"Damon Knight - Turncoat" - читать интересную книгу автора (Knight Damon)

slideway. It was not crowded; few people came to Store at this hour, for fear of using up their time
before they ever got to a Salesman. And then there was Sunday dinner to be gotten over with in time to
come back for evening services. . . . Bass caught himself. Already, he thought with a pang of bitterness,
he was thinking like a Consumer again. He might as well be-gin unlearning his painfully-acquired
Mercantile diction, too; it would not be appreciated in a factory, or on a farm . . .
Beyond that his mind refused to go. Dismissal from the Store was an incom-prehensible, alien idea. It
was like a huge object of unheard-of shapes and colors, set down before him with a "WellтАФwhat do you
think of that?" He could only gape at it numbly.
Curiously, the image that came to him now was not of himself, or of anyone he loved or hated, but of
the possessed fat man, in that instant's glimpse before he had looked away: the fat man's anguished face,
turned up in a silent ap-peal.

II

BASS."
The dun-robed secretary, with hair and face both so pale that they seemed one pasty, incongruous
mass, opened her mouth for the single syllable and then shut it again, like a trap. Her myopic eyes looked
not at him, or even through him, but beyond, at something indescrib-able in an undefined direction and at
an unguessable distance.
Twice, in the half-hour Bass had been waiting, she had stood up, walked direct-ly to the single
window that opened on an airshaft, lifted her hand to open it, and then frozen there, listening, before she
turned and walked mechanically back. A suicidal type, evidently; in the bad old days she would have
jumped out.
Bass stood up, numb from the hard-ness of the long bench. Murmuring ex-cuses, he worked his way
past his neigh-bors' knees to the end of the row. His legs carried him up the aisle.
The door slid open at his approach, and closed smoothly behind him.
The inner office was paneled in white oak and ebony. Facing Bass as he en-tered, behind the desk,
were three tall casement windows through which he could see the sunlit Glenbrook hills; the hangings on
either side of them were of green-flushed silver damask. On the walls, in ornate ebony frames, were hung
a few of the usual mottoes:

THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS WRONG
PARSIMONY IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL
A MORTIFIED CUSTOMER IS OUR BEST ADVERTISEMENT
WEAR IT OUT; TRADE IT IN; USE IT UP; START AGAIN

Behind the desk, watching him ex-pressionlessly as he advanced, were two men. One, with a round,
pink face that would have been cherubic except for the hardness of the slitted eyes, wore the
white-bordered black robes of Manager's rank. That would be Wooten; but he was standing at the desk,
leaning the heels of his hands upon it. The lean, white-haired old man who sat beside him, fingering a
sheaf of red file folders, wore the ruffles and scarlet lace of an Archdeputy.
тАЬThis is Bass, Your Excellency," said the man in the black robe. "Bass, I am Manager Wooten. This
is Archdeputy Laudermilk, who will interview you."
тАЬOnward, Your Excellency, Your Worship,тАЭ Bass said.



"Onward," Laudermilk answered in a surprisingly deep and resonant voice. "Sit down, Bass. Now,
let's see. .. ." He lifted a page of the dossier before him, glanced at the one under it, and went back to the
first page. "You're twenty-one," he said. "Eyes brown, hair black, complexion fair, build medium, no