she had glasses.”
“And a sharp nose.”
George Howe nodded.
Forlesen nodded in reply, and made his way to Fields’s old office. As he had expected, Fields was gone, and most of the items from his own desk had made their way to Fields’s—he wondered if Fields’s desk sometimes talked too, but before he could ask it Miss Fawn came in.
She wore two new rings and touched her hair often with her left hand to show them. Forlesen tried to imagine her pregnant or giving suck and found that he could not, but knew that this was a weakness in himself and not in her. “Ready for orientation?” Miss Fawn asked.
Forlesen ignored the question and asked what had happened to Fields.
“He passed on,” Miss Fawn said.
“You mean he died? He seemed too young for it; not much older than I am myself—certainly not as old as Mr. Freeling.”
“He was stout,” Miss Fawn said with a touch of righteous disdain. “He didn’t get much exercise and he smoked a great deal.”
“He worked very hard,” Forlesen said. “I don’t think he could have had much energy left for exercise.”
“I suppose not,” Miss Fawn conceded. She was leaning against the door, her left hand toying with the gold pencil she wore on a chain, and seemed to be signaling by her attitude that they were old friends, entitled to relax occasionally from the formality of business. “There was a thing—at one time—between Mr. Fields and myself. I don’t suppose you ever knew it.”
“No, I didn’t,” Forlesen said, and Miss Fawn looked pleased.
“Eddie and I—I called him Eddie, privately—were quite discreet. Or so I flatter myself now. I don’t mean, of course, that there was ever anything improper between us.”
“Naturally not.”
“A look and a few words. Elmer knows; I told him everything. You are ready to give that orientation, aren’t you?”
“I think I am now,” Forlesen said. “George Howe?”
Miss Fawn looked at a piece of paper. “No, Gordie Hilbert.”
As she was leaving, Forlesen asked impulsively where Fields was.
“Where he is buried, you mean? Right behind you.”
He looked at her blankly.
“There.” She gestured toward the picture behind Forlesen’s desk. “There’s a vault behind there—didn’t you know? Just a small one, of course; they’re cremated first.”
“Burned out.”
“Yes, burned up and then they put them behind the pictures—that’s what they’re for. The pictures, I mean. In a beautiful little cruet. It’s a company benefit, and you’d know if you’d read your own orientation material—of course, you can be buried at home if you like.”
“I think I’d prefer that,” Forlesen said.
“I thought so,” Miss Fawn told him. “You look the type. Anyway, Eddie bought the farm—that’s an expression the men have.”
At 125 hours Forlesen was notified of his interdepartmental training transfer. His route to his new desk took him through the main lobby of the building, where he observed that a large medallion set into the floor bore the face (too solemn, but quite unmistakable) of Abraham Beale, though the name beneath it was that of Adam Bean, the founder of the company. Since he was accompanied by his chief-to-be, Mr. Fleer, he made no remark.
“It’s going to be a pleasure going down the fast slope with you,” Mr. Fleer said. “I trust you’ve got your wax ready and your boots laced.”
“My wax is ready and my boots are laced,” Forlesen said; it was automatic by now.
“But not too tight—wouldn’t want to break a leg.”
“But not too tight,” Forlesen agreed. “What do we do in this division?”
Mr. Fleer smiled and Forlesen could see that he had asked a good question. “Right now we’re right in the middle of a very successful crash program to develop a hard-nosed understanding of the ins and outs of the real, realistic business world,” Mr. Fleer said, “with particular emphasis on marketing, finance, corporate developmental strategy, and risk appreciation. We’ve been playing a lot of Bet-Your-Life, the management-managing real-life pseudogame.”
“Great,” Forlesen said enthusiastically; he really felt enthusiastic, having been afraid that it would be more creativity.
“We’re in the center of the run,” Mr. Fleer assured him, “the snow is fast, and the wind is in our faces.”
Forlesen was tempted to comment that his boots were laced and his wax ready, but he contented himself at the last moment with nodding appreciatively and asking if he would get to play.
“You certainly will,” Mr. Fleer promised him. “You’ll be holding down Ffoulks’s chair. It’s an interesting position—he’s heavily committed to a line of plastic toys, but he has some military contracts for field rations and biological weapons to back him up. Also he’s big in aquarium supplies—that’s quite a small market altogether, but Ffoulks is big in it, if you get what I mean.”
