Ordeal by Terror. Lloyd Biggle jr.
“To work with a calculating cad,” Adelle suggested.
“If you say so,” Mondor said imperturbably. “If we three had to occupy the same office, there’d be murder before the end of a week. We survive only because we work so far apart, but that’s another thing that’s loony. This setup would give an efficiency expert apoplexy.” He got to his feet resignedly and turned off the fountain. “I’ll call you about those figures.”
She turned and went back into the building without waiting for him. Word machine, indeed! When she reached her office, the phone was ringing. She hurried to answer it.
“Six, three,” Mondor said. “Did I muck up anything else?”
She glanced over the next six pages and told him most of the figures were half legible.
Craig Dolan came in a few minutes later, grinning broadly and waving some typewritten sheets of copy. Mondor had once said Dolan could pass for Santa Claus if the padding was moved from his head to his stomach, but this was an exaggeration on several counts. He was an inch or two taller than six feet and large framed, but thus far the beer that he drank had put very little fat on him—perhaps because he consumed so few calories from other sources. Adelle thought his twinkling blue eyes indicated malice rather than mischief, and if she had heard him exclaim, “Ho! Ho! Ho!” she would have looked quickly to see whose leg had just been broken. His blond beard was medium length and neatly trimmed, and he wore bushy sideburns and kept his hair long. His trousers and open sport shirt always looked in need of pressing and cleaning. With a protruding jaw, he could have posed in a museum’s Neanderthal exhibit. Give Neanderthal Man long hair, a beard, sideburns, and sloppy modern dress, and—presto! Craig Dolan.
Gerald Wyman, the young man she had a date with, also had blond hair and blue eyes, and the contrast between him and Dolan had been a revelation to her. Because there had been so few men in her life, she was guilty of generalizing from insufficient evidence.
Dolan flourished the copy he was carrying. “Madam lost it. Then she insisted I’d never done it. I found it on her desk under umpteen dozen other things including that suitcase she calls a purse.”
“Handbag,” Adelle said. “I’ve never heard her call it a purse.”
“It’s certainly a bag,” Dolan agreed. “Hand, overnight, weekend, nose—take your pick. For that matter, so is she. A bit unhinged, too. Have you talked with the nicotine fiend today?” Dolan, who didn’t smoke, enjoyed razzing Mondor about his noon hour indulgence in a cigarette or two.
“Not willingly,” Adelle said.
“No one talks with Mondor willingly. Did he give you his lecture about this setup being loony?”
“He did. And it is, isn’t it?”
“Of course, but it isn’t politic to say so. If he’s right, our rooms probably are bugged.”
“In that case, we ought to do our work and shut up,” Adelle said politely. She took the copy from him. “I suppose this has to be done at once.”
“It was supposed to be done yesterday, but I told Madam I didn’t think you could manage that. ‘Loony’ is far too mild a word, but Mondor is only a Researcher/Statistician. Probably it was the best he could do.”
“As I remember it, he also mentioned ‘sinister.’”
“Then he’s found a thesaurus since I talked with him. ‘Sinister’ comes closer. Why are we called researchers when none of us researches anything? Someone furnishes the figures Mondor does his statistical stuff on, and the notes I base my copy on, and when I need a stray fact I telephone Madam, and she calls me back and tells me. The goons must look things up for her in their spare time, of which they seem to have quite a lot. I’ll swear she couldn’t find a fact or anything else all by herself. But why call me a researcher, and pay me for it, when all I do is write? Why call you one when you don’t do anything but massage a computer keyboard?”
“Future anticipation, maybe,” Adelle said. “Why are the three of us spread all over the building? Maybe each of these wings is going to be a separate department.”
“I hope you’re right. A couple more weeks of this, and my paychecks will become a habit. The setup is loony and also sinister, and when I have time, I’ll teach Mondor a few new words. On the other hand, Z-R Publications does show indications of actually intending to publish something. Madam just asked me what I thought of some offset pages of one of your lovely printouts.”
“Really?” Adelle exclaimed. “Do the goons have a press to play with?”
“I think Madam had someone offset a few pages to see how your copy would look. It looks good. When you finish that stuff, give her a buzz.”
“I’ll do it as soon as I finish this page,” Adelle promised.
Dolan pulled up a chair, a spindly item that looked much too small for his bulk and too fragile for his weight. “This place is double-phony,” he said. “Have you noticed how the interior of every wing is in a different style from the exterior? Tell me this. Did Mondor ever try to date you?”
Adelle sat frowning at the copy he had brought. Who had tried to date her, Mondor or anyone else, certainly was none of Dolan’s business. She said, “Of course. He’s a normal male—lecherous and obnoxious.”
“And you consider me abnormal?”
“Supernormal. Lecherous, obnoxious, and nauseating.”
“But only in the presence of a two-legged refrigerator,” Dolan grinned.
She shook her head. “Freezer. When you’re around, any respectable refrigerator becomes one. Now if you don’t mind—”
“Tell me why you hate men.”
“I don’t. That’d be silly. Why hate half the human race? It’s just that at the moment I don’t care to own one.”
“One more question. Have you dated anyone at all since you came to Ann Arbor?”
Adelle smiled at him. She felt immensely grateful to Gerald Wyman, the nice young man in her apartment building. Thanks to his concert invitation, she could answer truthfully, “Of course I have.”
Dolan stared at her for a moment. Then he got to his feet, returned the chair to its original position, and strode away. Adelle’s smile broadened. In one afternoon she’d been called a word machine and a two-legged refrigerator. It made her day a double success.
Whether Z-R Publications was loony and sinister, or one or the other, or neither, she was being paid an extraordinary salary for a simple typing job, and she intended to work as enthusiastically as she could while it lasted and ask no questions. She finished the page of statistics. Then she typed Dolan’s copy and telephoned Madam.
A short time later Madam tiptoed in, beaming with pride and bringing the offset pages to show to Adelle. Adelle agreed that they looked excellent. Madam complimented Adelle’s typing, and Adelle generously gave the credit to her computer and printer, especially the printer, which produced even, crisp letters that looked very much like printed material.
“Those pants really are lovely, Darlink,” Madam said. She took the copy and departed, tossing a last, superfluous “Darlink” over her shoulder as she went out the door. Adelle wearily returned to Mondor’s statistics.
While she typed, she thought about the evening ahead of her: bath, book, and bed. Tomorrow, the visit to Greenfield Village. She was amused at the number of people she encountered who had lived in Southeastern Michigan all their lives and never seen it.
And then her Sunday date. She had met Gerald Wyman in the apartment building’s laundry room, and they chatted while their laundry was being done. She enjoyed talking with him, and they seemed to have a great deal in common, but she was far too practical to spin a fantasy on the basis of half an hour’s conversation. One date did not, as Dolan thought, constitute a relationship.