Pepper wiped his face and neck with a crumpled handkerchief, waited till one mechanic defeated the other, then went downstairs. The corridors had become noisy; doors were open wide, staff were coming out for a smoke. Lively, excited, exhilarated voices exclaimed and buzzed. "I'm telling you the truth. Eskimos invented the Eskimo ice cream. What? Well, all right, I just read it in a book... You can't hear the assonance yourself? Es-ki-mos. Es-ki-mo. What? ..." "I saw it in the Hiver catalogue, a hundred and fifty thousand francs - and that was in fifty-six. Can you imagine what that would be today?" "Funny cigarettes. They say they aren't putting tobacco into cigarettes anymore. They get special paper, crush it, and saturate it in nicotine..." "You can get cancer from tomatoes as well. Tomatoes, a pipe, eggs, silk gloves..." "Did you sleep well? Imagine, I couldn't get to sleep all night: that piledriver keeps thumping all the time. Can you hear it? Like that all night. Hello, there, Pepper! They were saying you'd left... You're staying, good lad!" "They've found that thief at last, remember, all those things kept disappearing? It turned out to be the discus-thrower from the park, you know, the statue near the fountain. He had something filthy written on his leg, too." "Peppy, be a pal, lend me five till payday - tomorrow that is..." "But he wasn't after her. She kept throwing herself at him. Right in front of her husband. You won't believe this, but I saw it with my own eyes..."
Pepper went down to his office, said hello to Kirn, and washed his hands. Kim wasn't working. He was sitting quietly with his hands on the table, gazing at the tiled wall. Pepper took the dust-cover off the Merce-des, plugged it in, and glanced expectantly at Kim.
"Can't work today," said Kim. "Some goon is going around repairing everything. I'm sat here not knowing what to do."
At this point a note on his desk caught Pepper's eye. "To Pepper. We are to advise you that your telephone is located in office 771." Signature illegible. Pepper sighed.
"No use sighing," said Kim, "you should have got to work on time."
"Well, I didn't know," Pepper said. "I was intending to leave today."
"It's your own fault," Kim said shortly.
"Anyway I did hear something. Kim, you know. I didn't understand it at all. Why was that?"
"Hear something! You're a fool. You're an idiot. You missed such an opportunity I can hardly bear to speak to you. I'll have to introduce you to the director. Out of pity."
"Do that," said Pepper. "You know," he went on, "sometimes I thought I caught the sense of something, some scraps of ideas, I think very interesting ones, but I'm trying to recall them - and nothing."
"Whose telephone was it?"
"I don't know. Where Hausbotcher sits!"
"Ah-h, yes, she's having a baby. Hausbotcher's out of luck. Gets a new assistant, works six months - and a baby. Yes, Pepper, you got a woman's telephone. So I don't know how I can help you... Nobody listens to it all right through, women either, I suppose. After all, the director is addressing everybody at once, but at the same time everybody separately as well. Understand?"
"I'm afraid not."
"I for instance, recommend listening like this. Put the director's speech into one line, omitting punctuation marks, and choose the words at random, mentally putting down dominoes. Then if the domino halves coincide, the word is accepted and noted down on a separate list. If it doesn't - the word is temporarily rejected, but remains in the line. There are a few other refinements to do with the frequency of vowels and consonants, but that is an effect of secondary significance. Get it?"
"No," said Pepper. "That is, yes. Pity I didn't know that method. And what did he say today?"
"It's not the only method. There is, for example, the
intermittent spiral method. It's rather crude, but if the speech is only about equipment and economic problems, it's very convenient because it's simple. There is the Stevenson-Zade method, but that requires electronic gadgets... So that, all round, the domino method's the best, but when the terminology is specialized and narrow - the spiral method."
"Thank you," said Pepper. "But what was the director talking about today?"
"What d'you mean, what about?"
"What? ... Well... what about? Well, what did he ,say?"
"To whom?"
"To whom? Well, you for instance." "Unfortunately, I can't tell you that. It's classified material, and after all. Peppy, you're not on permanent staff here. So don't get mad."
"No, I'm not angry," said Pepper. "I'd have liked to know, that's all... He said something about the forest and free will... I'd recently been lobbing pebbles over the cliff, well, just like that for no real reason and he said something about it."
"Don't you tell me about that," said Kirn nervously. "It's nothing to do with me. Or you either if it wasn't your telephone."
"Now wait a minute, did he say something about the forest?"
Kim shrugged.
