3.
In the office, at least, no one dares show hostility to me. There are no scowls, no glares, no snide references to the missing program. I am, after all, chief deputy to the District Commissioner of Nutrition, and since the commissioner is usually absent, I am in effect in charge of the department. If Silena’s crime does not destroy my career, it might prove to have been unwise for my subordinates to treat me with disdain. In any case we are so busy that there is no time for such gambits. We are responsible for keeping the community properly fed; our tasks have been greatly complicated by the loss of the program, for there is no reliable way now of processing our allocation sheets, and we must requisition and distribute food by guesswork and memory. How many bales of plankton cubes do we consume each week? How many kilos of proteoid mix? How much bread for the shops of Lower Ganfield? What fads of diet are likely to sweep the district this month? If demand and supply fall into imbalance as a result of our miscalculations, there could be widespread acts of violence, forays into neighboring districts, even renewed outbreaks of cannibalism within Ganfield itself. So we must draw up our estimates with the greatest precision. What a terrible spiritual isolation we feel, deciding such things with no computers to guide us!
4.
On the fourteenth day of the crisis the district captain summons me. His message comes in late afternoon, when we all are dizzy with fatigue, choked by humidity. For several hours I have been tangled in complex dealings with a high official of the Marine Nutrients Board; this is an arm of the central city government, and I must therefore show the greatest tact, lest Ganfield’s plankton quotas be arbitrarily lowered by a bureaucrat’s sudden pique. Telephone contact is uncertain—the Marine Nutrients Board has its headquarters in Melrose New Port, half a continent away on the southeastern coast—and the line sputters and blurs with distortions that our computers, if the master program were in operation, would normally erase. As we reach a crisis in the negotiation my subdeputy gives me a note: DISTRICT CAPTAIN WANTS TO SEE YOU. “Not now,” I say in silent lip-talk. The haggling proceeds. A few minutes later comes another note: IT’S URGENT. I shake my head, brush the note from my desk. The subdeputy retreats to the outer office, where I see him engaged in frantic discussion with a man in the gray and green uniform of the district captain’s staff. The messenger points vehemently at me. Just then the phone line goes dead. I slam the instrument down and call to the messenger, “What is it?”
“The captain, sir. To his office at once, please.”
“Impossible.”
He displays a warrant bearing the captain’s seal. “He requires your immediate presence.”
“Tell him I have delicate business to complete,” I reply. “Another fifteen minutes, maybe.”
He shakes his head. “I am not empowered to allow a delay.”
“Is this an arrest, then?”
“A summons.”
“But with the force of an arrest?”
“With the force of an arrest, yes,” he tells me.
I shrug and yield. All burdens drop from me. Let the subdeputy deal with the Marine Nutrients Board; let the clerk in the outer office do it, or no one at all; let the whole district starve. I no longer care. I am summoned. My responsibilities are discharged. I give over my desk to the subdeputy and summarize for him, in perhaps a hundred words, my intricate hours of negotiation. All that is someone else’s problem now.
The messenger leads me from the building into the hot, dank street. The sky is dark and heavy with rain, and evidently it has been raining some while, for the sewers are backing up and angry swirls of muddy water run shin-deep through the gutters. The drainage system, too, is controlled from Ganfield Hold, and must now be failing. We hurry across the narrow plaza fronting my office, skirt a gush of sewage-laden outflow, push into a close-packed crowd of irritable workers heading for home. The messenger’s uniform creates an invisible sphere of untouchability for us; the throngs part readily and close again behind us. Wordlessly I am conducted to the stone-faced building of the district captain, and quickly to his office. It is no unfamiliar place to me, but coming here as a prisoner is quite different from attending a meeting of the district council. My shoulders are slumped, my eyes look toward the threadbare carpeting.
The district captain appears. He is a man of sixty, silver-haired, upright, his eyes frank and direct, his features reflecting little of the strain his position must impose. He has governed our district ten years. He greets me by name, but with warmth, and says, “You’ve heard nothing from your woman?”
“I would have reported it if I had.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps. Have you any idea where she is?”
“I know only the common rumors,” I say. “Conning Town, Morton Court, the Mill.”
“She is in none of those places.”
“Are you sure?”
“I have consulted the captains of those districts,” he says. “They deny any knowledge of her. Of course, one has no reason to trust their word, but on the other hand, why would they bother to deceive me?” His eyes fasten on mine. “What part did you play in the stealing of the program?”
“None, sir.”
“She never spoke to you of treasonable things?”
“Never.”
“There is strong feeling in Ganfield that a conspiracy existed.”
“If so, I knew nothing of it.”
He judges me with a piercing look. After a long pause he says heavily, “She has destroyed us, you know. We can function at the present level of order for another six weeks, possibly, without the program—if there is no plague, if we are not flooded, if we are not overrun with bandits from outside. After that the accumulated effects of many minor breakdowns will paralyze us. We will fall into chaos. We will strangle on our own wastes, starve, suffocate, revert to savagery, live like beasts until the end—who knows? Without the master program we are lost. Why did she do this to us?”
“I have no theories,” I say. “She kept her own counsel. Her independence of soul is what attracted me to her.”
“Very well. Let her independence of soul be what attracts you to her now. Find her and bring back the program.”
“Find her? Where?”
“That is for you to discover.”
“I know nothing of the world outside Ganfield!”
“You will learn,” the captain says coolly. “There are those here who would indict you for treason. I see no value in this. How does it help us to punish you? But we can use you. You are a clever and resourceful man; you can make your way through the hostile districts, and you can gather information, and you could well succeed in tracking her. If anyone has influence over her, you do—if you find her, you perhaps can induce her to surrender the program. No one else could hope to accomplish that. Go. We offer you immunity from prosecution in return for your cooperation.”
The world spins wildly about me. My skin burns with shock. “Will I have safe conduct through the neighboring districts?” I ask.
“To whatever extent we can arrange. That will not be much, I fear.”
“You’ll give me an escort, then? Two or three men?”
“We feel you will travel more effectively alone. A party of several men takes on the character of an invading force. You would be met with suspicion and worse.”
“Diplomatic credentials, at least?”
“A letter of identification, calling on all captains to honor your mission and treat you with courtesy.”