I had to go to the toilet. Now, one of the privileges of being head of the section was a private toilet opening off the office. While I was in there, I looked around. It was pretty messed up with paper scraps and all. When I finished, I chanced to look out the window. And it was then that the proton moved all the way out and went bang!
The toilet window of my office is right above a five-hundred-foot straight drop down the cliff into the River Wiel. Standing on tiptoe I could even see the river edge.
I went right back and put a call through to a building contractor we had never used. And to prove we had never used him, he was over there inside of fifteen minutes.
"I am an influential executive," I told him.
He looked around. "Oh, I can see that," he said.
"I have an unused allocation for two hundred and thirty-one credits."
"So little," he said. But I knew he was just trying to act like a big contractor. They are hungry these guys. I was, too.
"Come with me," I said. I took him into the toilet. "Now you see this wall?" And I tapped it. "I want it to be brought forward a bit and a secret undetectable door put in it. Then behind it, I want a ladder and a hatchway to the roof." He inspected it and shrugged. It looked easy enough to do.
"Now you see this window?" I tapped it. "I want the glass changed to a type called silent-break."
"Well, I can do all that. But why?"
"People are sometimes after me," I said.
"Ah, you're part of the Apparatus. I understand." But he hesitated. "I still don't get what you mean to do."
"There's no back door to my office," I said. "If I were chased in here, there would be no way out. But if this job I'm asking for gets done, I can rush into the toilet, smash the window, duck through the secret door, climb the ladder and get out on the roof." He still looked a bit puzzled.
"If the glass is silent-break type, it gives me time to get into the secret door and out." He got up on the toilet bowl and looked down. "That's a drop of five hundred feet and into a wild river!"
"Exactly," I said. "They'll think I made an impossible attempt. No bodies are ever recovered from that river as we in the Apparatus very well know. They won't even look for me! But I'll be on the roof. Now don't bother your head about spy tradecraft. That's my department. Can you build it?" He said he could although the allocation would be a little tight.
"Good," I said, "then hand me over twenty credits and you've got the job." Well, that began quite an argument. They love to haggle. But I am not too bad at that. We finally settled for ten credits kickback.
I held out my hand. He said, "Oh, kickbacks can't be paid until the finance office pays the bill. There's rumors about you people." He smiled, still friendly. "I'll get on the job right away and in six months you'll have your ten credits." I couldn't cancel the order. It would have been too obviously just a chance to gouge some money.
He left.
Somewhat bitterly, I sat back down at my desk and out of spite wouldn't stamp the original bill from the other contractor. That would show them! An officer has to have somepride. Even in the Apparatus.
Chapter 4
Several times I half made up my mind to go down to the hangar to see what was going on with Heller. Each time I got a pain in my stomach.
But pain or no pain, I was hungry and one of those times I made it out to my airbus.
I was amazed to see the driver had everything out and was cleaning the vehicle up. Unheard of. He had never done it before. He had also spread my gear around on the parking plot to air and get the garbage smell out. Until he saw me, he was whistling away.
"You going down to see Heller?" he said.
The pain hit me. After a moment I shook my head. It occurred to me that I could send him down. But Heller had already undoubtedly overpaid him and he had just been lying about the two credits. There was no relief to be found there. I was in no shape for a fight.
I forbade him to go near the hangar. Heller had sent him on an errand to Fleet for cleaning supplies. Who knows what other messages Heller would send to Fleet? I had a feeling I really ought to die and get it over with for it was only a matter of time before the sky fell in on me. They'd catch Krak. Or Lombar would realize we weren't gone. Or the Crown inspectors would show up. There wasn't a thing I could do about any of it. To Hells with the ladder to the roof. I ought to just dive out the toilet window and get it over with.
I went back inside. There are quite a few rooms to Section 451, what with all the files. I never found out how many personnel it really had due to the padded list and Bawtch's and other high-up rake-offs. But in this main room there were forty-one clerks shuffling papers. I knew some of them and knew about others. But I didn't speak to them and they never speak to me. I wandered back into my own office.
My stomach hurt. I gloomed.
Maybe it was because I was hungry and thirsty. I had had only one sip of hot jolt the dawn before, and now that I thought of it, I had not eaten or drunk anything the day before that. Forty-eight hours, really. My stomach hurt too much. I began to have an odd sort of hallucination. I actually commenced to believe I was sitting in the caves of the offices in Turkey on Blito-P3. I had my own desk. Some of the personnel were there, smiling, friendly. I was stamping manifests of freighter cargo and every time my identoplate went down on one, the clerks would all applaud and say how great that was. Everything was going well. I was far, far away from Voltar. A beautiful Turkish girl, a dancer, came in through the door and began to dance slowly and suggestively toward me, her lips and eyes inviting. She also had her hands full, money in one and FOOD, delicious Turkish baklava,in the other.
I opened my mouth to speak to her in Turkish. And then, with a shock, I came to my senses. I had actually seenthe girl! I had heard the coins clink! I had smelled the food!
I knew I was going crazy.
How I knew this was very simple. But I had better explain it. While I didn't do well in the Royal Academy, when I went to the Apparatus schools I was a whiz, especially in languages.
Of course, they have very good teachers there. They have to. They must teach about four hundred languages just to cover the 110 planets of the Voltar Confederacy. Although Voltarian, imported from the home galaxy, is standard in the schools everywhere, the work of the Apparatus takes one too often into the back country where Standard Voltarian is unknown. And then there are at least ten thousand languages of enemy planets or planets marked for invasion.
They have a cunning system of gradual approach. It graduates upwards from child's blocks to primers and then higher. In the case of Blito-P3, the route for English is blocks, "kindergarten primers," comic books, technical books.
The comic book I chose was one called Bugs Bunny.Actually, I recall with a smile the first error I made. I thought the actor named Bugs Bunny was the true shape and behavior of the people of Earth where I had not yet been. How my professor laughed! He pointed out that the true shape and behavior of Earth people was to be found in the same comic book. He was called "Elmer Fudd." But Bugs Bunny, I must say, has a way with him. Bugs is cunning. And he certainly can handle people. So it was obvious to me that they knew how to handle people on Earth. And when some of the scientists around the school told me there was not much difference between Earth's comic books and their technical books, I took the hint. One can choose his own technical subjects for reading so I chose a subject they call, down there, "psychology." It is a government monopoly but it is taught in their universities. They claim everybody is evil. They say sentient beings are animals and have no soul. And while this last is unique to Earth and is not believed on any other planet anywhere, I so often fervently hope that I will never live another life anywhere that I was eager to accept it. And naturally, like Lombar, I believed everybody was evil.