"Think the Chairman'll buy it?" Cull said. "Myself, I see at least four distinct markets -- rich markets -- in Fyodor's stuff. And G.o.d knows what else can be squeezed out of it."

"I agree, Cull," said Stengarius. "But, it's up tohim."

Stengarius cut Cull off and put in a call to the Chairman. This call had to go through the Chair-man's Secretary; he sat on a basalt chair carved out of the steps of the platform. Cull watched him answer Stengarius, then cut Stengarius off, and put in a call to the Chairman.

The old man kept the phone hidden under his beard. He reached into the white tangled ma.s.s -- like a nest of uncooked spaghetti or pale worms -- and pulled out the phone. For a long time he listened without speaking, or, at least, without moving his lips, while Stengarius talked. Then, suddenly, the long long hairs over his upper lip parted a little, and a black hole appeared beneath them. He turned his head toward Cull -- the upside-down scimitar of a nose briefly profiled -- and his black eyes stared at Cull.

Cull knew a man's eyes did not shine from reflected light as a cat's, but he could swear he saw the old man's shine. Perhaps, it was terror reflected from Cull, the bright nightlight of terror.

The Chairman phoned to Stengarius, and Stengarius looked up at Cull and gestured with the thumb and forefinger meeting to make an O.

Cull smiled. If this worked out, he might be ad-vanced, might even find himself on a seat on the bottom row. Maybe, some day, to the Secretary-ship. Possibly -- though not probably -- to the Chairmanship. The Chairman had been on the throne for a long long time.

Fyodor's voice roused Cull from his dream. "Mr. Cull, I haven't finished. Not by a long way."

Suddenly, Cull knew why the voice had seemed familiar. Of course! He had heard that same voice only a short time ago in his apartment when he had started to replace the phone after Doctor B.O.

had left.

"Down in the sewers!" said Cull. Breath sucked in on the other end. A pause. Then, a stammering in some Slavic tongue -- probably Russian. He must have been shocked to have reverted to his native speech. Finally, he said, in Hebrew, "What do you mean?"

"There was an accidental connection on the phone earlier today," Cull said. "I heard you. Which reminds me. You're not a member of the Exchange. What were you doing on the phone?"

Cull did not tell him he had heard only the final part of the conversation and only his voice. Let panic shake what Cull did not know out of Fyodor. Rotten apples blown down by the wind of guilt. Or so he hoped.

"Mr. Cull," Fyodor said, "I don't know how much you heard. Or whose side you're on." He said nothing of why he was using the phone.

"Man's side," Cull said. "You surely don't think I'm a stinking Judas? I wouldn't work for The Authorities, d.a.m.n them!"

"I don't want to say any more over the phone," Fyodor said excitedly. "I never thought of it before. But The Authorities could be tapping this line."

"If they are, they've never given any evidence of it yet," Cull said. "The Exchange has been operating for a long time, and They've never in-terfered with anything. At least, Their in-terference, if any, was indirect."

Again, he began sweating. From time to time, men disappeared. Perhaps, the Authorities, whom n.o.body had ever seen but who had to exist. . .?

"You know where I am," said Fyodor. "I'll wait for you here."

The phone clicked off.

Cull did not try to call Sven back. He decided, instead, to go directly to where Sven and Fyodor were. He had to ask permission to leave. But, after he had explained that this Fyodor was a possible treasure house, he was told to go ahead. Find out everything.

"If you really dig up something for the good of the Exchange, you'll be a big man in the organization," said Stengarius. "Bigger, anyway. Only, don't get too big for your britches. You'll get whittled down so fast you won't know where the knives come from. I'd take this a.s.signment myself, but I'm too busy now."

What he meant was that he did not dare to leave for fear of the machinations of his colleagues.

Once a man worked his way up to First Telephoner, he became a prisoner. He could not chance leaving his post. But there were com-pensations.

One of the compensations was Phyllis Nilstrom. She was standing in the lobby, talking to Robert-son, First Telephoner of the Second Shift, when Cull left the Exchange Floor. She was a beautiful woman of medium height. Her hair was ash-blonde, pulled back tightly from her broad forehead and fastened in a large Psyche knot. She had long slim legs, curving firm b.u.t.tocks, a narrow waist, flat stomach, and b.r.e.a.s.t.s that were firm and full but not vulgarly so. Her voice was husky.

Cull loathed her.

Shortly after he had joined Exchange, he had gone to a party given by Cardinal, Head Telephoner of Sector XXB-1A/A. He was in-troduced to Phyllis by Cardinal, who informed him he could shake hands with her but that was to be his last intimate contact with her. Cull had dutifully laughed, but, during the rest of the party, he could not keep his eyes off her. He wanted her more than he had ever wanted any woman. But he was no fool; he did not make it ap-parent. Every chance he got thereafter, he managed to talk to her, in the Exchange lobby, at parties, sometimes, when he contrived "ac-cidental"

meetings. Then, when he had worked his way up to Head Telephoner for sector XXB-8N/B and could offer her something to rank with Cardinal's position, he had nerved himself to tell her he loved her.

Knowledge of her relationship at that time with Cardinal had helped him gain courage, for he knew that the two were unhappy with each other.

To his surprise and delight, Phyllis had re-sponded. She had told him that she'd love to move into his apartment. That is, if something hap-pened that would demote Cardinal. At present, Cardinal still held much power. If she left him for Cull, she might disappear, murdered and dropped into the sewers by Cardinal's agents. Cull did not have enough power to protect her.

A short time later, Zabbini, Telephoner for one of the smaller sectors, was caught by two of Car-dinal's bodyguards in Cardinal's apartment. They killed him and then searched for their boss. Not finding him in his rooms, though they knew he had not left, they looked out the window. A crowd gathered around a body showed them what had happened. Zabbini had defenestrated Cardinal.

Phyllis came home a little later and expressed much surprise but little grief. After the inquest conducted by the Exchange First Detective, Phyllis was absolved of any direct blame. It was revealed that Zabbini had been in love with Phyllis and that he must have killed Cardinal with the ex-pectation of getting her as his mistress.

Cull had been a little shocked at this. He had no doubt that Phyllis had encouraged Zabbini to kill Cardinal so that she could get rid of him and also become Cull's mistress.

But he forgot about that when he took her to bed. She was the most pa.s.sionate woman he had ever known.

Or so he thought until the day she left him for Stengarius, the First Telephoner. Cull had made a big scene, had called her every name he could think of in Hebrew, English, and demon-speech. Phyllis had then told him that she was frigid, that she had to force herself to let any man touch her. But she wanted all the good things of life -- her words -- and she could get them easily by allowing men to get excited over her beauty and by pre-tending pa.s.sion.

Cull had threatened to tell Stengarius this fact. She had laughed and said that, if he did, she'd tell Stengarius that he was lying and that he was scheming to get her back. How long would he last after that?

Now, as he pa.s.sed her in the lobby, she spoke to him.

Cull said, "How are you?" and went to pa.s.s by.

"I'm fine," she replied, and she smiled. She had very white teeth.

"I want to speak to you alone," she said.

Robertson looked startled. He glanced with narrowed eyes at Cull, then said, "Be seeing you, Phyl."

"Not for some time," she answered. She reached out and placed her hand on Cull's arm.

"I understand you're taking a long trip," she said. "Way out."

He trembled a little at the touch of her hand, and he became sick with the pain of wanting her. He loathed her, but he wanted her back.

"It's. . . it's. . . a business. . . tr. . . trip," he said, hating himself because his stammer was betraying him.

She smiled coolly and said, "Don't be nervous. Stengarius knows I'll be talking to you. He won't think the wrong thing. You have nothing to worry about. I convinced him that you and I are through."

"I'm not the least bit worried abouthim," Cull said. He hoped his voice did not sound as hollow to her as to him.

"I'm sure you're not," she said, her smile leaving no doubt that she thought him scared out of his skin.

"d.a.m.n it, I'm not!" he said harshly.

"I didn't stop you to discuss your state of terror. So drop it. The facts are these. The Chair-man wants me to go to the same sector you're going to. You are to be my bodyguard. Or," she smiled again but with an unpleasant curl of lip, "my watchdog. Stengarius didn't want me to go, but the Chairman ordered it. So, he had to swallow the bitter pill. But he's trying to put a little sugar on it. You're the sugar."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," she said, suddenly speaking in English, "that he thinks I'm perfectly safe with you. He knows what an eager beaver you are to advance yourself and how you'd do nothing to jeopardize your chances. Also, that you wouldn't have the guts to make a pa.s.s at me."

Cull felt the heat climbing up his face. He tried to laugh but failed.

"Perhaps," she said, "beaver was the wrong description of you. Wouldn't jackal be the better term? A jackal among the lions, Jack Cull?"

For a moment, he did not understand her. It had been so long since he had spoken English that he had almost forgotten its use. Moreover, his memory was dim. What were lions? What was a jackal?

Then, the images of the beasts came. They were blurred but not so much that he did not feel the sting of the metaphor. And he knew why she had used English. Only with it could she make a pun on his name.

Why, you b.i.t.c.h, you frigid Stengarian wh.o.r.e! he thought. His face was composed though he knew his flush exposed the anger within.

"Well, Jack Cull, shall we go?" she said. She beckoned to a servant. The fellow picked up her briefcase, and he and Cull followed her out of the Exchange.

A palanquin sat on the street between its four carriers. It was constructed on long bones cleverly fitted together and covered with skin. The four men, seeing Phyllis, lifted the palanquin off the street. The servant placed her briefcase on one end. She climbed into the palanquin and sat up, her back supported by a pile of cushions formed of skin and stuffed with rocktree leaves.

Phyllis said, "Let's go." The servant began trotting ahead of the palanquin, and he shouted, "Way for the Exchange! Way for the lady of the Exchange!"

The crowd in the street parted to form an aisle for her pa.s.sage. To them, sight of the telephone receiver waved in the servant's hand was enough. The Exchange was not to be trifled with.

Cull had to take another means of trans-portation. Under other conditions, he would have been proud of this. For the first time, he was on a mission important enough for him to be given a ticket on the Piggyback Express.

But, now, he shone only with reflected l.u.s.ter. To ride on a man's back while she, the deepfreeze b.i.t.c.h, was carried on a palanquin was to be struck in the face.

He jumped upon the back of the first pony, a big Negro with long muscular legs. Cull's legs went around the man's waist and both arms went over his shoulders. The Negro hooked his arms under Cull's legs to support him, and off he ran at full speed.

For about half a mile he ran, going fast the first quarter mile, then slowing down at an exponential rate the last quarter. By the time they had reached the next pony, he was breathing noisily as a steam engine. After he had let Cull down off his back, he fell on the stone of the street. He had given all he had.

Cull jumped up on the next man, a short but muscular blond, and he, too, ran as fast and as far as he could until his legs almost gave way. And he stopped suddenly and dropped his arms and allowed Cull to slip off his back. So it werit, mile after mile as people scattered to make way for them. Piggyback after piggyback, while the leaning granite buildings and gargoyle faces spun by.

Long before Cull had reached the end of the line, he had decided that, prestige or no, it was a h.e.l.l of a way to travel. Tough enough on the human steeds, for they often dropped in their tracks after unloading him. But they were in con-dition, would recover quickly, and did not have far to go. He was not in condition, and he had a long distance to travel. By the time he had reached the destination, he would be so stiff and sore his muscles would creak. The skin on the inner part of his thighs, where they had rubbed against the arms of his carriers, was burning. And he was seasick or bouncesick, whatever you please. Three times he had to halt his ponies while he got rid of his soup and bread. And the sun sud-denly became weak, dim, as it did every twelve hours by the hourgla.s.s. It was not black but a faintly lit orb, a sun become a moon. All night he rode, hanging on, legs burning, stomach oscil-lating like a pendulum. All night, and then the sun suddenly flared up again (no dawn or dusk here). He rode all the next day, stopping only once to eat and then too tired to do it. Lifting a stone spoon to his lips, he fell asleep. His pony woke him at once and said they had to go. Orders. Then he found out that, if you were tired enough, you could sleep under almost any conditions.

But what a sleep! He would mount drowsily on the back of his pony and sink into joggled un-consciousness. The trouble was that the sleep lasted no more than a few minutes. When his carrier reached the end of his run, he would release his hold. Cull would fall off the man's back, crash into the stone, and wake with a jar. Before he recovered from the shock, he would climb, with a.s.sistance, onto the next back. His swiftly beating heart and overdriven adrenalin system would keep him awake for perhaps ten or fifteen seconds. Then, he would slide into un-consciousness again, only to be hurled up out of the deeps by another painful impact as his pony loosed him.

Nor did complaints help him. The pony would reply that it was not his duty to ease Cull gently to the ground, to baby him so he was not aware of being transferred to another carrier. The pony had not been so instructed. It became evident that every one of Cull's beasts of burden disliked his job, regarded it as humiliating and degrading. The only reasons they had hired on were (1) jobs were so scarce that any job was better than nothing and (2) the job was a means of getting into the organization and possible promotion in the Ex-change.

But Cull was sick and tired, and he did not see why his status was not now high enough to permit certain privileges. So, at one stop, where an Ex-change telephone was nearby, he phoned Stengarius. He complained bitterly, in a hoa.r.s.e voice, itemizing the rude abandonments, con-sequent shocks and skinned elbows, knees, and nose, and his burned thighs. A man in his position should not have to put up with such indignities. By treating Cull so cavalierly, the ponies were ex-pressing their contempt of the Exchange, and this should not be permitted.

This last argument convinced Stengarius. He called the local supervisor and told him what he must do. Without any backtalk, the supervisor agreed. And he phoned ahead to various super-visors.

After that, the ponies slid Cull gently to the street and hoisted him onto the back of the fresh runner. By then, he began wondering why he did not, as Phyllis did, rate a palanquin. He could sleep through the whole journey while stretched out on a soft seat.

He phoned again at another stop. Stengarius ex-ploded. "Who in h.e.l.l do you think you are? Only a First Phoner rates a palanquin. And you're a long ways from that! Get back in the saddle, Cull, and ride like blazes! You're wasting the Ex-change's time! And don't think this out-of-line request won't be held against you at your next merit review!"

"Yes, sir," Cull said humbly. He didn't dare to mention that the First Phoner's mistress had a palanquin. Back to the backs he went. By then, he was so tired he did not wake even during the transfers. How far he went in that condition, he didn't know. Then, he was shaken awake and saw Sven's broad red face with its thick orange moustache hovering over him.

"Rough, ain't it?" he said grinning. "Think it's worth it?"

"It'd better be," Cull said as he rose painfully. "Got any coffee?"

"Fyodor's waiting at the cafe," Sven said. "Come along."

The earthquake struck before they had taken six steps. The stone slab beneath their feet trembled. A low rumbling came a few seconds later. The buildings on both sides of the street began swaying.

Cull threw himself on the stone, digging into it with his fingers. His eyes were closed, and he was praying that the buildings would not fall. Ma.s.sive as they were, they had been known to collapse.

He did not know why he prayed to be spared. Death would have been a merciful -- if tem-porary -- escape. Of course, he would wake up again, and he would be where he had been before.

Well, not quite, for he might, in the meantime, have been discharged from death at a place far from here and would find himself out of a job with the Exchange. Because of the maneuvering that went on in the organization, twenty-four hours' absence could get you out into the cold. That is, not kicked out of it, just a loss of seniority.

The shaking and growling did not last more than thirty seconds. Afterward, there was silence.

n.o.body cared to speak; they were too busy being relieved. Or they might have been afraid that even the vibration of a voice would tip over a delicately balanced block of stone.

He rose and looked around. Not too much damage. Here and there, in the faces of the buildings, a block of granite had shoved forward and hung out over the street. A woman had leaped out of a window in her panic and was a mess on the street. Some slabs in the street had thrust up-ward, looking like half-opened doors to tombs. Some telephone lines were down, hanging from the gargoyles on the building's where they had been strung.

Sven said, softly, "Have you noticed that the quakes have been getting more frequent lately?

Perhaps what that demon told me is true."

"What demon?" Cull said.

"You know what liars they are. But, some-times, they do tell you the truth, if only to make you think it's a lie. Anyway, he says that Earth is in the throes of an atomic war. That the immigration from there is so heavy that almost all of the population must be dying. Or maybe all. There's no way of determining at what time events take place on Earth. The terrestrial and infernal chronologies are not geared together. Not in a one-to-one ratio, anyway."

"Yeah," Cull said. "If what I've been told is true, there's a lag. I met an old fellow once who told me that he knows for a fact that those who died in the last half of the sixteenth century im-migrated here before those who died in the first half. How do you figure that?"

"Who in h.e.l.l knows!" said Sven, his face becoming even redder. "Things here are just as obscure, puzzling, and unanswerable as they were on Earth. I think that's part of our punishment. Keep us guessing, keep us insecure. If only we knew! But we don't! Ever!"

"Is it better not to have been born and thus never have existed?" Cull said. "Sometimes, many times, I think so. But, even with all the miseries, frustrations, humiliations, anxieties, and pains that we had on Earth and have here, we still get a chuckle, a good belly-laugh, a piece of a.s.s. And we're aware. Not a nothingness, a zero, floating in a vacuum."

"You don't believe that," Sven said.

They had to slow down for a moment. A manna cloud had been forming for some time over this area, and now the filaments had begun pre-cipitating. They fluttered down, whipping this way and that, while people ran back and forth below them. One struck not twenty yards away from them, and they watched while a mob gathered around it and tore away large chunks of greyish-brown waffle-like material or strings of spaghetti-stuff. As soon as anyone had a handful or an armful, he ran. Some got away with their loot; others had to drop it and flee for their lives when faced with the local official gatherers. Every neighborhood had its official gatherers. Other-wise, there'd be absolute chaos. Some would get more than enough. Others would go hungry until the next cloud dropped its nutritious load or they could barter something precious for the manna.

Cull thought, what a h.e.l.l of a way to provide food for a world! And he wondered again, for the ten thousandth time, what made the manna clouds form and what const.i.tuted their chemical make-up. He thanked himself that he worked for the Ex-change and didn't have to depend on his neigh-borhood suppliers for manna. You got some very vicious controllers sometimes; they demanded rather peculiar services for an extra share. He knew; hungry, he'd given in to some of the demands before he smartened up and joined the Exchange.

By then, they had come to one of the sidewalk cafes found everywhere in The City. The earth-quake had tumbled some of the stone tables, but these were being set up again. The demon waiter was serving the customers rocktree coffee. Seven stopped by one of the round tables (supported by a single thick stone pedestal) around which five men sat. One rose to greet them, and Cull knew by his voice that he was Fyodor.

Fyodor was a thick-bodied short man with a big bald round head and an uncut untrimmed grey-shot beard that hung down to his waist. His forehead was tall; his eyebrows, bushy. He had little blue eyes above a blob of a nose, high and prominent cheekbones, and thick red lips. His temples were deeply indented, as if they had caved in. Deep blue shadows and pouches under his eyes made him look as if he seldom slept and that uneasily.

"Ah, Mr. Cull," he said in a thin high-pitched voice as he shook Cull's hand with a thick stubby hand. "Sit down, have a cup of coffee with me."

"I'd rather talk in private," Cull said, looking at the men around the table.

At the same time, they heard a siren wailing in the distance and knew that They were coming for the dead woman in the streets.

"Get the Exchange on the phone," Cull said to Sven. "If X shows, we can notify the Exchange."