Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut [24]
"That may be so," said Constant, "but I don’t think you can hurt me. I don’t owe the Federal Government a dime."
The callow visitor nodded. "I know," he said. "I found everything in apple-pie order."
The young man looked around the room. He wasn’t surprised by its squalor. He was worldly enough to have expected something diseased.
"I’ve been over your income-tax reports for the past two years," he said, "and, by my calculations, you are the luckiest man who ever lived."
"Lucky?" said Noel Constant.
"I think so," said the young visitor. "Don’t you think so? For instance—what does ELCO Hoist Company manufacture?"
"ELCO Hoist?" said Noel Constant blankly.
"You owned fifty-three per cent of it for a period of two months," said the young visitor.
"Why—hoists—things for lifting various articles," said Noel Constant stuffily. "And various allied products."
The young visitor’s smile made cat’s whiskers under his nose. "For your information," he said, "ELCO Hoist Company was a name given by the Government in the last war to a top-secret laboratory that was developing underwater listening gear. After the war, it was sold to private enterprise, and the name was never changed— since the work was still top secret, and the only customer was still the Government.
"Suppose you tell me," said the young visitor, "what it was you learned about Indiana Novelty that made you think it was a shrewd investment? Did you think they made little party poppers with paper hats inside?"
"I have to answer these questions for the Bureau of Internal Revenue?" said Noel Constant. "I have to describe every company I owned in detail, or I can’t keep the money?"
"I was simply asking for my own curiosity. From your reaction, I gather that you haven’t the remotest idea what Indiana Novelty does. For your information, Indiana Novelty manufactures nothing, but holds certain key patents on tire-recapping machinery."
"Suppose we get down to the Bureau of Internal Revenue business," said Noel Constant curtly.
"I’m no longer with the Bureau," said the young visitor. "I resigned my one-hundred-and-fourteen-dollar-a-week job this morning in order to take a job making two thousand dollars a week."
"Working for whom?" said Noel Constant.
"Working for you," said the young man. He stood, held out his hand. "Ransom K. Fern is the name," he said.
"I had a professor in the Harvard Business School," said young Fern to Noel Constant, "who kept telling me that I was smart, but that I would have to find my boy, if I was going to be rich. He wouldn’t explain what he meant. He said I would catch on sooner or later. I asked him how I could go looking for my boy, and he suggested that I work for the Bureau of Internal Revenue for a year or so.
"When I went over your tax returns, Mr. Constant, it suddenly came to me what it was he meant. He meant I was shrewd and thorough, but I wasn’t remarkably lucky. I had to find somebody who had luck in an astonishing degree—and so I have."
"Why should I pay you two thousand dollars a week?" said Noel Constant. "You see my facilities and my staff here, and you know what I’ve done with them."
"Yes—" said Fern, "and I can show you where you should have made two hundred million where you made only fifty-nine. You know absolutely nothing about corporate law or tax law—or even common-sense business procedure."
Fern thereupon proved this to Noel Constant, father of Malachi — and Fern showed him an organizational plan that had the name Magnum Opus, Incorporated. It was a marvelous engine for doing violence to the spirit of thousands of laws without actually running afoul of so much as a city ordinance.
Noel Constant was so impressed by this monument to hypocrisy and sharp practice that he wanted to buy stock in it without even referring to his Bible.
"Mr. Constant, sir," said young Fern, "don’t you