He nodded curtly. Candella cried, “Hey, Norvie! Don’t— don’t run off like that! Can’t you stay a little while and have some lunch, or a drink or something?”
“Sorry. Afraid not.”
Candella rushed on, “But gee, Norvie, everybody’s been looking forward to seeing you again. Stimmens particularly— I don’t know what to say if you won’t have lunch with us.”
Norvell frowned. “Stimmens,” he said thoughtfully. “Oh, Stimmens. Sorry, Candella. But do give Stimmens my regards, and tell her that I think of her often.”
He left.
Norvell had a busy day. His schedule was General Recreations, Hussein’s, and an even dozen bars hi Monmouth City. By evening he was tired, happy, and about seventy-five per cent drunk. He approached his last call with a mixture of sadness, anger, and nostalgia.
Arnie Dworcas let him in.
Norvell tried none of the tricks he’d used on Candella with Arnie Dworcas; he was the old Norvell, the true friend, the shy acolyte. Sitting there with Amie, listening to Arnie’s explanations of the world’s affairs, it seemed to Norvie that Belly Rave was a nightmare and Mundin a figure from a dream; nothing had changed; nothing would ever change, as long as he could sit and drink Arnie’s beer.
But there were changes. . . .
Arnie drained his glass of beer, wiped his mouth and dialed another. “No, Norvell,” he said meditatively, “I wouldn’t say that you have succeeded. Not as We Engineers understand success. To Us Engineers, a mechanism—and all of us are mechanisms, Norvell, I, you, everybody—a mechanism is a success when it is functioning at maximum efficiency. Frank-
ly, in my little experiment of suggesting that you try Belly Rave I was attempting to perform what we call ‘destructive testing’—the only way in which maximum efficiency can be determined. But what happened? You didn’t rise through your own efforts, Norvell. By pure fortuitousness you made a connection and are now a really able man’s secretary.” He sipped his beer sorrowfully. ‘To use an analogy,” he said, “it’s as if my slipstick were to take credit for the computations I make on it.”
“I’m sorry, Arnie,” Norvell said. It was very difficult to decide whether he wanted more to laugh in Arnie’s face or take out some of his front teeth with a beer glass. “Mr. Mundin thinks a great deal of you and your brother too, you know.”
“Naturally,” Arnie said severely. “That’s one of the things you’ll have to learn. Like seeks like, in human relations as well as electrostatics.”
“I thought in electrostatics like repelled—”
“There you go!” yelled Arnie violently. “The layman! The quibbler! It’s people like you that——”
“I’m sorry, Arnie!”
“All right. Don’t get so excited. Really able people never lose control of themselves, Norvell! That was a stupid thing for you to get all upset about.”
“I’m sorry, Arnie. That’s what I was telling Mr. Mundin.”
Arnie, raising his glass irritatedly, stopped it in mid-air. “What were you telling Mr. Mundin?” he asked suspiciously.
“Why, that you never lost control in an emergency. That you would be a damned good man to put in charge of—oh, God, Arnie, I shouldn’t have said anything!” Norvell covered his mouth with both hands.
Arnie Dworcas said sternly, “Norvell, stop stammering and come out with it! In charge of what?”
Norvie, who had been fighting back a tendency to retch, removed his hands from his mouth. He said, “Well—well, it isn’t as if I couldn’t trust you, Arnie. It’s—it’s G.M.L.”
“What about G.M.L.?”
Norvie said rapidly, “It’s too soon to say anything definite and, please, Arnie, don’t let a word of it get out But you’ve heard the rumors about G.M.L., naturally.”
“Naturally!” Arnie said, though his eyes were vacant
“Mr. Mundin is associated with the—uh—the Coshocton bunch, Arnie. And he’s looking around, quietly, you know, for key men to replace some of the old duffers. An 11 took the liberty of mentioning you to him, Arnie. The only thing is, Mr. Mundin doesn’t know much about the technical end, you see, and he wasn’t sure just how much experience you had had.”
“My record is in the professional journals, Norvell. Not that I would feel free to discuss it in this informal manner in any case, of course.”