Planning a Date

Planning, Ernest had long believed, was the only reliable weapon against chaos.

Give him a vein of iron ore buried in a hillside, and he could lay out the extraction drifts, the blast engines, and the freight sidings before nightfall. Give him two industrial centers separated by fifty leagues of mountain pass, and he could calculate the ruling grade to the third decimal place.

Yet here he was on a bright Wednesday morning, paralyzed by a single, pristine sheet of writing paper.

At the very top, penned in his sharp, vertical script:

OUTING WITH ELEANOR — SATURDAY

Beneath it lay half an hour of agonizing indecision.

1. Steelworks inspection.

Crossed out with two heavy black strokes. She would throw him into a cooling vat.

2. Rail journey.

Promising, but vague.

3. Countryside luncheon.

Serviceable, if slightly conventional.

4. Locomotive Works No. 3.