The Delicate Crunch of Marshmallows

Erica studied the gears, which matched the stripes of grease down Kara’s arm. If the machine had suddenly started, Kara would have drawn back a nub. “Why not just fix it? For good, I mean.”

Kara looked Erica straight in the eyes with the same tired look the first technologist of the day had given her. “That would be nice. But while we’re dreaming, why not just finish building the upset forge and thread rolling machines we were supposed to build in the first place?”

Erica gestured toward the cutting heads. “Everybody told me this tool was perfect for making fasteners.”

Kara reached over to the chuck and shook it. It rattled. “It was. Plus a lot of other things. In small quantities. But it is a toolmaker’s machine, not a mass production unit. We were supposed to use it and others like it to build bigger machines, then to make small quantities of speciality stuff. Instead, we’ve pushed it into production service, and run it at speeds and feeds it was never intended for. Poor thing done been rode hard and put away wet. Same as the rest of the equipment we brought up.”

Erica glanced at Kara’s cubicle. “Can we go someplace more private? I need some honest answers.”

Kara nodded, then pulled the key from the machine’s power switch and put it in her pocket. On the way to the cubicle, she grabbed a shop rag and started smearing the blood and grease from her arm.

Erica closed the door. “Kara, you’ve been working for me for what, twelve years now?”

Kara looked up for a second. “Let’s see, I started working for you at the Supercollider in… yeah about twelve.”

“Have I always been an intolerable bitch, or is this a recent phenomenon?”

Kara hesitated, her eyes darting about as she considered the answer. “You’ve only been an intolerable bitch for about two years. You started becoming a bitch about a year after we got up here. At the Supercollider, you were the best boss I’d ever had. When you won the Nobel prize, I was so proud to be working for you I could barely stand it.”

“I had good help,” Erica injected.

Kara shook her head. “Machinists are a dime a dozen. Technicians, maybe a quarter. Grad students, hell, they give them away in cereal boxes. People capable of figuring out, from scratch, the physics behind Higgs fields, how to create and manipulate them, and how to employ them to make controlled fusion simple… there is only one.”

Erica smiled, and shook her head. “I have stood on the shoulders of people who stood on the shoulders of giants, then stolen their lines. It bugs me that nobody seems to give Higgs any credit. And besides, the Higgs field work is just a spin-off of another crack pot theory I’ve been cooking up. Anyway, I’m coming to the very painful conclusion that a pretty medallion does not necessarily make a very good program manager. With your help, maybe I can change that. Any ideas on where I went wrong?”

Kara sighed. “At the Supercollider, you were always on our side. If management made stupid demands, you always stood up for us. If we needed something, you fought to get it. I would have followed you to the ends of…” Kara broke into a giggle that brought tears to her eyes.

“You followed me a lot further than that,” Erica said, suppressing a snicker. She stopped suddenly. “Now I’m management, and I’m making stupid demands, and telling you to do without.”

Kara stopped giggling, and wiped her eyes with the greasy rag, adding more streaks to those already on her face. “You’re stuck in the middle. We know that. That’s why we’ve been putting up with it for so long. That, and because we believe in the same things you do. This project ought to work. It would work if we could just take the time to do it right. But the way things are going right now… hell, we might be lucky to make it home alive. We need the old Erica Thompson fighting for us.”

Erica sat silently for two minutes. “Thanks,” she said at last, and slowly left the cubicle, deep in thought.

Shortly after Erica’s departure, Buzz Santi entered the shop and spotted Kara, who was attempting to fish a wrench out of the bowels of a fabricator. “Hey, Kara, was Erica down here?”

“Yeah, Doc. You just missed her. She was headed downstairs.”

Buzz shook his head. He spoke in a low voice. “Don’t want to see her. I’m snooping around behind her. How’s she doing?”

Kara looked confused. “I dunno. Got a lot on her mind. Why?”

“Something I said to her the other day that I’m starting to regret,” Buzz replied. “Especially since it appears she is going around collecting bad news.”

Kara shrugged. “Erica is tough. And feisty. She’ll do OK.”

Buzz didn’t look so certain. “She’s tired, Kara. From what I can tell, she feels defeated. For the first time since I’ve known her, she seems indecisive. I’m not sure she has any fight left in her. You were with her at the Supercollider. What do you know about the conditions of her departure?”

“Got fed up, and accepted this job,” Kara replied.