"They'll have to," Ray said. "If not right now, when the pressure gets on. You ask me, we've got them by the short hair." He settled into the chair. "I see it as an organic phenomenon. When society gets as complex as ours, it has to grow more and more engineers. But there's a feedback circuit in effect. The more engineers we grow, the more complex society becomes. Each new one creates the need for two more. I get a sort of feeling of--I don't know--vitality, I guess, when I walk into, say, an automated factory. All that machinery and all that electronic gear is like a single cell in a living organism--an organism that's growing every day, multiplying like bacteria. And it's always sick, and we're the doctors. That's job security. We're riding the wave of the future. I don't think they'll make a salary cut stick." "I hope you're right," Eddie said. * * * * * Eddie checked out at 7:15, when the night supervisor finally arrived. As he left the building, he noted that a burglar alarm down the street had gone off; probably because of a short circuit. The clanking set his nerves on edge. Apprehensively he felt a rising wind against his cheeks. At home, he was greeted with a perfunctory kiss at the door. "Honey," Lois told him, "you took the check book, and I didn't have any money." "Something come up? I'm sorry." "We're all out of milk. The milk man didn't come today. Their homogenizing machinery broke down. I phoned the dairy about nine; and then, of course, the phone has been on the blink since about eleven or a little before, so I couldn't ask you to bring some home." "I kept trying to get you." "I figured you had to work late again, when you weren't here at six, and I knew you'd be here when you got here." Eddie sat down and she sat on the chair arm beside him. "How did it go today?" He started to tell her about the wage cut and Ramon Lopez; but then he didn't want to talk about it. "So-so," he said. "There was an outage over in the Silver Lake Area just before I left." "Fixed yet?" "I doubt it," he said. "Probably a couple of more hours." "Gee," she said, "when I think of all that meat in the deep freezer...." "I wouldn't stock so much," he said. "I really wouldn't." She twisted away from him. "Honey. I'm jittery. Something's ... I don't know. In the air, I guess." The wind rattled the windows. * * * * * While Lois was warming dinner, his son came in. "Hi, Eddie." "Hi, Larry." "Eddie, when we gonna get the TV fixed?" Eddie put down the newspaper. "We just don't have a hundred dollars or so right now." He searched for matches on the table by the chair. "Lois, oh, Lois, where're the matches?" She came in. "They were all out Friday at the store, and I keep forgetting to lay in a supply. Use my lighter over there." "About the TV--"