The Speed of Dark

“C’mon, I’m not recording anything,” Paul said. He sipped his coffee. “It will be more conspicuous if you stand there gaping at me or pat me down. You must have one helluva secret.”

Aldrin sat, his coffee slopping over the edge of his mug. “You know my new division head is one of the new brooms—”

“Join the club,” Paul said, with an intonation of get on with it.

“Crenshaw,” Aldrin said.

“Lucky bastard,” Paul said. “He’s got quite a reputation, our Mr. Crenshaw.”

“Yeah, well, remember Section A?”

“The autistics, sure.” Paul’s expression sharpened. “Is he taking after them?

Aldrin nodded.

“That’s stupid,” Paul said. “Not that he’s not, but — that’s really stupid. Our Section Six-fourteen-point-eleven tax break depends on ’em. Your division is marginal anyway for Six-fourteen-point-eleven employees, and they’re worth one-point-five credits each. Besides, the publicity…”

“I know,” Aldrin said. “But he’s not listening. He says they’re too expensive.”

“He thinks everyone but himself is too expensive,” Paul said. “He thinks he’s underpaid, if you can believe it.” He sipped his coffee again. Aldrin noticed he didn’t say what Crenshaw was paid, even now. “We had a time with him when he came through our office — he knows every benefit and tax trick in the book.”

“I’m sure,” Aldrin said.

“So what’s he want to do, fire them? Dock their pay?”

“Threaten them into volunteering for a human-trials research protocol,” Aldrin said.

Paul’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding! He can’t do that!”

“He is.” Aldrin paused, then went on. “He says there’s not a law the company can’t get around.”

“Well, that may be true, but — we can’t just ignore the laws. We have to subvert them. And human trials — what is it, a drug?”

“A treatment for adult autistics,” Aldrin said. “Supposed to make them normal. It supposedly worked on an ape.”

“You can’t be serious.” Paul stared at him. “You are serious. Crenshaw’s trying to bully Category Six-fourteen-point-eleven employees into stage-one human trials on something like that? It’s asking for a publicity nightmare; it could cost the company billions—”

“You know that and I know that, but Crenshaw… has his own way of looking at things.”

“So — who signed off on it upstairs?”

“Nobody that I know of,” Aldrin said, crossing mental fingers. That was the literal truth, because he hadn’t asked.

Paul no longer looked sour and sulky. “That power-mad idiot,” he said. “He thinks he can pull this off and gain ground on Samuelson.”

“Samuelson?”

“Another one of the new brooms. Don’t you keep up with what’s going on?”

“No,” Aldrin said. “I’m not any good at that sort of thing.”

Paul nodded. “I used to think I was, but this pink slip proves I’m not. But anyway, Samuelson and Crenshaw came in as rivals. Samuelson’s cut manufacturing costs without raising a ripple in the press — though that’s going to change soon, I think. Anyway, Crenshaw must think he can pull a triple play — get some volunteers who’ll be too scared for their jobs to complain about it if something goes wrong, push it through all on his own without letting anyone else know, and then take the credit. And you’ll go down with him, Pete, if you don’t do something.”

“He’ll fire me in a second if I do,” Aldrin said.

“There’s always the ombudsman. They haven’t cut that position yet, though Laurie’s feeling pretty shaky.”

“I can’t trust it,” Aldrin said, but he filed it away. Meanwhile he had other questions. “Look — I don’t know how he’s going to account for their time, if they do this. I was hoping to find out more about the law — can he make them put their sick leave and vacation time into it? What’s the rule for special employees?”

“Well, basically, what he’s proposing is illegal as hell. First off, if Research gets a whiff that they’re not genuine volunteers, they’ll stomp all over it. They have to report to NIH, and they don’t want the feds down on them for half a dozen breaches of medical ethics and the fair employment laws. Then, if it’ll put ’em out of the office more than thirty days — will it?” Aldrin nodded and Paul went on. “Then it can’t be classed as vacation time, and there are special rules for leave and sabbatical, especially regarding special-category employees. They can’t be made to lose seniority. Or salary for that matter.” He ran his finger around the rim of his mug. “Which is not going to make Accounting happy. Except for senior scientists on sabbatical in other institutions, we have no accounting category for employees not actually on the job who are receiving full salary. Oh, and it’ll shoot your productivity to hell and gone, too.”

“I thought of that,” Aldrin murmured.

Paul’s mouth quirked. “You can really nail this guy,” he said. “I know I can’t get my job back, not the way things are, but… I’ll enjoy knowing what’s going on.”