Copyright © 1960 by Farrar, Straus and Cudahy
Originally published in German as Gläserne Bienen by Ernst Klett Verlag
All rights reserved
Published in Canada by HarperCollins Canada Ltd
This edition first published in 1991 by The Noonday Press
Library of Congress catalog card number: 60-10005
Designed by Marshall Lee
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the resourceful and acute editorial help of Ruth Limmer, in the final stages of this translation.
Louise Rogan
CONTENTS
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
I
When we were hard up, Twinnings had to step in. This time I had waited too long: I should have decided to see him sooner, but misery undermines the will. As long as one still has some small coins to jingle together, one hangs around the cafés, staring into empty space. My run of bad luck seemed endless. I still had one suit in which I looked reasonably presentable, unless I crossed my legs. There were holes in my shoes. In such a situation solitude is preferable.
I had served with Twinnings in the Light Cavalry, and he frequently had given me and other comrades advice. He had good connections. After listening to me, he pointed out that I could count only on jobs with a catch to them. I knew this was the truth; I could not afford to be fastidious.
We were friends, which did not mean much, since Twinnings was friendly with nearly everyone he knew, except those with whom he was on bad terms at the moment. That was his business. He spoke to me without reservation, which did not embarrass me because it was rather like consulting a doctor who makes a thorough examination and does not waste words. He felt the lapel of my coat, testing the material. Suddenly I saw the spots on it, as if my vision had been sharpened.
He then discussed my situation in detail. A good part of me was, as it were, consumed, and though I had experienced much, I had accomplished little that might serve as reference. I had to admit that. The best jobs, those coveted by everyone, brought in a large income without involving too much work. But I did not have relatives who could bestow honors and commissions, like Paul Domann, for example, whose father-in-law built locomotives and earned more money at breakfast than people who, year in year out, slaved on Sundays and weekdays. The larger the objects you peddle, the easier it is; a locomotive can be sold quicker than a vacuum cleaner.
But I did have an uncle—a former senator, long since dead—nobody remembers him now. My father had lived the quiet life of a civil servant; the little he left me had long since disappeared, and I had married a poor girl. I could not make a great show of a dead senator or of a wife who comes to the door herself when the doorbell rings.
Jobs existed which involved much work and decidedly little pay. You sold refrigerators and washing machines from house to house until you were almost seized with doorbell panic. If you visited old war-comrades, they were, of course, resentful when you attacked them, all unsuspecting, with a life insurance policy. Smiling, Twinnings avoided saying anything about this sort of job, and I was grateful. He could, with reason, have asked me if I hadn’t learned anything better. He knew, of course, that I had once been employed in testing tanks, but he also knew that I was on the black list. Later I shall come back to this episode.
The rest were jobs with a risk attached. They provided a comfortable life, sufficient means, but troubled sleep. Twinnings mentioned a few of these—they resembled police jobs. Who nowadays did not have his own police? Times were unsafe. Life and property had to be protected, real estate and transportation closely guarded, blackmail and crime counteracted. Presumption increased in proportion to philanthropy. Anyone who reached a certain prominence could no longer rely on public protection; he had to have a cudgel in the house.
But even in this special field supply was greater than demand. All the good jobs were already filled. Twinnings had a great many friends and times were not propitious for ex-soldiers. There was, for instance, Lady Boston, an immensely rich and still youthful widow, who continually trembled for her children’s safety, particularly since capital punishment for kidnapping had been abolished. But Twinnings had already attended to this.
Another case was that of Preston, the oil magnate, who was obsessed with horses. Like an ancient Byzantine, he was crazy about his stables—a hippomaniac, who did not spare any expense to satisfy his passion. His horses were treated like demi-gods. Everyone tries to distinguish himself in some way and Preston considered horses more satisfying to his ambition than fleets of oil tanks and forests of derricks. His horses also drew royalty to his house. At the same time this passion brought with it a lot of trouble. Everyone had to be closely watched in the stables, and during transport as well as on the race track. Conspiracies among the jockeys, jealousies of other horse-fanciers, passions linked with high betting, were constant menaces. No diva has to be so carefully guarded as a race horse entered for the grand prix. This is a job for an old cavalryman, a man with a good eye and a heart for horses. But Tommy Gilbert already had the job and had found work for half of his cavalry unit too. He was the apple of Preston’s eye.
Twinnings ticked off these jobs one after another, as a chef would name the most delicious items no longer on a menu. This is a trait peculiar to all agents. He wished to whet my appetite. Finally he arrived at tangible offers; now you could be sure that there was more than one fly in the ointment.
The person in question was Giacomo Zapparoni, one of those men who have money to bum—although his father had crossed the Alps, penniless and on foot. You couldn’t open a newspaper or a magazine or sit in front of a movie screen without coming upon his name. His plant was quite near, and by exploiting both his own and foreign inventions, he had achieved a monopoly in his field.
Journalists wrote fantastic stories about the objects he manufactured. “To those who have, shall be given.” Probably their imagination ran wild. The Zapparoni Works manufactured robots for every imaginable purpose. They were supplied on special order, and in standard models which could be found in every household. It was not a question of big automatic machines as one might think at first. Zapparoni’s speciality was lilliputian robots. With a few exceptions their scale increased to the size of a watermelon and decreased to something the size of a Chinese curio. On the smaller scale they gave the impression of intelligent ants, distinct units working as mechanisms, that is, not at all in a purely chemical or organic fashion. This was one of Zapparoni’s business principles or, if you will, one of the rules of his game. When faced with two solutions, it seemed as if he almost always preferred the more subtle one. This choice corresponded with the trend of the times, and he was not the worse for it.
Zapparoni had started with tiny turtles—he called them “selectors”—which were designed for picking and choosing. They could count, weigh, sort gems or paper money and while doing so, eliminate counterfeits. The principle involved was soon extended; they worked in dangerous locations, handling explosives, dangerous viruses, and even radioactive materials. Swarms of selectors could not only detect the faintest smell of smoke but could also extinguish a fire at an early stage; others repaired defective wiring, and still others fed upon filth and became indispensable in all jobs where cleanliness was essential. My uncle, the senator, who all his life suffered from hay fever, no longer
had to retreat to the mountains after Zapparoni had put selectors, trained for pollen, on the market.
His apparatuses soon became irreplaceable, not only to industry and science but also to the housewife. They saved labor and introduced a human atmosphere, unknown until now, into the factory. A resourceful mind had discovered a gap which no one had seen, and had filled it. This is the best way to do business, the best way to make a fortune.
Yet in Zapparoni’s case the shoe pinched. Twinnings, for one, did not know the exact details, but one could roughly guess. Now and then he had difficulties with his workers. If someone is ambitious enough to force dead matter to think, he cannot do without original minds. Moreover, the measurements in question were infinitesimal. In the beginning, probably, it was less difficult to create a whale than a hummingbird.
Zapparoni had a staff of highly skilled experts. He greatly preferred that the inventors, who brought him their models, take on permanent employment with him, where they either reproduced their inventions or modified them. This was chiefly necessary in those departments where the objects, toys for instance, were dependent on fashion. Before the era of Zapparoni, no one had ever seen such fantastic toys—he created a lilliputian realm, a pygmy world, which made not only children but grown-ups forget time in a dreamlike trance. The toys went far beyond human imagination. But every year, for Christmas, this lilliput theater had to be redecorated with new settings and a new cast of characters.
The wages of Zapparoni’s employees equaled those of professors or even government officials. He was amply repaid. Should any of his workers give notice, it would mean irreparable loss, if not catastrophe for him, particularly if they chose to work elsewhere, either in this country or, still worse, abroad. Zapparoni’s wealth and monopoly rested not only upon his firm’s secret but upon a special technique, which could be acquired only in the course of decades and then not by everyone. And this technique was dependent on the workers, upon their hands, upon their brains.
To be sure, they had little inclination to quit a place where they were so well-treated and so royally paid. There were, however, exceptional cases. It’s an old truth that man cannot always be satisfied. Apart from that, the people employed by Zapparoni were an extremely difficult lot. Engaged in a most peculiar kind of work—the handling of minute and often extremely intricate objects—they gradually developed an eccentric, over-scrupulous behavior, and they developed personalities which took offence at the motes in a sunbeam. They could find flaws in everything. They were artists who had to measure objects of the size of a flea, provide them with horse-shoes, and screw them on. This was very close to pure fantasy. Zapparoni’s world of automatons, sufficiently uncanny in itself, was the setting for minds which indulged in the strangest whims. It was rumored that scenes frequently took place in his private office similar to those which occur in the office of the chief physician of a lunatic asylum. Unfortunately, robots capable of manufacturing robots do not yet exist. That would be the philosophers’ stone, the squaring of the circle.
Zapparoni had to face the facts. His geniuses were part of the character of his factory, and he handled them with diplomatic skill. He left the models to them while he reserved for himself the manipulation of men, displaying all the charm and flexibility of an Italian impresario. In doing so, he reached the limit of the possible. To be exploited by Zapparoni was the dream of every young man with a technical bent. Zapparoni hardly ever lost his self-control or his affability, but when he did, terrifying scenes followed.
Naturally, he tried to protect himself in the employment contracts, though in a most agreeable manner. The contracts were drawn up for a lifetime, with provisions for gradual wage increases, for premiums, insurance, and, in the case of breach of contract, penalties. The employee who had signed a contract with Zapparoni and could call himself “master” or “author” was a man whose success was assured. He had his own house, his own car, and his paid vacation on Teneriffe or in Norway.
There were some restrictions, it is true—scarcely noticeable however—that actually added up to a well-devised control system. Various arrangements served this purpose: they were marked with the innocent labels which today disguise a secret service—one of them was called, I believe, the Clearing House. The lists kept on every single employee in the Zapparoni Works resembled police dossiers. Only they went into more detail. Nowadays a person has to be mentally X-rayed in order to find out what to expect from him, because the temptations are enormous.
All this was perfectly correct. To take precautions against breaches of confidence is one of the duties of the manager of a great industry. To assist Zapparoni in protecting the secrets of his firm proved that one was on the side of the law.
What happened, then, if one of the experts gave notice, or simply left and paid the penalty? Here was a weak point in Zapparoni’s system. After all, he could not detain anyone by force; it was a great risk. It was in his own interest, therefore, to demonstrate that either form of absconding would prove undesirable. There are, we know, many ways and means to turn the screws on a person, particularly when money doesn’t count.
In the first place, you can saddle him with lawsuits. They have already taught many a man a lesson. The law, however, was not without gaps; for some time now it lagged behind technical development. What, for example, could the right of “authorship” be called in such a case? Wasn’t it the glory, which the head of a team radiated, rather than personal merit, a glory that could not simply be detached and taken along? And wasn’t it the same with artistic skill, developed in the course of thirty or forty years with the help and at the expense of the plant? This skill was not the property of a single individual. The individual was indivisible—or wasn’t he? These were problems which the primitive mind of a policeman could hardly solve. Confidential positions presuppose independent thinking. The essential has to be guessed at; it was not mentioned, either in writing or by word of mouth. It must be grasped intuitively.
All this I roughly gathered from Twinnings’ remarks, which were a mixture of logic and guesswork. Perhaps he knew more, perhaps less. In such cases the less said, the better. I already understood enough; Zapparoni was looking for a man to do the dirty work.
The job was not for me. I shall not speak of morality—that would be ridiculous. I had served through the whole Asturian civil war. In that kind of warfare no one’s hands stay clean, high or low, right or left. You met types with a list of sins which would have staggered case-hardened father confessors. Of course, they would not have dreamed of going to confession; on the contrary, when they got together they were high-spirited, even boastful, as the Bible says, of their misdeeds. People with tender consciences were not popular with them. But they had their own moral code. Not one of them would have accepted the job that Twinnings proposed to me—not so long as he wished to keep the respect of the others, whatever the color of his skin. He would have been excluded from their comradeship, from their drinking bouts, from their camp. His comrades would not have trusted him, would have been tongue-tied in his presence, and would not expect his aid in an emergency. Even prisoners and galley slaves are extremely sensitive on this point.
Therefore, after listening to the story of Zapparoni and his querulous workers, I would have left at once, if Teresa had not been sitting at home, waiting for me. Twinnings was my last straw, and she had set all her hopes upon our meeting.
I am not suited to deal with money or to earn it. Probably Mercury’s aspect is unfavorable. This fact becomes more conspicuous as I get older. In our first years together Teresa and I had lived on my demobilization checks, and later we had sold some of our belongings; now there was nothing left to sell. In every household there is a corner where once the lares and penates were assembled, and where today the unsalable objects are kept. In our case these objects were a few racing trophies and other engraved silver left me by my father. Teresa believed I had been sorry to give them up. Her chief worry was that she might be a burden to me; it was her idée fix
e. But it was I who should have done something long ago—our misery was entirely the result of my own inertia. The sole reason was that I loathed anything connected with business.
I cannot bear the role of a martyr. It makes me furious to be taken for a good man. But Teresa had just this habit: she moved around me as if I were a saint. She saw me in an entirely false light. She should have scolded me, raged, broken vases—but unfortunately she was not that kind of person.
Even as a schoolboy I disliked work. If I was in trouble up to my neck, I wriggled out by developing a temperature. I knew a way to do it. Then I was sent to bed and nursed by my mother with juices and compresses. My cheating didn’t worry me at all—I even enjoyed it, but I felt guilty at being pampered like a poor sick child. So in return, I tried to behave intolerably; but the more effectively I acted up, the more everyone worried about my health.
It was almost the same with Teresa; I could not bear to think of her face should I come home without any prospects. When she opened the door, she would instantly read everything in my face.
Possibly I was regarding the whole matter too unfavorably. I was still one mass of useless and antiquated prejudices. Since everything was now supposed to be based on a contract—which was founded neither upon oath nor atonement nor Man—trust and faith no longer existed. Discipline had vanished from the world. It had been replaced by the catastrophe. We were living in permanent unrest, and no one could trust anyone else. Was it my responsibility?
Twinnings, watching me sit there, unable to make up my mind, seemed to know my weak point; he said:
“Teresa would most certainly be pleased if you came home with something definite.”
II
This reminded me of the time—long ago—when we had been cadets. Twinnings sat next to me. Even then there was a touch of the middleman about him, and he was on good terms with everybody. It had been a tough time; we weren’t treated with kid gloves. Our instructor was Monteron; his presence always cowed us.