The vaulted ceiling of the windowless waiting room was upheld by
romanesque pillars. It was so low Lampley could have touched it without
stretching his arms to the full. Dirt had worked its way into every
unevenness of the whitewashed surface. Unshaded bulbs stabbed his eyes.
A girl sat in an armchair, rolling and unrolling a magazine. A woman in
her thirties pulled at her glossy black hair; when a strand came loose
she tucked it back under her hat, then pulled at it again. A row of
plastic mannequins, smiling, dressed in blouses and hats with veils but
skirtless and unshod, were wedged tightly together on a long bench. The
Governor looked for a vacant seat; there was none.
The thick whitewash on the ceiling and pillars constantly flaked off,
falling in a fine, dusty powder on the limp carpet, to be trodden by
nervous feet. Lampley scraped a short semicircle with the toe of his
shoe; the layer was very deep. A mouse came out of the wall and stood
in the middle of the floor. No one paid any attention. A white cat
with black and orange patches prowled past, rubbed itself against the
Governor's leg, saw the mouse and crouched, tail lashing. The mouse
scuttled for its hole; the cat pounced--too late. It mewed pitifully.
* * * * *
An elderly nurse entered the waiting room. Her cap was perched on hair
dyed butter yellow, her hound's cheeks had bull's-eyes of rouge on the
bones, her down-turned mouth was unevenly lipsticked in raspberry red.
"Doctor will see you now," she announced.
The girl and woman jumped up. The nurse walked past them. "Me?" asked
Lampley.
She wheeled about; he followed her. The girl took the woman's seat and
began fussing with her hair; the woman sank into the girl's chair and
rolled the magazine. The dummies' eyes crinkled and winked behind their
veils; they had no mouths.
The nurse led him through a cracked and splintered door, the frame
eaten by termites and dry rot. She swished her stiff skirt down a hall
smelling of anaesthetics, dried blood, food cooked and forgotten. The
plaster was cracked and bulging, seemingly held in place by the thick,
greasy paint. The hall opened on a dressing room with triple-mirrored
vanity-table. Cotton smocks of varying lengths hung on hooks. "Put on a
gown please," she ordered.
"But I...."
She gave him an arch look. "You wouldn't expect Doctor to do your
little work while you had your clothes on, now, would you? Come,
dear--there's no use being shy at this stage. And let's not keep Doctor
waiting; Doctor's a busy man."
She drew the curtain behind her; it was glossy-green with the word
PULLMAN stitched to it. The Governor slowly took off his jacket, tie
and shirt. There was a calendar on the wall, a calendar for the year
he had gone into politics, after he and Mattie had been married for
eighteen months. The picture was of an abnormally short-torsoed girl
saying, "Let's have fun!"
Lampley selected the longest gown. It was not only too short, the edges
were grimed. He put it on and pulled the curtain aside. The nurse said,
"Let's not be nervous, dear. If you'd seen as many as I have come in
to have their little work done you wouldn't think any more of it than
brushing your teeth. I've had it done myself a dozen or two times. This
way, please."
* * * * *
She preceded him into a grim office. Blue skies and flowering trees
were painted on the glass of closed windows. There was a gray operating
table under floodlights, and an oak desk with mustard-colored streaks.
A man with a sharp nose, close-clipped gray mustache, large, cloudy
spectacles sat behind the desk, looking over pads, pencils, ash-trays
and a portable radio. A wilted rose was thrust into a buttonhole of
his nylon smock. Two younger nurses leaned their elbows on the table,
intent only on their animated conversation.
"Now then," said the doctor, putting his hands behind his head and
tilting back. "Let's take a little case history, shall we?"
"There's nothing wrong with me," stated the Governor.
The younger nurses tittered, the older one patted him on the shoulder.
"That's the spirit, dear."
The doctor murmured, "It's just a formality, you know."
"But I don't know," argued the Governor.
The doctor looked annoyed. "Let's not waste time." All three nurses
agreed in unison, "Let's not waste Doctor's time. There are twenty
girls waiting to have their little work done."
The radio played, _Take Me Out to the Ball Game_.
"Forty," snapped the doctor.
"Forty," echoed the nurses. "Forty girls waiting to have their little
work done. If you knew how grateful they were to Doctor, you wouldn't
waste Doctor's time."
"But--" began the Governor.
"Enough!" shouted the doctor, standing up. "I can't stand these silly
creatures who chop and change."
"Doctor is the only one entitled to chop and change," admonished the
elderly nurse.
The doctor came from behind the desk. "Are we ready?"
"Yes, Doctor."
The radio played _Anchors Aweigh_.
"Then let's get it over with."
They grabbed his wrists and ankles. He did not struggle. They hoisted
him on the table; a needle pierced his arm. "Just relax, dear," advised
the elderly nurse.
Lampley grew helpless. He tried to raise his arms; he rolled his eyes.
The doctor said, "Nice going. Very nice. Now then."
A frightful stab of pain went through him. Then a worse one, more
prolonged, probing, searching. He tried to scream but his mouth
wouldn't open, his larynx and diaphragm refused response. The pain was
beyond bearing: sharp, hot, slashing, searing through his abdomen,
forking through kidneys, lungs, heart, throat.
"Ha-ha, nothing to it," chortled the doctor.
"Not when _you_ do it, Doctor," cried all three nurses together.
"Shall we put it under the microscope and see what it was?" asked the
doctor jovially.
"Oh, yes, Doctor, do," responded the nurses.
* * * * *
They left him. Lampley felt the blood gushing from the wound in his
body, heard the pulse in his neck grow faint. Weakness didn't diminish
his pain, only made him less able to bear it. He judged the anaesthetic
was wearing off; he moved dry tongue against cracked lips. If not for
the loss of blood and the drag of pain he might be able to raise his
arms, or at least turn his head to see what they were doing.
"A boy," said the doctor. "One little assistant less."
The nurses cackled. "Oh, Doctor, you're so witty. You're a regular
killer."
The older nurse came over to the table and took the Governor's hand.
"How do we feel?" she inquired perfunctorily, "now our little work is
all done?"
Lampley groaned.
"Never better, ay? Well, girls will be girls, I always say. Once you've
had your little work done you're good as new till next time. Shall we
get dressed now?"
"Wa-water," moaned the Governor.
The radio played a medley of _Jingle Bells_, _Tea for Two_, _Smoke Gets
in Your Eyes_, _St. James Infirmary_, and _April Showers_.
"A little water? All right, dear. Just come with me." She helped him
off the table without solicitude. The pain came in dull, hard thrusts.
His mind crawled in disparate ways, a spider whose legs writhed,
though the body had been transfixed. He could move but he had trouble
controlling his movements. He put one foot very carefully before the
other and leaned on the nurse as she guided him back to the dressing
room. "You can rest if you like," she offered brightly. "But not tooooo
long, because there are others waiting for their little work. Doctor is
a very busy man, you know."
He clutched the edge of the vanity; the face three times reflected in
the mirrors was unchanged: the well-groomed, almost handsome, dignified
yet twinkling, lightly aged, thoughtful but friendly face of the
state's chief executive and first magistrate. He turned away in shame
and horror.
Shakily, he got out of the smock, letting it lie in a wrinkled,
blood-spotted, ugly pile. He stood, cowering a little, waiting for the
agony, the fire inside him, to recede before he slowly, so slowly, put
on his clothes. Leaning against the wall, he endured the spasmodic
cramps. He saw that the calendar was gone; in its place was the bright
cover of a seed catalogue. The curtain was now marked, BOX F.
The hall was a round tunnel pervaded by an overpowering smell.
Spiralling ridges, set close together, reflected a dizzying light
whose source he could not see. He stooped slightly to avoid the ridges
above his head. Walking was awkward but--apart from the pain--not too
difficult. He tried to identify the smell, familiar and not unpleasant
though strong, but he could not. He put his hand against the grooves,
somehow expecting them to be warm and moist; they were dry and cold.
His head brushed the roof, forcing him to crouch. After a short
distance he had to stoop still further, then crawl on hands and knees.
The peculiar effect of the reflected light--as though he were looking
through the inside of a tightly compressed corkscrew--hurt his eyes.
He shut them; this only made the pressure against his flesh more
noticeable. He opened them again.
He could no longer crawl; he had to wriggle slowly forward. A bright
ball of light far ahead dimmed the sinuous windings around him. He
was sure it indicated an opening too small for him to get through. He
bitterly regretted not having stretched his arms ahead of him while the
size of the tunnel still allowed it. He progressed by digging in the
toes of his shoes for a forward push, aided by arching his back. His
shirt was wet with sweat; jagged flashes shot through his head.
He was exhausted, unable to move farther. The cessation of movement, of
effort, did not ease him or recruit his strength to go on. He dared not
give up, relax, slacken his will. He was condemned to go on and on,
to bruise himself against the ever-narrowing passage. The necessity to
complete the journey had been ordained before he was born. There was
nothing to do but force himself to shrink even more tightly together,
to compress his rebellious body into the prescribed space.
The pipe debouched partway up on a wall; the Governor looked down upon
a brightly polished floor of inlaid wood. A large area was enclosed
within barbed-wire entanglements, guarded by unmanned machine guns.
Beyond this area the normal business of the department store proceeded:
customers strolled through aisles of merchandise, salespeople waited on
them; between the two societies was bare floor.
* * * * *
Inside the wire enclosure tombstones were displayed, voting machines,
parking meters, printing presses, atom bombs, wireless masts, garbage
trucks, spaceships, oil derricks, semaphores, gas pumps, power shovels,
parachutes, purse seins, burglar tools, cyclotrons, glass eyes, a
stuffed whale, medals and orders of chivalry and nobility. Closely
shaven men in dark blue, dark gray, dark brown suits, neck microphones
resting on their hand-painted ties, traded these things to each
other--a truck for a net, a medal for a gravestone.
In the exact center of the enclosure, suspended from the ceiling, an
electric signboard offered quotations which moved slowly along from
right to left, allowing the slowest reader time to grasp them. BONE
TOOLS 37⅛ ... CONSOLIDATED ALCHEMISTS 104 ... INTERSTELLAR DRIVE PREF
66¼ ... CSA BONDS #5 ... UNITED METROPOLITAN HOT CRUMPET & PUNCTUAL
DELIVERY LTD 70....
One of the presses began turning, the paper flashing by on the
cylinders in an endless stream. As they were spewed out and
automatically cut and folded, the headlines were large enough for the
Governor to read. LAMPLEY NOMINATED said the top one. A broker seized
and stamped on it. GOVERNOR FAILS TO GET NOD read the one below, then
in rapid succession, GOVERNOR'S OPPONENTS IN UNITY BID, CONVENTION
DEADLOCK, LAMPLEY SWEEPS PRIMARIES, LAMPLEY SWAMPED IN PRIMARIES,
THREE-CORNERED NOVEMBER RACE SEEN.
One of the brokers retrieved LAMPLEY NOMINATED and held up the smudged
paper. Someone bid the stuffed whale. They slapped each other on the
back, they fell into each other's arms helplessly, they rolled on the
floor in ungovernable laughter after putting on coveralls to protect
their clothes, they drew revolvers from hip-pockets and shot them into
the air, stamping and rollicking in mirth. When delight at the jape
finally died down, a broker offered, LAMPLEY SWEEPS PRIMARIES. There
were no takers.
The illuminated ticker jerked in its hitherto smooth run. LAMPLEY 41½
... DEHYDRATED AARDVARK 88 ... UNITED ARBALEST & HARQUEBUS 90¼ ...
LAMPLEY 40⅞ ... MONTGOLFIER AERONAUTICS 284 ... EAST INDIA CO GE⅜ ...
LAMPLEY 39 ... SPACE DOGS & GENERAL MUTANTS 368½ ... ENGLISH CHANNEL
TUBE 111 ... LAMPLEY 37 ... HERO'S ALEXANDRIA STEAM POWER DEVELOPMENT
104¼ ... MARTIAN SUBDIVISIONS 208 ... LAMPLEY 35....
* * * * *
A broker pointed his finger at the Governor. He would have shrunk back;
the smallness of the tube forbade it. All the traders lined up and
stared at him through binoculars. The signboard speeded up:
LAMPLEY 32 ... LAMPLEY 29 ... LAMPLEY 21 ... LAMPLEY 14 ... LAMPLEY
9 ... LAMPLEY 1 ... LAMPLEY....
"Yah!" they shouted in chorus. "You'd have to pay us to take you."
"Pay us! Pay us!"
Each put a hand on the shoulder in front. They snake-danced around
and between the displays. The signboard began spelling out, BORN IN A
HOSPITAL, OF AVERAGE INCOME BUT NOTABLY IMPROVIDENT PARENTS, HE EARLY
SHOWED THE APTITUDES CALCULATED TO PUT HIM IN SECOND PLACE AT ALL
TIMES. Oil began gushing up through the derricks and splashing on the
floor. The smelting furnaces produced gold bricks. The stuffed whale's
seams burst to show it was filled with stocks and bonds, promissory
notes, mortgages, checks, bankbooks and trust deeds. The signboard
read, UNIQUE SPECTACLE: GOVERNOR PUFFED WHEAT WILL NOW BE SHOT FROM THE
He felt the tremendous pressure building up behind him, tried to
resist, gave up. The men below stood at attention, their right hands
placed reverently against their left breasts. The Governor soared over
their heads in a wide arc, above busy departments and dark, still
spaces. He found he could control his flight, made a neat immelmann
turn, and came gently to rest on a balcony overlooking the florist
department. Scent of frangipani, orange blossoms, cereus, honeysuckle,
liana floated up to him. Orchids bloomed in midair, lilies blossomed on
plants rooted in the grass mats bestrewed over the floor.
The balcony was cluttered with anchor-chains, spools of telephone
conduit, cotton bales, spare parts for mechanical chess-players.
Lampley trod carefully between them and opened a door marked NO
ADMITTANCE, SERVICE ONLY, DO NOT ENTER, THIS MEANS YOU. The room had
no proper floor, only closely woven flat steel strips which sagged at
every step. Enlarged X-ray photographs lined the walls; light shone
through them to show up the deformed bones like parachutes, like plows,
like cutlasses. The clerk, wearing an admiral's gold-laced cocked
hat and the black robes of a judge over his blue jeans, sat in a
porch swing that swayed gently to and fro behind a pulpit. He looked
inquiringly at the Governor.
"Why did you take me to that doctor?" demanded Lampley.
The clerk shrugged and took a pinch of snuff. He sneezed. "Why did you
go?"
Lampley pondered. "You forced me," he said at last.
The clerk plucked a dry weed from a candlestick on the pulpit and
chewed it thoroughly. "You didn't resist."
"I--I was taken by surprise," stammered Lampley.
"There are no accidents."
"But--"
"And there is free will," affirmed the clerk drowsily, the swing almost
stopped.
"I didn't go voluntarily."
The clerk opened his eyes wide. "Mmm. Also mmmmm."
"I--" The Governor was unable to say more.
* * * * *
The clerk stood up in the swing, reaching out his arms to the chains
and began pumping with his feet. The swing cleared the pulpit, knocked
over the candlestick, which bounced on the steel floor. He let go the
chain, folded his arms. The swing subsided into gentle motion. The
clerk jumped down and brought up a heavy lawbook from under the pulpit.
He laid it open on the lectern, riffling through it. Several moths flew
out from between the pages. "You plead not guilty?" he asked coldly.
"I don't understand."
"You plead non compos parentis, in loco ignoramus, ab squatulatis
feasance, nolo comprendere?"
"That's nonsense," exclaimed the Governor.
"Certainly. Convicted in the thirty-third degree."
"I demand a suspended sentence."
"Granted," accorded the clerk, lying on the swing again, face down, so
that his voice was muffled. "Now then! You insist the responsibility
wasn't yours?"
"What's the use of going into that?"
The clerk sat up and adjusted his hat from the Napoleonic tilt it had
assumed when he was prone to the proper fore-and-aft position. "The
defendant is instructed that evasion is paramount to tutti-frutti.
Answer the question or be incontemptible."
"It wasn't my idea," said the Governor sullenly.
"You consented, however."
"I 'consented'? Was she some chattel who needed dispensation from me?"
The clerk shook his finger.
"I actually tried to persuade her not to do it."
* * * * *
The clerk tore several pages out of the book and constructed an
airplane. It flew silently over their heads, dropping leaflets a
quarter the size of postage-stamps. The Governor tried to control his
nervous shrinking. "It wasn't as if she were a silly girl. I mean, it
was a considered decision on her part--nothing frivolous or vain...."
His voice trailed off. The clerk tore out another page and made a
cannon. He shot a wing off the plane with it; the machine whirled down
lopsidedly and crashed on the pulpit. "If that's the way you want it,
that's the way you want it. Let's go."
"Where to?"
"Ah," said the clerk; "If we only knew." He removed the cocked hat and
black robe and dropped them in a wastebasket. He pressed a button on
the pulpit which immediately swung aside to reveal a manhole. A ladder
rose out of the depths in short jerks. As it neared the ceiling a
trapdoor fell open. The ladder glided through and stopped. "You first,"
said the clerk.
Lampley climbed the ladder, feeling he might lose his hold on the
rungs at any step. When he was almost to the top he looked down.
The clerk had disappeared. Carpenters were laying a wooden floor,
erecting partitions. Porters removed the swing and the pulpit. Wiring,
air-conditioning, telephones, interoffice communication-systems, were
installed rapidly. One of the workers took up an ax and began chopping
at the ladder.
Lampley climbed through the floor. He was in a court with squat walls,
and gateways wider at the bottom than the top, bearing winged suns.
He passed between rows of statues, animal-headed gods, men and women
wearing conventionalized wigs and beards in stylized poses. The pale
light gave the reds, greens and blues which predominated, a chalky,
muffled quality; it threw the looped crosses molded on the frieze into
shadowed relief.
The air was dank with the penetrating, pervasive dampness of oozing
stone. Lampley was oppressed by thoughts of decay and destruction, of
the knowledge without the sensation of pain. He longed for the warmth
of the sun outside the hotel or the climate of the island under the
earth. He shuddered away from the hidden corners, suggestive of toads
and snakes, small animals decomposing and maggoty. This place should
have had some measure of sanctity, induced some feelings of reverence
or at least contemplation. He was aware only of the sodden air.
* * * * *
He walked moodily from the dusky precincts into the shocking light of
a busy office. Girls in tight pink nylon bathing suits, their hair
dyed royal blue, wearing blue nail polish, blue lipstick and red eye
shadow, sat at transparent plastic desks, inserting thin rectangles of
Swiss cheese into tabulating machines. Each desk had a silver champagne
ice bucket in which rested a telephone. Beside the machines a row of
feather dusters in graduated sizes were arranged in neat holders.
Lampley saw pretzels were being used as paper clips.
"Pardon me," he said. "Is this the accounting department?"
The four nearest girls looked up in panic. Alarm bells rang shrilly,
rockets popped out of the centers of the feather dusters, fire
sprinklers showered down rainbowed sparks. The pretzels unwound limply.
The slices of Swiss cheese curled into rolls out of which confetti blew
in continuous blasts.
A girl pulled her phone out of the ice bucket and choked herself by
winding the cord around and around her throat. The next one reached in
her desk for a pair of waterwings, inflated them and began practicing
the breast stroke. Others mutely handed him sheaf after sheaf of
statements, loading them on his reflexively outstretched arms until the
top ones slid off onto the floor. He could see they were made out to
him but he had no chance to read the items or prices.
They piled the bills faster and faster; girls came from the farthest
desks, staggered under armfuls. He dumped what he was holding and
tried to struggle free from the mounting heap but it was already above
his waist; he could not get his legs loose. He dug with his hands;
the papers slipped down to cram the holes as fast as he dug. They
imprisoned him with their weight; first the left, then the right arm
was pinned to his side.
Buried to the chin, he filled his lungs with air, foreseeing the
covering of his mouth and nose. The pressure was painful now; he felt
his ribs slowly caving in. The deluge ceased; the girl who had choked
herself wormed her way to him on her belly, creeping up the paper
mound, dragging the telephone behind her. She pressed her swollen,
twisted, blackened tongue against his lips, looked into his eyes with
her protruding glazed ones.
He wrenched his face away. Girls approached with rubber stamps so large
they could barely lift the bulbous handles. As they were raised he
read DIAP on their dark purple surfaces. The girls hurled and slashed
them downward, biting into the bills. With each thump masses of paper
vanished. His arms were disengaged, then his legs. He breathed deeply,
took a step, leaving only scattered invoices on the floor.
The girls threw themselves at his feet. "Take us," they moaned, "use
us, violate us, degrade us. We love you."
* * * * *
The Governor shuddered as he perceived they were all sisters, product
of a multiple birth; in each face he saw the features of the strangled
girl. The one with the waterwings, using a crawl, swam rapidly
between the others and raised her clasped hands imploringly. She was
drowning. He rolled her over and began clumsily giving her artificial
respiration. Her hair gradually turned white, the blue dye floating in
a powdery cloud above her head. He put the valve of the waterwings to
her mouth and expressed the air. She opened her eyes.
"Let us go," she said.
The others protested, weeping, clasping and unclasping their hands,
tearing at their bathing suits in anguish, clutching their throats in
grief, but they did not try to hold him. He helped the white-haired
girl to her feet. She drew a key from between her breasts and handed
it to him. He put it in his pocket and they left the office. As soon
as they were outside her hair changed to brown, the pink bathing suit
became white, her nail polish, lipstick and eye-shadow faded. She
shivered.
"Are you cold?" She nodded. "We must find something to put around you."
There was no one in sight. This part of the store had an air of
neglect, as though it had been used for storage, shut up and forgotten.
The showcases looked as though they had been discarded from more
enterprising sections; they were of odd sizes, with dull glass, in some
cases cracked and repaired. Many were empty, others contained pearls,
loose toothpicks, used cartridge cases, false teeth, celluloid collars,
oil cans, rare stamps.
They came to an escalator powered by two ponies working a treadmill,
and rode to the floor above. A floorwalker in morning clothes,
binoculars dangling on his chest from a leather strap, hastened to
them. "Customers only, customers only," he barked.
"We're looking for a coat or a cloak," the Governor informed him.
"Nothing but mink or sables here," said the floorwalker coldly,
surveying them through the binoculars.
"We'll take either," said Lampley.
The floorwalker knelt and kissed the Governor's shoe. He reached behind
him and took the tails of his frockcoat in his fingers and tore it up
the back, placing the two halves before their feet. A saleswoman with
a diamond collar sparkling on her neck rolled up in a motor scooter.
"This way, if you please."
Two grapnels emerged from the scooter and hooked on to the pieces
of coat; Lampley and the girl rode them like water skis to a small,
shallow auditorium. An old-fashioned carrier system hummed overhead,
its wire baskets moving briskly back and forth, disappearing above the
proscenium arch of a cramped stage on which models pranced and postured
in furs. When they turned rapidly, flirting the cloaks, Lampley saw
they wore nothing beneath and that they were all gravid.
"I'll take that one," said the girl, pointing.
The curtain thumped down. The saleswoman pulled a cord on the carrier
system. "Madam has excellent taste, for a slut," she complimented the
girl. An oversized basket brought the model clutching the cloak tightly
about her. She was cowering in terror. The saleswoman pulled the cord
again and the basket tipped, tumbling the model out. "Rip it off her
back," she ordered.
The model cried out. "Oh, wait. Please wait," she begged.
"You beast," said the saleswoman. "You pretty little female beast. What
rights have you? What feelings have you? You were born for this moment."
The model moaned.
"Is there no other way?" asked the Governor.
The saleswoman stared at him. "How could there be? This isn't the place
for cheap merchandise or cheap methods." She gave the order again.
* * * * *
The model sank to the floor in a trembling heap. "The poor thing," said
the girl in the bathing suit. "Will it hurt her very much?"
"What difference does it make?" asked the saleswoman. "It'll be over
before you know it. And there are plenty of other models. All this
palaver over a wretched creature! It's disgusting."
"I can't do it," whispered the girl. "I'm too tender-hearted."
"Chicken-hearted, you mean," sneered the woman. "Anyone can see what
you are. All right, let him do it then."
"No," said the Governor firmly.
"You'll have to pay just the same," warned the woman.
"Very well." He drew the key from his pocket and handed it to her.
"And take your property with you."
The model walked humbly behind them. "Still cold?" asked Lampley.
"Yes I am. And if you were a gentleman you'd have seen that I got my
coat."
He didn't answer. The floorwalker, in a new frockcoat, bowed pleasantly
to them and waved them to the elevator. Lampley pressed the button,
noting that there was no indicator above, that there never had been
indicators over any of the elevator entrances. The thought depressed
him.
The doors rolled open. The cage was very large, with wide brown leather
benches around three sides, and a padded leather ceiling and walls.
The clerk wore a leather jockey cap, and a rawhide vest over his blue
jeans. He clasped his hands together over his head as they entered. He
closed the doors smartly; the elevator lurched sideways, throwing the
girl and model to the benches.
"I hope--" began Lampley.
The clerk nodded. "Excellent, excellent. Where there's hope there's
life and where there's life there's despair. A beginning, anyway."
"I meant I hoped--"
"Heard you," said the clerk. "Let's not say the same thing more than
once." The car stopped and he opened the doors. Lampley could see
nothing clearly through the clouds of steam outside. After a slight
hesitation the girl left, followed by the model. The Governor moved
after them; the clerk barred his way. "Ladies only," he said politely.
"You weren't so particular at the doctor's office," argued Lampley
angrily.
"Yang and Yin," explained the clerk. "Circumstances alter faces."
* * * * *
The elevator shot upward. The noise of airhammers and riveting machines
grew loud; it was succeeded by the sounds of distant motors, wind
rustling in the trees, surf spuming against rocks, hooves clopping on
soft asphalt. "You want out here?" asked the clerk. "Or will you try
for a higher number?" Before the Governor could answer, the elevator
stopped. Lampley stepped out on linoleum with the pattern worn off, the
burlap backing showing through in streaks. A gloomy corridor, warm and
fetid, stretched ahead of him. He turned back to the elevator but the
doors were shut.
He paced along the corridor, past tarnished spittoons, sagging chairs,
earthenware umbrella stands. The saffron wallpaper hung in shaggy
strips, spiderwebs loaded with the dried chitin of insect victims
tied it to the pocked plaster. Tarnished metal signs exhorted, NO
SMOKING, DON'T SPIT ON THE FLOOR, SILENCE, NO WOMEN ALLOWED, FIREARMS
PROHIBITED, ACT LIKE YOUR MOTHER SAW YOU. The light bulbs were the
ancient carbon type; their filaments glowed an angry red through the
flawed, smeared glass.
He entered a room whose wooden walls were riddled with holes, the
remaining surfaces powdery and fragile, reeking with slime and foul
smells. Men lay on the floor in their own filth and vomit, their greasy
clothes clutched across thin chests, sagging bellies, protruding
Adam's apples. They quivered and twitched, squirmed and tossed, turned
on their sides and then on their backs. They moved their arms under
their uneasy heads, rolled over on them, jerked them up. They snored,
wheezed, gasped, cried out. They burrowed unshaven faces, heavy with
sores, scars, bloody cuts, into their elbows or against hunched
shoulders. The Governor picked his way between them as best he could,
anxious not to stumble, dreading to touch one of them with his foot.
At the end of the room an alabaster basin, perhaps twenty feet across,
was full to the brim with sewage. Gorged and sluggish flies hovered,
or lit briefly on bobbing orange-peels. He shuddered lest some tremor
of the floor, some unseen current of air cause the loathsome bog to
overflow and reach him.
He finished his cautious tour and entered a circular anteroom whose
sides were completely taken up by divans and easy-chairs upholstered in
faded green plush. Gas brackets curved outward from the walls, holding
fan-shaped yellow flames like halting palms. A chandelier was suspended
from the ceiling, its glass prisms and teardrops reflecting the violet
end of the spectrum. Below it was a round settee with a blunted cone
of upholstery rising in its center; the seat might have accommodated
twenty pairs of buttocks; no more than four shoulders could have found
space against the spindling back. This cone supported a cast-iron
statuette of an effeminate youth or a mannish girl--it was impossible
to tell which because of the chaste metallic drapery. There was no one
in the room.
* * * * *
The Governor paused before the halls raying out from the anteroom. They
were all precisely alike, shadowed, somber, murky; he chose the center
one. The glow of kerosene lamps enshrined in recesses made pale brown
half moons on the mud-colored floor. He would not have been surprised
had the hall led to some cell from which there was no return, instead
it ended in another anteroom. This one was square, with board benches.
Fat candles on wooden stands slowly dripped wax; the floor was covered
with sawdust and shavings.
There was a row of double-hinged saloon doors reaching from knee to
shoulder. Lampley pushed through one. Sleepers were even more numerous
here, piled closer together, and their smell was more nauseating.
Some of the faces were rigid, lips drawn back in a snarl to uncover
noisome caverns. Others were mobile in sleep, grinning, grimacing,
teeth-grinding, cheek-puffing. Pale worms crawled out of one open mouth.
He recognized some of the sleepers. Playmates, school fellows, college
acquaintances, his first employer, merchants and farmers to whom he
had sold tractors or plows, political allies he had left behind, a
candidate he had ostensibly supported, a lobbyist to whom he had
promised his vote before he changed his mind, a legislator of the same
party whom he had disavowed, an office-seeker whom he had praised
with calculated faintness--a dozen others. He could remember the
names of none. He saw a man he was sure was his uncle, his mother's
brother, in whose home he had lived and who had sent him to school.
"Uncle--Uncle--" he stammered, but the name would not come. He stooped
to rouse the man, to beg him to tell his name, to relieve the burden
of forgetfulness. His uncle--if it was--slept on, knees drawn up, jaw
slack, fingers fluttering. Lampley's hands fell away from the recumbent
figure.
He hooded his eyes against the other faces, heeding only the legs
and bodies to keep himself from stumbling. He saw the treasures,
tokens, souvenirs, keepsakes the outcasts possessed, spilled from
their hands or pockets onto the crowded floor: curling photographs,
creased letters, cracked newspaper clippings, locks of lifeless hair,
tarnished luckpieces, battered amulets, illegible diplomas, crumpled
certificates.
The dormitory was surrounded by bathrooms of lustrous tile, milky
porcelain, harsh chrome fixtures. Men slept on the spotless floors,
in the immaculate tubs, draped themselves over lavatories and
close-stools. The one Lampley entered seemed less crowded than the
others. A figure on the floor struggled free of his companions. It was
the clerk. He closed the door and twisted the faucet in the bathtub.
The elevator shot upward.
"I don't seem to remember any of the names," apologized the Governor.
The clerk smiled tolerantly, then frowned. He turned the faucet hard
over; the elevator's speed became frightening. "There's forgetting and
forgetting," he said. "Anyway, you'll remember these."
"What?" asked Lampley.
"These," said the clerk. The elevator stopped with a jolt. The clerk
waved his hand. "Your floor."