The Director of the Budget was astonished. "Would he take it?"
Treasury cleared his throat. "As a matter of fact, I've asked him to stop by right about now." He hurled a medicine ball into the budgetary gut.
"Oof!" said the Director. "You bastard. Steiner would be perfect. He runs Standards like a watch." He treacherously fired the medicine ball at the Secretary of Raw Materials, who blandly caught it and slammed it back.
"Here he comes," said the Secretary of Raw Materials. "Steiner! Come and sweat some oleo off!"
Steiner ambled over, a squat man in his fifties, and said: "I don't mind if I do. Where's Willy?"
State said: "The President unmasked him as a traitor. He's probably been executed by now."
Steiner looked grim, and grimmer yet when the Secretary of the Treasury said, dead-pan: "We want to propose you for Defense."
"I'm happy in Standards," Steiner said. "Safer, too. The Man's father took an interest in science, but The Man never comes around. Things are very quiet. Why don't you invite Winch, from the National Art Commission? It wouldn't be much of a change for the worse for him."
"No brains," the Secretary for Raw Materials said briefly. "Heads up!"
Steiner caught the ball and slugged it back at him. "What good are brains?" he asked quietly.