Seeing where Woodard sat, he frowned. "No, no," he said. "That won't do. You'll be better off...."
Woodard repeated, "I'm utterly amazed by all this."
Nodus' expression softened. "It's a garage, as you can see. Four hours at the start of the summer to convert it to a sound-room. Three and a half hours, at the end, to reconvert it. On the nose in both instances. Half-hour discrepancy there. We're working on that."
Woodard understood that "we" included the pair, whose life currents evidently flowed from the master's battery.
"Job's all broken down," said Nodus. "I do certain things, Russ does certain things. The girl"—She bridled as he jerked an elbow toward her.—"does her little chores."
The girl! Would she see fifty again? But Woodard felt himself wanting to placate, a sensation both new and unpleasant. "The details must be very interesting," he said weakly.
Nodus' face had gone stern again. "—won't do," he back-tracked curtly. "You'll be better off over there." He indicated a lone chair directly opposite the "NOW PLAYING" sign. "Acoustically speaking, the most effective location in the studio." Clinical and considered, his tone brooked no protest. Woodard stumbled embarrassedly to the chair. "You can see," Nodus stated, "if you look down, all the chalk marks where we've experimented with positions."
And Woodard did see: dozens of white marks on the rug around the chair legs, close together as if fractions of an inch were vital.
As Nodus moved to the dial boxes, Russ and the girl dropped like wraiths into chairs: she nearest Woodard, he in the middle, leaving the place by the apparatus for Nodus. Woodard thought: God, but he has this worked out! He's a tyrant, a baby-faced ogre. And these two goops are in bondage to him.