“I’m an important man, you know, Schmutzig von Dreck is a man to be reckoned with, they’ll find out. They think they can get away with this, but they can’t. An error they said, just a simple error, the tape in the records section broke, and when they repaired it a little weensy bit got snipped out, and that was the piece with my record on it, and the first I heard about it was when my pay didn’t arrive at the end of the month and I went to see them about it and they had never heard of me. But everyone has heard of me. Von Dreck is a good old name. I was an echelon manager before I was twenty-two and had a staff of 356 under me in the Staple and Paper Clip Division of the 89th Office Supply Wing. So they couldn’t make believe they never heard of me, even if I had left my ID card home in my other suit, and they had no reason clearing everything out of my apartment while I was away just because it was rented to what they said was an imaginary person. I could have proven who I was if I had my ID card … have you seen my ID card?”
This is where I came in, Bill thought, then aloud, “That sure sounds rough. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll help you look for it. I’ll go down here and see if I can find it.”
Before the softheaded Schmutzig could answer Bill had slipped away between the mountainous stacks of old files, very proud of himself for having outwitted a middle-aged nut: He was feeling pleasantly full and tired and didn’t want to be bothered again. What he needed was a good night’s rest, then in the morning he would think about this mess, maybe figure a way out of it. Feeling his way along the cluttered aisle he put a long distance between himself and the other deplanned before climbing up on a tottering stack of paper and from that clambering to a still higher one. He sighed with relief, arranged a little pile of paper for a pillow and closed his eyes.
Then the lights came on in rows high up on the ceiling of the warehouse and shrill police whistles sounded from all sides and guttural shouts that set him to shivering with fear.
“Grab that one! Don’t let him get away!”
“I got the horse thief!”
“You planless bowbs have stolen your last Chlora-filly! It’s the uranium-salt mines on Zana-2 for you!”
Then, “Do we have them all-?” and as Bill lay clutching desperately at the forms, with his heart thudding with fear, the answer finally came.
“Yeah, four of them, we been watching them for a long time, ready to pull them in if they tried anything like this.”
“But we only got three here.”
“I saw the fourth one earlier, getting carried off stiff as a board by a sanitation robot.”
“Affirm, then let’s go.”
Fear lashed through Bill again. How long before one of the bunch talked, ratted to buy a favor for himself, and told the cops that they had just sworn, in a new recruit? He had to get out of here. All the police now seemed to be bunched at the wienie roast, and he had to take a chance. Sliding from the pile as silently as he could, he began to creep in the opposite direction. If there was no exit this way he was trapped-no, mustn’t think like that! Behind him whistles shrilled again, and he knew the hunt was on. Adrenalin poured into his bloodstream as he spurted forward, while rich, equine protein added strength to his legs and a decided canter to his gait. Ahead was a door, and he hurled his weight against it; for an instant it stuck-then squealed open on rusty hinges. Heedless of danger, he hurled himself down the spiral staircase, down and down, and out of another door, fleeing wildly, thinking only of escape.
Once more, with the instincts of a hunted animal, he fled downward. He did not notice that the walls here were bolted together at places and streaked with rust, nor did he think it unusual when he had to pry open a jammed wooden doorwood on a planet that had not seen a tree in a hundred millenia! The air was danker and foul at times, and his fearridden course took him through a stone tunnel where nameless beasts fled before him with the rattle of evil claws. There were long stretches now doomed to eternal darkness where he had to feel his way, running his fingers along the repellent and slimy moss covered walls. Where there were lights they glowed but dimly behind their burdens of spider webs and insect corpses. He splashed through pools of stagnant water until, slowly, the strangeness of his surroundings penetrated, and he blinked about him. Set into the floor beneath his feet was another door, and, still gripped by the reflex of flight, he threw it open, but it led nowhere. Instead it gave access to a bin of some kind of granulated material, not unlike coarse sugar. Though it might just as well be insulation. It could be edible: he bent and picked some up between his fingers and ground it between his teeth. No, not edible, he spat it out, though there was something very familiar about it. Then it hit him.