[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]"If I had any idea you'd stay there . He flipped the screen switch and got
Myra on it. "I had a few things to clean up before I could come down," he told
her, with literal truthfulness. "How many girls have we in the front office,
this morning9"
There were eight, and they were all busy. Myra started to tell him what with;
maybe four could handle it at a pinch, and six without undue strain. That was
another thing the Charterless Zarathustra Company would have to economize on.
"Well, they can look after the Fuzzy, too," he said. "Take turns with him.
He's in here, trying to make up his mind what kind of deviltry to get into
next. Come get him, and take him out and tell the girls to keep him innocently
amused."
"But, Mr. Grego; they have work.
"This is more work. We'll find out which one gets along best with him, and
promote her to chief
Fuzzy-sitter. Are we going to let one Fuzzy disrupt our whole organization?"
Myra started to remind him of what the Fuzzies had done to the company
already, then said, "Yes, Mr.
Grego," and blanked the screen. A moment later she entered.
She and the Fuzzy looked at one another in mutual hostility and suspicion. She
took a hesitant step forward; the Fuzzy yeeked angrily, dodged when she
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reached for him, and ran to Grego, jumping onto his lap.
"She won't hurt you," he soothed. "This is Myra; she likes Fuz-zies. Don't
you, Myra?" He stroked the
Fuzzy. "I'm afraid he doesn't like you."
"Well, that makes it mutual," Myra said. "Mr. Grego, I am your secretary. I am
not an animal keeper."
"Fuzzies are not animals. They are sapient beings. The Chief Jus-tice himself
said so. Have you never heard of the Pendarvis Deci-sions?"
"Have I heard of anything else, lately'7 Mr. Grego, how you can make a pet of
that little demon, after all that's happened .
"All right, Myra. I'll take him,"
He went through Myra's office and into the big room they called executive
operations center, through which reports from all over the company's shrunken
but still extensive empire reached him and his decisions and directives and
orders and instructions were handed down to his subjects. There were eight
girls there, none particularly busy. One was reading alternately from several
sets of clipboarded papers and talking into a vocowriter. Another was making a
subdued clatter with a teleprint machine. A third was at a drawing board,
con-structing one of those multicolored zigzag graphs so dear to the
or-ganizational heart. The rest sat smoking and chatting; they all made hasty
pretense of busying themselves as he entered. Then one of them saw the Fuzzy
in his arms.
"Look! Mr. Grego has a Fuzzy!"
"Why, it's a real live Fuzzy!"
Then they were all on their feet and crowding forward in a swirl of colored
dresses and perfumes and eager, laughing voices and pretty, smiling faces.
"Where did you get him, Mr. Grego?"
"Oh, can we see him?"
"Yes, girls." He set the Fuzzy down on the floor. "I don't know where he came
from, but I think he wants to stay with us. I'm going to leave him here for a
while. Don't let him interfere too much with your work, but keep an eye on him
and don't let him get into any trouble. It'll be at least an hour before I
have anything ready to go out. You can give him anything you'd eat yourselves;
if he doesn't want it, he won't take it. I don't think he's very hungry right
now. And don't kill him with affection."
When he went out, they were all sitting on the floor in a circle around the
Fuzzy, who was having a wonderful time. He told Myra to leave the doors of her
office open so he could go through when he wanted to. Then he went through
another door, into the computer room.
It was quarter-circular; two straight walls twenty feet long at right angles
and the curved wall between, the latter occupied by the input board for the
situation-analysis and operation-guidance computers. This was a band of pale
green plastic, three feet wide, divided into foot squares by horizontal and
vertical red lines, each square perfo-rated with thousands of tiny holes, in
some of them, little plug-in lights twinkled in every color of the spectrum.
Three levels down, a whole floor was occupied with the computers this board
serviced. From it, new information was added in the quasi-mathematical
sym~-bology computers understood.
He stood for a moment, looking at the Christmas-tree lights. Noth-ing in the
world would have tempted him to touch it; he knew far too little about it. He
wondered if they had started the computers work-ing on the sunstone-buying
policy problem, then went out into his own office, closing the door behind
him, and sat down at his desk.
In the old, pre-Fuzzy days, he would have spent a leisurely couple of hours
here, drinking more coffee and going over reports. Once in a while he would
have made some comment, or asked a question, or made a suggestion, to show
that he was keeping up with what was going on. Only rarely would any situation
arise requiring his personal action.
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Now everybody was having situations; things he had thought set-tled at the
marathon staff conference of the past four days were com-ing unstuck;
conflicts were developing. He had to make screen-calls to people he would
never have bothered talking to under ordinary circumstances-the superintendent
of the meat-packing plant on Delta Continent, the chief engineer on the
now-idle Big Blackwater drainage project, the master mechanic at the
nuclear-electric power-unit plant. He welcomed one such necessity, the master
mechanic at the electronics-equipment factory; they were starting production
of ultrasonic hearing-aids for the Government, and he ordered half a dozen
sent around to his office. When he got one of them, he could hear what his new
friend was saying.
Myra Fallada came in, dithering in the doorway till he had finished talking to
the chief of chemical industries about a bottleneck in blast-ing-explosive
production. As soon as he blanked the screen, she began.
"Mr. Grego, you will simply have to get that horrid creature out of operations
center. The girls aren't doing a bit of work, and the noise is driving me
simply mad!"
He could hear shrieks of laughter, and the running scamper of Fuzzy feet. Now
that he thought of it, he had been hearing that for some time.
"And I positively can't work . . . AaaaaaP'
Something bright red hit her on the back of the head and bounced into the
room. A red plastic bag, a sponge bag or swimsuit bag or something like that,
stuffed with tissue paper. The Fuzzy ran into the room, dodging past Myra, and
hurled it back, within inches of her face, then ran after it.
"Well, yes, Myra. I'm afraid this is being carried a bit far." He rose and
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