The Investigator knew he couldn’t be mistaken. The man was indeed the Guide, the one who’d escorted him to that very office some hours earlier. It couldn’t be anyone else, unless he had an identical twin. Only his clothes were different: The elegant gray double-breasted suit was replaced by a black jumpsuit with a zippered front, cinched at the waist with a canvas belt. In addition, he was wearing a soft cap, also black, and high-topped military boots. His right hand held a remarkably large revolver.
“But look, please,” the Investigator stammered, “we know each other! You’re the—”
“Not one more word, or I’ll be forced to utilize my weapon!” the man yelled, rapidly approaching him and steadily aiming the revolver. When he got within reach of the Investigator, he flattened him against the wall and obliged him to put both hands behind his back. After cuffing them together with a plastic strap, he pushed him roughly toward the exit, taking care along the way to stop beside one of the armchairs, pick up the hard hat, and replace it on the Investigator’s head.
That had all taken place in fewer than thirty seconds, and the Investigator had been unable to react or say a word. The man’s handgun didn’t look like a toy, and besides, whether it was or not, the Investigator felt too weak to offer any sort of resistance. Before leaving the room, the armed man gazed at the big photograph of the old fellow, and then, appearing to speak more to the portrait than to the Investigator, he said very loudly, “The police have been informed and will be here soon! You will have to answer for what you’ve done!”
At that, he shoved the Investigator into the hall and rushed out after him, quickly closing the door behind them.
“Good God …!” The man took several deep breaths, laughed a little nervously, looked at the Investigator, and used a knife to cut off his handcuffs. “I beg your pardon,” he said, “but I had to play the game. That place must be loaded with microphones — and cameras, too, no doubt!”
The Investigator no longer had any idea what was going on. “I was sure you were going to give me away,” the other said.
“Then you are the one who … you’re the Guide?”
Suddenly the man appeared to be extremely annoyed. “Certainly not. After a certain hour, I become the Watchman … You see, my salary is so abysmally low … I hacked into the computer system and worked out a way to give myself both positions, but if anyone in the Central Directorate finds out, I’m sunk.… You won’t say anything, will you? As I think you can tell, my situation is such that I’ll stop at nothing. A desperate man has very little to lose.”
As he said that, he shook his weapon in front of the Investigator’s eyes, and he, with a wordless look, indicated that he’d keep the secret.
“I know of no other solution to my plight. It’s humiliating, but what can you do? When you don’t have what it takes to play a leading role, you have to take several small walk-on parts in order to survive. No, if you don’t mind, please keep your hard hat on!”
The Investigator readjusted his headgear, not even trying anymore to understand why one person insisted that he wear it and another required him to take it off at once.
“But to hell with that, what about you? Why are you still in this office at this hour?”
Without going into details, the Investigator felt obliged to summarize what the Manager had said, but he kept quiet about the Manager’s attempt to hurdle his desk and the pathetic display that had followed, with the Manager on his knees, weeping at the Investigator’s feet. Then he described the Manager’s abrupt departure, attributed by the Investigator to courtesy: The Manager, he explained, must have gone off to see about the Investigator’s meal, which had been ordered but never received.
“Come on, what are you talking about? For the past fourteen months, the Enterprise’s restaurant has been closed for renovations! As the Manager knows very well. It’s caused a lot of discontent among the personnel — there’s even the threat of a strike! How could he have made you such a promise? Are you certain you understood him correctly?”
The Investigator was no longer sure of anything. Not even his name. He shrugged his shoulders with an air of resignation.
“In any case,” the other went on, “the Manager left the Enterprise quite a while ago. I personally saw him exit the tower in the late afternoon. Now, come on, you can’t stay here. If someone finds you, that will necessarily mean trouble for me.”
The Watchman, formerly the Guide, put his weapon back in its holster, gave the Investigator’s shoulder a light tap, and signaled to him to follow. They went down the same winding stairway they’d gone up together several hours earlier. The first time, the Investigator had felt a pleasant giddiness as he climbed the stairs; on the way down, he was seized by an overwhelming feeling of nausea, which made the steel-and-aluminum structures of the tower look as soft as marshmallows. Sharp angles bent into curves, straight lines turned into moving coils, the stairs themselves became shaky, rubbery, incomparably treacherous, like a supple, mobile carpet of moss. The farther down he went, the more the world came apart, a little as though someone were dismantling a stage set that was no longer needed, and he understood that if he didn’t quicken his pace, he’d no doubt risk being absorbed by that shifting, yielding, unstable mass, as surely as dirty water disappears into a gutter.
XXII
A FORCEFUL SLAP BROUGHT HIM BACK to consciousness.
“Pardon me, but I wasn’t sure what to do. You literally collapsed against me at the bottom of the stairs. I had to hold you up and drag you out, and as soon as we got through the door, you dropped like a ripe fruit! Do you feel any better?”
The Watchman was standing over the Investigator, who lay curled up on the ground. There was no sympathy in the Watchman’s worried face, and nothing friendly in his question. The Investigator made a vague hand gesture to show him there was no cause for alarm.
“You’re not carrying some virus, by any chance, are you?” asked the Watchman. “Because what the Enterprise really doesn’t need at this moment is an epidemic!”
“Nothing to fear,” the Investigator murmured weakly. “It’s just that … I haven’t eaten anything since yesterday morning.…”
The Watchman seemed surprised: “Since yesterday morning, you say?” He thought for a moment. “That’s only two days. You mustn’t have a very solid constitution if a little two-day fast can put you in this state. Either that, or you don’t have enough willpower. Six months ago, the Deputy Head of the Export Department went on a hunger strike. He said no one had the right to put him in a pre-retirement program. Guess how many days he held out?”
The Investigator shook his head to indicate that he had no idea.
“No, no, say a number!”
“Fifteen days …?”
“Forty-two! He held out for forty-two days. Do you realize how long that is? Forty-two days! Management didn’t want to give in. And they were right! They were right not to give in!”
He’d screamed the last sentence, looking all around as he did so. Then he fell silent, calmed down, and turned his eyes again to the Investigator, who was still on the ground. He began to feel the beneficial effects of fresh air.
“How did it end?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The hunger strike you were talking about.”
“Ah, right,” said the Watchman, as if setting foot on a shore abandoned long ago. “The DHED died. Simply died. The organism has its limits. Forty-two days is a lot of days. Too many days. Some people never know when to stop. Result: no pre-retirement, plus no retirement at all. Nothing. So that’s one less grumbler, and his position comes free and makes somebody happy.”