Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance, Volume One (50 page)

“Let me cite my personal experience,” said Luke. “This morning—as I say, in my temporary capacity as a flunky—I carried a shovel from tunnel head to warehouse and checked it. The operation required an hour and a half. If I were working steadily on a job of this sort, I’d be quite demoralized.”

Ripp appeared untroubled. “I can only refer you to my superiors.” He spoke aside into his desk phone. “Please transmit File OR9, Item 123.” He turned back to Luke. “I can’t take responsibility, either for the directive or for revoking it. May I ask what sort of investigation takes you down into the tunnels? And to whom you report?”

At a loss for words at once evasive and convincing, Luke conveyed an attitude of contemptuous silence.

Judiath Ripp contracted the skin around his blank round eyes in a frown. “As I consider this matter I become increasingly puzzled. Why is this subject a matter for investigation? Just who—”

From a slot appeared the directive Ripp had requested. He glanced at it, tossed it to Luke. “You’ll see that this relieves me totally of responsibility,” he said curtly.

The directive was the standard form:

PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT, PUBLIC UTILITIES DIVISION

Office of

The Commissioner of Public Utilities

Luke rose to his feet, concerned now only to depart from the office as quickly as possible. He indicated the directive. “This is a copy?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll take it, if I may.” He included it with the previous two.

Judiath Ripp watched with a faint but definite suspicion. “I fail to understand whom you represent.”

“Sometimes the less one knows the better,” said Luke.

The suspicion faded from Judiath Ripp’s piscine face. Only a person secure in his status could afford to use language of this sort to a member of the low High Echelon. He nodded slightly. “Is that all you require?”

“No,” said Luke, “but it’s all I can get here.”

He turned toward the door, feeling the rake of Ripp’s eyes on his back.

Ripp’s voice cut at him suddenly and sharply. “Just a moment.”

Luke slowly turned.

“Who are you? Let me see your credentials.”

Luke laughed coarsely. “I don’t have any.”

Judiath Ripp rose to his feet, stood towering with knuckles pressed on the desk. Suddenly Luke saw that, after all, Judiath Ripp
was
choleric. His face, mackerel-pale, became suffused with salmon-pink. “Identify yourself,” he said throatily, “before I call the watchman.”

“Certainly,” said Luke. “I have nothing to hide. I am Luke Grogatch. I work as Class D Flunky on Tunnel Gang No. 3 out of the Bureau of Sewer Construction and Maintenance.”

“What are you doing here, misrepresenting yourself, wasting my time?”

“Where did I misrepresent myself?” demanded Luke in a contentious voice. “I came here to find out why I had to carry my shovel to the warehouse this morning. It cost me an hour and a half. It doesn’t make sense. You’ve been ordered to economize two percent, so I spend three hours a day carrying a shovel back and forth.”

Judiath Ripp stared at Luke for ten seconds, then abruptly sat down. “You’re a Class D Flunky?”

“That’s right.”

“Hmm. You’ve been to the Office of Procurement. The manager sent you here?”

“No. He gave me a copy of his directive, just as you did.”

The salmon-pink flush had died from Ripp’s flat cheeks. The carplike mouth twitched in infinitesimal amusement. “No harm in that, certainly. What do you hope to achieve?”

“I don’t want to carry that blasted shovel back and forth. I’d like you to issue orders to that effect.”

Judiath Ripp spread his pale mouth in a cold drooping smile. “Bring me a policy directive to that effect from Parris deVicker and I’ll be glad to oblige you. Now—”

“Will you make an appointment for me?”

“An appointment?” Ripp was puzzled. “With whom?”

“With the Commissioner of Public Utilities.”

“Pffah.” Ripp waved his hand in cold dismissal. “Get out.”

Luke stood in the blue-mosaic entry seething with hate for Ripp, Limon, Miskitman and every intervening functionary. If he were only Chairman of the Board for a brief two hours—went the oft-repeated daydream—how they’d quick-step! In his mind’s eye he saw Judiath Ripp shoveling wads of ‘wet waste’ with a leaden shovel while a rotary driller, twice as noisy and twice as violent, blew back gales of hot dust and rock chips across his neck. Lavester Limon would be forced to change the smoking teeth of the drill with a small and rusty monkey wrench, while Fedor Miskitman, before and after the shift, carried shovel, monkey wrench and all the worn teeth to and from the warehouse.

Luke stood moping in the passage for five minutes, then escalated to the surface, which at this point, by virtue of Bramblebury Park, could clearly be distinguishable as the surface and not just another level among co-equal levels. He walked slowly along the gravel paths, ignoring the open sky for the immediacy of his problems. He faced a dead end. There was no further scope of action. Judiath Ripp mockingly had suggested that he consult the Commissioner of Public Utilities. Even if by some improbable circumstance he secured an appointment with the Commissioner, what good would ensue? Why should the Commissioner revoke a policy directive of such evident importance? Unless he could be persuaded—by some instrumentality Luke was unable to define or even imagine—to issue a special directive exempting Luke from the provision of the policy…

Luke chuckled hollowly, a noise which alarmed the pigeons strutting along the walk. Now what? Back to the dormitory. His dormitory privileges included twelve hours use of his cot per day, and he was not extracting full value from his expense account unless he made use of it. But Luke had no desire for sleep. As he glanced up at the perspective of the towers surrounding the park he felt a melancholy exhilaration. The sky, the wonderful clear open sky, blue and brilliant! Luke shivered, for the sun here was hidden by the Morgenthau Moonspike, and the air was brisk.

Luke crossed the park, thinking to sit where a band of hazy sunlight slashed down between the towers. The benches were crowded with blinking old men and women, but Luke presently found a seat. He sat looking up into the sky, enjoying the mild natural sun-warmth. How seldom did he see the sun! In his youth he had frequently set forth on long cross-city hikes, rambling high along the skyways, with space to right and left, the clouds near enough for intimate inspection, the sunlight sparkling and stinging his skin. Gradually the hikes had spread apart, coming at ever longer intervals, and now he could hardly remember when last he’d tramped the wind-lanes. What dreams he had had in those early days, what exuberant visions! Obstacles seemed trivial; he had seen himself clawing up the list, winning a good expense account, the choicest of perquisites, unnumbered Special Coupons! He had planned a private air-car, unrestricted nutrition, an apartment far above the surface, high and remote…Dreams. Luke had been victimized by his tongue, his quick temper, his obstinacy. At heart, he was no Nonconformist—no, cried Luke, never! Luke had been born of tycoon stock, and through influence, a word here, a hint there, had been launched into the Organization on a high status. But circumstances and Luke’s chronic truculence had driven him into opposition with established ways, and down the Status List he had gone: through professional scholarships, technical trainee appointments, craft apprenticeships, all the varieties of semiskills and machine operation. Now he was Luke Grogatch, flunky, unskilled, Class D, facing the final declassification. But still too vain to carry a shovel. No: Luke corrected himself. His vanity was not at stake. Vanity he had discarded long ago, along with his youthful dreams. All he had left was pride, his right to use the word “I” in connection with himself. If he submitted to Policy Directive 6511 he relinquished this right; he combined with the masses of the Organization as a spatter of foam falls back and is absorbed into the ocean…Luke jerked nervously to his feet. He wasted time sitting here. Judiath Ripp, with conger-like malice, had suggested a directive from the Commissioner of Public Utilities. Very well, Luke would obtain that directive and fling it down under Ripp’s pale round nostrils.

How?

Luke rubbed his chin dubiously. He walked to a communication booth, checked the directory. As he had surmised, the Commission of Public Utilities was housed in the Organization Central Tower, in Silverado, District 3666, ninety miles to the north.

Luke stood in the watery sunlight, hoping for inspiration. The aged idlers, huddling on the benches like winterbound sparrows, watched him incuriously. Once again Luke was obscurely pleased with his purchase of new clothes. A fine figure he cut, he assured himself.

How? wondered Luke. How to gain an appointment with the Commissioner? How to persuade him to change his views?

No inkling of a solution presented itself.

He looked at his watch: still only middle morning. Ample time to visit Organization Central and return in time to report for duty…Luke grimaced wanly. Was his resolution so feeble, then? Was he, after all, to slink back into the tunnel tonight carrying the hated shovel? Luke shook his head slowly. He did not know.

At the Bramblebury Interchange Luke boarded an express highline northbound for Silverado Station. With a hiss and a whine, the shining metal worm darted forward, sliding up to Level 13, flashing north at great speed, in and out of the sunlight, through tunnels, across inter-tower chasms, with far below the nervous seethe of the City. Four times the express sighed to a halt: at IBM University, at Braemar, at Great Northern Junction, and finally, thirty minutes out of Bramblebury, at Silverado Central. Luke disembarked; the express slid away through the towers, lithe as an eel through waterweed.

Luke entered the tenth-level foyer of the Central Tower, a vast cave of marble and bronze. Throngs of men and women thrust past him: grim striding tycoons, stamped with the look of destiny, High Echelon personnel, their assistants, the assistants to their assistants, functionaries on down the list, all dutifully wearing high-status garments, the lesser folk hoping to be mistaken for their superiors. All hurried, tense-faced and abrupt, partly from habit, partly because only a person of low status had no need to hurry. Luke thrust and elbowed with the best of them, and made his way to the central kiosk where he consulted a directory.