“Mr. Brown doesn’t like his employees to give way easily,” Middridge said.

I lit a cigarette. “I didn’t give way easily about the computer project originally,” I said. “If what I suggested and what the com­­puter people had suggested had been done from the start, we wouldn’t have had all this trouble.”

“That’s what I mean.” He glared at me. “Why the hell didn’t you argue me out of it?”

I looked at him incredulously. Then I began to laugh.

“You’ve left me speechless,” I said. “I haven’t any answer to that.”

Brown permitted himself a smile. “I can manage them all, can’t I, Middridge?”

“Wait a moment,” I said. “It’s a question now of getting the computer to do the right things for us. We’ve got to re-think the whole business and we need some help.”

“We’re coming to that, Joe,” he said.

“You can’t deny that I’m right on that issue.”

“You are. Flamville are the only people to do it. They made the damned thing and they’re the only people who can do the all-over programming.” He paused. “Programming. Why the hell don’t they call it planning? However, they’re the people to do it, and they’re the people who will do it. But they’re not getting five thousand pounds out of us.”

“That’s their figure,” I said.

Middridge smiled again. “Excuse me, Mr. Lampton, but you weren’t given the authority to ask them for a figure.”

“That’s immaterial,” Brown said. “Joe asked them and they told him. Joe had a pretty good idea of what the figures would be before he asked them. It’s fair enough, too. As Joe’s just pointed out, we wouldn’t have had all this trouble if we’d done what he suggested in the first place.”

“And what they suggested,” I said. “There isn’t any way out of it.”

It was hardly possible, I thought: I had lost all the skirmishes and was going to win the last battle.

I leaned forward.

“We can ask them officially,” I said. “And then—”

“And then nothing,” Brown said. “We’re sending someone down to put it to them straight. If they can’t do the programming for us free then I’m scrapping the computer. And I’m telling every­one that I’m scrapping it because it’s no use to me. They’re a small firm; if I do that it’ll cost them more than any five thou­sand pounds. They’ll be ruined, won’t they?”

“The laws of libel—” Middridge began.

“Don’t be such an old granny. There’s no law to forbid me scrapping the computer and no law to forbid me saying I’ve scrapped it. You’ve realized that, haven’t you, Joe?”

“It’s obvious,” I said.