The Intuitionist Read Online Free PDF

Whenever she decides for sure one way, Jimmy does something to make her reconsider, initiating another few months’ speculation. “They’re talking about the Fanny Briggs building, right?”
    “Yes,” Jimmy says.
    “And what happened to it?” She’s taking it step by step. She is very aware that her time is running out.
    “Something happened and the elevator fell. There’s been a lot of fuss about it and—everybody—in the garage—is saying that you did it.” Sucks in his breath: “And that’s what they’re saying on the radio, too.”
    “It’s okay, Jimmy. Just one more thing—is the day shift upstairs or are they in O’Connor’s?”
    “I heard some of them say they were going over to O’Connor’sto listen to Chancre.” The poor kid is shaking. He stopped smiling some time ago.
    “Thank you, Jimmy,” Lila Mae says. Up the ramp, out onto the street, and it’s three stores over to O’Connor’s. She can probably make it without being seen by the people at the entrance. If Chuck is there. On her way out, Lila Mae grabs Jimmy’s shoulder and tells him she’s running fine. Fibbing of course.
    * * *
    Lila Mae has one friend in the Department and his name is Chuck. Chuck’s red hair is chopped and coaxed into a prim Safety, which helps him fit in with the younger inspectors in the Department. According to Chuck, the haircut is mandatory at the Midwestern Institute for Vertical Transport, his alma mater as of last spring. Item one (or close to it) in the
Handbook for Students
. Even the female students have to wear Safeties, making for so many confused, wrenching swivels that Midwestern’s physician christened the resulting campus-wide epidemic of bruised spinal muscles “Safety Neck.” Chuck’s theory is that the Safety’s reemergence is part of an oozing conservatism observable in every facet of the elevator industry, from this season’s minimalist cab designs to the return of the sturdy T-rail after the ill-fated flirtation with round, European guardrails. Says he. Been too many changes in the Guild over the last few years—just look at the messy rise of Intuitionism, or the growing numbers of women and colored people in the Guild, shoot, just look at Lila Mae, flux itself, three times cursed. Inevitably the cycle’s got to come back around to what the Old Dogs want. “Innovation and regression,” Chuck likes to tell Lila Mae over lunch, lunch usually being a brown-bag negotiation over squeezed knees in the dirty atrium of the Metzger Building a few blocks from the office. “Back and forth, back and forth.” Or up and down, Lila Mae adds to herself.
    Chuck maintains that after a quick tour of duty running thestreets, he intends to park himself at a Department desk job for a while and then pack it up to teach escalators at the Institute. Chuck’s a shrewd one. Given elevator inspection’s undeniable macho cachet and preferential treatment within the Guild, it takes a unique personality to specialize in escalators, the lowliest conveyance on the totem pole. Escalator safety has never received its due respect, probably because inspecting the revolving creatures is so monotonous that few have the fortitude, the stomach for vertigo, necessary to stare at the cascading teeth all day. But Chuck can live with the obscurity and disrespect and occasional migraines. Specialization means job security, and there’s a nationwide lack of escalator professors in the Institutes, so Chuck figures he’s a shoo-in for a teaching job. And once he’s in there, drawing a bead on tenure, he can branch out from escalators and teach whatever he wants. He probably even has his dream syllabus tucked in his pocket at this very moment, scratched on a cheap napkin. A general survey course on the history of hydraulic elevators, for example—Chuck’s kooky for hydraulics, from Edoux’s 1867 direct-action monstrosity to the latest rumors on the hybrids Arbo Labs has planned for next year’s fall line. Or