The airbus stopped at the side entrance, setting down in what had once been a small yard but was now a garbage dump. The driver usually sleeps there in the airbus so I left him and went up the crooked stairs to my room.
It was locked. Not just locked but barred.
I stamped over to a stairwell and yelled down for Meeley. I was gratified to hear a rush of feet. She was practically beating the stairs apart she was coming up so fast. For a moment I was gratified to get such quick response.
The light was dim and I did not anticipate anything. I could not see the expression on her ancient and cut-up face – she has several knife scars.
"Where's my money?" she demanded.
"Why, Meeley! You know I always pay you!"
"Always means never!" she shrieked. She has never liked me. "You been gone for days and days without no word. I thought we'd had the good luck you'd been killed like you deserve! You Apparatus scum is all alike. (Bleep) you!" She hit me!
"Open my room door!" I said, prudently stepping back.
She found a keyplate and dropped the bar. She flung the door open. She flashed on the lights!
Without another word, working like fury, she began grabbing up my things. She blasted past me and rushed to the balcony above the side yard. She pitched the whole armload down toward the airbus.
"Driver!" I yelled.
Meeley came rushing out of the room again with another armload. She hurled it into the night!
She returned and came out with an old pair of boots and my one bedcover and pitched those after the rest!
"Now get out!" she screamed. "I'm going to tell every lodging keeper in this whole area that you haven't paid a particle of rent for a year! GET OUT!" I thought I ought to look in the room to see if she had gotten everything. But I changed my mind. There are times to fight and times to run. She had always had a dislike for me for some reason.
My driver and I picked my things out of the garbage in the side yard, cleaned them off as best we could and bundled them into the airbus.
"Where to?" said the driver.
I couldn't think of anyplace.
"How about your office?" said the driver.
"Old Bawtch doesn't like that," I said.
"It's the only place you got," said the driver. "If you want my opinion, a desk is better than a gutter anytime. There really ain't room for two to sleep comfortable in this airbus. I'll take you to your office." There were cabins on that tug. But the very thought of it brought heavy pains into my stomach.
(Bleep) this mission. And (bleep) Heller! I ought to kill him!
And then I really got sick. A little later, the driver even had to help me to get up and stretch out on the hard desk.
It had been an awfulday!
Chapter 3
I woke up as I hit the floor in a shattering crash. It was daylight. Somebody had pulled me off the desk.
"You know you're not supposed to sleep in here," said old Bawtch, peevishly.
"Whose office is it, if it isn't mine?" I muttered from the floor under his big feet.
"Now get away from the side of the desk," he said. "I've got to stand there to put these papers down." And it was true. He was standing there with about a yard-high stack of documents and forms. I understood the situation then. He had needed the top of the desk to put this massive stack of papers on it.
I scrambled sideways out of the road and got to my feet. "That's an awful lot of papers," I said.
He had gotten the load down and was stacking it by categories. "You might drop by once in a while to validate forms. I can do all the rest of your work. But notpush your identoplate. You do remember how to push it onto a piece of paper, don't you?" I detected a sneer.
Bawtch, for some reason, has never liked me. He stands – I had better say stoops – about six feet tall. He has two wild tufts of gray wool that stand out on either side above his ears; his nose is so sharp you could cut paper with it; he wears black blinders to keep light from side-striking his protruding black eyes. He doesn't talk, really: he bites. I think about eighty years ago he had ambitions to be an officer. The highest he ever made was chief clerk of Section 451. I worked it all out once. He is just jealous.
He was standing there threateningly to ensure I sat down and started stamping. "You might at least bring me some of the clerk's hot jolt," I said.
"The office funds are totally depleted. We heard a rumor you had been transferred elsewhere and we had a party. Then we heard you had been left on post and we had a wake. There is no jolt, hot or otherwise." I sat down, got out my identoplate and started to stamp. I was hungry and wondered if paper were edible. If it were, there was sure a feast here. The Apparatus rides, walks and sleeps on forms, forms, forms, nearly all of them lies.
Manifests for supplies that were personally stolen, certifications of payrolls that were never paid, sums scheduled for informers that went into the pockets of agents instead, personnel lists which falsely attested twice the number, "customer expenses" from the base chief in Turkey that were really fees of local prostitutes for himself: tons of made-out forms, the usual fare of the Apparatus.
I reduced the pile about half in half an hour. I was just about to bang my identoplate down on the next one when my attention was drawn to it simply by all the numerous currency symbols on it. I was broke. Here were all these people getting fat but not me. I stared at it: Renovations, C764.9it said at the bottom of the figure column.
"This is local," I said. "Renovations? For this place?" Bawtch muttered to himself something about my having the memory of an insect. Aloud, he said, "That's the repairs on the roof last year. Thisroof. The rain was coming down on our papers. The work was done. You even complained about the noise. The bill has been presented several times. You always find something else to do before you get that far down in the pile. The contractor has been on the phone twice a day for his money. Stamp it."
"What's this 'Unused Allocation'down here at the bottom?" I said. "C231."
"I was nice enough to think, when I made the official request for funds, that you might like to get your office redone. You never said what you wanted done so it's unused." I looked around. There was a little paint peeling off the walls and a water stain over only half the ceiling. "I never could see anything wrong with it." A cunning thought had hit me, as yet only a proton moving out of the nucleus of an idea. Contractors kicked back when it was demanded. "Get me the original authorization," I ordered sternly. "Oh, I'll keep stamping the rest," I added hurriedly and only then did he move off.
I had finished the rest of. the pile by the time he came back. He was wiping hot jolt off his mouth. But I had other things in mind. He had the additional, unused two-hundred-and-thirty-one credit slip. I took it. "I'll handle this now." He carted away the tall stack of forms and I sat there looking at the two sheets. Now, first, let's see if I could get a kickback from the contractor who had done the work. He was pretty anxious to get paid, it being so overdue.
I got him on the communicator box. "You want this roof job paid fast?" I said and gave him the number.
"Who is this?"
"Officer Gris." He hung up. Well, that was a dead end. Bawtch had obviously been saying things behind my back.
I sat and thought. Redecorating this place was a waste of time. Who cared about pretty walls? Something more in keeping with my profession.