thousands and thousands of people on the other side of them, and those thousands of people, if you was to add their money up, would be worth more. But they can’t buy the legislature at all, ain’t that right?”
“Go on,” Forlesen said.
“Well, don’t that prove that little money’s power to buy certain things is zero? If it had any at all, thousands and thousands times it would make those people the kings of the state, but the actual fact is they can’t do a thing —thousands time nothing is still nothing.” Suddenly Beale turned, staring out the window of the car, and Forlesen realized that while they had been talking the road had descended to the ground. Still many-laned, it passed now through a level landscape dotted with great, square buildings which, despite their size, made no pretense of majesty or grace, but seemed in every case intentionally ugly. They were constructed of the cheapest materials, mostly corrugated metal and cinder block, and each was surrounded by a high, rusty wire fence, with a barren area of asphalt or gravel beyond it as though to provide (Forlesen knew the thought was ridiculous) a clear field of fire for defenders within.
“Hold up!” Beale said urgently. “Hold up a minute there.” He gripped Forlesen’s right arm, and Forlesen jockeyed the car to the outermost lane of traffic, then onto the rutted clay at the shoulder of the road.
“Look ’e there!” Beale said, pointing down a broad alley between two of the huge buildings.
Forlesen looked as directed. “Horses.”
“Mustangs! Never been broke; you can tell that from looking at ’em. Whoever’s got ’em’s going to need some help.” Beale opened the car door, then turned and shook Forlesen’s hand. “Well, you’ve been a friend,” he said, “and if ever I can do anything for you just you ask.” Then he was gone, and Forlesen sat, for a moment, looking at the billboard-sized sign above the building into which the horses were being driven. It showed a dog’s head in a red triangle on a field of black, without caption of any kind.
The speaker said, “Do not stop en route. You are still one and one-half aisles from Model Pattern Products, your place of employment.”
Forlesen nodded and looked at the watch his wife had given him. It was 069.50.
“You are to park your car,” the speaker continued, “in the Model Pattern Products parking lot. You are not to occupy any position marked visitors, or any position marked with a name not your own.”
“Do they know I’m coming?” Forlesen asked, pressing the button.
“An employee service folder has already been made out for you,” the speaker told him. “All that needs to be done is to fill in your name.”
The Model Pattern Products parking lot was enclosed by a high fence, but the gates were open and the hinges so rusted that Forlesen, who stopped in the gateway for a moment thinking some guard or watchman might wish to challenge him, wondered if they had ever been closed; the ground itself, covered with loose gravel the color of ash, sloped steeply; he was forced to drive carefully to keep his car from skidding among the concrete stops of brilliant orange provided to prevent the parked cars from rolling down the grade; most of these were marked either with some name not his or with the word VISITOR, but he eventually discovered an unmarked position (unattractive, apparently, because smoke from a stubby flue projecting from the back of an outbuilding would blow across it) and left his car. His legs ached.
He was thirty or forty feet from his car when he realized he no longer had the speaker to advise him; several people were walking toward the gray metal building that was Model Pattern Products, but all were too distant for him to talk to them without shouting, and something in their appearance suggested that they would not wait for him to overtake them in any case. He followed them through a small door and found himself alone.
An anteroom held two time clocks, one beige, the other brown. Remembering the instruction sheet, he took a blank time card from the rack and wrote his name at the top, then pushed it into the beige machine and depressed the lever. A gong sounded. He withdrew the card and checked the stamped time: 069.56. A thin, youngish woman with large glasses and a sharp nose looked over his shoulder. “You’re late,” she said. (He was aware for an instant of the effort she was making to read his name at the top of the card.) “Mr. Forlesen.”
He said, “I’m afraid I don’t know the starting time.”
The woman said, “Oh seventy ours sharp, Mr. Forlesen. Start oh seventy ours sharp, coffee for your subdivision one hundred ours to one hundred and one. Lunch one hundred and twenty to one hundred and forty-one. Coffee, your subdivision, one fifty to one fifty-one P.M. Quit one seventy ours at the whistle.”
“Then I’m not late,” Forlesen said. He showed her his card.
“Mr. Frick likes everyone to be at least twenty minutes early, especially supervisory and management people. The real go-getters—that’s what he calls them, the real go-getters—try to be early. I mean, earlier than the regular early. Oh sixty-nine twenty-five, something like that. They unlock their desks and go upstairs for early coffee, and sometimes they play cards; it’s fun.”
“I’m sorry I missed it,” Forlesen said. “Can you tell me where I’m supposed to go now?”
“To your desk,” the woman said, nodding. “Unlock it.”
“I don’t know where it is.”
“Well, of course you don’t, but I can’t assign you to your desk—that’s up to Mr. Fields, your supervisor.” After a moment she added: “I know where you’re going to go, but he has the keys.”
Forlesen said, “I thought I was a supervisor.”
“You are,” the woman told him, “but Mr. Fields is—you know—a real supervisor. Anyway, nearly. Do you want to talk to him now?”
Forlesen nodded.
“I’ll see if he’ll see you now. You have Creativity Group today, and Leadership Training. And Company Orientation, and Bet-Your-Life—that’s the management-managing real-life pseudogame—and one interdepartmental training-transfer.”
“I’ll be glad to get the orientation anyway,” Forlesen said. He followed the woman, who had started to walk away. “But am I going to have time for all that?”
“You don’t get it,” she told him over her shoulder. “You give it. And you’ll have lots of time for work besides— don’t worry. I’ve been here a long time already. I’m Miss Fawn. Are you married?”
