Chapter 5

The new sign on the office door said:

ROY WALTON

Interim Director

Bureau of Population Equalization

He had argued against putting it up there, on the grounds that his appointment was strictly temporary, pending a meeting of the General Assembly to choose a new head for Popeek. But Ludwig had maintained it might be weeks or months before such a meeting could be held and that there was no harm in identifying his office.

“Everything under control?” the UN man asked.

Walton eyed him unhappily. “I guess so. Now all I have to do is start figuring out how Mr. FitzMaugham’s filing system worked, and I’ll be all set.”

“You mean you don’t know?”

“Mr. FitzMaugham took very few people into his confidence,” Walton said. “Popeek was his special brain-child. He had lived with it so long he thought its workings were self-evident to everyone. There’ll be a period of adjustment.”

“Of course,” Ludwig said.

“This conference you were going to have with the director yesterday when he--ah, what was it about?” Walton asked.

The UN man shrugged. “It’s irrelevant now, I suppose. I wanted to find out how Popeek’s subsidiary research lines were coming along. But I guess you’ll have to go through Mr. FitzMaugham’s files before you know anything, eh?” Ludwig stared at him sharply.

Suddenly, Walton did not like the cheerful UN man.

“There’ll be a certain period of adjustment,” he repeated. “I’ll let you know when I’m ready to answer questions about Popeek.”

“Of course. I didn’t mean to imply any criticism of you or of the late director or of Popeek, Mr. Walton.”

“Naturally. I understand, Mr. Ludwig.”

Ludwig took his leave at last, and Walton was alone in the late Mr. FitzMaugham’s office for the first time since the assassination. He spread his hands on the highly polished desk and twisted his wrists outward in a tense gesture. His fingers made squeaking sounds as they rubbed the wood surface.

It had been an uneasy afternoon yesterday, after the nightmare of the assassination and the subsequent security inquisition. Walton, wrung dry, had gone home early, leaving Popeek headless for two hours. The newsblares in the jetbus had been programmed with nothing but talk of the killing.

“A brutal hand today struck down the revered D. F. FitzMaugham, eighty-one, Director of Population Equalization. Security officials report definite prospects of solution of the shocking crime, and...”

The other riders in the bus had been vehemently outspoken.

“It’s about time they let him have it,” a fat woman in sleazy old clothes said. “That baby killer!”

“I knew they’d get him sooner or later,” offered a thin, wispy-haired old man. “They had to.”

“Rumor going around he was really a Herschelite...”

“Some new kid is taking over Popeek, they say. They’ll get him too, mark my words.”

Walton, huddling in his seat, pulled up his collar, and tried to shut his ears. It didn’t work.

They’ll get him too, mark my words.

He hadn’t forgotten that prophecy by the time he reached his cubicle in upper Manhattan. The harsh words had drifted through his restless sleep all night.

Now, behind the safety of his office door, he thought of them again.

He couldn’t hide. It hadn’t worked for FitzMaugham, and it wouldn’t for him.

Hiding wasn’t the answer. Walton smiled grimly. If martyrdom were in store for him, let martyrdom come. The work of Popeek had to go forward. He decided he would conduct as much of his official business as possible by screen; but when personal contact was necessary, he would make no attempt to avoid it.

He glanced around FitzMaugham’s office. The director had been a product of the last century, and he had seen nothing ugly in the furnishings of the Cullen Building. Unlike Walton, then, he had not had his office remodeled.

That would be one of the first tasks--to replace the clumsy battery of tungsten-filament incandescents with a wall of electroluminescents, to replace the creaking sash windows with some decent opaquers, to get rid of the accursed gingerbread trimming that offended the eye in every direction. The thunkety-thunk air-conditioner would have to go too; he’d have a molecusorter installed in a day or two.

The redecorating problems were the minor ones. It was the task of filling FitzMaugham’s giant shoes, even on an interim basis, that staggered Walton.

He fumbled in the desk for a pad and stylus. This was going to call for an agenda. Hastily he wrote:

1. Cancel F’s appointments

2. Investigate setup in Files

a) Lang terraforming project

b) faster-than-light

c) budget--stretchable?

d) locate spy pickups in building

3. Meeting with section chiefs

4. Press conference with telefax services

5. See Ludwig ... straighten things out

6. Redecorate office

He thought for a moment, then erased a few of his numbers and changed Press conference to 6. and Redecorate office to 4. He licked the stylus and wrote in at the very top of the paper:

0. Finish Prior affair.

In a way, FitzMaugham’s assassination had taken Walton off the hook on the Prior case. Whatever FitzMaugham suspected about Walton’s activities yesterday morning no longer need trouble him. If the director had jotted down a memorandum on the subject, Walton would be able to find and destroy it when he went through FitzMaugham’s files later. And if the dead man had merely kept the matter in his head, well, then it was safely at rest in the crematorium.

Walton groped in his jacket pocket and found the note his brother had slipped to him at lunchtime the day before. In the rush of events, Walton had not had a chance to destroy it.

Now, he read it once more, ripped it in half, ripped it again, and fed one quarter of the note into the disposal chute. He would get rid of the rest at fifteen-minute intervals, and he would defy anyone monitoring the disposal units to locate all four fragments.

Actually, he realized he was being overcautious. This was Director FitzMaugham’s office and FitzMaugham’s disposal chute. The director wouldn’t have arranged to have his own chute monitored, would he?

Or would he? There was never any telling, with FitzMaugham. The old man had been terribly devious in every maneuver he made.

The room had the dry, crisp smell of the detecting devices that had been used--the close-to-the-ground, ugly metering-robots that had crawled all over the floor, sniffing up footprints and stray dandruff flakes for analysis, the chemical cleansers that had mopped the blood out of the rug. Walton cursed at the air-conditioner that was so inefficiently removing these smells from the air.

The annunciator chimed. Walton waited impatiently for a voice, then remembered that FitzMaugham had doggedly required an acknowledgment. He opened the channel and said, “This is Walton. In the future no acknowledgment will be necessary.”

“Yes, sir. There’s a reporter from Citizen here, and one from Globe Telefax.”

“Tell them I’m not seeing anyone today. Here, I’ll give them a statement. Tell them the Gargantuan task of picking up the reins where the late, great Director FitzMaugham dropped them is one that will require my full energy for the next several days. I’ll be happy to hold my first official press conference as soon as Popeek is once again moving on an even keel. Got that?”