Black House Chapter Nineteen

19 JACK FOLLOWS THE Thunder Five out of the parking lot, and for the moment we will let him go alone on his northward way on Highway 93 toward Judy Marshall's lookout and Judy Marshall's locked ward. Like Jack, the bikers are headed toward the unknown, but their unknown lies westward on Highway 35, into the land of the steadily accumulating past, and we want to know what they will find there. These men do not appear to be nervous; they still project the massive confidence with which they burst into the Sand Bar. In truth, they never really display nervousness, for situations that would make other people worried or anxious generally make them get physical. Fear affects them differently than it does other people, too: in the rare moments when they have experienced fear, they've tended on the whole to enjoy it. In their eyes, fear represents a God-given opportunity for focusing their collective concentration. Due to their remarkable solidarity, that concentration is formidable. For those o f us who are not members of a biker gang or the Marine Corps, solidarity means little more than the compassionate impulse that leads us to comfort a bereft friend; for Beezer and his merry band, solidarity is the assurance that someone's always got your back. They are on each other's hands, and they know it. For the Thunder Five, safety really is in numbers. Yet the encounter toward which they are flying has no precedents or analogues in their experience. Black House is something new, and its newness the sheer strangeness of Mouse's story sinks tendrils down into their guts, one and all. Eight miles west of Centralia, where the flatland around Potsie's thirty-year-old development yields to the long stretch of woods that runs all the way to Maxton's, Mouse and Beezer ride side by side in front of the others. Beezer occasionally looks to his friend, asking a wordless question. The third time that Mouse shakes his head, he follows the gesture with a backward wave of his hand that says Stop bugging me, I'll tell you when we're there. Beezer drops back; Sonny, Kaiser Bill, and Doc automatically assume Beezer is giving them a signal, and they string out in a single line. At the head of the column, Mouse keeps taking his eyes off the highway to inspect the right-hand side of the road. The little road is hard to see, Mouse knows, and by now it will be more overgrown than it was two years ago. He is trying to spot the white of the battered NO TRESPASSING sign. It, too, may be partially hidden by new growth. He slows down to thirty-five. The four men behind him match his change in pace with the smoothness of long practice. Alone of the Thunder Five, Mouse has already seen their destination, and in the deepest places of his soul he can scarcely believe that he is going there again. At first, the ease and rapidity with which his memories had flown out of their dark vault had pleased him; now, instead of feeling that he has effortlessly reclaimed a lost part of his life, he has the sense of being at the mercy of that lost afternoon. A grave danger then and he does not doubt that some great and dangerous force had brushed him with a warning hand is an increased danger now. Memory has returned a miserable conclusion he thrust away long ago: that the hideous structure Jack Sawyer called Black House had killed Little Nancy Hale as surely as if its rafters had fallen in on her. Moral more than physical, Black House's ugliness exhaled toxic fumes. Little Nancy had been killed by the invisible poisons carried on the warning hand; now Mouse had to look at that knowledge without blinking. He can feel her hands o n his shoulders, and their thin bones are covered with rotting flesh. If I'd been five foot three and weighed one hundred and five pounds instead of being six-two and two hundred and ninety, by now I'd be rotting, too, he thinks. Mouse may look for the narrow road and the sign beside it with the eyes of a fighter pilot, but someone else has to see them, because he never will. His unconscious has taken a vote, and the decision was unanimous. Each of the other men, Sonny, Doc, the Kaiser, and even Beezer, have also connected Little Nancy's death with Black House, and the same speculations about comparative size and weight have passed through their minds. However, Sonny Cantinaro, Doc Amberson, Kaiser Bill Strassner, and especially Beezer St. Pierre assume that whatever poison surrounded Black House had been concocted in a laboratory by human beings who knew what they were doing. These four men derive the old, primitive reassurance from one another's company that they have enjoyed since college; if anything makes them feel a touch uneasy, it is that Mouse Baumann, not Beezer, leads their column. Even though Beezer let Mouse wave him back, Mouse's position contains a hint of insurrection, of mutiny: the universe has been subtly disordered. Twenty yards from the back end of the Maxton property, Sonny decides to put an end to this farce, guns his Softail, roars past his friends, and moves up parallel to Mouse. Mouse glances at him with a trace of worry, and Sonny motions to the side of the road. When they have all pulled over, Mouse says, â€Å"What's your problem, Sonny?† â€Å"You are,† Sonny says. â€Å"Either you missed the turnoff, or your whole story's all fucked up.† â€Å"I said I wasn't sure where it is.† He notices with nearly immeasurable relief that Little Nancy's dead hands no longer grip his shoulders. â€Å"Of course not. You were ripped on acid!† â€Å"Good acid.† â€Å"Well, there's no road up ahead, I know that much. It's just trees all the way to the old fucks' home.† Mouse ponders the stretch of road ahead as if the road just might be up there, after all, although he knows it is not. â€Å"Shit, Mouse, we're practically in town. I can see Queen Street from here.† â€Å"Yeah,† Mouse says. â€Å"Okay.† If he can get to Queen Street, he thinks, those hands will never fasten on him again. Beezer walks his Electra Glide up to them and says, â€Å"Okay what, Mouse? You agree it's farther back, or is the road somewhere else?† Frowning, Mouse turns his head to look back down the highway. â€Å"Goddamn. I think it's along here somewhere, unless I got totally turned around that day.† â€Å"Gee, how could that have happened?† says Sonny. â€Å"I looked at every inch of ground we passed, and I sure as hell didn't see a road. Did you, Beezer? How about a NO TRESPASSING sign, you happen to see one of those?† â€Å"You don't get it,† Mouse says. â€Å"This shit doesn't want to be seen.† â€Å"Maybe you shoulda gone to Ward D with Sawyer,† Sonny says. â€Å"People in there appreciate visionaries.† â€Å"Can it, Sonny,† Beezer says. â€Å"I was there before, and you weren't,† Mouse says. â€Å"Which one of us knows what he's talking about?† â€Å"I've heard enough out of both of you guys,† Beezer says. â€Å"Do you still think it's along here somewhere, Mouse?† â€Å"As far as I can recollect, yeah.† â€Å"Then we missed it. We'll go back and check again, and if we don't find it, we'll look somewhere else. If it's not here, it's between two of the valleys along 93, or in the woods on the hill leading up to the lookout. We have plenty of time.† â€Å"What makes you so sure?† Sonny asks. Mild anxiety about what they might come across is making him belligerent. He would just as soon go back to the Sand Bar and down a pitcher of Kingsland while messing with Stinky's head as waste his time goofing along the highways. Beezer looks at him, and his eyes crackle. â€Å"You know anywhere else there's enough trees to call it a woods?† Sonny backs down immediately. Beezer is never going to give up and go back to the Sand Bar. Beezer is in this for keeps. Most of that has to do with Amy, but some of it relates to Jack Sawyer. Sawyer impressed the shit out of Beezer the other night, that's what happened, and now Beezer thinks everything the guy says is golden. To Sonny, this makes no sense at all, but Beezer's the one who calls the shots, so for now, Sonny guesses, they will all run around like junior G-men for a while. If this adopt-a-cop program goes on for more than a couple of days, Sonny plans to have a little chat with Mouse and the Kaiser. Doc will always side with Beezer no matter what, but the other two are capable of listening to reason. â€Å"All right, then,† Beezer says. â€Å"Scratch from here to Queen Street. We know there's no fuckin' road along that stretch. We'll go back the way we came, give it one more shot. Single file the whole way. Mouse, you're point man again.† Mouse nods and prepares himself to feel those hands on his shoulders again. Gunning his Fat Boy, he rolls forward and takes his place at the head of the line. Beezer moves in behind him, and Sonny follows Beezer, with Doc and the Kaiser in the last two slots. Five pairs of eyes, Sonny thinks. If we don't see it this time, we never will. And we won't, because that damned road is halfway across the state. When Mouse and his old lady got buzzed on the Ultimate, they could go for hundreds of miles and think they'd taken a spin around the block. Everybody scans the opposite side of the road and the edge of the woods. Five pairs of eyes, as Sonny puts it, register an unbroken line of oaks and pine trees. Mouse has set a pace somewhere between a fast walk and a medium jog, and the trees crawl by. At this speed, they can notice the moss blistering the trunks of the oaks and the bright smears of sunlight on the forest's floor, which is brownish gray and resembles a layer of rumpled felt. A hidden world of upright trees, shafts of light, and deadfalls extends backward from the first, sentinel row. Within that world, paths that are not paths wind mazelike between the thick trunks and lead to mysterious clearings. Sonny becomes suddenly aware of a tribe of squirrels doing squirrel gymnastics in the map of branches that lace into an intermittent canopy. And with the squirrels, an aviary of birds pops into view. All of this reminds him of the deep Pennsylvania woods he had explored as a boy, before his parents sold their house and moved to Illinois. Those woods had contained a rapture he had found nowhere else. Sonny's conviction that Mouse got things wrong and they are looking in the wrong place takes on greater inner density. Earlier, Sonny had spoken about bad places, of which he has seen at least one he was absolutely certain about. In Sonny's experience, bad places, the ones that let you know you were not welcome, tended to be on or near borders. During the summer after his high school graduation, he and his two best buddies, all of them motorcycle freaks, had taken their bikes to Rice Lake, Wisconsin, where he had two cousins cute enough to show off to his friends. Sal and Harry were thrilled with the girls, and the girls thought the bikers were sexy and exotic. After a couple of days spent as a literal fifth wheel (or fifth and sixth wheel, depending on what you are counting), Sonny proposed extending their trip by a week and, in the interest of expanding their educations, ballin' the jack down to Chicago and spending the rest of their money on beer and hookers until they had to go home. Sal and Harry loved the whole idea, and on their third evening in Rice Lake, they packed their rolls on their bikes and roared south, making as much noise as possible. By 10:00 they had managed to get completely lost. It might have been the beer, it might have been inattention, but for one reason or another they had wandered off the highway and, in the deep black of a rural night, found themselves on the edge of an almost nonexistent town named Harko. Harko could not be found on their gas-station road map, but it had to be close to the Illinois border, on either one side or the other. Harko seemed to consist of an abandoned motel, a collapsing general store, and an empty grain mill. When the boys reached the mill, Sal and Harry groused about being exhausted and hungry and wanted to turn back to spend the night in the motel. Sonny, who was no less worn out, rode back with them; the second they rolled into the dark forecourt of the motel, he had a bad feeling about the place. The air seemed heavier, the darkness darker than they should have been. To Sonny, it seemed that malign, invisible presences haunted the place. He could all but make them out as they flitted between the cabins. Sal and Harry jeered at his reservations: he was a coward, a fairy, a girl. They broke down a door and unrolled their sleeping bags in a bare, dusty rectangular room. He carried his across the street and slept in a field. Dawn awakened him, and his face was wet with dew. He jumped up, pissed into the high grass, and checked for the motorcycles on the other side of the road. There they were, all three of them, listing over their stands outside a broken door. The dead neon sign at the entrance of the forecourt read HONEYMOONER'S BOWER. He walked across the narrow road and swept a hand over the moisture shining black on the seats of the motorcycles. A funny sound came from the room where his friends were sleeping. Already tasting dread, Sonny pushed open the broken door. If he had not initially refused to make sense of what was before him, what he saw in the room would have made him pass out. His face streaked with blood and tears, Sal Turso was sitting on the floor. Harry Reilly's severed head rested in his lap, and an ocean of blood soaked the floor and daubed the walls. Harry's body lay loose and disjointed on top of his blood-soaked sleeping bag. The body was naked; Sal wore only a blood-red T-shirt. Sal raised both his hands the one holding his prize long-bladed knife and the one holding only a palmful of blood and lifted his contorted face to Sonny's frozen gaze. I don't know what happened. His voice was high and screechy, not his. I don't remember doing this, how could I have done this? Help me, Sonny. I don't know what happened. Unable to speak, Sonny had backed out and flown away on his cycle. He'd had no clear idea of where he was going except that it was out of Harko. Two miles down the road, he came to a little town, a real one, with people in it, and someone finally took him to the sheriff's office. Harko: there was a bad place. In a way, both of his high school friends had died there, because Sal Turso hanged himself six months after being committed to a state penitentiary for life on a second-degree murder charge. In Harko, you saw no red-winged blackbirds or woodpeckers. Even sparrows steered clear of Harko. This little stretch of 35? Nothing but a nice, comfortable woodland. Let me tell you, Senator, Sonny Cantinaro has seen Harko, and this ain't no Harko. This don't even come close. It might as well be in another world. What meets Sonny's appraising eye and increasingly impatient spirit is about a mile and a quarter of beautiful wooded landscape. You could call it a mini-forest. He thinks it would be cool to come out here by himself one day, tuck the Harley out of sight, and just walk around through the great oaks and pines, that big pad of felt beneath his feet, digging the birds and the crazy squirrels. Sonny gazes at and through the sentinel trees on the far side of the road, enjoying his anticipation of the pleasure to come, and a flash of white jumps out at him from the darkness beside a huge oak tree. Caught up in the vision of walking alone under that green canopy, he almost dismisses it as a trick of the light, a brief illusion. Then he remembers what he is supposed to be looking for, and he slows down and leans sideways and sees, emerging from the tangle of underbrush at the base of the oak, a rusty bullet hole and a large, black letter N. Sonny swerves across the road, and the N expands into NO. He doesn't believe it, but there it is, Mouse's goddamn sign. He rolls ahead another foot, and the entire phrase comes into view. Sonny puts the bike in neutral and plants one foot on the ground. The darkness next to the oak stretches like a web to the next tree at the side of the road, which is also an oak, though not as huge. Behind him, Doc and the Kaiser cross the road and come to a halt. He ignores them and looks at Beezer and Mouse, who are already some thirty feet up the road, intently scanning the trees. â€Å"Hey,† he shouts. Beezer and Mouse do not hear him. â€Å"Hey! Stop!† â€Å"You got it?† Doc calls out. â€Å"Go up to those assholes and bring them back,† Sonny says. â€Å"It's here?† Doc asks, peering into the trees. â€Å"What, you think I found a body? Of course it's here.† Doc speeds up, stops just behind Sonny, and stares at the woods. â€Å"Doc, you see it?† Kaiser Bill shouts, and he speeds up, too. â€Å"Nope,† Doc says. â€Å"You can't see it from there,† Sonny tells him. â€Å"Will you please get your ass in gear and tell Beezer to come back here?† â€Å"Why don't you do it, instead?† Doc says. â€Å"Because if I leave this spot, I might not ever be able to fucking find it again,† Sonny says. Mouse and Beezer, now about sixty feet up the road, continue blithely on their way. â€Å"Well, I still don't see it,† Doc says. Sonny sighs. â€Å"Come up alongside me.† Doc walks his Fat Boy to a point parallel with Sonny's bike, then moves a couple of inches ahead. â€Å"There,† Sonny says, pointing at the sign. Doc squints and leans over, putting his head above Sonny's handle-bars. â€Å"Where? Oh, I see it now. It's all beat to hell.† The top half of the sign curls over and shades the bottom half. Some antisocial lad has happened along and creased the sign with his baseball bat. His older brothers, more advanced in the ways of crime, had tried to kill it with their .22 rifles, and he was just delivering the coup de grace. â€Å"Where's the road supposed to be?† Doc asks. Sonny, who is a little troubled about this point, indicates the flat sheet of darkness to the right of the sign and extending to the next, smaller oak tree. As he looks at it, the darkness loses its two-dimensionality and deepens backward like a cave, or a black hole softly punched through the air. The cave, the black hole, melts and widens into the earthen road, about five and a half feet wide, that it must have been all along. â€Å"That sure as hell is it,† says Kaiser Bill. â€Å"I don't know how all of us could have missed it the first time.† Sonny and Doc glance at each other, realizing that the Kaiser came along too late to watch the road seem to materialize out of a black wall with the thickness of a sheet of paper. â€Å"It's kind of tricky,† Sonny says. â€Å"Your eyes have to adjust,† Doc says. â€Å"Okay,† says Kaiser Bill, â€Å"but if you two want to argue about who tells Mouse and the Beeze, let me put you out of your misery.† He jams his bike into gear and tears off like a World War I messenger with a hot dispatch from the front. By now a long way up the road, Mouse and Beezer come to a halt and look back, having apparently heard the sound of his bike. â€Å"I guess that's it,† Sonny says, with an uneasy glance at Doc. â€Å"Our eyes had to adjust.† â€Å"Couldn't be anything else.† Less convinced than they would like to be, both men let it drop in favor of watching Kaiser Bill conversing with Beezer and Mouse. The Kaiser points at Sonny and Doc, Beezer points. Then Mouse points at them, and the Kaiser points again. It looks like a discussion in an extremely unevolved version of sign language. When everybody has gotten the point, Kaiser Bill spins his bike around and comes roaring back down the road with Beezer and Mouse on his tail. There is always that feeling of disorder, of misrule, when Beezer is not in the lead. The Kaiser stops on the side of the narrow road. Beezer and Mouse halt beside him, and Mouse winds up stationed directly in front of the opening in the woods. â€Å"Shouldn't have been that hard to see,† Beezer says. â€Å"But there she is, anyhow. I was beginning to have my doubts, Mousie.† â€Å"Uh-huh,† says Mouse. His customary manner, that of an intellectual roughneck with a playful take on the world, has lost all of its buoyancy. Beneath his biker's fair-weather sunburn, his skin looks pale and curdlike. â€Å"I want to tell you guys the truth,† Beezer says. â€Å"If Sawyer is right about this place, the creepy fuck who built it could have set up booby traps and all sorts of surprises. It was a long time ago, but if he really is the Fisherman, he has more reason than ever to keep people away from his crib. So we gotta watch our backs. The best way to do that is to go in strong, and go in ready. Put your weapons where you can reach them in a hurry, all right?† Beezer opens one of his saddlebags and draws out a Colt 9mm pistol with ivory grips and a blue-steel barrel. He chambers a round and unlocks the safety. Under his gaze, Sonny pulls his massive .357 Magnum from his bag, Doc a Colt identical to Beezer's, and Kaiser Bill an old S .38 Special he has owned since the late seventies. They shove the weapons, which until this moment have seen use only on firing ranges, into the pockets of their leather jackets. Mouse, who does not own a gun, pats the various knives he has secreted in the small of his back, in the hip and front pockets of his jeans, and sheathed within both of his boots. â€Å"Okay,† Beezer says. â€Å"Anybody in there is going to hear us coming no matter what we do, and maybe already has heard us, so there's no point in being sneaky about this. I want a fast, aggressive entrance just what you guys are good at. We can use speed to our advantage. Depending on what happens, we get as close to the house as possible.† â€Å"What if nothing happens?† asks the Kaiser. â€Å"Like, if we roll on in there and just keep going until we get to the house? I mean, I don't see any particular reason to be spooked here. Okay, something bad happened to Mouse, but . . . you know. Doesn't mean it's going to happen all over again.† â€Å"Then we enjoy the ride,† Beezer says. â€Å"Don't you want to take a look inside?† the Kaiser asks. â€Å"He might have kids in there.† â€Å"He might be in there,† Beezer tells him. â€Å"If he is, no matter what I said to Sawyer, we're bringing him out. Alive would be better than dead, but I wouldn't mind putting him in a serious state of bad health.† He gets a rumble of approval. Mouse does not contribute to this wordless, but otherwise universal agreement; he lowers his head and tightens his hands on the grips of his bike. â€Å"Because Mouse has been here before, he goes in on point. Doc and I'll be right behind him, with Sonny and the Kaiser covering our asses.† Beezer glances at them and says, â€Å"Stay about six, eight feet back, all right?† Don't put Mouse on point; you have to go in first, speaks in Sonny's mind, but he says, â€Å"All right, Beeze.† â€Å"Line up,† Beezer says. They move their bikes into the positions Beezer has specified. Anyone driving fast along Highway 35 would have to hit his brakes to avoid running into at least two beefy men on motorcycles, but the road stays empty. Everyone, including Mouse, guns his engine and prepares to move. Sonny slaps his fist against the Kaiser's and looks back at that dark tunnel into the woods. A big crow flaps onto a low-hanging branch, cocks its head, and seems to fix Sonny's eyes with its own. The crow must be looking at all of them, Sonny knows, but he cannot shake the illusion that the crow is staring directly at him, and that its black insatiable eyes are dancing with malice. The uncomfortable feeling that the crow is amused by the sight of him bent over his bike makes Sonny think of his Magnum. Turn you into a mess of bloody feathers, baby. Without unfolding its wings, the crow hops backward and disappears into the oak leaves. â€Å"GO!† Beezer shouts. The moment Mouse charges in, Little Nancy's rotting hands clamp down on his shoulders. Her thin bones press down on the leather hard enough to leave bruises on his skin. Although he knows this is impossible you cannot get rid of what does not exist the sudden flare of pain causes him to try to shake her off. He twitches his shoulders and wiggles the handlebars, and the bike wobbles. As the bike dips, Little Nancy digs in harder. When Mouse rights himself, she pulls herself forward, wraps her bony arms around his chest, and flattens her body against his back. Her skull grinds against the nape of his neck; her teeth bite down on his skin. It is too much. Mouse had known she would reappear, but not that she would put him in a vise. And despite his speed, he has the feeling that he is traveling through a substance heavier and more viscous than air, a kind of syrup that slows him down, holds him back. Both he and the bike seem unnaturally dense, as if gravity exerts a stronger pull on the little road than anywhere else. His head pounds, and already he can hear that dog growling in the woods off to his right. He could take all of that, he supposes, if it were not for what stopped him the last time he drove up this path: a dead woman. Then she was Kiz Martin; now the dead woman is Little Nancy, and she is riding him like a dervish, slapping his head, punching him in the side, battering his ears. He feels her teeth leave his neck and sink into the left shoulder of his jacket. One of her arms whips in front of him, and he enters a deeper level of shock and horror when he realizes that this arm is visible. Rags of skin flutte r over long bones; he glimpses white maggots wriggling into the few remaining knots of flesh. A hand that feels both spongelike and bony flaps onto his cheek and crawls up his face. Mouse cannot keep it together anymore: his mind fills with white panic, and he loses control of the bike. When he heads into the curve that leads to Black House, the wheels are already tilting dangerously, and Mouse's sideways jerk of revulsion pushes them over beyond the possibility of correction. As the bike topples, he hears the dog snarling from only a few yards away. The Harley smashes down on his left leg, then skids ahead, and he and his ghastly passenger slide after it. When Mouse sees Black House looming from its dark bower amid the trees, a rotting hand flattens over his eyes. His scream is a bright, thin thread of sound against the fury of the dog. A few seconds after going in, Beezer feels the air thicken and congeal around him. It's some trick, he tells himself, an illusion produced by the Fisherman's mind-fuck toxins. Trusting that the others will not be suckered by this illusion, he raises his head and looks over Mouse's broad back and cornrowed head to see the road curve to the left about fifty feet ahead. The thick air seems to weigh down on his arms and shoulders, and he feels the onset of the mother and father of all headaches, a dull, insistent pain that begins as a sharp twinge behind his eyes and moves thudding deeper into his brain. Beezer gives Doc a half second of attention, and from what he sees, Doc is taking care of business. A glance at the speedometer tells him that he is traveling at thirty-five miles per hour and gathering steam, so they should be doing sixty by the time they come into the curve. Off to his left, a dog growls. Beezer hauls his pistol out of his pocket and listens to the growling keep pace with them as they speed toward the curve. The band of pain in his head widens and intensifies; it seems to push at his eyes from the inside, making them bulge in their sockets. The big dog it has to be a dog, what else could it be? is getting closer, and the fury of its noises makes Beezer see a giant, tossing head with blazing red eyes and ropes of slather whipping from a gaping mouth filled with shark's teeth. Two separate things destroy his concentration: the first is that he sees Mouse slamming himself back and forth on his bike as he goes into the curve, as if he is trying to scratch his back on the thickening air; the second is that the pressure behind his eyes triples in force, and immediately after he sees Mouse going into what is surely a fall, the blood vessels in his eyes explode. From deep red, his vision shifts rapidly to absolute black. An ugly voice starts up in his head, saying, Amy zadt in my lap an huggedt mee. I made opp my mindt to eed hurr. How she dud, dud, dud kick an scrutch. I chokked hurr do deff â€Å"No!† Beezer shouts, and the voice that is pushing at his eyes drops into a rasping chuckle. For less than a second, he gets a vision of a tall, shadowy creature and a single eye, a flash of teeth beneath a hat or a hood and the world abruptly revolves around him, and he ends up flat on his back with the bike weighing on his chest. Everything he sees is stained a dark, seething red. Mouse is screaming, and when Beezer turns his head in the direction of the screams, he sees a red Mouse lying on a red road with a huge red dog barreling toward him. Beezer cannot find his pistol; it went sailing into the woods. Shouts, screams, and the roar of motorcycles fill his ears. He scrambles out from under the bike yelling he knows not what. A red Doc flashes by on his red bike and almost knocks him down again. He hears a gunshot, then another. Doc sees Beezer glance at him and tries not to show how sick he feels. Dishwater boils in his stomach, and his guts are writhing. It feels like he is going about five miles an hour, the air is so thick and rancid. For some reason, his head weighs thirty or forty pounds, damnedest thing; it would almost be interesting if he could stop the disaster happening inside him. The air seems to concentrate itself, to solidify, and then boom, his head turns into a superheavyweight bowling ball that wants to drop onto his chest. A giant growling sound comes from out of the woods beside him, and Doc almost yields to the impulse to puke. He is dimly aware that Beezer is pulling out his gun, and he supposes he should do the same, but part of his problem is that the memory of a child named Daisy Temperly has moved into his mind, and the memory of Daisy Temperly paralyzes his will. As a resident in surgery at the university hospital in Urbana, Doc had performed, under supervision, nearly a hundred operations of every sort and assisted at as many. Until Daisy Temperly was wheeled into the O.R., all of them had gone well. Complicated but not especially difficult or life-threatening, her case involved bone grafts and other repair work. Daisy was being put back together again after a serious auto accident, and she had already endured two previous surgeries. Two hours after the start of the procedure, the head of the department, Doc's supervisor, was called away for an emergency operation, and Doc was left in charge. Partly because he had been sleep-deprived for forty-eight hours, partly because in his exhaustion he had pictured himself cruising along the highway with Beezer, Mouse, and his other new friends, he made a mistake not during the operation, but after it. While writing a prescription for medication, he miscalculated the dosage, and two hours later, Daisy Temperly was dead. There were things he could have done to rescue his career, but he did none of them. He was allowed to finish his residency, and then he left medicine for good. Talking to Jack Sawyer, he had vastly simplified his motives. The uproar in the middle of his body can no longer be contained. Doc turns his head and vomits as he races forward. It is not the first time he has puked while riding, but it is the messiest and the most painful. The weight of his bowling-ball head means that he cannot extend his neck, so vomit spatters against his right shoulder and right arm; and what comes leaping out of him feels alive and equipped with teeth and claws. He is not surprised to see blood mixed with the vomit erupting from his mouth. His stomach doubles in on itself with pain. Without meaning to, Doc has slowed down, and when he accelerates and faces forward again, he sees Mouse topple over sideways and skid behind his bike into the curve up ahead. His ears report a rushing sound, like that of a distant waterfall. Dimly, Mouse screams; equally dimly, Beezer shouts â€Å"No!† Right after that, the Beeze runs headlong into a big rock or some other obstruction, because his Electra Glide leaves the ground, flips completely over in the compacted air, and comes down on top of him. It occurs to Doc that this mission is totally FUBAR. The whole world has hung a left, and now they are in deep shit. He does the only sensible thing: he yanks his trusty 9mm out of his pocket and tries to figure out what to shoot first. His ears pop, and the sounds around him surge into life. Mouse is still screeching. Doc cannot figure out how he missed hearing the noise of the dog before, because even with the roaring of the cycles and Mouse's screams, that moving growl is the loudest sound in the woods. The fucking Hound of the Baskervilles is racing toward them, and both Mouse and Beezer are out of commission. From the noise it makes, the thing must be the size of a bear. Doc aims the pistol straight ahead and steers with one hand as he blasts by Beezer, who is wriggling out from beneath his bike. That enormous sound Doc imagines a bear-sized dog widening its chops around Mouse's head, and instantly erases the image. Things are happening too fast, and if he doesn't pay attention, those jaws could close on him. He has just time enough to think, That's no ordinary dog, not even a huge one when something enormous and black comes charging out of the woods to his right and cuts on a diagonal toward Mouse. Doc pulls the trigger, and at the sound of the pistol the animal whirls halfway around and snarls at him. All Doc can see clearly are two red eyes and an open red mouth with a long tongue and a lot of sharp canine teeth. Everything else is smudgy and indistinct, with no more definition than if it were covered in a swirling cape. A lightning bolt of pure terror that tastes as clean and sharp as cheap vodka pierces Doc from gullet to testicles, and his bike slews its rear end around and comes to a halt he has stopped it out of sheer reflex. Suddenly it feels like deep night. Of course he can't see it how could you see a black dog in the middle of the night? The creature whirls around again and streaks toward Mouse. It doesn't want to charge me because of the gun and because the other two guys are right behind me, Doc thinks. His head and arms seem to have gained another forty pounds apiece, but he fights against the weight of his muscles and straightens his arms and fires again. This time he knows he hits that thing, but its only reaction is to shudder off-course for a moment. The big smudge of its head swings toward Doc. The growling gets even louder, and long, silvery streamers of dog drool fly from its open mouth. Something that suggests a tail switches back and forth. When Doc looks into the open red gash, his resolve weakens, his arms get heavier, and he is scarcely capable of holding his head upright. He feels as though he is falling down into that red maw; his pistol dangles from his limp hand. In a moment suspended throughout eternity, the same hand scribbles a post-op prescription for Daisy Temperly. The creature trots toward Mouse. Doc can hear Sonny's voice, cursing furiously. A loud explosion on his right side seals both of his ears, and the world falls perfectly silent. Here we are, Doc says to himself. Darkness at noon. For Sonny, the darkness strikes at the same time as the searing pain in his head and his stomach. A single band of agony rips right down through his body, a phenomenon so unparalleled and extreme that he assumes it has also erased the daylight. He and Kaiser Bill are eight feet behind Beezer and Doc, and about fifteen feet up the narrow dirt road. The Kaiser lets go of his handlebars and grips the sides of his head. Sonny understands exactly how he feels: a four-foot section of red-hot iron pipe has been thrust through the top of his head and pushed down into his guts, burning everything it touches. â€Å"Hey, man,† he says, in his misery noticing that the air has turned sludgy, as though individual atoms of oxygen and carbon dioxide are gummy enough to stick to his skin. Then Sonny notices that the Kaiser's eyes are swimming up toward the back of his head, and he realizes that the man is passing out right next to him. Sick as he is, he has to do something to protect the Kaise r. Sonny reaches out for the other man's bike, watching as well as he can the disappearance of the Kaiser's irises beneath his upper eyelids. Blood explodes out of his nostrils, and his body slumps backward on the seat and rolls over the side. For a couple of seconds, he is dragged along by a boot caught in the handlebars, but the boot slips off, and the cycle drifts to a halt. The red-hot iron bar seems to rupture his stomach, and Sonny has no choice; he lets the other bike fall and utters a groan and bends sideways and vomits out what feels like every meal he has ever eaten. When nothing is left inside him, his stomach feels better, but John Henry has decided to drive giant rail spikes through his skull. His arms and legs are made of rubber. Sonny focuses on his bike. It seems to be standing still. He does not understand how he can go forward, but he watches a blood-spattered hand gun his bike and manages to stay upright when it takes off. Is that my blood? he wonders, and remembers two long red flags unfurling from the Kaiser's nose. A noise that had been gathering strength in the background turns into the sound of a 747 coming in for a landing. Sonny thinks that the last thing he wants to do today is get a look at the animal capable of making that sound. Mouse was right on the money: this is a bad, bad place, right up there with the charming town of Harko, Illinois. Sonny wishes to encounter no more Harkos, okay? One was enough. So why is he moving forward instead of turning around and running for the sunny peace of Highway 35? Why is he pulling that massive gun out of his pocket? It's simple. He is not about to let that jet-airplane-dog mess up his homeys, no matter how much his head hurts. John Henry keeps pounding in those five-dollar spikes while Sonny picks up speed and squints at the road ahead, trying to figure out what is going on. Someone screams, he cannot identify who. Through the growling, he hears the unmistakable sound of a motorcycle hitting the ground after a flip, and his heart shivers. Beezer should always be point man, he thinks, otherwise we're asking for punishment. A gun goes off with a loud explosion. Sonny forces himself to press through the gluey atoms in the air, and after another five or six seconds he spots Beezer, who is painfully pushing himself upward beside his toppled bike. A few feet beyond Beezer, Doc's bulky figure comes into view, sitting astride his bike and aiming his 9 at something in the road ahead of him. Doc fires, and red flame bursts from the barrel of his pistol. Feeling more beat-up and useless than ever before in his life, Sonny jumps from his moving bike and runs toward Doc, trying to look past him. The first thing he sees is a flash of light off Mouse's bike, which comes into view flat on its side about twenty feet down the road, at the top of the curve. Then he finds Mouse, on his ass and scrambling backward from some animal Sonny can barely make out, except for its eyes and teeth. Unconscious of the stream of obscenities that pour from his mouth, Sonny levels his pistol at the creature and fires just as he runs past Doc. Doc just stands there; Doc is out for the count. The weird animal up on the road closes its jaws on Mouse's leg. It is going to rip away a hamburger-sized chunk of muscle, but Sonny hits it with a fucking hollow-point missile from his Magnum, a bit show-offy for target practice but under the circumstances no more than prudent, thank you very much. Contrary to all expectations and the laws of physics, Sonny's amazing wonderbullet does not knock a hole the size of a football in the creature's hide. The wonderbullet pushes the animal sideways and distracts it from Mouse's leg; it does not even knock it down. Mouse sends up a howl of pain. The dog whips around and glares at Sonny with red eyes the size of baseballs. Its mouth opens on jagged white teeth, and it snaps the air. Ropes of slime shoot out of its jaws. The creature lowers its shoulders and steps forward. Amazingly, its snarling grows in volume and ferocity. Sonny is being warned: if he does not turn and run, he is next on the menu. â€Å"Fuck that,† Sonny says, and fires straight at the animal's mouth. Its whole head should fly apart in bloody rags, but for a second after the Magnum goes off, nothing changes. Oh, shit, Sonny thinks. The dog-thing's eyes blaze, and its feral, wedge-shaped head seems to assemble itself out of the darkness in the air and emerge into view. As though an inky robe had been partially twitched aside, Sonny can see a thick neck descending to meaty shoulders and strong front legs. Maybe the tide is turning here, maybe this monster will turn out to be vulnerable after all. Sonny braces his right wrist with his left hand, aims at the dog-thing's chest, and squeezes off another round. The explosion seems to stuff his ears with cotton. All the railroad spikes in his head heat up like electric coils, and bright pain sings between his temples. Dark blood gouts from the creature's brisket. At the center of Sonny Cantinaro's being, a pure, primitive triumph bursts into life. More of the monster melts into visibility, the wide back and a suggestion of its rear legs. Of no recognizable breed and four and a half feet high, the dog-thing is approximately the size of a gigantic wolf. When it moves toward him, Sonny fires again. Like an echo, the sound of his gun repeats from somewhere close behind; a bullet like a supercharged wasp zings past his chest. The creature staggers back, limping on an injured leg. Its enraged eyes bore into Sonny's. He risks glancing over his shoulder and sees Beezer braced in the middle of the narrow road. â€Å"Don't look at me, shoot!† Beezer yells. His voice seems to awaken Doc, who raises his arm and takes aim. Then all three of them are pulling their triggers, and the little road sounds like the firing range on a busy day. The dog-thing (hell hound, Sonny thinks) limps back a step and opens wide its terrible mouth to howl in rage and frustration. Before the howl ends, the creature gathers its rear legs beneath its body, springs across the road, and vanishes into the woods. Sonny fights off the impulse to collapse under a wave of relief and fatigue. Doc swivels his body and keeps firing into the darkness behind the trees until Beezer puts a hand on his arm and orders him to stop. The air stinks of cordite and some animal odor that is musky and disgustingly sweet. Pale gray smoke shimmers almost white as it filters upward through the darker air. Beezer's haggard face turns to Sonny, and the whites of his eyes are crimson. â€Å"You hit that fucking animal, didn't you?† Through the wads of cotton in his ears, Beezer's voice sounds small and tinny. â€Å"Shit, yes. At least twice, probably three times.† â€Å"And Doc and I hit it once apiece. What the hell is that thing?† † ‘What the hell' is right,† Sonny says. Weeping with pain, Mouse a third time repeats his cry of â€Å"Help me!† and the others hear him at last. Moving slowly and pressing their hands over whatever parts of their bodies hurt the most, they hobble up the road and kneel in front of Mouse. The right leg of his jeans is ripped and soaked with blood, and his face is contorted. â€Å"Are you assholes deaf ?† â€Å"Pretty near,† Doc says. â€Å"Tell me you didn't take a bullet in your leg.† â€Å"No, but it must be some kind of miracle.† He winces and inhales sharply. Air hisses between his teeth. â€Å"Way you guys were shooting. Too bad you couldn't draw a bead before it bit my leg.† â€Å"I did,† Sonny says. â€Å"Reason you still got a leg.† Mouse peers at him, then shakes his head. â€Å"What happened to the Kaiser?† â€Å"He lost about a liter of blood through his nose and passed out,† Sonny tells him. Mouse sighs as if at the frailty of the human species. â€Å"I believe we might try to get out of this crazy shithole.† â€Å"Is your leg all right?† Beezer asks. â€Å"It's not broken, if that's what you mean. But it's not all right, either.† â€Å"What?† Doc asks. â€Å"I can't say,† Mouse tells him. â€Å"I don't answer medical questions from guys all covered in puke.† â€Å"Can you ride?† â€Å"Fuck yes, Beezer you ever know me when I couldn't ride?† Beezer and Sonny each take a side and, with excruciating effort, lift Mouse to his feet. When they release his arms, Mouse lumbers sideways a few steps. â€Å"This is not right,† he says. â€Å"That's brilliant,† says Beezer. â€Å"Beeze, old buddy, you know your eyes are, like, bright red? You look like fuckin' Dracula.† To the extent that hurry is possible, they are hurrying. Doc wants to get a look at Mouse's leg; Beezer wants to make sure that Kaiser Bill is still alive; and all of them want to get out of this place and back into normal air and sunlight. Their heads pound, and their muscles ache from strain. None of them can be sure that the dog-thing is not preparing for another charge. As they speak, Sonny has been picking up Mouse's Fat Boy and rolling it toward its owner. Mouse takes the handles and pushes his machine forward, wincing as he goes. Beezer and Doc rescue their bikes, and six feet along Sonny pulls his upright out of a snarl of weeds. Beezer realizes that when he was at the curve in the road, he failed to look for Black House. He remembers Mouse saying, This shit doesn't want to be seen, and he thinks Mouse got it just about right: the Fisherman did not want them there, and the Fisherman did not want his house to be seen. Everything else was spinning around in his head the way his Electra Glide had spun over after that ugly voice spoke up in his mind. Beezer is certain of one thing, however: Jack Sawyer is not going to hold out on him any longer. Then a terrible thought strikes him, and he asks, â€Å"Did anything funny anything really strange happen to you guys before the dog from hell jumped out of the woods? Besides the physical stuff, I mean.† He looks at Doc, and Doc blushes. Hello? Beezer thinks. Mouse says, â€Å"Go fuck yourself. I'm not gonna talk about that.† â€Å"I'm with Mouse,† Sonny says. â€Å"I guess the answer is yes,† Beezer says. Kaiser Bill is lying by the side of the road with his eyes closed and the front of his body wet with blood from mouth to waist. The air is still gray and sticky; their bodies seem to weigh a thousand pounds, the bikes to roll on leaden wheels. Sonny walks his bike up beside the Kaiser's supine body and kicks him, not all that gently, in the ribs. The Kaiser opens his eyes and groans. â€Å"Fuck, Sonny,† he says. â€Å"You kicked me.† His eyelids flutter, and he lifts his head off the ground and notices the blood soaking into his clothing. â€Å"What happened? Am I shot?† â€Å"You conducted yourself like a hero,† Sonny says. â€Å"How do you feel?† â€Å"Lousy. Where was I hit?† â€Å"How am I supposed to know?† Sonny says. â€Å"Come on, we're getting out of here.† The others file past. Kaiser Bill manages to get to his feet and, after another epic struggle, hauls his bike upright beside him. He pushes it down the track after the others, marveling at the pain in his head and the quantity of blood on his body. When he comes out through the last of the trees and joins his friends on Highway 35, the sudden brightness stabs his eyes, his body feels light enough to float away, and he nearly passes out all over again. â€Å"I don't think I did get shot,† he says. No one pays any attention to the Kaiser. Doc is asking Mouse if he wants to go to the hospital. â€Å"No hospital, man. Hospitals kill people.† â€Å"At least let me take a look at your leg.† â€Å"Fine, look.† Doc kneels at the side of the road and tugs the cuff of Mouse's jeans up to the bottom of his knee. He probes with surprisingly delicate fingers, and Mouse winces. â€Å"Mouse,† he says, â€Å"I've never seen a dog bite like this before.† â€Å"Never saw a dog like that before, either.† The Kaiser says, â€Å"What dog?† â€Å"There's something funny about this wound,† Doc says. â€Å"You need antibiotics, and you need them right away.† â€Å"Don't you have antibiotics?† â€Å"Sure, I do.† â€Å"Then let's go back to Beezer's place, and you can stick me full of needles.† â€Å"Whatever you say,† says Doc.

Knowledge and Wisdom

Knowledge – and wisdom. Sometimes we have all we need of one, but not enough of the other. And often, too often, we don't know the difference. Often, too often, we mistake knowledge, the accumulation of facts, for wisdom, the ability to make the right choices in life.To succeed as individuals, and as a nation, we need to know how to put what we know to proper use. Perhaps this is why our system of education so often fails. Children are fed facts, lots of facts, without being shown the use of those facts. That can lead to a gain in knowledge without any gain in wisdom, or it can lead nowhere at all as the student turns away from what he or she perceives as busy work designed to fill the mind with useless facts.Often, too often, students are told they must learn something without being told why, without being guided toward the wisdom they will need to put to proper use the facts they are given. Or they are told they must learn something to pass an examination. A passing grade is held up as the ultimate goal, and that's not good.What should be held up as the ultimate goal is both knowledge and wisdom gained in school that can be put to good use in life. When the student sees that this fact, or that bit of information, can have real value somewhere besides on an examination, that student will want to learn. And that student will have a higher score on any examination. Knowledge – and wisdom. One needs the other, and we all need both.

The Letter of Complaint

Dear Sir/ Madam I am writing to you in order to complain about your package holidays in Greece where I have been last two weeks. On 25 August 2011 from your company I bought a two – week holiday in Greece. Unfortunately, your package holiday was unfaithful and misleading. I am disappointed because everything that was said in your brochure was a lay. When I arrived to Greece I found an overflowing resort with a lot of tourists instead of peaceful island where I had to relax.Moreover, in PTC’s brochure were said that there was miles of empty golden sands but the nearest beach to the hotel was a kilometre away and very rocky. Furthermore, I could reach the mainland with a ferry which ran only three times a week and were very crowded. In addition, your company made a promise that there was a traditional Greek hospitality in a comfortable family run hotel full of a local atmosphere but I could not find the traditional Greek dishes and everywhere was a holiday- camp atmospher e.To resolve the problem, I would appreciate your money back. Moreover, I require you to correct your mistakes and do not deceive your clients. Furthermore, I hope you will make me a discount for another holiday package, if liked to go for my holidays. I trust you will ensure that such errors will not happen again. I look forward to your replay and a resolution to my problem. Please contact me at the above address or by phone. Yours faithfully,

Email Policy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Email Policy - Essay Example The technologies like telephone and other earlier modes of swift communication systems too had some problems on the issues of etiquette in their usage. But on contrary, the current issue in monitoring email is virtually monitoring everyone due to the comprehensive connectively among all users in the organization. The apprehensions on the policy of archiving all the emails to disturb on the productivity of the company from the resentment generated due to restriction imposed on the freedom of employees expression is not very serious. The research studies undertaken across the world to assess the employees attitude towards email user policy strongly recommends that absence to articulate an effective email policy would give wrong signal on the user attitude (Weisband and Reinig, 1995). The experience of Jason Perry clearly justifies this finding that the absence of a proper policy too have given the users to take the technology to their personal advantage and made it detrimental to the r eputation and credibility of the organization. But in the case of M/S Johnson & Dresser, the issue that confuses the top management is on the outcome of the implementation rather than the policy framework preparation for the email usage in the company. More over, Jason Perry as an architect for the effective implementation of the policy shall prepare necessary exercises to sensitize the entire community around him in the organization to reinforce in them the need for a code of email usage in the organization. And to create a proper prudent approach towards this rather than an offensive strategy, it would also be essential for the CEO and the other responsible members in the company to have a public release of the company policy as a benchmarking program in creating digital ethics codes (Simmers, 2002). This would help the employees to rally behind such a noble cause which otherwise would be invite significant amount of suspicion in the mind of the employees. On the content

The difference between in-process inventory, safety stock inventory, Assignment

The difference between in-process inventory, safety stock inventory, and seasonal inventory - Assignment Example The production of the raw metal involves a mix of raw materials. The safety stock inventory refers to the stock that a firm holds to guard against lead-time, uncertainty in demand, and supply. Safety stock is a significant factor that determines the balance between the inventory investment and the service to the customers (Dear, 2009). The high stock safety indicates excellent service and investment in the inventory (Saxena, 2003). A company can reduce the in-house safety stock levels by shrinking the delivery lead times assigned to the suppliers. An example in hardware store involves keeping some packets of cement in anticipation of the demand that may exceed the forecasts. In case of the cement shortage, the hardware store will respond to the uncertainty in demand. Seasonal inventory encompasses products that have demand in particular seasons. The products do not have consistent and stable demand. The firms should strategize how to purchase and manage the seasonal inventory effectively in anticipation of demand (Dear, 2009). The management is significant in order to offset the temporary seasonal demand of the products. In the hardware store, the Christmas cards are seasonal inventory. The hardware store should ensure it has enough Christmas cards to satisfy demand in

Compare and Contrast Religion Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Compare and Contrast Religion - Essay Example Christian Theism is the classical Christian philosophy of 17th century. The word â€Å"theism† is derived from the Greek word â€Å"theos† which means God. The word was first used in this context by Mr. Ralph Cudworth in the 17th Century. Literally speaking, Christian Theism is, in fact, propagation of Monotheism which means that there is only one God. Many argue that Christian Theism is based on Judaism, the Pagan Gods and the old Greek philosophy but this is disputed and, to a large extent, a matter of opinion. The first two attributes, when read together gives an apparently contradictory yet interwoven understanding of God. Theism defines God to be personal – which means God has characteristics of a human being. Hence God thinks and acts like a human being, takes interest and is involved in the activities of his creations – that is our universe and us, human beings. At the same time, God is also perceived as infinite and transcendent and therefore one can never truly understand or comprehend his nature. As Sire (2004) frames it â€Å"This means that he is beyond scope, beyond measure, as far as we are concerned........All else is secondary†(Sire,â€Å"The Universe Next Door†,2004).Theism also defines God to be omnipresent – and thereby always aware of what is happening in this world. God is, hence, present in everything but not the thing itself. And God is also perceived to be good and thereby all his actions are for the good of human beings. This philosophy throws up some interesting thinking and concepts. This inherently assumes that the world is logical and has a co-relation between cause and effect. God has created an underlying order into the universe and therefore the world and the universe is meaningful. Though not a defined Christian Theist, perhaps the best expression of this concept was uttered by Mr. Albert Einstein when he said â€Å"You believe in the god who plays dice, and I in complete law and order

Is criminal justice policy in respect to prisons and sex offender Essay

Is criminal justice policy in respect to prisons and sex offender notification based upon research evidence or populist considerations. Discuss in relation to - Essay Example ted sex offenders convicted, under custodial or community sentence or those released back to the community but remain under correctional supervision are required to inform local law enforcement of their identity and conviction or supervision as sex offenders (Plotnikoff & Woolfson, 2000; National Offender Management Service [NOMS], 2006). Though there is no denying the value of the objective of the provisions there has also been equal concern that the provisions contravene human and civil rights as well as prevent the social integration of previous offenders contravening correction efforts (Thomas, 2003; Grubin & Prentky, 1993). One element of this debate is based on the validity and effectiveness of the provisions: whether they can are based on research or populist considerations. The reinforcement of research evidence is critical in ensuring confidence in the measures while the latter would support social relevance of provisions (Jenkins, 1995). However, Baron (2003) believes that though sex offender notification is driven by either research or populist sentiments, there is a need to determine what is of greater influence to be able to ascertain whether requirements do not undermine the rights of offenders in the process. The idea of offenders, not only for sexual-related crime, being required to disclose their movements or to be subject to monitoring is a means of enhancing the ability of law enforcement to ensure compliance with release requirements, prevent recidivism and to develop a reference for possible suspects in the sex crimes with no known perpetrators (Knock et al, 2002; Matravers, 2003). The practice is not a new of unique to the U.K.: the history of the use of markers to denote offenders and their crime has been a practice among society to reinforce the censure for the crime committed and to communicate social consequence (Home Office, 2002). These include permanent marking of offenders via tattoos, prescription or restriction of residence or the

The Internationalization and Brand Development of HuaWei Dissertation

The Internationalization and Brand Development of HuaWei - Dissertation Example Organization which can adapt itself with the changing business needs and scenarios are in a greater position to remain sustainable and competitive in the long term. This particular project dissertation has the title of internationalization as well as brand development of Huawei. It is important to mention that in this particular case, the influence of the factors of internationalization as well as brand development has to be researched in connection to the brand of Huawei. While doing the literature review, it was realized that the concepts of internationalization as well as brand development are very intrinsic in nature. In order to get a better understanding of the influence of the two in regards to the Chinese global brand, it is important to take the views of the people who are deeply associated and integrated with the process of the firm. As a result, a research question was developed to understand the influence of internationalization and brand development of Huawei and how it helped in achieving the dominance of the brand in the global markets. This dissertation based project in the course of progress will take into account, the factor of considering a primary based research and proper analysis of the collected data, so that significant amount of justice can be done to the research question, that has been framed. Introduction The world of the 21st century is moving at a fast pace. The fast pace of advancement of the modern day world is more on the lines of rapid change and tremendous development. It is of high importance to mention that the evolution of the telecommunication technology along with the process of evolution of high speed internet and various kinds of technology enabled gadgets has resulted in the process of playing a tremendous amount of influence in the lives of the masses around the world. It needs to be mentioned that because of the lines of emergence of high speed internet connectivity, the network of communication channels has improved in a drastic manner all over the world. The internet has played a major role in the process of creating the channels of communication in the various regions of the developed as well as the developing economies. It can be rightly said that it is of considerable importance to highlight that this technology powered development has resulted in the process of transformation of the globe, where the entire world can be represented and increasingly seen as a single and well connected global entity. Because of this technology powered transformation of the world around us, there has always been a steady evolution of various kinds of

Marketing and Distribution Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Marketing and Distribution - Essay Example It aims to paint a positive image for its brand in its efforts to cultivate a favorable impression from the buying public. This display of responsible and ethical conduct gains goodwill from the consumers and the community directly affected by its production operation (Heath, 2005, 368). Secondly, Nescafe Plan is also a measure to enhance good relations between the company and its suppliers. Nescafe is communicating the message that it takes care of those it deals with, hence, assures loyalty and even hard work from the farmers in the process. This also goes to other suppliers of Nescafe and Nestle. There is a clear message that working for the organization is an opportunity. Suppliers and workers are not slaves but instead, they are treated as partners in growth. 3. Although the website does not have a comments section, there is a button that enables visitors to share the website in social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. In addition, a section is provided that contains comprehensive contact details, if visitors want more information or have questions. This approach tells about the intent to disseminate information and perhaps initiate public discussion indirectly, which could work in Nescafes favor as it may not be seen as a blatant marketing

New Product Proposal and Development Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

New Product Proposal and Development - Essay Example   The small innovations typically make up for more than 80% of the development of the company (Annacchino, 25). These events do not lead to the growth that the company hopes to get in the end. R-W-W directs the project to answer six important questions, which are, does the product have a real market? Does the company produce a genuine product? Can the commodity compete with other products? Will the organization compete with others? Is the product return profitable at a particular risk? Is it logic to launch the product?  Ã‚   Does the product have a real market?Establishing if the market exists is an important factor to its growth.   The new technology has a real market because it has passed the qualities of the market (Day, 03). The charger has been able to shape the quality of the market because of its quality. Apple and Samsung are the main producers of smart phones in the world. The phones they produce do not come with a portable charger. It means the charger will have a re ady market for the charger. The need of portable kinetic charger is growth due to diversity of products.  Ã‚  Will the organization compete with others?  Individuals will choose the charger over other because of one or more features it possesses. The charger would improve on the existing charging solutions in the industry. The market has been there for a long time and it indicates that the portable kinetic charger will, compete with other corporations. The high use of mobile phones and other devices has become a community norm.

Canadian Democracy in a North American Assignment

Canadian Democracy in a North American - Assignment Example Quebec being the only province in Canada that speaks French, the two professors try to identify the laws that affect Quebec and how relevant these laws are to the French population. To try and support the province, they analyze ways in which the province can be recognized in the Constitution of Canada without any trouble. This would, however, require amendments that will not only require the expertise of the legislation but will also have to be passed by a majority of votes in the other provinces. Is it necessary for Quebec to have its own language and hence promote their rich French culture? Body Quebec has always had a rich history in French culture and language. However, the other parts of the country speak English and do not have the rich French culture that exists in Quebec. Preserving the French culture has always proved to be a problem and as a result of this, the leaders have come with amendments that will allow each province to be able to determine some issues affecting them without having to affect other provinces. For example in this case, Quebec could be able to change its laws and make French the official language in the province unlike other provinces which have English being their official language. However, it will mean that the constitution will have to be amended to allow each province to choose its respective language without legislative opposition. The bilateral constitution amendments process has to be limited to only a few issues and should not include issues that are critical to the country’s security and economy such as voting periods. At the moment, however, it is not possible for any province to amend its constitution without legislative approval. The process began in 1982 when the country adopted a new constitutional amendment process that ensures that Canada changes its constitution without the inclusion of the British. It has, however, been argued that during this period, the amendments were made without the approval of Quebe c – a major province that had over a quarter of the entire population at that particular period of time. This was ironical since Quebec had played a major role in ensuring that Canada got these amendments. However, the country’s legislature completely ignored the agenda that Quebec had for this particular change. After this, there have been several failed attempts to accept the changes that Quebec proposes to the constitution. The main arguments of the authors are that Quebec has always had a rich French culture that has always been protected by the people all through the years. The people, therefore, need these cultural values that include the French language to be protected by law. This would mean that French becomes the official language of the province. However, currently the law does not recognize the bilateral amendment process. The authors argue that in 1982, Quebec fought for a new constitution that would allow the country to amend its own constitution without Britain’s help. Quebec also proposed the inclusion of bilateral constitution amendment, a system that would allow each province to change some of its laws that did not include controversial statements that were important to the country. However, during the constitutional amendment process, Quebec was not included in the process and some of its needs were not met. Despite the constant complaints by the Quebec leaders, there has not been a consensus on how to promote culture in the area. It is important to

Luxury consumer behavior in Mainland China Essay Example for Free

Luxury consumer behavior in Mainland China Essay China recently became the world’s second largest market for luxury goods with an annual increase of more than 30% in 2010, even surpassing Japan. Further estimates predict that China will become the largest upscale product and consumer goods market in the world. How does a country with an average GDP per capita of $3,800 USD, and classified behind 105 in the world ranking possess such a strong propensity for consuming luxury goods and products? Specifically, how does one make sense of Mainland Chinese luxury buyers and their respective consumer behavior? This article answers these strategic questions for foreign companies and marketers who are interested in the luxury industry in China, and for those who want to develop a greater understanding of one of the world’s largest market and its 1. 3 billion consumers. â€Å"At the core of this paper is an explanation of Mainland China’s 21st century value system that can only have been shaped from the country’s rich history. † At the core of this paper is an explanation of Mainland China’s 21st century value system that can only have been shaped from the country’s rich history. Answering how China has become the buoyant socialist state economy it is today, is to shed light onto the country’s various economic, social, cultural and psychological histories. The history of luxury consumption in China is one of the country’s oldest. It remains deeply rooted into China’s cultural and sociological landscape and has subsequently influenced other Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. The contemporary Chinese antique market and auction houses offer a telling explanation of how luxury is consumed in China. During the economic downtown, collections of Chinese antiquities were sold at Christie’s auction house for far more than their estimated value. In 2009, a 12th-century B. C. bronze vessel from the Western Zhou Dynasty sold for over 14 times its estimated value. These antique collectors are, in large part, Chinese or Asian. Collecting an expensive, storied antique is viewed in a similar vein to purchasing a luxury good. To own an artifact at home was tantamount in grandeur to that displayed by museums around the world that also housed ancient Chinese art collections. In sharp contrast, during China’s Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, tradition and Chinese cultural heritage was viewed negatively as something boring, worthless, and divisive. History and heritage were destroyed in favor of new equalizing ideology. The Cultural Revolution created a cultural void, and those affected would go on to be known as the ‘lost generation’. Currently in their 50s, some members of the ‘lost generation’ have attained new wealth. They partake in the purchasing of luxury goods, and often lack subtlety. They are ostentatious and inherently possess a skewed view of what is traditional or socially accepted, subsequently explaining for very extravagant behavior. A few examples include the rebuilding of the Chateau de Maison Laffitte of Paris in a suburb of Beijing, or one wealthy man’s endeavors to build an exact replica of the U. S. President’s White House in a rural area of Anhui province. The underlying theme is the Mainland Chinese desire to mimic emblems of power from Western culture. â€Å"Today, the Mainland Chinese consumer’s 21st century value system is comprised of three salient parts: the traditional Chinese value system persists, the socialist Chinese value system (dominant), and the Western value system which is often regarded like a trend. † As the West represents advanced technology, super powers and modern values, the majority of Mainland Chinese seek to pursue these values the best they can. Therefore the pursuit of Western values can be said to have a strong influence on the Chinese consumer value system. Today, the Mainland Chinese consumer’s 21st century value system is comprised of three salient parts: the traditional Chinese value system persists, the socialist Chinese value system (dominant), and the Western value system which is often regarded like a trend. The updated Chinese socialist value system of Deng’s reform and opening policy brings modernity, wealth, achievement and success, while the Western values bring personal liberty, post-modernism, also modernity, achievement and success. Together, the Chinese consumer’s 21st century value system is a veritable melting pot; strong values of modernity, wealth and success are dominant. Thus, the pursuit of modernity, wealth and success remains the key in explaining luxury consumer behavior in Mainland China. From this explanation of the dominant set of values within Chinese society, it is hardly surprising to discover that Mainland China’s car sales in 2009 averaged 13 million, even exceeding car sales in the U. S.. Additionally, sales for German car manufacturer Mercedes Benz went up 77%. Deng’s Open reform policy in 1978 allowed for individuals to pursue wealth through various means. Economic development transformed the social structure from a model that was horizontally equal to that of vertical extension and growth. Now, after three decades of inexistence from 1950 to 1980, social classes have reemerged. During the following three decades from 1980s to 2010, social wealth increased by an average 10% of growth each year. The Mainland Chinese consumer saw better financial opportunity and became increasingly wealthy. Financial and career success and achievements naturally became a way for people to distinguish themselves from others. It became de rigueur to openly display a person’s individual success, and luxury goods and designer brands effectively communicated status and wealth. However, at the core of this newfound wealth and status was the honest pursuit of better living conditions. Better living conditions meant for higher quality products and upscale brands. Therefore, international luxury brands perfectly fulfilled the needs of Mainland Chinese consumers from all angles – cultural, social, and economic – attributing for a more modern, powerful, and self-confident approach to life. â€Å"At the core of this newfound wealth and status was the honest pursuit of better living conditions. Better living conditions meant for higher quality products and upscale brands. † In Mainland China, one may see a person carrying an authentic Louis Vuitton bag while riding a crowded, public bus somewhere in the rural countryside. Luxury goods are consumed on a mass level, and are not confined to a select few. The central cause for an increased consumption of luxury products results from the country’s socialist value system. During the transitional period from a pure planned system to a market-driven economy, consumers inherently retained the idea of equality. Government authorities also try to maintain and communicate that equality in Mainland China is crucial to national identity. Based on steady economic development and a newfound consumer confidence towards the future’s potential, Mainland Chinese consumers believe that they are, in essence, the same as each other. Even if they cannot afford a luxury brand item today, they will save up several months of savings to eventually have it. It is important to note that all Chinese luxury consumers do not aim to show off. There is a homogenous identity and behavioral patterns that come with new wealth. However, only focusing on this collective homogenous identity, and not pay attention on the differences would cause a marketing plan to fail. The Mainland Chinese market is large and sophisticated enough to use multi-criteria methods to understanding its various crossed aspects, such as psychographic, geographic and demographic aspects. Psychographically, consumers are different from socio-psychological and cultural attitudes towards luxury point of views. These psychographic variables segment in the market into four groups known as luxury lovers, luxury followers, luxury intellectuals and luxury laggards with three dimensions according to the different psychographic aspects: collectivism-individualism, analytical-impulsive thinking, conspicuousness-functionality for luxury goods. Geographically, the regional differences in China (in terms of climates, cultural customs and languages) are varied; they are the equivalent to the collective differences found throughout Europe. China can also be divided into four large regions: North, South, East and West. Cities within a given region can be further classified into tiered cities according to city’s level of economic development. Demographically, the factors classify naturally consumers into traditional groups. For the purposes of this paper, the research sample used is meaningful for study as the income levels are controlled at ten times the national average income. This ensures luxury consumption because of the sample’s disposable income level and the easy affordability of luxury goods. Age is also controlled in the range of 25 to 45 years of age in order to be sure that the sample belongs to members of Mainland China’s new generation, avoiding the inclusion of members from the ‘lost generation’ entirely. All sample participants were educated at the university level and possessed an undergraduate degree. The psychographic segmentation of Chinese luxury consumers as luxury lovers, luxury followers, luxury intellectuals and luxury laggards cross with geographic factors to show the regional distribution difference of the four groups in various parts of the Mainland Chinese market. The results can be found in Table I and Table II. Table I: Psychographic Segmentation of Chinese Luxury Consumers Table II: Chinese Luxury Consumer Segmentation Geographical Distribution in China The segmentation proves the heterogeneity of Chinese luxury consumers although conspicuousness is dominant for luxury lovers and followers, representing 31. 2% of the total market in first tier cities. Still, conspicuousness is very visible and serves as motivation especially among ‘first movers’ for purchasing new products. First movers are often portrayed by the media as opinion leaders, and are they are tactfully used to influence the market. However, intellectuals and laggards focusing on functionality and individualism are still the main dominant groups for luxury consumers in China even in first tier cities. Why are luxury’s main consumers still quiet and conservative about their attitude towards luxury goods? â€Å"After the initial introduction of international luxury brands in China, the curiosity of Mainland Chinese consumers wore off as they began to seriously confront the psychological discomfort associated with the absence of a Chinese luxury brand. † The conservative conspicuousness is coming from the cultural and psychological contradiction: 1) the admiration of ancient China’s luxury lifestyle influences the luxury pursuit today. Currently, luxury brands are widely available from many foreign countries, such as France, Italy, and Switzerland. After the initial introduction of international luxury brands in China, the curiosity of Mainland Chinese consumers wore off as they began to seriously confront the psychological discomfort associated with the absence of a Chinese luxury brand. Why was there no Chinese brand capable of carrying out the essence of luxury found in ancient Chinese culture? 2) Chinese tradition encourages people to be benign and to not have an extravagant life. Exercising frugality and discreetness are seen as the proper way for a person to behave in society. This virtue of frugality and discreetness is also the socially accepted norm by the Chinese socialist value system. Therefore, frugality and discreetness received two confirmations from two value systems (tradition and socialist) in comparison to modernity, wealth and achievement values, which were confirmed twice by socialist and western value systems. As a result, the internal psychological values within the 21st century value system of Mainland China are conflicted. This conflict is reflected in the attitudes and behaviors of its consumers, especially in regard to the luxury market, and accounts for the following: an ambivalent attitude towards luxury consumption and psychological dissonance after purchasing. An exception is gift giving or special product categories. â€Å"The conflict of having a centralized power structure versus liberty and an openness of the market creates individual wealth while limiting the expression of wealth and status. † Conservative conspicuousness can also be understood by the unique socialist system within Mainland China’s market-drive economy. The conflict of having a centralized power structure versus liberty and an openness of the market creates individual wealth while limiting the expression of wealth and status. Those consumers who are typically found in politics or a government related environment are said to be luxury intellectuals. In this setting, wealth should not be overtly expressed or shown off to others. Products that are discreetly designed, such as ties, scarves, business suits, or handbags without logos are most popular. Alternatively, if an individual outside of politics consumes luxury products, it is most likely that he or she is a luxury lover or follower. (Please see Table III) Table III: The Conservative Conspicuousness of Chinese Luxury Consumers The potential for luxury industries to thrive in the Mainland Chinese market is high. With steady economic development, more information on luxury goods readily available online and offline, the increasing relevance of e-commerce, and a greater awareness for a higher quality of life, consumerism will propel to the center of this dynamic market. As consumers get more savvy and sophisticated, the Mainland Chinese market will, in due time, be much more difficult and complicated to operate. About the author Pierre Xiao LU is Assistant Professor of Marketing at School of Management of Fudan University in Shanghai. He specializes in luxury consumer behavior study, luxury brand management and selective retailing. His theories about Chinese consumer formed the fundamental understanding for international brands towards this market and largely adopted by successful upscale brands. Before he joins Fudan University, he received his PhD in marketing from ESSEC Paris where he is visiting professor of LVMH Chair and of its Asian campus in Singapore. Lu is author of â€Å"Elite China, Luxury Consumer Behavior in China† and co-author of â€Å"Luxury China, Market Opportunities and Potentials†. He can be reached at [emailprotected] edu. cn. References †¢ Michel Chevalier and Pierre Xiao Lu, Luxury China, Market Opportunities and Potentials, Wiley and sons, 2010 †¢ Jacques Gernet, Le Monde Chinois, Paris: Armand Colin, 1999 †¢ Alexandra Peers, What’s Still Recession-Proof, The Wall Street Journal, September 24, 2009 †¢ Pierre Xiao Lu, Elite China, Luxury Consumer Behavior in China, Wiley and Sons, 2008 †¢ China car sales top U. S. by Gilles Guillaume, Reuters, January 11, 2010 †¢Ã¢â‚¬ ¢ http://www. reuters. com/article/idUSTRE60A1BQ20100111 †¢ Mercedes-Benz says 2009 China sales up 77 percent, Reuters, January 11, 2010 †¢Ã¢â‚¬ ¢ http://www. reuters. com/article/idUSTRE60B0EY20100112 †¢ Pierre Bordieux, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, London: Routledge, 1984 †¢ Pierre Xiao Lu, Elite China, Luxury Consumer Behavior in China, Wiley and Sons, 2008 †¢ Michel Chevalier and Pierre Xiao Lu, Luxury China, Market Opportunities and Potentials, Wiley and sons, 2010 †¢ Pierre Xiao Lu and Benard Pras, Profiling Mass Affluent Luxury Goods Consumers in China: a Psychographic Approach, Thunderbird International Business Review, forthcoming.

Psychological Contracts And Boundaryless And Protean Careers Management Essay

Psychological Contracts And Boundaryless And Protean Careers Management Essay Introduction The way in which academics are treating careers has evolved greatly over the last 30 40 years. In a traditional career model a workers portfolio generally consisted of one, maximum two firms and progression within these was expected to be linear (Levinson, 1978; Super, 1957). Achievement was awarded internally within the organisation and was generally measured in upward promotion and salary payments. (Hall, 1996). The premise of the psychological contract between an organisation and its employee has often been used as a means of analysing changes in the employment relationship (Sturges 2005). The psychological contract has been defined as an individuals beliefs, shaped by the organization, regarding terms of an implicit agreement between the individual and the organization (Sturges 2005) One of the most frequent arguments is that the traditional ideology of job security in return for job effort, or an organizational career in return for loyalty and hard work, has been diminished due to changes in organisations structure such as downsizing, de-layering and outsourcing (Guest, 1998). Miles Snow (1996) also noted that the tall, multi-layer, functionally organized structures characteristic of many large companies have changed Academics and practitioners have noted the importance of re-evaluating the nature of career attitudes (Arthur Rousseau, 1996; Hall, 1976) in a hope to create better understanding and models to map its progression (Sullivan 1999) Relevant literature heralds two new paradigms for the use in examining careers. The Boundaryless career (Arthur Rousseau, 1996) and the protean career (Hall, 1976,2002). As a result of the changing environmental conditions it is theorised that employers can no longer offer lifetime employment (Sullivan, 1999). Therefore these models offer an alternative way to look at careers, careers that become self managed and self influenced and are not bound by any one organisation or indeed industry (Arthur Rousseau, 1996; Hall, 1976) In this work I will begin by looking at the changing nature of the psychological contract looking at employees perceived obligations towards them and how these effect the employer/employee relationship. I will then examine how the changing nature of this relationship has led to the rise of the new Boundaryless and Protean career. I then intend to look at the relationship between the two paradigms before continuing on to look at the limitation regarding current work in the field Discussion Early work on the nature of careers and psychological contracts began in the late 50s and was heavily influenced by the adult development work such as that by Donald Super (1957) and Daniel Levinson (1978). It is argued that the psychological contract between and employee and the employer which contains the perceived terms and conditions that are not noted in the written employment contract (Rousseau, 1989), has undergone major changes. As a result employers and employees are now looking at new forms of career relationships. Levinson (1978) saw the psychological contract as a series of mutual expectations of which the parties to the relationship may not themselves be dimly aware but which nonetheless govern their relationship to each other. Working by the traditional psychological contract, employees were seen to exchange loyalty and commitment for long term or lifetime employment from their employer. However under the newly theorised contract, employees exchange their good performan ce for marketable skills and personal development (Rousseau Wade-Benzoni, 1995). Part of the problem in analysing the changing nature of psychological contracts as identified by Guest (1998) is that by their very nature these contracts are perceptions, expectations, beliefs, promises and obligations A view supported by Rousseau, (1995) who described the psychological contract as a promise made and a consideration offered in exchange for it, binding the parties to some set of reciprocal obligation One problem as identified by Guest (1998) is that the terms expectations and beliefs hold different values to the term obligations. As Guest states failure to meet expectations is rather different than failing to meet obligations as expectations and beliefs are derived from social norms whereas obligations are perceived promises and entitlement. Sturges et al (2002) theorised that over time an employee feels that they are owed more from an organisation due to the time they have invested into staying with them and therefore the perceived employer obligations grow whilst t he employee perceives their obligations as diminishing. A further problem when looking at work relating to the psychological contract is that, as identified by Arthur and Rousseau (1996), who note that only three recent works have approached the subject of the changing in nature of the traditional organizational career boundaries. One of these limited few studies was conducted by Altman and Post (1996) who investigated 25 Fortune 500 executives to examine their perceptions on the altering work relationships. The findings showed that executives recognised the phasing out of the traditional style contract and recognized a new form of contract (Sullivan, 1999) which built on employability and employee responsibility, as opposed to security and a paternalistic style. Despite the enthusiasm by some for the new form of relationship some studies have shown that employees do still expect to receive some form of career support from their management (Sturges, Conway Makenzie., 2002). This theory is also supported in work by Robinson, Kraatz Rouss eau (1994), who suggested that the level of an employees commitment to an organisation, was a result of the employees perceptions of their obligations to organizations and the degree to which they are reciprocated rather than from attachment, loyalty, or satisfaction, as has been most frequently suggested (Robinson et al 1994). Sturges et al (2002) and Robinson et al (1994), also agree that perceived violations of employer obligations leads to a decrease in the importance an employee places on their obligations. A further problem to the psychological contract notion is that a contract breach is a very subjective matter (Robinson 1994, Rousseau and Wade-Benzoni 1995). Robinson (1994) identifies that it is not important if an actual breach took place but rather if an employee perceives a breach to have occurred. A widely mentioned term in literature relating to psychological contract is trust (Robinson et al,1994). Robinson notes that trust can have a great significance on how a person perceives the actions of his employer and states that breaches in trust relate to judgments of integrity and beliefs in benevolence-that in turn reduce employees contributions. However other than Robinsons limited survey there is little to no empirical evidence in relation to the trust relationships between employees and employer. Critics of the psychological contract model contest the usefulness of current literature claiming it adds little to the field (Guest 1998, Robinson et al 1994). Some literature states that the effects of psychological contract breach can be treated as unmet expectations (Guest 1998). Should this assumption be true physiological contract breach research merely mimics prior research relating to unmet expectations (Robinson et al 1994). However, those that support the psychological contract paradigm suggest that differing from unmet expectations a breach of this contract will lead to erosion of trust and the foundation of the relationship between the two parties (Robinson et al 1994) this view is also supported by Rousseau (1996) and Sturges et al (2002). Unfortunately research on psychological contract breach is still itself relatively new and again there is little empirical evidence. What evidence there is will be fairly modern and there is now way to analyse a change over a longer pe riod of time making it difficult to comment on past trends. As stated above the apparent change in psychological contacts has great significance in new career patterns and organizational commitment. Employees are now viewed as a less adaptable resource for organisations and more active investors of their personal human capital (Gratton Ghoshal, 2003 as in Fernandez et al 2008).They will also gain responsibility for some level of career management including the seizure of opportunities and advanced learning with the aim to improve their future marketability (Sturges et al 2002). The changing nature of the business environment, including the globalisation, de-layering and highly competitive markets (as mentioned in my introduction) led to the appearance of new models for the modern career and organisations; The Boundaryless career (Arthur Rousseau, 1996) the protean career (Hall, 1976, 2002) as well as the Boundaryless organisation. Handy (1989) theorises one such configuration in the three leaf clover. The first leaf (the most important for survival) is core staff consisting of managers, professionals and technical staff. These staff are expected to invest personally in the organisation and have high commitment levels. The second leaf is contractors consisting of specialist companies who can normally do jobs such as distribution much more quickly and efficiently than in house. The third leaf is made up of the contingent labour force such as part time workers and temporary staff who act as a buffer for the core workers. The benefit of looking to examine an o rganisation in this way is that it enables managers to get a broader picture of the business environment and to be more flexible (Mirvis Hall 1994). Workers can be re-arranged and re-assigned and would hit the floor running (Mirvis Hall 1994) Extrapolating from the Boundaryless organisation these new career models aim to reflect the changing nature of the organisational relationship and psychological contract. Whilst the traditional career was seen as a paternalistic culture of vertical linear progression within just one or two organizations and measured by promotions and pay rises(Levinson, 1978; Super, 1957); the Boundaryless and protean models highlight the need for the individual to actively manage their own career, learning and psychological success. Workers who have protean career attitudes have been described as being intent upon using their own values (versus organizational values for example) to guide their career (values-driven) and take an independent role in managing their vocational behaviour (self-directed) (Fernandez et al 2008). In contrast, a worker who did not hold protean career attitudes would be more likely to be influenced by external values and would be more likely to look for external guidance and direction in their career choices as instead of being more proactive and independent (Mirvis Hall 1994,Hall 2002, Fernandez et al 2008) . Whilst those that show signs of leading a protean valued career style might show signs of greater openness to the idea of mobility and continuous learning, some theorists suggest that mobility and learning may be correlates of a protean career, but not necessary components of it (Fernandez et al 2008). It has been said that a worker considered to be following the Boundaryless career model navigates the changing work landscape by enacting a career characterized by different levels of physical and psychological movement (Sullivan Arthur,2006). While there may be some complementary features of the two models, many treat protean and Boundaryless career models as separate but related ideas. That is, a person could display protean rationales, making self directed and motivated career decisions, yet not follow a boundary crossing path. However, a person could hold a Boundaryless mindset but chose one organization to paternalistically guide their career (Fernandez et al 2008, Hall 2002) A Boundaryless career is viewed as independent from, rather than dependent on, traditional career arrangements (Arthur Rousseau, 1996), as it goes beyond the boundaries of an individual employment setting, involving both physical and psychological (objective vs. subjective) areas of mobility (Briscoe Hall 2005). The Boundaryless career is conceived by assuming that organizations are no longer capable of giving workers the traditional career path including stability and progression in exchange for commitment and hard work (Arthur, 1994; Arthur and Rousseau, 1996). As a consequence academics have identified the end of the traditional career where a person aims to progress through a company gaining power, notability and financial reward and predict workers following a more individualistic approach to goal setting and personal assessment (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996). The Boundryless career has been said to be the opposite of the Organisational Career (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996; Rodrigues and Guest, 2010). Arthur (1994) described in his original work 6 potential aspects of permeability and mobility across organisations: The most prominent [meaning] is when a career, like the stereotypical Silicon Valley career, moves across the boundaries of separate employers. A second meaning is when a career, like that of an academic or a carpenter, draws validation and marketability from outside the present employer. A third meaning is when a career, like that of a real estate agent, is sustained by extra-organizational networks or information. A fourth meaning occurs when traditional organizational career boundaries, notably hierarchical reporting and advancement principles, are broken. A fifth meaning occurs when a person rejects existing career opportunities for personal reasons. Perhaps a sixth meaning depends on the interpretation of the career actor, who may perceive a Boundaryless future regardless of structural constraints. A common theme to all these meanings is one of independence from, rather than dependence on, traditional organizational principles. (Arthur, 1994). One limitation of the idea that Boundaryless careers are the opposite to Organisational careers, is that it oversimplifies the changes in modern career patterns (Rodrigues and Guest, 2010). Moreover as identified by Rodrigues and Guest, (2010) Arthur places great emphasis on the notion of movement across organisational boundaries. Whilst transitioning across organisational boundaries is the defining feature of the new Boundaryless model, works such as Arnold and Cohen (2008) note that this organisational movement is not incompatible with the more traditional model of careers (Sullivan 1999) . Sullivan (1999) also notes that there is evidence to support the idea that this kind of mobility in the boundryless model is already present in America, and was empirically documented in a period perceived to be dominated by the traditional career style. Another study covering areas of career mobility looked at a selection of workers between 1957 and 1972, Topel and Ward (1992 as in Sullivan 199 9) who conducted the study demonstrated that during this period the workers followed (who were based in the states) had held an average of 10 jobs during their careers. Sullivan (1999) also identified a similar study by Hashimoto and Raisian (1985 as in Sullivan 1999) conducted in Japan, (an area often associated with the traditional one company career) found that workers there also had multiple employers over their careers. When Arthur Sullivan (2006) sought to further clarify the concept, and said career mobility can include the physical and/or psychological mobility, they also stated that mobility can be across many levels such as occupational, organisational and cultural(2006). However as noted by (Rodrigues and Guest, 2010) this amendment means that unless there is complete career immobility it is difficult not to classify any career as potentially Boundaryless. (Rodrigues and Guest, 2010) Baker and Aldrich (1996) constructed a measure for the Boundaryless career, they claim that for a career to be truly Boundaryless it would have to rank highly along three career dimensions. These dimensions consist of; number of employers, extent of knowledge accumulation, and the role of personal identity. This model places high value on marketable skills and a high personal identity which are rated just as highly as an employees mobility, ratings on these factors can help to determine whether a person is truly acting on the Boundaryless career. Along a similar line DeFillippi and Arthur (1996) derived a competency model, stating that those following a Boundaryless career build a portfolio of career competencies, this can be achieved by using DeFillippi and Arthurs knowing-why, knowing-whom and knowing how model of career enhancement. Eby et al. (2003) later built on DeFillippi and Arthurs (1996) work and sought to provide empirical evidence supporting it. Eby et al (2003) found tha t the knowing-why, knowing-whom and knowing-how competencies are important indicators of success of ones Boundaryless career. There have also been calls from writers such as Bird (1996) AND Fernandez et al, (2008) for a rethink and re-modelling of career ideas based on knowledge economies and personal knowledge obtainment. While some authors and their work have chosen to look at Boundaryless careers solely examining the physical re-arrangement of the working environment (Fernandez et al 2008) Sullivan and Arthur (2006) advocate the viewing of mobility across two planes, the physical and psychological when conducting research into careers. In her wide ranging literature review on the subject of careers Sullivan (1999) and later Sullivan Arthur (2006) look at what empirical evidence currently exists. Sullivan found that only sixteen studies examined mobility across physical boundaries, whereas only three studies focussed on the relationships across these boundaries (Sullivan Arthur, 2006). Similar findings to that of Sullivan are noted in the work of Briscoe et. al. (2006) who gave empirical evidence for the implementation of both the Boundaryless mindset and organizational mobility preference. Under the new form of psychological contract workers are said to display low levels of both loyalty to an organization and low levels of organizational commitment, what loyalty and commitment that does exist is under the condition that the organisation provides them with opportunities to advance their marketability through training and development (Rousseau Wade-Benzoni, 1995). Gunz (2000 as in Rodrigues Guest 2010) also noted how in a study by Zabusky and Barley (1996) of technicians, they found that the technicians placed greater value on growth and challenging work than they did on promotions. The companies who employed the technicians however had no systems in pace to offer this to them. As Sullivan (1999) identified, the study shows how individual career strategies must be considered within an organizational business strategies. The study also noted the problems of transforming from a culture of advancement (traditional career model) to a culture of achievement (Boundaryless c areer model) (Sullivan 1999). Large volumes of work centred around the changing psychological contract and the Boundaryless career model often gives great prominence to the positive aspects, such as increased opportunities for growth and job challenge (Sullivan (1999). Comparatively lesser amounts (Hirsch Shanley,1996 as in Sullivan 1999) have been focused on the downsides of the model, such as the problems underemployment and the possible reduction in organizational learning and personal development (Sullivan, 1999). One such piece on the negative aspects suggested that Workers who transfer into unrelated occupations often suffer from lowered status and reduced earnings (Markey Parks 1989). As previously mentioned some researchers like to separate the notions of the Protean and Boundaryless careers, However others such as Hall, (1976, 2002) note that those who follow a Boundaryless career approach often have Protean attitudes that help them navigate the organisational landscape. Hall notes that a Protean approach represents a self driven and self motivated approach to managing a personal career, which also builds on values such as freedom and adaptability (Hall, 1976, 2002). Baruch (2004)(as in Fernandez et al 2008) noted that the protean career was: a contract with oneself, rather than with the organization, as individuals take responsibility for transforming their career path, in taking responsibility for their career. Hall (2004) and Hall and Chandler (2005) concluded that the staple parts of the Protean orientation paradigm are: freedom, growth, professional commitment, and the attainment of psychological success, through the pursuit of meaningful work Fernandez et al (2008) Briscoe Hall (2006) identify the potential psychological implications of being highly Protean career driven in their work, they define someone truly Protean driven as on a quest to define meaning and success through the career (Briscoe Hall, 2006) In further research relating to personal Protean career management King (2004) found that being personally in control of ones own career and growth can lead to favourable psychological satisfaction, improved self-efficiency and personal well-being , if ones career goals are met. Further more in the work of Fernandez et al (2008) they identify that Seibert et al. (2001) and Crant (2000) (Bothe found in Fernandez et al 2008) also support the work of King (2004), as their findings suggest that individuals who have a proactive disposition achieve extrinsic career progression and internal satisfaction with their careers Fernandez et al (2008). Arthur (2009) too notes the importance of factoring into work environments and relationships the ability to meet personal goals which would generate both greater productivity and greater career satisfaction for the workers involved As a result of the work on Protean careers further work by Wrzesniewski and Dutton (2001) and Wrzesniewski et. al. (1997) (found in Fernandez et al, 2008) created the idea of career management though job crafting, this notion involves treating employees as creative identity builders (Fernandez et al, 2008) who use personal networks and support from others to achieve own career milestones. Whilst there are high levels of work relating to the potential for workers with protean attitudes, like the work on the Boundaryless model there appears to be little amounts of research relating to the downsides of the protean model, such as the effects of failing to meet personal goals and setting realistic personal goals. As the burden of ones career shifts away from the organisation and falls into the hands of the individual, networking plays an important role in the life of a self driven career (Arthur Rousseau, 1996, Sullivan 1999). The ability to form personal networks aids and supports the process of job mobility and accelerates personal development and job learning (Sullivan 1999). Networking as a tool allows an individual to extend their presence into wide ranging social circles and thus potentially increase job opportunities (Forret and Dougherty, 2004).Sullivan (1999) identifies that existing organisational structures do not support networking activities, therefore individuals forced out of a traditional organisational structure may experience problems in adapting to the new form of career paths. While networking abilities vary from person to person, it has been found through research (Forret and Dougherty, 2004) that networking benefits men more than it does women due to mens perceived abili ty to more effectively influence social groups. Sullivan (1999) also covers in her work the problem and limitations in research relating to women in the changing nature of employment. The high levels of women in part time work and work that is not classed as core workers could be creating an imbalance in research relating to Boundaryless and protean careers. Future research could look into if the increased family commitments of women effect their progress through the two forms of career. Whilst there is much literature being produced relating to the Boundaryless career not everyone is convinced of the evidence supporting it. As Gunz et al write: the trouble with the Boundaryless hypothesis is that it is still just that, a hypothesis (2000). They also note that while some authors advocate that organisational boundaries are diminishing it might just be that the nature of the boundaries are shifting/altering. Gunz et al note that boundaries, rather than disappearing, are becoming more complex and multifaceted. In fact they claim that boundaries of some sort are inevitable. Aurthur (2006) also notes that the much on the subject of Boundaryless careers often focuses on intra-organizational as opposed to inter-organizational changes. A further lack of research has been done on what Arthur (2009) identifies as the lack of legal status and protection mobile workers have under present employment law. Also as identified by Defillippi Arthur 1994 most research has been conducted on what they refer to as core workers and there is little empirical or theoretical work on non-core workers such as part-time and seasonal staff and their employment and career paths. Sullivan 1999 also notes that there has been very few empirical studies relating to the choices made by workers other than new graduates (such as in the work of Arthur and Rousseau (1996)). Although younger workers may provide greater data sets, as the most frequent movement across occupations occurs during the earliest years of a persons working life (Mergenhagen 1991 as in Defillippi Arthur,1994) The reason for this early career movement is suggested to be because younger workers have made fewer career specific investments and therefore feel less committed (Defillippi Arthur,1994). Whilst explaining why much research is conducted on younger workers this argument from Defillippi Arthur also support the earlier theories of Sturges et al (2002) as mentioned above regarding employees increased commitment over time. If the theories regarding younger mobility hold true then as the worlds workforce ages and in Asian areas such as china where there is already and aged population trends of increased job tenure would be expected. This is one area of future possible research. The lack of research conducted during adulthood, despite evidence that adults are making occupational choices throughout their lifetimes (Arthur Rousseau, 1996); proves to be a problem, as relatively little is known as to what motivates these cross organisational movements (Sullivan 1999). Whilst the concept of Boundaryless careers centres on the idea of workers easily moving between various organisations statistical data from Robinson (1997) shows no dramatic increase over the past 20 years in either job movement or job loss. A view supported in the work of Guest (1998) who found that time spent in organizations and in jobs has reduced only marginally, if at all, in the past 20 years, however he does speculate that a reduction in male workers tenure could be hidden by a rise in that of female workers. Rodrigues Guest (2010) also note that research into job stability trends has also been hampered by the variation in non-response rates and changes in the wording of the questions thu s making it difficult for long term trends to be identified. Briscoe et al (2006) notes a further problem in current research where some employees display strong attitudes of Boundaryless and protean models, yet they have no desire for physical mobility. This occurrence identifies a potential flaw in the way the two paradigms are defined and emphasises the need for greater care in outlining the premise. Failure to accurately define the notions could lead to problems in the adaptability of the model. Furthermore, lack of accurate definition could affect the relevance for researchers if the models cannot accurately put to use on real life situations. (Briscoe Hall, 2005, Fernandez et al, 2008) Fernandez et al, 2008 have also described what they see as researchers inability to fully explain their empirical findings with the protean and Boundaryless metaphors as already happening, which according to Briscoe Hall (2005) is causing a slight rumbling and backlash against the two paradigms. Conclusion As demonstrated in this work there are large and ever increasing amounts of work relating to the changing nature of employment relationships and career patterns. In the past decade the field of careers has produced much work to support the understanding of managers and employees regarding the employment and career relationships. No doubt thanks to recent global economic problems we can expect to see yet more work released over the coming few years. As discussed the changing nature of the relationships between employees and their employer has had significant coverage, however I identify 2 areas where there is potential for future research. The first of which was in the trust relationships between employees and employer. Further research on this area can help to further the psychological contract understanding and its values. A second area of research concerns the perceived value of contract breach. Whilst there is work concerning this matter as noted there is little empirical evidence of the consequences and frequency of this breach. Within the model of the Boundaryless career there is room for further research regarding the nature of people changes. Current work is focused from an organisational point of view and much research is quantitive. As a result there are few studies relating to what motivates people to make changes and whether the motivator affects the magnitude of change. Furthermore varying and dilute definitions of the Boundaryless career have been noted as a potential problem for future researchers, a re-conceptualisation of the definition may make it more adaptable in future. Whilst work on the protean career gives good explanation of its potential benefits, like the work on the Boundaryless career, little evidence has been published of potential problems and downsides of the model. An area for future research could include work on the consequences of failing to meet personally set objectives or how effective/inhibitive self critique may be for an individual. A further area to look into that is currently under represented in the literature is that of the non core workers, such as part time and temporary staff. This group is made up also of a disproportionate amount of women which would need to be taken into account when analysing the findings. The final area of indentified research relates to the current abundance of empirical evidence relating to young, often newly graduate workers and their career mobility choices. Whilst I have mentioned that this group is most prevalent to making cross-organisational career movements they are over represented in the l iterature meaning there are few studies on older workers. This has consequences for geographical and industry areas with an ageing population as career trends may be different to that of younger organisation or region. To summarise there is much useful and thought provoking work relating to the changing nature of careers and its applicability to nearly the whole of the population and all business makes it a fascinating area for reading and research. The continuing environmental changes and ever increasing literature means that changes and progression in the subject are likely to be fast paced and wide ranging. References List Altman, B. W., Post, J. E. 1996. Beyond the social contract: An analysis of the executive view at twenty-five larger companies. In D. T. Hall (Ed.), The career is dead long live the career: 46-71. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Arnold J, Cohen L (2008) The psychology of career in industrial and organizational