The Black Corridor Read online

  Ryan realised that he was right out on a limb. Where his competitors refused to take on employees with suspect names, however impeccable their backgrounds, Ryan had an actual living, breathing Welshman working for him. Someone who could quite easily be a Nationalist, working for the Welsh Cause (a somewhat obscure Cause as Ryan saw it). It was bloody ridiculous. How could he have got so out of touch? Why hadn't he thought of it?

  Ryan frowned. No—it was stupid. Powell was too absorbed in his work to worry about politics. He was the last person to get involved in anything like that.

  Still, a name was a name. The Nationalists had been causing quite a bit of trouble lately and things had really got bad with the assassination of the King. The Welsh Nationalists had claimed it was their work. But other groups of extremists had also made the same claim.

  From a practical point of view, Ryan thought, Powell was an embarrassment. No question of it. Yet he couldn't fire a man on suspicion.

  Ryan's face took on an over-rosy tinge and his thick hands gripped each other a little more firmly behind his back.

  I'm in fucking trouble here, he thought.

  He pinched his nose and then reached out to buzz for his personnel manager.

  Frederick Masterson was sitting at his desk working on a graph.

  Masterson was, in physical terms, the exact complement to Ryan.

  Where Ryan was thickset and ruddy, Masterson was tall, thin and pale. As the communicator buzzed in his office he dropped the pencil from his long, thin hand and looked at the screen in alarm.

  Seeing Ryan, a thin smile came to his lips.

  'Oh, it's you,' he said.

  'Fred. I want details of any staff we employ with foreign or strange-sounding names—or foreign backgrounds of any kind.

  Just to be on the safe side, you realise. I'm not planning a purge!'

  He laughed briefly.

  'Just as well,' Masterson grinned. 'Your name's Irish isn't it, begorrah!'

  Ryan said: 'Come off it, Fred. I'm no more Irish than you are.

  Not a single relative or ancestor for the past hundred years has even seen Ireland, let alone come from it.'

  'I know, I know,' said Fred. 'Call me Oirish agin and Oi'll knock ye over the hade wid me shillelegh.'

  'Skip the funny imitations, Fred,' Ryan said shortly. 'The firm's at stake. You know how bloody small-minded a lot of people are.

  Well it seems to be getting worse. I just don't want to take any chances. I want you to probe. If necessary turn the whole department over to examining personnel records for the slightest hint of anything peculiar. Examine marriages, family background, schooling, previous places of employment. No action at this stage. I'm not planning to victimise anyone.'

  'Not at the moment,' said Masterson, a funny note in his voice.

  'Oh, come off it, Fred. I just want to be prepared. In case any competitors start going for us. Naturally I'll protect my employees to the hilt. This is one way of making sure I can protect them— against any scandal, for a start.'

  Masterson sighed. 'What about those with Negro blood? I mean the West Indians got around a bit before they were all sent back.'

  'Okay. I don't think anyone's got anything against blacks at the moment have they?'

  'Not at the moment.'

  'Fine.'

  'But you never know...'

  'No.'

  'I want to protect them, Fred.'

  'Of course.'

  Ryan cut the communicator and sighed.

  An image flashed into his mind and with a start he remembered a dream he had had the previous night. It was funny, the way you suddenly remembered dreams long after you had dreamt them.

  It had been to do with a cat. His old house where he had lived with his parents. It had had a big, overgrown back garden and they had kept several cats. The dream was to do with the air rifle he had had and a white and ginger cat—an interloper—that had entered the garden. Someone—not himself, as he remembered the dream —had shot the cat. He had not wanted to shoot the cat himself, but had gone along with this other person. They had shot the cat once and it had been patched up by neighbours. There had been a piece of sticking plaster on its left flank. The person had fired the gun and badly wounded the cat but the animal had not appeared to notice. It had still come confidently along the wall, tail up and purring, towards the French windows. It had had a big, bloody wound in its side, but it hadn't seemed to be aware of it.

  The cat had entered the house and come into the kitchen, still purring, and eaten from the bowl of one of the resident cats.

  Ryan had not known whether to kill it to put it out of its misery or whether to let it be. It hadn't actually seemed to be in any misery, that was the strange thing.

  Ryan shook his head. A disturbing dream. Why should he remember it now?

  He had never, after all, owned a white and ginger cat.

  Ryan shrugged. Good God, this was no time for worrying about silly dreams. He would have to do some hard thinking. Some realistic thinking. He prided himself that if he was nothing else he was a pragmatist. Not an ogre. He was well-known for his good qualities as an employer. He had the best staff in the toy industry.

  People were only too eager to come and work for Ryan Toys. The pay was better. The conditions were better. Ryan was much respected by his fellow employers and by the trades unions. There had never been any trouble at Ryan Toys.

  But he had the business to consider. And, of course ultimately the country, for Ryan's exports were high.

  Or had been, thought Ryan, before the massive wave of nationalism had swept the world and all but frozen trade, save for the basic necessities.

  Still, it would pass. A bit of a shake-up for everybody. It wasn't a bad thing. Made people keep their feet on the ground. One had to know how to ride these peculiar political crises that came and went. He wasn't particularly politically minded himself. A liberal with a small l was how he liked to describe himself. He had an excellent profit-sharing scheme in the factory, lots of fringe benefits, and an agreement with the unions that on his death the workers would take over control of the factory, paying a certain percentage of profits to his dependants. He was all for socialism so long as it was phased in painlessly. He steadfastly refused to have a private doctor and took his chances with the National Health Service along with everybody else. While he was not over-friendly with his workers, he was on good terms with them and they liked him. This silly racialistic stuff would come and go.

  The odds were that it wouldn't affect the factory at all.

  Ryan took a deep breath. He was getting over-anxious, that was his trouble. Probably that bloody Davies account preying on his mind. It was just as well to take a stiff line with Davies, even if it meant losing a few thousand. He would rather kiss the money goodbye if it meant kissing goodbye to the worries that went with it.

  He buzzed through to Powell again.

  Powell was once again on his knees, fiddling with a doll.

  'Ah,' said Powell straightening up.

  'Did you take care of those couple of items, Powell?'

  'Yes. I spoke to Ames and I phoned Davies. He said he'd do his best.'

  'Good man,' Ryan said and switched off hastily as a delighted grin spread over Powell's face.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Ryan is working on a small problem that has come up concerning the liquid regeneration unit in the forward part of the ship.

  It is malfunctioning slightly and the water has a slight taste of urine in it. A spare part is needed and he is instructing the little servorobot to replace the defunct element.

  That was what had saved him, of course, he thought. His pragmatism. He had kept his head while all around people were losing theirs, getting hysterical, making stupid decisions—or worse, making no decisions at all.

  He smiles. He had always made quick decisions. Even when those decisions were unpalatable or possibly unfashionable in terms of the current thinking of the time. It was his basic hardheadedness that h
ad kept him going longer than most of them, allowed him to hang on to a lot more, helped him to the point where he was now safely out of the mess that was the disrupted, insane society of Earth.

  And that is how he intends to remain. He must keep cool, not let the depression, the aching loneliness, the weaker elements of his character, take him over.

  'I'll make it,' he murmurs confidently to himself. 'I'll make it.

  Those people are going to get their chance to start all over again."

  He yawns. The muscles at the back of his neck are aching. He wriggles his shoulders, hoping to limber the muscles up. But the ache remains. He'll have to do something about that. Must stay fit at all costs. Not just himself to think of.

  He isn't proud of everything he did on Earth. Some of those decisions would not have been made under different circumstances.

  But he didn't go mad.

  Not the way so many of the others did.

  He stayed sane. Just barely, sometimes, but he made it through to the other side. He kept his eyes clear and saw things as they really were while a lot of other people were chasing wild geese or phantom tigers. It was a struggle, naturally. And sometimes he had made mistakes. But his common sense hadn't let him down—not in the long run.

  What had someone once said to him?

  He nodded to himself. That was it. You're a survivor, Ryan. A natural bloody survivor.

  It was truer now, of course, than ever before.

  He was a survivor. The survivor. He and his friends and relatives.

  He was making for the clean, fresh world untainted by mankind, leaving the rest of them to rot in the shit heap they had created.

  Yet he mustn't feel proud. Pride goeth before a fall... Mustn't get egocentric. There had been a good deal of luck involved. It wasn't such a bad idea to test himself from time to time, run through that Old Time Religion stuff. The seven deadly sins.

  Check his own psyche out the way he checked the ship.

  CHECK FOR PRIDE.

  CHECK FOR ENVY.

  CHECK FOR SLOTH.

  CHECK FOR GLUTTONY.

  ... and so forth. It didn't do any harm. It kept him sane. And he didn't reject the possibility that he could go insane. There was always a chance. He had to watch for the signs. Check them in time. A stitch in time saves nine.

  That was how he had always operated.

  And he hadn't done badly, after all.

  REPAIR COMPLETED reports the computer. Ryan is satisfied.

  'Congratulations,' he says cheerfully. 'Keep up the good work, chum.'

  The point was, he thinks, that he, unlike so many of the rest, had never been to a psychiatrist in his life. He'd been his own psychiatrist. Gluttony, for instance, could indicate some kind of disturbance that came out in obsessive eating. Therefore if he found himself overeating, he searched for a reason, hunted out the cause of the problem. It was the same with work. If it started to get on top of you, then stop—take a holiday. It meant you could work better when you got back and didn't spend all your time bawling out your staff for mistakes that were essentially your own creation.

  He presses a faucet button and samples the water. He smacks his lips. It's fine.

  He is relaxing. The disturbing dreams, the sense of depression have been replaced by a feeling of well-being. He has compensated in time. Instead of looking back at the bad times, he is looking back at the good times. That is how it should be.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Masterson flashed Ryan about a week after he had begun his check-up.

  Ryan had been feeling good for days. The Davies matter was settled. Davies had paid up two-thirds of the amount and they had called it quits. To show no hard feelings Ryan had even paid off the mortgage on Davies' apartment so that he would have somewhere secure to live after he had sold up his business.

  'Morning, Fred. What's new?'

  'I've been doing that work you asked for.'

  'Any results?'

  'I think all the results are in. I've drawn up a graph of our findings on the subject.'

  'How does the graph look?'

  'It'll come as a shock to you.' Masterson pursed his lips. 'I think I'd better come and talk to you personally. Show you the stuff I've got. Okay?'

  'Well—of course—yes. Okay, Fred. When do you want to come here?'

  'Right away?'

  'Give me half an hour.'

  'Fine.'

  Ryan used the half hour to prepare himself for Masterson's visit, tidying his desk, putting everything away that could be put away, straightening the chairs.

  When Masterson arrived he was sitting at his desk smiling.

  Masterson spread out the graph.

  'I see what you mean,' said Ryan. 'Good heavens! Just as well we decided to do this, eh?'

  'It confirms what I already believed,' said Masterson. 'Ten per cent of your employees, chiefly from the factories in the North, are actually of wholly foreign parentage—Australian and Irish in the main. Another ten per cent had parents born outside England itself, i. e. in Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland. Three per cent of your staff, although born and educated in England, are Jewish. About half a per cent have Negro or Asiatic blood. That's the general picture.'

  Ryan rubbed his nose. 'Bloody difficult, eh, Masterson?'

  Masterson shrugged. 'It could be used against us. There are a number of ways. If the government offers tax relief to firms employing one hundred per cent English labour, as they're talking of doing, then we aren't going to benefit from the tax relief. Then there are wholesaler's and retailer's embargos if our rivals release this information. Lastly there's the customers.'

  Ryan licked his lips thoughtfully. 'It's a tricky one, Fred.'

  'Yes. Tricky.'

  'Oh, fuck, Fred.' Ryan scratched his head. 'There's only one assumption, isn't there?'

  'If you want to survive,' said Fred, 'yes.'

  'It means sacrificing a few in order to protect the many. We'll pay them generous severance pay, of course.'

  'It's something like thirty-five per cent of your employees.'

  'We'll phase them out gradually, of course.' Ryan sighed. 'I'll have to have a talk with the unions. I don't think they'll give us any trouble. They'll see the sense of it. They always have.'

  'Make sure of it,' said Masterson, 'first.'

  'Naturally. What's up, Fred? You seem fed up about something.'

  'Well, you know as well as I do what this means. You'll have to get rid of Powell, too.'

  'He won't suffer from it. I'm not a bloody monster, Fred. You've got to adjust though. It's the only way to survive. We've got to be realistic. If I stood on some abstract ideal, the whole firm would collapse within six months. You know that. The one thing all political parties are agreed on is that many of our troubles stem from an over-indulgent attitude towards foreign labour. Whichever way the wind blows in the near future, there's no escaping that one. And the way our rivals are fighting these days, we can't afford to go around wearing kid gloves and sniffing bloody daffodils.'

  'I realise that,' said Masterson. 'Of course.'

  'Powell won't feel a thing. He'd rather be running a doll's hospital or a toyshop, anyway. I'll do that. I'll buy him a bloody toyshop. What do you say? That way everybody's happy.'

  'Okay,' said Masterson. 'Sounds a good idea.' He rolled up the charts. 'I'll leave the breakdown with you to go over.' He made for the door.

  'Thanks a lot, Fred,' Ryan said gratefully. 'A lot of hard work.

  Very useful. Thanks.'

  'It's my job,' said Masterson. 'Cheerio. Keep smiling.' He left the office.

  Ryan was relieved that he had gone. He couldn't help the irrational feeling of invasion he had whenever anyone came into his office. He sat back, humming, and studied Masterson's figures.

  You had to stay ahead of the game.

  But Masterson had put his finger on the only real problem. He disliked the idea of firing Powell in spite of the man's unbearable friendliness, his nauseating candour
, his stupid assumption that you only bad to give one happy grin to open the great dam of smiles swirling about in everyone.

  Ryan grinned in spite of himself. That summed up poor old Powell all right.

  As a manager, as a creative man, Powell was first class. Ryan could think of no one in the business who could more than half fill his place. He wasn't any trouble. He was content. A willing worker putting in much longer hours than were expected of him.

  But was that just his good-heartedness? Ryan wondered. A light was dawning. Now he could see it. Powell was probably just grateful to have a job! He knew that no one in any business would employ him.

  Just like a bloody Welshman to hang on and on, not letting you know the facts, creeping about, getting good money out of you, not letting you know that his very presence was threatening to ruin your business. Trying to make himself indispensible in the hopes that you'd never find out about him and fire him. Pleasant and agreeable and co-operative. Maybe even a front for some sort of Welsh Nationalist sabotage. Then—the knife in the back, the bullet from the window, the enemy in the alley.

  Stop it, Ryan told himself. Powell wasn't like that. He didn't need to build the man up into a villain to justify sacking him. There was only one reason for sacking him. He was an embarrassment.

  He could harm the firm.

  Ryan relaxed.

  He sat down at his desk, opened a drawer and took out his packed lunch. He opened the thermos flask and poured himself a cup of coffee. He placed his meal on the miniature heater in the lower compartment of the luncheon box.

  Thank God, he thought, for the abolition of those communal lunches with other business men, or the firm's executives.

  Thank God that communal eating had finally died the death.

  What could have been more disgusting than sitting munching and swallowing with a gang of total strangers, sitting there staring at their moving mouths, offering them items—wine, salt, pepper, water—to make their own consumption more palatable, talking to them face to face as they nourished themselves. The conversion of the canteens had provided much-needed office space as well.