Clifford Simak - New Folks' Home - And Other Stories

Blaine nodded. “It was in my basket this morning, I suppose. I didn’t get around to going through the stuff until rather late.”

Which was true enough, he hadn’t gone through the basket until 10 o’clock or so. And another thing—there was no record of inter-office mail.

And still another thing: Maintenance came around and emptied the waste baskets at precisely 11:30; it was now a quarter of one, and anything that had been in his basket had long since been burned.

“And you just put the form in your pocket and forgot about it?”

“I didn’t forget about it; I had an applicant about that time. Then, when the applicant left, two of the fabricators came in. I was going over a point or two with them when Giesey called and asked me to come up. “

Farris nodded. “You think he wanted to talk with you about your new position?”

“That was what I thought.”

“Had he talked about it before? Did you know that it was coming?”

Norman Blaine shook his head. “It was a complete surprise.”

“A happy one, of course?”

“Naturally. It’s a better job. Better pay. A man wants to get ahead.”

Farris looked thoughtful. “Didn’t it strike you as a rather strange procedure to get an appointment—particularly to a key position—in an inter-office envelope?”

“Of course it did; I wondered about it at the time.”

“But you did nothing about it?”

“I have told you,” Blaine said, “I was busy. And what would you suggest that I should have done?”

“Nothing,” Farris told him.

“That is what I thought,” said Blaine. He thought: Make something out of it, if you can .

He felt a brief elation and fought it down. It was too soon, he knew.

At the moment there wasn’t a thing that Farris could do—not a single thing. The appointment was in order, properly signed and executed. As of the coming midnight he, Norman Blaine, would be administrator of records, taking over from Roemer. Only the delivery of the appointment was not in order, but there was no way in the world that Farris could prove that Blaine had not received it in the inter-office mail.

He wondered, briefly, what might have happened if Giesey had not died. Would the appointment have come through, or would it have been quashed somewhere along the line? Would some pressure have been brought to bear to give the position to someone else?

Farris was saying, “I knew the change was going to be made. Roemer was getting—well, just a little difficult. It had come to my attention, and I spoke to Giesey about it. So had several others. We talked about it some; he mentioned you as among several men who could be trusted, but that was all he said.”

“You didn’t know he had decided?”

Farris shook his head. “No, but I’m glad he picked you for the post. You’re the kind of man I like to work with, realistic. We’ll get along. We’d better talk about it.”

“Any time,” said Blaine.

“If you have the time, how about dropping in on me tonight? Any time at all, I’ll be home all evening. You know where I live?”

Blaine nodded and got to his feet.

“Don’t worry about this business,” Farris said. “Lew Giesey was a good man, but there are other good men. We all thought a lot of him. I know it must have been a shock, walking in on him that way.”

He hesitated for a moment, then: “And don’t worry about any change in your appointment. I’ll speak to whomever replaces Giesey.”

“Any idea who it’ll be?”

Farris’ eyelids flicked just once, then his eyes were hard and steady, wavery no longer. “No idea,” he said, brusquely. “The executive board will name the man. I have no idea who they’ll put the finger on.”

The hell you don’t, thought Blaine.

“You’re sure about it being suicide?”

“Certain,” Farris said. “Giesey had a heart history, he was worried.”

He rose and reached for his cap, put it on. “I like a man who thinks fast on his feet. Keep thinking on your feet, Blaine. We’ll get along.”

“I’m sure we will.”

“Don’t forget about tonight.”

“I’ll be seeing you,” Blaine told him.

The Buttonholer had seized upon Norman Blaine that morning, after he had parked his car, just when he was leaving the lot. How the man had gotten in, Blaine could not imagine, but there he was, waiting for a victim. “Just a second, sir,” he said.

Blaine swung around toward him. The man took a quick step forward, put out both his hands and clasped Blaine’s lapels firmly. Blaine backed away, but the man’s fingers held their grip and halted him.

“Let me go,” Blaine said, but the man told him, “Not until I’ve had a word with you. You work at the Center and you’re just the man I want to talk with. Because if I can make you understand—why, then, sir, I know that there is hope.

“Hope,” he said, a fine spray of saliva flying from between his lips—”hope that we can make the people understand the viciousness of Dreams. Because they are vicious, sir, they undermine the moral fiber of the people. They hold the opportunity for quick escape from the troubles and the problems which develop character. With the Dreams, there is no need for a man to face his troubles—he can run away from them, he can seek a forgetfulness in Dreams. I tell you, sir, it is the damnation of our culture.”

Remembering it now, Norman Blaine still felt the cold, quiet whiteness of the anger that had enveloped him.

“Let loose of me,” he’d said. There must have been something in his tone which warned the Buttonholer, for the man let loose his grip and backed away. And Blaine, lifting his arm to wipe his face upon his coat sleeve, watched him back away, then finally turn and run.

It had been the first time he’d ever been seized upon by a Buttonholer, although he had heard of them often and had laughed them off.

Now, thinking back upon it, he was surprised at the impact of his encounter with a Buttonholer—his horror that here, finally, he had physical evidence that there were persons in the world who doubted the sincerity and the purpose of the Dreams.

He jerked himself away from his reverie; there were other, more important things with which to concern himself. Giesey’s death and the sheet of paper he had found upon the floor—the strange conduct of Farris. Almost, he thought, as if there were a conspiracy between the two of us—as if he and I had been involved in some gigantic plot, now coming to fruition.

He sat quietly behind his desk and tried to think it out.

Given a moment to consider, he was certain that he would not have snatched the paper off the floor; given another moment for consideration, even after having seen what it was, he was certain that he would have dropped it back on the floor again. But there had been no time at all. Farris and his goons were already on their way and Blaine had stood defenseless in the office with a dead man, without an adequate explanation of why he should be there, without an adequate answer to any of the questions that they were sure to ask him.

The paper had given him a reason for being in the office, had given him the answer to the questions, had forestalled many other questions that would have been asked if he had not had the answer to the first ones.

Farris had said suicide.

Would it have been suicide or murder, Blaine wondered, if he had not had the paper in his pocket? If he had remained defenseless, would his luckless position have been used to explain Giesey’s death?

Farris had said he liked a man who could think standing on his feet. And there was no doubt he did. For Farris himself was a man who could think standing on his feet, who could improvise and trim his course with each passing situation.