“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.”
A
t 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.”
“I can hardly wait to start,” Forlesen said. “I have a feeling that this may be the age of aquariums.” Fleer pondered this while they trudged up the stairs.
Bet-Your-Life, the management-managing real-life pseudogame, was played on a very large board laid out on a very big table in a very large meeting room. Scattered all over the board were markers and spinners and decks of cards, and birdcages holding eight- and twelve-sided dice. Scattered around the room, in chairs, were the players: two were arguing and one was asleep; five others were studying the board or making notes, or working out calculations on small handheld machines that were something like abacuses and something like cash registers. “I’ll just give you the rule book, and have a look at my own stuff, and go,” Mr. Fleer said. “I’m late for the meeting now.” He took a brown pamphlet from a pile in one corner of the room and handed it to Forlesen, who (with some feeling of surprise) noticed that it was identical to one of the booklets he had found under his job assignment sheet upon awakening.
Mr. Fleer had scrawled a note on a small tablet marked with the Bet-Your-Life emblem. He tore the sheet off as Forlesen watched, and laid it in an empty square near the center of the board. It read: “BID 17 ASK 18 1/4 SNOWMOBILE 5 1/2 UP 1/2 OPEN NEW TERRITORY SHUT DOWN COAL OIL SHOES FLEER.” He left the room, and Forlesen, timing the remark in such a way that it might be supposed that he thought Mr. Fleer out of earshot, said, “I’ll bet he’s a strong player.”
The man to his left, to whom the remark was nominally addressed, shook his head. “He’s overbought in sporting goods.”
“Sporting goods seem like a good investment to me,” Forlesen said. “Of course I don’t know the game.”
“Well, you won’t learn it reading that thing—it’ll only mix you up. The basic rule to remember is that no one has to move, but that anyone can move at any time if he wants to. Fleer hasn’t been here for ten ours—now he’s moved.”
“On the other hand,” a man in a red jacket said, “this part of the building is kept open at all times, and coffee and sandwiches are brought in every our—some people never leave. I’m the referee.”
A man with a bristling mustache, who had been arguing with the man in the red jacket a moment before, interjected, “The rules can be changed whenever a quorum agrees—we pull the staple out of the middle of the book, type up a new page, and slip it in. A quorum is three-quarters of the players present but never seven or less.”
Forlesen said hesitantly, “It’s not likely three-quarters of those present would be seven, is it?”
“No, it isn’t,” the referee agreed. “We rarely have that many.”
The man with the mustache said, “You’d better look over your holdings.”
Forlesen did so, and discovered that he held 100 percent of the stock of a company called International Toys and Foods. He wrote: “BID 34 ASK 32 FFOULKS” on a slip and placed it in the center of the board. “You’ll never get thirty-two for that stuff,” the man with the mustache said. “It isn’t worth near that.”
Forlesen pointed out that he had an offer to buy in at thirty-four but was finding no takers. The man with the mustache looked puzzled, and Forlesen used the time he had gained to examine the brown pamphlet. Opening it at random he read:
