Damon Knight: Orbit 14

“It’s time to go already,” she said.

“Wait a minute—I want to finish my coffee.”

“How was work?”

“Fine,” he said. .

“You have a lot to do there?”

“Oh, God, yes.” He remembered the crowded desk that had been waiting for him when he returned from the creativity meeting, the supervision of workers for whom he had been given responsibility without authority, the hours spent with Fields drawing up the plan which, just before he left, had been vetoed by Mr. Freeling. “I don’t think there’s any purpose in most of it,” he said, “but there’s plenty to do.”

“You shouldn’t talk like that,” his wife said, “you’ll lose your job.”

“I don’t, when I’m there.”

“I’ve got nothing to do,” she said. It was as though the words themselves had forced their way between her lips.

He said, “That can’t be true.”

“I made the beds, and I dusted and swept, and it was all finished a couple of hours after you had gone. There’s nothing.”

“You could read,” he said.

“I can’t—I’m too nervous.”

“Well, you could have prepared a better lunch than this.”

“That’s nothing,” she said. “Just nothing.” She was suddenly angry, and it struck him, as he looked at her, that she was a stranger, that he knew Fields and Miss Fawn and even Mr. Freeling better than he knew her.

“The morning’s over,” he said. “I’m sorry I can’t give it back to you, but I can’t; what I did—that was nothing too.”

“Please,” she said, “won’t you go? Having you here makes me so nervous.”

He said, “Try and find something to do.”

“All right.”

He wiped his mouth on the paper napkin she had given him and took a step toward the parlor. To his surprise she walked with him, not detaining him, but seeming to savor his company now that she had deprived herself of it. “Do you remember when we woke up?” she said. “You didn’t know at first that you were supposed to dress yourself.”

“I’m still not sure of it.”

“Oh, you know what I mean.”

“Yes,” he said, and knew that he did, but that she did not.

The parking lot was more rutted than he had remembered; he drove slowly and carefully. The outbuilding had been tom down, and another car, startlingly shiny (Forlesen did not believe his own had ever been that well polished, not even when he had first looked out the window at it), had his old place; he was forced to take another, farther from the plant. Several other people, he noticed, seemed to have gone home for lunch as he had—some he knew, having shared meeting rooms with them. He had never punched out on the beige clock, and did not punch in.

There was a boy seated at his desk, piling new schoolbooks on it from a cardboard box on the floor. Forlesen said hello, and the boy said that his name was George Howe, and that he worked in Mr. Forlesen’s section.

Forlesen nodded, feeling that he understood. “Miss Fawn showed you to your desk?”

The boy shook his head in bewilderment. “A lady named. Mrs. Frost—she said she was Mr. Freeling’s secretary; she had glasses.”

“And a sharp nose.”

George Howe nodded.

Forlesen nodded in reply, and made his way to Fields’ old office. As he had expected, Fields was gone, and most of the items from his own desk had made their way to Fields’—he wondered if Fields’ desk sometimes talked too, but before he could ask it Miss Fawn . came in.

She wore two new rings and touched her hair often with her left hand to show them. Forlesen tried to imagine her pregnant or giving suck and found that he could not, but knew that this was a weakness in himself and not in her. “Ready for orientation?” Miss Fawn asked.

Forlesen ignored the question and asked what had happened to Fields.

“He passed on,” Miss Fawn said.

“You mean he died? He seemed too young for it; not much older than I am myself—certainly not as old as Mr. Freeling.”

“He was stout,” Miss Fawn said with a touch of righteous disdain. “He didn’t get much exercise and he smoked a great deal.”

“He worked very hard,” Forlesen said. “I don’t think he could have had much energy left for exercise.”

“I suppose not,” Miss Fawn conceded. She was leaning against the door, her left hand toying with the gold pencil she wore on a chain, and seemed to be signaling by her attitude that they were old friends, entitled to relax occasionally from the formality of business. “There was a thing—at one time—between Mr. Fields and myself. I don’t suppose you ever knew it.”

“No, I didn’t,” Forlesen said, and Miss Fawn looked pleased.

“Eddie and I—I called him Eddie, privately—were quite discreet. Or so I flatter myself now. I don’t mean, of course, that there was ever anything improper between us.”

“Naturally not.”

“A look and a few words. Elmer knows; I told him everything. You are ready to give that orientation, aren’t you?”

“I think I am now,” Forlesen said. “George Howe?”

Miss Fawn studied a slip of paper. “No, Gordie Hilbert.”

As she was leaving, Forlesen asked impulsively where Fields was.

“Where he’s buried, you mean? Right behind you.”

He looked at her blankly.

“There.” She gestured toward the picture behind Forlesen’s desk. “There’s a vault behind there—didn’t you know? Just a small one, of course; they’re cremated first.”

“Burned out.”

“Yes, burned up, and then they put them behind the pictures— that’s what they’re for. The pictures, I mean. In a beautiful little cruet. It’s a company benefit, and you’d know if you’d read your own orientation material—of course, you can be buried at home if you like.”

“I think I’d prefer that,” Forlesen said.

“I thought so,” Miss Fawn told him. “You look the type. Anyway, Eddie bought the farm—that’s an expression the men have.”

Forlesen went past row upon row of office doors looking for Hilbert’s, and climbed two flights of stairs before he found someone who looked as though she could direct him, a sharp-nosed woman who wore glasses.

“You’re looking at me funny,” the sharp-nosed woman said. She smiled like a blindfolded schoolteacher who has been made to bite a lemon at a Halloween party.

“You remind me a great deal of someone I know,” Forlesen said. “Mrs. Frost.” As a matter of fact the woman looked exactly like Miss Fawn.

The woman’s smile grew somewhat warmer. “Everyone says that. Actually we’re cousins—I’m Miss Fedd.”

“Say something else.”

“Do I talk like her too?”

“No, I think I recognize your voice. This is going to sound rather silly, but when I came here—in the morning, I mean—my car talked to me. I hadn’t thought of it as a female voice, but it sounded just like you.”

“It’s quite possible,” Miss Fedd said. “I used to be in Traffic, and I still fill in there at times.”

“I never thought I’d meet you. I was the one who stopped and got out of his car.”

“A lot of them do, but usually only once. What’s that you’re carrying?”

“This?” Forlesen held up the brown orientation booklet he had received from Miss Fawn. “A book. I’m afraid to read the ending.”

“It’s the red book you’re supposed to be afraid to read the end of,” Miss Fedd told him. “It’s the opposite of a mystery—everyone stops before the revelations.”

“I haven’t even read the beginning of that one,” Forlesen said. “Come to think of it, I haven’t read the beginning of this one either.”

“We’re not supposed to talk about books here, not even when we haven’t anything to do. What was it you wanted?”