Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance, Volume One (52 page)

“Level 29, sir, this building.”

In Policy Evaluation on Level 29 Luke talked with a silk-mustached young man, courtly and elegant, with the status classification
Plan Coordinator.
“Certainly!” exclaimed the young man in response to Luke’s question. “Authoritative information is the basis of authoritative organization. Material from Files is collated, digested in the Bureau of Abstracts and sent up to us. We shape it and present it to the Board of Directors in the form of a daily précis.”

Luke expressed interest in the Bureau of Abstracts, and the young man quickly became bored. “Grubbers among the statistics, barely able to compose an intelligible sentence. If it weren’t for us—” His eyebrows, silken as his mustache, hinted of the disasters which in the absence of Policy Evaluation would overtake the Organization. “They work in a suite down on the Sixth Level.”

Luke descended to the Bureau of Abstracts, and found no difficulty gaining admission to the general office. In contrast to the rather nebulous intellectualism of Policy Evaluation, the Bureau of Abstracts seemed workaday and matter-of-fact. A middle-aged woman, cheerfully fat, inquired Luke’s business, and when Luke professed himself a journalist, conducted him about the premises. They went from the main lobby, walled in antique cream-colored plaster with gold scrollwork, past the small fusty cubicles, where clerks sat at projection-desks scanning ribbons of words, extracting idea-sequences, emending, excising, condensing, cross-referring, finally producing the abstract to be submitted to Policy Evaluation. Luke’s fat and cheerful guide brewed them a pot of tea; she asked questions which Luke answered in general terms, straining his voice and pursing his mouth in the effort to seem agreeable and hearty. He himself asked questions. “I’m interested in a set of statistics on the scarcity of metals, or ores, or something similar which recently went up to Policy Evaluation. Would you know anything about this?”

“Heavens no,” the woman responded. “There’s just too much material coming in—the business of the entire Organization.”

“Where does this material come from? Who sends it to you?”

The woman made a humorous little grimace of distaste. “From Files, down on Sublevel 12. I can’t tell you much, because we don’t associate with the personnel. They’re low status: clerks and the like. Sheer automatons.”

Luke expressed an interest in the source of the Bureau of Abstracts’ information. The woman shrugged, as if to say, everyone to his own taste. “I’ll call down to the Chief File Clerk; I know him, very slightly.”

The Chief File Clerk, Mr. Sidd Boatridge, was self-important and brusque, as if aware of the low esteem in which he was held by the Bureau of Abstracts. He dismissed Luke’s questions with a stony face of indifference. “I really have no idea, sir. We file, index, and cross-index material into the Information Bank, but concern ourselves very little with outgoing data. My duties in fact are mainly administrative. I’ll call in one of the under-clerks; he can tell you more than I can.”

The under-clerk who answered Boatridge’s summons was a short turnip-faced man with matted red hair. “Take Mr. Grogatch into the outer office,” said the Chief File Clerk testily. “He wants to ask you a few questions.”

In the outer office, out of the Chief File Clerk’s hearing, the under-clerk became rather surly and pompous, as if he had divined the level of Luke’s status. He referred to himself as a “line-tender” rather than a “file clerk”, the latter apparently being a classification of lesser prestige. His “line-tending” consisted of sitting beside a panel which glowed and blinked with a thousand orange and green lights. “The orange lights indicate information going down into the Bank,” said the file clerk. “The green lights show where somebody up-level is drawing information out—generally at the Bureau of Abstracts.”

Luke observed the orange and green flickers for a moment. “What information is being transmitted now?”

“Couldn’t say,” the file clerk grunted. “It’s all coded. Down in the old office we had a monitoring machine and never used it. Too much else to do.”

Luke considered. The file clerk showed signs of restiveness. Luke’s mind worked hurriedly. He asked, “So—as I understand it—you file information, but have nothing further to do with it?”

“We file it and code it. Whoever wants information puts a program into the works and the information goes out to him. We never see it, unless we went and looked in the old monitoring machine.”

“Which is still down at your old office?”

The file clerk nodded. “They call it the staging chamber now. Nothing there but input and output pipes, the monitor, and the custodian.”

“Where is the staging chamber?”

“Way down the levels, behind the Bank. Too low for me to work. I got more ambition.” For emphasis he spat on the floor.

“A custodian is there, you say?”

“An old junior executive named Dodkin. He’s been there a hundred years.”

Luke dropped thirty levels aboard an express lift, then rode the down escalator another six levels to Sublevel 48. He emerged on a dingy landing, a low-perquisite nutrition hall to one side, a lift-attendants dormitory to the other. The air carried the familiar reek of the deep underground, a compound of dank concrete, phenol, mercaptans, a discreet but pervasive human smell. Luke realized with bitter amusement that he had returned to familiar territory.

Following instructions grudgingly detailed by the under-file clerk, Luke stepped aboard a chattering man-belt labeled ‘902—Tanks’. Presently he came to a brightly-lit landing marked by a black and yellow sign:
Information Tanks: Technical Station.
Inside the door a number of mechanics sat on stools, dangling their legs, lounging, chaffering.

Luke changed to a side-belt, even more dilapidated, almost in a state of disrepair. At the second junction—this unmarked—he left the man-belt, turned down a narrow passage toward a far yellow bulb. The passage was silent, almost sinister in its disassociation from the life of the City.

Below the single yellow bulb a dented metal door was daubed with a sign:

Information Tanks: Staging Chamber

No Admittance

Luke tested the door and found it locked. He rapped and waited.

Silence shrouded the passage, broken only by a faint sound from the distant man-belt.

Luke rapped again, and now from within came a shuffle of movement. The door slid back, a pale placid eye looked forth. A rather weak voice inquired, “Yes sir?”

Luke attempted a manner of easy authority. “You’re Dodkin the custodian?”

“Yes, sir, I’m Dodkin.”

“Open up, please, I’d like to come in.”

The pale eye blinked in mild wonder. “This is only the staging room, sir. There’s nothing here to see. The storage complexes are around to the front; if you’ll go back to the junction—”

Luke broke into the flow of words. “I’ve just come down from Files; it’s you I want to see.”

The pale eye blinked once more; the door slid open. Luke entered the long narrow concrete-floored staging room. Conduits dropped from the ceiling by the thousands, bent, twisted and looped, entered the wall, each conduit labeled with a dangling metal tag. At one end of the room was a grimy cot where Dodkin apparently slept; at the other end was a long black desk: the monitoring machine? Dodkin himself was small and stooped, but moved nimbly in spite of his evident age. His white hair was stained but well brushed; his gaze, weak and watery, was without guile, and fixed on Luke with an astronomer’s detachment. He opened his mouth, and words quavered forth in spate, with Luke vainly seeking to interrupt.

“Not often do visitors come from above. Is something wrong?”

“No, nothing wrong.”

“They should tell me if aught isn’t correct, or perhaps there’s been new policies of which I haven’t been notified.”

“Nothing like that, Mr. Dodkin. I’m just a visitor—”

“I don’t move out as much as I used to, but last week I—”

Luke pretended to listen while Dodkin maundered on in obbligato to Luke’s bitter thoughts. The continuity of directives leading from Fedor Miskitman to Lavester Limon to Judiath Ripp, by-passing Parris deVicker to Sewell Sepp and the Chairman of the Board, then returning down the classifications, down the levels through the Policy Evaluation Board, the Bureau of Abstracts, the File Clerk’s Office—the continuity had finally ended; the thread he had traced with such forlorn hope seemed about to lose itself. Well, Luke told himself, he had accepted Miskitman’s challenge; he had failed, and now was faced with his original choice. Submit, carry the wretched shovel back and forth to the warehouse, or defy the order, throw down his shovel, assert himself as a free-willed man, and be declassified, to become a junior executive like old Dodkin—who, sucking and wheezing, still rambled on in compulsive loquacity.

“…something incorrect, I’d never know, because who ever tells me? From year end to year end I’m quiet down here and there’s no one to relieve me, and I only get to the up-side rarely, once a fortnight or so, but then once you’ve seen the sky, does it ever change? And the sun, the marvel of it, but once you’ve seen a marvel—”

Luke drew a deep breath. “I’m investigating an item of information which reached the File Clerk’s Office. I wonder if you can help me.”

Dodkin blinked his pale eyes. “What item is this, sir? Naturally I’ll be glad to help in any way, even though—”

“The item dealt with economy in the use of metals and metal tools.”

Dodkin nodded. “I remember the item perfectly.”

It was Luke’s turn to stare. “You
remember
this item?”

“Certainly. It was, if I may say so, one of my little interpolations. A personal observation which I included among the other material.”

“Would you be kind enough to explain?”

Dodkin would be only too pleased to explain. “Last week I had occasion to visit an old friend over by Claxton Abbey, a fine Conformist, well adapted and cooperative, even if, alas, like myself, a junior executive. Of course, I mean no disrespect to good Davy Evans, like myself about ready for the pension—though little enough they allow nowadays…”

“The interpolation?”

“Yes, indeed. On my way home along the man-belt—on Sublevel 32, as I recall—I saw a workman of some sort—perhaps an electrical technician—toss several tools into a crevice on his way off-shift. I thought, now there’s a slovenly act—disgraceful! Suppose the man forgot where he had hidden his tools? They’d be lost! Our reserves of raw metallic ore are very low—that’s common knowledge—and every year the ocean water becomes weaker and more dilute. That man had no regard for the future of Organization. We should cherish our natural resources, do you not agree, sir?”

“I agree, naturally. But—”

“In any event, I returned here and added a memorandum to that effect into the material which goes up to the Assistant File Clerk. I thought that perhaps he’d be impressed and say a word to someone with influence—perhaps the Head File Clerk. In any event, there’s the tale of my interpolation. Naturally I attempted to give it weight by citing the inevitable diminution of our natural resources.”