It was dark when he heard the voice whisper: “Four Up!”
Hestler jerked wide awake. He blinked, wondering if he’d dreamed the urgent tone.
“Four Up!” the voice hissed again. Hestler twitched the curtain open, saw nothing, pulled his head back in. Then he saw the pale, pinched face, the bulging eyes of Four Back, peering through the vent slot at the rear of the tent.
“You have to help me,” the little man said. “You saw what happened, you can make a deposition that I was cheated, that—”
“Look here, what are you doing out of Line?” Hestler cut in. “I know you’re on-shift, why aren’t you holding down a new slot?”
“I . . . I couldn’t face it,” Four Back said brokenly. “My wife, my children—they’re all counting on me.”
“You should have thought of that sooner.”
“I swear I couldn’t help it. It just hit me so suddenly. And—”
“You lost your Place. There’s nothing I can do.”
“If I have to start over now—I’ll be over seventy when I get to the Window!”
“That’s not my lookout—”
” . . . but if you’ll just tell the Line Police what happened, explain about my special case—”
“You’re crazy, I can’t do that!”
“But you . . . I always thought you looked like a decent sort—”
“You’d better go. Suppose someone sees me talking to you?”
“I had to speak to you here, I don’t know your name, but after all we’ve been four Spaces apart in Line for nine years—”
“Go away! Before I call a Line cop!”
Hestler had a hard time getting comfortable again after Four Back left. There was a fly inside the queuebana. It was a hot night. The Line moved up again, and Hestler had to emerge and roll the queuebana forward. Two Spaces to go! The feeling of excitement was so intense that it made Hestler feel a little sick. Two more moves up, and he’d be at the Window. He’d open the lockbox, and present the Papers, taking his time, one at a time, getting it all correct, all in order. With a sudden pang of panic he wondered if anyone had goofed, anywhere back along the line, failed to sign anything, missed a Notary’s seal, or a witness’ signature. But they couldn’t have. Nothing as dumb as that. For that you could get bounced out of Line, lose your Place, have to go all the way back—
Hestler shook off the morbid fancies. He was just nervous, that was all. Well, who wouldn’t be? After tonight, his whole life would be different; his days of standing in Line would be over. He’d have time—all the time in the world to do all the things he hadn’t been able to think about all these years . . .
Someone shouted, near at hand. Hestler stumbled out of the queuebana to see Two Up—at the Head of the line now—raise his fist and shake it under the nose of the small, black-moustached face in the green eye-shade framed in the Window, bathed in harsh white light.
“Idiot! Dumbbell! Jackass!” Two Up yelled. “What do you mean take it back home and have my wife spell out her middle name!”
Two burly Line police appeared, shone lights in Two Up’s wild face, grabbed his arms, took him away. Hestler trembled as he pushed the queuebana forward a Space on its roller skate wheels. Only one man ahead of him now. He’d be next. But no reason to get all upset; the Line had been moving like greased lightning, but it would take a few hours to process the man ahead. He had time to relax, get his nerves soothed down, get ready to answer questions . . .
“I don’t understand, sir,” the reedy voice of One Up was saying to the small black moustache behind the Window. “My Papers are all in order, I swear it—”
“You said yourself your father is dead,” the small, dry voice of Black Moustache said. “That means you’ll have to reexecute Form 56839847565342-B in sextuplicate, with an endorsement from the medical doctor, the Residential Police, and waivers from Department A, B, C, and so on. You’ll find it all, right in the Regulations.”
“But—but he only died two hours ago: I just received word—”
“Two hours, two years; he’s just as dead.”
“But—I’ll lose my Place! If I hadn’t mentioned it to you—”
“Then I wouldn’t have known about it. But you did mention it, quite right, too.”
“Couldn’t you just pretend I didn’t say anything? That the messenger never reached me?”
“Are you suggesting I commit fraud?”
“No . . . no . . . ” One Up turned and tottered away, his invalidated Papers clutched in his hand. Hestler swallowed hard.
“Next,” Black Moustache said.
It was almost dawn six hours later when the clerk stamped the last Paper, licked the last stamp, thrust the stack of processed documents into a slot and looked past Hestler at the next man in Line.
Hestler hesitated, holding the empty lockbox in nerveless fingers. It felt abnormally light, like a cast husk.
“That’s all,” the clerk said. “Next.”
One Down jostled Hestler getting to the Window. He was a small, bandy-legged Standee with large, loose lips and long ears. Hestler had never really looked at him before. He felt an urge to tell him all about how it had been, give him a few friendly tips, as an old Window veteran to a newcomer. But the man didn’t give him a chance.
Moving off, Hestler noticed the queuebana. It looked abandoned, functionless. He thought of all the hours, the days, the years he had spent in it, crouched in the sling . . .
“You can have it,” he said on impulse to Two Down, who, he noted with surprise, was a woman, dumpy, slack-jowled. He gestured toward the queuebana. She made a snorting sound and ignored him. He wandered off down the Line, staring curiously at the people in it, at the varied faces and figures, tall, wide, narrow, old, young—not so many of those—dressed in used clothing, with hair combed or uncombed, some with facial hair, some with paint on their lips, all unattractive in their own individual ways.
He encountered Galpert whizzing toward him on the power wheel. Galpert slowed, gaping, came to a halt. Hestler noticed that his cousin had thin, bony ankles in maroon socks, one of which suffered from perished elastic so that the sock drooped, exposing clay-white skin.
“Farn—what . . . ?”
“All done.” Hestler held up the empty lockbox.
“All done . . . ?” Galpert looked across toward the distant Window in a bewildered way.
“All done. Not much to it, really.”
“Then . . . I . . . I guess I don’t need to . . . ” Galpert’s voice died away.
“No, no need, never again, Galpert.”
“Yes, but what . . . ?” Galpert looked at Hestler, looked at the Line, back at Hestler. “You coming, Farn?”
“I . . . I think I’ll just take a walk for a while. Savor it, you know.”
“Well,” Galpert said. He started up the wheel and rode slowly off across the ramp.
Suddenly, Hestler was thinking about time—all that time stretching ahead, like an abyss. What would he do with it . . . ? He almost called after Galpert, but instead turned and continued his walk along the Line. Faces stared past him, over him, through him.
Noon came and went. Hestler obtained a dry hot dog and a paper cup of warm milk from a vendor on a three-wheeler with a big umbrella and a pet chicken perched on the back. He walked on, searching the faces. They were all so ugly. He pitied them, so far from the Window. He looked back; it was barely visible, a tiny dark point toward which the Line dwindled. What did they think about, standing in Line? How they must envy him!
But no one seemed to notice him. Toward sunset he began to feel lonely. He wanted to talk to someone; but none of the faces he passed seemed sympathetic.
It was almost dark when he reached the End of the Line. Beyond, the empty plain stretched toward the dark horizon. It looked cold out there, lonely.
“It looks cold out there,” he heard himself say to the oatmeal-faced lad who huddled at the tail of the Line, hands in pockets. “And lonely.”
“You in Line, or what?” the boy asked.
Hestler looked again at the bleak horizon. He came over and stood behind the youth.
“Certainly,” he said.
THE PLANET WRECKERS
In his shabby room in the formerly elegant hostelry known as the Grand Atumpquah Palace, Jack Waverly pulled the coarse weave sheet up about his ears and composed himself for sleep.
Somewhere, a voice whispered. Somewhere, boards creaked. Wind muttered around the loosely fitted window, rattling it in its frame. The pulled-down blind clacked restlessly. In the room above, footsteps went three paces; clank; back three paces; clank . . .