Vera & Luvius : Part 4 : Vera's Appraisal
By David Kirtley
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Vera and Luvius : (Chapter 6) : Part 4 : Vera’s Appraisal
At the end of the month Vera attended her regular appraisal interview. All staff went through this important process, which enabled them to set targets for their own work, to determine how well they had done in meeting previous targets and to develop methods for personal improvement. The process was carried out for the benefit of the employee, to determine areas where improvements could be made and to benefit employees who had worked particularly hard. Sometimes promotions were offered at these interviews. She had been having them for years now, and she felt no abnormal stress.
“At first your performance was what we would have expected from your record, Vera; but it seems to have slackened since then. Three nights ago you failed to arrive at a night shift until most of it was over. What were you doing and where were you?”
He paused and Vera thought she should answer him but she could not start the words to explain easily. Thankfully he paused for no more than brief seconds, as if he had never intended her to give any answer, his question only rhetorical. “When you finally arrived at your shift you never mentioned what you had been doing or what was wrong. You’ve been working for us for quite a few years now and you’ve never been absent before without a valid excuse. You should know by now that you are to give a good explanation for any absences, or lose credits and the respect of your colleagues – we are surprised at you. Your work performance has also suffered. You have not been achieving or even approaching target levels for maintenance of electrical circuitry. Five times in the last few weeks your foreman has drafted in support labour to your jobs because stages were not completed on time.
“We don’t understand what has happened here. It is as if you’ve been pretending to work and not having your mind on duties. You have been daydreaming on company time, we think! It’s the only explanation. We think you’re capable of this work because you’ve shown you can do it in the past. Therefore, the problem must be lack of concentration. Are you having any difficulties at the moment, Vera?”
Vera was internally convulsed. Never before had she been given such a disapproving report. She had received slight criticisms at times, but only the usual target reports designed to “motivate” and educate the subject into what he or she is capable of achieving. It was typical of managers to use these reports as a minor threat to workers to encourage them to stay motivated and to work hard to achieve personal progress. Such appraisals were issued as a matter of course, in order to extract maximum motivation from workers. Vera, who had worked and studied for many years, was well used to these reports and had used them as they were intended – as a means of spurring herself on – to good effect. However, she had come to expect that the target improvements were often unrealistic or not achievable. They acted as a spur, not as a contract for improvement. She was used to falling short of these targets as most other MIOST workers were; but this new criticism was something new. She saw in their eyes and heard in their voices a naked disapproval.
She felt suddenly guilty. For the last month she had been enjoying the rosy contentment of her first love, the pleasure of something long postponed, which she had expected in later years she would never experience. She had thought she had come to terms with the absence of that which she had never had before. Without warning, love had found her. Offered that which she thought she might never have she took it with open arms, falling as willing prey to the man who dared to breach her reserve. She had devoted herself to him, as she might have done to many other such men who had the courage to try. She loved him partly for his bravery. She owed him love. But she loved his person too. The body was a man’s, shapely and attractive to her although, as everyone had, she had seen better on the Vidnet. He was ageing and worn by work. Perhaps ideally she would have preferred someone younger, but she was lucky to have even this and he satisfied her need to love. His character and personality had a depth she had not known existed.
“Vera, you are a good maintenance engineer. Your record is a conscientious one and you have achieved a high level for your age. Your early weeks here showed a high performance from you but in recent weeks you have slackened substantially.” He repeated himself, going back over some of the standard points he had already mentioned. She imagined this was just another standard disciplinary case to him. Perhaps repeating himself was a part of the standard technique, the way in which he got the messages of management across to ordinary staff who were in need of being enlightened by their wisdom. She felt vaguely irritated by the way in which he seemed to assume that she had not heard this kind of advice before. “Let us take some of your foreman’s statistics, shall we. In November, your second month here, you achieved full attendance – no lates or overlong break times, no reports of unnecessary timewasting or periods of conversatonal excess. Your foreman’s marks for technical performance: 8, motivation: 7, ability to incorporate new tasks: 7, and there are a few other indicators,” he said crisply. “I won’t go through them all.”
The man seemed very young for one in such a role. He was older than she but not by many years. Perhaps thirty-four or thirty-five. Signs of maturity and approaching age were upon him but he looked keen, bright, motivated. If she had not felt uncomfortable nervousness at the critique which was being delivered to her, she would have thought him very handsome, suave and full of barely hidden confidence and zest for life. He had reached an optimum age where relative youth, with its good looks, marries with growing maturity, sufficient to have developed personality. However, the words which tumbled effortlessly from his mouth spoke not of kindness or sympathy, although they attempted to hide behind that veneer. The man clearly believed her to be in serious breach of the rules of labour contracts. He reminded her of the enthusiasm she had felt for some of the tasks she had performed in her time as an engineer. She felt she could understand his zeal. He evidently viewed her as a recalcitrant worker who needed to be coached back into recognition of the standards that were expected of all workers.
“In January, your last full month, your record has slipped somewhat. Three lates with inadequate excuse, including almost a whole night shift.” He dwelt on this as if perusing the rest of his printout. The pause allowed her to think. Aside from the night shift, which was certainly inexcusable, one of them had been a full half hour late. Even that had been inexcusable and she felt some shame. It was not as if she had been feeling ill or was delayed by the tram network, the kind of excuses that may or may not have satisfied her overseers. The truth, which she could never reveal to her foreman, or to this petty manager, was that she had been with Luvius most of the night. They had made love irresistibly too late into the night. On the half hour late occasion, in the morning they had awoken with another irresistible urge to turn an otherwise ordinary morning into a memorable and satisfying one. Vera had found in recent weeks that these events cannot be timed. As the time approached when they needed to begin the morning rush to prepare themselves for work they had also been approaching heights of passion which could not be ignored. Nature took over their logical trained minds and years of steady reliable habits were suspended until their act was completed. They had both been late before they even rushed to make the most of minimum and barest preparations. Luvius had been late too on a different job, in a different part of the station.
“What have you got to say for yourself?” asked the man with the superiority of one who had no doubt about the importance of his work. After all these years as a MIOST engineer Vera realised that she was still regarded as no more than a trainee by these petty managers. The fact that she probably knew far more than they about the engineering work of the station or of MIOST’s projects in Marta, did not enter their thoughts. Three aberrant late arrivals, quite out of her normal character, and due to her human need to take the rare opportunities which life could give, and here she was now; “demoted” to the position of an insubordinate and inferior petty criminal. How could three infractions of the rules, two of which she regarded as very minor, be enough to place her under the dismissive disapproval of these two men and this woman? Did her year of experience and hard work mean nothing to them?
She felt suddenly angry at the injustice of it. Buttressed by a wild courage, which could only have come from the knowledge of Luvius’ love, she spoke out in a way that was uncharacteristic of her. She had become an emotional being now. The quiet person who had for so many years been buried under layers of duty was gone now when the new confidence of love’s discovery met the unreasonable recrimination of those in authority. She would have made a reasoned appeal but they were pushing her too far and she snapped in her desperation.
“What do you want from me? Do you want my soul as well? It’s just a job. It’s not all that interesting. It’s just something I do for a living, that’s all. But you want me to live and breathe it. You won’t even let me keep the job if I don’t live and breathe it.
“Have we all become robots, that we live and breathe only for the purpose of work? Is there to be nothing else in our lives? I’ve never had a boyfriend before. Am I supposed to give up the boyfriend in order to only perform work? If that is so, we have become quite unnatural. Are the laws of nature no longer to apply to us? Can we no longer mingle with the opposite sex in the natural way? Are we to no longer have any babies? Is our race to die out here in this generation?”
She had known how babies were made only from her scientific education and from Vidnet films. Real life had held no practical proof of all this. For all she knew babies came out of test tubes, although she knew well from education and media that half the babies born came from completely natural conceptions and births. Over the last few years the expectation that she might ever have any had withered and died. It had never been very strong in her anyway. She had wanted to study and to work, to make something of herself, not to be just a mother, as hers had been when she was young. She had vaguely thought, however, that she might make it someday to marriage, or girlfriendhood at least, with a professional man. That hope had faded in the last few years to be occasionally re-ignited, as in her infatuation with Diocletian. She now finally had a lover after all these years, but the desire for children was gone. Would it come back? Perhaps continued intimacy with Luvius and a relaxation of work duties would have allowed it to return. Suddenly in a flash, before her inquisitors she understood the failure of Marta and all Gallanol. She knew why the population was in decline, why sections of the city were slowly closing down. It all made sense to her as she told them why there were few babies any more.
“People can’t marry. They can’t have children. They can’t even meet each other any more. The race will die if you don’t allow us to be our natural selves!”
Her outburst was so uncharacteristic. Her accusers looked at each other patiently, calmly, but admitting to perplexity. What were they thinking, she wondered. Did they think that madness had settled inside her; she had never been more rational in her life. She imagined them recommending, in her worst fears only, a recommendation, never an enforcement, that she should join Mother in her institutional hospital. Or did they excuse her outburst as a Space Delusion?
She was afraid again now. Quietly her brief outburst was filed and consigned to its rightful place. Outward control began to return. Her shaking diminished. MIOST had little mercy. Morag had disappeared quickly. One day a student colleague, the next she had no longer existed. Vera wished she had bothered to trace her old friend, but she had refrained. She had known hanging on to Morag would have distracted her from her studious goals, and would have brought her into personal turmoil. So she had let her go, just like Mother.
She feared she had overstepped some line. At what point had she made the fatal error that would lose her her position? She just knew they would separate her from the only lover she had ever been able to find in her whole frustrated life.
The inquisitors were probably thinking, “This young woman should not be on a space station, she is not committed enough. She appears to hold a grudge against our organisation. She is not behaving rationally. Does she not realise the direction of her career is at stake here?” She was sure that despite her outburst to them, they would refuse to answer the charges she had put to the system of Marta and continental Gallanol.
“Have you anything relevant to say?” one of them, the woman, asked calmly, as if there had been no words of passion. “The population statistics of Marta or of Gallanol are of no relevance to your employment contract.” It was true they were not even interested in the question. Surely if they had been alive inside they would have found her tack at least amusing, if not interesting. Her hypothesis lay beyond their training, and the narrow view of their occupation. She fought back against returning turbulence, which would have prompted her to ask whether they had any personal opinions on anything. Had any of them married, or were they lonely as she had been? Would any of them have valued the intimacy of a loved one and the satisfaction of love as a rare gift, by which the dull repetition of work measured far less brightly.
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