Door Into Summer

Curtis finally suggested a compromise. "See here, Mr. Davis, you obviously occupy a very special position. One might say that you founded not merely this firm but the whole industry. Nevertheless, as Mr. McBee has hinted, the industry has moved on since the year you took the Long Sleep. Suppose we put you on the staff with the title of... uh, `Research Engineer Emeritus."

I hesitated. "What would that mean?"

"Whatever you made it mean. However, I tell you frankly that you would be expected to co-operate with Mr. Galloway. We not only make these things, we have to sell them."

"Uh, would I have a chance to do any engineering?"

"That's up to you. You'd have facilities and you could do what you wished."

"Shop facilities?"

Curtis looked at McBee. The chief engineer answered, "Certainly, certainly...ithin reason, of course." He bad slipped so far into Glasgow speech that I could hardly understand him.

Galloway said briskly, "That's settled. May I be excused, B.J.? Don't go away, Mr. Davis-we're going to get a picture of you `with the very first model of Hired Girl."

And he did. I was glad to see her...he very model I had put together with my own pinkies and lots of sweat. I wanted to see if she still worked, but MeBee `wouldn't let me start her up-I don't think he really believed that I knew how she worked.

I had a good time at Hired Girl all through March and April. I had all the professional tools I could want, technical journals, the indispensable trade catalogues, a practical library, a Drafting Dan (Hired Girl did not make a drafting machine themselves, so they used the best on the market, which was Aladdin's), and the shoptalk of professionals: music to my ears!

I got acquainted especially with Chuck Freudenberg, components assistant chief engineer. For my money Chuck was the only real engineer there; the rest were overeducated slipstick mechanics including McBee, for the chief engineer was, I thought, a clear proof that it took more than a degree and a Scottish accent to make an engineer. After we got better acquainted Chuck admitted that he felt the same way. "Mac doesn't really like anything new; he would rather do things the way his grandpa did on the bonnie banks of the Clyde."

"What's he doing in this job?"

Freudenberg did not know the details, but it seemed that the present firm bad been a manufacturing company which had simply rented the patents (my patents) from Hired Girl, Inc. Then about twenty years ago there had been one of those tax-saving mergers, with Hired Girl stock swapped for stock in the mauufacturing firm and the new firm taking the name of the one that I had founded. Chuck thought that MeBee had been hired at that time. "He's got a piece of it, I think."

Chuck and I used to sit over beers in the evening and discuss engineering, what the company needed, and the whichness of what. His original interest in me had been that I was a Sleeper. Too many people, I had found, had a queasy interest in Sleepers (as if we were freaks) and I avoided letting people know that I was one. But Chuck was fascinated by the time jump itself and his interest was a healthy one in what the world had been like before he was born, as recalled by a man who literally remembered it as "only yesterday."

In return be was willing to criticize the new gadgets that were always boiling up in my head, and set me straight when I (as I did repeatedly) would rough out something that was old hat... in 2001 Ad). Under his friendly guidance I was becoming a modem engineer, catching up fast.

But when I outlined to him one April evening my autosecretary idea he said slowly, "Dan, have you done work on this on company time?"

"Huh? No, not really. Why?"

"How does your contract read?"

"What? I don't have one." Curtis had put me on the payroll and Galloway had taken pictures of me and had a ghost writer asking me silly questions; that was all.

"Mmm... pal, I wouldn't do anything about this until you are sure where you stand. This is really new. And I think you can make it work."

"I hadn't worried about that angle."

"Put it away for a while. You know the shape the company is in. It's making money and we put out good products. But the only new items we've brought out in five years are ones we've acquired by license. I can't get anything new past Mac. But you can bypass Mac and take this to the big boss. So don't... unless you want to hand it over to the company just for your salary check."

I took his advice. I continued to design but I burned any drawings I thought were good-I didn't need them once I had them in my head. I didn't feel guilty about it; they hadn't hired me as an engineer, they were paying me to be a show-window dummy for Galloway. When my advertising value was sucked dry, they would give me a month's pay and a vote of thanks and let me go.

But by then I'd be a real engineer again and able to open my own office. If Chuck wanted to take a flyer I'd take him with me.