Damon Knight: Orbit 14

“I’ve just been transferred into the division, and I was hoping you’d help me find my desk.”

“What’s your name?”

“Forlesen. Emanuel Forlesen.”

“Good. I was looking for you—you weren’t at your desk.”

“No, I wasn’t,” Forlesen said. “I was in the Bet-Your-Life room —well, not recently.”

“I know. I looked there too. Mr. Frick wants to see you.”

“Mr. Frick?”

“Yes. He said to tell you he was planning to do this a bit later today, but he’s got to leave the office a little early. Come on.”

Miss Fedd walked with short, mincing steps, but so rapidly that Forlesen was forced to trot to keep up. “Why does Mr. Frick want to see me?”

“I’m not supposed to tell,” Miss Fedd said. “This is Mr. Frick’s door.”

“I know,” Forlesen told her. It was a large door—larger than the other doors in the building, and not painted to resemble wood. Mr. Frick’s plaque was of silver (or perhaps platinum), and had the single word Frick engraved in an almost too tasteful script. A man Forlesen did not know walked past them as they stood before Mr. Frick’s plaque; the man wore a hat and carried a briefcase, and had a coat slung over his arm.

“We’re emptying out a little already,” Miss Fedd said. “I’d go right in now if I were you—I think he wants to play golf before he goes home.”

“Aren’t you going in with me?”

“Of course not—he’s got a group in there already, and I have things to do. Don’t knock, just go in.”

Forlesen opened the door. The room was very large and crowded; men in expensive suits stood smoking, holding drinks, knocking out their pipes in bronze ashtrays. The tables and the desk—yes, he told himself, there is a desk, a very large desk next to the window at one end, a desk shaped like the lid of a grand piano—the tables and the desk all of dark heavy tropical wood, the tables and the desk all littered with bronze trophies so that the whole room seemed of bronze and black wood and red wool. Several of the men looked at him, then toward the opposite end of the room, and he knew at once who Mr. Frick was: a bald man standing with his back to the room, rather heavy, Forlesen thought, and somewhat below average height. He made his way through the smokers and drink holders. “I’m Emanuel Forlesen.”

“Oh, there you are.” Mr. Frick turned around. “Ernie Frick.” Mr. Frick had a wide, plump face, a mole over one eyebrow, and a gold tooth. Forlesen felt that he had seen him before.

“We went to grade school together,” Mr. Frick said. “I bet you don’t remember me, do you?”

Forlesen shook his head.

“Well, I’ll be honest—I don’t think I would have remembered you, but I looked up your file while we were getting set for the ceremony. And now that I see you, by gosh, I do remember—I played prisoner’s base with you one day; you used to be able to run like anything.”

“I wonder where I lost it,” Forlesen said. Mr. Frick and several of the men standing around him laughed, but Forlesen was thinking that he could not possibly be as old as Mr. Frick.

“Say, that’s pretty good. You know, we must have started at about the same time. Well, some of us go up and some don’t, and I suppose you envy me, but let me tell you, I envy you. It’s lonely at the top, the work is hard, and you can never set down the responsibility for a minute. You won’t believe it, but you’ve had the best of it.”

“I don’t,” Forlesen said.

“Well, anyway, I’m tired—we’re all tired. Let’s get this over with so we can all go home.” Mr. Frick raised his voice to address the room at large. “Gentlemen, I asked you to come here because you have all been associated at one time or another, in one way or another, with this gentleman here, Mr. Forlesen, to whom I am very happy to present this token of his colleagues’ regard.”

Someone handed Mr. Frick a box, and he handed it to Forlesen, who opened it while everyone clapped. It was a watch. “I didn’t know it was so late,” Forlesen said.

Several people laughed; they were already filing out.

“You’ve been playing Bet-Your-Life, haven’t you?” Mr. Frick said. “A fellow can spend more time at that than he thinks.”

Forlesen nodded.

“Say, why don’t you take the rest of the day off? There’s not much of it left anyhow.”

Outside, others who presumably had not been given the remainder of the day off by Mr. Frick were straggling toward their cars. As Forlesen walked toward his, feeling as he did so the stiffness and pain in his legs, a bright new car pulled onto the lot and a couple got out, the man a fresh-faced boy, really; the girl a working-class girl, meticulously made up and dressed, cheaply attractive and forlorn, like the models in the advertisements of third-rate dress shops. They went up the sidewalk hand in hand to kiss, Forlesen felt sure, in the time-clock room, and separate, she going up the steps, he down. They would meet for coffee later, both uncomfortable, out of a sense of duty; meet for lunch in the cafeteria, he charging her meal to the paycheck he had not yet received.

The yellow signs that lined the street read yield; orange-and-black machines were eating the houses just beyond the light. Forlesen pulled his car into his driveway, over the oil spot. A small man in a dark suit was sitting on a wood-and-canvas folding stool beside his door, a black bag at his feet; Forlesen spoke to him but he did not answer. Forlesen shrugged and stepped inside.

A tall young man stood beside a long, angular object that rested on a sort of trestle in the center of the parlor. “Look what we’ve got for you,” he said.

Forlesen looked. It was exactly like the box his watch had come in, save that it was much larger: of red-brown wood that seemed almost black, lined with pinkish-white silk.

“Want to try her out?” the young man said.

“No, I don’t.” Forlesen had already guessed who the young man must be, and after a moment he added a question: “Where’s your mother?”

“Busy,” the young man said. “You know how women are . . . Well, to tell the truth, she doesn’t want to come in until it’s over. This lid is neat—watch.” He folded down half the lid. “Like a Dutch door.” He folded it up again. “Don’t you want to try it for size? I’m afraid it’s going to be tight around the shoulders, but it’s got a hell of a good engine.”

“No,” Forlesen said, “I don’t want to try it out.” Something about the pinkish silk disgusted him. He bent over it to examine it more closely, and the young man took him by the hips and lifted him in as though he were a child, closing the lower half of the lid; it reached to his shirt pockets and effectively pinioned his arms. “Ha, ha,” Forlesen said.

The young man sniffed. “You don’t think we’d bury you before you’re dead, do you? I just wanted you to try it out, and that was the easiest way. How do you like it?”

“Get me out of this thing.”

“In a minute. Is it comfortable? Is it a good fit? It’s costing us quite a bit, you know.”

“Actually,” Forlesen said, “it’s more comfortable than I had foreseen. The bottom is only thinly padded, but I find the firmness helps my back.”

“Good, that’s great. Now have you decided about the Explainer?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Didn’t you read your orientation? Everyone’s entitled to an Explainer—in whatever form he chooses—at the end of his life. He—”

“It seems to me,” Forlesen interrupted, “that it would be more useful at the beginning.”

“—may be a novelist, aged loremaster, national hero, warlock, or actor.”

“None of those sounds quite right for me,” Forlesen said.