The Seventh Candidate Read Online Free PDF

of security,
he warned, never. He stressed the importance of locking the wheels
before each intervention. He had his assistant repeat the locking
operation twice.
    In very simple language the director now
tried to explain the matter-of-fact economics that underlay poster
cosmetics. The advertisers were at the mercy of the vandals, he
said in effect. Their message was subverted by the intrusion of
graffiti, often of an obscene nature. At best, the graffiti
distracted attention from that message. At worst, it created a
disastrous connection between the brand and the scrawled obscenity
in the mind of the potential customer. The vandalized poster
couldn’t be left in that state. In a great number of cases Ideal could repair the poster in a
fraction of the time required by the traditional method of total
replacement. But not always.
    The first task of an operator was,
therefore, to be able to recognize at a glance if it paid to
restore a given poster. Naturally if the repair job took as long as
the classical method of total replacement, nothing was to be gained
by utilizing cosmetic techniques. Hence the constant question posed
to the operator by a defaced poster: feasible or not feasible?
    “In the case of this particular poster,”
said the director, pointing over his shoulder at the sailor-suited
girl on the wall behind him, “the answer is immediate:
feasible.”
    Feasible, he explained, because of the
localization of the aggression and because of the chemical
composition of the graffiti media utilized. The center of
attraction, the young lady’s face, was fortunately unscathed.
Facial repair-work, while not impossible, was a highly skilled
operation. In extreme cases, the cutout technique could be
utilized. From another identical poster the whole head or even
individual features could be substituted. This was demanding work
which, the director reassured the candidates, they would not, at
first, be called upon to perform.
    “As for the chemical properties of the
graffiti substances employed on posters, I have seen blood used as
a vehicle for graffiti and worse than blood …”
    The candidates snapped alert at that. Some
snickered. The director rapped on the lectern and went on. He
explained that ninety-eight percent of all graffiti was produced
by: 1. the pencil, 2. the ballpoint pen, 3. the felt-tip pen, 4.
the crayon, 5. the redoubtable spray-can. Some of these graffiti
vehicles required an application of sizing-fluid such as XL 54. His
pointer touched a bottle on his table. Half a minute to dry. An
expenditure of precious time. Nothing of the sort here.
Ball-pointed, felt-tipped graffis, not to mention simple stickers
and lacerations. A run-of-the-mill case.
    The director turned toward Miss Ruda. Step
by step, he explained, his assistant would illustrate the
techniques of restoring the vandalized poster to its original
state.
     
    Dorothea Ruda clambered up into hopeless
competition with the girl’s giant loveliness. Her plain but
expressive face was painfully concentrated. She must make no
mistake, nothing that would add to her error or oversight or
whatever it was that had aroused her employer’s discontent.
Normally she loved these pedagogical sessions like everything else
about her job. After the art-school fiasco and then the
acting-school super-fiasco and then the screaming boredom of a
secretarial school, she’d answered the Ideal ad. Her test-performance had been brilliant and
she’d been hired, reluctantly.
    But despite her sex, Dorothea Ruda had
turned out to be the most expert and dependable of all the
operators. She’d risen from the ranks and now took care of the
correspondence, the book-keeping and canvassed clients. Concealed
behind pillars and vending-machines, she shared in turn with the
director the all-important task of surveying the operators, for the
most part an untrustworthy lot. She also swept up and prepared
coffee. The business was no more conceivable without her than
without Basic White