I Will Fear No Evil Read Free

anything about running a business!”
    “You wouldn’t have to. Directors don’t manage, they set policy. But you do know more about running it than most of our directors; you’ve been on the inside for years. Plus Almost inside during the time you were my secretary’s secretary before Mrs. Bierman retired. But here are advantages I see in what may have been a playful suggestion on Jake’s part. You are already an officer of the corporation as Special Assistant Secretary assigned to record for the board—and I made you that, you’ll both remember, to shut up Parkinson when he bellyached about my secretary being present during an executive session. You’ll go on being that—and my personal secretary, too; can’t spare you—while becoming a director. No conflict, you’ll simply vote as well as recording. Now we come to the key question: Are you willing to vote the way Jake votes?”
    She looked solemn. “You wish me to, sir?”
    “Or the way I do if I’m present, which comes to the same thing. Think back and you’ll see that Jake and I have always voted the same way on basic policy—settling it ahead of time—while wrangling and voting against each other on things that don’t matter. Read the old minutes, you’ll spot it.”
    “I noticed it long ago,” she said simply, “but didn’t think it was my place to comment.”
    “Jake, she’s our new director. One more point, my dear: If it turns out that we need your spot, will you resign? You won’t lose by it.”
    “Of course, sir. I don’t have to be paid to agree to that.”
    “You still won’t lose by it. I feel better. Eunice, I’ve had to turn management over to Teal; I’ll be turning policy over to Jake—you know the shape I’m in. I want Jake to have as many sure votes backing him as possible. Oh, we can always fire directors . . . but it is best not to have to do so, a fact von Ritter rubbed my nose in. Okay, you’re a director. We’ll formalize it at that stockholders’ meeting. Welcome to the ranks of the Establishment. Instead of a wage slave, you have sold out and are now a counterrevolutionary, warmongering, rat-fink, fascist dog. How does it feel?”
    “Not ‘dog,’ ” Eunice objected. “The rest is lovely but ‘dog’ is the wrong sex; I’m female. A bitch.”
    “Eunice, I not only do not use such words with ladies around, you know that I do not care to hear them from ladies.”
    “Can a ‘rat-fink fascist’ be a lady? Boss, I learned that word in kindergarten. Nobody minds it today.”
    “I learned it out behind the barn and let’s keep it there.”
    Salomon growled. “I don’t have time to listen to amateur lexicologists. Is the conference over?”
    “What? Not at all! Now comes the top-secret part, the reason I sent the nurse out. So gather ye round.”
    “Johann, before you talk secrets, let me ask one question. Does that bed have a mike on it? Your chair may be bugged, too.”
    “Eh?” the old man looked thoughtful. “I used a call button . . . until they started standing a heel-and-toe watch on me.”
    “Seven to two you’re bugged. Eunice my dear, can you trace the circuits and make sure?”
    “Uh . . . I doubt it. The circuitry isn’t much like my stenodesk. But I’ll look.” Eunice left her desk, studied the console on the back of the wheelchair. “These two dials almost certainly have mikes hooked to them; they’re respiration and heart beat. But they don’t show voices as my voice does not make the needles jiggle. Filtered out, I suppose. “But”—she looked thoughtful—“voice could be pulled off either circuit ahead of a filter. I do something like that, in reverse, whenever I record with a high background db. I don’t know what these dials do. Darn it, I might spot a voice circuit . . . but I could never be sure that there was not one. Or two. Or three. I’m sorry.”
    “Don’t be sorry, dear,” the lawyer said soothingly. “There hasn’t been real privacy in this country