Hissing. Crackling. An unfamiliar squeaky voice: "Directorate can in practice only control an infinitesimal area in the ocean of the forest, which laps the continent. The meaning of life does not exist, nor does the meaning of action. We can do an extraordinary amount, but up to now we have not understood what, out of what we can do, we really need. It does not resist, it simply takes no notice. If an action has brought you pleasure - well and good, if it hasn't - it was pointless." More hissing and crackling. "We oppose with millions of horsepower, dozens of land-rovers, airships, and helicopters, medical science and the finest logistics theory in the world. The Directorate has at least two major failings. At the present time similar actions can have far-reaching cipher communication in the name of Herostratus, so that he remains our dearly beloved friend. It cannot create at all without destroying authority and ingratitude..." Hooting, whistling, noises like an explosive cough. "... it is particularly fond of so-called simple solutions, libraries, internal communications, geographical and other maps. The ways it regards as shortest, so as to consider the meaning of life for everyone at once, and people don't like that. Personnel sit with their legs dangling over the cliff, each in his own place, tussle together, make jokes and hurl stones, each trying to hurl a heavier stone, at the same time, the expenditure on yogurt does not help grafting or eradication, nor the due amount of forest security. I am afraid that we have not realized what we really want, and nerves, let us face it also need to be trained, as capacity for receptivity can be trained. Reason does not blush or suffer from pangs of conscience, since a question from a scientific, a correctly posed one, becomes a moral one. It is deceitful and slippery, it is impermanent and dissimulates. But someone must irritate, not relate legends, and carefully prepare himself for a trial exit. Tomorrow I will receive you again and see how you have prepared yourself. Twenty-two hundred hours - radiological alarm and earthquake. Eighteen hundred - meeting of all off-duty personnel in my office, so to speak, on the carpet. Twenty-four hundred - general evacuation..."
Through the receiver came a sound of pouring water. Then everything went quiet and Pepper noticed Hausbotcher watching him with sternly accusing eyes.
"What's he saying?" asked Pepper in a whisper. "I can't understand a thing."
"Hardly surprising," said Hausbotcher icily. "You picked up the wrong telephone." He dropped his eyes, noted something on his pad and went on: "That is, incidentally, an absolutely impermissable contravention of the rules. I insist that you replace the receiver and leave. Otherwise I shall summon official personnel."
"All right," said Pepper. "I'll go. But where's my telephone? This isn't mine. Where's mine, then?"
Hausbotcher made no reply. His eyes had closed again, and he once more pressed the instrument to his ear. Pepper could hear croaking noises.
"I'm asking you, where's my phone?" shouted Pepper. Now he could hear nothing at all. There was hissing, there was crackling, then came the rapid beeps of the signing-off signal. He dropped the instrument and ran out into the corridor. He opened the doors of the offices one after another and everywhere saw staff familiar and unfamiliar. Some were sitting or standing, frozen into total immobility, like wax figures with glassy eyes; others were treading from one corner to another, stepping over the telephone wires they trailed after them; still others were feverishly writing in thick exercise books, on scraps of paper, or the margins of newspapers. And every one of them had the telephone clamped close to his ear, as if afraid to miss even a word. There were no spare telephones. Pepper attempted to take a receiver away from one of the entranced ones, a young man in a boiler-suit. He, however, at once came alive, began squealing and kicking, at which the others began shushing and waving their hands. Somebody shouted hysterically: "Disgraceful! Call the guard!"
"Where's my telephone?" Pepper was shouting. "I'm a man like you and I have a right to know! Let me listen! Give me my telephone!"
He was pushed out and the doors locked in his face. He wandered up to the last story, where, almost into the attic, next to the never-working elevator machinery, there sat two duty mechanics at a table, playing noughts and crosses. Pepper leaned against the wall, out of breath. The mechanics glanced at him, gave him an absent smile, and once more bent over the paper.
"Haven't you got your own telephone?" asked Pepper.
"Yes," said one. "Naturally. We haven't come to that yet."
"Well, why aren't you listening?" "You can't hear anything. Why listen?" "Why can't you hear anything?"
"Because we've cut the wire."
