"Correct," Steven nodded.

"You've just left your previous employment, is that right?"

"Yes."

"And you wish to -"

"Not," Steven said, sitting forward and tapping the desk as MrStarke sat back, slumping down with a sigh in his seat and shaking his head, smiling slightly, "because I wanted to, either. They were out to get me from the start. They wanted rid of me all the time. I was hounded out. They forced me to leave. But I left of my own free will. I wouldn't give them the satisfaction. I resigned. I have my pride, you know. They can't kick me around."

"Ah," Mr Starke said, sitting forward in his seat and looking more interested, "you resigned?"

"I certainly did. I wasn't going to let them -"

"Well, you do realise, Mr Grout, that by resigning you have made yourself ineligible for Unemployment Benefit for a period of -"

"What?" Steven said, sitting forward. "What's this? I did the only decent thing I could do. If you think I was going to stand there and -"

"I'm sorry, Mr Grout, but I thought I ought to mention it. You still have to register as unemployed, but for the first -"

"Oh no," Steven said, "I'm sorry, that's just not good enough. I've paid my stamps. I've paid as I've earned. I'm not a scrounger or one of these social misfits. I'm a working man. Not just now, perhaps, but I am, I certainly am. I just wasn't going to let them sack me. I was not," he tapped the desk, "going to give them the satisfaction, you see?"

"I appreciate that you would rather terminate your employment yourself, Mr Grout, but the rules are that if you do then you have to-"

"Well, that's just not good enough, I'm sorry," Grout said. They'd found him. He was starting to heat up. His collar felt itchy and he could smell some strange tense body-smell coming from his armpits. Mr Starke was shaking his head.

"Nevertheless -"

"Don't you 'nevertheless' me, young man," Grout said, raising his voice. People were looking at him. The sunlit Job Centre was quite crowded, he saw now. The sun was slanting in through the windows and heating the place up. But there was ordinary heat and there was microwave heat. He knew the difference well by now. Ordinary heat didn't itch the way microwave heat did. Ordinary heat didn't come from inside the way microwave seemed to, affecting you all at once. He decided to try ignoring it, and said, "Don't you 'nevertheless' me, oh no. I'm not having it,"

Starke gave a small laugh. A laugh! Just like that! "I'm sorry, Mr Grout, but what you're not having is Unemployment Benefit. You get Supplementary Benefit instead for the first six -"

"You're sorry?" Grout said. "Well, you don't suit your sorrow like they say. I want to know why I'm being victimised against."

"You're not being victimised, Mr Grout," Starke said. "The rules are that if you leave your employment voluntarily you have to wait six weeks before you can claim Unemployment Benefit. If you are eligible, which I imagine you will be, you may claim Supplementary Benefit during the interim."

"And what about my dignity?" Steven said loudly. "What about that, I ask you? Eh? Supplementary Benefit, indeed! I've paid my stamps. I've paid my taxes. This isn't good enough."

"I appreciate your position, Mr Grout, but I'm afraid that is the way things are set up. You probably will be eligible for Supplementary Benefit; first you have to register -"

"Well, it's not good enough," Grout said, sitting straight up in his chair and fixing Starke with one eye, trying to turn the tables again so that he would stop feeling uncomfortable and Starke would go back on the defensive. "I'm being victimised against and that's all there is to it. As though I haven't got enough crisises to have to put up with. But this won't be the last straw; they won't get rid of me that easy. I'm just not -"

"Well, if you feel you've been unfairly dismissed," Starke said, "you can go to the -"

"Ha!" Grout said, "I'm unfairly everything. Employed, unemployed, housed, treated; everything. But you won't catch me complaining. I've learned better. Doesn't get you anywhere. I'd rather keep my dignity." He was trying to explain, but he got the impression he was losing out now. Clerk Starke had the upper hand. It was so unfair. Those devils! They hadn't said anything to him at the depot; they hadn't told him anything about not getting unemployment money. They'd let him resign, just when they'd been on the point of sacking him. Maybe just a few more seconds and they would have fired him and he wouldn't be in this position now. Just a few more seconds! The swines!

"Well," Starke began, and started talking about what Steven should do about registering as unemployed.

Grout wasn't listening. He watched the young man's face, now set in the sort of bored, practised, professional expression Grout had seen a hundred times before.

He heard the words "P45" in Starke's speech, and his heart sank. That was what he'd dropped, wasn't it? Or was it? Ashton had shouted something which sounded like that, when he was running away from the depot. Oh-oh. A new salvo of microwaves hit him; he felt a rush of uncomfortable warmth slide all over his body, and he felt his face going red. His skin prickled and itched. Damn! He'd felt so pleased, victorious even, after leaving the depot, that he'd quite forgotten about dropping the form. But of course; Dan Ashton had chased after him with it.

Or at least, that was what they wanted him to think, he suddenly realised. He didn't remember being given that form; they had probably not even given it to him in the first place. If it was all that important then they almost certainly hadn't. It was like when his Giro cheques from the unemployment people hadn't turned up the last time he'd been out of work; it was all done to wear him down. They could talk all they wanted about incorrectly filled-out forms, wrong addresses and the like; he knew what was really going on. They were slowly trying to destroy him.

They probably didn't have to refer back to their superiors - those mysterious Controllers, be they human or not - for instructions, they probably had their contingency plans all ready and prepared. So even when he'd got the drop on them they could still count on messing him around somehow. Devious bastards!

Sometimes, he had to admit, he wished they would just leave him alone and let him live out this petty, pointless, insignificant life in peace. It might not be all that much, but it might be almost bearable if they didn't keep tormenting him. It was an ignoble, unworthy thought, he knew, but he was - now, anyway - only human, and therefore prey to human weaknesses, whatever sort of superhuman he'd been during the War. It was a measure of how well they had done that he even considered such an awful thing. They had so oppressed his higher thoughts, his own belief in himself, that he would almost trade the chance to return to his previous, glorious existence for some peace.

But he wouldn't give in! They wouldn't win!

All the same, he wished he'd paid a little more attention to what had gone on when he'd been leaving the depot, so that he could have spotted when they carried out that trick with the form he was supposed to have dropped. He wondered if they had some other sort of beam they could train on him, which would make him forget things, or make his attention wander. The trouble was, he thought, as Starke talked on, that it would be very difficult to spot when they were using such a subtly fiendish device. This needed more thought. But what to do now?

There was always Revenge. He could get back at them in some commando-style way.

Ever since he had been at high school he'd found some enjoyment and relief by getting back at them in ways they obviously didn't expect. He'd thrown rocks at windows of offices and works they'd sacked him from, he'd defaced buildings, scratched officials" cars and mutilated bonnet mascots (though that was largely for his own safety) and he'd made bomb-hoax telephone calls. It wasn't much, and they would take it in their stride, no doubt, but apart from the fact these revenge raids certainly did upset his Tormentors a little, making life and their cruel purpose just that little bit less easy for them, the greatest effect was on him. He relieved his frustration, he vented his anger and hatred. If he'd tried to bottle it up he would have exploded one way or the other long before now. They'd have been able to certify him insane, or he'd have done something so terrible and criminal they could have put him in prison, where he'd be sodomised and knifed; quietly disposed of without any fuss because the rules were different in there. At least out here they had to play according to some sort of standard of fairness, even if it was a standard they could change as they went along according to how it suited them (like doubling the bus fares just after he'd found that job way out in Brentford), but in prison, even more so than in a mental hospital, there were no real limits to what they could do to him.