Hausbotcher shook his head and burbled something. Pepper loosened his collar and stared helplessly around. In the shadow of an oak tree not far off, two engineers in cardboard masks were standing for some reason. Catching his glance, they straightened up and clicked their heels. Pepper peered around him like a hunted animal, then hurriedly walked along the path out of the park. There'd been plenty of surprises up till now, he thought feverishly, but this beat all... They were all in it together ... run, he had to run! But how? He emerged from the park and was about to turn off toward the canteen, but he found Hausbotcher blocking his way once more, filthy and appalling. He was standing with the suitcase on his shoulder, his blue face was bathed in tears or water or sweat, his eyes roved beneath a white film of moisture, he gripped the file folder with teethmarks on it close to his chest.
"Not here, please..." he croaked. "I beg you ... to the study ... intolerably urgent ... not forgetting interests of subordination..."
Pepper recoiled from him and ran off along the main street. People were standing like statues along the pavements, heads back and eyes staring. A truck speeding toward him pulled up with a squeal of brakes and smashed into a newsstand. People with spades spilled out of the back and began forming up in two ranks. A security guard went by with ceremonial step, holding his rifle at the present-arms...
On two occasions Pepper attempted to turn off into a side street, but each time Hausbotcher appeared before him. Hausbotcher was no longer able to speak, he just moaned and growled, rolling beseeching eyes. Thereupon Pepper ran off toward the Directorate building.
Kim, he thought desperately, Kim won't permit... surely Kim wasn't in with them as well? ... I'll lock myself in the lavatory ... let them try ... I'll use my feet... I'm past caring...
He burst into the hallway only to be greeted at once with the brazen clangor of the amalgamated local orchestras thundering out a march. Strained faces, protruding eyes, inflated chests flashed before him. Hausbotcher caught him up and chased him up the main staircase with its raspberry carpets, a route forbidden to everyone at all times, through some unfamiliar two-tone halls, past security guards in full-dress uniform with decorations, along slippery waxed parquet, up to the fifth floor along a portrait gallery, upstairs again to floor six, past some bedecked females frozen like mannequins, into a sort of luxurious dead end with fluorescent lighting, and up to an enormous leather door with the nameplate "Director." Nowhere else to run.
Hausbotcher caught up with him and slid under his elbow, croaked horribly like an epileptic and flung the leather door wide before him. Pepper entered, and sank up to his insteps in a monstrous tiger skin, and immersed his whole being into the austere executive twilight of half-drawn door curtains, into the noble aroma of expensive tobacco, in the cotton-wool silence, into the even tenor and serenity of an alien existence.
"Hello," he said into space. But no one was sitting behind the huge table. No one was sitting in the huge armchairs. And no one met his glance except Selivan the Martyr in a vast picture occupying the whole of one side of the room.
Behind him, Hausbotcher dropped the suitcase with a thump. Pepper started and turned around. Hausbotcher was standing, swaying and proffering the file folder like an empty tray. His eyes were dead, glassy. The man'll die any minute, thought Pepper. But Hausbotcher did not die.
"Unusually urgent..." he grated, panting. "Not possible without director's signature ... personal... would never dare..."
"What director?" Pepper whispered. A terrible surmise had begun to take vague shape in his brain.
"You..." Hausbotcher croaked. "Without your official stamp ... no way..."
Pepper leaned against the table and supporting himself on its polished surface, wandered around it to the chair that seemed nearest. He dropped into its cool leather embrace and took in the rows of colored telephones on his left and the gold stamped volumes on the right. In front of him stood a monumental inkwell with Tannhauser and Venus, and above it, the white beseeching eyes of Hausbotcher and the proffered document case. He drew his elbows in, thought: Well, so that's how it is? You scum, sods, lackies ... that's it, eh? Well, well, you bastards, slaves, cardboard snouts... Well, all right, let it be...
"Stop waggling that over the table," he said severely. "Give it here."
Things began moving in the office, shadows flitted^ a small whirlwind started up and Hausbotcher materialized at his right shoulder; the folder lay on the table and opened as if of its own accord, sheets of fine quality paper peeped out, and he read a word printed in large letters: DRAFT. "Thank you," he said severely. "You may go."
