“Do they know I’m coming?” Forlesen asked, pressing the button.
“An employee service folder has already been made out for you,” the speaker told him. “All that needs to be done is to fill in your name.”
The Model Pattern Products parking lot was enclosed by a high fence, but the gates were open and the hinges so rusted that Forlesen, who stopped in the gateway for a moment thinking some guard or watchman might wish to challenge him, wondered if they had ever been closed; the ground itself, covered with loose gravel the color of ash, sloped steeply; he was forced to drive carefully to keep his car from skidding among the concrete stops of brilliant orange provided to prevent the parked cars from rolling down the grade; most of these were marked either with some name not his or with the word VISITOR, but he eventually discovered an unmarked position (unattractive, apparently, because smoke from a stubby flue projecting from the back of an outbuilding would blow across it) and left his car. His legs ached.
He was thirty or forty feet from his car when he realized he no longer had the speaker to advise him; several people were walking toward the gray metal building that was Model Pattern Products, but all were too distant for him to talk to them without shouting, and something in their appearance suggested that they would not wait for him to overtake them in any case. He followed them through a small door and found himself alone.
An anteroom held two time clocks, one beige, the other brown. Remembering the instruction sheet, he took a blank time card from the rack and wrote his name at the top, then pushed it into the beige machine and depressed the lever. A gong sounded. He withdrew the card and checked the stamped time: 069.56. A thin, youngish woman with large glasses and a sharp nose looked over his shoulder. “You’re late,” she said. (He was aware for an instant of the effort she was making to read his name at the top of the card.) “Mr. Forlesen.”
He said, “I’m afraid I don’t know the starting time.”
The woman said, “Oh seventy ours sharp, Mr. Forlesen. Start oh seventy ours sharp, coffee for your subdivision one hundred ours to one hundred and one. Lunch one hundred and twenty to one hundred and forty-one. Coffee, your subdivision, one fifty to one fifty-one P.M. Quit one seventy ours at the whistle.”
“Then I’m not late,” Forlesen said. He showed her his card.
“Mr. Frick likes everyone to be at least twenty minutes early, especially supervisory and management people. The real go-getters—that’s what he calls them, the real go-getters—try to be early. I mean, earlier than the regular early. Oh sixty-nine twenty-five, something like that. They unlock their desks and go upstairs for early coffee, and sometimes they play cards; it’s fun.”
“I’m sorry I missed it,” Forlesen said. “Can you tell me where I’m supposed to go now?”
“To your desk,” the woman said, nodding. “Unlock it.”
“I don’t know where it is.”
“Well, of course you don’t, but I can’t assign you to your desk—that’s up to Mr. Fields, your supervisor.” After a moment she added: “I know where you’re going to go, but he has the keys.”
Forlesen said, “I thought I was a supervisor.”
“You are,” the woman told him, “but Mr. Fields is—you know—a real supervisor. Anyway, nearly. Do you want to talk to him now?”
Forlesen nodded.
“I’ll see if he’ll see you now. You have Creativity Group today, and Leadership Training. And Company Orientation, and Bet-Your-Life—that’s the management-managing real-life pseudogame—and one interdepartmental training-transfer.”
“I’ll be glad to get the orientation anyway,” Forlesen said. He followed the woman, who had started to walk away. “But am I going to have time for all that?”
“You don’t get it,” she told him over her shoulder. “You give it. And you’ll have lots of time for work besides— don’t worry. I’ve been here a long time already. I’m Miss Fawn. Are you married?”
“Yes,” Forlesen said, “and I think we have children.”
“Oh. Well, you look it. Here’s Mr. Fields’s office, and I nearly forgot to tell you you’re on the Planning and Evaluation Committee. Don’t forget to knock.”
Forlesen knocked on the door to which the woman had led him. It was of metal painted to resemble wood, and had riveted to its front a small brass plaque which read: MR. D’ANDREA.
“Come in!” someone called from inside the office.
Forlesen entered and saw a short, thickset, youngish man with closecropped hair sitting at a metal desk. The office was extremely small and had no windows, but there was a large, brightly colored picture on each wall—two photographs in color (a beach with rocks and waves, and a snow-clad mountain) and two realistic landscapes (both of rolling green countryside dotted with cows and trees).
“Come in,” the youngish man said again. “Sit down. Listen, I want to tell you something—you don’t have to knock to come in this office. Not ever. My door—like they say—is always open. What I mean is, I may keep it shut to keep out the noise and so forth out in the hall, but it’s always open to you.”
“I think I understand,” Forlesen said. “Are you Mr. Fields?” The plaque had somewhat shaken his faith in the young woman with glasses.
“Right—Ed Fields at your service.”
“Then I’m going to be working for you. I’m Emanuel Forlesen.” Forlesen leaned forward and offered his hand, which Fields walked around the desk to take.
“Glad to meet you, Manny. Always happy to welcome a new face to the subdivision.” For an instant, as their eyes met, Forlesen felt himself weighed on invisible scales and, he thought, found slightly wanting. Then the moment passed, and a few seconds later he had difficulty believing it had ever been. “Remember what I told you when you came in—my door is always open,” Fields said. “Sit down.” Forlesen sat, and Fields resumed his place behind the desk.
“We’re a small outfit,” Fields said, “but we’re sharp.” He held up a clenched fist. “And I intend to make us the
