Anarchaos

X

She was gone in the morning, when I was awakened by a knocking at the door. I was fully conscious at once, though baffled by where I was and by a sense that someone should be with me, though for a second I couldn’t think who or why. But then the knock was repeated. I got out of bed, put on my trousers, and found at the door a short and sullen girl with greasy long hair, who wore a guard uniform exactly like those worn by the men outside the main door. She handed me a small package and said, “I’m supposed to show you to the diner. After you eat, I’m supposed to take you to see Miss Guild.”

“Good,” I said. “Wait there.” I shut the door, leaving her outside.

The package contained a watch, which read eight-thirty. I washed and dressed, took the elevator with my sullen guide, and entered the diner at ten minutes to nine. The normal day had begun much earlier here, I saw, since all the tables in the diner — a room very similar to what we called the mess in prison — were empty. A sullen employee paced me along the serving line, filling my tray with a stock breakfast, and as I ate at a table near the door I reflected on the reason for Jenna Guild’s consideration in letting me sleep late, and I found a smile coming unbidden to my lips. How odd it felt. But then my memory stretched to include my reason for being here in the first place, and the smile dissolved, and I hurried through the rest of the meal.

At nine twenty-five my guide left me at the entrance to Jenna’s office. I stepped in, wondering how I was going to behave on first seeing her, and she decided it for me, greeting me briskly with, “There you are. Had a good sleep? Does the watch fit?” She remained seated behind her desk.

Business hours, in other words, were exclusively for business. I said, “Yes to both questions. Now I get started.”

“Certainly.” Brisk, impersonal, friendly in the machined way she’d been when I’d first seen her by the elevator. “To begin with,” she said, “I thought you might be interested in seeing your brother’s file.” She extended a folder across her desk toward me. “You could sit at that table over there while you look at it, if you like.”

“Thank you.”

The folder contained documents, and the documents reduced Gar to a blueprint. His height, his weight, his date of birth, the color of his hair and eyes and skin, the place of his birth, the names and current address of his parents, the GD address for me that hid my life in prison, his scholastic records, his work history; all things I already knew, and all seeming false and out of focus and somehow incorrect when placed on paper within this folder.

There were other facts, too, which I hadn’t known. His salary, which was large. His job title, which was Developmental Surveyor. His home address here at the tower of Ice, which was Suite 87. His last job assignment, which was Special Projects Department, working under SP Supervisor L. L. Goss.

And finally, there were job evaluations, six of them, the final one from the same L.L. Goss, the first three from V. Topher, four and five from G. D. zi Quinn. All six evaluations were full of praise; his supervisors had found Gar an excellent worker, imaginative, self-reliant, capable of taking criticism, very productive, cooperative, no trouble with co-workers, and so on and so on.

But those weren’t the final papers. There was one more: the copy of a letter from Gar to Supervisor Goss recommending me for the job as his Field Assistant. The description was not me. Reading it, I saw that it too was a blueprint, like this folder, except that this was a blueprint for Rolf Malone. A revised blueprint. A loving description of who I might have been, if I hadn’t been who I am. Here and there in the revision glimpses of the original could faintly be made out.

I closed the folder. I closed my eyes. I breathed as little as possible, because breathing hurt my throat. After a while Jenna came over and said, “What’s wrong? Rolf? Is something wrong?”

“No,” I said, I opened my eyes and handed her the folder. “Thank you.”

“You’re pale,” she said.

“I want to see where he lived.”

“Where he lived?” As though she had no idea what I meant.

I pointed at the folder. “Suite 87. Gar.”

“Oh.” She shook her head. “That’s all changed now,” she said.

“I want to see it.”

“But someone else lives there now. All your brother’s personal property was sent home to his parents. If we’d known you were coming, if you’d wanted us to keep them and give them to you here…” She trailed off.

“I just want to see the rooms,” I said.

“I don’t—” She stopped, and looked at the folder, and shook her head. “I don’t know. Let me see if I can get the key.”

Of course she could get the key. She went away, and came back almost immediately, and led me to Suite 87 herself.

No windows. Not in the balls, not in my room, not in the diner, not in Jenna’s office, and not here in Suite 87. Only die Colonel, at the top of the tower, had a window, which told him kindly lies. Windowless, Suite 87 had three rooms, each as small as the one in which I had slept last night. The first was a sitting room done in green and brown, with an entertainment center along one wall, I almost went over to look at the books and tapes, but then I remembered they wouldn’t be Gar’s, they’d be the new tenant’s, and I turned away.

The second room was a dinette, in silver and yellow, the kitchen appliances grouped on one side and the meal area across the way. It was necessary to go through the dinette to get to the third room, a bedroom in yellow and green, continuing the two primary colors from the earlier part of the suite. (Just as there were no windows, there was no red anywhere. The only man-made red I’d seen since arrival was the Colonel’s robe.) Finally, off the bedroom was a small silver and while bath.

There was nothing here, I could stand in any of the rooms and look around and know I was looking at the walls and floors and furnishings that Gar had looked at, but artifacts of the new tenant kept intruding, breaking into my communication. Suite 87 was barren.

At last I shook my head and said, “All right. I’ve had enough.”

She looked at me with sympathy, and put her hand on ray arm. I don’t know why, but that look and that touch made me dislike her for the moment.

Out in the corridor again, I waited while Jenna relocked the door and then I said, “It’s time for me to see L.L. Goss.”

“Special Projects Supervisor. He’ll help you, if anybody will.”

We had to take the elevator, and came to the first really busy level I’d so far seen. Men and women in work jumpers sat at tables, carried papers from room to room, spoke into tape machines or discussed things together in low intense voices. Jenna led me to a door which took me away from all this activity into a brown room where a girl sat primly in a brown juniper at a brown desk. She was plain of face and very thin, and I saw a quick expression of something like bitter envy flash by her eyes when she looked up and saw Jenna. But her voice was bright and impersonal as she asked what we wanted.

Jenna answered: “Gar Malone’s brother, to see Mr. Goss. He’s expected.”

“One moment.”

When she left the room, going through another door into an inner office, Jenna turned to me and said, “Well, good luck, Rolf.”

“You’re going?”

“I have work to do. Goodbye.”

“Will I see you later on?”

She smiled slightly and shook her head. “I doubt you’ll ever see me again, Rolf,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because we both have work to do. And it takes us in different directions.” Her smile twisted a little, and she said, “Besides, I don’t think I like who you think I am.”

“I don’t even know you.”

“What difference does that make?” Then she smiled more freely and said, “In some ways, you remind me of Gar. But in most ways you’re very different.”

I suddenly had to know. I said, “Did he ask you?”

“Of course not.” Smiling, putting sex into it for just a second, she said, “I had to ask him.”

It was an exit line, and she’d planned it that way, and she went out on it. Suddenly disliking her more than ever, I took a step toward the door, to follow her and spoil the exit, force her to give Gar and me and herself back our individuality no matter what the pain, but the voice of the plain girl in brown stopped me, saying, “Mr. Goss will see you now.”