"Today's grievance day. Dinner?"
"I promised Don," she said demurely.
I swallowed hard. "How about the Term festival tomorrow night?"
"Well, Don sort of asked—"
I tried to laugh it off and Fern said she'd see me later and the screen went blank and I sat there shaking.
The screen flickered again. Starza's great moon face smiled at me and said sweetly, "We're ready to start grieving."
I picked up the time studies that were death sentences for two Terms, and went down the hall to ulcer gulch, the conference room.
Lure a termite away from his tribe. Promise him the stars. Make him bust his thorax on an assembly line. He makes a wonderful worker, with reflexes twice as fast as a human's, but he still isn't an individual. Even when putting a spaceship together, he's still part of the tribe, part of a glowing symphony of color and motion. That's bad for production. Accent on individuality, that was the keynote. The Terms and their union representatives could argue a grievance right to the letter of the contract, but when it came to production standards we had them. Terminorb IV was ninety light-years from the system, and the Terms couldn't afford a home office time and motion analyst. It wasn't worth it. Terms were expendable.
Los Tichnat was committeeman at large for the Term local. He sat regally at the head of the conference table, seven gleaming chitinous feet of him, with his softly pulsating antennae and faceted eyes, and said in a clicking, humorless voice, "The first item is a second-stage grievance. Brother Nadkek, in final assembly, was laid off for one day. Reason: He missed an operation. The grievance, of course, is a mere formality. You will deny it."
Dave Starza winked at me from behind horn-rimmed glasses. He sat like some great bland Buddha, Director of Industrial Relations, genius in outer psychology, ruthless, soft-spoken, anticipator of alien trends. He said in that beautiful velvet voice, "Ordinarily, yes. In this case Nadkek wished to ask his foreman about omitting a welding phase of the operation. While the suggestion was declined, Nadkek showed unmistakable initiative." Starza stressed the word. "We appreciate his interest in the job. He will receive pay for the lost day."