Day of the Moron | Page 8

probably won't get a chance to work on it much before thirteen-hundred tomorrow." He
unzipped a bulky brief case he had brought in under his arm and dumped papers onto his
desk. "I still have this stuff to get straightened out, too."
"Had anything to eat? Then call the cafeteria and have them send up three dinners. Dr.
Rives is eating here, too. Find out what she wants; I want pork chops."
"Uh-huh; Li'l Abner Melroy; po'k chops unless otherwise specified." Keating got up and
went out into the middle office. As he opened the door. Melroy could hear a recording of
somebody being given a word-association test.
Half an hour later, when the food arrived, they spread their table on a relatively clear desk
in the middle office. Doris Rives had finished evaluating the completed tests; after dinner,
she intended going over the written portions of the uncompleted tests.
"How'd the finished tests come out?" Melroy asked her.

"Better than I'd expected. Only two washouts," she replied. "Harvey Burris and Julius
Koffler."
"Oh, no!" Keating wailed. "The I.F.A.W. steward, and the loudest-mouthed
I-know-my-rights boy on the job!"
"Well, wasn't that to be expected?" Melroy asked. "If you'd seen the act those two put
on--"
"They're both inherently stupid, infantile, and deficient in reasoning ability and
judgment," Doris said. "Koffler is a typical adolescent problem-child show-off type, and
Burris is an almost perfect twelve-year-old schoolyard bully. They both have inferiority
complexes long enough to step on. If the purpose of this test is what I'm led to believe it
is, I can't, in professional good conscience, recommend anything but that you get rid of
both of them."
"What Bob's getting at is that they're the very ones who can claim, with the best show of
plausibility, that the test is just a pretext to fire them for union activities," Melroy
explained. "And the worst of it is, they're the only ones."
"Maybe we can scrub out a couple more on the written tests alone. Then they'll have
company," Keating suggested.
"No, I can't do that." Doris was firm on the point. "The written part of the test was solely
for ability to reason logically. Just among the three of us, I know some university
professors who'd flunk on that. But if the rest of the tests show stability, sense of
responsibility, good judgment, and a tendency to think before acting, the subject can be
classified as a safe and reliable workman."
"Well, then, let's don't say anything till we have the tests all finished," Keating proposed.
"No!" Melroy cried. "Every minute those two are on the job, there's a chance they may do
something disastrous. I'll fire them at oh-eight-hundred tomorrow."
"All right," Keating shook his head. "I only work here. But don't say I didn't warn you."
* * * * *
By 0930 the next morning, Keating's forebodings began to be realized. The first
intimation came with a phone call to Melroy from Crandall, who accused him of having
used the psychological tests as a fraudulent pretext for discharging Koffler and Burris for
union activities. When Melroy rejected his demand that the two men be reinstated,
Crandall demanded to see the records of the tests.
"They're here at my office," Melroy told him. "You're welcome to look at them, and hear
recordings of the oral portions of the tests. But I'd advise you to bring a professional
psychologist along, because unless you're a trained psychologist yourself, they're not
likely to mean much to you."

"Oh, sure!" Crandall retorted. "They'd have to be unintelligible to ordinary people, or you
couldn't get away with this frame-up! Well, don't worry, I'll be along to see them."
Within ten minutes, the phone rang again. This time it was Leighton, the Atomic Power
Authority man.
"We're much disturbed about this dispute between your company and the I.F.A.W.," he
began.
"Well, frankly, so am I," Melroy admitted. "I'm here to do a job, not play Hatfields and
McCoys with this union. I've had union trouble before, and it isn't fun. You're the
gentleman who called me last evening, aren't you? Then you understand my position in
the matter."
"Certainly, Mr. Melroy. I was talking to Colonel Bradshaw, the security officer, last
evening. He agrees that a stupid or careless workman is, under some circumstances, a
more serious threat to security than any saboteur. And we realize fully how dangerous
those Doernberg-Giardanos are, and how much more dangerous they'd be if these
cybernetic controls were improperly assembled. But this man Crandall is talking about
calling a strike."
"Well, let him. In the first place, it'd be against me, not against the Atomic Power
Authority. And, in the second place, if he does and it goes to Federal mediation, his
demand for the reinstatement of those men will