by Keith Laumer
Mart sat pulling at his lower lip. “All right, Glamis. Maybe I will go in for Adjustment …”
“Oh, wonderful, Mart.” She smiled. “I’m sure you’ll be happier—
“But first, I want to know more about it. I want to be sure they aren’t going to make a permanent idiot out of me.”
She tsked, handed over a small folder from a pile on the corner of the desk.
“This will tell you—”
He shook his head. “I saw that. It’s just a throwaway for the public. I want to know how the thing works; circuit diagrams, technical specs.”
“Why, Mart, I don’t have anything of that sort—and even if I did-”
“You can get ’em. I’ll wait.”
“Mart, I do want to help you … but… what… ?”
“I’m not going in for Adjustment until I know something about it,” he said flatly. “I want to put my mind at ease that they’re not going to burn out my cortex.”
Glamis nibbled her upper lip. “Perhaps I could get something from Central Files.” She stood. “Wait here; I won’t be long.”
She was back in five minutes carrying a thick book with a cover of heavy manila stock on which were the words, GSM 8765-89.
Operation and Maintenance, EET Mark II. Underneath, in smaller print, was a notice:
This Field Manual for Use of Authorized Personnel Only.
“Thanks, Glamis.” Mart rifled the pages, glimpsed fine print and intricate diagrams. “I’ll bring it back tomorrow.” He headed for the door.
“Oh, you can’t take it out of the office! You’re not even supposed to look at it!”
“You’ll get it back.” He winked and closed the door on her worried voice.
VII
The cubicle reminded Mart of the one at the Placement center, three days earlier, except that it contained a high, narrow cot in place of a desk and chair. A damp-looking attendant in a white coat flipped a wall switch, twiddled a dial.
“Strip to your waist, place your clothing and shoes in the basket, remove all metal objects from your pockets, no watches or other jewelry must be worn,” he recited in a rapid monotone. “When you are ready, lie down on your back—” he slapped the cot— “hands at your sides, breathe deeply, do not touch any of the equipment. I will return in approximately five minutes. Do not leave the stall.” He whisked the curtain aside and was gone.
Mart slipped a flat plastic tool kit from his pocket, opened it out, picked the largest screwdriver, and went to work on the metal panel cover set against the wall. He lifted it off and looked in at a maze of junction blocks, vari-colored wires, bright screw-heads, fuses, tiny condensers.
He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket, compared it to the circuits before him. The large black lead, here … He put a finger on it. And the matching red one, leading up from the 30 MFD condenser …
With a twist, he freed the two connectors, reversed them, tightened them back in place. Working quickly, he snipped wires, fitted jumpers in place, added a massive resistor from his pocket. There; with luck, the check instruments would give the proper readings now—but the current designed to lightly scorch his synapses would flow harmlessly round and round within the apparatus. He clapped the cover back in place, screwed it down, and had just pulled off his shirt when the attendant thrust his head inside the curtains.
“Let’s go, let’s get those clothes off and get on the cot,” he said, and disappeared.
Maldon emptied his pockets, pulled off his shoes, stretched out on the cot. A minute or two ticked past. There was an odor of alcohol in the air. The curtain jumped aside. The round-faced attendant took his left arm, swiped a cold tuft of cotton across it, held a hypo-spray an inch from the skin, and depressed the plunger. Mart felt a momentary sting.
“You’ve been given a harmless soporific,” the attendant said tonelessly. “Just relax, don’t attempt to change the position of the headset or chest contacts after I have placed them in position, are you beginning to feel drowsy… ?”
Mart nodded. A tingling had begun in his fingertips; his head seemed to be inflating slowly. There was a touch of something cold across his wrists, then his ankles, pressure against his chest…
“Do not be alarmed, the restraint is for your own protection, relax and breathe deeply, it will hasten the effects of the soporific …” The voice echoed, fading and swelling. For a moment, the panicky thought came to Mart that perhaps he had made a mistake, that the modified apparatus would send a lethal charge through his brain … Then that thought was gone with all the others, lost in a swirling as of a soft green mist.
VIII
He was sitting on the side of the cot, and the attendant was offering him a small plastic cup. He took it, tasted the sweet liquid, handed it back.
“You should drink this,” the attendant said, “It’s very good for you.”
Mart ignored him. He was still alive; and the attendant appeared to have noticed nothing unusual. So far, so good. He glanced at his hand. One, two, three, four, five … He could still count. My name is Mart Maldon, age twenty-eight, place of residence, Welfare Dorm 69, Wing Two, nineteenth floor, room 1906 …
His memory seemed to be OK. Twenty-seven times eighteen is … four hundred and eighty-six …
He could still do simple arithmetic.
“Come on, fellow, drink the nice cup, then put your clothes on.”
He shook his head, reached for his shirt, then remembered to move slowly, uncertainly, like a moron ought to. He fumbled clumsily with his shirt …
The attendant muttered, put the cup down, snatched the shirt, helped Mart into it, buttoned it for him.
“Put your stuff in your pockets, come on, that’s a good fellow …”
He allowed himself to be led along the corridor, smiling vaguely at people hurrying past. In the processing room, a starched woman back of a small desk stamped papers, took his hand and impressed his thumbprint on them, slid them across the desk.
“Sign your name here …” she pointed. Maldon stood gaping at the paper.
“Write your name here!” She tapped the paper impatiently. Maldon reached up and wiped his nose with a forefinger, letting his mouth hang open.
The woman looked past him. “A Nine-oh-one,” she snapped. “Take him back—”
Maldon grabbed the pen and wrote his name in large, scrawling letters. The woman snapped the form apart, thrust one sheet at him.
“Uh, I was thinking,” he explained, folding the paper clumsily.
“Next!” the woman snapped, waving him on. He nodded submissively and shuffled slowly to the door.
IX
The Placement monitor looked at the form Maldon had given him. He looked up, smiling. “Well, so you finally wised up. Good boy. And today you got a nice score. We’re going to be able to place you. You like bridges, hah?”
Maldon hesitated, then nodded.
“Sure you like bridges. Out in the open air. You’re going to be an important man. When the cars come up, you lean out and see that they put the money in the box. You get to wear a uniform …” The small man rambled on, filling out forms. Maldon stood by, looking at nothing.
“Here you go. Now, you go where it says right here, see? Just get on the cross-town shuttle, right outside on this level, the one with the big number nine. You know what a nine is, OK?”
Maldon blinked, nodded. The clerk frowned. “Sometimes I think them guys overdo a good thing. But you’ll get to feeling better in a few days; you’ll sharpen up, like me. Now, you go on over there, and they’ll give you your I.D. and your uniform and put you to work. OK?”
“Uh, thanks …” Maldon crossed the wide room, pushed through the turnstile, emerged into the late-afternoon sunlight on the fourth-level walkaway. The glare panel by the shuttle entrance read NEXT—9. He thrust his papers into his pocket and ran for it.
X
Maldon left his Dormitory promptly at eight the next morning, dressed in his threadbare Student-issue suit, carrying the heav
y duffel-bag of Port Authority uniforms which had been issued to him the day before. His new yellow tag was pinned prominently to his lapel.
He took a cargo car to street level, caught an uptown car, dropped off in the run-down neighborhood of second-hand stores centered around Fifth Avenue and Forty-fifth Street. He picked a shabby establishment barricaded behind racks of dowdy garments, stepped into a long, dim-lit room smelling of naphtha and mouldy wool. Behind a counter, a short man with a circlet of fuzz above his ears and a vest hanging open over a tight-belted paunch looked him over. Mart hoisted the bag up, opened it, dumped the clothing out onto the counter. The paunchy man followed the action with his eyes.
“What’ll you give me for this stuff?” Mart said.
The man behind the counter prodded the dark blue tunic, put a finger under the light blue trousers, rubbed the cloth. He leaned across the counter, glanced toward the door, squinted at Mart’s badge. His eyes flicked to Mart’s face, back to the clothing. He spread his hands.
“Five credits.”
“For all of it? It’s worth a hundred anyway.”
The man glanced sharply at Maldon’s face, back at his tag, frowning.
“Don’t let the tag throw you,” Maldon said. “It’s stolen—just like the rest of the stuff.”
“Hey.” The paunchy man thrust his lips out. “What kinda talk is that? I run a respectable joint. What are you, some kinda cop?”
“I haven’t got any time to waste,” Maldon said. “There’s nobody listening. Let’s get down to business. You can strip off the braid and buttons and—”
“Ten credits, my top offer,” the man said in a low voice. “I gotta stay alive, ain’t I? Any bum can get outfitted free at the Welfare; who’s buying my stuff?”
“I don’t know. Make it twenty.”
“Fifteen; it’s robbery.”
“Throw in a set of Maintenance coveralls, and it’s a deal.”
“I ain’t got the real article, but close …”
Ten minutes later, Mart left the store wearing a grease-stained coverall with the cuffs turned up, the yellow tag clipped to the breast pocket.
XI
The girl at the bleached-driftwood desk placed austerely at the exact center of the quarter-acre of fog-grey rug stared at Maldon distastefully.
“I know of no trouble with the equipment—” she started in a lofty tone.
“Look, sister, I’m in the plumbing line; you run your dictyper.” Maldon swung a greasy tool box around by the leather strap as though he were about to lower it to the rug. “They tell me the Exec gym, Level 9, City Tower, that’s where I go. Now, you want to tell me where the steam room is, or do I go back and file a beef with the Union … ?”
“Next time come up the service shaft, Clyde!” she jabbed at a button; a panel whooshed aside across the room. “Men to the right, women to the left, co-ed straight ahead. Take your choice.”
He went along the tiled corridor, passed steam-frosted doors. The passage turned right, angled left again. Mart pushed through a door, looked around at chromium and red plastic benches, horses, parallel bars, racks of graduated weights. A fat man in white shorts lay on the floor, half-heartedly pedaling his feet in the air. Mart crossed the room, tried another door.
Warm, sun-colored light streamed through an obscure-glass ceiling. Tropical plants in tubs nodded wide leaves over a mat of grass-green carpet edging a turquoise-tiled pool with chrome railings. Two brown-skinned men in brief trunks and sun-glasses sprawled on inflated rafts. There was a door to the right lettered EXECUTIVE DRESSING ROOM—MEMBERS ONLY. Mart Went to it, stepped inside.
Tall, ivory-colored lockers lined two walls, with a wide padded bench between them. Beyond, bright shower heads winked in a darkened shower room. Maldon put the tool box on the bench, opened it, took out a twelve-inch prybar.
By levering at the top of the tall locker door, he was able to bulge it out sufficiently to see the long metal strip on the back of the door which secured it. He went back to the tool box, picked out a slim pair of pincers; with them he gripped the locking strip, levered up; the door opened with a sudden clang. The locker was empty.
He tried the next; it contained a handsome pale tan suit which would have fitted him nicely at the age of twelve. He went to the next locker …
Four lockers later, a door popped open on a dark maroon suit of expensive-looking polyon, a pair of plain scarlet shoes, a crisp pink shirt. Mart checked quickly. There was a wallet stuffed with ten-credit notes, a club membership card, and a blue I. D. with a gold alligator clip. Mart left the money on the shelf, rolled the clothing and stuffed it into the tool box, made for the door. It swung open and the smaller of the two sun bathers pushed past him with a sharp glance. Mart walked quickly around the end of the pool, stepped into the corridor. At the far end of it, the girl from the desk stood talking emphatically to a surprised-looking man. Their eyes turned toward Mart. He pushed through the first door on the left into a room with a row of white-sheeted tables, standing lamps with wide reflectors, an array of belted and rollered equipment. A vast bulk of a man with hairy forearms and a bald head, wearing a tight white leotard and white sneakers folded a newspaper and looked up from his bench, wobbling a toothpick in the corner of his mouth. There was a pink tag on his chest.
“Uh … showers?” Mart inquired. The fat man nodded toward a door behind him. Mart stepped to it, found himself in a long room studded with shower-heads and control knobs. There was no other door out. He turned back, bumped into the fat man in the doorway.
“So somebody finally decided to do something about the leak,” he said around the toothpick. “Three months since I phoned it in. You guys take your time, hah?”
“I’ve got to go back for my tools,” Mart said, starting past him.
The fat man blocked him without moving. “So what’s in the box?”
“Ah, they’re the wrong tools . . He tried to sidle past. The big man took the toothpick from his mouth, frowned at it.
“You got a pipe wrench, ain’t you? You got crescents, a screwdriver. What else you need to fix a lousy leak?”
“Well, I need my sprog-depressor,” Mart said, “and my detrafficator rings, and possibly a marpilizer or two …”
“How come you ain’t got—what you said—in there.” The fat man eyed the tool box. “Ain’t that standard equipment?”
“Yes, indeed—but I only have a right-hand one, and—”
“Let’s have a look—” A fat hand reached for the tool-kit. Mart backed.
“—but I might be able to make it work,” he finished. He glanced around the room. “Which one was it?”
“That third needle-battery on the right. You can see the drip. I’m tryna read, it drives me nuts.”
Mart put the tool box down. “If you don’t mind, it makes me nervous to work in front of an audience …”
The fat man grunted and withdrew. Mart opened the box, took out a wrench, began loosening a wide hex-sided locking ring. Water began to dribble, then spurt. Mart went to the door, flung it open.
“Hey, you didn’t tell me the water wasn’t turned off …” “Huh?”
“You’ll have to turn off the master valve; hurry up, before the place is flooded!”
The fat man jumped up, headed for the door.
“Stand by it, wait five minutes, then turn it back on!” Mart called after him. The door banged. Mart hauled the tool box out into the massage room, quickly stripped off the grimy coverall. His eye fell on a rack of neatly-packaged underwear, socks, toothbrushes, combs. He helped himself to a set, removed the last of the Welfare issue clothing—
A shout sounded outside the door, running feet. The door burst open. It was the big man from the executive locker room.
“Where’s Charlie? Some rascal’s stolen my clothing … !”
Mart grabbed up a towel, dropped it over his head and rubbed vigorously, humming loudly, his back to the newcomer.
“The workman—there’s his tool box!”
<
br /> Mart whirled, pulled the towel free, snatched the box from the hand of the invader, with a hearty shove sent him reeling into the locker room. He slammed the door, turned the key and dropped it down a drain. The shouts from inside were barely audible. He wrapped the towel around himself and dashed into the hall. There were people, some in white, others in towels or street clothes, all talking at once.
“Down there!” Mart shouted, pointing vaguely. “Don’t let him get away!” He plunged through the press, along the hall. Doors opened and shut.
“Hey, what’s he doing with a tool box?” someone shouted. Mart whirled, dived through a door, found himself in a dense, hot fog. A woman with pink skin beaded with perspiration and a towel wrapped turban-fashion around her head stared at him.
“What are you doing in here? Co-ed is the next room along.”
Mart gulped and dived past her, slammed through a plain door, found himself in a small room stacked with cartons. There was another door in the opposite wall. He went through it, emerged in a dusty hall. Three doors down, he found an empty store-room.
Five minutes later he emerged, dressed in a handsome maroon suit. He strode briskly along to a door marked EXIT, came out into a carpeted foyer with a rank of open elevator doors. He stepped into one. The yellow-tagged attendant whooshed the door shut.
“Tag, sir?” Maldon showed the blue I. D. The operator nodded.
“Down, sir?”
“No,” Mart said. “Up.”
XII
He stepped out into the cool silence of Level Fifty.
“Which way to the class One Testing Rooms?” he asked briskly.
The operator pointed. The door-lined corridor seemed to stretch endlessly.
“Going to try for the Big One, eh, sir?” the operator said. “Boy, you couldn’t hire me to take on them kind of jobs. Me, I wouldn’t want the responsibility.” The closing door cut off the view of his wagging head.