`Oh, thank you, my dear. You’ve been such a help. You’ve no idea of the responsibilities a person in my position has.’
Miss Cormet cluck-clucked in professional sympathy while deciding that this particular girl was good for still more fees. `You do look exhausted, madame,’ she said anxiously. `Should I not have a masseuse accompany you on the trip? Is your health at all delicate? Perhaps a physician would be still better.’
`How thoughtful you are!’
`I’ll send both,’ Miss Cormet decided, and switched off, with a faint regret that she had not suggested a specially chartered rocket. Special service, not listed in the master price schedule, was supplied on a cost-plus basis. In cases like this `plus’ meant all the traffic would bear.
She switched to EXECUTIVE; an alert-eyed young man filled the screen. `Stand by for transcript, Steve,’ she said. `Special service, triple-A. I’ve started the immediate service’
His eyebrows lifted. `Triple-A – bonuses?’
`Undoubtedly. Give this old battleaxe the works – smoothly. And look – the client’s son is laid up in a hospital. Check on his nurses. If any one of them has even a shred of sex-appeal, fire her out and put a zombie in.’
`Gotcha, kid. Start the transcript.’
She cleared her screen again; the `available-for-service’ light in her booth turned automatically to green, then almost at once turned red again and a new figure built up in her screen.
No stupid waster this. Grace Cormet saw a weil-kempt man in his middle forties, flat-waisted, shrewd-eyed, hard but urbane. The cape of his formal morning clothes was thrown back with careful casualness. `General Services,’ she said. `Miss Cormet speaking.’
`Ab, Miss Cormet,’ he began, `I wish to see your chief.’
`Chief of switchboard?’
`No, I wish to see the President of General Services.’
`Will you tell me what it is you wish? Perhaps I can help you.’
`Sorry, but I can’t make explanations. I must see him, at once.’
`And General Services is sorry. Mr Clare is a very busy man; it is impossible to see him without appointment and without explanation.’
`Are you recording?’
`Certainly.’
`Then please cease doing so.’
Above the console, in sight of the client, she switched off the recorder. Underneath the desk she switched it back on again. General Services was sometimes asked to perform illegal acts; its confidential employees took no chances. He fished something out from the folds of his chemise and held it out to her. The stereo effect made it appear as if he were reaching right out through the screen.
Trained features masked her surprise-it was the sigil of a planetary official, and the color of the badge was green.
`I will arrange it,’ she said.
`Very good. Can you meet me and conduct me in from the waiting room? In ten minutes?’
`I will be there, Mister . . . Mister – ` But he had cut off.
Grace Cormet switched to the switchboard chief and called for relief. Then, with her board cut out of service, she removed the spool bearing the clandestine record of the interview, stared at it as if undecided, and after a moment, dipped it into an opening in the top of the desk where a strong magnetic field wiped the unfixed patterns from the soft metal.
A girl entered the booth from the rear. She was blond, decorative, and looked slow and a little dull. She was neither. `Okay, Grace,’ she said. `Anything to turn over?’
`No. Clear board.’
“S matter? Sick?’
`No.’ With no further explanation Grace left the booth, went on out past the other booths housing operators who handled unlisted services and into the large hail where the hundreds of catalogue operators worked. These had no such complex equipment as the booth which Grace had quitted. One enormous volume, a copy of the current price list of all of General Services’ regular price-marked functions, and an ordinary look-and-listen enabled a catalogue operator to provide for the public almost anything the ordinary customer could wish for. If a call was beyond the scope of the catalogue it was transferred to the aristocrats of resourcefulness, such as Grace.
She took a short cut through the master files room, walked down an alleyway between dozens of chattering punched-card machines, and entered the foyer of that level. A pneumatic lift bounced her up to the level of the President’s office. The President’s receptionist did not stop her, nor, apparently, announce her. But Grace noted that the girl’s hands were busy at the keys of her voder.