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Thursday, May 12, 2005
The Hawk
(From the Onteora Canon. Principles can be a hard master. All but the very best of us will set them aside under sufficiently demanding conditions. Nor is it always possible to know, even just beforehand, that we’re about to do so. Men just don’t know themselves that well.
Rolf Svenson and Kevin Conway also appear in my novels Chosen One and On Broken Wings.)
"Looks like war."
Svenson looked up and across the aisle. "You think so?"
Harris nodded, smirking cynically. "War means jobs, y'know."
"Sounds as if you think even less of the administration than I do."
Harris's eyes widened in mock astonishment. "Is that possible?"
Svenson smirked back. "Just not very likely." He twisted uncomfortably in his chair. Office furniture that would accommodate his tall, slight frame was uncommon. Though his desk chair was highly adjustable, he had never gotten it quite right for the length of his legs.
"You really think he'd intervene over there to justify defense increases?"
Harris snorted. "Come on, Rolf, grow up. His home state is dominated by defense contractors. They made him governor, and they sure as hell gave him a leg up on the presidency."
Svenson had often disagreed with George Harris on political topics, but then Svenson, an anarchist, disagreed with almost everyone. Although political exchanges at Onteora Aviation were frequent and intense, he had ceased to participate long ago. He'd reaped too much frustration from being repeatedly scorned or misunderstood. His older colleague was one of the few who granted him any measure of respect for his views, for Harris's own cynicism about politics was both wide and deep. In turn, Svenson granted Harris the respect due an intelligent man whose opinions had been formed by experience.
"And what about you?" Svenson said. "Are you for it?"
"Of course! The principal weapon we've got for this kind of thing is the aircraft carrier, right? Who builds the planes that take off from those carriers, who makes the support equipment, who does the maintenance? And who's looking at a thirty percent layoff within the next year if no new contracts come in?"
"I see."
Harris's smirk vanished and his tone acquired an edge. "How dismissive we are! Could it be that the company's top software engineer feels just a wee bit more secure in his career prospects than those of us who've spent our lives studying wings and missiles?"
Svenson looked up, surprised. "And if so, so what? You know me, George. For me, politics has a moral dimension. Do you think so little of me as to imagine that, if our professional positions were reversed, I'd be beating the drums? Do you think so little of yourself as to imagine that you wouldn't?"
Harris rose from his desk in silence. He stood at the office window and stared through it, his back to Svenson, for a long still moment.
"No."
Harris turned away from the window and quickly returned to his usual position, hunched over his desk. But Svenson had caught in Harris's eyes, as the older man turned back to his work, the bright glitter of tears.
The office was agog all afternoon, after someone came back from lunch with news of American fighter-bombers in action over the zone of conflict. As he had done over the preceding weeks of tension, Svenson rigidly refrained from entering any conversation on the subject. His colleagues seemed to solicit his participation, by wordless but pointed glance, more than once.
On his way home that afternoon, the all-news radio station he habitually played in the car was full of what he called "news clutter" -- opinions by professional opinion-mongers, man-in-the-street interviews on the intervention, prognostications about the administration's next step. Ordinarily he disliked and ignored it. that day he found himself listening with unusual concentration.
Among ordinary citizens the station's "roving reporter" had interviewed about the intervention, three had admitted to working for weapons makers. All were strongly in favor of the action. One had admitted that economic self-interest was among the reasons for his approval. The others had evaded the question, and the interviewer had not seen fit to press it.
At home, he had not even put down his briefcase before Anna asked him if he had seen the feature article on Onteora Aviation in the regional paper. He had not. It delineated OA's struggle to stay viable in a time of declining defense budgets. Once the bastion of the regional economy, it had laid off a third of its work force and had sold a similar fraction of its real property over the seven years he had worked there. The company had once been famous for lifetime employment, and for its paternalism toward its employees. All this, said the writer, was considered past and gone.
On impulse, he turned to the Help Wanted section, for the first time in seven years. Listings for software engineers were not so plentiful as they had once been, and most of the positions were uncomfortably distant. He looked up at his wife.
"Sweetie."
"Hm?" She continued to read.
"What would it take for you to consider relocating?"
She looked up at that, frowning. "Now that we've finally got this place in livable shape? Did that article tell you something you didn't already know?"
"No, not really . . . but I've got to admit, it has me thinking about our options."
She put down her reading and fixed him with her "auditor's look," the one she used to warn away inappropriate flights of imagination, to which she considered her husband, her children, and many of her accounting clients all too prone.
"Unless you have some hard reason to consider your job at risk, this is a subject I don't care to discuss. It means uprooting two minor children, selling a house, you changing your job and me finding an entirely new group of clients. If it wasn't the article, have you been told something you haven't told me yet?"
He tried not to react visibly. "No, I told you, I'm thinking about our options. The company's had some hard times lately, and I want to have some idea what we're really prepared to do if things go from bad to worse. We can't live on your income alone . . . at least, not this way."
She didn't flinch. "Unless your income is in jeopardy, we don't have to. You've told me over and over that you're the top guy in software there, that you'll be the one to turn out the lights when they close the plant. Is it true?"
Reluctantly: "Yes."
"Then stop vaporing. I'll only worry about things that are much more likely than the collapse of the company. If that's what you're worrying about."
"It isn't."
She seemed not to have heard. Her eyes dropped back to her book. "You shouldn't raise upsetting possibilities lightly. If trouble starts to brew, you'll have warning, you'll have time to expand your outside consulting or look for another job. Besides, that article says the company seems pretty well positioned now, what with the war."
"Hello?"
"Hi, Steve, it's Rolf."
"Hey! How're you doing? It's a dog's age since you've been here for a meeting."
Svenson grinned. Steve Carlucci ran the county chapter of the Freeman's Society; it was the most important thing in his life. He had once said that if his wife were to force him to choose between her and the Society, he'd surely miss her.
"Try having kids, Steve. It does things to your time budget. But I called to ask about the next meeting. Last Saturday of the month, as usual?"
"Yup. You plan to come?"
"I'd like to suggest a topic."
"Angie already had something planned, but what have you got?"
"The war, of course."
There was a brief silence on the line.
"What's to discuss? We're shoving our nose into an ethnic and religious dispute that goes back more than a thousand years. What justification could there be for forcing Americans to pay and bleed for that?"
"Well, don't you want to consider any other aspects of the thing? What about the morality of permitting innocent people to be slaughtered when we have the power to prevent it?"
"We've covered that argument before." A note of impatience entered Carlucci's voice. "American intervention can't prevent that. It can only change the identities of the innocent people who'll die."
"Still, warfare is one of the few constants in human history. We can't just dismiss it from consideration as a solved problem when so many lives are affected."
Another pause. "Alright, I'll ask Angie if she wouldn't mind waiting a month as a favor to you. She's put a lot of work into her presentation, though, so don't be surprised if she says no."
"What's she been pursuing?"
"Capture theory, George Stigler's stuff. It's amazing, she's been researching for most of a year, and she hasn't yet found a single case where individuals inside an institution were able to override its natural dynamics and hang on to change them. You'll love it."
All the next day his colleagues continued to chatter about the war news. OA's products were getting good publicity from the action. The planes were performing well; their crews were giving them high marks in all areas. Throughout the plant there reigned a night-before-Christmas atmosphere of expectancy and excitement.
He found it hard to fault them for it. Their livelihoods were so bound up with the ghastly business of dropping explosives on strangers, probably they couldn't see it the way he did. Moral clarity comes hard to a man facing unemployment. He had options they didn't, after all.
Just after lunch, he succumbed to impulse and phoned Harry Goetz, the recruiter who had placed him there.
"Rolf! How's life been treating you? Bet the war has everyone all stirred up over there."
Svenson swallowed. "You betcha, Harry. How's business by you?"
"A little slow. You know what the regional economy's been like these past three years."
"Any prospects for someone like your humble servant?"
"Whooo, I'd say not many. What are you making these days?"
Svenson hesitated, looked about to see if anyone might overhear him. "About seventy, before fringes."
The line was silent for a moment. "Same constraints as before? No government jobs, no commute longer than fifty miles, must have a 401K plan, little or no travel?"
"Yeah." Svenson scoped the room once more.
"Slim to none, fella. I'd love to move you, I'd make nearly twenty thousand dollars on it, but you're 'way high up the pyramid now, and the positions are pretty thinly spread out. Just for the record, any interest in relocating?"
"No, Anna won't consider it."
"Then you'd better plan to stay where you are. I haven't got anything in the order book that matches what they're doing for you over there. Why the sudden interest in other situations? I thought you were their fair-haired boy."
"Well, yeah, that hasn't changed, except that I've lost a little hair. I'm just rounding up my options, like my favorite recruiter told me I should do every so often. You know, to stay in practice."
Goetz chuckled. "Well, consider that you've just done it for the year. But there's really no reason to float your resume, unless you're willing to relocate. A position like yours is a pretty rare thing. All the same, I wouldn't worry. That article in yesterday's paper is probably what got you thinking, right?"
"Yeah, with maybe a touch of seven-year itch on top."
"Of course, you've been there longer than anywhere else by now, haven't you? But at your age and professional altitude, you ought to be thinking long term. That's a good place to retire from, if you can hang on, and if you can't, who could? A lot of your co-workers have never worked anywhere else."
"I know. Look, Harry, even if I'm being silly about it, I am nervous. Could you let slip some hints in the right places that I might be available, if the right position opens up?"
"Sure, no problem, but stay dug in over there. You really haven't got a thing to worry about, now. I can't turn on the radio without hearing about what your planes are doing to those poor clowns."
As the meeting broke up, Svenson found himself wishing he'd never called Carlucci, or that Carlucci had never called him back, or that he'd broken a leg that afternoon. Anything that might have kept him away from the meeting. Even discounting for the normally high rhetorical temperature of Freeman's Society meetings, and for his own anxiety, he'd probably alienated more friends and acquaintances on that one evening than he'd made in ten years. Several of them pointedly refused to look at him as they left. Angela Baldaserra, whose presentation had been postponed to make room for his topic, practically disemboweled him with her glare.
"Got time for a beer before you go, Rolf?" Carlucci called to him from the kitchen.
"Yeah, sure." Eager to escape further embarrassment, Svenson followed the voice, and found his host already seated at the kitchen table plying a church key.
"Rolf, that bit about 'moral absolutism' was not well done," Carlucci said after a long draught.
Svenson bridled. "Well, was there any give in Art's position? Was he willing to admit that he might be wrong?"
Carlucci raised an eyebrow. "Were you?"
"Of course! My whole premise was that we couldn't be sure of the absolute morality of a military intervention, but that it might be obligatory to act anyway -- "
"To which premise you clung like a fifty-year-old barnacle. C'mon, let's not recap the whole meeting. I just want to ask one thing: did you get what you wanted tonight?"
Reluctantly: "No."
"Rolf, you're very bright, maybe the brightest guy I know and certainly the brightest person who ever comes here. You know Artie almost as well as I do. You know how opinionated he is, and how grating his style can be. You ought to, you've crossed swords with him more than once. But I have never seen you make the mistake you made with him tonight, and I never expected to."
"What mistake was that?"
"Confusing argument with combat. You know the difference between them."
Svenson bit back an expostulation and forced himself to think it over. "Maybe I don't, not in your sense."
"Sure you do. The purpose of argument is to test something: either an idea, or your rhetorical skills. The techniques of argument are logic, evidence, analogy, examples and counterexamples, all of which require mutual respect. The ethics of argument require that truth be only the deciding criterion -- and that disagreement be respected wherever uncertainty leaves room for more than one opinion.
"The purpose of combat is to neutralize the enemy, because his desires and your desires are totally incompatible. The techniques of combat allow for the possibility of eliminating the enemy, if that's the only way he can be neutralized. The ethics of combat are simple: It's him or you."
Svenson glowered. "So I was trying to eliminate Artie instead of arguing with him?"
Carlucci nodded, face perfectly straight. "What else does a charge of 'moral absolutism' mean? It means 'this room ain't big enough for both our moral positions.' And suppose that's true? What's left then, but to fight to the death with sabers? You of all people ought to know you can't argue about morality."
"And why not? I thought our whole movement was based on our approach to morality. If we can't argue morality, then how do we sell our positions?"
"Jesus, why do I have to explain this to you? To a moralist, his morality is primary. It comes before everything else; all his other beliefs and behavior are derived from it. If he gives on his morality, his foundation is undermined, and his identity goes with it. To a consequentialist, morality is only a set of conventions that bind other people. He's got another set of primary concerns, and he's not interested in any moral constraint that might block them off."
Svenson waved in exasperation. "Sounds to me as if you've just eliminated all argument. Why bother if you can't argue about moral underpinnings or primary concerns?"
"You can, but not your way. Even an absolute moralist like Artie has an agenda of another kind. There are things he wants to see done in the world, and you can suggest ways to him that he can get them done. If he's taken with your ideas, he'll eventually adjust his morality as much as it takes to be able to use them -- but it has to be done by him."
Carlucci sat back in his chair and drained his beer.
"Not even a total pragmatist wants his morality questioned. He might not be quick to admit that he has one, but it's there. It's what allows him to decide what 'good' is, whether he realizes it or not. When you attack him on it, you're reading him out of the human race."
Svenson felt very small. Carlucci was the owner of a powerful intelligence, for which he gave himself too little credit. Admiring material success as he did, and having achieved relatively little, he esteemed the abilities of such as Svenson more highly than they deserved. He had just demonstrated it.
"So how do we get at morality, then?"
"I don't know. Maybe it's always a resultant, just a model that people and societies form out of their accumulated experience, not knowing that they're doing it. But we can't argue about it. If you don't have enough common moral ground with the other guy, you can't argue about anything. Trust me on this: I know. But what I don't know, what I'd still like to know, was what you were looking for tonight."
Svenson didn't answer.
In a few days, American participation in the conflict was over, with little visible impact upon the status quo. Government interest in the company's products did increase somewhat in the following months, but a year later the projected layoffs had occurred, and more company real estate had been sold. Otherwise, all was as it had been. Svenson remained employed but nervous. Harry Goetz had not called him back, and he had not tried to discuss relocation with Anna a second time.
That fall, the Republican candidate for Congress from Svenson's district bore down heavily upon the plight of the region's defense businesses. He vowed to spearhead military appropriations bills that would preserve his constituents' jobs, that would restore the economic health that had been theirs only a decade ago. Svenson clucked to himself over the brazenness of the appeal, the most blatant use of the defense budget as a welfare program he had ever heard, as he waited in line to register to vote for the first time in twelve years.
Late in September, George Harris announced his retirement. It was a mild surprise, since he was only fifty-seven and had been well regarded by both his peers and his management. Shortly before his going-away luncheon, he admitted to two colleagues that he had been encouraged to the decision by some modest financial incentives and by a series of oblique comments from his supervisor to the effect that his time was drawing near.
Svenson was saddened by the event. Harris had come to OA at age twenty-two, directly from the Navy. After thirty-five years in its protective embrace, being thrust from its bosom with a pension and a handshake was certain to be a shock. Yet how long could a man feel the imminence of such a thing without caving in? There was no way to fight it. And it was certain to recur, for the company had already announced to the press that further workforce reductions were planned.
In mid-October, a new man was put at Harris's desk, a recent college graduate whose job apparently included Harris's former responsibilities. Svenson was so taken aback by his youth and the abruptness of his arrival that he employed every available device to postpone becoming acquainted. It was more than a week before the new man, up to his eyelashes in the background reading required of him, took the matter into his own hands.
"Mr. Svenson? I'm Kevin Conway."
Svenson looked up to see Conway's hand thrust nearly into his face. The young engineer was built like a linebacker: tall, broad across the shoulders, and trim-waisted below a muscular chest. His imposing appearance was softened by a wide and gentle smile. Svenson repressed the impulse to recoil and shook the proffered hand.
"What can I do for you?"
"If you've got a minute, I'd like to buy you a cup of coffee."
Svenson rose from his desk with some reluctance and followed his new colleague down the corridor to the coffee machines. He waited in silence while Conway poured two cups of coffee, and accepted one with a murmur of thanks.
"What was George Harris like?"
Svenson's vague unease congealed at once into a desire to flee. "Why do you ask?"
"His name's on the cover of every document I have to read. I replaced him, didn't I?"
Svenson nodded.
"Was he very popular?"
Svenson reflected on Harris's peculiar combination of sarcastic acerbity and readiness with a quip or a joke. "Yes, he was popular. Why?"
"Because a lot of the older people have been treating me as if I murdered him."
Svenson flinched. The pleasant guilelessness of Conway's demeanor had unreadied him for such candor.
"Look, son, in an organization like this --"
"Please call me Kevin, Mr. Svenson." The younger man's expression of pleasant attention remained steady.
Svenson took a deep breath and started again. "I'm sorry, Kevin. In an organization like this one, in an exotic field, with so many older employees and a declining business base, a lot of people will identify with a George Harris. His retirement wasn't completely voluntary. Some of our colleagues probably see it as a mirror being held up to them."
Conway nodded. "I guess I understand. But can't they understand that I had nothing to do with it? He wasn't forced out to make room for me. This is just where I ended up."
"People aren't always that reasonable about things that frighten them."
The younger man started at that. "I frighten them?"
"Yes, or what you represent. They average about twenty-five years older than you. Most of them have spent all of their adult lives working here . . . just like George Harris, whom they liked and respected. For some of them, their work is their whole life. Their kids have grown up and moved away, their marriages have gone stale or busted up altogether, and they have literally nothing else to anchor to. When they see you sitting at George's desk, they don't think about you, they think about themselves, about what it would be like for them to lose their jobs to a twenty-two-year-old kid. It would be wrong to take that personally."
"But I'm a person, Mr. Svenson. I have feelings. There's no other way I can take it. And Mr. Harris is not gone from here because of me." Aside from a note of emphasis, Conway's voice had not wavered.
Svenson nodded. "I know that. It was mostly the suddenness of your appearance, so soon after his departure. Given time, they'll thaw out, and it won't be George Harris's desk any more." His brow furrowed. "Why did you bring this to me?"
Conway nodded. "I wondered if you'd ask. I've noticed that you're not in the mainstream here, Mr. Svenson. Everyone speaks highly of you professionally, but you don't take part in the group lunches and coffee klatches and such. I figured that if anyone here knew what it was like to be an outsider, it would be you. I hope you're not offended. I just want them all to know that I'm no threat to them.
"I did pretty well in school; I didn't expect to have so few possibilities when I graduated. But this was the only offer I received. I didn't plan to go into defense work. I have to admit, if I'd had any other option, I'd probably have taken it. But I have to be practical, Mr. Svenson. I have school loans to pay off, and I'm engaged to be married this coming spring. If this is all I can do to survive, then this is what I'll do."
Svenson was shaken by the young man's combination of innocence and realism. When he had first set out into the workaday world, that world had been far more benign. He found himself wondering how his younger self would have measured up to Kevin Conway, and firmly turned the thought aside.
"We all do what we have to do to survive, Kevin." He extended his hand. "Please call me Rolf."
When they returned to their desks, Conway gestured at Svenson to wait a moment, and turned the older man's desk chair upside down to study it. After a hard look, a twiddle and a yank, he set it upright again and invited Svenson to sit. The older man found that, for the first time, he could keep his feet flat on the floor beneath him without putting pressure on his back or knees.
"Thank you."
Conway grinned. "I know what it feels like not to fit in your chair. Anyway, I'm glad I could help."
Tuesday, November the second was a bright, crisp autumn day. All day long Svenson felt acutely conscious of both time and place, so much so that he was unable to get seriously to work. It had long been the company's policy to dismiss its employees two hours early on Election Day. Svenson had never taken the time off before, but on this occasion he felt he might as well.
His unnatural time-consciousness followed him home, through dinner, and into the evening. It oppressed him almost to the point of striking him dumb. Yet, if Anna or the children noticed his displacement, they gave no sign.
His unease turned gradually to restlessness. At eight twenty-four, he announced to no one in particular that he was going for a walk, and got in response only a soft grunt from Anna. He strolled through the neighborhood for about twenty minutes, unconscious of any purpose or direction, and presently found himself standing before the Civic Center, the hamlet's traditional polling place, unable to remember how he had got there.
You don't belong here, he said to himself. Yet he could no longer evade consciousness of what he was about to do, what he had come to do.
As he entered, he felt the pressure of innumerable pairs of eyes weighing him, even though only two clerks and a handful of local residents were present. He joined the short line and awaited the attention of the clerks.
"Name, please?" The clerk appraised him without recognition.
He swallowed. "Rolf Svenson."
"Are you registered in this district?"
"Yes."
The clerk flipped through a book of signature cards and found one with his name and address typed across the top. Her brow wrinkled when she saw its nakedness, but she shoved it across the table to him without comment.
Moments later he was in the booth, the curtains closed around him. His time-consciousness had been replaced by vertiginous panic. Reality had telescoped down to the few square feet around him, and it was surging and veering like a storm-tossed boat. He put out a hand to steady himself; it landed on the lever bearing the name of the Republican candidate for Congress.
He struggled to throw off the sense of imminent disaster, but all he could feel was a vast and formless fear. It was like being confronted by a ravenous beast so gigantic that its features could not be perceived, only its power and malevolence.
The crack of the lever snapping down rang like a pistol shot in his ears. Yet there was nothing more; no external tumult arose to match the storm within him. Straining for self-possession, he grasped the lever that would open the curtains and pulled it firmly. He heard a faint click from the voting machine's innards registering his vote as the curtains parted. It was irrevocable now.
If, to the others in that place, he looked as shaken as he felt, none saw fit to mention it. Not that there was much opportunity, for he hurried out and home as quickly as he could.
With the change in administrations there came a putative change in foreign policy, for the new president had been identified with noninterventionist ideals all his public life. It meant little to the company, which had apparently reached a stable workforce and a level of continuing business that could be relied upon for the foreseeable future. The anxieties of Svenson's colleagues had retreated. Anyway, they were less in evidence.
Despite the difference in their ages, Svenson got to know and like Kevin Conway quite well. The young engineer was highly intelligent, terse without being unsociable, and candid without being unpleasant. The two lunched together regularly. When first they tried a foursome evening, Anna Svenson and Dorothy Conway took to one another just as readily. Get-togethers between the two couples became a regular affair.
Yet it was nearly two years before their talk turned to politics. Much to his own surprise, Svenson discarded his habitual reticence without so much as a prod, and avowed his convictions frankly. Conway heard him out with an attitude of sober respect, which was not the surprise it might have been.
"As far as I can grasp the implications of your philosophical position, I agree with it -- I think," Conway said after Svenson had concluded his disquisition. "But why anarchy?"
"Because if self-defense is every man's right and responsibility, then no organization can rightly claim a monopoly over the use of defensive force." Svenson paused for a mouthful of liverwurst on rye.
"You don't consider private justice undesirable?"
"If I've read the history correctly, it's been far more efficient and responsible than the 'justice' dispensed by politics. Anyway, that's what you'd expect from competition."
"And who would defend such a society against invasion by the governments of neighboring countries?"
Svenson nodded. "You've hit the hard problem. In a world filled with predatory, unlimited governments, an anarchic society would probably be swallowed up by whichever state was first to act. But that wouldn't necessarily happen if there were a contiguous group of countries with sharply limited governments, and one of them decided to try going completely without. So I think an era of classical-liberal limited government has to come first."
"Special interest politics will be a problem, won't it? After all, a lot of people vote only for candidates who support their favored government activities -- the ones that put money into their pockets. We're one such."
"Bull's-eye! But you know, I think it's an illusion, an example of the will to believe triumphing over objective evidence. I don't think whether the President is a Democrat or a Republican has anything to do with our well-being." Svenson paused to swallow. "If you look back over the last forty years, the company's fortunes haven't correlated at all with national party dominance."
Conway looked skeptical. "You don't put any stock in the Republicans as the friends of the military?"
"Naah. Both parties are dominated by opportunists. They'll do whatever they think will best help them to gain or retain power. If military expenditures or interventionist actions are popular, a Democrat won't shrink from them. If peace is selling well, a Republican will put his so-called principles aside. And both will fund the welfare state to whatever degree they think is politically prudent."
"You make it sound as if it's pure calculation. I don't think you can exclude principle or emotion from political decisions. Why else would they screw up so often?"
Svenson grinned. "Just because they're scoundrels doesn't mean they're smart, Kevin."
"Well, what about principle, then? If there's anything more likely to lead you into a swamp than an unbreakable principle, I can't think of it."
Svenson shook his head vigorously. "I disagree. What the world needs most is more people with principles."
Conway's eternal smile quirked slightly. "With your principles, you mean."
For a moment Svenson could not believe he had heard correctly. "And how am I supposed to take that?"
"Oh, don't get offended, Rolf. But principles are the very things people fight over when there's no good reason to fight at all. If you were confronted by someone whose principles contradicted yours, it'd be pistols at dawn. There'd be no keeping the two of you apart."
Svenson controlled himself with an effort. "In a way, you're right, and I don't want you to think that I'm dismissing your point out of hand. A principle is a fundamental moral premise, so two people whose principles contradict one another would necessarily view one another as evil. But have you ever thought about the uniformity among people who're thought of as highly principled? The term just isn't applied to people whose premise is that it's okay to lie, cheat, steal, kidnap, torture or kill."
Conway nodded slowly. "I suppose you're right. Still, I tend to prefer a pragmatist to a dogmatist, myself. There's usually more ground on which I can dicker with them."
Svenson lurched forward across the lunchroom table so suddenly that Conway could not help but jerk back.
"Kevin, you're young yet. You don't know the full range of human depravity, and if you're lucky, you never will. Without principle, without internal constraints that say that no matter what, there are some things you just won't do, no one is safe from you . . . and you're never safe either. If you haven't got a long enough perspective, ethical behavior looks like a fool's game. Other people, not you, benefit from your morals. But the reverse is true too, and unless nearly everybody keeps that in mind, the world will go to hell."
The younger man was briefly silent.
"Rolf, you know I respect you."
Svenson cocked an eyebrow, uneasy about what might be coming. "I assumed so."
"I haven't respected very many people in my time. When I do, I don't always know why, and when I don't, I don't always know why not. Maybe you've just told me, and I have to get used to it. But tell me this, please: what would you set aside your principles for?"
"Nothing less urgent than sheer survival, or the survival of my family."
Now it was Conway's turn to lean across the table, but his expression and tone remained gentle. "Have you, ever?"
Abruptly Svenson saw that he had trapped himself. To say no was to assume the stance of an incorruptible bastion of virtue. To say yes was to plant in his young friend's imagination the seed of unjustified hero-worship for a fictional noble deed. The surge of tension closed his throat tightly. He only relaxed enough to speak when he saw alarm rising in Conway's face.
"I'm not perfect, Kevin. I've defaulted on my convictions. And I don't want you to think it was in the face of some awful crisis. It was a petty thing, and I regretted it immediately. The worst of it was how unworthy I felt right after."
Conway's expression was unreadable. "Do you think if the situation were repeated, you'd do it again?"
"I don't know." Svenson briefly covered his face with his hands. "Some of us don't get better as we get older."
After a moment's silence, Conway said softly, "Forgive me, Rolf, but I just had to ask."
They had never bothered to attend the company's summer picnic, so Svenson was greatly surprised when Anna announced to him that this year they should do so. When he asked why, she said she thought Signe and Thomas would enjoy it, and went no further.
Svenson knew the quality of his wife's character thoroughly. Along with her considerable intelligence, Anna was a rock: what she had decided must be, would be, come hell or high water. He also knew that she was able to withhold her real reasons for her decisions, even from him, if she thought it best. Having long ago conceded the management of the family's social dealings to her, he had followed a policy of not probing her thinking too deeply once she had made up her mind. It wouldn't change things for the better in any case.
Yet he found it difficult not to dwell on the subject. If Anna thought his career prospects or his security might be enhanced by attending the picnic, why would she refrain from saying so? The children had many friends and a more than sufficient number of summer frolics. Aside from Kevin Conway, his work circle and their social circle didn't intersect at all. He began to worry that he had somehow alarmed his wife about the security of his job.
The appointed day was bright and clear, denying him a reprieve by weather. By the time they arrived at the huge open field the company leased each year for the picnic, several thousand people were already in attendance, and the rides and the food pavilions were thronged. From the edge of the parking field, Anna spied someone she knew, called out, and strode off with the children in tow. Cut loose so suddenly, Svenson took what comfort he could in the knowledge that he had the car keys.
For a long while he ambled randomly, not seeing anyone he recognized. The few dozen engineers he worked with were a drop in this ocean, and mostly could not be counted on to attend a plebeian event like this picnic, dominated by the much greater numbers of the assembly-line workers and clerical functionaries.
The day had started warm, and grew warmer still toward midafternoon. Presently, Svenson sought the shelter of a food pavilion, less from hunger than to escape from the rays of the sun. He joined the queue for hot dogs and hamburgers, and had been waiting on it for some time before he realized, with a slight shock, that the man standing in line before him was George Harris.
"George?"
Harris turned and started in surprise. "Rolf! Be damned! I'd never have expected to see you here. Are Anna and the kids here too?"
Svenson smiled wryly. "Somewhere."
"What prevailed upon you to come to one of these?"
"Anna thought it would be a good idea." Svenson waved at the crowd beyond. "Yours is the first familiar face I've seen since I arrived."
Harris laughed. "I'm not surprised. The engineering section is dwarfed by the manufacturing personnel. You're best off at these things if you come as a family and stay together. Speaking of which, I'll bet you haven't met my younger brother Al." He gestured at a large man immediately in front of him in line, who turned and looked Svenson up and down.
Al Harris did not have his elder brother's affable manner even when he was sober. On that occasion, he was just sober enough to stand unsupported. The hand he extended toward Svenson was large and unsteady.
"Pleased t'meetcha." After shaking Svenson's hand, the big man began to turn away once again. Unaccountably, his brother stopped him with a comment.
"You probably remember my telling you about Rolf, don't you, Al? He's the company pacifist."
Svenson looked to his former colleague in surprise. "What's this about, George?"
The elder Harris paid no attention, speaking instead to his sibling. "Rolf was the only guy I knew who was against our getting into the war three years ago. You know, the one just before I was canned."
The hair on the back of Svenson's neck stood to attention. "George, I thought you retired."
"Oh, sure!" George Harris waved expansively. "That's what it is, when you wake up in the morning with nothing at all to occupy you, when you have to make distractions for yourself sixteen hours a day because you're no use to anyone any more. Retirement. I'll have to remember that." It appeared that the elder Harris was no soberer than his younger brother, though he carried it somewhat better. "Al here's retired too."
Svenson looked from the elder brother's face to the younger's. Al Harris was no more than forty-five years old. "Did you come into some good fortune, Al?"
Al Harris glowered while George Harris spoke. "Same good fortune as I had, old buddy. Al was a metal-bender on the EL-17. When the production orders were cut this past winter, the company retired him, just the way it retired me."
Svenson cast about for some way to escape the conversation without seeming rude. George Harris had turned to face his brother, addressing him as a schoolteacher might address an unusually slow pupil.
"Rolf here doesn't hold with the use of military force, even if it means jobs. Your job, my job, it's all the same to Rolf. I'm sure he'd feel exactly the same if it were his job, don't you think so? But I doubt it'll ever come to that. The company is Rolf's oyster. It's very fond of him."
Svenson stood paralyzed with alarm. All vestiges of affability and camaraderie had vanished from George Harris's demeanor. What remained was hatred, and it was undisguised.
Al Harris was not a bright man, but he was devoted to his brother. Drunk or sober, he could tell when his brother wanted something from him, as long as it was simple. This was simple enough. He swept back one huge arm and backhanded Rolf Svenson across the mouth with enough force to lay him out along the ground. The crowd around them gave way in all directions. There was suddenly silence.
When Svenson, bleeding from the mouth where his lips had broken against his teeth, failed to rise from where he lay, Al Harris strode forward and reached down to grab his shirtfront and yank him to his feet. He cocked his arm for another blow, while his elder brother stood motionless, arms folded, and the crowd watched in fascination.
Svenson closed his eyes and awaited the impact, but it did not arrive. When he opened them again, he saw that someone had seized Al Harris in a half nelson.
"Let go of him." The voice was Kevin Conway's.
Abruptly Al Harris released Svenson, who fell backward to the dirt once more. He jerked loose and whirled to face the man who had restrained him, obviously meaning to unleash his full fury on whoever had so presumed.
Conway gave him no chance, taking him with a straight punch to the solar plexus that left him gasping and retching on his face in the dirt.
The young engineer reached down and helped Svenson to his feet, then turned to face George Harris, from whose face the hatred and satisfaction had been displaced by anxiety.
All three remained still and silent for a long interval. Finally, Conway snorted dismissively at the older man, turned, and led Svenson away with an arm around the shoulders.
"I didn't expect to see you here. This never struck me as your cup of tea."
"It isn't." Svenson had to talk around the ice-filled dishtowel into which he was bleeding.
"Anna and the kids here somewhere?"
"Somewhere." Svenson gestured vaguely with his free hand. "This was her idea. Where's Dot?"
Conway's face lost all expression.
"I don't know."
Svenson looked up in surprise.
"You don't mean she's here somewhere."
Conway gave a tiny shake of the head, lips pressed tightly together.
"Kevin, is there a problem?"
The young engineer scowled. "Of course there's a problem. My wife has left me. I don't know where she is. Do you mean, is there some other problem? Something really serious?"
"Calm down, Kev. How long?"
"About three weeks."
Conway's uninflected monotone conveyed more pain than Svenson had ever heard modulated onto a human voice. He bit back a multitude of stupid questions and tried to slow his rising heart rate, his own recent indignities forgotten.
"Kevin, why are you here?"
Conway looked away. "No particular reason. Mostly I just wanted to be around people. Might have been hoping I'd run into you."
"Hah." The absurdity of the notion was heightened by its having come true. Svenson cast the bloody dishtowel aside and rose from the picnic table. "Shall we walk?"
"How long have you known her?"
They had strolled the perimeter of the picnic grounds in silence, not seeing anyone else either of them knew.
"About twelve years. High school sweethearts." Conway shook his head as if to clear it. "I don't remember us ever having been apart this long before."
"What do her parents have to say?"
"Nothing much." The younger man's tone remained level. "They assured me that she was all right, said she'd probably be in touch soon."
"For all that Anna can be a trial, if she were to leave me, I might kill myself."
Conway looked up sharply. "Don't say that."
"Sorry." The silence returned.
Presently, Svenson said, "I forgot to thank you."
"Think nothing of it."
"Impossible. That was a very large man."
"All the same." Conway looked straight ahead, hands in his pockets.
"Were you that sure you could take him?"
"I don't lose fights, Rolf."
"Have you trained?"
"Not in boxing, no. But I'm big, and I'm strong, and I'm quick, and I don't lose my head when the action starts, and that's most of what it takes."
Svenson nodded and drew a deep breath. "Well, now you've met George Harris."
"I could've skipped it."
Despite all, Svenson had to chuckle. "Me, too."
"Y'know, I never thanked you either."
"For what?"
"For easing me through those first few months, when no one would talk to me, when I was sitting at George Harris's desk."
"But you still . . . " Svenson trailed off, and turned toward his friend. The younger man was still looking blankly ahead of him, but there was no pain in his face, and no tension.
"The only thing I've ever regretted was allowing myself to suffer for no good reason. You helped with that."
"I did?"
Conway turned to look him full in the face. Svenson recalled the conversation in the cafeteria, and said no more.
That evening, when Signe and Thomas had been put to bed and Anna had resumed her reading, Svenson acted on his decision.
"Sweetie."
"Hm?"
"We're moving."
Anna Svenson looked up with a frown of displeasure.
"What nonsense is this?"
Svenson smiled pleasantly. "We'll know where in a month or two. I'm going to tell Harry Goetz to put me into his relocation system tomorrow."
Anna put her book aside with an ominously definite gesture. "I thought we had discussed this."
"We have. We're not discussing it any further."
Her eyes widened in astonishment. "Are you serious?"
"Perfectly."
She rose from the couch. There was a tremor in her limbs, and in her voice when she spoke again.
"You're willing to disrupt the children's lives and force me to start a whole new practice just because you're tired of your job? You're going to make me go through selling this house, finding another one in a strange place, and making it livable all over again? Have you completely taken leave of your senses?" Her voice had risen near to a scream.
He shook his head. "Not a bit of it, my dear. Families move all the time. The children are young and resilient. They have us. There are accounting clients everywhere. There are houses everywhere. And you can stay here, if you like."
She gaped.
He forced himself to look squarely into her eyes. "I've endured my job for eleven years. Endured it, not enjoyed it. I will endure it no longer. I'm tired to death of trying to hide from myself the fact that I hate what I do. There are superior alternatives, and I will find one."
He rose, crossed the room, and took her into his arms. She looked up at him mutely.
"All things have a price. The price of our stability here is my self-respect. I've decided it's not worth it. If the price of my self-respect, of my being able to look myself in the eye, is losing you, Signe, and Thomas, I'll pay it. My self-respect is what I need to survive, and I intend to survive. The only question that remains is, which is worth more to you: our marriage and family, or staying here, where I can no longer stand to be?"
She had remained silent, but her tremble had crescendoed to a near-convulsive shaking. Consciously marshaling his calm, he squeezed her against him.
"There'll be time. You'll get used to it. So will the kids." He kissed her gently on the cheek, and her arms came up suddenly to clasp him.
She began to sob. He held her and himself steady.
Whatever comes, I'll weather it.
Thank you, Kevin.
