The Investigation

XVI

THOROUGHLY OCCUPIED IN SNEEZING, he hadn’t heard the approach of the man who’d just addressed him so peremptorily.

“Are you the Investigator?”

The Investigator nodded almost reluctantly, blowing his nose at the same time.

“I’m the Guide. I’ll be escorting you to the Manager’s office. Don’t be offended if I don’t shake your hand. Here, this is for you.”

The Guide looked as though he might be the Investigator’s age. Of about middle height, with a slightly fleshy face and not much hair, he was wearing an elegant gray suit. He handed the Investigator a bag in which the latter found various objects: a long white coat, a hard hat of the same color, a pen, a key ring adorned with a photograph of an old man with a mustache — the same man whose framed photograph hung on the wall of his Hotel room? — a notebook and a little plastic flag, both bearing the logo of the Enterprise, and a badge with the words “External Element” printed in bold type.

“It’s the traditional welcome gift. I’ll ask you to put on the coat immediately, clip your badge to the upper left pocket, and place the hard hat on your head.”

“Of course,” said the Investigator, as if he found these instructions completely natural. The long white coat was several sizes too big and the hat too small. As for the badge, it was perfect.

“Will you please follow me?”

The Investigator needed no second invitation. Things were finally starting to get serious. He was glad to have the coat on, big as it was, because it hid the state his own clothes were in; furthermore, the hard hat offered his skull a little gentle warmth, as if a beloved hand were caressing his head, and sheltered him from the snow, which was falling more and more thickly. His strength was returning.

“You don’t wear anything?” the Investigator asked.

“I beg your pardon?”

“A hard hat, a white coat. You don’t wear anything like that?”

“No. They’re useless, to tell you the truth, but absolutely obligatory for External Elements. We always observe the rules. Please take care not to drift away from the line!”

As they walked, they followed a red line painted on the ground. Parallel to the red line were three others: a yellow line, a green line, and a blue line. The Investigator took advantage of this opportunity to ask the Guide exactly what activities the Enterprise was engaged in. “That’s a vast question,” the Guide began, “and I’m not the person best qualified to respond to it. I don’t know everything. Actually, I don’t know very much. The Enterprise is active in so many areas: communications, engineering, water treatment, renewable energy, nuclear chemistry, oil and gas production, stock analysis, pharmaceutical research, nanotechnology, gene therapy, food processing, banking, insurance, mining, concrete, real estate, storage and consolidation of nonconventional data resources, armaments, humanitarian development, micro-credit aid programs, education and training, textiles, plastics, publishing, public works, patrimony preservation, investment and tax counseling, agriculture, logging, mental analysis, entertainment, surgery, aid to disaster victims, and obviously other fields I’m forgetting! In fact, I’m not sure there’s any sector of human activity that doesn’t depend directly or indirectly on the Enterprise or one of its subsidiaries. Well, we’re almost there.”

The Investigator was having trouble digesting the list the Guide had just enumerated. He’d been far from suspecting that the Enterprise covered all those areas; it was difficult for him to understand how such a range could be possible. The fleeting sensation that he was going alone to face a body with a thousand heads panicked him.

The two men were approaching a cone-shaped glass building. The Investigator noticed that the yellow, green, and blue lines turned right, but the red line ended at the conical building’s entrance.

“Kindly step in.” The Guide held the door open for him, and they both went inside. A circular stairway turned round upon itself as it rose to the upper floors; it was a little like the staircase in the Hope Hotel, but here the risers all appeared to be of equal height. Behind frosted-glass doors, the visitor could make out unmoving silhouettes, persons of indeterminate sex who seemed to be seated at desks in front of parallelepiped shapes that might have been computers. The atmosphere was very silent, almost reverential.

“Would you mind waiting a few moments while I inform the Manager that you’re here? In the meantime, please have a seat.” The Guide indicated three chairs arranged around a low table on which lay a certain number of what looked like brochures. “I’ve asked a Colleague to put together a collection of documents for your perusal. They’ll give you an idea of the Enterprise’s social policy, of how the Enterprise works, and of the Enterprise’s unwavering concern for its employees’ well-being.”

The Investigator thanked the Guide, who then began to climb the stairs. His footfalls resounded as though he were treading on the stone floor of a cathedral. As he progressed, his body dwindled but remained visible, thanks to the transparent steps of azure-hued glass that mounted skyward up the giant spiral.

The chair the Investigator had chosen quickly proved uncomfortable. Because the seat was inclined slightly forward, he couldn’t stop sliding on it. He started to change chairs but ascertained that the other two presented the same defect. Tightening his thigh muscles, he tried to forget his discomfort by plunging into the leaflets and booklets that lay on the table.

They formed a veritable miscellany: Some press clippings about the Enterprise mingled with the menus offered at the cafeteria during the last two months of the preceding year; an organizational chart rendered absolutely illegible by the low quality of the photocopy was paired with a report on a visit to an Asian industrialist specializing in the manufacture of soy sauce. A smallish bound volume purported to set out, according to its title, a complete list of the personnel active in the Enterprise as of January 1 of the current year, but this book contained nothing but two or three hundred blank pages. The Investigator also came upon some application forms for a tango evening organized by the Region 3 Transport Service Technical Executives’ Association, a circular informing the warehousemen in the International Packaging Sector about the opening of a rest home located in the Balkans, a user’s manual in ten languages for a dictating machine with a German brand name, an invoice for the purchase of thirty liters of liquid soap, and some twenty photographs of a place under construction whose location and purpose weren’t specified.

The Investigator perused each of these documents conscientiously, telling himself he might thus come to understand by what logic they had been assembled, but that mystery remained completely opaque. Nonetheless, he needed half an hour to read all the words and contemplate all the images presented in the collection, and when he was finished, the Guide had still not come back downstairs.

The Investigator suddenly clapped his hand to his stomach. A long, gurgling rumble had just shaken his innards. Not surprising. Nothing had gone down his throat since the two heinous rusks he’d consumed that morning, and the previous evening, he hadn’t eaten anything at all. Some distance away, behind the first curve of the stairway, he saw what looked like a vending machine. He had two coins left. Could he perhaps find something over there to calm his hunger? He stood up and discovered that because of those blasted chairs, his muscles were totally cramped.

Hobbling, bent in half, his thighs hard and tense, he headed for the vending machine. The skirts of his coat trailed the floor, and he tripped on them twice, almost falling both times, but the sight of the display behind the machine’s glass front sufficed to make him forget his pains. There was a large selection of cold and hot drinks, but, more important — and this he hadn’t expected at all — there were dozens of sandwiches, chicken, ham, sausage, tuna, all garnished with green lettuce leaves, sliced tomatoes, and mayonnaise, all magnificently fresh in appearance, each neatly wrapped in cellophane and waiting in the refrigerated interior.