Nine Men in Time Page 2

morning I saw a new face at the keyboard of one of ourlinecasting machines. I had long ago adopted democracy as a good policy,so now I stopped to introduce myself. "I'm J. J. Shane, the manager."

  His hands, with incredibly long fingers, had been just flowing over thekeyboard--that is the only way to describe it--with the long fingersmoving down an inch or so whenever they were above the right key, anddoing it all so smoothly it was hard to realize he was actuallycomposing lines. His hands seemed to flow back and forth like the tide,and yet he was setting twenty ems eight-point and keeping the machinehung. Here, I thought right away, was a valuable man. This fellow couldbe a pace-setter if we would handle him right.

  But when I spoke to him and held out my hand, he looked at me for asecond without missing a stroke, then his hands dropped away from thekeyboard and he started to unfold himself from the chair.

  "You don't need to get up," I said hastily. "I don't want to take up anyof your time."

  But he finished unfolding himself and stood up. "I have plenty of time,"he said. He was over seven feet tall, and that meant a foot and a halfover me--and very thin. His clothes looked pretty weatherbeaten, as ifmaybe he'd been caught in a few rainstorms.

  "Jones," said his booming voice from somewhere far above me."High-Pockets Jones, sometimes known as the Dean of Barn-stormers."

  I leaned back to look up at him. His face was as weatherbeaten as hisclothes. I recognized the reddish tan that comes from facing a hot windon the top of a moving boxcar. He was obviously a bum, and probablywouldn't be with us long, but there was something almost of nobility inhis eyes--calmness, gentleness, or perhaps just the knowledge of havingbeen in many, many situations and the experience gained from getting outof them, and the self-assurance that he would always be able to get outof any situation.

  I reached up to shake hands. "Yes, I've heard of you," I said. "You'resort of a throwback to the days when they needed barnstormers to correctbad working-conditions, aren't you?"

  He chose to pass that remark, "I've heard of you, too," he said, thatlast word sounding like the low string on a bull fiddle.

  I laughed quickly but efficiently--shortly, I believe they call it."Nothing good, I hope."

  High-Pockets Jones paused a moment before he answered: "Not bad, untillately."

  It took me a moment or two to realize what he had said. I bent back tolook at his face. He was quite sober about it.

  "Okay," I said hastily. "I don't want to keep you from your work."

  I worried a little about High-Pockets. I had heard a lot about him; hewas a sort of mystery man in the printing business, going from place toplace, wherever printers felt they were having trouble, and trying tostraighten things out.

  The stories about him indicated that he had some odd ways of doing that,based largely on a sort of legendary influence that he had overmachinery. I remembered even the theory that all machinery wasnegatively charged with some sort of "personal" electricity, and thatHigh-Pockets--having been hit by lightning--had a terrifically highcharge of positive electricity of the same sort, which enabled him to domiraculous things on occasion with machinery--especially linecastingmachines.

  Well, I dismissed that as a bunch of talk, but what I didn't quite likewas the fact that High-Pockets traditionally appeared in places where hewas needed to straighten out things for the men.

  * * * * *

  I went into conference with Dr. Hudson, and he agreed with me that weshould go right ahead; but we'd keep an eye on High-Pockets Jones, andat the first sign of interference Mr. Jones would find himself in agreat deal of trouble. I would even, I decided, stoop to having himthrown in jail on a phony charge, if that should be necessary.

  By this time we had started on the Legal Printing Company job, and wewent ahead with our next offensive. Mind-reading came first. Dr. Hudsoninstalled a black box at the water-fountain, and he explained to the menwhat it was for. He had a private wire to his desk, and a transformerthat turned the current from the box back into thoughts. It was quiteefficient. Some of the thoughts we got the first day were vituperative,some were quite obscene, and some were pretty feeble, but that didn'tmatter. It got the boys to worrying, and it saved us a bottle of springwater a day.

  Then there was the installation of the lucite piping. Of course seeingin curves had been possible for years, but never on this scale. We pipedlucite to every place where a man worked, and so we could throw a switchin the inner office and check on every man in the shop without theirknowing it. That was a very clever device; it really put the men on thespot.

  Once in a while, when I needed to relax, I would flip a switch and throwHigh-Pockets Jones' machine on the screen. The smooth rhythm of thoseflowing hands was more soothing than a lullaby, especially because Iknew how much type they were getting up.

  Then we advanced to the third step in our strategy: having a man in twoplaces at once.

  Dr. Hudson finished making his cabinet filled with coils andtransformers and condensers and circuits I'd never heard of, and we setit up in the composing-room one night.

  It was that night that full realization hit me that we had set only twohundred galleys of type out of the two thousand on the Legal PrintingCompany job, and that there were only two weeks left to get it out.Somehow or other, I had let it slip by. I thought Dr. Hudson waswatching those things; I had been busy trying to make an impression forthe receivers.

  I was sick when I figured it all out. We had six machines. If we shouldrun those six machines two shifts a day, our capacity was about threehundred and sixty galleys a week. Into eighteen hundred that goesconsiderably more than two times. We would need five weeks of fullproduction--and we couldn't possibly give it full production; we hadother jobs, too.

  The only hope was Dr. Hudson's new machine.

  The next day the electricians hooked it up to a twelve-hundred-voltfeed-line, and by noon it was ready to go. At twelve-thirty, as soon asthe men punched in, I called them together. This was on office time, ofcourse, so there couldn't be any squawk. Dr. Hudson was there toexplain. I never had fully realized how much of him was nose before Iwatched him that day.

  "Gentlemen," he said, "this is nothing to be afraid of. This is merelya modern device to assure continuous production in the composing-room byeliminating lost time from sickness and accidents. As you know, if alinotype operator is ill, his machine goes untouched. That day'sproduction is lost. At a cost per man of around ten dollars an hour,that represents a considerable loss."

  He opened the cabinet and showed them a comfortable leather seat inside.

  "There are two compartments in this cabinet," he said. "All this machinedoes is to produce, temporarily, an extra man to fill the sick man'splace. One of the men present steps in here; I close the door, see thatthe machine is charged here on the other side with plenty of linotypemetal to provide the material of atomic synthesis, press the button, andlo!--the man in the chair is duplicated on the other side of thecabinet."

  High-Pockets Jones stepped forward with his deep eyes fixed on Dr.Hudson. "What," High-Pockets asked, "is your theory of this machine?"

  Dr. Hudson smiled. "I am glad you asked that, Mr. Jones. Very glad. Thisprocess is in no sense a separation or thinning out of the man in thechair. It is, in reality; an unusual extension of the well-known factthat nature tends to follow a pattern. If you want to make a syntheticsapphire, you start with a seed sapphire, and the artificial processbuilds up on that. Now, this machine, which I call an extender, ismerely a far-reaching extension of the synthesis of precious stones."

  "By use of a revolutionary type of three-dimensional scanner, which wasinvented by myself," he said modestly, "I am able to focus on a certainobject from a certain distance and, if there is material at hand,synthesize an exact duplicate of the original from the scanner. Itdoesn't hurt the original in any way. You merely have two where you hadbut one."

  The men stood around bug-eyed and stared incredulously--all butHigh-Pockets. "Is the second one alive?" he asked. "
I mean, would yousay it has a soul?"

  "That," said Dr. Hudson crisply, "is out of my field. I suggest youconsult your spiritual adviser."

  The chairman stepped up, "You have tried this thing, have you?"

  "Thoroughly tested," said Dr. Hudson.

  I refrained from smiling. The printers were flabbergasted; they didn'tknow what to do or think. The chairman was trying to get his poorfogged brain together with arguments. The only person besides myself andDr. Hudson who seemed to be at ease was the barnstormer, High-PocketJones.

  "In-other words," High-Pockets said, "if we are short an operator, I canwalk in that cabinet and you can in a few minutes make anotherHigh-Pockets Jones, who will set type until you put him back