“I hate to say anything,” I said, “but if I’m right, you’re talking about me, and I don’t like this cold- shoulder routine, not one little bit.” I was sick of all this rigamarole, and me stuck somewhere a million miles or more away from my office, and everyone acting as though I’d done it on purpose and I was a nuisance.
“Now talk in English so I can understand, will you?”
The Auditor turned cool grey eyes on me. Stiffly, as though he were unaccustomed to speaking the language, he said, “You have stumbled into something by chance, and though it is not your fault, dispensation must be arranged. Will you please come with. me.”
He stated it, didn’t ask it, and I had no choice.
We took a few steps, and the Auditor turned to stare back at Da Campo who was watching us balefully.
“You, too,” the man in the blue tunic said.
“But I have to be at—”
“You will be needed for a statement. I’m sorry, but it’s official.”
“What am I paying my Allotments for, if you Auditors can’t handle a little thing like this?” He was getting angry, but the Auditor shrugged his shoulders, and Da Campo trudged along behind us.
We came up off one of the escalators, into the light of triple suns. Three of them. Burning all at once. Triple shadows. That was when I realized how far away, more than a mere million miles, and how strange, and how lost I was.
“How—how far from Earth are we?” I asked.
The Auditor answered absently, “About 60,000 light-years.”
I gawked, stopped dead in my tracks. “But you toss it off so lightly, as though it were around the block! And you don’t live that differently from us! I don’t understand!”
“Understand? What’s to understand?” snapped Da Campo with annoyance. “It was a fluke that discovered Translation, and allowed us to live off Drexwill. But it didn’t change our culture much. Why
“In fact, “ he added, glaring at the Auditor, “it’s a blasted bother sometimes!”
His tossing it off in that manner only made it worse for me.
I thought of the distance between me and my office, realizing I hadn’t the faintest idea how far away it was, but knowing it was further than anything I could ever imagine. I tried putting it into mundane terms by remembering that the nearest star to Earth was only four light-years away and then trying something like:
I was lost.
“I want to go home,” I said, and realized I sounded like a little boy. But I couldn’t help it. The Auditor and Da Campo turned to look at me at the same time. I wished I had been unable to read what was in their eyes.
But I could. I wished I hadn’t been able to, really.
They hurried me down a street, if street it was, and I supposed that was what it was, and into a bubble- like car with a blue insignia, that sat by the curb. It ran on a monorail, and in a few seconds we had left the Depot behind. We sped through the city, and oddly, I didn’t marvel at the fantastic architecture and evidences of great science, though there were enough of both. From the screaming ships that split the morning sky to the cone- within- helix buildings rising on all sides.
I didn’t look, because it was so restful for the first time in my life not to have to worry about offices, and commuting, and bills, and Charlotte’s ashtray fetish, or any of the other goddam bothers I had been heir to since I was able to go out and earn a living. No treadmill. No responsibility.
It was good to lie back in the padded seat and just close my eyes. Even though I knew I was in deep trouble. We drove for a while, and then something occurred to me.
“Why don’t we just translate where we’re going?”
The Auditor was looking out the window abstractedly, but he said, “Too short a jump. It only works in light- year minimums.”
“Oh,” I said, and sank back again.
It was all so logical.
Something else popped into my mind. The sheet of liabilities under my desk blotter.
“Uh—Da Campo,” I began, and shrank back at the scathing look he turned on me.
“The name is Helgorth Labbula, I told your” The Auditor smiled out the window.
“Want to tell me a few things?” I asked, timidly.
Da Campo sighed once, deeply, “Go ahead. You can’t be any more trouble to me than you have already. I’m twenty kil-boros late already.”
“What was that in your garden?”
“ A plant, what do you think?”
“But—”
He seemed about to explode with irritation. “Look, Weiler, you grow those runty little chrysanthemums and roses, don’t you? Well, why shouldn’t I be entitled to grow a native plant in my garden? Just because I’m living out there in the sticks doesn’t mean I have to act and live like a barbarian.”
The Auditor looked over, “Yes, but you were warned several times about growing native plants in Suburb Territory when you signed the real estate release, weren’t you, Helgorth?”
Da Campo turned red.
“Well, that’s—what I mean is—a man bas to have
“How come we never saw any smoke from your house?”
“We don’t use imbecilic fuels like coal or gas or oil.”
I didn’t understand, but he cleared it up with the answer to my next question. I said, “Why don’t you ever go out, or show lights at night, and why do you pull those drapes?”
“Because the inside of our house isn’t like yours. We have a Drexwillian bungalow in there. A bit cramped for space we are,” he said, casting a nasty look at the Auditor, “but with regulations what they are, we can’t expect much better. We have our own independent heating system’ food supply, lighting system and everything else. We pull the drapes so you won’t see when we turn on all the units at once. We have to inconvenience ourselves, I’ll tell you.
“But at least it’s better than living in this madhouse,” he finished, waving a hand at the bustling city.
