"Don't stall! Give it to me straight! Now!" He was fumbling in his tunic. He had some pieces of paper. "Oh, yeah. I remember now. I got all the receipts. Gods, Officer Gris, you got no idea how much things cost! Do you know he spent three hundred and two credits through me today? The Fleet gave him the cleaning supplies for nothing – he has a pal in supply there and all it took was a note." He was fumbling with the receipts. "The tup truck cost a hundred and seventy-five credits. Oh, yes! It was the dresses!

"Officer Gris, I ain't ever going to get married. You won't believe it, but them dresses cost one hundred credits! Oh, that was embarrassing. I'd spent twenty-five credits for some other things. . . ." I shook him again, "Come to the point and stop stalling!"

"I'm trying to tell you," he wailed. "Where was I? You got me all mixed up and I lost a paper to boot. Ah, there it is. It was such a fancy store and they looked on me like dirt. I had the dresses all picked out and I only had ninety-eight credits of his money left and I knew he was really counting on me. I myself had two credits of my own so I put that with the ninety-eight and I got out of there with the dresses. I got it now. He owes me two credits." He thought for a moment. "I'll give him his receipts tomorrow and he'll sure pay me back my two credits. But that ain't important." A note of admiration crept into his voice. "Ain't he a really great guy, Officer Gris!" Such insolence! I hit him and I hit him hard.

The blood started trickling down the side of his mouth. He gathered up the receipts quietly. Without a word, he got into the driver's seat. That's how you have to treat this riffraff. It's all they understand. Lombar was right. They should be exterminated for the good of the Confederation.

I got in back. "Take me to my town hotel," I ordered. At least I had a place to sleep.

We flew through the early evening traffic toward the north end of Government City. The area has long been a sort of slum. That's why the Apparatus has its offices there. The offices themselves are on a cliff where the River Wiel takes a bend. But well inward from the cliff and down the hill, there is a sort of stew where Apparatus clerks gloom away their off-time and just a little further up is where some Apparatus officers live. The area stinks, not just from the dirty river but also from the dilapidated buildings themselves.

My "hotel" was not strictly speaking a hotel. It had been some notable's residence long ago and clapboard shacks had been added on and these were lorded over by a female who called herself Meeley. I had a small room there.

The airbus stopped at the side entrance, setting down in what had once been a small yard but was now a garbage dump. The driver usually sleeps there in the airbus so I left him and went up the crooked stairs to my room.

It was locked. Not just locked but barred.

I stamped over to a stairwell and yelled down for Meeley. I was gratified to hear a rush of feet. She was practically beating the stairs apart she was coming up so fast. For a moment I was gratified to get such quick response.

The light was dim and I did not anticipate anything. I could not see the expression on her ancient and cut-up face – she has several knife scars.

"Where's my money?" she demanded.

"Why, Meeley! You know I always pay you!"

"Always means never!" she shrieked. She has never liked me. "You been gone for days and days without no word. I thought we'd had the good luck you'd been killed like you deserve! You Apparatus scum is all alike. (Bleep) you!" She hit me!

"Open my room door!" I said, prudently stepping back.

She found a keyplate and dropped the bar. She flung the door open. She flashed on the lights!

Without another word, working like fury, she began grabbing up my things. She blasted past me and rushed to the balcony above the side yard. She pitched the whole armload down toward the airbus.

"Driver!" I yelled.

Meeley came rushing out of the room again with another armload. She hurled it into the night!

She returned and came out with an old pair of boots and my one bedcover and pitched those after the rest!

"Now get out!" she screamed. "I'm going to tell every lodging keeper in this whole area that you haven't paid a particle of rent for a year! GET OUT!" I thought I ought to look in the room to see if she had gotten everything. But I changed my mind. There are times to fight and times to run. She had always had a dislike for me for some reason.

My driver and I picked my things out of the garbage in the side yard, cleaned them off as best we could and bundled them into the airbus.

"Where to?" said the driver.

I couldn't think of anyplace.

"How about your office?" said the driver.

"Old Bawtch doesn't like that," I said.

"It's the only place you got," said the driver. "If you want my opinion, a desk is better than a gutter anytime. There really ain't room for two to sleep comfortable in this airbus. I'll take you to your office." There were cabins on that tug. But the very thought of it brought heavy pains into my stomach.

(Bleep) this mission. And (bleep) Heller! I ought to kill him!

And then I really got sick. A little later, the driver even had to help me to get up and stretch out on the hard desk.

It had been an awfulday!

I woke up as I hit the floor in a shattering crash. It was daylight. Somebody had pulled me off the desk.

"You know you're not supposed to sleep in here," said old Bawtch, peevishly.

"Whose office is it, if it isn't mine?" I muttered from the floor under his big feet.

"Now get away from the side of the desk," he said. "I've got to stand there to put these papers down." And it was true. He was standing there with about a yard-high stack of documents and forms. I understood the situation then. He had needed the top of the desk to put this massive stack of papers on it.

I scrambled sideways out of the road and got to my feet. "That's an awful lot of papers," I said.

He had gotten the load down and was stacking it by categories. "You might drop by once in a while to validate forms. I can do all the rest of your work. But notpush your identoplate. You do remember how to push it onto a piece of paper, don't you?" I detected a sneer.

Bawtch, for some reason, has never liked me. He stands – I had better say stoops – about six feet tall. He has two wild tufts of gray wool that stand out on either side above his ears; his nose is so sharp you could cut paper with it; he wears black blinders to keep light from side-striking his protruding black eyes. He doesn't talk, really: he bites. I think about eighty years ago he had ambitions to be an officer. The highest he ever made was chief clerk of Section 451. I worked it all out once. He is just jealous.

He was standing there threateningly to ensure I sat down and started stamping. "You might at least bring me some of the clerk's hot jolt," I said.

"The office funds are totally depleted. We heard a rumor you had been transferred elsewhere and we had a party. Then we heard you had been left on post and we had a wake. There is no jolt, hot or otherwise." I sat down, got out my identoplate and started to stamp. I was hungry and wondered if paper were edible. If it were, there was sure a feast here. The Apparatus rides, walks and sleeps on forms, forms, forms, nearly all of them lies.

Manifests for supplies that were personally stolen, certifications of payrolls that were never paid, sums scheduled for informers that went into the pockets of agents instead, personnel lists which falsely attested twice the number, "customer expenses" from the base chief in Turkey that were really fees of local prostitutes for himself: tons of made-out forms, the usual fare of the Apparatus.