The Best of Gene Wolfe

Forlesen

When Emanuel Forlesen awoke, his wife was already up preparing breakfast. Forlesen remembered nothing, knew nothing but his name, for an instant did not remember his wife, or that she was his wife, or that she was a human being, or what human beings were supposed to look like.

At the time he woke he knew only his own name; the rest came later and is therefore suspect, colored by rationalization and the expectations of the woman herself and the other people. He moaned, and his wife said, “Oh, you’re awake. Better read the orientation.”

He said, “What orientation?”

“You don’t remember where you work, do you? Or what you’re supposed to do.”

He said, “I don’t remember a damn thing.”

“Well, read the orientation.”

He pushed aside the gingham spread and got out of bed, looking at himself, noticing first the oddly deformed hands at the ends of his legs, then remembering the name for them: shoes. He was naked, and his wife turned her back to him politely while she prepared food. “Where the hell am I?” he asked.

“In our house.” She gave him the address. “In our bedroom.”

“We cook in the bedroom?”

“We sure do,” his wife said. “There isn’t any kitchen. There’s a parlor, the children’s bedroom, this room, and a bath. I’ve got an electric fry pan, a tabletop electric oven, and a coffeepot here; we’ll be all right.”

The confidence in her voice heartened him. He said, “I suppose this used to be a one-bedroom house and we made the kitchen into a place for the kids.”

“Maybe it’s an old house and they made the kitchen into the bathroom when they got inside plumbing.”

He was dressing himself, having seen that she wore clothing, and that there was clothing too large for her piled on a chair near the bed. He said, “Don’t you know?”

“It wasn’t in the orientation.”

At first he did not understand what she had said. He repeated, “Don’t you know?”

“I told you, it wasn’t in there. There’s just a diagram of the house, and there’s this room, the children’s room, the parlor, and the bath. It said that door there”—she gestured with the spatula—“was the bath, and that’s right, because I went in there to get the water for the coffee. I stay here and look after things and you go out and work; that’s what it said. There was some stuff about what you do, but I skipped that and read about what I do.”

“You didn’t know anything when you woke up either,” he said.

“Just my name.”

“What’s your name?”

“Edna Forlesen. I’m your wife—that’s what it said.”

He walked around the small table on which she had arranged the cooking appliances, wanting to look at her. “You’re sort of pretty,” he said.

“You are sort of handsome,” his wife said. “Anyway, you look tough and strong.” This made him walk over to the mirror on the dresser and try to look at himself. He did not know what he looked like, but the man in the mirror was not he. The image was older, fatter, meaner, more cunning, and stupider than he knew himself to be, and he raised his hands (the man in the mirror did likewise) to touch his features; they were what they should have been and he turned away. “That mirror’s no good,” he said.

“Can’t you see yourself? That means you’re a vampire.”

He laughed, and decided that that was the way he always laughed when his wife’s jokes weren’t funny. She said, “Want some coffee?” and he sat down.

She put a cup in front of him, and a pile of books. “This is the orientation,” she said. “You better read it—you don’t have much time.”

On top of the pile was a mimeographed sheet, and he picked that up first. It said:

“Eat your egg,” his wife said. He tasted the egg. It was good but slightly oily, as though a drop of motor oil had found its way into the grease in which she had fried it. His Job Assignment read.

(To his wife he said, “They got our name wrong.”)

The yellow paper was illegible save for the title and first line: There are 240 ours in each day.

“What time is it?” he asked his wife.

She glanced at her wrist. “Oh six oh ours. Didn’t they give you a watch?”

He looked at his own wrist—it was bare, of course. For a few moments Edna helped him search for one, but it seemed that none had been provided and in the end he took hers, she saying that he would need it more than she. It was big for a woman’s watch, he thought, but very small for a man’s. “Try it,” she said, and he obediently studied the tiny screen. The words THE TIME IS were cast in the metal at its top; below them, glimmering and changing even as he looked: 060.07.43. He took a sip of coffee and found the oily taste was there too.

The book at the top of the pile was a booklet really, about seven inches by four with the pages stapled in the middle. The title, printed in black on a blue cover of slightly heavier paper, was How to Drive.

He turned the page. The new page was a diagram of the control panel of an automobile, and he noted the positions of Windshield, Steering Wheel, Accelerator, Brake, Reversing Switch, Communicator, Beverage Dispenser, Urinal, Defecator, and Map Compartment. He asked Edna if they had a car, and she said she thought they did, and that it would be outside.

“You know,” he said, “I’ve just noticed that this place has windows.”

Edna said, “You’re always jumping up from the table. Finish your breakfast.”

Ignoring her, he parted the curtains. She said, “Two walls have windows and two don’t. I haven’t looked out of them.” Outside he saw sunshine on concrete; a small, yellow, somehow hunched-looking automobile; and a house.

“Yeah, we’ve got a car,” he said. “It’s parked right under the window.”

“Well, I wish you’d finish breakfast and get to work.”

“I want to look out of the other window.”

If the first window had been, as it appeared to be, at one side of the house, then the other should be at either the back or the front. He opened the curtains and saw a narrow, asthmatic brick courtyard. On the bricks stood three dead plants in terra-cotta jars; the opposite side of the court, no more than fifteen feet off, was the wall of another house. There were two widely spaced windows in this wall, each closed with curtains, and as he watched (though his face was only at the window for an instant) a man pushed aside the curtains at the nearer window and looked at him. Forlesen stepped back and said to Edna, “I saw a man; he looked afraid. A bald man with a wide, fat face, and a gold tooth in front, and a mole over one eyebrow.” He went to the mirror again and studied himself.

“You don’t look like that,” his wife said.

“No, I don’t—that’s what bothers me. That was the first thing I thought of—that it would be myself, perhaps the way I’m going to look when I’m older. I’ve lost a lot of my hair now and I could lose the rest of it; in fact, I suppose I will. And I could break a tooth in front and get a gold one—”

“Maybe it wasn’t really a mole,” Edna said. “It could have been just a spot of dirt or something.”

“It could have been.” He had seated himself again, and as he spoke he speared a bite of egg with his fork. “I suppose it’s even possible that I could grow a mole I don’t have now, and I could put on weight. But that wasn’t me; those weren’t my features, not at any age.”

“Well, why should it be you?”

“I just felt it should, somehow.”

“You’ve been reading that red book.” Edna’s voice was accusing.

“No, I haven’t even looked at it.” Curious, he pushed aside brown and purple pamphlets, fished the red book out of the pile, and looked at it. The cover was of leather and had been blind-tooled in a pattern of thin lines. Holding it at a slant to the light from the window, he decided he could discern, in the intricacies of the pattern, a group of men surrounding a winged being. “What is it?” he said.

“It’s supposed to tell you how to be good, and how to live—everything like that.”

He riffled the pages, and noted that the left side of the book—the back of each leaf—was printed in scarlet in a language he did not understand. The right side, printed in black, seemed by its arrangement on the page to be a translation.

“Look at this,” he said. “This can’t be right.”

“I wish you’d hurry. You’re going to be late.”

He looked at the watch she had given him. It read 060.26.13, and he said, “I still have time. But look here—the black is supposed to say the same thing as the red, but look at how different they are: where it says: And last those who sleep, there’s a whole paragraph opposite it; and across from, Fourth those who amuse themselves . . . there are only two words.”

“You don’t want any more coffee, do you?”

He shook his head, laid down the red book, and picked up another; its title was Food Preparation in the Home. “That’s for me,” his wife said. “You wouldn’t be interested by that.”

He set the book down again, and as he did so its cheap plastic cover popped open to the last page. At the bottom of the “Helpful Hints for Homemakers,” he read: Remember that if he does not go, you and your children will starve. He closed it and put the sugar bowl on top of it.

“I wish you’d get going,” his wife said.

He stood up. “I was just leaving. How do I get out?”

She pointed to one of the doors, and said, “That’s the parlor. You go straight through that, and there’s another door that goes outside.”

“And the car,” Forlesen said, more than half to himself, “will be around there under the window.” He slipped the blue How to Drive booklet into one of his pockets.

The parlor was smaller than the bedroom, but because it held no furniture as large as the bed or the table it seemed nearly empty. There was an uncomfortable-looking, sofa against one wall, and two bowlegged chairs in corners; an umbrella stand and a dusty potted palm. The floor was covered by a dark, patterned rug and the walls by flowered paper. Four strides took him across the room; he opened another, larger and heavier door and stepped outside. A moment after he had closed the door he heard the bolt snick behind him; he tried to open it again, and found, as he had expected, that he was locked out.

The house in which he seemed to have been born stood on a narrow street paved with asphalt. Only a two-foot concrete walkway separated it from the curb; there was no porch, and the doorway was at the same level as the walk, which had been stenciled at intervals of six feet or so with the words GO TO YOUR RIGHT—NOT TO YOUR LEFT. They were positioned in such a way as to be upside down to a person who had gone to the left. Forlesen went around the corner of his house instead and got into the yellow car—the instrument panel differed in several details from the one in the blue book. For a moment he considered rolling down the right window of the car to rap on the house window, but he felt sure that Edna would not come. He threw the reversing switch instead, wondering if he should not do something to bring the car to life first. It began to roll slowly backward at once; he guided it with the steering wheel, craning his neck to look over his shoulder.

The narrow street seemed deserted. He switched into Front and touched the accelerator pedal with his foot; the car inched forward, picking up speed only slowly even when he pushed the pedal to the floor. The street was lined with small brick houses much like the one he had left; their curtains were drawn, and small cars like his own but of various colors were parked beside the houses. Signs stood on metal poles cast into the asphalt of the road, spaced just sufficiently far apart that each was out of sight of the next. They were diamond shaped, with black letters on an orange ground, and each read: HIDDEN DRIVES.

His communicator said: “If you do not know how to reach your destination, press the button and ask.”

He pressed the button and said, “I think I’m supposed to go to a place called Model Pattern Products.”

“Correct. Your destination is 19000370 Plant Parkway, Highland Industrial Park. Turn right at the next light.”

He was about to ask what was meant by the word light in this connotation when he saw that he was approaching an intersection and that over it, like a ceiling fixture unaccompanied by any ceiling, was suspended a rapidly blinking light which emitted at intervals of perhaps a quarter second alternating flashes of red and green. He turned to the right; the changing colors gave an illusion of jerky motion, belied by the smooth hum of the tires. The flickering brought a sensation of nausea, and for a moment he shut his eyes against it; then he felt the car nosing up, tilting under him. He opened his eyes and saw that the new street onto which he had turned was lifting beneath him, becoming, ahead, an airborne ribbon of pavement that traced a thin streak through the sky. Already he was higher than the tops of the trees. The roofs of the houses—little tarpaper things like the lids of boxes—were dwindling below. He thought of Edna in one of those boxes (he found he could not tell which one) cooking a meal for herself, perhaps smoothing the bed in which the two of them had slept, and knew, with that sudden insight which stands in relation to reason as reason does to instinct, that she would spend ours, most of whatever day there was, looking out the parlor window at the empty street; he found that he both pitied and envied her, and stopped the car with some vague thought of returning home and devising some plan by which they could either stay there together or go together to wherever it was he was being sent. “Model Pattern Products,” he said aloud. What was that?

As though it were answering him the speaker said, “Why have you stopped? Do you require mechanical assistance?”

“Wait a minute; I’m not sure if I do or not.” He got out of the car and walked to the low rail at the edge of the road and looked down. Something, he felt sure, must be supporting the mass of concrete and steel upon which he stood, but he could not see what it was, only the houses and trees and the narrow asphalt streets below. The sunlight striking his face when he looked up again gave him an idea, and he hurried across the road and bent over the rail on the opposite side. There, as he had anticipated, the shadow of the road, long in the level morning sunshine, lay stretched across the roofs and streets. Under it, very closely spaced, were yet other shadows, but these were so broken by the irregular shapes upon which they were thrown by the sun that he could not be sure if they were the shadows of things actually straight or if the casters of these shadows (whatever they might be) were themselves bowed, twisted, and deformed.

He was still studying the shadows when the humming sound of wheels drew his attention back to the flying roadway upon which he stood. A car, painted a metallic and yet peculiarly pleasing shade of blue, was speeding toward him.

Unaccustomed to estimating the speeds of vehicles, he wondered for an instant whether or not he had time to recross the road and reach his own car again, and was torn between the fear of being run down if he tried and that of being pinned against the rail where he stood, should the blue car swerve too near. Then he realized that the blue car was slowing as it approached him—that he himself was, so to speak, its destination. Its door, he saw, was painted with a fantastic design, a mingling of fabulous beasts with plants and what appeared to be wholly abstract symbols.

A man was seated in the blue car, and as Forlesen watched he leaned across the seat toward him, rolling down the window. “Hey, bud, what are you doing outside your car?”

“I was looking over the railing,” Forlesen said. He indicated the sheer drop beside him. “I wanted to see how the road got up in the air like this.”

“Get back in.”

Forlesen was about to obey when in a remote corner of his field of vision he detected a movement, a shifting in that spot of ground below toward which he had been looking a moment before, and thus toward which (as is the habit of vision) his gaze was still to some degree drawn. He swung around to look at it, and the man in the blue car said again, “Get back in your car, bud.” And then: “I’m telling you, you better get back.”

“Come here,” Forlesen said. “Look at this.” He heard the door of the other car open and assumed the driver was coming to join him, then felt something—it might have been the handlebar of a bicycle against which he had accidentally backed—prodding him in the spine, just above his belt. He moved away from it with his attention still riveted on the shadows below, but it followed him. He turned and saw that the driver had, as he had supposed, left the blue car, and that he wore a loose, broad-sleeved blue shirt with a metal badge pinned to the fabric off-center. Also that he wore no trousers, his sexual organs being effectively concealed by the length of the shirt, and that from under the shirt six or more plastic tubes led back to the blue car, some of the color of straw and others of the dark red color of blood; and that he held a pistol, and that it had been the muzzle of this pistol which he (Forlesen) had felt a moment before pressing against his back. “Get in there,” the man from the blue car said a third time.

Forlesen said, “All right,” and did as he was told, but found (to his own very great surprise) that he was not frightened.

When he was behind the wheel of his own car again, the man from the blue car reentered it, and (so it appeared to Forlesen) seemed to holster his gun beneath the car’s dashboard. “I’m back in my car now,” Forlesen said. “Can I tell you what it was I saw?”

The man in the blue car said to his speaker, “This is two oh four twelve forty-three. Subject has returned to his vehicle. Repeat—subject has returned to his vehicle.”

“Those pillars or columns or whatever they are that hold this road up—one of them moved, or at least its shadow did. I saw it.”

The man in the blue car muttered something under his breath.

“Are they falling down?” Forlesen asked. “Have you been noticing cracks?”

The speaker in Forlesen’s car said, “Information received indicates an unauthorized stop. Continue toward your destination at once.” He noticed that the speaker in the blue car seemed to be talking to its driver as well, but Forlesen could not hear what was being said. After a moment (his own speaker had fallen silent) he heard the driver say, “Yes, ma’am. Over and out.” Then the pistol was aimed at Forlesen once more, this time at his face, through the window of the blue car. The driver said, “You roll that thing, bud, and you roll it now or I shoot.”

Forlesen stepped on the accelerator, and his car began to move forward, slowly at first, then picking up speed until he felt sure it was traveling much faster than a man could run. In the mirror above the windshield Forlesen could see the blue car; it did not turn—as he had supposed it might—to follow him, but after a delay continued to descend the road he himself was going up.

He had supposed that this road would lead him to Model Pattern Products (whatever that might be), but when he had been following it for some time it joined another similar but far wider, highway. There were now multiple lines of traffic all going in the same direction, and by traveling in the fast lane he could avoid looking over the side. It was a relief he accepted gratefully; he had a good head for heights, but he had found himself studying the long shadows of the supports whenever the twistings of the road put them on the side upon which he drove.

With that distraction out of the way he discovered that he enjoyed driving, though the memory of the twisted columns remained in the back of his mind. Yet the performance of the yellow car was deeply satisfying: it sped to the top of the high, white, billowing undulations of the highway with a power slight yet sure, and descended in a way that made him almost believe himself a hawk—or the operator of some fantastic machine that could itself soar like a bird—or even such a winged being as had appeared on the cover of the red book. The clear sky, which lay now to the right and left of the highway as well as above it, promoted these fantasies, and its snowy clouds might almost have been other highways like the one on which he traveled—indeed, from time to time he seemed to see moving dots of color on them, as though cars like his own, but immensely remote, dashed over plains and precipices of vapor. He used the defecator and the urinal, dispensed himself a sparkling green beverage; the car was a cozy and secret place of retirement, a second body, his palace and his fortress; he imagined himself a mouse descending a clear stream in half an eggshell, the master of a comet enfolding a hollow world.

He had been traveling in this way for a long while when he saw the hitchhiker. The man did not stand at the side of the road where Forlesen would have expected to see a pedestrian if, indeed, he had anticipated seeing any at all, but balanced himself on the high divider that separated the innermost lane from those on which traffic moved in the opposite direction. As he was some distance ahead, Forlesen was able to observe him for several minutes before reaching the point at which he stood.

He appeared to be a tall man, much stooped; and despite the ludicrousness of his position, his attitude suggested a certain dignity. His hands and arms were in constant motion—not only as he sought to maintain his balance, but because he mimed to each car that passed his desire to ride, acting out in pantomime the car’s stopping, his haste to reach it, his opening the door and seating himself, his gratitude.

Nor did he care, apparently, in which direction he rode. While Forlesen watched, he turned around and for a few moments sought to attract the attention of a passing vehicle on the opposite side; then, as though he realized that he was unlikely to have better fortune there than in the direction he had chosen originally, turned back again. His clothing was stiffly old-fashioned, once fairly good perhaps, but now worn and dusty. When Forlesen stopped before this scarecrow figure and motioned toward the seat beside him, the hitchhiker seemed so startled at having gotten a ride at last that Forlesen wondered if he was going to get in. Traffic zoomed and swirled around them like a summer storm.

With his long legs folded high and the edge of the dashboard pressing against his shins he looked (Forlesen thought) like a cricket. An old cricket, for despite his agility and air of alertness the hitchhiker was old, his mouth full of crooked and stained old teeth and new white straight ones which were surely false, his bright, dark eyes surrounded by wrinkles, the hand he extended crook fingered and callused. “Name’s Abraham Beale.” Bad teeth in a good smile.

“Emanuel Forlesen,” Forlesen said, taking the hand as he started the car rolling again. “Where are you going, Mr. Beale?”

“Anywhere.” Beale was craning his neck to look out the small window in the back of the car. “Glad you didn’t get hit,” he said. “ ’Fraid you would.”

“I’m sure they could see I had stopped,” Forlesen said, “and there are plenty of other lanes.”

“Half of them’s asleep. More’n half. You’re awake, so I guess you thought everybody was, ain’t that right?”

“They’re driving; I’d think they’d run off the road if they were sleeping.”

Beale was dusting his high-crowned, battered old hat with his big hands, patting and brushing it gently as though it were a baby animal of some delicate and appealing kind, a young rabbit or a little coatimundi. “I could see them,” he said. “From where I was up there. Most of them didn’t even see me—off in cloudland somewheres.”

“I’m going to Model Pattern Products,” Forlesen said.

The older man shook his head, and, having finished with his hat, set it on one knee. “I already tried there,” he said, “nothin’ for me.” In a slightly lower voice, the voice of a man who is ashamed but feels he should not be, he added: “Lost my old job. I been trying to hook on somewhere else.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Forlesen found, somewhat to his surprise, that he was sorry. “What did you do?”

“About everything. There ain’t much I can’t turn a hand to. By rights I’m a lawyer, but I’ve soldiered some and worked stock out west, and lumberjacked, and once I fired on the railroad. And I’m a pretty good reaper mechanic if I do say so myself.” Beale took a round tin box of snuff from one of the pockets of his shabby vest and put a pinch of the brown contents under his lip, then offered the box to Forlesen.

“You’ve had an interesting time,” Forlesen said, waving it away. “I would have guessed you were a farmer, I think, if I had had to guess.”

“Well, I’ve followed a plow and I ain’t ashamed to say it. I was raised on the farm—oldest of thirteen children, and we all helped. I’d farm again if I had the land; it would be something. You know what? My dad, he left the old place to me, and the same day I got the letter that said I was to have it—from a esteemed colleague there, you know, a old fellow named Abner Bunter, we used to call him Banty; my dad’d had him do his will for him, me not being there—I got another that said the state was taking her for a highway. Had it and lost it between rippin’ up one envelope and the other. I remember when it happened I went out and bought a cigar; I had been workin’, but I couldn’t work no more, not right then.”

“Didn’t they pay you for it?” Forlesen asked. He had been coming up behind a car the color of sour milk, and changed lanes as he spoke, shooting into an opening that allowed him to pass.

“You bet. There was a check in there,” Beale said. “I planted her, but she didn’t grow.”

Forlesen glanced at him, startled.

“Hey!” The older man slapped his leg. “You think I’m touched. I meant I invested her.”

“Well, I’m sorry you lost your money,” Forlesen said.

“I didn’t exactly lose it.” Beale rubbed his chin. “It just sort of come to nothing. I still got it—draw the interest every year; they post her in the book for me—but there ain’t nothing left.” He snapped his fingers. “Tell you what it’s like. We had a tree once on the farm, a apple tree—McIntoshes, I think they were. Well, it never did die, but every winter it would die back a little bit, first one limb and then another, until there wasn’t hardly anything left. Dad always thought it would come back, so he never did grub it out, but I don’t believe it ever bore after I was big enough to go to school, and I remember the year I left home he cut a switch of it for Avery—Avery was the youngest of us brothers; he was always getting into trouble, like I recollect one time he let one of Dad’s blue slate gamecocks in the pen with our big Shanghai rooster, said he thought the blue slate was too full of himself and the big one would take him down a piece; well, what happened was the blue slate ripped him right up the front; any fool could have told him; looked like he was going to clean him without picking first. Dad was mad as hell—he thought the world of that rooster, and he used to feed him cake crumbs right out of his hand.”

“What happened to the apple tree?” Forlesen asked.

“That’s what I said myself,” Beale said. Forlesen waited for him to continue, but he did not. The miles (hundreds of miles, Forlesen thought) slipped by; at long intervals the speaker announced the time: “It is oh sixty-three, oh sixty-five, oh sixty-eight thirty ours.” The road dropped by slow degrees until they were level with the roofs of buildings, buildings whose roofs were jagged saw blades fronted with glass.

Forlesen said, “Model Pattern Products is in an industrial park—the Highland Industrial Park—maybe you’ll be able to get a job there.”

Beale nodded slowly. “I been looking out for something that looked to be in my line,” and after a moment added, “I guess I didn’t finish tellin’ you ’bout my check I got, did I? Look here.” His left hand fumbled inside his shabby coat, and Forlesen noticed that the elbows were so threadbare that his shirt could be seen through the fabric as though the man himself had begun to be slightly transparent, at least in his external and nonessential attributes. After a moment he held out a small, dun-colored bankbook, opening it dexterously with the fingers of one hand, but to the wrong page, an empty and unused page, which he presented for Forlesen’s inspection. “That’s all there is,” Beale said. “I never drew a nickel, and I put the interest, most times, right smack back in, and that’s all that’s left. That’s Dad’s farm, them little numbers in the book.”

Forlesen said, “I see.”

“They didn’t cheat me,” Beale continued. “That was a good hunk of money when they give it to me, big money. But it’s went down and down since till it’s only little money, and little money ain’t hardly worth nothing. Listen, you’re young yit—I suppose you think two dollars is twice as much as one? Like, if you’re paid one and some other fellar gits two, he’s got twice as much as you? Or the other way around?”

“I suppose so,” Forlesen said.

“Well, you’re right. Now suppose you’ve got—I won’t ask you to tell me; I’ll just strike upon a figure here from your general age and appearance and whatnot—five thousand dollars. And the other’s got fifty thousand. Would you say he had ten times what you did?”

“Yes.”

“That’s where you’re wrong; he’s got fifty times, a hundred times what you do—maybe two hundred. Ain’t you never noticed how a man with fifty thousand cold behind him will act? Like you’re nothin’ to him, you don’t even weigh in his figuring at all.”

Forlesen smiled. “Are you saying five thousand times ten isn’t fifty thousand?”

“Look at it this way: You take your dollar to the store and you can git a dozen of eggs and a can of beans and a plug of tobacco. The other takes his two and gits two dozen of eggs, two cans of beans, and two plugs—ain’t that right? But a man that has big money don’t pay fifteen cents a plug like you and me; he can buy by the case if he feels inclined, and if he gits very much he gits it cheap as the store. Another thing—some things he can buy you and me can’t git at all. It ain’t that we can buy less; we can’t git even a little bit of it. Let me give you an example: The railroads and the coal mines buy your state legislatures, right? Sure they do, and everybody knows it. Now there’s thousands and thousands of people on the other side of them, and those thousands of people, if you was to add their money up, would be worth more. But they can’t buy the legislature at all, ain’t that right?”

“Go on,” Forlesen said.

“Well, don’t that prove that little money’s power to buy certain things is zero? If it had any at all, thousands and thousands times it would make those people the kings of the state, but the actual fact is they can’t do a thing—thousands time nothing is still nothing.” Suddenly Beale turned, staring out the window of the car, and Forlesen realized that while they had been talking the road had descended to the ground. Still many-laned, it passed now through a level landscape dotted with great, square buildings which, despite their size, made no pretense of majesty or grace, but seemed in every case intentionally ugly. They were constructed of the cheapest materials, mostly corrugated metal and cinder block, and each was surrounded by a high, rusty wire fence, with a barren area of asphalt or gravel beyond it as though to provide (Forlesen knew the thought was ridiculous) a clear field of fire for defenders within.

“Hold up!” Beale said urgently. “Hold up a minute there.” He gripped Forlesen’s right arm, and Forlesen jockeyed the car to the outermost lane of traffic, then onto the rutted clay at the shoulder of the road.

“Look ’e there!” Beale said, pointing down a broad alley between two of the huge buildings.

Forlesen looked as directed. “Horses.”

“Mustangs! Never been broke; you can tell that from looking at ’em. Whoever’s got ’em’s going to need some help.” Beale opened the car door, then turned and shook Forlesen’s hand. “Well, you’ve been a friend,” he said, “and if ever I can do anything for you just you ask.” Then he was gone, and Forlesen sat, for a moment, looking at the billboard-sized sign above the building into which the horses were being driven. It showed a dog’s head in a red triangle on a field of black, without caption of any kind.

The speaker said, “Do not stop en route. You are still one and one-half aisles from Model Pattern Products, your place of employment.”

Forlesen nodded and looked at the watch his wife had given him. It was 069.50.

“You are to park your car,” the speaker continued, “in the Model Pattern Products parking lot. You are not to occupy any position marked visitors, or any position marked with a name not your own.”

“Do they know I’m coming?” Forlesen asked, pressing the button.

“An employee service folder has already been made out for you,” the speaker told him. “All that needs to be done is to fill in your name.”

The Model Pattern Products parking lot was enclosed by a high fence, but the gates were open and the hinges so rusted that Forlesen, who stopped in the gateway for a moment thinking some guard or watchman might wish to challenge him, wondered if they had ever been closed; the ground itself, covered with loose gravel the color of ash, sloped steeply; he was forced to drive carefully to keep his car from skidding among the concrete stops of brilliant orange provided to prevent the parked cars from rolling down the grade; most of these were marked either with some name not his or with the word VISITOR, but he eventually discovered an unmarked position (unattractive, apparently, because smoke from a stubby flue projecting from the back of an outbuilding would blow across it) and left his car. His legs ached.

He was thirty or forty feet from his car when he realized he no longer had the speaker to advise him; several people were walking toward the gray metal building that was Model Pattern Products, but all were too distant for him to talk to them without shouting, and something in their appearance suggested that they would not wait for him to overtake them in any case. He followed them through a small door and found himself alone.

An anteroom held two time clocks, one beige, the other brown. Remembering the instruction sheet, he took a blank time card from the rack and wrote his name at the top, then pushed it into the beige machine and depressed the lever. A gong sounded. He withdrew the card and checked the stamped time: 069.56. A thin, youngish woman with large glasses and a sharp nose looked over his shoulder. “You’re late,” she said. (He was aware for an instant of the effort she was making to read his name at the top of the card.) “Mr. Forlesen.”

He said, “I’m afraid I don’t know the starting time.”

The woman said, “Oh seventy ours sharp, Mr. Forlesen. Start oh seventy ours sharp, coffee for your subdivision one hundred ours to one hundred and one. Lunch one hundred and twenty to one hundred and forty-one. Coffee, your subdivision, one fifty to one fifty-one P.M. Quit one seventy ours at the whistle.”

“Then I’m not late,” Forlesen said. He showed her his card.

“Mr. Frick likes everyone to be at least twenty minutes early, especially supervisory and management people. The real go-getters—that’s what he calls them, the real go-getters—try to be early. I mean, earlier than the regular early. Oh sixty-nine twenty-five, something like that. They unlock their desks and go upstairs for early coffee, and sometimes they play cards; it’s fun.”

“I’m sorry I missed it,” Forlesen said. “Can you tell me where I’m supposed to go now?”

“To your desk,” the woman said, nodding. “Unlock it.”

“I don’t know where it is.”

“Well, of course you don’t, but I can’t assign you to your desk—that’s up to Mr. Fields, your supervisor.” After a moment she added: “I know where you’re going to go, but he has the keys.”

Forlesen said, “I thought I was a supervisor.”

“You are,” the woman told him, “but Mr. Fields is—you know—a real supervisor. Anyway, nearly. Do you want to talk to him now?”

Forlesen nodded.

“I’ll see if he’ll see you now. You have Creativity Group today, and Leadership Training. And Company Orientation, and Bet-Your-Life—that’s the management-managing real-life pseudogame—and one interdepartmental training-transfer.”

“I’ll be glad to get the orientation anyway,” Forlesen said. He followed the woman, who had started to walk away. “But am I going to have time for all that?”

“You don’t get it,” she told him over her shoulder. “You give it. And you’ll have lots of time for work besides—don’t worry. I’ve been here a long time already. I’m Miss Fawn. Are you married?”

“Yes,” Forlesen said, “and I think we have children.”

“Oh. Well, you look it. Here’s Mr. Fields’s office, and I nearly forgot to tell you you’re on the Planning and Evaluation Committee. Don’t forget to knock.”

Forlesen knocked on the door to which the woman had led him. It was of metal painted to resemble wood, and had riveted to its front a small brass plaque which read: MR. D’ANDREA.

“Come in!” someone called from inside the office.

Forlesen entered and saw a short, thickset, youngish man with closecropped hair sitting at a metal desk. The office was extremely small and had no windows, but there was a large, brightly colored picture on each wall—two photographs in color (a beach with rocks and waves, and a snow-clad mountain) and two realistic landscapes (both of rolling green countryside dotted with cows and trees).

“Come in,” the youngish man said again. “Sit down. Listen, I want to tell you something—you don’t have to knock to come in this office. Not ever. My door—like they say—is always open. What I mean is, I may keep it shut to keep out the noise and so forth out in the hall, but it’s always open to you.”

“I think I understand,” Forlesen said. “Are you Mr. Fields?” The plaque had somewhat shaken his faith in the young woman with glasses.

“Right—Ed Fields at your service.”

“Then I’m going to be working for you. I’m Emanuel Forlesen.” Forlesen leaned forward and offered his hand, which Fields walked around the desk to take.

“Glad to meet you, Manny. Always happy to welcome a new face to the subdivision.” For an instant, as their eyes met, Forlesen felt himself weighed on invisible scales and, he thought, found slightly wanting. Then the moment passed, and a few seconds later he had difficulty believing it had ever been. “Remember what I told you when you came in—my door is always open,” Fields said. “Sit down.” Forlesen sat, and Fields resumed his place behind the desk.

“We’re a small outfit,” Fields said, “but we’re sharp.” He held up a clenched fist. “And I intend to make us the sharpest in the division. I need men who’ll back my play all the way, and maybe even run in front a little. Sharpies. That’s what I call ’em—sharpies. And you work with me, not for me.”

Forlesen nodded.

“We’re a team,” Fields continued, “and we’re going to function as a team. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a quarterback, and a coach”—he pointed toward the ceiling—“up there. It does mean that I expect every man to bat two fifty or better, and the ones that don’t make three hundred had better be damn good field. See what I mean?”

Forlesen nodded again and asked, “What does our subdivision do? What’s our function?”

“We make money for the company,” Fields told him. “We do what needs to be done. You see this office? This desk, this chair?”

Forlesen nodded.

“There’s two kinds of guys that sit here—I mean all through the company. There’s the old has-been guys they stick in here because they’ve been through it all and seen everything, and there’s the young guys like me that get put here to get an education—you get me? Sometimes the young guys just never move out; then they turn into the old ones. That isn’t going to happen to me, and I want you to remember that the easiest way for you to move up yourself is to move into this spot right here. Someday this will all be yours—that’s the way to think of it. That’s what I tell every guy in the subdivision—someday this’ll all be yours.” Fields reached over his head to tap one of the realistic landscapes. “You get what I mean?”

“I think so.”

“Okay, then let me show you your desk and where you’re gonna work.”

As they dodged among windowless, brightly lit corridors, it struck Forlesen that though the building was certainly ventilated—some of the corridors, in fact, were actually windy—the system could not be working very well. A hundred odors, mostly foul, but some of a sickening sweetness, thronged the air; and though most of the hallways they traveled were so cold as to be uncomfortable, a few were as stuffy as tents left closed all day beneath a summer sun.

“What’s that noise?” Forlesen asked.

“That’s a jackhammer busting concrete. You’re going to be in the new wing.” Fields opened a green steel door and led the way down a narrow, low-ceilinged passage pungent with the burnt-metal smell of arc welding; the tiled floor was gritty with cement dust, and Forlesen wondered, looking at the unpainted walls, how they could have gotten so dirty when they were clearly so new. “In here,” Fields said.

It was a big room, and had been divided into cubicles with rippled glass partitions five feet high. The effect was one of privacy, but the cubicles had been laid out in such a way as to allow anyone looking through the glass panel in the office door to see into them all. The windows were covered with splintering boards, and the floor sufficiently uneven that it was possible to imagine it a petrified sea, though its streaked black and gray pattern was more suggestive of charred wood. “You’re in luck,” Fields said. “I’d forgotten, or I would have told you back in the office. You get a window desk. Right here. Sitting by the window makes it kind of dark, but you only got the one other guy on the side of you over there, that’s nice, and you know there’s always a certain prestige goes with the desk that’s next to the window.”

Forlesen asked, “Wouldn’t it be possible to take some of the glass out of these partitions and use it in the windows?”

“Hell, no. This stuff is partition glass—what you need for a window is window glass. I thought you were supposed to have a lot of science.”

“My duties are supposed to be supervisory and managerial,” Forlesen said.

“Don’t ever let anybody tell you management isn’t a science.” Fields thumped Forlesen’s new desk for emphasis and got a smudge of dust on his fist. “It’s an art, sure, but it’s a science too.”

Forlesen, who could not see how anything could be both, nodded.

Fields glanced at his watch. “Nearly oh seventy-one already, and I got an appointment. Listen, I’m gonna leave you to find your way around.”

Forlesen seated himself at his desk. “I was hoping you’d tell me what I’m supposed to do here before you left.”

Fields was already outside the cubicle. “You mean your responsibilities; there’s a list around somewhere.”

Forlesen had intended to protest further, but as he started to speak he noticed an optical illusion so astonishing that for the brief period it was visible he could only stare. As Fields passed behind one of the rippled glass partitions on his way to the door, the distortions in the glass caused his image to change from that of the somewhat dumpy and rumpled man with whom Forlesen was now slightly familiar; behind the glass he was taller, exceedingly neat, and blank faced. And he wore glasses.

When he was gone Forlesen got up and examined the partitions carefully; they seemed ordinary enough, one surface rippled, the other smooth, the tops slightly dusty. He looked at his empty desk through the glass; it was a vague blur. He sat down again, and the telephone rang. “Cappy?”

“This is Emanuel Forlesen.” At the last moment it occurred to Forlesen that it might have been better to call himself Manny as Fields had—that it might seem more friendly and less formal, particularly to someone who was looking for someone he addressed so casually—but, as the thought entered his mind, something else, not a thought but one of those deeper feelings from which our thoughts have, perhaps, evolved contradicted it, so he repeated his name, bearing down on the first syllable: “Ee-manuel Forlesen.”

“Isn’t Cappy Dillingham there?”

“He may be in this office,” Forlesen said, “that is, his desk may be here, but he’s not here himself, and this is my telephone—I just moved into the office.”

“Take a message for him, will you? Tell him the Creativity Group meeting is moved up to oh seventy-eight sharp. I’m sorry it had to be so early, but Gene Fine has got a bunch of other stuff and we couldn’t figure out anything else to do short of canceling. And we couldn’t get a room, so we’re meeting in the hall outside the drilling and boring shop. There’s definitely going to be a film. Have you got that?”

“I think so,” Forlesen said. “Oh seventy-eight, hall outside the drill room, movie.” He heard someone behind him and turned to look. It was Miss Fawn, so he said, “Do you know where Mr. Dillingham is? I’m taking a call for him.”

“He died,” Miss Fawn said. “Let me talk to them.” She took the receiver. “Who’s calling, please? . . . Mr. Franklin, Mr. Dillingham died. . . . Lastnight . . . Yes, it is. Mr. Forlesen is taking his place in your group—you should have gotten a memo on it. . . . On Mr. Dillingham’s old number; you were just talking to him. He’s right here. Wait a moment.” She turned back to Forlesen: “It’s for you.”

He took the telephone and a voice in the earpiece said, “Are you Forlesen? Listen, this is Ned Franklin. You may not have been notified yet, but you’re in our Creativity Group, and we’re meeting—Wait a minute; I’ve got a memo on it under all this crap somewhere.”

“Oh seventy-eight,” Forlesen said.

“Right. I realize that’s pretty early—”

“We wouldn’t want to try to get along without Gene Fine,” Forlesen said.

“Right. Try to be there.”

Miss Fawn seemed to be leaving. Forlesen turned to see how she would appear in the rippled glass as he said, “What are we going to try and create?”

“Creativity. We create creativity itself—we learn to be creative.”

“I see,” Forlesen said. He watched Miss Fawn become pretty while remaining sexless, like a mannequin. He said, “I thought we’d just take some clay or something and start in.”

“Not that sort of creativity, for crap’s sake!”

“All right,” Forlesen said.

“Just show up, okay? Mr. Frick is solidly behind this and he gets upset when we have less than full attendance.”

“Maybe he could get us a meeting room then,” Forlesen suggested. He had no idea who “Mr. Frick” was, but he was obviously important.

“Hell, I couldn’t ask Mr. Frick that. Anyway, he never asks where we had the meeting—just how many came and what we discussed, and whether we feel we’re making progress.”

“He could be saving it.”

“Yeah, I guess he could. Listen, Cappy, if I can get us a room I’ll call you, okay?”

“Right,” said Forlesen. He hung up, wondered vaguely why Miss Fawn had come, then saw that she had left a stack of papers on a corner of his desk. “Well, the hell with you,” he said, and pushed them toward the wall. “I haven’t even looked at this desk yet.”

It was a metal desk, and somewhat smaller, older, and shabbier than the one in Fields’s office. It seemed odd to Forlesen that he should find old furniture in a part of the building which was still—judging from the sounds that occasionally drifted through the walls and window boards—under construction; but the desk and his chair as well were unquestionably nearing the end of their useful lives. The center desk drawer held a dead insect, a penknife with yellowed imitation ivory sides and a broken blade, a drawing of a bracket (very neatly lettered, Forlesen noticed) on crumpled tracing paper, and a dirty stomach mint. He threw this last away (his wastebasket was new, made of plastic, and did not seem to fit in with the other furnishings of the office) and opened the right-hand side drawer. It contained an assortment of pencils (all more or less chewed), a cube of art gum with the corners worn off, and some sheets of blank paper with one corner folded. The next drawer down yielded a wrinkled brown paper bag that disgorged a wad of wax paper, a stale half cookie, and the sharp smell of apples; the last two drawers proved to be a single file drawer in masquerade; there were five empty file folders in it, including one with a column of twenty-seven figures written on it in pencil, the first and lowest being 8,750 and the last and highest 12,500; they were not totaled. On the left side of the desk what looked like the ends of four more drawers proved to be a device for concealing a typewriter; there was no typewriter.

Forlesen closed it and leaned back in his chair, aware that inventorying the desk had depressed him. After a moment he remembered Fields’s saying that he would find a list of his responsibilities in the office, and discovered it on the top of the stack of papers Miss Fawn had left with him. It read:

Forlesen threw the paper in the wastebasket.

The second paper in the stack was headed “Sample Leadership Problem #105” and read:

After reading the problem through twice, Forlesen picked up his telephone and dialed the number. A female voice said, “Mr. Fairchild’s office.”

Forlesen identified himself, and a moment later a masculine voice announced, “Eric Fairchild.”

“It’s about the leadership problem—number one oh five?”

“Oh, yes.” (Fairchild’s voice was hearty; Forlesen imagined him slapping backs and challenging people to Indian-wrestle at parties.) “I’ve had quite a few calls about that one. You can check as many answers as you like if they’re not mutually exclusive—okay?”

“That wasn’t what I was going to ask,” Forlesen said. “This girl’s work—”

“Wait a minute,” Fairchild said. And then, much more faintly, “Get me the Leadership file, Miss Fenton.”

“What did you say?” Forlesen asked.

“Wait a minute,” Fairchild said again. “If we’re going to dig into this thing in depth I want to have a copy of the problem in front of me. Thank you. Okay, you can shoot now. What did you say your name was?”

“Forlesen. I meant after you said, ‘Wait a minute,’ the first time. I thought I heard you call your secretary Miss Fenton.”

“Ha ha ha.”

“Didn’t you?”

“My secretary’s name is Mrs. Fairchild, Mr. Forlesen—no, she’s not my wife, if that’s what you’re thinking. Mr. Frick doesn’t approve of nepotism. She’s just a nice lady who happens to be named Mrs. Fairchild, and I was addressing Miss Fetton, who is filling in for her today.”

“Sorry,” Forlesen said.

“You wanted to ask about problem one hundred and five?”

“Yes, I wanted to ask—Well, for one thing, in what way is the young woman’s work unsatisfactory?”

“Just what it says on the sheet, whatever that is. Wait a minute; here it is. Her work has not been satisfactory, but because clerical help has been in short supply she has not been told this.”

“Yes,” Forlesen said, “but in what way has it been unsatisfactory?”

“I see what you’re getting at now, but I can’t very well answer that, can I? After all, the whole essence of Leadership Training involves presenting the participants with structured problems—you see what I mean? This is a structured problem. Miss Fenton, could I trouble you to go down to the canteen and get me some coffee? Take it out of petty cash. Now if I explained something like that to you, and not to the others, then it would have a different structuring for you than for them. You see?”

“Well, it seemed to me,” Forlesen said, “that one of the first things to do would be to take Miss Fenton aside and explain to her that her work was unsatisfactory and perhaps hear what she had to say.”

“Miss who?”

“Fetton, the girl in the problem.”

“Right, and I see what you mean. However, since it specifically says what I read to you, and nothing else more than that, then if I was to tell you something else it would be structured different for you than for the other fellows. See what I mean?”

After thinking for a moment Forlesen said, “I don’t see how I can check any of the boxes knowing no more than I do now. Is it all right if I write my own solution?”

“You mean, draw a little box for yourself?”

“Yes, and write what I said after it—I mean, what I outlined to you a minute ago. That I’d talk to her.”

“I don’t think there’s room on the paper for all that, fella. I mean, you said quite a bit.”

Forlesen said, “I think I can boil it down.”

“Well, we can’t allow it anyway. These things are scored by a computer and we have to give it an answer—what I’m driving at is the number of your answer. Like the girl codes in the I.D. number of each participant and then the problem number, and then the answer number, like one or two or three. Or then if she puts like twenty-three it knows you answered two AND three. That would be indicate to her that her work has been satisfactory but hint that she may be laid off, and Offer her a six-week leave of absence without pay—during which she may obtain further training. “You get it?”

“You’re telling me that that’s the right answer,” Forlesen said. “Twenty-three.”

“Listen, hell no! I don’t know what the right answer is; only the machine does. Maybe there isn’t any right answer at all. I was just trying to give you a kind of a hint—what I’d do if I was in your shoes. You want to get a good grade, don’t you?”

“Is it important?”

“I would say that it’s important. I think it’s important to any man to know he did something like this and he did good—wouldn’t you say so? But like we said at the start of the course, your grade is your personal thing. We’re going to give grades, sure, on a scale of seven hundred and fifty-seven—that’s the top—to forty-nine, but nobody knows your grade but you. You’re told your own grade and your class standing and your standing among everybody here who’s ever taken the course—naturally that doesn’t mean much; the problems change all the time—but what you do with that information is up to you. You evaluate yourself. I know there have been these rumors about Mr. Frick coming in and asking the computer questions, but it’s not true—frankly, I don’t think Mr. Frick even knows how to program. It doesn’t just talk to you, you know.”

“I didn’t get to attend the first part of the course,” Forlesen said. “I’m filling in for Cappy Dillingham. He died.”

“Sorry to hear that. Old age, I guess.”

“I don’t know.”

“Probably that was it. Hell, it seems like it was only yesterday I was talking to him about his grade after class—he had some question about one oh four; I don’t even remember what it was now. Old Cappy. Wow.”

“How was he doing?” Forlesen asked.

“Not too hot. I had him figured for about a five-fifty, give or take twenty—but listen, if you had seen the earlier stuff you wouldn’t be asking these questions now. You’d of been guided into it—see what I mean?”

Forlesen said, “I just don’t see how I can mark this. I’m going to return the unmarked sheet under protest.”

“I told you, we can’t score something like that.”

Forlesen said, “Well, that’s what I’m going to do,” and hung up.

His desk said, “You’re a sharp one, aren’t you? He’s going to call you back.”

Forlesen looked for the speaker but could not find it.

“I heard you talking to Franklin too, and I saw you throw away the Management Responsibilities list. Do you know that in a lot of the offices here you find that framed and hung on the wall? Some of them hang it where they can see it, and some of them hang it where their visitors can see it.”

“Which kind gets promoted?” Forlesen asked. He had decided the speaker was under the center desk drawer, and was on his hands and knees looking for it.

“The kind that fit in,” the desk said.

Forlesen said, “What kind of an answer is that?” The telephone rang and he answered it.

“Mr. Forlesen, please.” It was Fairchild.

“Speaking.”

“I was wondering about number one oh five—have you sent it back yet?”

“I just put it in my out-box,” Forlesen said. “They haven’t picked it up yet.” Vaguely he wondered if Miss Fawn was supposed to empty the out-box, or if anyone was; perhaps he was supposed to do it himself.

“Good, good. Listen, I’ve been thinking about what you said—do you think that if I told you what was wrong with this girl you’d be able to size her up better? The thing is, she just doesn’t fit in; you know what I mean?”

“No,” Forlesen said.

“Let me give you an example. Guys come in the office all the time, either to talk to me or just because they haven’t anything better to do. They kid around with the girls, you know? Okay, this girl, you never know how she’s going to take it. Sometimes she gets mad. Sometimes she thinks the guy really wants to get romantic, and she wants to go along with it.”

“I’d think they’d learn to leave her alone,” Forlesen said.

“Believe me, they have. And the other girls don’t like her—they come in to me and say they want to be moved away from her desk.”

“Do they say why?”

“Oh, hell, no. Listen, if you’d ever bossed a bunch of women you’d know better than that; the way they always put it is the light isn’t good there, or it’s too close to the keypunch—too noisy—or it’s too far from the keypunch and they don’t wanna have to walk that far, or they want to be closer to somebody they do like. But you know how it is—I’ve moved her all around the damn office and everybody wants to get away; she’s Typhoid Mary.”

“Make her your permanent secretary,” Forlesen said.

“What?”

“Just for a while. Give your mother a special assignment. That way you can find out what’s wrong with this girl, if anything is, which I doubt.”

“You’re crazy, Forlesen,” Fairchild said, and hung up.

The telephone rang again almost as soon as Forlesen set the receiver down. “This is Miss Fawn,” the telephone said. “Mr. Freeling wants to see you, Mr. Forlesen.”

“Mr. Freeling?”

“Mr. Freeling is Mr. Fields’s chief, Mr. Forlesen, and Mr. Fields is your chief. Mr. Freeling reports to Mr. Flint, and Mr. Flint reports directly to Mr. Frick. I am Mr. Freeling’s secretary.”

“Thank you,” Forlesen said. “I was beginning to wonder where you fit in.”

“Right out of your office, down the hall to the ‘T,’ left, up the stairs, and along the front of the building. Mr. Freeling’s name is on the door.”

“Thank you,” Forlesen said again.

Mr. Freeling’s name was on the door, in the form of a bronzelike plaque. Forlesen, remembering D’Andrea’s brass one, saw at once that Mr. Freeling’s was more modern and up-to-date, and realized that Mr. Freeling was more important than D’Andrea had been; but he also realized that D’Andrea’s plaque had been real brass and that Mr. Freeling’s was plastic. He knocked, and Miss Fawn’s voice called, “Come in.” He came in, and Miss Fawn threw a switch on her desk and said, “Mr. Forlesen to see you, Mr. Freeling.”

And then to Forlesen: “Go right in.”

Mr. Freeling’s office was large and had two windows, both overlooking the highway. Forlesen found that he was somewhat surprised to see the highway again, though it looked just as it had before. The pictures on the walls were landscapes much like Fields’s, but Mr. Freeling’s desk, which was quite large, was covered by a sheet of glass with photographs under it, and these were all of sailboats, and of groups of men in shorts and striped knit shirts and peaked caps.

“Sit down,” Mr. Freeling said. “Be with you in a minute.” He was a large, sunburned, squinting man, beginning to go gray. The chair in front of his desk had wooden arms and a vinyl seat made to look like ostrich hide. Forlesen sat down, wondering what Mr. Freeling wanted, and after a time it came to him that what Mr. Freeling wanted was for him to wonder this, and that Mr. Freeling would have been wiser to speak to him sooner. Mr. Freeling had a pen in his hand and was reading a letter—the same letter—over and over; at last he signed it with a scribble and laid it and the pen flat on his desk. “I should have called you in earlier to say welcome aboard,” he said, “but maybe it was better to give you a chance to drop your hook and get your jib in first. Are you finding M.P.P. a snug harbor?”

“I think I would like it better,” Forlesen said, “if I knew what it was I’m supposed to be doing here.”

Freeling laughed. “Well, that’s easily fixed—Bert Fields is standing watch with you, isn’t he? Ask him for a list of your responsibilities.”

“It’s Ed Fields,” Forlesen said, “and I already have the list. What I would like to know is what I’m supposed to be doing.”

“I see what you mean,” Freeling said, “but I’m afraid I can’t tell you. If you were a lathe operator I’d say, ‘Make that part,’ but you’re a part of management, and you can’t treat managerial people that way.”

“Go ahead,” Forlesen told him. “I won’t mind.”

Freeling cleared his throat. “That isn’t what I meant, and, quite frankly, if you think anyone here is going to feel any compulsion to be polite to you, you’re in for squalls. What I meant was that if I knew what you ought to be doing I’d hire a clerk to do it. You’re where you are because we feel—rightly or wrongly—that you can find your own work, recognize it when you see it, and do it or get somebody else to. Just make damn sure you don’t step on anybody’s toes while you’re doing it, and don’t make more trouble than you fix. Don’t rock the boat.”

“I see,” Forlesen said.

“Just make damn sure before you do anything that it’s in line with policy, and remember that if you get the unions down on us we’re going to throw you overboard quick.”

Forlesen nodded.

“And keep your hand off the tiller. Look at it this way—your job is fixing leaks. Only the sailor who’s spent most of his life down there in the hold with the oakum and . . . uh . . . Fastpatch has the experience necessary to recognize the landmarks and weather signs. But don’t you patch a leak somebody else is already patching, or has been told to patch, or is getting ready to patch. Understand? Don’t come running to me with complaints, and don’t let me get any complaints about you. Now what was it you wanted to see me about?”

“I don’t,” Forlesen said. “You said you wanted to see me.”

“Oh. Well, I’m through.”

Outside Forlesen asked Miss Fawn how he was supposed to know what company policy was. “It’s in the air,” Miss Fawn said tartly. “You breathe it.” Forlesen suggested that it might be useful if it were written down someplace, and she said, “You’ve been here long enough to know better than that, Mr. Forlesen; you’re no kid anymore.” As he left the office she called, “Don’t forget your Creativity Group.”

He found the drilling room only after a great deal of difficulty. It was full of drill presses and jig bores—perhaps thirty or more—of which only two were being used. At one, a white-haired man was making a hole in a steel plate; he worked slowly, lifting the drill from time to time to fill the cavity with oil from a squirt can beside the machine. At the other a much younger man sang as he worked, an obscene parody of a popular song. Forlesen was about to ask if he knew where the Creativity Group was meeting when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned and saw Fields, who said, “Looks like you found it. Come on; I’m going to make this one come hell or high water. Right through the door on the other side there.”

They threaded their way through the drill presses, most of which seemed to be out of order in some way, and were about to go through the door Fields had indicated when Forlesen heard a yell behind them. The younger man had burned his hand in trying to change the smoking drill in his machine. “That’s a good operator,” Fields said. “He pushes everything right along—you know what I mean?” Forlesen said he did.

The creativity meeting, as Franklin had told him, was in the corridor. Folding metal chairs had been set up in groupings that looked intentionally disorganized, and a small motion picture screen stood on an easel. Franklin was wrestling with a projector resting (pretty precariously, Forlesen thought) on the seat of the rearmost chair; he had the look of not being as young as he seemed, and after he had introduced himself they sat down and watched him. From time to time others joined them, and people passing up and down the hall, mostly men in gray work clothing, ignored them all, threading their way among the tin chairs without seeming to see them and stepping skillfully around the screen, from which, from time to time, flashed faint numerals 1, 2, and 3, or the legend:

After a while Fields said, “I think we ought to get started.”

“You go ahead,” Franklin told him. “I’ll have this going in a minute.”

Fields walked to the front of the group, beside the screen, and said “Creativity Group Twenty-one is now in session. I’m going to ask the man in front to write his name on a piece of paper and pass it back. Everybody sign, and do it so we can read it, please. We’re going to have a movie on creativity—”

“Creativity Means Jobs,” Franklin put in.

“Yeah, Creativity Means Jobs, then a free-form critique of the movie. Then what, Ned?”

“Open discussion on creativity in problem study.”

“You got the movie yet?”

“Just a minute.”

Forlesen looked at his watch. It was 078.45.

Someone at the front of the group, close to where Fields was now standing, said, “While we have a minute I’d like to get an objection on record to this phrase ‘creativity in problem study.’ It seems to me that what it implies is that creativity is automatically going to point you toward some solution you didn’t see before, and I feel that anyone who believes that’s going to happen—anyway, in most cases—doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”

Fields said, “Everybody knows creativity isn’t going to solve your problems for you.”

“I said point the way,” the man objected.

Someone else said, “What creativity is going to do for you in the way of problem study is point the way to new ways of seeing your problem.”

“Not necessarily successful,” the first man said.

“Not necessarily successful,” the second man said, “if by successful what you mean is permitting you to make a nontrivial elaboration of the problem definition.”

Someone else said, “Personally, I feel problem definitions don’t limit creativity,” and Fields said, “I think we’re all agreed on that when they’re creative problem definitions. Right, Ned?”

“Of creative problems.”

“Right, of creative problems. You know, Ned told me one time when he was talking to somebody about what we do at these meetings this fellow said he thought we’d just each take a lump of clay or something and, you know, start trying to make some kind of shape.” There was laughter, and Fields held up a hand good-naturedly. “Okay, it’s funny, but I think we can all learn something from that. What we can learn is, most people when we talk about our Creativity Group are thinking the same way this guy was, and that’s why when we talk about it we got to make certain points, like for one thing creativity isn’t ever what you do alone, right? It’s your creative group that gets things going—Hey, Ned, what’s the word I want?”

“Synergy.”

“Yeah, and teamwork. And second, creativity isn’t about making new things—like some statue or something nobody wants. What creativity is about is solving company problems—”

Franklin called, “Hey, I’ve got this ready now.”

“Just a minute. Like you take the problem this company had when Adam Bean that founded it died. The problem was—should we go on making what we used to when he was alive, or should we make something different? That problem was solved by Mr. Dudley, as I guess everybody knows, but he wouldn’t have been able to do it without a lot of good men to help him. I personally feel that a football team is about the most creative thing there is.”

Someone brushed Forlesen’s sleeve; it was Miss Fawn, and as Fields paused, she said in her rather shrill voice, “Mr. Fields! Mr. Fields, you’re wanted on the telephone. It’s quite important.” There was something stilted in the way she delivered her lines, like a poor actress, and after a moment Forlesen realized that there was no telephone call, that she had been instructed by Fields to provide this interruption and thus give him an excuse for escaping the meeting while increasing the other participants’ estimate of his importance. After a moment more he understood that Franklin and the others knew this as well as he, and that the admiration they felt for Fields—and admiration was certainly there, surrounding the stocky man as he followed Miss Fawn out—had its root in the daring Fields had shown, and in the power implied by his securing the cooperation of Miss Fawn, Mr. Freeling’s secretary.

Someone had dimmed the lights. “CREATIVITY MEANS JOBS” flashed on the screen, then a group of men and women in what might have been a schoolroom in a very exclusive school. One waved his hand, stood up, and spoke. There was no sound, but his eyes flashed with enthusiasm; when he sat down, an impressive-looking woman in tweeds rose, and Forlesen felt that whatever she was saying must be unanswerable, the final word on the subject under discussion; she was polite and restrained and as firm as iron, and she clearly had every fact at her fingertips.

“I can’t get this damn sound working,” Franklin said. “Just a minute.”

“What are they talking about?” Forlesen asked.

“Huh?”

“In the picture. What are they discussing?”

“Oh, I got it,” Franklin said. “Wait a minute. They’re talking about promoting creativity in the educational system.”

“Are they teachers?”

“No, they’re actors—let me alone for a minute, will you? I want to get this sound going.”

The sound came on, almost coinciding with the end of the picture; while Franklin was rewinding the film Forlesen said, “I suppose actors would have a better understanding of creativity than teachers would at that.”

“It’s a re-creation of an actual meeting of real teachers,” Franklin explained. “They photographed it and taped it, then had the actors reproduce the debate.”

Forlesen decided to go home for lunch. Lunch ours were 120 to 141—twenty-one ours should be enough, he thought, for him to drive there and return, and to eat. He kept the pedal down all the way, and discovered that the signs with HIDDEN DRIVES on their faces had SLOW CHILDREN on their backs.

The brick house was just as he remembered it. He parked the car on the spot where he had first seen it (there was a black oil stain there) and knocked at the door. Edna answered it, looking not quite as he remembered her. “What do you want?” she said.

“Lunch.”

“Are you crazy? If you’re selling something, we don’t want it.”

Forlesen said, “Don’t you know who I am?”

She looked at him more closely. He said, “I’m your husband, Emanuel.”

She seemed uncertain, then smiled, kissed him, and said, “Yes you are, aren’t you. You look different. Tired.”

“I am tired,” he said, and realized that it was true.

“Is it lunchtime already? I don’t have a watch, you know. I haven’t been able to keep track. I thought it was only the middle of the morning.”

“It seemed long enough to me,” Forlesen said. He wondered where the children were, thinking that he would have liked to see them.

“What do you want for lunch?”

“Whatever you have.”

In the bedroom she got out bread and sliced meat, and plugged in the coffeepot. “How was work?”

“All right. Fine.”

“Did you get promoted? Or get a raise?”

He shook his head.

“After lunch,” she said. “You’ll get promoted after lunch.”

He laughed, thinking that she was joking.

“A woman knows.”

“Where are the kids?”

“At school. They eat their lunch at school. There’s a beautiful cafeteria—everything is stainless steel—and they have a dietician who thinks about the best possible lunch for each child and makes them eat it.”

“Did you see it?” he asked.

“No, I read about it. In here.” She tapped Food Preparation in the Home.

“Oh.”

“They’ll be home at one hundred and thirty—that’s what the book says. Here’s your sandwich.” She poured him a cup of coffee. “What time is it now?”

He looked at the watch she had given him. “A hundred and twenty-nine thirty.”

“Eat. You ought to be going back soon.”

He said, “I was hoping we might have time for more than this.”

“Tonight, maybe. You don’t want to be late.”

“All right.” The coffee was good, but tasted slightly oily; the sandwich meat, salty and dry and flavorless. He unstrapped the watch from his wrist and handed it to her. “You keep this,” he said. “I’ve felt badly about wearing it all morning—it really belongs to you.”

“You need it more than I do,” she said.

“No I don’t; they have clocks all over, there. All I have to do is look at them.”

“You’ll be late getting back to work.”

“I’m going to drive as fast as I can anyway—I can’t go any faster than that no matter what a watch says. Besides, there’s a speaker that tells me things, and I’m sure it will tell me if I’m late.”

Reluctantly she accepted the watch. He chewed the last of his sandwich. “You’ll have to tell me when to go now,” he said, thinking that this would somehow cheer her.

“It’s time to go already,” she said.

“Wait a minute—I want to finish my coffee.”

“How was work?”

“Fine,” he said.

“You have a lot to do there?”

“Oh, God, yes.” He remembered the crowded desk that had been waiting for him when he had returned from the creativity meeting, the supervision of workers for whom he had been given responsibility without authority, the ours spent with Fields drawing up the plan which, just before he left, had been vetoed by Mr. Freeling. “I don’t think there’s any purpose in most of it,” he said, “but there’s plenty to do.”

“You shouldn’t talk like that,” his wife said. “You’ll lose your job.”

“I don’t, when I’m there.”

“I’ve got nothing to do,” she said. It was as though the words themselves had forced their way from between her lips.

He said, “That can’t be true.”

“I made the beds, and I dusted and swept, and it was all finished a couple of ours after you had gone. There’s nothing.”

“You could read,” he said.

“I can’t—I’m too nervous.”

“Well, you could have prepared a better lunch than this.”

“That’s nothing,” she said. “Just nothing.” She was suddenly angry, and it struck him, as he looked at her, that she was a stranger, that he knew Fields and Miss Fawn and even Mr. Freeling better than he knew her.

“The morning’s over,” he said. “I’m sorry I can’t give it back to you, but I can’t; what I did—that was nothing too.”

“Please,” she said, “won’t you go? Having you here makes me so nervous.”

He said, “Try and find something to do.”

“All right.”

He wiped his mouth on the paper she had given him and took a step toward the parlor; to his surprise she walked with him, not detaining him, but seeming to savor his company now that she had deprived herself of it. “Do you remember when we woke up?” she said. “You didn’t know at first that you were supposed to dress yourself.”

“I’m still not sure of it.”

“Oh, you know what I mean.”

“Yes,” he said, and he knew that he did, but that she did not.

The signs said: NO TURN, and Forlesen wondered if he was really compelled to obey them, if the man in the blue car would come after him if he did not go back to Model Pattern Products. He suspected that the man would, but that nothing he could do would be worse than M.P.P. itself. In front of the dog-food factory a shapeless brown object fluttered in the road, animated by the turbulence of each car that passed and seeming to attack it, throwing itself with desperate, toothless courage at the singing, invulnerable tires. He had almost run over it before he realized what it was—Abraham Beale’s hat.

The parking lot was more rutted than he had remembered; he drove slowly and carefully. The outbuilding had been torn down, and another car, startlingly shiny (Forlesen did not believe his own had ever been that well polished, not even when he had first looked out the window at it), had his old place; he was forced to take another, farther from the plant. Several other people, he noticed, seemed to have gone home for lunch as he had—some he knew, having shared meeting rooms with them. He had never punched out on the beige clock, and did not punch in.

There was a boy seated at his desk, piling new schoolbooks on it from a cardboard box on the floor. Forlesen said hello, and the boy said that his name was George Howe, and that he worked in Mr. Forlesen’s section.

Forlesen nodded, feeling that he understood. “Miss Fawn showed you to your desk?”

The boy shook his head in bewilderment. “A lady named Mrs. Frost—she said she was Mr. Freeling’s secretary; she had glasses.”

“And a sharp nose.”

George Howe nodded.

Forlesen nodded in reply, and made his way to Fields’s old office. As he had expected, Fields was gone, and most of the items from his own desk had made their way to Fields’s—he wondered if Fields’s desk sometimes talked too, but before he could ask it Miss Fawn came in.

She wore two new rings and touched her hair often with her left hand to show them. Forlesen tried to imagine her pregnant or giving suck and found that he could not, but knew that this was a weakness in himself and not in her. “Ready for orientation?” Miss Fawn asked.

Forlesen ignored the question and asked what had happened to Fields.

“He passed on,” Miss Fawn said.

“You mean he died? He seemed too young for it; not much older than I am myself—certainly not as old as Mr. Freeling.”

“He was stout,” Miss Fawn said with a touch of righteous disdain. “He didn’t get much exercise and he smoked a great deal.”

“He worked very hard,” Forlesen said. “I don’t think he could have had much energy left for exercise.”

“I suppose not,” Miss Fawn conceded. She was leaning against the door, her left hand toying with the gold pencil she wore on a chain, and seemed to be signaling by her attitude that they were old friends, entitled to relax occasionally from the formality of business. “There was a thing—at one time—between Mr. Fields and myself. I don’t suppose you ever knew it.”

“No, I didn’t,” Forlesen said, and Miss Fawn looked pleased.

“Eddie and I—I called him Eddie, privately—were quite discreet. Or so I flatter myself now. I don’t mean, of course, that there was ever anything improper between us.”

“Naturally not.”

“A look and a few words. Elmer knows; I told him everything. You are ready to give that orientation, aren’t you?”

“I think I am now,” Forlesen said. “George Howe?”

Miss Fawn looked at a piece of paper. “No, Gordie Hilbert.”

As she was leaving, Forlesen asked impulsively where Fields was.

“Where he is buried, you mean? Right behind you.”

He looked at her blankly.

“There.” She gestured toward the picture behind Forlesen’s desk. “There’s a vault behind there—didn’t you know? Just a small one, of course; they’re cremated first.”

“Burned out.”

“Yes, burned up and then they put them behind the pictures—that’s what they’re for. The pictures, I mean. In a beautiful little cruet. It’s a company benefit, and you’d know if you’d read your own orientation material—of course, you can be buried at home if you like.”

“I think I’d prefer that,” Forlesen said.

“I thought so,” Miss Fawn told him. “You look the type. Anyway, Eddie bought the farm—that’s an expression the men have.”

At 125 hours Forlesen was notified of his interdepartmental training transfer. His route to his new desk took him through the main lobby of the building, where he observed that a large medallion set into the floor bore the face (too solemn, but quite unmistakable) of Abraham Beale, though the name beneath it was that of Adam Bean, the founder of the company. Since he was accompanied by his chief-to-be, Mr. Fleer, he made no remark.

“It’s going to be a pleasure going down the fast slope with you,” Mr. Fleer said. “I trust you’ve got your wax ready and your boots laced.”

“My wax is ready and my boots are laced,” Forlesen said; it was automatic by now.

“But not too tight—wouldn’t want to break a leg.”

“But not too tight,” Forlesen agreed. “What do we do in this division?”

Mr. Fleer smiled and Forlesen could see that he had asked a good question. “Right now we’re right in the middle of a very successful crash program to develop a hard-nosed understanding of the ins and outs of the real, realistic business world,” Mr. Fleer said, “with particular emphasis on marketing, finance, corporate developmental strategy, and risk appreciation. We’ve been playing a lot of Bet-Your-Life, the management-managing real-life pseudogame.”

“Great,” Forlesen said enthusiastically; he really felt enthusiastic, having been afraid that it would be more creativity.

“We’re in the center of the run,” Mr. Fleer assured him, “the snow is fast, and the wind is in our faces.”

Forlesen was tempted to comment that his boots were laced and his wax ready, but he contented himself at the last moment with nodding appreciatively and asking if he would get to play.

“You certainly will,” Mr. Fleer promised him. “You’ll be holding down Ffoulks’s chair. It’s an interesting position—he’s heavily committed to a line of plastic toys, but he has some military contracts for field rations and biological weapons to back him up. Also he’s big in aquarium supplies—that’s quite a small market altogether, but Ffoulks is big in it, if you get what I mean.”

“I can hardly wait to start,” Forlesen said. “I have a feeling that this may be the age of aquariums.” Fleer pondered this while they trudged up the stairs.

Bet-Your-Life, the management-managing real-life pseudogame, was played on a very large board laid out on a very big table in a very large meeting room. Scattered all over the board were markers and spinners and decks of cards, and birdcages holding eight- and twelve-sided dice. Scattered around the room, in chairs, were the players: two were arguing and one was asleep; five others were studying the board or making notes, or working out calculations on small handheld machines that were something like abacuses and something like cash registers. “I’ll just give you the rule book, and have a look at my own stuff, and go,” Mr. Fleer said. “I’m late for the meeting now.” He took a brown pamphlet from a pile in one corner of the room and handed it to Forlesen, who (with some feeling of surprise) noticed that it was identical to one of the booklets he had found under his job assignment sheet upon awakening.

Mr. Fleer had scrawled a note on a small tablet marked with the Bet-Your-Life emblem. He tore the sheet off as Forlesen watched, and laid it in an empty square near the center of the board. It read: “BID 17 ASK 18 1/4 SNOWMOBILE 5 1/2 UP 1/2 OPEN NEW TERRITORY SHUT DOWN COAL OIL SHOES FLEER.” He left the room, and Forlesen, timing the remark in such a way that it might be supposed that he thought Mr. Fleer out of earshot, said, “I’ll bet he’s a strong player.”

The man to his left, to whom the remark was nominally addressed, shook his head. “He’s overbought in sporting goods.”

“Sporting goods seem like a good investment to me,” Forlesen said. “Of course I don’t know the game.”

“Well, you won’t learn it reading that thing—it’ll only mix you up. The basic rule to remember is that no one has to move, but that anyone can move at any time if he wants to. Fleer hasn’t been here for ten ours—now he’s moved.”

“On the other hand,” a man in a red jacket said, “this part of the building is kept open at all times, and coffee and sandwiches are brought in every our—some people never leave. I’m the referee.”

A man with a bristling mustache, who had been arguing with the man in the red jacket a moment before, interjected, “The rules can be changed whenever a quorum agrees—we pull the staple out of the middle of the book, type up a new page, and slip it in. A quorum is three-quarters of the players present but never seven or less.”

Forlesen said hesitantly, “It’s not likely three-quarters of those present would be seven, is it?”

“No, it isn’t,” the referee agreed. “We rarely have that many.”

The man with the mustache said, “You’d better look over your holdings.”

Forlesen did so, and discovered that he held 100 percent of the stock of a company called International Toys and Foods. He wrote: “BID 34 ASK 32 FFOULKS” on a slip and placed it in the center of the board. “You’ll never get thirty-two for that stuff,” the man with the mustache said. “It isn’t worth near that.”

Forlesen pointed out that he had an offer to buy in at thirty-four but was finding no takers. The man with the mustache looked puzzled, and Forlesen used the time he had gained to examine the brown pamphlet. Opening it at random he read:

“I buy five hundred, and I’m selling them to you.”

Forlesen nodded again and asked, “What does our subdivision do? What’s our function?”

“I said I’m going to buy five hundred shares and then I’m going to sell them back to you.”

“Not so fast,” Forlesen said. “You don’t own any yet.”

“Well, I’m buying.” The man with the mustache rummaged among his playing materials and produced some bits of colored paper. Forlesen accepted the money and began to count it.

The man with the red jacket said: “Coffee. And sandwiches. Spam and Churkey.” The man with the mustache went over to get one, and Forlesen went out the door.

The corridor was deserted. There had been a feeling of airlessness in the game room, an atmosphere compounded of stale sweat and smoke and the cold, oily coffee left to stagnate in the bottom of the paper hot cups; the corridor was glacial by comparison, filled with quiet wind and the memory of ice. Forlesen stopped outside the door to savor it for a second, and was joined by the man with the mustache, munching a sandwich. “Nice to get out here for a minute, isn’t it?” he said.

Forlesen nodded.

“Not that I don’t enjoy the game,” the man with the mustache continued. “I do. I’m in Sales, you know.”

“I didn’t. I thought everyone was from our division.”

“Oh, no. There’s several of us Sales guys, and some Advertising guys. Brought in to sharpen you up. That’s what we say.”

“I’m sure we can use some sharpening.”

“Well, anyway, I like it—this wheeling and dealing. You know what Sales is—you put pressure on the grocers. Tell them if they don’t stock the new items they’re going to get slow deliveries on the standard stuff, going to lose their discount. A guy doesn’t learn much financial management that way.”

“Enough,” Forlesen said.

“Yeah, I guess so.” The man with the mustache swallowed the remainder of his sandwich. “Listen, I got to be going; I’m about to clip some guy in there.”

Forlesen said, “Good luck,” and walked away, hearing the door to the game room open and close behind him. He went past a number of offices, looking for his own, and up two flights of steps before he found someone who looked as though she could direct him, a sharp-nosed woman who wore glasses.

“You’re looking at me funny,” the sharp-nosed woman said. She smiled with something of the expression of a blindfolded schoolteacher who has been made to bite a lemon at a Halloween party.

“You remind me a great deal of someone I know,” Forlesen said, “Mrs. Frost.” As a matter of fact, the woman looked exactly like Miss Fawn.

The woman’s smile grew somewhat warmer. “Everyone says that. Actually we’re cousins—I’m Miss Fedd.”

“Say something else.”

“Do I talk like her too?”

“No. I think I recognize your voice. This is going to sound rather silly, but when I came here—in the morning, I mean—my car talked to me. I hadn’t thought of it as a female voice, but it sounded just like you.”

“It’s quite possible,” Miss Fedd said. “I used to be in Traffic, and I still fill in there at times.”

“I never thought I’d meet you. I was the one who stopped and got out of his car.”

“A lot of them do, but usually only once. What’s that you’re carrying?”

“This?” Forlesen held up the brown book; his finger was still thrust between the pages. “A book. I’m afraid to read the ending.”

“It’s the red book you’re supposed to be afraid to read the end of,” Miss Fedd told him. “It’s the opposite of a mystery—everyone stops before the revelations.”

“I haven’t even read the beginning of that one,” Forlesen said. “Come to think of it, I haven’t read the beginning of this one either.”

“We’re not supposed to talk about books here, not even when we haven’t anything to do. What was it you wanted?”

“I’ve just been transferred into the division, and I was hoping you’d help me find my desk.”

“What’s your name?”

“Forlesen. Emanuel Forlesen.”

“Good. I was looking for you—you weren’t at your desk.”

“No, I wasn’t,” Forlesen said. “I was in the Bet-Your-Life room—well, not recently.”

“I know. I looked there too. Mr. Frick wants to see you.”

“Mr. Frick?”

“Yes. He said to tell you he was planning to do this a bit later today, but he’s got to leave the office a little early. Come on.”

Miss Fedd walked with short, mincing steps, but so rapidly that Forlesen was forced to trot to keep up. “Why does Mr. Frick want to see me?” He thought of the way he had cheated the man with the mustache, of the time he had baited Fairchild on the telephone, of other things.

“I’m not supposed to tell,” Miss Fedd said. “This is Mr. Frick’s door.”

“I know,” Forlesen told her. It was a large door—larger than the other doors in the building—and not painted to resemble metal. Mr. Frick’s plaque was of silver (or perhaps platinum), and had the single word Frick engraved in an almost too-tasteful script. A man Forlesen did not know walked past them as they stood before Mr. Frick’s tasteful plaque; the man wore a hat and carried a briefcase, and had a coat slung over his arm.

“We’re emptying out a little already,” Miss Fedd said. “I’d go right in now if I were you—I think he wants to play golf before he goes home.”

“Aren’t you going in with me?”

“Of course not—he’s got a group in there already, and I have things to do. Don’t knock; just go in.”

Forlesen opened the door. The room was very large and crowded; men in expensive suits stood smoking, holding drinks, knocking out their pipes in bronze ashtrays. The tables and the desk—yes, he told himself, there is a desk, a very large desk next to the window at one end, a desk shaped like the lid of a grand piano—the tables and the desk all of dark heavy tropical wood, the tables and the desk all littered with bronze trophies so that the whole room seemed of bronze and black wood and red wool. Several of the men looked at him, then toward the opposite end of the room, and he knew at once who Mr. Frick was: a bald man standing with his back to the room, rather heavy, Forlesen thought, and somewhat below average height. He made his way through the smokers and drink holders. “I’m Emanuel Forlesen.”

“Oh, there you are.” Mr. Frick turned around. “Ernie Frick, Forlesen.” Mr. Frick had a wide, plump face, a mole over one eyebrow, and a gold tooth. Forlesen felt that he had seen him before.

“We went to grade school together,” Mr. Frick said. “I bet you don’t remember me, do you?”

Forlesen shook his head.

“Well, I’ll be honest—I don’t think I would have remembered you; but I looked up your file while we were getting set for the ceremony. And now that I see you, by gosh, I do remember—I played prisoner’s base with you one day; you used to be able to run like anything.”

“I wonder where I lost it,” Forlesen said. Mr. Frick and several of the men standing around him laughed, but Forlesen was thinking that he could not possibly be as old as Mr. Frick.

“Say, that’s pretty good. You know, we must have started at about the same time. Well, some of us go up and some don’t, and I suppose you envy me, but let me tell you I envy you. It’s lonely at the top, the work is hard, and you can never set down the responsibility for a minute. You won’t believe it, but you’ve had the best of it.”

“I don’t,” Forlesen said.

“Well, anyway, I’m tired—we’re all tired. Let’s get this over with so we can all go home.” Mr. Frick raised his voice to address the room at large. “Gentlemen, I asked you to come here because you have all been associated at one time or another, in one way or another, with this gentleman here, Mr. Forlesen, to whom I am very happy to present this token of his colleagues’ regard.”

Someone handed Mr. Frick a box, and he handed it to Forlesen, who opened it while everyone clapped. It was a watch. “I didn’t know it was so late,” Forlesen said.

Several people laughed; they were already filing out.

“You’ve been playing Bet-Your-Life, haven’t you?” Mr. Frick said. “A fellow can spend more time at that than he thinks.”

Forlesen nodded.

“Say, why don’t you take the rest of the day off? There’s not much of it left anyhow.”

Outside, others, who presumably had not been given the remainder of the day off by Mr. Frick, were straggling toward their cars. As Forlesen walked toward his, feeling as he did the stiffness and the pain in his legs, a bright, new car pulled onto the lot and a couple got out, the man a fresh-faced boy, really, the girl a working-class girl, meticulously made up and dressed, cheaply attractive and forlorn, like the models in the advertisements of third-rate dress shops. They went up the sidewalk hand in hand to kiss, Forlesen felt sure, in the time clock room, and separate, she going up the steps, he down. They would meet for coffee later, both uncomfortable, out of a sense of duty, meet for lunch in the cafeteria, he charging her meal to the paycheck he had not yet received.

The yellow signs that lined the street read: YIELD; orange and black machines were eating the houses just beyond the light. Forlesen pulled his car into his driveway, over the oil spot. A small man in a dark suit was sitting on a wood and canvas folding stool beside Forlesen’s door, a black bag at his feet; Forlesen spoke to him, but he did not answer. Forlesen shrugged and stepped inside.

A tall young man stood beside a long, angular object that rested on a sort of trestle in the center of the parlor. “Look what we’ve got for you,” he said.

Forlesen looked. It was exactly like the box his watch had come in, save that it was much larger: of red-brown wood that seemed almost black, lined with pinkish-white silk.

“Want to try her out?” the young man said.

“No, I don’t.” Forlesen had already guessed who the young man must be, and after a moment he added a question: “Where’s your mother?”

“Busy,” the young man said. “You know how women are. . . . Well, to tell the truth she doesn’t want to come in until it’s over. This lid is neat—watch.” He folded down half the lid. “Like a Dutch door.” He folded it up again. “Don’t you want to try it for size? I’m afraid it’s going to be tight around the shoulders, but it’s got a hell of a good engine.”

“No,” Forlesen said, “I don’t want to try it out.” Something about the pinkish silk disgusted him. He bent over it to examine it more closely, and the young man took him by the hips and lifted him in as though he were a child, closing the lower half of the lid; it reached to his shirt pockets and effectively pinioned his arms. “Ha, ha,” Forlesen said.

The young man sniffed. “You don’t think we’d bury you before you’re dead, do you? I just wanted you to try it out, and that was the easiest way. How do you like it?”

“Get me out of this thing.”

“In a minute. Is it comfortable? Is it a good fit? It’s costing us quite a bit, you know.”

“Actually,” Forlesen said, “it’s more comfortable than I had foreseen. The bottom is only thinly padded, but I find the firmness helps my back.”

“Good, that’s great. Now have you decided about the Explainer?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Didn’t you read your orientation? Everyone’s entitled to an Explainer—in whatever form he chooses—at the end of his life. He—”

“It seems to me,” Forlesen interrupted, “that it would be more useful at the beginning.”

“—may be a novelist, aged loremaster, National Hero, warlock, or actor.”

“None of those sounds quite right for me,” Forlesen said.

“Or a theologian, philosopher, priest, or doctor.”

“I don’t think I like those either.”

“Well, that’s the end of the menu as far as I know,” his son said. “I’ll tell you what—I’ll send him in and you can talk to him yourself; he’s right outside.”

“That little fellow in the dark suit?” Forlesen asked. His son, whose head was thrust out the door already, paid no attention.

After a moment the small man came in carrying his bag, and Forlesen’s son placed a chair close to the coffin for him and went into the bedroom. “Well, what’s it going to be,” the small man asked, “or is it going to be nothing?”

“I don’t know,” Forlesen said. He was looking at the weave of the small man’s suit, the intertwining of the innumerable threads, and realizing that they constituted the universe in themselves, that they were serpents and worms and roots, the black tracks of forgotten rockets across a dark sky, the sine waves of the radiation of the cosmos. “I wish I could talk to my wife.”

“Your wife is dead,” the small man said “The kid didn’t want to tell you. We got her laid out in the next room. What’ll it be? Doctor, priest, philosopher, theologian, actor, warlock, National Hero, aged loremaster, or novelist?”

“I don’t know,” Forlesen said again. “I want to feel, you know, that this box is a bed—and yet a ship, a ship that will set me free. And yet . . . it’s been a strange life.”

“You may have been oppressed by demons,” the small man said. “Or revived by unseen aliens who, landing on the Earth eons after the death of the last man, have sought to re-create the life of the twentieth century. Or it may be that there is a small pressure, exerted by a tumor in your brain.”

“Those are the explanations?” Forlesen asked.

“Those are some of them.”

“I want to know if it’s meant anything,” Forlesen said. “If what I suffered—if it’s been worth it.”

“No,” the little man said. “Yes. No. Yes. Yes. No. Yes. Yes. Maybe.”

There are men—I have known a good many—who work all their lives for the same Fortune 500 company. They have families to support, and no skills that will permit them to leave and support their families by other means in another place. Their work is of little value, because few, if any, assignments of value come to them. They spend an amazing amount of time trying to find something useful to do. And, failing that, just trying to look busy.

In time their lives end, as all lives do. As this world recons things they have spent eight thousand days, perhaps, at work; but in a clearer air it has all been the same day.

The story you have just read was my tribute to them.