"Katharine, when's my speech going to be typed?"
Only the night before, a mouse had gnawed through the insulation on a control wire and put buildings 17, 19, and 21 temporarily out of commission. "Mmmmm-aaaaah - good, eh?" He had spotted her that morning, near the golf course, and had picked her up as a mouser for the plant. "Like that, kitty?" With solicitousness and vicarious pleasure, young Proteus ran a roll of blueprints along the cat's arched back. Ironically as anyone would please, he had married her after she had declared that she was certainly pregnant, following an abandoned office celebration of victory. Paul's wife, Anita, his secretary during the war, was barren. His father, Doctor George Proteus, was at the time of his death the nation's first National Industrial, Commercial, Communications, Foodstuffs, and Resources Director, a position approached in importance only by the presidency of the United States.Īs for the Proteus genes' chances of being passed down to yet another generation, there were practically none. Those old enough to remember and too old to compete said affectionately that Doctor Proteus looked just as his father had as a young man - and it was generally understood, resentfully in some quarters, that Paul would someday rise almost as high in the organization as his father had. His principle concern just then was that the black cat be contented in its new surroundings. He didn't feel important or brilliant at the moment, nor had he for some time. He was tall, thin, nervous, and dark, with the gentle good looks of his long face distorted by dark-rimmed glasses.
He was the most important, brilliant person in Ilium, the manager of the Ilium Works, though only thirty-five. Ten years after the war - after the men and women had come home, after the riots had been put down, after thousands had been jailed under the antisabotage laws - Doctor Paul Proteus was petting a cat in his office. In the patois of the north side of the river, it was the know-how that won the war. It was the miracle that won the war - production with almost no manpower. Not many people on either side have reasons other than curiosity for crossing.ĭuring the war, in hundreds of Iliums over America, managers and engineers learned to get along without their men and women, who went to fight.
If the bridge across the Iroquois were dynamited, few daily routines would be disturbed.
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In the northwest are the managers and engineers and civil servants and a few professional people in the northeast are the machines and in the south, across the Iroquois River, is the area known locally as Homestead, where almost all of the people live. ILIUM, New York, is divided into three parts. Upon the skill and imagination and courage of our managersĪnd engineers, and I hope that God will help them to help usīut this book is about another point in history, when there History, 1952 A.D., our lives and freedom depend largely It is mostly about managers and engineers. The characters are modeled after personsĪs yet unborn, or, perhaps, at this writing, infants. This book is not a book about what is, but a book about
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