Most people—including Corrigan himself—had seen the consolidation of EVIE under his direction as an effective promotion, and an indicator that he was solidly on his way upward to better things. Shipley, however, wasn’t so sure.
“You said yourself, once, that in the long term EVIE doesn’t lead anywhere,” he reminded Corrigan. “You called it a short-term stunt, a hybrid mishmash. So what does that say about anyone doing you a favor by putting you in charge of it?”
But Corrigan was still riding the wave. “Ah, come on, Eric,” he said lightly. “You wouldn’t want me think that you’re having an attack of sour grapes, now, would you? Don’t you remember, too, that EVIE was to be the main-thrust program for two years? Whoever runs it now will automatically pick up whatever comes next.”
“That could be changing, Joe. There’s been a lot going on involving Tyron and Pinder at the division level that we’re only getting parts of. My guess is that corporate thinking has been turning away from EVIE ever since that business with Feller and Faber. In other words, they’re saddling you with a lame duck.”
“What else would they have in its place, then?” Corrigan challenged, his voice a touch sharper. They were still a year or more away from shifting up to the thalamus—and there was no guarantee that it would work even then.
Shipley shrugged and showed his hands. “You tell me.”
“Why assume that they’ve got anything else at all?”
“Then look at it this way. If EVIE really is a sinking ship, whose name is being quietly dissociated from it and who’ll be the skipper who goes down?” Shipley paused to let Corrigan think about that. “Then ask yourself what Tyron and his people were really brought in for. It certainly wasn’t just to take over Ivy’s section. That’s a holding operation.”
This time Corrigan said nothing but stared hard at him for several seconds. Shipley waited, holding his eye questioningly. Before they could resume, however, the long, loose-limbed figure of Tom Hatcher sauntered in from the living room, holding a can of beer in one hand and licking pizza grease off the fingers of the other. Evelyn was behind him, looking fresh and casually appealing with her long, fair hair, white top, and red, clinging slacks.
“Not interrupting anything, are we?” Hatcher drawled. ” ‘Cause if we are it’s too bad. This is a party.”
Corrigan hesitated, then grinned. “No, it’s okay, Tom. Just shop as always.” It was a good time to ease things up a little anyway. Evelyn squeezed past Hatcher to hand Corrigan a sausage on a cocktail stick, then snuggled close while he slipped an arm around her. Hatcher went over to look at the chronometer that Corrigan had been examining earlier.
“Say, that’s some piece. They don’t make ’em like that these days.”
“Not a shred of plastic in it, and the knobs don’t come off in your hand,” Corrigan agreed.
“Can’t say I’d want to carry it around on my wrist, though.”
“You didn’t have to. You had a ship to carry these around.”
“Where do the batteries go?” Hatcher moved to admire a highly polished period revolver, mounted as a display on a board fixed to the wall nearby. “Looks like a .44 Dragoon Colt,” he commented. “Probably from the Civil War.”
“Right on,” Shipley said, nodding.
“I didn’t know you were into that kinda thing.”
“I’m not. Thelma picked it up at a yard sale for five dollars.”
“Does it work?”
“No—just an ornament.”
“Too bad.” Hatcher’s interest in guns was well known.
Shipley nodded in the direction that Hatcher and Evelyn had come from. “What’s going on back there?” he inquired.
“Shop,” Evelyn said. “Is it ever different with this bunch?”
“Charlie’s talking about his accelerator for the new look-ahead tree,” Hatcher explained. “I had enough of it all day. I came here to get away.”
They still hadn’t found a reliable way of paralleling the human intuition for knowing what people were apt to do next. In a test the previous day, the system had properly anticipated all the things that one of the experimenters could reasonably have been expected to do with a magazine when he picked it up and rolled it—except use it to swat a simulated fly. Hence there was a hangup upon impact, in which time the velocity of the magazine fell to zero, and the fly was able to walk with impunity onto the object that was supposed to have flattened it.