Conrad Starguard - Conrad's Time Machine Part 21

Nonetheless, I pushed onward.

I started out by apologizing for the joke we'd pulled on him, but before I had even finished, he brushed it off as not worth bothering with.

"Think nothing of it, Tom. It was nothing but a youthful prank, and a harmlessly amusing one at that."

"Youthful prank? Jim, we are the same age. You are just as youthful as I am."

"Of course we are. Did I tell you what an outstanding job you and Ian did with that lecture series? It was remarkably well done. Why, even I got the feeling that I understood this time travel business myself, by the time the two of you were finished. Everyone has been talking about it, of course, even those who could only catch it on television."

"I never realized that we were being televised. I never saw any cameras. Where were they?"

"I haven't the foggiest notion. The people here have their ways, of course. I'm told that the two of you will be starting back to work on Monday.""Yes."

"That is excellent. You will be accomplishing great things there in your new facility, never doubt it for a moment."

I tried repeatedly to get him talking about the strange things Ian and I had discovered about the island, about the two distinct types of people who lived here, and the strange cultural quirks that each type had, but I might as well have been talking to a college advisor, for all the personal interest he took in it. He acted as if I was a small child, telling him about all the things that had happened today in the third grade.

"Yes, the two of you are far too intelligent and observant for anything to remain a mystery for long. It's one of the many things that I have always admired about you both."

"Jim, this is Tom. Do you remember? Your friend Tom?"

"Of course I remember. We've always been the best of friends, and we always will be!"

"Yeah."

I left, feeling saddened and sickened. One of my two best friends was gone. Grown up, maybe, while I was just abandoned like Puff the Magic Dragon. The fact was that in a few weeks, Jim Hasenpfeffer had somehow grown old.

Ian was waiting for me when I got back.

"So how is he, Tom?"

"Uh, I'd rather not say, just now. Why don't you visit him tomorrow, before church.

After that, we can compare notes."

But on Sunday afternoon, Ian was looking as sad as I felt.

Hasenpfeffer, at least the old Hasenpfeffer that we knew, respected, and, yes, loved. .

. . was gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Womaning the Factory

Ian and I showed up promptly at eight on Monday morning, ready to meet our new workmen and get them all to work.

We'd taken the subway there, and rather than ride our private elevator up to our offices, we went up the public elevators to the main plant floor. Barb had said that our new people would be there at seven, to start getting things squared away, so we expected to find dozens of men working diligently. The doors opened and we got our first shock of the day.

We didn't have any manpower in our facility.

We had woman power. Working around the huge lathes, mills and overhead cranes, there was not a single male human being. All of the machinists, skilled tradesmen, and repairmen were beautiful young women.

Now, back in Michigan, I'd heard all of the women's complaints about the inequalities in the workplace, and for the most part, I sympathized with them. I mean, if somebody was working next to me, doing exactly the same job that I was doing, but was bringing home twice what I was being paid, I wouldn't be happy. And if I was making half what that person was, just because of a little biological accident, I'd be downright p.i.s.sed! If I was being pa.s.sed up for promotions, if the good work I'd done was not being credited, and I was simply not being taken seriously for the same non-reason, I'd be ready to revolt! If I was the last to be hired, and the first to be laid off, and given all the s.h.i.t jobs in between, I'd be about ready to head up into the hills with a rifle and a bandolier of ammo to rectify the situation!

But I was never on the receiving end of that sort of discrimination, so my feelings were all sort of on an intellectual level.

On that spring morning in 1971, I couldn't help having a gut feeling that there was something inherently wrong when you see a small, pretty woman in coveralls loading a three-ton casting into the jaws of a lathe with an eight-foot throw. Yes, she was using an overhead crane to do it with, just as any man would have had to do, but there still seemed to be a wrongness about it all.

I could see that Ian was even more upset about the whole thing than I was, so I steered him back into the elevator, even though half the women in the shop had seen uscome out. We went down to the subway level, crossed over to our private elevator, and then went up to the hallway between our offices.

I made a right and went to my office, and Ian followed me. I sat behind my desk and pressed the b.u.t.ton marked "secretary."

An attractive woman came in immediately, smiled and said, "Yes, sir?"

Which was just fine, except that she was dressed in the fashion which most of the women at my mansion had adopted. That is to say, in nothing but a pair of skimpy shoes.

I mean, yes, she was pretty, she was well built, and nakedness looked very nice on her, but was this lack of clothing conducive to a proper working environment?

Ignoring the clothing issue for the moment, I said, "Please have my majordomo, Barbara, and Ian's Ming Po come here immediately."

"Yes, sir."

As she left, Ian said, "From the looks of things, we don't have a workforce, here.

We've got another f.u.c.king harem!"

Before I could answer, and explain that f.u.c.king was what harems were for, our housekeepers came in. This sort of instantaneous appearance had happened so often that I had come to expect it.

"Okay, Barb. Why did the two of you decide to 'man' this installation entirely with women?"

"But Tom, we made no such decision!"

"Well, somebody sure as h.e.l.l did!" Ian said, "There isn't one single male human being out there. Are you claiming that not one single qualified man applied for a job here?"

"No sir, many qualified men applied for work here."

"Then why in h.e.l.l didn't any of them get hired?"

"Because in all cases, women outbid them for the jobs available, sir."

I said, "Hold it. What do you mean, 'bid for the jobs'? Just how do you go about filling a working position around here?"

"When a position becomes open, the prospective employer posts a notice at the Employment Office, describing the job, the maximum salary that might be paid, and the qualifications necessary to fill it. The Employment Office screens job applicants, and decides who is qualified for what. Job applicants read these postings, offer to fill those that they are qualified for, and bid a minimum salary that they would be willing to work for. In our case, all of the women who applied were willing to work for less than the equally qualified men were."

"That seems like a reasonable enough system, but why were the women willing to work so much cheaper than the men?"

"A person expects many forms of remuneration from their job. Besides money, one wants a chance for personal growth and advancement, a pleasant working environment, interesting, challenging work, and . . . other things."

"Other things?" I asked.

"Tom, she's saying that the women were willing to work cheap because by working here, they'll get a chance to meet us," Ian said. "Those who didn't get jobs at our palacesfigured that this was their next best shot."

"The mind boggles. Barb, how much are the girls out there working for? For that matter, what do the women at the palaces make? How much are you, yourself, paid?"

"Minimum wage, Tom. We're all earning the least that the regulations permit."

"Uh huh. And how does this minimum wage compare with the usual salary paid to an experienced skilled tradesman or a good engineer?"

"Usually, such people would make about six times minimum page."

"And all of these women are willing to work for starvation wages, just to get a chance to meet Ian and me?"

"Yes, Tom. Although no one is starving, of course. All wages include food, housing, and medical insurance."

Ian said, "Barb, I want you and Ming Po to go out and wait for a while. Tom and I need to talk."

When they were gone, Ian continued, "Tom, there are a lot of things that I don't like about all this. One of them is that I don't like wearing solid gold b.u.t.tons on my silk shirt while I'm paying people scab wages."

"Agreed. As of now, everybody who works for us gets paid as much as they would earn if we weren't here."

"No way. We've got to make it retroactive to the date of hiring. And all of Hasenpfeffer's women have to be included in the deal."

"Seconded and so moved. Next, what do we do about the hundred or so women out there? If we replace them with men, what do we do with them? Do we fire them because they're women?"

"Tom, how could we do that and still be honorable men? No, we have to keep those women who have already been hired, and try to treat them just like men."

"But they don't want to be treated like men. They offered to work for nearly nothing because they expected us to treat them like women! Are you going to decline the services of the next attractive woman who works her way into your bed? Could any normal man turn down that many decent, gorgeous women? I mean, there are these biological imperatives that a man doesn't have all that much to say about!"

"And there are some religious reasons for doing the same thing. G.o.d's very first commandment was for us to be fruitful, to divide and multiply. But what I meant was that in the work situation, we should try to be as fair as possible, and keep our private, s.e.xual lives separate from our working lives."

"Good luck. I'll tell you what I'm minded to do. Aside from Barb, I've followed Hasenpfeffer's original suggestion, and put all the girls at my place on a schedule. They each have their occasional night in bed with me, and if it happens that they get laid before then, they forfeit their next turn, until all the others have caught up."

"Yeah. I've done about the same, Tom."

"So, I'm going to tell Barb to put all the women who work for me on the same schedule. Those who want to, that is. If the girls at the palace don't like it, well, they can blame the whole thing on Barb."

"Okay. Then I'll do the same. But it's not going to be easy, treating the girl you sleptwith last night like she's just another worker."

"It's a rough life, Ian, but England expects every man to do his duty."

"I've got a better idea. How about if the girls who work here for you belong to my harem, and your new harem girls all work for me? After that, we try not to mess around with each other's girls, and pillow talk about work isn't allowed."

"A good thought! We'll act on it."

We called in Barb and Ming Po, and explained the new program to them. I was surprised that they weren't happier about the way we'd just octtippled their salaries, retroactively to last month, but they weren't. It was like they actually didn't care, one way or the other.

"One other thing," I said. "Dress codes. Anybody working down below on the plant floor is expected to wear proper safety equipment, including safety gla.s.ses, steel tipped shoes, hard hats, and st.u.r.dy garments that completely cover them. People who might occasionally need to go down there shall wear safety gla.s.ses and hard hats, at least, when they do. And people who work in an office environment must wear shoes and other clothing that completely covers at least their torsos. Anyone dressing too s.e.xy, in our opinion, will be sent home to change. This last is for our benefit, not yours. All play and no work doesn't get the job done."

"Yes, Tom."

"Good. Now, let's go meet the managers you've hired for us."

As we walked past my new secretary, I noticed that she was now properly dressed in a skirt, blouse, and sensible shoes.

I decided right off that I would stay on a last name basis with the women who worked for me, in an attempt at keeping our relationships as businesslike as possible.

I told them that they could call me "sir."

I later noticed Ian doing the same thing, I suppose for the same reason. Something had to be done, since every woman in the shop was as beautiful as any of the women at the palaces. By ordinary American standards, they were all knockouts, each as beautiful as any leading lady that Alfred Hichc.o.c.k ever put on the screen.

I soon met the five key people I had working for me. There was Kowalski, my secretary. She was one of those extremely organized people who always knows where everything and everybody is. She had two other secretaries subordinate to her.

Preston was primarily a mathematician, although she got her Ph.D. in physics. I figured that we'd be working together a lot. My math has always been a bit poor, and up until then, I'd had to ask Ian's help when I needed to get into anything beyond calculus.

Preston didn't have a solid place in our table of organization, and her name just appeared near the top boxed in with dotted lines that didn't connect to anyone else, not even me.

She had no subordinates, but she was sort of on call to anybody who needed theoretical or mathematical help.

As the weeks went by, she got to spending much of her time at the coffee bar located between engineering and the technician's a.s.sembly area. When I asked her about that, she said that some people were hesitant about "bothering" her in her office, and she worked better on an informal basis, anyway. Later, she admitted that the biggest reason for hernew location was the two hundred pounds of Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee I had donated to the bar from my palace's stores.

DuBoise was a solid electrical engineer, and was competent and disciplined, if not overly imaginative. She did everything exactly "by the book," and kept copious notes on everything she did. Everyone was encouraged to keep a journal of the work they did, but DuBoise filled them up at the rate of three a month. She headed a team consisting of eight other engineers, two computer programmers, and nine draftsmen.

O'Mally was an engineer, too, but of a more practical bent than DuBoise. Like me, she was of the "make it work, and fill out the paperwork later, if you have time" school of thought. She headed up a group of eighteen a.s.sorted technicians.

Brown was in charge of purchasing and liaison work with both suppliers and customers. We didn't have a sales or marketing group, since for the foreseeable future, all of our products would be used internally within our own greater company, KMH Industries, which consisted of the entire City of Morrow, and much else, besides. Not that we planned to let any of our temporal devices get off the island.

We didn't have an advertising group, either, since everybody on the island already knew about us.

The accounting people reported to Brown, as well, as did the janitors, for a total of twenty-one subordinates. It seemed like an odd bag, but those functions had been grouped under her, and her under me, primarily to make the size of my group the same size as Ian's group.

Which meant that when Barb had set it up, she was thinking more about a balanced harem than of an efficient work force.

Someday, I'm going to get ahead of that little girl.

Still and all, it was a day well spent. The six of us had gotten ourselves shaken down, then, in a four hour meeting with Ian and his people, we had figured out what we had to do, and had a schedule that said when we were going to do what.

Late that night, after four new ladies (two mechanical engineers, a draftsman and a machinist with a Ph.D.-a woman also strange in other ways) had come and gone, I was alone in bed with Barb.

"Barb, you're awake, aren't you?" I said quietly.