘These should all be notated, Claudie.’

‘These are shells of men I’m saying. If Glendenning can get any throughput he wants out of this crew… Some look catatonic. One might be an idiot savant. I haven’t seen him yet.’

‘None of which has to do with throughput.’

‘And have I mentioned the wind out here? The sound it makes through cracks near the windows? Or the heat? Or the enormous mass of these tiny cruciform rural towns with exactly one intersection that appear to consist entirely of a grain silo and a gas station with names like Arrowsmith, Anthony, Shirley, Tolono, Stayne? There’s a town called Big Thistle near here. Repeat: Big Thistle, Illinois. Hey, let’s us go over to the Big Thistle Diner and snap Fanny’s girdle. And the humidity. Towels don’t dry; your windshield gets condensation like a glass of iced tea if you run the AC on the way in. The sky the color of motel ice — no color, no depth. It’s like a bad dream. And the flatness. What’s the horizon at sea level, eighteen miles?’

‘Let’s stay on task, Claudie.’

‘He’s posted me to the second dimension, R.J.’

‘You were doing so well, Claudie.’

‘And what if I said I miss you?’

‘We’re not going to get into this, not—’

‘Because you know the way someone really old’s eyes look, with cataracts? That milky spooky anybody-home quality? Imagine a whole face like that. Philly was frenzy. This is a kind of caul of boredom. Boredom past boredom. These examiners, most—’

‘You realize this is good news in a way.’

‘Well it’s not good to look at, I can certainly—’

‘Has any of the demo equipment arrived?’

‘Glendenning’s letting them personalize their desks. Listen to music if they — not smoke at their desks, but get this: A couple of them chew tobacco at their desks.’

‘Where are we in terms of profiles of the actual hardware then?’

‘Have you by chance ever actually seen an in-use spittoon, Reynolds, because I cer—’

‘I miss you, too, Claude. Happy now?’

Once he’d chewed it so badly it got infected, which made it taste just awful. ‘I haven’t done a list per se as such yet.’

‘What should I tell Mel?’

‘That I’ve been here only a week and am under terrific duress from the primitiveness of the field-quarters, lack of contact vectors, and numbing heat. Tell Mel that.’

‘Aren’t we brave in absentia.’

‘As you may recall the real hardware’s over with Corporate in the out-site, and except for verifying Mel’s facilities I’ve been lurking in Exams. Per specs I believe.’

‘I wasn’t squeezing, Claudie. Let’s just get through this. I have a nasty commute ahead of me.’

‘I have so far seen a Sperry UNIVAC 3- or 4000-series mainframe with terminals apparently all at Corporate. I’ve seen two IBM 5486 card sorters and have deduced the presence of related 5000-series keypunch and collating equipment.’

‘And ninety-six-column cards for the IBMs.’

‘Except UNIVACs still use the eighty-. They’ve apparently got something jerry-rigged to mix the two.’

‘So the examiners are all hexadecimal-proficient, or is that the punch-girls? But the punch-girls are locals, no?’

‘I don’t have a training protocol yet. We can assume they’re natural-language-translated for temps during March to May, yes?’

‘Even Rome didn’t mix ninety-six and eighties.’

‘This is the provinces, I’ve been telling you. Mel’s office is right down from the Central, which I deduce is a complete mutt of different systems. I’ve seen a Burroughs 1005 calculator-printer.’

‘Does Burroughs even use cards anymore?’

‘Burroughs work off tape since the 900 series. I’ve told you. The whole thing’s a mutt. A garage sale. I’ve seen two IBM RPGs in a closet with an unbelievable tangle of co-ax leading up to a ragged and sub-code hole in the closet’s ceiling, presumably meant to compatibilize the RPGs with the UNIVAC. It’s all very ancient and scuzzy and I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if there were monkeys with abacuses and string inside.’

‘This is very good news. And their assembler’s COBOL?’

‘Unknown at this juncture.’

‘We’ve got good news on the hardware front.’

‘And if anything’s arrived from DC then SS here isn’t aware of it.’

‘So it could just be sitting on the loading dock?’

‘So I’m to be in Records with a flashlight in my teeth, on the horn to Martinsburg getting flowthrough analyses, probing Glendenning’s No-First-Year implementation, inventorying the hardware, and cabbaging keys to get a firsthand at Mel’s office all at once? Oh, and on the loading dock quizzing burly men on whether any of the boxes are from Martinsburg.’

‘All I’m doing is lining up a protocol for next week’s field-, Claudie.’

‘What am I, a machine?’

Shinn was long-bodied and had very light baby-fine blond hair that hung in bangs like an early Beatle’s. The man seated next to him in the IRS van had exited Angler’s Cove with several others as they all stood at the curb in the pastel dawn and waited for the van. The sweet wet heavy air of summer dawns. The men with Service nametags all knew each other and spoke among themselves. Some drank from mugs or smoked cigarettes they ground out against the curb as the van came into view. One had sideburns and a cowboy hat, which now in the van he’d removed two rows of bench seats up. Some read the paper. Some of the men in the van were as old as maybe fifty. The windows tilted out rather than rolling down; it was an odd vehicle, more like a small boxy truck that had bench seats welded in.