Prescription for Chaos (41 page)

Grissom looked startled. "No. But either you're overstating the criticisms—"

"—You may just be right, at that," said Schwenck.

"—Or we've got a real mess on our hands," said Grissom.

There was a little silence as Grissom, Schwenck, and everybody else in the room, put the pieces of sentences together, to work out who had just said what. Then Schwenck cleared his throat.

"I'm not overstating the objections. I haven't even finished with them. The shape—the style—of this trap is straight out of the Great Depression. The colors—in the catalog, the one that's called 'Cherryapple'—in reality it's an off-shade of red that clashes with more backgrounds than anything I ever saw before. We have succeeded in getting dozens of these stoves into the hands of the dealers, and the one thing I'm grateful for is that it's dozens and not hundreds."

The silence following Schwenck's last remark was broken by a faint rustling and creaking of chairs as people shifted position uneasily, then Schwenck shook his head.

"Last night I dreamt some fanatical gang blew up half the oil industry in the Middle East, and everyone was buying our stoves. They were selling like hotcakes. The president himself bought one. I woke up in a cold sweat. All I could think of was the shock in store for all these customers."

Halfway down the long table, a pretty woman with dark-blonde hair said, "Do our stoves
work
, Mr. Schwenck?"

Schwenck reminded himself that the name and seeming mildness of this director—descended from a manager of the company named John J. Phyllis—could both be deceptive.

"They work," he said finally, "but to keep warm on a really cold night you pay a small fortune for one of the larger versions, or get up twice to reload the little one."

"Does what you've mentioned conclude the list of defects? Or are there more?"

Schwenck opened his mouth, but didn't get a chance to speak. Sanson, apparently out of an impulse to protect his subordinate, put in, "You have to remember, Miss Leslie, it's the small model Mr. Schwenck is really unhappy with."

The pretty blonde looked at Sanson coolly.

Sanson looked briefly puzzled, then winced. "Excuse me. I mean, Miss Phyllis."

She glanced back at Schwenck, who said, "It doesn't conclude the list of defects, though it's all I can think of at the moment. It's all but impossible to remember all the things that are wrong with this stove."

"But does it work?"

"It does give heat."

"And that is what it is supposed to do, isn't it?"

"Yes, but the problem is the way it does it. It's a very wearing way to try to stay warm."

"But if there were a fuel shortage, it would help solve the problem, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, it would. But if we ever want to sell two of these stoves to the same customer, or to sell one by word of mouth to anyone, we have a lot of improvements to make."

"What are you doing to correct the problem?"

"I've got everyone I can working on it. It looks to me as if we need a complete redesign."

"And how long will that take?"

"If things don't go just right, it could take a year-and-a-half. I never knew things to go just right yet."

"When this 'solid-fuel converter' was first suggested as a fit source of investment for us," said Leslie Phyllis sweetly, "it seems to me we were told it already had a long successful history behind it."

Schwenck opened his mouth, and shut it again without saying anything. Involuntarily, he glanced at Sanson.

Sanson cleared his throat. "That was my responsibility, Miss Phyllis."

She turned to look at Sanson.

Sanson said, "At Superdee, we sold a lot of these stoves, including the small model. So far as I know, no one ever complained."

"Then you disagree with Mr. Schwenck?"

"I wish I did. No, he's right. This stove is a real bomb, and that's leaning over backwards to be polite."

"But it's the same stove you sold before, isn't it?"

"In most ways, yes, it is."

"Well, how can that be?"

"Two things have changed. We've added the Combuster. That takes up space, and gets in the way, particularly in the small model. Then, too, we're planning to sell these stoves in great numbers, to new customers—customers used to oil heat. At Superdee, we sold them to rural families who had been using wood or coal stoves for a long time. These present models are still solid, well built, long-lasting stoves that will do a good heating job for people who need a reliable coal stove, and are used to them—or for people who are upgrading from wood stoves. For someone used to an oil burner, it's a different matter entirely."

"Why?"

"For someone who learned to drive in a car with a stick shift, changing gears is no problem. It's a different matter if you've always driven an automatic, and suddenly you've got to drive a stick shift. The market we are aiming these stoves at now will respond to them the same way. These are people used to automatic heat—to thermostats."

"Yes . . . but if there's an actual fuel emergency?"

"People will buy them if they have to. But everyone will make stoves once it's clear there's a need. What we can naturally expect is a big demand, which we can't possibly keep up with. Then, after we increase production, demand for our models will drop like a rock—because word will get around about the defects in this stove. Then our competitors will skim the cream."

Cartwright said, "I have to agree with Mr. Sanson and Mr. Schwenck. The fact remains, we at least have a stove—which is more than most of our potential competitors can say. And now we see what the problems are. If we can clean up the problems, we'll have the advantage we've been aiming at since the beginning."

"Does the combuster work?"

Cartwright nodded, and glanced at Schwenck.

Schwenck said, "It works, but the fifteenth time you bang into that brace when you put in a shovel of coal—"

"But, look here, Mr. Schwenck, didn't you know where the combuster was going to be when you authorized production? How is it that it ended up in the wrong place?"

"I've asked myself the same question. In the original computer design, we allowed room for the shovel to enter the feed-door opening and deposit the coal in the combustion zone. We even checked out the measurements on a full-scale hand-assembled model to be sure. And it is possible, if you have someone open the door and hold it open, to carefully put a normal-sized fire shovel into the firebox and not bang into anything."

"Then what's the problem?"

"There's a difference between loading the stove in a laboratory-type setting, and actually using it. This Combuster is held in place by braces—three of them reach down into the firebox. It's perfectly possible to miss all three. But the feed door tends to swing shut; to avoid the door, you move the shovel a little, and then you hit the left-hand brace. That never happened when we checked it out, because we were crowded around the stove, and someone held the door open."

Leslie Phyllis looked at him thoughtfully. "But now that you're actually using it, you run into these difficulties?"

Schwenck nodded.

"Are there any further defects?"

Sanson shook his head. "Mr. Schwenck hasn't yet mentioned one of the worst. For years, at Superdee, we routinely put a black protective coating on the body of the stove inside the enameled outer shell, to protect the metal from rust, and improve its looks." He gave a little laugh.

Schwenck looked at Sanson. "I never heard a complaint."

"No," said Sanson aggrievedly. "Me either."

"Now what?" said Leslie Phyllis.

Cartwright said sparely, "Fumes. Every time the fire gets hot, some of this protective coating boils off."

Grissom, the treasurer, glanced from Sanson to Schwenck. "Well, you weren't the only people to use that coating. I bought a wood stove during the fuel shortage, and the first good fire I lit the stuff boiled off in clouds. It stank up the house, and a fine oily dust settled over everything."

Sanson and Schwenck studied the tabletop. Cartwright looked mad, but kept his mouth shut. Down the table, Nelson Ravagger was elaborately expressionless.

Cartwright sucked in a deep breath. "Well, we now know first-hand exactly what our customers are going to run into. We have to clean up these things." He glanced at Schwenck.

"We're counting on you, Schwenckie."

Schwenck settled visibly under the burden, then nodded.

"There's got to be some way around all these problems. If we just have time enough, we'll find it."

Nelson Ravagger was wearing a blue bathrobe with an elaborately patterned red-clawed dragon on it as he opened his front door some twenty-two months later, picked up the Sunday paper, and padded back to the bedroom with it.

Julia Ravagger yawned as her husband settled into his side of the bed, noisily unfolded the first section of the paper, then gave a sharp grunt, as if he had been hit.

She sat up. "What's wrong?"

He passed over the front page, where big black headlines screamed:

Julia Ravagger stared at the paper, then handed it back without a word to her husband.

He read aloud, ". . . It is believed that the powerful weapons used were originally smuggled out of the Soviet Union at the time of its political collapse . . . nightmare of the U. S. Administration come true . . . terrorists reportedly demanded five hundred billion dollars not to use atomic bombs against the refineries and pumping stations . . . authorities are now convinced that atomic weapons have not in fact yet been used although . . . at 2:00 A.M. the first heavy rocket attacks were made, cutting oil shipments, and creating fires which rival in intensity the conflagration in Kuwait at the end of the Gulf War. More explosions soon followed . . . A quick-reaction strike-force is already on the scene, and troops are in motion halfway around the world. But nothing can now be done to prevent serious energy shortages. It is not known at the present time if. . . ."

Ravagger took a second careful look at the papers, then reached around and plugged in the phone that sat on the night table. He dialed a number.

Madeleine Schwenck's voice replied sleepily. "Hello?"

"Nelson Ravagger, Mrs. Schwenck. May I speak to your husband?"

R. J. Schwenck sounded even sleepier than his wife. "No, no, Mr. Ravagger, I haven't seen the paper yet. What's up?"

Ravagger methodically read the headlines, and as Schwenck exclaimed in horror, Ravagger read aloud the first part of the article, which reduced Schwenck to silence. Ravagger said, "How close to ready is our improved coal heater?"

"We tested it last week at the lab. I've been using one in my office for several weeks. Mr. Sanson has had an early version at home since around New Year's. The small model can't cut it till we find some way to shrink the Combuster, but the other two are not bad at all. Compared to the first version, they're straight from heaven."

"You see what we're going to have to do."

"We've already got a moderate production going. There's no reason we can't step it up. By next fall we can flood the market with this improved version. I'll call Mr. Sanson right away."

"Good. I'll get hold of Cartwright."

Julia Ravagger had turned on the bedside clock-radio, where an announcer was saying ". . . Inevitable that gasoline supplies will be affected. Heating oil prices will skyrocket. By next winter, a severe worldwide fuel shortage will be in place. There is already no way to prevent the most severe hardships in the depths of the coming winter. . ."

She glanced at Nelson Ravagger, who was hunting through the phone book. She said, "You actually have an improved version of that monstrosity in the living room?"

"Yes. That monstrosity's just a prototype. The problem was, they didn't know it."

Ravagger dialed a number.

Julia Ravagger said, "Was that the 'tiny little flaw' you said the management had?"

"The flaw was the company actually didn't have any negative feedback worth mentioning on some of its products, including that stove."

" 'Negative—' Oh, yes, negative feedback is the signal that tells which way a robot arm is off-course as it reaches out to take hold of something? A correction factor that puts things back on course."

"Right. And one way to get useful negative feedback is to have the exact people who can end a problem be the ones to get kicked in the face by it."

There was a click in the receiver, and Cartwright's voice said, "That you, Nels?"

"Right here."

"Thought it was you. I've heard, and I'm on the way in."

"Good work." Ravagger hung up the phone, and warily unfolded the paper. As he settled back, Julia Ravagger was favored with a fresh view of his combative profile. As one of her old friends had said on hearing of her marriage, "Well, Jule, now you've really done it. How are you going to domesticate that throwback to the Age of the Robber Barons?"

Julia glanced at the screaming headlines, and exhaled carefully.

Considering what the world was like, possibly the country could use a robber baron or two.

The night was dark, with a fog that blurred vision despite brilliant lights spaced along the road curving through the park. Traffic had thinned out, and only an occasional car glided past. Then from the distance came the harsh rhythmic sound of approaching heels.

A solitary figure came into view, indistinct in the fog. As the figure approached, it resolved into a well-dressed man of about sixty. He strode with an athletic pace along the sidewalk and past a low spreading tree growing to one side.

As he passed the tree, three figures rushed out behind him. There was a blur of motion, a sharp flash of reflected light, and a brief struggle. The three knelt for a moment over the fallen figure, then dragged it back into the shadows.

A car, wet and gleaming, slid past with a hiss of tires on the wet pavement.

Burr Macon, Chief of Criminal Documents, snapped off the screen and glanced at Hostetter, who was in charge of Apprehension and Arrests.