Welcome to the Monkey House - Kurt Vonnegut [96]
At the mouth of the alley, he stopped a man and asked him if he’d heard anything about a deer in the Works. The man shook his head and looked at David oddly, making David aware of how frantic he must look. "I heard it was out by the lab," David said more calmly.
"Which lab?" said the man.
"That’s what I’m not sure of," said David. "There’s more than one?"
"Chemical lab?" said the man. "Materials testing lab? Paint lab? Insulation lab?"
"No—I don’t think it’s any of those," said David.
"Well, I could stand here all afternoon naming labs, and probably not hit the right one. Sorry, I’ve got to go. You don’t know what building they’ve got the differential analyzer in, do you?"
"Sorry," said David. He stopped several other people, none of whom knew anything about the deer, and he tried to retrace his steps to the office of his supervisor, whatever his name was. He was swept this way and that by the currents of the Works, stranded in backwaters, sucked back into the main stream, and his mind was more and more numbed, and the mere reflexes of self-preservation were more and more in charge.
He chose a building at random, and walked inside for a momentary respite from the summer heat, and was deafened by the clangor of steel sheets being cut and punched, being smashed into strange shapes by great hammers that dropped out of the smoke and dust overhead. A hairy, heavily muscled man was seated near the door on a wooden stool, watching a giant lathe turn a bar of steel the size of a silo.
David now had the idea of going through a company phone directory until he recognized his supervisor’s name. He called to the machinist from a few feet away, but his voice was lost in the din. He tapped the man’s shoulder. "Telephone around here?"
The man nodded. He cupped his hands around David’s ear, and shouted. "Up that, and through the—" Down crashed a hammer. "Turn left and keep going until you—" An overhead crane dropped a stack of steel plates. "Four doors down from there is it. Can’t miss it."
David, his ears ringing and his head aching, walked into the street again and chose another door. Here was peace and air conditioning. He was in the lobby of an auditorium, where a group of men were examining a box studded with dials and switches that was spotlighted and mounted on a revolving platform.
"Please, miss," he said to a receptionist by the door, "could you tell me where I could find a telephone?"
"It’s right around the corner, sir," she said. "But I’m afraid no one is permitted here today but the crystallographers. Are you with them?"
"Yes," said David.
"Oh—well, come right in. Name?"
He told her, and a man sitting next to her lettered it on a badge. The badge was hung on his chest, and David headed for the telephone. A grinning, bald, big-toothed man, wearing a badge that said, "Stan Dunkel, Sales," caught him and steered him to the display.
"Dr. Potter," said Dunkel, "I ask you: is that the way to build an X-ray spectrogoniometer, or is that the way to build an X-ray spectrogoniometer?"
"Yes," said David. "That’s the way, all right."
"Martini, Dr. Potter?" said a maid, offering a tray.
David emptied a Martini in one gloriously hot, stinging gulp.
"What features do you want in an X-ray spectrogoniometer, Doctor?" said Dunkel.
"It should be sturdy, Mr. Dunkel," said David, and he left Dunkel there, pledging his reputation that there wasn’t a sturdier one on earth.
In the phone booth, David had barely got through the telephone directory’s A’s before the name of his supervisor miraculously returned to his consciousness: Flammer! He found the number and dialed.
"Mr. Flammer’s office," said a woman.
"Could I speak to him, please? This is David Potter."
"Oh—Mr. Potter. Well, Mr. Flammer is somewhere out in the Works now, but he left a message for you. He said there’s an added twist on the deer story. When they catch the deer, the venison is going to be used at the Quarter-Century Club picnic."
"Quarter-Century Club?" said David.
"Oh, that’s