“Old Hap’s never going to make it,” said the boy to the girl, then looked up as he saw Forrester. “Oh, you’re done?”
Forrester nodded. A drone from the view-wall was saying, “. . . Made it again, with a total to this minute of thirty-one and fifty-five out of a possible ninety-eight. Not bad for the Old Master! Yet Hap still trails the rookie Maori from Port Moresby—”
“What are you watching?” he asked.
“Just the semifinals,” said the boy. “How’d you make out on your tests?”
“I don’t have the results yet.” The screen flickered and showed a new picture, a sort of stylized star map with arrows and dots of green and gold. Forrester said, “Is ten million a year too much to ask for?”
“Sweat, Charles! How would we know?” The boy was clearly more interested in the view-wall than in Forrester, but he was polite enough to add, “Tunt’s projected life average is about twelve million a year. Mine’s fifteen. But of course we’ve got, uh, more advantages,” he said delicately.
Forrester sat down and resigned himself to waiting for the results. The arrows and circles were moving about the star map, and a voice was saying, “Probe reports from 61 Cygni, Proxima Centauri, Epsilon Indi, and Cordoba 31353 show no sign of artifactual activity and no change in net systemic energy levels.”
“Dopes!” shrilled the little girl. “They couldn’t find a Martian in a mattress.”
“At Groombridge One, eight, three, oh, however, the unidentified object monitored six days ago shows no sign of emission and has been tentatively identified as a large comet, although its anecliptic orbit marks this large and massive intruder as a potential trouble spot. Needless to say, it is being carefully watched, and SEPF headquarters in Federal City announce that they are phasing two additional monitors out of their passive orbits. . . .”
“What are they talking about?” Forrester asked the boy.
“The war, of course. Shut up, won’t you?”
“. . . Well, there’s a good news tonight from 22H Camelopardis! A late bulletin just received from sortie-control headquarters states that the difficult task of replacing the damaged probe has been completed! The first of the replacements rushed out from BO 7899 has achieved stellar orbit in a near-perfect, almost circular orbit, and all systems are go. Seven backup replacements—”
“Sweat,” said the girl. “What a tedious war! Charles, you used to do things better, didn’t you?”
“In what way?”
The girl looked puzzled. “More killing, of course.”
“If you call that better, maybe we did. World War Two killed twenty million people, I think.”
“Weep. Twenty million,” breathed the girl. “And so far we’ve killed, what is it, Tunt? Twenty-two?”
“Twenty-two million?” asked Forrester.
The boy shook his head disgustedly. “Twenty-two individual Sirians. Isn’t that rotten?”
But before Forrester could answer, his joymaker spoke up.
“Man Forrester! Your tests have been integrated and assayed. May I display the transcript on Bensen children equipment?”
“Go ahead,” the boy said sullenly. “Can’t be any worse than that.”
The star map disappeared from the wall and was replaced by shimmering sine waves, punctuated with numbers that were quite meaningless to Forrester. “You may apply for reevaluation on any element of the profile, if you wish. Do you wish to do this, Man Forrester?”
“Hell, no.” The numbers and graphs were not only meaningless but disturbing. Forrester had a flash of memory, which he identified as dating from the last time a government agency had concerned itself with finding him a job—after his discharge from his post-Korean peacetime army service, when he joined the long lines of unemployables telling their lies to a bored State Employment Service clerk. He could almost see the squares of linoleum on the floor, the queues of those who, like himself, wanted only to collect unemployment insurance for a while, in the hope that during that time the world would clarify itself for them.
But the joymaker was talking.
“Your profile, Man Forrester, indicates relatively high employability in personal-service and advocative categories. I have selected ninety-three possible openings. Shall I give you the list?”
“My God, no. Just give me the one you like best.”
“Your optimum choice, Man Forrester, is as follows: Salary, seventeen thousand five hundred. This is rather less than your stated requirements, but an expense—”
“Hold on a minute! I’ll say it’s less! I was asking for ten million!”
“Yes, Man Forrester. You stated ten million per year. This is seventeen thousand five hundred per day. At four-day-week norm, allowing for projected overtime as against health losses, three million eight hundred thousand dollars per year. Expenses are also included, however, optimized at five million plus in addition to salary.”
“Wait a minute.” The numbers were so large as to be dizzying. He turned to the children. “That’s almost nine million a year. Can I live on that?”
“Sweat, Charles, sure, if you want to.”
Forrester took a deep breath.
“I’ll take it,” he said.
The joymaker did not seem particularly concerned. “Very well, Man Forrester. Your duties are as follows: Conversation. Briefing. Discussion. The orientation is timeless, so your status as a recent disfreezee will not be a handicap. You will be expected to answer questions and be available for discussions, usually remote due to habitat considerations. Some travel is indicated.”
“Sweat.” The Bensen children were showing signs of interest; the boy sat up, and his sister stared wide-eyed at Forrester.
“Supplementary information, Man Forrester: This employer has rejected automated services for heuristic reasons. His desideratum is subjectivity rather than accuracy of data. The employer is relatively unfamiliar with human history, culture, and customs—”
“It is!” cried the girl.
“—And will supplement your services with TIC data as needed.”
Forrester cut in, “Never mind that. Where do I go for my interview?”
“Man Forrester, you have had it.”
“You mean I’ve got the job? but—but what do I do next?”
“Man Forrester, I was outlining the procedure. Please note the following signal.” There was a mellow, booming chime. “This will indicate a message from your employer. Under the terms of your employment contract, you may not decline to accept these messages during the hours of ten hundred to fourteen hundred on working days. You are further required to receive such messages with no more than twelve hours’ delay even on nonworking days. Thank you, Man Forrester.”
And that, thought Forrester, was that.
Except for trying to find out what was bugging the kids. He said, “All right. What’s eating you?”
They were whispering together, their eyes on him. The boy stopped long enough to ask, “Eating us, Charles?”
“Why are you acting like that?” Forrester amended.
“Oh, nothing.”
“Nothing important,” corrected the girl.
“Come on!”
The little girl said, “It’s just that we never knew anybody who’d work for them before.”
“Work for who?”
“The joymaker told you, Charles! Don’t you listen?” said the boy, and the girl chimed in, “Sweat, Charles! Don’t you know who you’re working for?”
Forrester took a deep breath and glared at them. He told himself that they were only children and that in fact he was rather fond of them; but they seemed on this particular morning to be determined to drive him mad. He sat down and picked up his joymaker. Carefully he scanned the cluster of buttons until he found the crystal-clear, rounded one he was looking for, turned the joymaker until its spray nozzle was pointing at the exposed flesh of his arm, and pressed the button.
Happily it was the right button. What the fine mist that danced into his wrist might be he did not know, but it achieved the expected effect. It was like a supertranquilizer; it cleared his mind, quieted his pulse, and enabled him to say, quite calmly, “Machine! Just who the hell have you got me working for?”
“Do you wish me to display a picture of your employer, Man Forrester?”
“You damn bet I wish!”
“Please observe the view-wall, Man Forrester.”
And observe it Forrester did; and he swallowed hard, stunned.
In all justice to the joymaker, Forrester was forced to admit that he had placed no restrictions on its choice of an employer for him. He had been willing to accept almost anything, but all the same he was surprised.
He hadn’t expected his employer to have bright green fur, or a diadem of tiny eyes peering out of a ruff around a pointed head, or tentacles. He had not, in fact, expected it to be one of the enemy, the race whose presence in space had scared mankind into a vast series of raid drills, weapons programs, and space probes . . . in short, a Sirian.
Nine
Forrester could have carried on his new duties anywhere. But he didn’t want to, he wanted to return to the nest; and there in his room he wrestled with the joymaker and the view-wall and emerged with some sort of picture of what the Sirians were and what they were doing on Earth.