Beyond the Black Stump Read Free Page A

white coffee for them both, and when that was on the table he said, “What would you think of Paraguay?”
    “That’s the new concession?”
    “Surely. We’ll need geologists in the field there.”
    Stanton ate in silence for a minute. “I’ll have to admit I don’t know much about Paraguay,” he said at last. “Not desert, is it?”
    His boss shook his head. “I was never there myself, but I was in East Bolivia one time, and that’s just about the same. It’s forest country, jungle you might say. Communications aren’t so hot, apart from airstrips. Most of the heavy material goes up and down the rivers.”
    “What’s the capital of Paraguay?”
    “Asuncion.”
    “Is the concession near there?”
    “Well,” said Mr. Johnson, “it’s quite an area of country, of course. I’d say the nearest point would be about twohundred miles from Asuncion. It’s in the Chaco Boreal, around Fort Diaz.”
    “The people would be Spanish—like in Argentina?”
    “I guess so. The executives and the technicians would be Spanish Americans. Do you know any Spanish?”
    “Only a few words.”
    “I’d say you’d have to learn some. It’s an easy language to get along in—not so easy to speak well. I don’t know that you’d find a lot of Spanish society out in the field. The labour would be mostly Indian.”
    “Be a change from Arabia, anyway,” said Stanton.
    They said no more about the future work, but sat for a time in the club lounge after the meal talking of other aspects of the Topex organisation. In the end Mr. Johnson said, “You’re going out West tomorrow, I suppose?”
    “Unless you want me here.”
    The older man shook his head. “I’ll talk to P.K. about the new assignment for you, but he’s in Canada right now, and after that he’s going off on his vacation. I’ll have to write you, maybe in two weeks from now.” He pulled out his pocket diary. “Let’s see, you’ve got ten weeks’ vacation coming to you—that takes us to September twentieth. I’ll see you again then.”
    They walked back together to the office, where Stanton spent half an hour in the Treasurer’s office putting in expense accounts and drawing money; from the office he telephoned his friend about a bed in his apartment, telephoned an airline office for a reservation to the West next day, and sent a telegram to his parents in Hazel. Then he walked out into the streets of downtown New York and took a bus up Broadway, savouring the city.
    He loved his country very dearly, without realising it. He was a technician, and nothing technical was worth much to him that did not come from the United States. Overseas he had wondered at the little cramped style of the foreign motor cars; now that he was back in his own country the glorious, spacious vehicles of his own land were an acute pleasure to him; the cars that he had seen in his travels overseas could not compare with the new Oldsmobiles or Cadillacs. The origins of the techniques that pleased him so did not affect his thinking; that Otto was a German and Whittle an Englishman did not seem relevant when he considered the superiority of American motor cars and Americanjet aircraft. Nothing was very real to him that did not happen in the United States.
    His personal experience of the world outside America had been limited to Cairo, the Arabian desert, two days in Rome while waiting for air connections, and twenty-four hours in Lisbon. He had been impressed by the motor scooters in Rome, but they were the only things that he had seen in all his travels that had made him feel his own country behindhand. He was sensible enough to realise that there was more to the world than that, that London and Paris might have things to show him that he would admire, but the United States was his home, the place with the highest standard of living in the world, the place with the most glorious technical achievements, the place where he loved to be.
    In the late afternoon he found his way into