Case and the Dreamer (10 page)

Merrihew was no ordinary trouble-shooter, either.

Mr. Handel, co-president of M&H, explained to Merrihew about M&H, once they were settled in their booth in a cafe not far from the M&H headquarters. (Merrihew’s suggestion, of course; he was not given to charging into situations he did not comprehend.)

“No ordinary business, Mr. Merrihew. We are not a large firm, really. But then Maserati isn’t a large firm either, and no one yet produces Yomeimon Gates on a production line. Our methods are, I would say, unusual. I would not,” he added modestly, “say unique.”

“Your advertising says that for you.”

“Ah, then you do know something about us.”

Merrihew, whose reputation was that of knowing something about everything, gestured for Mr. Handel to continue. He did: “We are highly diversified and we buy, sell, trade, manufacture, contract, subcontract, and produce a great many things in many different ways and places. It is safe to say that each of our activities is successful to a degree—varying, of course—”

“From excellent all the way down to good.”

“You are kind, Mr. Merrihew.”

“You are successful, that’s all.”

“Ah.” Mr. Handel was pleased. “You do make it difficult to be modest.”

“It is only difficult to be modest when it’s painful, Mr. Handel, and it’s only painful when it’s necessary. Please go on.”

Mr. Handel raised his eyebrows at this piece of pragmatic philosophy and went on: “Well then, it’s no secret that our basic product is office equipment and that our products and services are means to promote that equipment. We try to integrate our approaches completely. That is, the problem dictates its solution, the chosen method of operation is what designs a machine or a component. If you came to us asking if one of our systems would sell oranges, say, or move merchandise or establish a Matto Grosso market or test consumer response equally well in Prague as in Bangkok, why, we would devise the best possible approach to the problem and take that one step further—the one that makes us, if I may say so at last, unique. We actually enter the field. We take the risks, we do the work, we find out if the approach is optimum. And if there seems to be a better way we try that too. When that happens, it is frequently the case that a new office machine or method is called for, which is why we say that ‘your problems design our equipment.’ ”

“And how do your customers—prospects—feel about your incursions into their fields? Especially the successful ones?”

“Mr. Merrihew,” said Mr. Handel, as if explaining not the phenomena, but the very fact of day-and-night, “they know we will withdraw.”

Merrihew lifted one eyebrow—somehow a much more potent gesture than the elevation of Mr. Handel’s two. “Don’t you sometimes find it a little tempting to stay with a nice new fruitful operation?”

“One need not yield to temptation,” Mr. Handel said primly. “Our central concern is office systems—and we try hard not to forget it.”

“Then you can’t lose.”

“As long as everything works as it is designed to work.”

“Ah,” said Merrihew. “Now we come to the problem.”

“Now we come to the problem. For you can see how essential, how absolutely vital, in a small but highly diversified operation such as ours, is the matter of retrieval—immediate, reliable retrieval of the information stored in our banks and available from outside. For not only do our operations depend on retrieval, but each operation, each sequence in each operation, is a demonstration of our systems and is on display. I have my own special nightmare, Mr. Merrihew,” said Mr. Handel, running a controlled finger around the back and side of his collar—a small movement, but in this bright, intense little man, a signal of submerged fatigue and terrible tension. “I have this nightmare in which some Very Important Person stands behind Mr. Samm of our Math division and witnesses Samm’s request for a certain set of figures—and there is a click from the console and from the slot comes something like this—” From the capacious attaché case beside him on the seat he drew a sheaf of papers and slid them across to Merrihew. A typical M&H duplication, with crisp typography and in vivid colors, it was an excessively specific illustrated article entitled “Alternatives to the Posterior Colpotomy.” Under it was another called “Management of Abscesses of the Lower Mandibular Arch.” There was more, and worse. Merrihew lifted the stack, banged the edge of it against the table to align the papers and carefully turned the whole thing face down. His eye fell on his half-empty coffee cup and with an infinitely eloquent gesture he pushed it away from him.

“The nightmare,” said Mr. Handel hoarsely, “actually came two-thirds true. The only important element missing was the Very Important Person.” He informed a discreet shudder and then displayed another many-leaved paper. “ ‘Hostility and Aggression, A Radical Approach,’ ” he read. “This arrived on the desk of our marketing director in response to a request for trade information on the South Island of New Zealand. These, of course, are gross examples. In a way I’m far more worried about the little ones. You can see the big ones. I don’t have to describe to you the possibilities of one misplaced decimal point, or the inaccurate reporting of a single raw-material supply in some of the more complex projections we get into.”

“I get the picture. Now, how often is this happening?”

“That,” said Mr. Handel, “is the most troublesome thing of all. I have here a chart of the incidence of these, ah, events—dates, times, locations of demand and points of retrieval—and as much as one can express as to the nature of the, ah, irregularities, and as you can see at a glance, they are about as nearly random as such things could possibly be—in frequency, quality, kind, importance and every other factor.”

“And your circuitry-tapes, disks, all that?”

Another thick sheaf joined the growing mound on the table. “That’s one area we can practically eliminate,” Mr. Handel said with confidence and more than a little pride, “These are M&H installations, naturally, in an M&H environment and maintained and inspected by M&H personnel. We are on display at all times, Mr. Merrihew, through and through. Our weekly maintenance is more thorough than you’d find elsewhere twice a year and our engineers know their jobs. As for the computers and their satellites, most are self-checking and run their own diagnostics periodically. No, Mr. Merrihew, we won’t find the trouble there.”

“I think you’re right. We won’t,” said Merrihew, with a positiveness that apparently startled the co-president.

“You sound, suddenly, as if you had solved the problem.”

“Oh, I have,” said Merrihew. He reached for the chart of events and glanced at it again. “It’s just that knowing what’s wrong isn’t enough. I want to know
why
.”

“I—don’t quite follow you, Mr. Merrihew.”

“I know that, Mr. Handel. Now, here’s what I want you to do. When I come to see you tomorrow morning, don’t let me.”

“I—beg your pardon?”

“Don’t get rid of me either. Just stall. All right?”

“Mr. Merrihew, would you mind telling me—”

“I’d mind a lot. Now I have to go think. See you tomorrow, Mr. Handel.” He rose and slid out of the booth and added the word: “Ultimately.” He left.

Mr. Handel sat where he was, motionless and speechless and for a long moment without even thought, until at length he stirred,
picked up his documents—and, of course, the check—and went back to the office.

Suave was the word: the room was suave. The lighting was gentle and varied, tasteful and flattering. Sound went where one desired it to go and was swallowed up everywhere else. There was a sense of pleasant disorientation, for the walls, and to a very subtle degree the floor, were not perfectly flat and there was no special place or line where wall became ceiling. In a strange way one seemed not to be indoors at all as much as in another country. Most of the light in the room changed color, but only slightly and with the wonderful gradualness of an aurora, for one does not see the change; one must look away and look back again to be able to know it at all. Yet the light was steady and clear where it should be so—around the wide soft benches and their displays of literature (current magazines, “coffee-table” art books and, nowhere in sight but by no means out of reach, discreetly startling M&H promotions) and equally steady and warm near the two mirrors. Clever touch, that, thought Merrihew.

But no one, on entering the reception room at M&H, could count the instruments of this symphony of subtleties, most especially when Miss Kuhli was at her console.

Miss Kuhli (Merrihew had heard it “Cooley” the day before, and had built quite a different picture) was Eurasian. Not since the perfection of ferro-concrete and its self-stressed freedom has architecture been able to match the construction of such eyelids and supraorbital arches as those with which Miss Kuhli had been born. Her hands seemed to be the cooperative work of a florist and a choreographer. Her body had not been designed, but inspired, and her hair was such that it could not be believed at a single glance. She dressed with the studied spontaneity of the highest possible high fashion, of which Merrihew had once cynically remarked,
If the eardrum ever becomes taboo, high fashion will find a way to give you a glimpse of it
. All of which was quite secondary to Miss Kuhli’s voice. Correction. It wasn’t solely the voice. It was the instrument and the skill, the genius with which it was played. “Good morning,” she said as Merrihew entered, and he all but responded,
Thank you—oh, thank you
—just because she cared to give him all her attention, all her time while she was saying it.

“Good morning.”

“Is there anything I can do for you?” she asked with tastefully controlled eagerness.

Offhand, Merrihew could think of twelve ways to answer that question and was strongly inclined to use all of them. But he said, “I’d like to see Mr. Handel.”

Her eyes flicked swiftly to what could only have been an appointment list; but the way she did it could be translated by any wishful visitor as—just possibly—a wink. “I’ll see if he’s in yet. Your name is—”

“Merrihew.”

“Mr. Merrihew!” she said through a warm quick smile. One would think she had been waiting for months for this meeting. “Lois,” she said to the holoscreen on her console. “Is Mr. Handel there yet? Mr. Merrihew’s here.” The way she spoke it Merrihew’s name was in a slightly larger type than the rest of the sentence—but discreetly not italicized. The punctuation at the end was something more emphatic than a period but nothing as gross as an exclamation point.

The screen asked if Mr. Merrihew could wait. Merrihew could. He squinted against the flashbulb radiance of Miss Kuhli’s smile and went to one of the benches (if it was a bench) against the wall (if it was a wall) where he might best watch the action.

And action there was. Miss Kuhli’s console (on which was affixed a polite but monumentally expensive small bronze plate, in lowercase italics:
agnes kuhli
) was so placed that it was not a barrier between herself and the world. At the same time it was not exactly included in the waiting room. One might call it half-surround, a construct of such a nature that it was a convenience for her to occupy it, while clearly the lesser of comforts to anyone else. Seated, she was not concealed, and to a degree shared the space as one might share a living room. Yet her operating point was hers and no one else’s.

People came. People went. People waited. Merrihew very soon observed, with a small cynical slap on his own wrist, that Miss Kuhli’s eager recognition of strangers and her warm willingness to help
had not been for him alone. She surely was among the best in the world at what she did, and this special thing she did better than anyone he had ever seen. But he did indulge himself in a childish moment of regret …

She was never hurried and never at a loss. It took some time for the casual observer (which Merrihew certainly was not) to realize that reception was a very small part of what she did. Her console was constantly active—soft lights and whispers, little flashings and murmurings, to each of which she responded according to its demand. At times she seemed to sink into a species of meditation—hands clasped on her knee, eyes downcast—and during those times it would take a practiced eye as sharp as Merrihew’s to divine that she was speaking and that this was no mantric interval—any more than the occasional rhythmic manipulation of the simply designed, glittering little ornament at her throat was meditative.

Therefore, while anyone might walk in and find an extremely restful, beautifully decorated room commanded by a startlingly pretty young woman at ease on a comfortable bench, a young woman who would put him at his ease unhurriedly, share his concerns for a moment, do what needed doing and then apparently retire quietly into her thoughts, there was actually a great deal more going on. In the moments between the ebbs and flows of people—who waited, who left, who delivered, who received, who were directed and ushered; who were greeted by suddenly appearing personnel from inside and led away, and who, twice that morning, included herds of awed children being given a tour through the plant—in these lulls when there was no one there but Merrihew and Agnes Kuhli (and each time she acknowledged this remote intimacy with a charming smile; never for a second did she seem unaware of him) his sharp ears extracted from the miracles of sound-absorbency around her some of the flood of detail she was handling. Flickers and pulses from little lights, quick touches from her long hands on illuminations and patches which could only be electrostatic switches, and the occasional radiance of the holoscreen, each elicited its quick manual or vocal response. Not that her every minute was crowded—far from
it. It was in one of the occasional lulls that their eyes met—he saw to that, keeping his gaze fixed on her in peril of drying his eyeballs—and she gave him that incredible, sharing smile and said, “My—he’s keeping you here so long—” So caring, so concerned. “Here, I’ll just—”

Her fingers flickered on the console and her face was palely lit by the glow from the holoscreen, which was not in his view. “Lois, Mr. Merrihew’s been waiting so long—”