But I was never on the receiving end of that sort of discrimination, so my feelings were all sort of on an intellectual level.
On that spring morning in 1971, I couldn't help having a gut feeling that there was something inherently
wrong
when you see a small, pretty woman in coveralls loading a three-ton casting into the jaws of a lathe with an eight-foot throw. Yes, she was using an overhead crane to do it with, just as any man would have had to do, but there still seemed to be a wrongness about it all.
I could see that Ian was even more upset about the whole thing than I was, so I steered him back into the elevator, even though half the women in the shop had seen us come out. We went down to the subway level, crossed over to our private elevator, and then went up to the hallway between our offices.
I made a right and went to my office, and Ian followed me. I sat behind my desk and pressed the button marked "secretary."
An attractive woman came in immediately, smiled and said, "Yes, sir?"
Which was just fine, except that she was dressed in the fashion which most of the women at my mansion had adopted. That is to say, in nothing but a pair of skimpy shoes. I mean, yes, she was pretty, she was well built, and nakedness looked very nice on her, but was this lack of clothing conducive to a proper working environment?
Ignoring the clothing issue for the moment, I said, "Please have my majordomo, Barbara, and Ian's Ming Po come here immediately."
"Yes, sir."
As she left, Ian said, "From the looks of things, we don't have a workforce, here. We've got another fucking harem!"
Before I could answer, and explain that fucking was what harems were for, our housekeepers came in. This sort of instantaneous appearance had happened so often that I had come to expect it.
"Okay, Barb.
Why
did the two of you decide to 'man' this installation entirely with women?"
"But Tom, we made no such decision!"
"Well, somebody sure as hell did!" Ian said, "There isn't one single male human being out there. Are you claiming that not one single qualified man applied for a job here?"
"No sir, many qualified men applied for work here."
"Then why in hell didn't any of them get hired?"
"Because in all cases, women outbid them for the jobs available, sir."
I said, "Hold it. What do you mean, 'bid for the jobs'? Just how do you go about filling a working position around here?"
"When a position becomes open, the prospective employer posts a notice at the Employment Office, describing the job, the maximum salary that might be paid, and the qualifications necessary to fill it. The Employment Office screens job applicants, and decides who is qualified for what. Job applicants read these postings, offer to fill those that they are qualified for, and bid a minimum salary that they would be willing to work for. In our case, all of the women who applied were willing to work for less than the equally qualified men were."
"That seems like a reasonable enough system, but why were the women willing to work so much cheaper than the men?"
"A person expects many forms of remuneration from their job. Besides money, one wants a chance for personal growth and advancement, a pleasant working environment, interesting, challenging work, and . . . other things."
"Other things?" I asked.
"Tom, she's saying that the women were willing to work cheap because by working here, they'll get a chance to meet us," Ian said. "Those who didn't get jobs at our palaces figured that this was their next best shot."
"The mind boggles. Barb, how much are the girls out there working for? For that matter, what do the women at the palaces make? How much are you, yourself, paid?"
"Minimum wage, Tom. We're all earning the least that the regulations permit."
"Uh huh. And how does this minimum wage compare with the usual salary paid to an experienced skilled tradesman or a good engineer?"
"Usually, such people would make about six times minimum page."
"And all of these women are willing to work for starvation wages, just to get a chance to meet Ian and me?"
"Yes, Tom. Although no one is starving, of course. All wages include food, housing, and medical insurance."
Ian said, "Barb, I want you and Ming Po to go out and wait for a while. Tom and I need to talk."
When they were gone, Ian continued, "Tom, there are a lot of things that I don't like about all this. One of them is that I don't like wearing solid gold buttons on my silk shirt while I'm paying people scab wages."
"Agreed. As of now, everybody who works for us gets paid as much as they would earn if we weren't here."
"No way. We've got to make it retroactive to the date of hiring. And all of Hasenpfeffer's women have to be included in the deal."
"Seconded and so moved. Next, what do we do about the hundred or so women out there? If we replace them with men, what do we do with them? Do we fire them because they're women?"
"Tom, how could we do that and still be honorable men? No, we have to keep those women who have already been hired, and try to treat them just like men."
"But they don't
want
to be treated like men. They offered to work for nearly nothing because they expected us to treat them like women! Are you going to decline the services of the next attractive woman who works her way into your bed? Could any normal man turn down that many decent, gorgeous women? I mean, there are these biological imperatives that a man doesn't have all that much to say about!"
"And there are some religious reasons for doing the same thing. God's very first commandment was for us to be fruitful, to divide and multiply. But what I meant was that in the work situation, we should try to be as fair as possible, and keep our private, sexual lives separate from our working lives."
"Good luck. I'll tell you what I'm minded to do. Aside from Barb, I've followed Hasenpfeffer's original suggestion, and put all the girls at my place on a schedule. They each have their occasional night in bed with me, and if it happens that they get laid before then, they forfeit their next turn, until all the others have caught up."
"Yeah. I've done about the same, Tom."
"So, I'm going to tell Barb to put all the women who work for me on the same schedule. Those who want to, that is. If the girls at the palace don't like it, well, they can blame the whole thing on Barb."
"Okay. Then I'll do the same. But it's not going to be easy, treating the girl you slept with last night like she's just another worker."
"It's a rough life, Ian, but England expects every man to do his duty."
"I've got a better idea. How about if the girls who work here for you belong to my harem, and your new harem girls all work for me? After that, we try not to mess around with each other's girls, and pillow talk about work isn't allowed."
"A good thought! We'll act on it."
We called in Barb and Ming Po, and explained the new program to them. I was surprised that they weren't happier about the way we'd just octtippled their salaries, retroactively to last month, but they weren't. It was like they actually didn't care, one way or the other.
"One other thing," I said. "Dress codes. Anybody working down below on the plant floor is expected to wear proper safety equipment, including safety glasses, steel tipped shoes, hard hats, and sturdy garments that completely cover them. People who might occasionally need to go down there shall wear safety glasses and hard hats, at least, when they do. And people who work in an office environment must wear shoes and other clothing that completely covers at least their torsos. Anyone dressing too sexy, in our opinion, will be sent home to change. This last is for our benefit, not yours. All play and no work doesn't get the job done."
"Yes, Tom."
"Good. Now, let's go meet the managers you've hired for us."
As we walked past my new secretary, I noticed that she was now properly dressed in a skirt, blouse, and sensible shoes.
I decided right off that I would stay on a last name basis with the women who worked for me, in an attempt at keeping our relationships as businesslike as possible.
I told them that they could call me "sir."
I later noticed Ian doing the same thing, I suppose for the same reason. Something had to be done, since every woman in the shop was as beautiful as any of the women at the palaces. By ordinary American standards, they were all knockouts, each as beautiful as any leading lady that Alfred Hichcock ever put on the screen.
I soon met the five key people I had working for me. There was Kowalski, my secretary. She was one of those extremely organized people who always knows where everything and everybody is. She had two other secretaries subordinate to her.
Preston was primarily a mathematician, although she got her Ph.D. in physics. I figured that we'd be working together a lot. My math has always been a bit poor, and up until then, I'd had to ask Ian's help when I needed to get into anything beyond calculus. Preston didn't have a solid place in our table of organization, and her name just appeared near the top boxed in with dotted lines that didn't connect to anyone else, not even me. She had no subordinates, but she was sort of on call to anybody who needed theoretical or mathematical help.
As the weeks went by, she got to spending much of her time at the coffee bar located between engineering and the technician's assembly area. When I asked her about that, she said that some people were hesitant about "bothering" her in her office, and she worked better on an informal basis, anyway. Later, she admitted that the biggest reason for her new location was the two hundred pounds of Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee I had donated to the bar from my palace's stores.
DuBoise was a solid electrical engineer, and was competent and disciplined, if not overly imaginative. She did everything exactly "by the book," and kept copious notes on everything she did. Everyone was encouraged to keep a journal of the work they did, but DuBoise filled them up at the rate of three a month. She headed a team consisting of eight other engineers, two computer programmers, and nine draftsmen.
O'Mally was an engineer, too, but of a more practical bent than DuBoise. Like me, she was of the "make it work, and fill out the paperwork later, if you have time" school of thought. She headed up a group of eighteen assorted technicians.
Brown was in charge of purchasing and liaison work with both suppliers and customers. We didn't have a sales or marketing group, since for the foreseeable future, all of our products would be used internally within our own greater company, KMH Industries, which consisted of the entire City of Morrow, and much else, besides. Not that we planned to let any of our temporal devices get off the island.
We didn't have an advertising group, either, since everybody on the island already knew about us.
The accounting people reported to Brown, as well, as did the janitors, for a total of twenty-one subordinates. It seemed like an odd bag, but those functions had been grouped under her, and her under me, primarily to make the size of my group the same size as Ian's group.
Which meant that when Barb had set it up, she was thinking more about a balanced harem than of an efficient work force.
Someday, I'm going to get ahead of that little girl.
Still and all, it was a day well spent. The six of us had gotten ourselves shaken down, then, in a four hour meeting with Ian and his people, we had figured out what we had to do, and had a schedule that said when we were going to do what.
Late that night, after four new ladies (two mechanical engineers, a draftsman and a machinist with a Ph.D.—a woman also strange in other ways) had come and gone, I was alone in bed with Barb.
"Barb, you're awake, aren't you?" I said quietly.
"Of course, Tom."
"I should have asked you sooner, but is it inconvenient for you to lie beside me every night while I sleep? I mean, what with you not sleeping and all. Doesn't it get boring?"
"Not really. My mind doesn't need to sleep, but my body still needs to rest, and if I wasn't by your side, I'd be lying down somewhere else, alone. I like being by you, and it gives me time to think."
"What do you think about?"
"Nothing important, usually. I go over the events of the day, and sort of mull them over. I plan the things that I'll be doing tomorrow. That sort of thing."
"Hmm. Well, if I ever do something that you are not happy with, be sure and tell me about it, won't you? I want you to be happy. You've become a very important person to me."
"Thank you, Tom."
"There's another thing that I've been meaning to ask you about. It's been more than a month since that first night we spent together. At the time, you said that there was a sixty percent chance that that you had conceived a child."
"Yes?"
"Well, have you? I mean, a month has gone by and all. Did you miss a period? Are you pregnant?"
"I am not pregnant now, Tom."
"Oh. Okay. To be honest, I don't know if I'm disappointed or relieved. I mean, you'd be a wonderful mother and all, but at the same time, having a child is such a huge responsibility, and I'm not sure whether or not I'm ready for it. I doubt if any man is, until after it happens to him."
"Not being a man, I couldn't advise you on that one, Tom."
"True. And what's more, I find it
good
that you are not a man. Good night, Barb."
"Good night, Tom."
I fell asleep kicking myself, because once more I had lost my nerve. I had not asked this perfect little woman to marry me.
Tuesday being a day when Ian's people cooked our breakfast, I met him there in his Taj Mahal.
"Tom, I've been playing with an idea for a logo for our new company. M and K Temporal Engineering."
Ian was already working on his usual stack of Famo Buckwheat pancakes with Vermont maple syrup. I'd gotten into the habit of asking to be surprised with something completely different each morning, and on that particular morning I was served some poached herring, English style, she said. It seemed like a strange thing to eat for breakfast, but it didn't taste all that bad.