Pepper presented himself in the director's anteroom at exactly ten. There was a line there already, about twenty people. Pepper was put in fourth place. He took an armchair between Beatrice Vakh of the Aid to Native Populations Group and a morose member of the Engineering Penetration Group. The morose member, judging by the identification button on his chest and the legend on his white mask, bore the name Brandskugel. The anteroom was decorated in pale pink, on one wall hung a board, "No smoking, no litter, no noise," on the other a large picture of pathfinder Selivan's exploit: Selivan with arms upraised, was turning into a jumping tree before the eyes of his stunned comrades. The pink blinds on the windows were tightly down, an enormous chandelier blazed from the ceiling. Apart from the entrance door on which was written "Exit," the room possessed one other door, vast and covered in yellow leather, with the sign "No Exit." This notice was done in fluorescent colors and had the effect of a lugubrious warning. Under it the secretary's desk stood with its four different-colored telephones and electric typewriter. The secretary herself, a plump middle-aged lady in pince-nez, was haughtily perusing the Textbook of Atomic Physics. The visitors talked among themselves in restrained voices. Many were plainly nervous and were compulsively leafing through old illustrated magazines.
It was all extraordinarily like a dentist's waiting room and Pepper again experienced an unpleasant chill, a quiver in the jaw, and a desire to go somewhere else quickly.
"They're not lazy even," said Beatrice Vakh, turning her beautiful red head slightly toward Pepper. "But they can't tolerate systematic work. How, for instance, can you explain the extraordinary ease with which they abandon their living places?"
"Are you addressing me?" asked Pepper timidly. He hadn't the faintest idea how to explain the extraordinary ease.
"No, I was talking to Monsher Brandskugel." Monsher Brandskugel adjusted his left moustache, which had come unstuck, and gave a muffled mumble. "I don't know!"
"Nor do we," said Beatrice bitterly. "As soon as our groups get near a village, they leave their houses and possessions and go. You get the impression they're absolutely uninterested in us. We've got nothing for them. Do you see it that way?"
Monsher Brandskugel was silent for a while as if pondering and looked at Beatrice through the strange cross-shaped embrasures of his mask. At length he brought out in his previous intonation, "I don't know."
"It's a great pity," Beatrice continued, "that our group is made up exclusively of women. I realize that • there is an underlying reason for it, but we often lack masculine toughness and endurance, I'd call it pur-posefulness. Women unfortunately tend to dissipate their energies, no doubt you've noticed that?"
"I don't know," said Brandskugel, at which his moustaches came off and floated softly to the floor. He picked them up, inspected them carefully, lifting the edge of his mask and, applying spit matter-of-factly, replaced them.
A bell rang sweetly on the secretary's desk. She put aside her book, glanced through her list, holding on her pince-nez with an elegant gesture, and announced:
"Professor Cockatoo, please go in." Professor Cockatoo dropped his picture magazine, jumped to his feet, sat down again, glanced around, grew perceptibly pale and then, biting his lip and with a violently distorted face, pushed off from his chair and disappeared behind the door marked "No Exit." A painful silence reigned in the anteroom for several seconds. Then voices resumed humming and pages rustling.
"We simply cannot find any way of engaging their interest, of absorbing them. We built them convenient day houses on piles. They fill them up with peat and colonize it with insects of some kind. We tried to offer them tasty food in place of the sour filth they eat. Useless. We tried to dress them like human beings. One died, two fell ill. Well, we're pushing on with our experiments. Yesterday we scattered a truckload of mirrors and gilt buttons in the forest... The cinema doesn't interest them, neither does music. Immortal works are just received with giggles... No, we'll have to start with the children. For instance, I suggest catching the children, and organizing special schools. Unfortunately that's linked with technical difficulties; human hands can't touch them, special machines are needed... Anyway, you know that as well as I dp."
"I don't know," said Brandskugel miserably.
The bell tinkled again and the secretary said, "Beatrice, you now. Go through, please."
