The Best of Gene Wolfe

and turned to look. It was Miss Fawn, so he said, “Do you know where Mr. Dillingham is? I’m taking a call for him.”

“He died,” Miss Fawn said. “Let me talk to them.” She took the receiver. “Who’s calling, please? . . . Mr. Franklin, Mr. Dillingham died. . . . Lastnight . . . Yes, it is. Mr. Forlesen is taking his place in your group—you should have gotten a memo on it. . . . On Mr. Dillingham’s old number; you were just talking to him. He’s right here. Wait a moment.” She turned back to Forlesen: “It’s for you.”

He took the telephone and a voice in the earpiece said, “Are you Forlesen? Listen, this is Ned Franklin. You may not have been notified yet, but you’re in our Creativity Group, and we’re meeting—Wait a minute; I’ve got a memo on it under all this crap somewhere.”

“Oh seventy-eight,” Forlesen said.

“Right. I realize that’s pretty early—”

“We wouldn’t want to try to get along without Gene Fine,” Forlesen said.

“Right. Try to be there.”

Miss Fawn seemed to be leaving. Forlesen turned to see how she would appear in the rippled glass as he said, “What are we going to try and create?”

“Creativity. We create creativity itself—we learn to be creative.”

“I see,” Forlesen said. He watched Miss Fawn become pretty while remaining sexless, like a mannequin. He said, “I thought we’d just take some clay or something and start in.”

“Not that sort of creativity, for crap’s sake!”

“All right,” Forlesen said.

“Just show up, okay? Mr. Frick is solidly behind this and he gets upset when we have less than full attendance.”

“Maybe he could get us a meeting room then,” Forlesen suggested. He had no idea who “Mr. Frick” was, but he was obviously important.

“Hell, I couldn’t ask Mr. Frick that. Anyway, he never asks where we had the meeting—just how many came and what we discussed, and whether we feel we’re making progress.”

“He could be saving it.”

“Yeah, I guess he could. Listen, Cappy, if I can get us a room I’ll call you, okay?”

“Right,” said Forlesen. He hung up, wondered vaguely why Miss Fawn had come, then saw that she had left a stack of papers on a corner of his desk. “Well, the hell with you,” he said, and pushed them toward the wall. “I haven’t even looked at this desk yet.”

It was a metal desk, and somewhat smaller, older, and shabbier than the one in Fields’s office. It seemed odd to Forlesen that he should find old furniture in a part of the building which was still—judging from the sounds that occasionally drifted through the walls and window boards—under construction; but the desk and his chair as well were unquestionably nearing the end of their useful lives. The center desk drawer held a dead insect, a penknife with yellowed imitation ivory sides and a broken blade, a drawing of a bracket (very neatly lettered, Forlesen noticed) on crumpled tracing paper, and a dirty stomach mint. He threw this last away (his wastebasket was new, made of plastic, and did not seem to fit in with the other furnishings of the office) and opened the right-hand side drawer. It contained an assortment of pencils (all more or less chewed), a cube of art gum with the corners worn off, and some sheets of blank paper with one corner folded. The next drawer down yielded a wrinkled brown paper bag that disgorged a wad of wax paper, a stale half cookie, and the sharp smell of apples; the last two drawers proved to be a single file drawer in masquerade; there were five empty file folders in it, including one with a column of twenty-seven figures written on it in pencil, the first and lowest being 8,750 and the last and highest 12,500; they were not totaled. On the left side of the desk what looked like the ends of four more drawers proved to be a device for concealing a typewriter; there was no typewriter.

Forlesen closed it and leaned back in his chair, aware that inventorying the desk had depressed him. After a moment he remembered Fields’s saying that he would find a list of his responsibilities in the office, and discovered it on the top of the stack of papers Miss Fawn had left with him. It read:

MANAGEMENT PERSONNEL

Make M.P.P. Co. profitable and keep it profitable.

Assist in carrying out corporate goals.

Maintain employee discipline by reporting violators’ names to their superiors.

Help keep costs down.

If any problems come up help to deal with them in accord with company policy.

Training, production, sales, and public relations are all supervised by management personnel.

Forlesen threw the paper in the wastebasket.

The second paper in the stack was headed “Sample Leadership Problem #105” and read:

A young woman named Enid Fenton was hired recently as clerical help. Her work has not been satisfactory, but because clerical help has been in short supply she has not been told this. Recently a reduction in the workload in her department made it possible to transfer three girls to another department. Miss Fenton asked for one of the transfers and when told that they had already been assigned to others behaved in such a manner as to suggest (though nothing was actually said) that she was considering resignation. Her work consists of keypunching, typing, and filing. Should her supervisor:

Discharge her.

Indicate to her that her work has been satisfactory but hint that she may be laid off.

Offer her a six-week leave of absence (without pay) during which she may obtain further training.

Threaten her with a disciplinary fine.