"Speak more c-clearly," Dunlop requested impatiently, twisting the key out of the lock.
"I said," repeated the thick drawl, "I've been waiting for you."
"Of course. What a t-terrible life you've led!"
Crash went the door behind him; Dunlop didn't dare look. And this key insisted on sticking in its lock! But he freed it and leaped to the Martian's side-at least there they would not dare fire, for fear of destroying their meal-ticket!
"You c-can get us out of here," Dunlop panted, fumbling for the lock on the Martian's ankle cuff and gagging. (It was true. They did smell like rotting fish.) "B-but you must be strong! LaFitte has been a father to you, but what a f-false f-father! Feel no loyalty to him, Martian. He made you his slave, even if he d-did keep you healthy and s-sane."
And behind him LaFitte cleared his throat. "But I didn't," he observed. "I didn't keep him sane."
"No," rumbled the thick, slow Martian voice. "No, he didn't."
The ropes that smelled like rotting fish closed lovingly and lethally around Dunlop.
The Census Takers
IT GETS TO BE A MADHOUSE around here along about the end of the first week. Thank heaven we only do this once a year, that's what I say! Six weeks on, and forty-six weeks off-that's pretty good hours, most people think. But they don't know what those six weeks are like.
It's bad enough for the field crews, but when you get to be an Area Boss like me it's frantic. You work your way up through the ranks, and then they give you a whole C.A. of your own; and you think you've got it made. Fifty three-man crews go out, covering the whole Census Area; a hundred and fifty men in the field, and twenty or thirty more in Area Command-and you boss them all. And everything looks great, until Census Period starts and you've got to work those hundred and fifty men; and six weeks is too unbearably long to live through, and too impossibly short to get the work done; and you begin living on black coffee and thiamin shots and dreaming about the vacation hostel on Point Loma.
Anybody can panic, when the pressure is on like that. Your best field men begin to crack up. But you can't afford to, because you're the Area Boss. .
Take Witeck. We were Enumerators together, and he was as good a man as you ever saw, absolutely nerveless when it came to processing the Overs. I counted on that man the way I counted on my own right arm; I always bracketed him with the greenest, shakiest new cadet Enumerators, and he never gave me a moment's trouble for years. Maybe it was too good to last; maybe I should have figured he would crack.
I set up my Area Command in a plush penthouse apartment. The people who lived there were pretty well off, you know, and they naturally raised the dickens about being shoved out. "Blow it," I told them. "Get out of here in five minutes, and we'll count you first." Well, that took care of that; they were practically kissing my feet on the way out. Of course, it wasn't strictly by the book, but you have to be a little flexible; that's why some men become Area Bosses, and others stay Enumerators.
Like Witeck.
Along about Day Eight things were really hotting up. I was up to my neck in hurry-ups from Regional Control-we were running a little slow-when Witeck called up. "Chief," he said, "I've got an In."
I grabbed the rotary file with one hand and a pencil with the other. "Blue card number?" I asked.
Witeck sounded funny over the phone. "Well, Chief," he said, "he doesn't have a blue card. He says-"
"No blue card?" I couldn't believe it. Come in to a strange C.A. without a card from your own Area Boss, and you're one In that's a cinch to be an Over. "What kind of a crazy C.A. does he come from, without a blue card?"
Witeck said, "He don't come from any C.A., Chief. He says-"
"You mean he isn't from this country?"
"That's right, Chief. He-"
"Hold it!" I pushed away the rotary file and grabbed the immigration roster. There were only a couple of dozen names on it, of course-we have enough trouble with our own Overs, without taking on a lot of foreigners, but still there were a handful every year who managed to get on the quotas. "I.D. number?" I demanded.
"Well, Chief," Witeck began, "he doesn't have an I.D. number. The way it looks to me-"
Well, you can fool around with these irregulars for a month, if you want to, but it's no way to get the work done. I said: "Over him!" and hung up. I was a little surprised, though; Witeck knew the ropes, and it wasn't like him to buck an irregular on to me. In the old days, when we were both starting out, I'd seen him Over a whole family just because the spelling of their names on their registry cards was different from the spelling on the checklist.
But we get older. I made a note to talk to Witeck as soon as the rush was past. We were old friends; I wouldn't have to threaten him with being Overed himself, or anything like that. He'd know, and maybe that would be all he would need to snap him back. I certainly would talk to him, I promised myself, as soon as the rush was over, or anyway as soon as I got back from Point Loma.
I had to run up to Regional Control to take a little talking-to myself just then, but I proved to them that we were catching up and they were only medium nasty. When I got back Witeck was on the phone again. "Chief," he said, real unhappy, "this In is giving me a headache. I-"
"Witeck," I snapped at him, "are you bothering me with another In? Can't you handle anything by yourself?"
He said, "It's the same one, Chief. He says he's a kind of ambassador, and-"
"Oh," I said. "Well, why the devil don't you get your facts straight in the first place? Give me his name and I'll check his legation."
"Well, Chief," he began again, "he, uh, doesn't have any legation. He says he's from the-" he swallowed - "from the middle of the earth."
"You're crazy." I'd seen it happen before, good men breaking under the strain of census taking. They say in cadets that by the time you process your first five hundred Overs you've had it; either you take a voluntary Over yourself, or you split wide open and they carry you off to a giggle farm. And Witeck was past the five hundred mark, way past.
There was a lot of yelling and crying from the filter center, which I'd put out by the elevators, and it looked like Jumpers. I stabbed the transfer button on the phone and called to Carias, my number-two man: "Witeck's flipped or something. Handle it!"
And then I forgot about it, while Carias talked to Witeck on the phone; because it was Jumpers, all right, a whole family of them.
There was a father and a mother and five kids-five of them. Aren't some people disgusting? The field Enumerator turned them over to the guards-they were moaning and crying-and came up and gave me the story. It was bad.
"You're the head of the household?" I demanded of the man.
He nodded, looking at me like a sick dog. "We-we weren't Jumping," he whined. "Honest to heaven, mister-you've got to believe me. We were-"
I cut in, "You were packed and on the doorstep when the field crew came by. Right?" He started to say something, but I had him dead to rights. "That's plenty, friend," I told him. "That's Jumping, under the law: Packing, with intent to move, while a census Enumeration crew is operating in your locale. Got anything to say?"
Well, he had plenty to say, but none of it made any sense. He turned my stomach, listening to him. I tried to keep my temper - you're not supposed to think of individuals, no matter how worthless and useless and generally unfit they are; that's against the whole principle of the Census-but I couldn't help telling him: "I've met your kind before, mister. Five kids! If it wasn't for people like you we wouldn't have any Overs, did you ever think of that? Sure you didn't - you people never think of anything but yourself! Five kids, and then when Census comes around you think you can get smart and Jump." I tell you, I was shaking. "You keep your little beady eyes peeled, sneaking around, watching the Enumerators, trying to count how many it takes to make an Over; and then you wait until they get close to you, so you can Jump. Ever stop to think what trouble that makes for us?" I demanded. "Census is supposed to be fair and square, everybody an even chance-and how can we make it that way unless everybody stands still to be counted?" I patted Old Betsy, on my hip. "I haven't Overed anybody myself in five years," I told him, "but I swear, I'd like to handle you personally!"