Once more the whirlwind, an aroma of sweat was sensed and then vanished, Hausbotcher was already by the door pausing, trunk inclined, hands by his seams, appalling, piteous, and ready for anything.
"One moment," said Pepper. Hausbotcher froze. "Can you kill a man?" asked Pepper. Hausbotcher did not hesitate. He pulled out a small notepad and spoke: "Your orders?" "And commit suicide?" Pepper asked. "What?" said Hausbotcher. "Go," said Pepper. "I'll call for you later." Hausbotcher vanished. Pepper cleared his throat and wiped his cheeks.
"Let's assume that," he said aloud. "And now what?"
On the table he observed a desk diary, turned the page, and read the present day's entry. The previous director's handwriting disappointed him; it was large and legible like a primary school teacher's. "Group leaders. 9:30. Foot examination. 10:30. Power for Ala. Try aerated yogurt. Machinization. Reel: who stole it? Four bulldozers!!!"
To hell with the bulldozers, thought Pepper, that's it: no bulldozers, no excavators, no saw-combines of eradication... Good idea to castrate Acey at the same time - can't, pity ... and that machine-depot. Blow that up, he decided. He pictured the Directorate from above and realized that a great deal needed blowing up. Too much... Any fool can use explosives, he thought.
He pulled out the desk's middle drawer and saw there heaps of papers, blunted pencils, and two philatelic perforation-gauges, and on top of all this, a twisted golden general's epaulette. Just one. He had a look for the other, raking his hand around under the papers, received a pinprick and found a bunch of safe keys. The safe itself stood in the far comer and a pretty odd safe it was; decorated like a sideboard. Pepper got up and crossed the room to the safe; he glanced around him and noticed a good many odd things he'd not seen before.
Under the window stood a hockey stick, next to it - a crutch and a false leg wearing a boot with a rusty skate. There turned out to be another door in the recesses of the office; a rope was stretched across it on which hung some black swimming trunks and several odd socks, a number of them holed. On the door was a tarnished metal plate with the inscribed legend CATTLE. On the windowsill, half-hidden by the curtain, stood a small aquarium; in the pure transparent water among varicolored seaweeds, a plump black axoloti stirred its feathery gills in measured tempo. From behind the Selivan picture protruded a splendid bandmaster's baton complete with horses tails. Pepper was busy with the safe a good while, trying the keys. At last the heavy armored door swung open. The inside of the door was covered in indecent pin-ups from men's magazines, and the safe was practically empty. Pepper found a pair of pince-nez, the left lens broken, a crumpled cap with a mysterious cockade, and a photograph of an unknown family (grinning father, mother with cupid's-bow lips, and two boys in cadet uniform). There was a parabellum pistol too, well cleaned and looked after, a single round up the barrel, another twisted general's epaulette, and an iron cross with oak leaves. There was another pile of file folders in the safe, but they were all empty except for the bottom one, which held a rough draft of an order imposing punishment on driver Acey for systematic nonattendance at the Museum of Directorate History. "That's got him, that's got him, rascal," muttered Pepper. "Fancy that, skipping the museum... We'll do something about this." Always Acey, what the ... ?
Yogurtomaniac, repulsive womanizer, junky, still, all the drivers were that... no, a stop would be put to it: yogurt, chess during working hours. By the way, what exactly does Kim add up on the broken Mercedes? Or is everything as it should be - some sort of stochastic processes going on... Look, Pepper, you don't know much; everybody's hard at work, after all. Hardly anybody loafs around. They work at night. Everybody's busy, nobody's got any time. Orders are carried out, that I know, seen it myself. Everything looks to be in order: guards do their guarding, drivers drive, engineers construct, scientists write articles, pay-clerks dish out money...
