The next door—ancient and rickety as the first—was also locked, and no one answered. The third door, no one answered. By then it was raining hard; the knob turned under my fingers, and we stepped inside.
We left the door ajar, on the chance that a squad car or cab might pass, and for light. It was almost dark outside, apart from the light from the lightning flashes, but even so it was darker within. There was no light at all in the narrow, odorous hall; not even a light seeping under the apartment doors.
In the lightning flare, Hammond's face was pale. He was beginning to sober up, and his manner was uneasy.
We were there perhaps half an hour in that silent hall, watching the rain sleet down and the lightning flare and listening to the thunder. Two or three times, squad cars passed, nosing slowly down the drenched streets, but though Hammond looked longingly at them, I still didn't want to get wet.
Then the rain slowed and almost simultaneously a civilian cab appeared at the head of the block. "Come on," I said, tugging at his arm.
He balked. "Wait for a squad car," he mumbled.
"Why? Come on, Hammond, it may start to pour again in a minute."
"No!"
His behavior was exasperating me. Clearly it wasn't that he was too niggardly to pay for the cab; it was almost as if he were delaying going back to the branch office for some hidden reason. But that was ridiculous, of course.
I said, "Look, you can stay here if you want to, but I'm going." I jumped out of the doorway just in time to flag the cab; it rolled to a stop, and the driver backed to where I was standing. As I got in, I looked once more to the doorway where Hammond was standing, his face unreadable.
He made a gesture of some sort, but the lightning flashed again and I skipped into the cab. When I looked again he was invisible inside the doorway, and I told the driver to take me to the branch office of the Company.
Curious; but it was not an end to curious things that night. At the branch office, my car was waiting to take me back to Naples.
I surrendered my travel coupons to the cab driver and jumped from one vehicle to the other.
Before my driver could start, someone appeared at the window of the car and a sharp voice said, "Un momento, Signore 'Ammond!"
I stared at the man, a rather badly dressed Neapolitan. I said angrily, "Hammond isn't here!"
The man's expression changed. It had been belligerent; it now became astonished and apologetic. "A thousand times excuse me," he said. "The Signore 'Ammond, can you say where he is?"
I hesitated, but only for a moment. I didn't like the little man peering in my window, however humble and conciliatory he had become. I said abruptly, "No." And my driver took off, leaving the man standing there.
I turned to look back at him as we drove off.
It was ridiculous, but the way he was standing as we left, holding one hand in his pocket, eyes narrowed and thoughtful, made me think that he was carrying a gun.
But, of course, that was impossible. The Company didn't permit lethal weapons, and who in all the world would challenge a rule of the Company?
When I showed up in the Naples office the next morning, Susan had my coffee ready and waiting for me. I said gratefully, "Bless you."
She chuckled. "That's not all," she said. "Here's something else you might like. Just remember though, if anyone asks, you got it out of the files yourself."
She slipped a folder under the piles of forms on my desk and disappeared. I peered at it curiously. It was labeled: "Policy BNT-3KT-890776, Blue Bolt Comprehensive. Insuree: Renata dell'Angela."
I could have been no more grateful had she given me the Company Mint.
But I had no chance to examine it. Gogarty was calling for me. I hastily swallowed my coffee and reported for orders.
They were simple enough. The appointment with Zorchi that I hadn't been able to keep the day before was set up for right then. I was already late and I had to leave without another glance at Rena's file.
The hospital Zorchi honored with his patronage was a marble-halled palace on the cliffs that rimmed the southern edge of the Bay of Naples. It was a luxurious, rich man's hospital, stuffy with its opulence; but the most opulent of all was the plush-lined three-room suite where Zorchi was.
A white-robed sister of some religious order led me into a silent elevator and along a statued hall. She tapped on a door, and left me in the care of a sharp-faced young man with glasses who introduced himself as Mr. Zorchi's secretary.
I explained my business. He contemptuously waved me to a brocaded chair, and left me alone for a good half hour.
By the time Zorchi was ready to see me, I was boiling. Nobody could treat a representative of the Company like an errand boy! I did my best to take into consideration the fact that he had just undergone major surgery—first under the wheels of the train, then under the knives of three of Naples' finest surgeons.
I said as pleasantly as I could, "I'm glad to see you at last."
The dark face on the pink embroidered pillow turned coldly toward me. "Che volete?" he demanded. The secretary opened his mouth to translate.
I said quickly, "Scusí; parlo un po' la lingua. Non bisogno un traduttore."
Zorchi said languidly in Italian, "In that case, Mario, you may go. What do you want with me, Weels?"
I explained my duties as a Claims Adjuster for the Company, pointing out that it was my task, indeed my privilege, to make settlement for injuries covered by Company policies. He listened condescendingly. I watched him carefully while I talked, trying to estimate the approach he might respond to if I was to win his confidence.
He was far from an attractive young man, I thought. No longer behind the shabby porter's uniform he had worn on the platform of the station, he still had an unkempt and slipshod appearance, despite the heavy silken dressing gown he wore and the manifest costliness of his room. The beard was still on his face; it, at least, had not been a disguise. It was not an attractive beard. It had been weeks, at the least, since any hand had trimmed it to shape and his hair was just as shaggy.
Zorchi was not impressed with my friendly words. When I had finished, he said coldly, "I have had claims against the Company before, Weels. Why is it that this time you make speeches at me?"
I said carefully, "Well, you must admit you are a rather unusual case."
"Case?" He frowned fiercely. "I am no case, Weels. I am Zorchi, if you please."
"Of course, of course. I only mean to say that—"
"That I am a statistic, eh?" He bobbed his head. "Surely. I comprehend. But I am not a statistic, you see. Or, at best, I am a statistic which will not fit into your electronic machines, am I not?"
I admitted, "As I say, you are a rather unusual ca—a rather unusual person, Mr. Zorchi."
He grinned coldly. "Good. We are agreed. Now that we have come to that understanding, are we finished with this interview?"
I coughed. "Mr. Zorchi, I'll be frank with you." He snorted, but I went on, "According to your records, this claim need not be paid. You see, you already have been paid for total disability, both a lump sum and a continuing settlement. There is no possibility of two claims for the loss of your legs, you must realize."
He looked at me with a touch of amusement. "I must?" he asked. "It is odd. I have discussed this, you understand, with many attorneys. The premiums were paid, were they not? The language of the policy is clear, is it not? My legs—would you like to observe the stumps yourself?"
He flung the silken covers off. I averted my eyes from the white-bandaged lower half of his torso, hairy and scrawny and horriblylessthan a man's legs should be.
I said desperately, "Perhaps I spoke too freely. I do not mean, Mr. Zorchi, that we will not pay your claim. The Companyalwayslives up to the letter of its contracts."
He covered himself casually. "Very well. Give the check to my secretary, please. Are you concluded?"
"Not quite." I swallowed. I plunged right in. "Mr. Zorchi, what the hell are you up to? How do you do it? There isn't any fraud, I admit it. You really lost your legs—more than once. You grew new ones. But how? Don't you realize how important this is? If you can do it, why not others? If you are in some way pecu—that is, if the structure of your body is in some way different from that of others, won't you help us find out how so that we can learn from it? It isn't necessary for you to live as you do, you know."
He was looking at me with a hint of interest in his close-set, dull eyes. I continued, "Even if you can grow new legs, do youenjoythe pain of having them cut off? Have you ever stopped to think that some day, perhaps, you will miscalculate, and the wheels of the train, or the truck, or whatever you use, may miss your legs and kill you? That's no way for a man to live, Mr. Zorchi. Why not talk freely to me, let me help you? Why not take the Company into your confidence, instead of living by fraud and deceit and—"
I had gone too far. Livid, he snarled, "Ass! That will cost your Company, I promise. Is it fraud for me to suffer like this? Do I enjoy it, do you think? Look, ass!" He flung the covers aside again, ripped at the white bandages with his hands—Blood spurted. He uncovered the raw stumps and jerked them at me.
I do not believe any sight of my life shocked me as much as that; it was worse than the Caserta hemp fields, worse than the terriblegonemoment when Marianna died, worse than anything I could imagine.
He raved, "See this fraud, look at it closely! Truly, I grow new legs, but does that make it easier to lose the old? It is the pain of being born, Weels, a pain you will never know! I grow legs, I grow arms, I grow eyes. I will never die! I will live on like a reptile or a fish."
His eyes were staring. Ignoring the blood spurting from his stumps, ignoring my attempts to say something, he pounded his abdomen. "Twelve times I have been cut—do you see even a scar? My appendix, it is bad; it traps filth, and the filth makes me sick. And I have it cut out—and it grows again; and I have it cut out again, and it grows back. And the pain, Weels, the pain never stops!" He flung the robe open, slapped his narrow, hairy chest.
I gasped. Under the scraggly hair was a rubble of boils and wens, breaking and matting the hair as he struck himself in frenzy. "Envy me, Weels!" he shouted. "Envy the man whose body defends itself against everything! I will live forever, I promise it, and I will always be in pain, and someone will pay for every horrible moment of it! Now get out, get out!"
I left under the hating eyes of the sharp-faced secretary who silently led me to the door.
I had put Zorchi through a tantrum and subjected myself to as disagreeable a time as I'd ever had. And I hadn't accomplished a thing. I knew that well enough. And if I hadn't known it by myself, I would have found out.
Gogarty pointed it out to me, in detail. "You're a big disappointment to me," he moaned sourly. "Ah, the hell with it. What were you trying to accomplish, anyway?"
I said defensively, "I thought I might appeal to his altruism. After all, you didn't give me very explicit instructions."
"I didn't tell you to remember to wipe your nose either," he said bitterly. He shook his head, the anger disappearing. "Well," he said disconsolately, "I don't suppose we're any worse off than we were. I guess I'd better try this myself." He must have caught a hopeful anticipatory gleam in my eye, because he said quickly, "Not right now, Wills. You've made that impossible. I'll just have to wait until he cools off."
I said nothing; just stood there waiting for him to let me go. I was sorry things hadn't worked out but, after all, he had very little to complain about. Besides, I wanted to get back to my desk and the folder about Rena dell'Angela. It wasn't so much that I was interested in her as a person, I reminded myself. I was just curious....
Once again, I had to stay curious for a while. Gogarty had other plans for me. Before I knew what was happening, I was on my way out of the office again, this time to visit another Neapolitan hospital, where some of the severely injured in the recent war were waiting final settlement of their claims. It was a hurry-up matter, which had been postponed too many times already; some of the injured urgently required major medical treatment, and the hospital was howling for approval of their claims before they'd begin treatment.
This one was far from a marble palace. It had the appearance of a stucco tenement, and all of the patients were in wards. I was a little surprised to see expediters guarding the entrance.
I asked one of them, "Anything wrong?"
He looked at me with a flicker of astonishment, recognizing the double-breasted Claim Adjuster uniform, surprised, I think, at my asking him a question. "Not as long as we're here, sir," he said.
"I mean, I was wondering what you were doing here."
The surprise became overt. "Vaults," he said succinctly.
I prodded no further. I knew what he meant by vaults, of course. It was part of the Company's beneficent plan for ameliorating the effects of even such tiny wars as the Naples-Sicily affair that those who suffered radiation burns got the best treatment possible. And the best treatment, of course, was suspended animation. The deadly danger of radiation burns lay in their cumulative effect; the first symptoms were nothing, the man was well and able to walk about. Degeneration of the system followed soon, the marrow of the bone gave up on its task of producing white corpuscles, the blood count dropped, the tiny radiant poisons in his blood spread and worked their havoc. If he could be gotten through the degenerative period he might live. But, if he lived, he would still die. That is, if his life processes continued, the radiation sickness would kill him. The answer was to stop the life process, temporarily, by means of the injections and deep-freeze in the vaults. It was used for more than radiation, of course. Marianna, for instance—
Well, anyway, that was what the vaults were. These were undoubtedly just a sort of distribution point, where local cases were received and kept until they could be sent to the main Company vaults up the coast at Anzio.
I wasn't questioning the presence of vaults there; I was only curious why the Company felt they needed guarding.
I found myself so busy, though, that I had no time to think about it. A good many of the cases in this shabby hospital really needed the Company's help. But a great many of them were obvious attempts at fraud.
There was a woman, for instance, in the maternity ward. During the war, she'd had to hide out after the Capodichino bombing and hadn't been able to reach medical service. So her third child was going to be a girl, and she was asking indemnity under the gender-guarantee clause. But she had only Class-C coverage and her first two had been boys; a daughter was permissible in any of the first four pregnancies. She began swearing at me before I finished explaining these simple facts to her.
I walked out of the ward, hot under the collar. Didn't these people realize we were trying to help them? They didn't appear to be aware of it. Only the terribly injured, the radiation cases, the amputees, the ones under anesthetic—only these gave me no arguments, mainly because they couldn't talk.
Most of them were on their way to the vaults, I found. My main job was revision of their policies to provide for immobilization. Inevitably, there are some people who will try to take advantage of anything.
The retirement clause in the basic contract was the joker here. Considering that the legal retirement age under the universal Blue Heaven policy was seventy-five years—calendar years, not metabolic years—there were plenty of invalids who wanted a few years in the vaults for reasons that had nothing to do with health. If they could sleep away two or three decades, they could, they thought, emerge at a physical age of forty or so and live idly off the Company the rest of their lives.
They naturally didn't stop to think that if any such practice became common the Company would simply be unable to pay claims. And they certainly didn't think, or care that, if the Company went bankrupt, the world as we knew it would end.
It was a delicate problem; we couldn't deny them medical care, but we couldn't permit them the vaults unless they were either in clearly urgent need, or were willing to sign an extension waiver to their policies....
I saw plenty of that, that afternoon. The radiation cases were the worst, in that way, because they still could talk and argue. Even while they were being loaded with drugs, even while they could see with their own eyes the blood-count graph dipping lower and lower, they still complained at being asked to sign the waiver.
There was even some fear of the vaults themselves—though every living human had surely seen the Company's indoctrination films that showed how the injected drugs slowed life processes and inhibited the body's own destructive enzymes; how the apparently lifeless body, down to ambient air temperature, would be slipped into its hermetic plastic sack and stacked away, row on row, far underground, to sleep away the months or years or, if necessary, the centuries. Time meant nothing to the suspendees. It was hard to imagine being afraid of as simple and natural a process as that!
Although I had to admit that the vaults looked a lot like morgues....
I didn't enjoy it. I kept thinking of Marianna. She had feared the vaults too, in the childish, unreasoning, feminine way that was her characteristic. When the Blue Blanket technicians had turned up the diagnosis of leukemia, they had proposed the sure-thing course of putting her under suspension while the slow-acting drugs—specially treated to operate even under those conditions—worked their cure, but she had refused. There had been, they admitted, a ninety-nine and nine-tenths per cent prospect of a cure without suspension....
It just happened that Marianna was in the forlorn one-tenth that died.
I couldn't get her out of my mind. The cases who protested or whined or pleaded or shrieked that they were being tortured and embalmed alive didn't help. I was glad when the afternoon was over and I could get back to the office.
As I came in the door, Gogarty was coming in, too, from the barbershop downstairs. He was freshly shaved and beaming.
"Quitting time, Tom," he said amiably, though his eyes were memorizing the pile of incomplete forms on my desk. "All work and no play, you know." He nudged me. "Not that you need reminding, eh? Still, you ought to tell your girl that she shouldn't call you on office time, Tom."
"Call me? Rena called me?"
He nodded absently, intent on the desk. "Against Company rules, you know. Say, I don't like to push you, but aren't you running a little behind here?"
I said with some irritation, "I don't have much chance to catch up, the way I've been racing around the country, you know. And there's plenty to be done."
He said soothingly, "Now, take it easy, Tom. I was only trying to say that there might be some easier way to handle these things." He speared a form, glanced over it casually. He frowned. "Take this, for instance. The claim is for catching cold as a result of exposure during the evacuation of Cerignola. What would you do with that one?"
"Why—pay it, I suppose."
"And put in the paper work? Suppose it's a phony, Tom? Not one case of coryza in fifty is genuine."
"What would you do?" I asked resentfully.
He said without hesitation, "Send it back with Form CBB-23A192. Ask for laboratory smear-test reports."
I looked over the form. A long letter was attached; it said in more detail than was necessary that there had been no laboratory service during the brief war, at least where the policyholder happened to be, and therefore he could submit only the affidavits of three registered physicians. It looked like a fair claim to me. If it was up to me, I would have paid it automatically.
I temporized. "Suppose it's legitimate?"
"Suppose it is? Look at it this way, Tom. If it's phoney, this will scare him off, and you'd be saving the Company the expense and embarrassment of paying off a fraudulent claim. If it's legitimate, he'll resubmit it—at a time when, perhaps, we won't be so busy. Meanwhile that's one more claim handled and disposed of, for our progress reports to the Home Office."
I stared at him unbelievingly. But he looked back in perfect calm, until my eyes dropped. After all, I thought, he was right in a way. The mountain of work on my desk was certainly a log-jam, and it had to be broken somehow. Maybe rejecting this claim would work some small hardship in an individual case, but what about the hundreds and thousands of others waiting for attention? Wasn't it true that no small hardship to an individual was as serious as delaying all those others?
It was, after all, that very solicitude for the people at large that the Company relied on for its reputation—that, and the iron-clad guarantee of prompt and full settlement.
I said, "I suppose you're right."
He nodded, and turned away. Then he paused. "I didn't mean to bawl you out for that phone call, Tom," he said. "Just tell her about the rule, will you?"
"Sure. Oh, one thing." He waited. I coughed. "This girl, Rena. I don't know much about her, you know. Is she, well, someone you know?"
He said, "Heavens, no. She was making a pest out of herself around here, frankly. She has a claim, but not a very good one. I don't know all the details, because it's encoded, but the machines turned it down automatically. I do know that she, uh—" he sort of half winked—"wants a favor. Her old man is in trouble. I'll look it up for you some time, if you want, and get the details. I think he's in the cooler—that is, the clinic—up at Anzio."
He scratched his plump jowls. "I didn't think it was fair to you for me to have a girl at dinner and none for you; Susan promised to bring someone along, and this one was right here, getting in the way. She said she liked Americans, so I told her you would be assigned to her case." This time he did wink. "No harm, of course. You certainly wouldn't be influenced by any, well, personal relationship, if you happened to get into one. Oh, a funny thing. She seemed to recognize your name."
Thatwas a jolt. "She what?"
Gogarty shrugged. "Well, she reacted to it. 'Thomas Wills,' I said. She'd been acting pretty stand-offish, but she warmed up quick. Maybe she just likes the name, but right then is when she told me she liked Americans."
I cleared my throat. "Mr. Gogarty," I said determinedly, "please get me straight on something. You say this girl's father is in some kind of trouble, and you imply she knows me. I want to know if you've ever had any kind of report, or even heard any kind of rumor, that would make you think that I was in the least sympathetic to any anti-Company groups? I'm aware that there were stories—"
He stopped me. "I never heard any, Tom," he said definitely.
I hesitated. It seemed like a good time to open up to Gogarty; I opened my mouth to start, but I was too late. Susan called him off for what she claimed was an urgent phone call and, feeling let-down, I watched him waddle away.
Because it was, after all, time that I took down my back hair with my boss.
Well, I hadn't done anything too terribly bad—anyway, I hadn'tmeantto do anything bad. And the circumstances sort of explained it, in a way. And it was all in the past, and—
And nothing. I faced the facts. I had spent three solid weeks getting blind drunk, ranting and raving and staggering up to every passer-by who would listen and whining to him that the Company was evil, the Company was murderous, the Company had killed my wife.
There was no denying it. And I had capped it all off one bleary midnight, with a brick through the window of the Company branch office that served my home. It was only a drunken piece of idiocy, I kept telling myself. But it was a drunken piece of idiocy that landed me in jail, that had been permanently indorsed on every one of my policies, that was in the confidential pages of my Company service record. It was a piece of idiocy that anyone might have done. But it would have meant deep trouble for me, if it hadn't been for the intercession of my wife's remote relative, Chief Underwriter Defoe.
It was he who had bailed me out. He had never told me how he had found out that I was in jail. He appeared, read the riot-act to me and got me out. He put me over the coals later, yes, but he'd bailed me out. He'd told me I was acting like a child—and convinced me of it, which was harder. And when he was convinced I had snapped out of it, he personally backed me for an appointment to the Company's school as a cadet Claims Adjuster.
I owed a considerable debt of gratitude to my ex-remote-in-law, Chief Underwriter Defoe.
While I still was brooding, Gogarty came back. He looked unhappy. "Hammond," he said bitterly. "He's missing. Look, was he drunk when you left him last night?" I nodded. "Thought so. Never showed up for work. Not at his quarters. The daily ledger's still open at his office, because there's no responsible person to sign it. So naturally I've got to run out to Caserta now, and what Susan will say—" He muttered away.
I remembered the file that was buried under the papers on my desk, when he mentioned Susan's name.
As soon as he was out of the office, I had it open.
And as soon as I had it open, I stared at it in shock.
The title page of the sheaf inside was headed: Signorina Renata dell'Angela. Age 22; daughter of Benedetto dell'Angela; accepted to general Class-AA; no employment. There were more details.
But across all, in big red letters, was a rubber stamp:Policy Canceled. Reassigned Class-E.
It meant that the sad-eyed Rena was completely uninsurable.
IV
Phone or no phone, I still had her address.
It was still daylight when I got out of the cab, and I had a chance for a good look at the house. It was a handsome place by day; the size of the huge white stucco wall didn't fit theuninsurablenotation on Rena's claim. That wall enclosed a garden; the garden could hardly hold less than an AA house. And Class-Es were ordinarily either sent to public hostels—at the Company's expense, to be sure—or existed on the charity of friends or relatives. And Class-Es seldom had friends in Class-AA houses.
I knocked at the gate. A fat woman, age uncertain but extreme, opened a little panel and peered at me. I asked politely, "Miss dell'Angela?"
The woman scowled. "Che dice?"
I repeated: "May I see Miss dell'Angela? I'm a Claims Adjuster for the Company. I have some business with her in connection with her policies."
"Ha!" said the woman. She left it at that for a moment, pursing her lips and regarding me thoughtfully. Then she shrugged apathetically. "Momento," she said wearily, and left me standing outside the gate.
From inside there was a muttering of unfamiliar voices. I thought I heard a door open, and the sound of steps, but when the fat woman came back she was alone.
Silently she opened the door and nodded me in. I started automatically up the courtyard toward the enclosed house, but she caught my arm and motioned me toward another path. It led down a flowered lane through a grape arbor to what might, at one time, have been a caretaker's hut.
I knocked on the door of the hut, comprehending where Rena dell'Angela lived as a Class-E uninsurable.
Rena herself opened it, her face flushed, her expression surprised—apprehensive, almost, I thought at first. It was the first time I had seen her by daylight. She was—oh, there was no other word. She was lovely.
She said quickly, "Mr. Wills! I didn't expect you."
I said, "You phoned me. I came as soon as I could."
She hesitated. "I did," she admitted. "It was—I'm sorry, Mr. Wills. It was an impulse. I shouldn't have done it."
"What was it, Rena?"
She shook her head. "I am sorry. It doesn't matter. But I am a bad hostess; won't you come in?"
The room behind the door was long and narrow, with worn furniture and a door that led, perhaps, to another room behind. It seemed dusty and, hating myself as a snooping fool, I took careful note that there was a faint aroma of tobacco. I had been quite sure that she didn't smoke, that evening we had met.
She gestured at a chair—there only were two, both pulled up to a crude wooden table, on which were two poured cups of coffee. "Please sit down," she invited.
I reminded myself that it was, after all, none of my business if she chose to entertain friends—even friends who smoked particularly rancid tobacco. And if they preferred not to be around when I came to the door, why, that was their business, not mine. I said cautiously, "I didn't mean to interrupt you."
"Interrupt me?" She saw my eyes on the cups. "Oh—oh, no, Mr. Wills. That other cup is for you, you see. I poured it when Luisa told me you were at the gate. It isn't very good, I'm afraid," she said apologetically.
I made an effort to sip the coffee; it was terrible. I set it down. "Rena, I just found out about your policies. Believe me, I'm sorry. I hadn't known about it, when we had dinner together; I would have—Well, I don't know what I would have done. There isn't much I can do, truthfully; I don't want you thinking I have any great power. But I wish I had known—I might not have made you cry, at any rate."
She smiled an odd sort of smile. "That wasn't the reason, Mr. Wills."
"Please call me Tom. Well, then, why did you cry?"
"It is of no importance. Please."
I coughed and tried a different tack. "You understand that I do havesomeauthority. And I would like to help you if I can—if you'll let me."
"Let you? How could I prevent it?"
Her eyes were deep and dark. I shook myself and pulled the notes I'd made on her policies from my pocket. In the most official voice I could manage, I said, "You see, there may be some leeway in interpreting the facts. As it stands, frankly, there isn't much hope. But if you'll give me some information—"
"Certainly."
"All right. Now, your father—Benedetto dell'Angela. He was a casualty of the war with Sicily; he got a dose of radiation, and he is at present in a low-metabolism state in the clinic at Anzio, waiting for the radiogens to clear out of his system. Is that correct?"
"It is what the Company's report said," she answered.
Her tone was odd. Surely she wasn't doubting a Company report!
"As his dependent, Rena, you applied for subsistence benefits on his Blue Blanket policies, as well as war-risk benefits under the Blue Bolt. Both applications were refused; the Blue Blanket because your father is technically not hospitalized; the Blue Bolt, as well as all your other personal policies, was cancelled, because of—" I stuttered over it—"of activities against the best interest of the Company. Specifically, giving aid and comfort to a known troublemaker whose name is given here as Slovetski." I showed her the cancellation sheet I had stolen from the files.
She shrugged. "This much I know, Tom," she said.
"Why?" I demanded. "This man is believed to have been instrumental in inciting the war with Sicily!"
She flared, "Tom, that's a lie! Slovetski is an old friend of my father's—they studied together in Berlin, many years ago. He is utterly, completely against war—any war!"
I hesitated. "Well, let's put that aside. But you realize that, in view of this, the Company can maintain—quite properly in a technical sense—that you contributed to the war, and therefore you can't collect Blue Bolt compensation for a war you helped bring about. You were warned, you see. You can't even say that you didn't know what you were doing."
"Tom," Rena's voice was infinitely patient and sad. "I knew what I was doing."
"In that case, Rena, you have to admit that it seems fair enough. Still, perhaps we can get something for you—even if only a refund of your premiums. The Company doesn't always follow the letter of the law, there are always exceptions, so—"
Her expression stopped me. She was smiling, but it was the tortured smile of Prometheus contemplating the cosmic jest that was ripping out his vitals.
I asked uncertainly, "Don't you believe me?"
"Believe you, Tom? Indeed I do." She laughed out loud that time. "After what happened to my father, I assure you, Tom, I am certain that the Company doesn't always follow the law."
I shook my head quickly. "No, you don't understand. I—"
"I understand quite well." She studied me for a moment, then patted my hand. "Let us talk of something else."
"Won't you tell me why your policy was cancelled?"
She said evenly, "It's in the file. Because I was a bad girl."
"But why? Why—"
"Because, Tom. Please, no more. I know you are trying to be just as helpful as you can, but there is no help you can give."
"You don't make it easy, Rena."
"It can't be easy! You see, I admit everything. I was warned. I helped an old friend whom the Company wanted to—shall we say—treat for radiation sickness? So there is no question that my policy can be cancelled. All legal. It is not the only one of its kind, you know. So why discuss it?"
"Why shouldn't we?"
Her expression softened. "Because—because we do not agree. And never shall."
I stared at her blankly. She was being very difficult. Really, I shouldn't be bothering with her, someone I barely knew, someone I hadn't even heard of until—
That reminded me. I said, "Rena, how did you know my name?"
Her eyes went opaque. "Know your name, Tom? Why, Mr. Gogarty introduced us."
"No. You knew of me before that. Come clean, Rena. Please."
She said flatly, "I don't know what you mean." She was beginning to act agitated. I had seen her covertly glancing at her watch several times; now she held it up openly—ostentatiously, in fact. "I am sorry, but you'd better go," she said with a hint of anxiety in her voice. "Please excuse me."
Well, there seemed no good reason to stay. So I went—not happily; not with any sense of accomplishment; and fully conscious of the figure I cut to the unseen watcher in the other room, the man whose coffee I had usurped.
Because there was no longer a conjecture about whether there had been such a person or not. I had heard him sneeze three times.
Back at my hotel, a red light was flashing on the phone as I let myself in. I unlocked the play-back with my room key and got a recorded message that Gogarty wanted me to phone him at once.
He answered the phone on the first ring, looking like the wrath of God. It took me a moment to recognize the symptoms; then it struck home.
The lined gray face, the jittery twitching of the head, the slow, tortured movements; here was a man with a classic textbook case of his ailment. The evidence was medically conclusive. He had been building up to a fancy drinking party, and something made him stop in the middle.
There were few tortures worse than a grade-A hangover, but one of those that qualified was the feeling of having the drink die slowly, going through the process of sobering up without the anesthetic of sleep.
He winced as the scanning lights from the phone hit him. "Wills," he said sourly. "About time. Listen, you've got to go up to Anzio. We've got a distinguished visitor, and he wants to talk to you."
"Me?"
"You! He knows you—his name is Defoe."
The name crashed over me; I hadn't expected that, of all things. He was a member of the Council of Underwriters! I thought they never ventured far from the Home Office. In fact, I thought they never had a moment to spare from the awesome duties of running the Company.
Gogarty explained. "He appeared out of nowhere at Carmody Field. I was still in Caserta! Just settling down to a couple of drinks with Susan, and they phoned me to say Chief Underwriter Defoe is on my doorstep!"
I cut in, "What does he want?"
Gogarty puffed his plump cheeks. "How do I know? He doesn't like the way things are going, I guess. Well, I don't like them either! But I've been twenty-six years with the Company, and if he thinks.... Snooping and prying. There are going to be some changes in the office, I can tell you. Somebody's been passing on all kinds of lying gossip and—" He broke off and stared at me calculatingly as an idea hit him.
Then he shook his head. "No. Couldn't be you, Wills, could it? You only got here, and Defoe's obviously been getting this stuff for weeks. Maybe months. Still—Say, how did you come to know him?"
It was none of his business. I said coldly, "At the Home Office. I guess I'll take the morning plane up to Anzio, then."
"The hell you will. You'll take the night train. It gets you there an hour earlier." Gogarty jerked his head righteously—then winced and clutched his temple. He said miserably, "Oh, damn. Tom, I don't like all of this. I think something happened to Hammond."
I repeated, "Happened? What could happen to him?"
"I don't know. But I found out a few things. He's been seen with some mighty peculiar people in Caserta. What's this about somebody with a gun waiting at the office for him when you were there?"
It took a moment for me to figure out what he was talking about. "Oh," I said, "you mean the man at the car? I didn't know he had a gun, for certain."
"I do," Gogarty said shortly. "The expediters tried to pick him up today, to question him about Hammond. He shot his way out."
I told Gogarty what I knew, although it wasn't much. He listened abstractedly and, when I had finished, he sighed. "Well, that's no help," he grumbled. "Better get ready to catch your train."
I nodded and reached to cut off the connection. He waved half-heartedly. "Oh, yes," he added, "give my regards to Susan if you see her."
"Isn't she here?"
He grimaced. "Your friend Defoe said he needed a secretary. He requisitioned her."
I boarded the Anzio train from the same platform where I had seen Zorchi dive under the wheels. But this was no sleek express; it was an ancient three-car string that could not have been less than fifty years out of date. The cars were not even air-conditioned.
Sleep was next to impossible, so I struck up a conversation with an expediter-officer. He was stand-offish at first but, when he found out I was a Claims Adjuster, he mellowed and produced some interesting information.
It was reasonable that Defoe would put aside his other duties and make a quick visit to Anzio, because Anzio seemed to need someone to do something about it pretty badly. My officer was part of a new levy being sent up there; the garrison was being doubled; there had been trouble. He was vague about what kind of "trouble" it had been, but it sounded like mob violence. I mentioned Caserta and the near-riot I had been in; the officer's eyes hooded over, and about five minutes after that he pointedly leaned back and pulled his hat over his eyes. Evidently it was not good form to discuss actual riots.
I accepted the rebuke, but I was puzzled in my mind as I tried to get some sleep for myself.
What kind of a place was this Naples, where mobs rioted against the Company and even intelligent-seeming persons like Renata dell'Angela appeared to have some reservations about it?
V
I slept, more or less, for an hour or so in that cramped coach seat. I was half asleep when the train-expediter nudged my elbow and said, "Anzio."
It was early—barely past daybreak. It was much too early to find a cab. I got directions from a drowsing stationmaster and walked toward the vaults.
The "clinic," as the official term went, was buried in the feet of the hills just beyond the beaches. I was astonished at the size of it. Not because it was so large; on the contrary. It was, as far as I could see, only a broad, low shed.
Then it occurred to me that the vaults were necessarily almost entirely underground, for the sake of economy in keeping them down to the optimum suspendee temperature. It was safe enough and simple enough to put a man in suspended animation but, as I understood it, it was necessary to be sure that the suspendees never got much above fifty degrees temperature for any length of time. Above that, they had an unwelcome tendency to decay.
This was, I realized, the first full-scale "clinic" I had ever seen. I had known that the Company had hundreds, perhaps thousands, of them scattered all over the world.
I had heard that the Company had enough of them, mostly in out-of-the-way locations, to deep-freeze the entire human race at once, though that seemed hardly reasonable.
I had even heard some ugly, never-quite-made-clear stories aboutwhythe Company had so many clinics ... but when people began hinting at such ridiculous unpleasantness, I felt it was my duty to make it clear that I wanted to hear no subversive talk. So I had never got the details—and certainly would never have believed them for a moment if I had.
It was very early in the morning, as I say, but it seemed that I was not the first to arrive at the clinic. On the sparse grass before the main entrance, half a dozen knots of men and women were standing around apathetically. Some of them glared at me as I came near them, for reasons I did not understand; others merely stared.
I heard a hoarse whisper as I passed one group of middle-aged women. One of them was saying, "Benedetto non é morte." She seemed to be directing it to me; but it meant nothing. The only comment that came to my somewhat weary mind was, "So what if Benedetto isn't dead?"
A huge armed expediter, yawning and scratching, let me in to the executive office. I explained that I had been sent for by Mr. Defoe. I had to wait until Mr. Defoe was ready to receive me and was finally conducted to a suite of rooms.
This might have once been an authentic clinic; it had the aseptic appearance of a depressing hospital room. One for, say, Class-Cs with terminal myasthenia. Now, though, it had been refitted as a private guest suite, with an attempt at luxurious drapes and deep stuffed armchairs superimposed on the basic adjustable beds and stainless steel plumbing.
I hadn't seen Defoe in some time, but he hadn't changed at all. He was, as always, the perfect model of a Company executive of general-officer rank. He was formal, but not unyielding. He was tall, distinguished-gray at the temples, spare, immaculately outfitted in the traditional vest and bow tie.
I recalled our first meeting. He was from the side of Marianna's family that she talked about, and she fluttered around for three whole days, checking our Blue Plate policies for every last exotic dish we could squeeze out to offer him, planning the television programs allowed under our entertainment policies, selecting the most respectable of our friends—"acquaintances" would be a better description; Marianna didn't make friends easily—to make up a dinner party. He'd arrived at the stroke of the hour he was due, and had brought with him what was undoubtedly his idea of a princely gift for newly-weds—a paid-up extra-coverage maternity benefit rider on our Blue Blanket policies.
We thanked him effusively. And, for my part, sincerely. That was before I had known Marianna's views on children; she had no intentions of raising a family.
As I walked in on Defoe in his private suite at the clinic, he was standing with his back to me, at a small washstand, peering at his reflection in a mirror. He appeared to have finished shaving. I rubbed my own bristled chin uneasily.
He said over his shoulder, "Good morning, Thomas. Sit down."
I sat on the edge of an enormous wing chair. He pursed his lips, stretched the skin under his chin and, when he seemed perfectly satisfied the job was complete, he said as though he were continuing a conversation, "Fill me in on your interview with Zorchi, Thomas."
It was the first I'd known he'd everheardof Zorchi. I hesitantly began to tell him about the meeting in the hospital. It did not, I knew, do me very much credit, but it simply didn't occur to me to try to make my own part look better. I suppose that if I thought of the matter at all, I simply thought that Defoe would instantly detect any attempt to gloss things over. He hardly seemed to be paying attention to me, though; he was preoccupied with the remainder of his morning ritual—carefully massaging his face with something fragrant, brushing his teeth with a maddening, old-fashioned insistence on careful strokes, combing his hair almost strand by strand.
Then he took a small bottle with a daub attached to the stopper and touched it to the distinguished gray at his temples.
I spluttered in the middle of a word; I had never thought of the possibility that the handsomely grayed temples of the Company's senior executives, as inevitable as the vest or the watch chain, were equally a part of the uniform! Defoe gave me a long inquiring look in the mirror; I coughed and went on with a careful description of Zorchi's temper tantrum.
Defoe turned to me and nodded gravely. There was neither approval nor disapproval. He had asked for information and the information had been received.
He pressed a communicator button and ordered breakfast. The microphone must have been there, but it was invisible. He sat down at a small, surgical-looking table, leaned back and folded his hands.
"Now," he said, "tell me what happened in Caserta just before Hammond disappeared."
Talking to Defoe had something of the quality of shouting down a well. I collected my thoughts and told him all I knew on the riot at the branch office.
While I was talking, Defoe's breakfast arrived. He didn't know I hadn't eaten anything, of course—I say "of course" because I know he couldn't have known, he didn't ask. I looked at it longingly, but all my looking didn't alter the fact that there was only one plate, one cup, one set of silverware.
He ate his breakfast as methodically as he'd brushed his teeth. I doubt if it took him five minutes. Since I finished the Caserta story in about three, the last couple of minutes were in dead silence, Defoe eating, me sitting mute as a disconnected jukebox.
Then he pushed the little table away, lit a cigarette and said, "You may smoke if you wish, Thomas. Come in, Susan."
He didn't raise his voice; and when, fifteen seconds later, Susan Manchester walked in, he didn't look at all impressed with the efficiency of his secretary, his intercom system, or himself. The concealed microphone, it occurred to me, had heard him order breakfast and request his secretary to walk in. It had undoubtedly heard—and most probably recorded—every word I had said.
How well they did things on the upper echelon of the Company!
Susan looked—different. She was as blonde and pretty as ever. But she wasn't bubbly. She smiled at me in passing and handed Defoe a typed script, which he scanned carefully.
He asked, "Nothing new on Hammond?"
"No, sir," she said.
"All right. You may leave this." She nodded and left. Defoe turned back to me. "I have some news for you, Thomas. Hammond has been located."
"That's good," I said. "Not too badly hung over, I hope."
He gave me an arctic smile. "Hardly. He was found by a couple of peasants who were picking grapes. He's dead."
V
Hammond dead! He had had his faults, but he was an officer of the Company and a man I had met. Dead!
I asked, "How? What happened?"
"Perhaps you can tell me that, Thomas," said Defoe.
I sat startledly erect, shocked by the significance of the words. I said hotly, "Damn it, Mr. Defoe, you know I had nothing to do with this! I've been all over the whole thing with you and I thought you were on my side! Just because I said a lot of crazy things after Marianna died doesn't mean I'm anti-Company—and it certainly doesn't mean I'd commit murder. If you think that, then why the devil did you put me in cadet school?"
Defoe merely raised his hand by bending the wrist slightly; it was enough to stop me, though. "Gently, Thomas. I don't think you did it—that much should be obvious. And I put you in cadet school because I had work for you."
"But you said I knew something I was holding back."
Defoe waggled the hand reprovingly. "I said you might be able to tell me who killed Hammond. And so you might—but not yet. I count heavily on you for help in this area, Thomas. There are two urgent tasks to be done. Hammond's death—" he paused and shrugged, and the shrug was all of Hammond's epitaph—"is only an incident in a larger pattern; we need to work out the pattern itself."
He glanced again at the typed list Susan had handed him. "I find that I can stay in the Naples area for only a short time; the two tasks must be done before I leave. I shall handle one myself. The other I intend to delegate to you.
"First we have the unfortunate situation in regard to the state of public morale. Unfortunate? Perhaps I should say disgraceful. There is quite obviously a nucleus of troublemakers at work, Thomas, and Gogarty has not had the wit to find them and take the appropriate steps. Someone else must. Second, this Zorchi is an unnecessary annoyance. I do not propose to let the Company be annoyed, Thomas. Which assignment would you prefer?"
I said hesitantly, "I don't know if Mr. Gogarty would like me to—"
"Gogarty is an ass! If he had not blundered incessantly since he took over the district, I should not have had to drop important work to come here."
I thought for a second. Digging out an undercover ring of troublemakers didn't sound particularly easy. On the other hand, I had already tried my luck with Zorchi.
"Perhaps you'd better try Zorchi," I said.
"Try?" Defoe allowed himself to look surprised. "As you wish. I think you will learn something from watching me handle it, Thomas. Shall we join Signore Zorchi now?"
"He'shere?"
Defoe said impatiently, "Of course, Thomas. Come along."
Zorchi's secretary was there, too. He was in a small anteroom, sitting on a hard wooden chair; as we passed him, I saw the hostility in his eyes. He didn't say a word.
Beyond him, in an examination room, was Zorchi, slim, naked and hideous, sitting on the edge of a surgical cot and trying not to look ill at ease. He had been shaved from head to knee stumps. Esthetically, at least, it had been a mistake. I never saw such a collection of skin eruptions on a human.
He burst out, faster than my language-school Italian could follow, in a stream of argument and abuse. Defoe listened icily for a moment, then shut him up in Italian as good as his own. "Answer questions; otherwise keep quiet. I will not warn you again."
I don't know if even Defoe could have stopped Zorchi under normal conditions. But there is something about being naked in the presence of fully dressed opponents that saps the will; and I guessed, too, that the shaving had made Zorchi feel nakeder than ever before in his life. I could see why he'd worn a beard and I wished he still had it.
"Dr. Lawton," said Defoe, "have you completed your examination of the insured?"
A youngish medical officer of the Company said, "Yes, sir. I have the slides and reports right here; they just came up from the laboratory." He handed a stapled collection of photographic prints and papers to Defoe, who took his own good time to examine them while the rest of us stood and waited.
Defoe finally put the papers down and nodded. "In a word, this bears out our previous discussion."
Lawton nodded. "If you will observe his legs, you will see that the skin healing is complete; already a blastema has formed and—"
"I know," Defoe said impatiently. "Signore Zorchi, I regret to say that I have bad news for you."
Zorchi waved his hand defiantly. "Youare the bad news."
Defoe ignored him. "You have a grave systemic imbalance. There is great danger of serious ill effects."
"To what?" snarled Zorchi. "The Company's bank account?"
"No, Zorchi. To your life." Defoe shook his head. "There are indications of malignancy."
"Malignancy?" Zorchi looked startled. "What kind? Do you mean cancer?"
"Exactly." Defoe patted his papers. "You see, Zorchi, healthy human flesh does not grow like a salamander's tail."
The phone rang; impeccable in everything, Defoe waited while Dr. Lawton nervously answered it. Lawton said a few short words, listened for a moment and hung up, looking worried.
He said: "The crowd outside is getting rather large. That was the expediter-captain from the main gate. He says—"
"I presume he has standing orders," Defoe said. "We need not concern ourselves with that, need we?"
"Well—" The doctor looked unhappy.
"Now, Zorchi," Defoe went on, dismissing Lawton utterly, "do you enjoy life?"
"I despise it!" Zorchi spat to emphasize how much.
"But you cling to it. You would not like to die, would you? Worse still, you would not care to live indefinitely with carcinoma eating you piece by piece."
Zorchi just glowered suspiciously.
"Perhaps we can cure you, however," Defoe went on reflectively. "It is by no means certain. I don't want to raise false hopes. But there is the possibility—"
"The possibility that you will cure me of collecting on my policies, eh?" Zorchi demanded belligerently. "You are crazy, Defoe. Never!"
Defoe looked at him for a thoughtful moment. To Lawton, he said: "Have you this man's claim warranty? It has the usual application for medical treatment, I presume?" He nodded as Lawton confirmed it. "You see, Mr. Zorchi? As a matter of routine, no claim can be paid unless the policyholder submits to our medical care. You signed the usual form, so—"
"One moment! You people never put me through this before! Did you change the contract on me?"
"No, Signore Zorchi. The same contract, but this time we will enforce it. I think I should warn you of something, though."
He riffled through the papers and found a photographic print to show Zorchi. "This picture isn't you, Signore. It is a picture of a newt. The doctor will explain it to you."
The print was an eight-by-ten glossy of a little lizard with something odd about its legs. Puzzled, Zorchi held it as though the lizard were alive and venomous. But as the doctor spoke, the puzzlement turned into horror and fury.
"What Mr. Defoe means," said Lawton, "is that totipotency—that is, the ability to regenerate lost tissues, as you can, even when entire members are involved—is full of unanswered riddles. We have found, for instance, that X-ray treatment on your leg helps a new leg to form rapidly, just as it does on the leg of the salamanders. The radiation appears to stimulate the formation of the blastema, which—well, never mind the technical part. It speeds things up."
His eyes gleamed with scientific interest. "But we tried the experiment of irradiating limbs that had not been severed. It worked the same way, oddly enough. New limbs were generatedeven though the old ones were still there. That's why the salamander in the photo has four hands on one of its limbs—nine legs altogether, counting that half-formed one just beside the tail. Curious-looking little beast, isn't it?"
Defoe cleared his throat. "I only mention, Signore, that the standard treatment for malignancy is X-radiation."
Zorchi's eyes flamed—rage battling it out with terror. He said shrilly, "But you can't make a laboratory animal out of me! I'm a policyholder!"
"Nature did it, Signore Zorchi, not us," Defoe said.
Zorchi's eyes rolled up in his head and closed; for a moment, I thought he had fainted and leaped forward to catch him rather than let his legless body crash to the floor. But he hadn't fainted. He was muttering, half aloud, sick with fear, "For the love of Mary, Defoe! Please, please, I beg you! Please!"
It was too much for me. I said, shaking with rage, "Mr. Defoe, you can't force this man to undergo experimental radiation that might make a monster out of him! I insist that you reconsider!"
Defoe threw his head back. "What, Thomas?" he snapped.
I said firmly, "He has no one here to advise him—I'll take the job. Zorchi, listen to me! You've signed the treatment application and he's right enough about that—you can't get out of it.But you don't have to take this treatment!Every policyholder has the right to refuse any new and unguaranteed course of treatment, no matter what the circumstances. All you've got to do is agree to go into suspension in the va—in the clinic here, pending such time as your condition can be infallibly cured. Do it, man! Don't let them make you a freak—demand suspension! What have you got to lose?"
I never saw a man go so to pieces as Zorchi, when he realized how nearly Defoe had trapped him into becoming a guinea pig. Whimpering thanks to me, he hastily signed the optional agreement for suspended animation and, as quickly as I could, I left him there.
Defoe followed me. We passed the secretary in the anteroom while Dr. Lawton was explaining the circumstances to him; the man was stricken with astonishment, almost too paralyzed to sign the witnessing form Defoe had insisted on. I knew the form well—I had been about to sign one for Marianna when, at the last moment, she decided against the vaults in favor of the experimental therapy that hadn't worked.
Outside in the hall, Defoe stopped and confronted me. I braced myself for the blast to end all blasts.
I could hardly believe my eyes. The great stone face was smiling!
"Thomas," he said inexplicably, "that was masterful. I couldn't have done better myself."
VI
We walked silently through the huge central waiting room of the clinic.
There should have been scores of relatives of suspendees milling around, seeking information—there was, I knew, still a steady shipment of suspendees coming in from the local hospitals; I had seen it myself. But there were hardly more than a dozen or so persons in sight, with a single clerk checking their forms and answering their questions.
It was too quiet. Defoe thought so, too; I saw his frown.
Now that I had had a few moments to catch my breath, I realized that I had seen a master judoist at work. It was all out of the textbooks—as a fledgling Claims Adjuster, I had had the basic courses in handling difficult cases—but not one man in a million could apply textbook rules as skillfully and successfully as Defoe did with Zorchi.
Push a man hard and he will lunge back; push him hard enough and persistently enough, and he will lunge back farther than his vision carries him, right to the position you planned for him in the first place. And I, of course, had been only a tool in Defoe's hand; by interceding for Zorchi, I had tricked the man into the surrender Defoe wanted.
And he had complimented me for it!
I couldn't help wondering, though, whether the compliment Defoe gave me was part of some still subtler scheme....
Defoe nodded curtly to the expediter-captain at the door, who saluted and pressed the teleswitch that summoned Defoe's limousine.
Defoe turned to me. "I have business in Rome and must leave at once. You will have to certify Zorchi's suspension this afternoon; since I won't be here, you'll have to come back to the clinic for it. After that, Thomas, you can begin your assignment."
I said uncertainly, "What—where shall I begin?"
One eyebrow lifted a trifle. "Where? Wherever you think proper, Thomas. Or must I handle this myself?"
The proper answer, and the one I longed to make, was "Yes." Instead I said, "Not at all, Mr. Defoe. It's only that I didn't even know there was an undercover group until you told me about it a few moments ago; I don't know exactly where to start. Gogarty never mentioned—"
"Gogarty," he cut in, "is very likely to be relieved as District Administrator before long. I should like to replace him with someone already on the scene—" he glanced at me to be sure I understood—"provided, that is, that I can find someone of proven competence. Someone who has the ability to handle this situation without the necessity of my personal intervention."
The limousine arrived then, with an armed expediter riding beside the chauffeur. Defoe allowed me to open the door for him and follow him in.
"Do you understand me?" he asked as the driver started off.
"I think so," I said.
"Good. I do not suppose that Gogarty has given you any information about the malcontents in this area."
"No."
"It may be for the best; his information is clearly not good." Defoe stared broodingly out the window at the silent groups of men and women on the grass before the clinic. "Your information is there," he said as they passed out of sight. "Learn what you can. Act when you know enough. And, Thomas—"
"Yes?"
"Have you given thought to your future?"
I shifted uncomfortably. "Well, I've only been a Claims Adjuster a little while, you know. I suppose that perhaps I might eventually get promoted, even become a District Administrator—"
He looked at me impersonally. "Dream higher," he advised.
I stood watching after Defoe's limousine, from the marquee of the hotel where he had left me to take a room and freshen up.Dream higher.He had the gift of intoxication.
Higher than a District Administrator! It could mean only—the Home Office.
Well, it was not impossible, after all. The Home Office jobs had to go to someone; the super-men who held them now—the Defoes and the Carmodys and the dozen or more others who headed up departments or filled seats on the Council of Underwriters—couldn't live forever. And the jobs had to be filled by someone.
Why not me? Only one reason, really. I was not a career man. I hadn't had the early academy training from adolescence on; I had come to the service of the Company itself relatively late in life. The calendar legislated against me.
Of course, I thought to myself, I was in a pretty good position, in a way, because of Defoe's evident interest in me. With him helping and counseling me, it might be easier.
I thought that and then I stopped myself, shocked. I was thinking in terms of personal preferment. That was not the Company way! If I had learned anything in my training, I had learned that Advancement was on merit alone.
Advancementhadto be on merit alone ... else the Company became an oligarchy, deadly and self-perpetuating.
Shaken, I sat in the dingy little hotel room that was the best the town of Anzio had for me and opened my little Black Book. I thumbed through the fine-printed pages of actuarial tables and turned to the words of Millen Carmody, Chief Underwriter, in the preface. They were the words that had been read to me and the others at our graduation at the Home Office, according to the tradition: