He ran and walked and ran and walked over shiny floors filled with spotless beige Hauni Protos II and G.D. Balogna making machines, computers and OSCAR units in bays where the roar and rat-a-tatting of production never ceased and there was no such thing as dirt or killing time.
Driverless, bright yellow robotic cars loaded with cases of cigarettes hummed back and forth, pausing to recharge at computerized magnets, never tiring or loitering or forming unions. Gray-uniformed maintenance workers zipped back and forth in supply carts and were careful turning corners and passing through busy intersections.
Huge spools spun cellulose too fast to see while thousands of pristine white cigarettes flowed down tracks and were fed into veins that configured them in rows of
7-6-7 for soft packs and 6-7-7 for flip-top boxes before a plunger kicked them into a pocket where they were wrapped in double-wide foil which was married to blanks that were labeled and glued on the sides and fed into big wheel drying drums and finished in cellophane and tear tape and marched single file into stacker towers where ten-packs were pushed into cartons that were carried by elevators up to exit stations with conveyor belts that eventually carried cases out of the building to awaiting trucks.
Bubba was breathless when he reached Bay 8, where he was a maker operator, or more formally, a tech 3, the highest pay grade. His responsibility was huge. He was the sole captain of a module that had been predicted to produce exactly 12,842,508 cigarettes by the end of this day’s twenty-four-hour period, or 4,280,836 cigarettes during Bubba’s eight-hour shift.
No module was ever unattended at Philip Morris, and Bubba’s supervisor, Gig Dan, had been forced to fill in for the last half of second shift and the first sixteen minutes of third. Dan was relieved but unhappy when Bubba appeared, dripping sweat and panting.
‘What in the hell has gotten into you, Bubba?’ Dan said loud enough for both of them to hear through their earplugs.
‘I got pulled by the cops,’ Bubba bent the truth.
‘And getting a ticket took four and a half hours?’ Dan didn’t buy it.
‘He spent a long time warning me and then the radio was down or something. I’m telling you, I was pissed.
There’s a lot of police bullying going on out there, Gig. It’s time some of us got involved and…’
‘Right now, I just want you to get involved in your module, Bubba!’ Gig Dan yelled above machines. ‘Our goal today was fifteen million and we were some 719,164 below that even before you decided to take your time smelling the roses!’
‘I wasn’t…” Bubba tried to protest.
‘So guess what? The latest readout has us at 3,822,563.11 this shift, which is exactly 458,272.0 below what we were gonna make when we were already below what we were damn supposed to make. And why? The tipping paper’s already broke twice, rejects is three times the usual because the circumference dropped below 24.5 and the weight didn’t hit even close to nine hundred and the dilution was minus eight percent, and then the glue got a bubble because there was air in the line, and why?
‘Because you weren’t here to hand-feed five lousy cigarettes into the Sodimat. You didn’t inspect the quality. You didn’t check out the machines because you were too goddamn busy getting stopped by the police or whatever the hell it was you were supposedly doing!’
‘Don’t worry,’ Bubba told him loudly. ‘I’ll make up the slack.’
Brazil was late, too, through no fault of his own. He had jogged in the dark from his endangered car, back to Park Avenue, and when he reached West’s apartment he took a moment to settle down. He rang the bell and she wasn’t the least bit warm as she let him in.
‘Where have you been?’ she asked, standing in front of the foyer table.
‘Trying to find a deli,’ Brazil said dryly.
‘What for?’
‘A deli, a restaurant, a bank. Anyplace I could maybe park.’
‘Obviously you succeeded,’ she said.
‘Depends on if my car’s still there after we’re done.’
She oddly continued to stand in front of the table, and he sensed there was something on it she didn’t want him to see.