The Investigation

XXIII

TREMBLING WITH FEAR BUT FINALLY outside on the sidewalk, the Investigator turned around for a last glimpse of the Guard. The latter didn’t notice, however, as he’d already gone back to his newspaper and sandwich. When the Investigator looked at him, the Guard was the picture of calm, tranquilly chewing and reading the sports page.

Earlier, inside the Enterprise, the Watchman had barely spoken to the Investigator again after giving him the sausage. The snow covering the red, green, blue, and yellow lines on the ground made them impossible to see, and the Watchman had limited himself to indicating the way out by mechanical gestures. When they were nearing the Guardhouse, the Watchman had stopped the Investigator and ordered him to remove his white coat, hard hat, and badge.

“They’ll be returned to you tomorrow,” the Watchman said. “Equipment belonging to the Enterprise cannot leave the Enterprise.”

The Investigator thrust his hands into his pockets, found the key ring with the old man’s photograph, and started to return it to the Watchman. “No, keep it,” he said. “It’ll bring you luck!”

Reluctantly, the Investigator handed over the heavy coat and the too-small cap. It was a little as if he’d suddenly found himself naked, naked and frozen. His raincoat and suit were much too light and still too damp to protect him from the intensifying cold. “Yesterday,” he said, “the Guard, I think, asked me if I had an Exceptional Authorization. Would it be possible for me to obtain one? I believe it could come in handy.…”

The Investigator went into a slight crouch, expecting a refusal, an outraged response, a sermon, perhaps some improbable — or hysterical — explanation, but the Watchman didn’t say a word. From the top pocket of his jumpsuit he took a pen and from one of the side pockets a square piece of what looked like cardboard. He scribbled something on it and gave the document to the Investigator.

“There you are. I don’t know what purpose an Exceptional Authorization may serve in your case, but you’re welcome to it. And now I must ask you to excuse me. I have work to do.”

He turned on his heel, walked away with long strides, and disappeared into the darkness and the swirling snow. The Investigator looked at what the Watchman had given him. It was a promotional coaster for a brand of beer. On the back of the stained, chipped square, the Watchman had written, “Exceptional Authorization granted to the holder of this card.”

The Investigator was on the verge of calling him back, but he didn’t have the strength. After all, the beer coaster fit in with all the rest. What else did he expect? He walked resolutely over to the Guardhouse, in which he could see some light, and in that light, a man’s bent head.

The Investigator had to traverse some distance in order to get to the man, even though, in a straight line, he couldn’t have been more than twenty yards away. But the caltrop barriers, the rolls of barbed wire, the chicanes, and the chevaux-de-frise, all of which were now back in place, were designed to create a labyrinthine passage that prevented precipitous exits as well as intrusions. Seeing that the Guard had noticed him and was observing his progress, the Investigator opted to solicit his favor with a little wave and a smile, but the movement caused the right side of his raincoat, the one with the torn and hanging pocket, to catch on the iron teeth of a piece of barbed wire, which summarily ripped a foot-long gash in the fabric. Inanimate matter is admirable; it knows no feelings, and therefore its existence is unencumbered by any weakness. You place it somewhere, and it performs its office. Only the elements, over the course of millennia, interfere with it, but it knows nothing of that. In spite of the accident, the Investigator kept a smile on his face. He didn’t want the Guard to scrutinize him too closely, because it wouldn’t have taken him long to notice that the Investigator looked like a tramp.

“Good evening!”

The Investigator needed to summon up all his remaining energy in order to pronounce those simple words in a natural tone of voice. The Guard was in the act of spreading the contents of a can of pâté on a demi-baguette. He was a nearly bald man with a roundish face. The newspaper in front of him, opened to the page with the sports scores, was strewn with bread crumbs. A half-empty bottle of wine stood next to an ashtray, in which a lit cigarette was smoking. Above the Guard’s head and a little to his left, monitor screens displayed fixed images of different interior and exterior parts of the Enterprise. No human being appeared on any screen. Those fragmentary images of the place gave a disturbing impression of unreality, as if surveillance cameras had been installed to watch over abandoned or never-used cinematic sets.

The Guard had raised his eyes and pressed the switch on his microphone. “Good evening!” he said. “Not too warm, is it?”

The Investigator was disconcerted by the Guard’s cordial voice and relaxed air. He looked at the Investigator, smiling and continuing to slather his bread with the pâté, whose delicious fragrance filtered through the tiny perforations in the glass panel that separated them.

“I have an Exceptional Authorization!” the Investigator proclaimed, pressing the coaster against the glass.

The Guard glanced automatically at the piece of cardboard and then shifted his gaze to the Investigator. “I’m not sure what your Authorization authorizes you to do, but you look so proud to have it that I’m happy for your sake.”

He took a large swig of wine, followed it with a last drag on his cigarette, crushed it out, and started eating his sandwich. The Investigator watched him with such longing that the other noticed it. “You look like you’re in pitiful shape. Let me guess: This wasn’t your lucky day, right?”

The Investigator nodded. The man’s spontaneous kindness deeply moved him and almost made him forget his hunger. He felt his eyes getting misty.

“Go on, hurry back to your room, where it’s nice and warm. Loitering around in this weather is only going to bring you grief. You’ve been exploited enough as it is, don’t you think?”

The Guard took another bite of his sandwich. Although the Investigator had no clear idea of what, or whom, the man was talking about, he took pleasure in drawing out this fraternal moment.

“What Department are you in?” asked the Guard. “Janitorial Services? You’re a modern-day slave! One more! I hope at least you’re not giving your all, are you? You and I, and thousands of others, we don’t count for them. We’re nothing. We’re barely numbers on personnel lists. Some would find the situation depressing, but I couldn’t care less. Look at me: The rule states that it’s forbidden to smoke, drink, or eat while on duty; I do all three at the same time. I trample on the rule. They want to make us do crappy work no one wants to do? Then let’s do a crappy job! I’m a free man. Since I’ve taken an immediate liking to you, I’m going to give you an example of what I mean: I’m a Guard, so therefore I’m supposed to protect the Enterprise from any and all unauthorized entry, right?”

The Investigator nodded. He’d lost control over the movements of his body, which was shaking with cold. On his head, a heavy accumulation of snow provided him with a curious hat. The Guard kept on talking while continuing to devour his sandwich. “I assure you that hundreds of individuals could come here with the intent of stealing everything not nailed down and I wouldn’t lift my little finger to stop them, I’d let them through without pressing the least of the emergency buttons you see here in front of me. I daresay I’d open the gates even wider for them, and I’d applaud as they filled their trucks with whatever they could steal!”

The Guard took another big gulp of wine, straight from the bottle. “I don’t mean to offend you,” he went on, “but look at yourself. Do you see what a state they’ve reduced you to? And all so they can keep raking in more profits! If I might give you a word of advice: A man in your position could cause some real damage. Instead of cleaning up their offices, you could sabotage all the computers. Oh, of course I don’t mean by smashing them with a hammer, but by more discreet methods: a little water spilled on a keyboard, a cup of coffee in the ventilation grill of a hard-disk-drive cover, a tube of glue in a printer, the contents of your vacuum cleaner in the air-conditioning ducts, and maybe even a good old short-circuit now and then — the classics always work, that’s why they’re classics — and the whole thing collapses! The Enterprise is a colossus with feet of clay. Our world is a colossus with feet of clay. The problem is that few people like you — I mean little people, the exploited, the hungry, the weak, the contemporary slaves — few such people realize the truth. The time is past for taking to the streets and chopping off the heads of kings. There haven’t been any kings for a long time. Today’s monarchs don’t have heads, or faces, either. They’re complex financial mechanisms, algorithms, projections, speculations on risks and losses, fifth-degree equations. Their thrones aren’t material thrones, they’re screens, fiber optics, printed circuit boards, and their nobility is the encrypted information that circulates through them at speeds faster than light. Their castles have become databases. If you break one of the Enterprise’s computers, one among thousands, you cut off one of the monarch’s fingers. Do you understand?”

The Guard took another large mouthful of wine, gargling the liquid before swallowing it. The Investigator had listened to him with mouth agape, looking like a perfect idiot. The snow gave his thin shoulders a more marked, rectangular outline, thanks to which he became a sort of noncommissioned officer of the night, a stupefied sergeant in a routed army who’d been thrown into a conflict and could no longer recall the reason for the fighting. “Don’t you think you ought to be more careful about what you say?” he ventured to ask.

“Careful? Why? For whose sake? I have no master. I know no authority. People like me still exist. Why do you think I do this job that everyone else refuses? Because I don’t want to play the game. Look at me, behind this glass. I’m a total symbol! But wait, you’re not a policeman, are you? Eh?”

“Of course not,” said the Investigator.

“And the person who claims to be the Investigator — you’re not him, either, right? My colleague warned me about this guy. He tried to force his way in here last night, around ten o’clock. His pretext was an Investigation into the suicides. An Investigation into the suicides at ten o’clock at night — do they think we’re that stupid? I’m convinced this individual is actually a Downsizer. Another one. We get one a month. And every time, there are layoffs right and left. Those people have no morals — you realize that, don’t you? If we’d let them, they’d come here even at night so they could get an early start on their repulsive tasks! Of course you’re not the Investigator. With your miserable face, those three little hairs on your head, and your rags, you’re like me, you’re not him!”

“Of course not …” replied the Investigator, trembling — not solely from the cold — and clutching, in his raincoat’s one remaining pocket, the old sausage that had been the Watchman’s gift to him.

“I swear to you that if that individual comes back tonight,” the Guard began again, “I won’t be as amiable as my colleague. I’ll fry him!”

“You’ll … fry him?”

“Without batting an eye! You see that lever?” said the Guard, pointing to a kind of rubber-coated handle set into the wall. “If I pull it down, I send a twenty-thousand-volt current into all the metal barriers you see around you. Even if he doesn’t touch them, even if he stands still in the place where you’re standing right now, for example, the amperage is so high that in two or three seconds the repugnant creature will be reduced to a common heap of ashes!”

“A heap of ashes …” the Investigator groaned.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust!” the Guard concluded. A tiny morsel of pâté had fallen from his sandwich and now adorned his chin.