Robert Silverberg - Passport to Sirius

Consumer Sixth Class David Carman watched the yellow snake that was the morning telefax sheet come rippling from the wall slot of his bachelor flat. The folds of plastic-impregnated tape slithered into the receiving tray, and Carman surveyed them glumly. He knew there would only be more bad news—more tales of defeat in the Sirian war, more heralding of price increases on the consumer front.

After a moment of hesitation Carman gathered up the telefax spool and slipped it into the scanner-reader. He shuddered as the first news appeared on the screen.

COSTLY SETBACK IN SIRIUS

War Sector, 14 Nov (via subradio)—A Sirian pitchfork maneuver hurled Earth lines back today in the battle for Sirius IV. The sudden alien thrust cost Earth eight destroyers and more than a hundred casualties.

The push began, according to a front-lines communique, when eleven Sirian battle cruisers initiated diversionary tactics in orbit around the Earth base on Sirius IV’s seventh moon. Bringing in a battalion of mosquito ships next, the aliens successfully—

Morosely Carman thumbed his weary eyes and moved the scanner further along. All these war stories were pretty much alike, he thought. And the telefax reveled in detailed descriptions of each offensive and defensive tactic. Carman knew nothing of war-making; the details bored him.

But the next item was hardly more cheering.

PRICE INDEX TO JUMP AGAIN

Lower Urb-district, 16 Nov—Consumer prices are due for another increase spiral as a result of the severe setback suffered by Terran forces in the Sirian sector. Economic Regulator Harrison Morch revealed this morning that a down-the-line 5% increase is likely.

“We tried to hold the line,” commented Regulator Morch. “The inflationary trend was too strong to buck, however. It is to be hoped that conclusion of hostages will soon bring about a reversion to peacetime living standards and—”

With an angry, impatient gesture, Carman blanked the screen. There was little sense spending good money subscribing to the ’fax service if it only brought bad news.

Things hadn’t been this bad a year ago, before the war started, he thought, as he dialed breakfast and took his seat by the dispensall. He had even been thinking of applying for a marriage permit, then. Now, of course, it was out of the question; his economic status was totally altered. And Sally, who worked for the Bureau of Extraterreslial Affairs, had received a pay boost that put her entirely beyond Carman’s aspirations. She was Third Class, now, and would soon marry a wealthy bureau official.

Carman broodingly munched his somewhat dry algae omelet. He was thirty-three, and not getting younger. He was too pale, too thin, his eyes too close-set, his hair flowing sparse. And it seemed that whenever he got some money saved and looked around to better his position, along came some war to send prices shooting up and cripple his savings. Five years ago there had been that thing in Procyon, and then a year or two of peace followed by a scuffle out near Proxima Centauri. And now Sirius.

You can’t win, he thought. He finished breakfast mechanically, dropped the dishes in the disposal, and selected his second-best suit with a quick, bitter jab at the wardrobe control buttons.

It came issuing forth: gray crepe, with dark blue trim. The jacket was getting tattered at the elbows.

I’d better buy a new suit, Carman decided, as he stepped out on the pickup platform to hail a jet-cab. Before clothing prices get astronomical.

He reached the office at 0700 that morning, with dawn barely brightening the late autumn sky. Carman worked as a sorter in the permit-processing department of the Confederation Passport Office, and so as a government employee had little recourse when the periodic inflation spirals came; he could hardly go on strike against the Confederation.

A good-sized batch of passport applications had already accumulated at his receiving tray. Carman slid easily into the seat, flashed bright but hollow smiles at the five or six fellow workers nearest him, and grabbed at the top sheet of the stack. He estimated quickly that 180 applications had arrived so far. They would be pouring in at a rate of seven a minute the rest of the day.

He computed:

If I process one form every six seconds, ten a minute, I’ll gain three per minute on them. Which means I’ll catch up with them in about an hour.

If he kept up the ten-a-minute pace, he’d be free to take short breathers later on. This was one of the games he played to make his dreary work more palatable.

The first application was from Consumer Second Class.

Leebig D. Quellen and family; Consumer Second Class Ouellen wanted to visit the Ganymede outpost next summer. Carman plunged the application into the bin stencil-labelled 14a with his left hand, and with his right took another from the waiting stack. Sort with the left, grab with the right. Carman swayed rhythmically in his seat as he fell into the pattern of the day’s work.

After a while he began hitting them twelve to a minute, sometimes thirteen. By 0757 his tray was empty. He sighed. Eight seconds of free time, now, until the next permit reared its ugly head.

Sort, grab… sort, grab/ it was dull but essentially simple work, in a mechanical way. It scarcely taxed his brain. But he was paid accordingly: $163 a week, barely a subsistence wage before the last spiral. And now—

1030 came. Break time. Carman stretched and rose, noticing angrily that the girl in the upstairs receiving room had slipped three applications in after break time sounded. She was always pulling tricks like that.

Carman had long since reduced break time to a ritual. He crossed the office to the cleanall and held his hands in the energizing bath until his fingertips were wiped clean of their accumulation of stylus grime; then he glanced out the single big window at the crowded city, turned, and smiled at Montano, the heavy-set fellow who had occupied the next desk for the six years Carman had worked for the Passport Office.

“Nice day,” Montano said. “For November.”

“Yes.”

“See the morning ’fax? Looks like another upping for prices.”

Carman nodded unhappily. “I saw. Don’t know how we’ll manage.”

“Oh, we’ll get along. We always do. The wife’s due for a raise soon anyway.” Montano’s wife pushed buttons in a car autofactory. Somehow she seemed to be due for a raise almost every other week.

“That’s nice,” Carman said.

“Yeah.”

“Does she think cars are going up?”

“Damn right,” Montano said. “Ford-Chrysler’s boosting the stock model to six thousand next month. Need turbogenerators for the war effort, they say. We already got our order in at the old price. You better buy fast if you want one, Carman. Save five hundred bucks now if you’re smart.”

“I don’t need a new car,” Carman said.

“Better get anything you need now, anyway. Everything’s going up. Always does, wartime.”

The bell tone announced the end of break time. Carman reached his desk just in time to see a passport application come fluttering down, followed seconds later by another.

“Demons take that girl,” he muttered softly. She always cut her break short to plague him with extra work. Now she was six—no, seven—ahead of him.

Justin C. Froelich and family, of Minnetonka, wished permission to visit Pluto next July. Wearily, Carman dropped Justin C. Froelich’s application in the proper bin, and reached for the next.

He was seething inwardly, cursing the Passport Office, the girl upstairs, inflation, Economic Regulator Morch, and the world in general. It seemed to be a rat-race with no exit from the treadmill.