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By Root 275 0

to find ways to make reorganizations less disruptive. It has tried a variety of techniques, up to and including the current “surprise” reorganization, which was Eve Jantiss's idea for eliminating the usual productivity loss involved in stage one. This appears to have been accomplished, for Zephyr has unequivocally skipped straight into the middle of stage two. Civil wars are brewing. Alliances are coalescing. Warlords, like Roger in Staff Services, are rising. On Wednesday at 8:50 A.M., the first sortie is launched. It comes from Infrastructure Control, in the form of a voice mail to all department heads. It regrets to announce that the costs charged to each department for floor space, cubicles, parking spaces, and phone lines must rise. The building is still the same size, Infrastructure Control points out, as is the parking lot, and there are just as many phone lines. But there are fewer employees to pick up the tab. Infrastructure Control has no option but to raise prices.

New superdepartmental managers listen to this with their faces turning purple. Cubicle partitions to cost nine hundred dollars! Five hundred per month for a computer! Six thousand a year per window! The managers seethe in their leather office chairs, which are now three times as expensive. This is naked profiteering! The phone lines between departments (two hundred dollars per socket plus usage charges) run hot, as managers share their fury. Vows to involve Senior Management are made—although not carried out, not yet. Senior Management seems a little tetchy about the consolidation at the moment; has been ever since two hundred angry workers camped out in front of the building and started throwing things. Instead, a crisis meeting is called. In the lobby, Gretel watches in amazement as the elevators spit out manager after manager, each striding toward the meeting rooms with a firm tread and a dark brow.

Soon all the managers are there, even Roger. The only exception is Human Resources (or rather, Human Resources and Asset Protection, as the merged department is now known), whom nobody called. Even managers find HR creepy. It is led by a short man with wet lips and slickly parted hair that curls up at the ends; knowing he has your complete personnel file at his fingertips is enough to give anyone the heebie-jeebies. So it's everyone but him, and when Infrastructure Control arrives, the room's atmosphere is thick with anger.

The Infrastructure Control manager is a short, muscular man with a dark beard. He is an oddity in Zephyr Hold-ings: a person who started on the floor and was promoted through hard work. This makes other managers uncomfortable. The idea that you can get ahead through sheer competence, and not politicking, backstabbing, fleeing impending disasters, and clambering on board imminent successes, undermines everything they know. Infrastructure Control strides to the front of the room and folds his impressive forearms. “All right, what's the problem?”

Infrastructure Control is buffeted by a gale of invective and airborne spittle, as the managers let him know exactly what. But he doesn't step backward. His expression doesn't change. When the well of their anger runs dry, he shrugs. “Nothing I can do about it.”

Whoa! A new gale howls through the room. Since Infrastructure Control has not reacted well to fury, the second assault is tinged with plaintiveness. Surely, the managers plead, he will not rob them to stuff his own coffers. Surely he can see the position they're in. He must understand they can't operate under these outrageous cost increases.

Infrastructure Control shrugs again. “All I know is what our total costs are and how many people we've got to split them across.”

Goddamn it! The third gale is the most violent yet. They are not getting anywhere, the managers realize, so they just vent. The attacks get personal, referring to Infrastructure Control's blue-collar career and lack of formal education. Infrastructure Control meets every narrowed eye. Finally, this gale blows itself out, too. “If you want Zephyr to lower its total