The agency was crowded, but since it was the only one in the paper that had listed in its ad, Man, chmcl trng, admstv pos, sal open, he had no choice but to wait out the line. It took nearly half a day, which Chesley passed, as best he could, by conversation with the others in line—guarded at first, then more and more open, until the man ahead of him happened to glance up at the picture of the Viceroy that hung on the wall over his head. He turned white; sweat broke out on his forehead; he slumped, caught himself, started to speak, and then burst out of his place in line and raced back through the long hall to the elevators.
There was a microphone under the picture.
Chesley shook his head ruefully and kept silent for the rest of the time. It didn't pay to talk too much. The Viceroy wasn't everywhere—though, being far from human, he was in an astonishing number of places at astonishing times. But his Guard, the V.G., was in even more places all the time. Chesley had passed one just outside the door—a man in a blinding blue uniform, who parked blatantly near a fire hydrant and strolled away. In a matter of seconds a traffic cop caught sight of the car and charged toward it, fire in his eye and one hand dragging his summons pad out of his pocket. But then the cop caught sight of the magic letters V.G. on the place where the license plate would have been—if the Viceregal Guard bothered with license plates—and he turned pale and staggered away as though he had had a narrow escape.
Which he had.
Chesley shook his head again. It was hard to reconcile the idea of old Iry Morgenstern down-the-block with the total and awful powers of a member of the V.G. But there were too many things these days that couldn't be reconciled, he wasn't going to bother his head about them. The Viceregal Guard served a function, he supposed. That is, if the Viceroy served a function, well, then the Guard was pretty necessary. The Viceroy could reach down and strike any human, anywhere; but apparently he couldn't find the human who was thwarting his efforts without a little on-the-spot help from the V.G. He was perfectly capable of wiping out a whole city if it angered him—witness Omaha, in the second week of his reign—but it happened that Omaha was not the site of any of his own special projects. Most every other city in the world did have a high-priority Viceroy's Project going—increasing the rate of births, building up human health, building cryptic objects for unknown purposes—oh, there was no limit to the things the Viceroy wanted Earth to do in preparation for the landing of his own extra-solar race. And it was the Viceregal Guard that was charged with seeing that they were done. From the moment he arrived he had been recruiting, and paying well. It was his first human helpers who had turned up at the offices of the radio and television networks with fabulous bundles of cash in their pockets, who had rented Yankee Stadium for a fantastic price; and those human helpers were now the colonels and generals and marshals and generalissimos of the V.G.
The V.G. seldom killed anybody, but they had power of life and death all the same. For—annoyingly—people kept trying to take advantage of the Viceroy. They knew it meant death to be discovered, but there were persons who complained because they couldn't afford the taxes and because they were thrown out of jobs they'd held for decades and because their homes were ripped down to make room for Viceroy's Projects. Some of the Projects didn't make all the sense in the world, Chesley thought—for example, did the Viceroy really need the four-acre swimming pool he was putting up on the lots that Rockefeller Center had once inhabited? But there was no questioning them; those who questioned were punished. Others sold impure foods—the Viceroy was vehement about human health, apparently because his people were going to want plenty of good, strong servants. Others insanely sold inferior or incorrect materials to the Projects themselves. Others did forbidden research—there was a long, long list of prohibited topics. And the Viceregal Guards tracked them down, and then, as soon as the busy Viceroy could get it onto his schedule, somewhere on the Earth's face there was a bam and a violet flare, and another sinner had met his fate. All it took was one word from a member of the V.G., and . . . bam.
So it didn't pay to tangle with the V.G., because—
Chesley stopped in mid-thought, disconcerted. "What?" Somebody was saying impatiently, "You, there! Come on, you're holding up the whole line. Next!"
"Sorry," mumbled Chesley. He had been waiting so long that it was a shock to realize he had finally gained the threshold of one of the employment agency's interviewers. He stumbled in, laid his hat on the desk, hastily picked it up again, put it on his lap and said: "I'm here about that ad in this morning's N. Y. Times—"
"So," sighed the red-headed, weary-eyed girl behind the desk, "are six hundred others. But wait a minute—you're a chemist? Oh. Well—"
Chesley listened in growing consternation. Chemical training, the ad had said, administrative position. He had thought, naturally, that it would be checking over some manufacturing company's crude materials supply orders, or maybe, at the most daring, a little routine analysis. It turned out to be anything but those. It was, in fact, so different from what he had expected that it terrified him.
He stammered, "I'm s-sorry, sir —I mean, ma'am, but I don't th-think I'm qualified."
"We're the best judges of that," the interviewer told him sternly. She paused significantly. "Of course," she added, "we're not forcing the work on you. You're free to take the job or leave it, as you choose. However, if you leave it—"
She stopped there.
Chelsey thought about what would happen if he refused: the loyalty investigation, the arrest, the disgrace, the report to the Viceroy, the violet flare and the bam.
He nodded. "Yes, ma'am," he said timidly. "You're right, ma'am. I'll take it, of course."
It seemed that there was a uniform that went with the work—a blinding blue uniform, and on every bright chromium button were stamped the letters: V.G.
III
For a very short time Chesley's wife was impressed. She said the uniform looked nice on him, so trim and neat, and it broadened his shoulders and made him look like a soldier. And Chesley himself, when he stopped being afraid of himself, found that it scared the pants off practically everybody who saw it except other members of the V.G. For the first time in his life he felt the surge of personal power through his previously calm veins.
"But why on earth should they hire you?" his wife demanded. "You're not a policeman."
"They don't need policemen. They need people with chemical training, for instance. I'm a Research Investigator."
"But you're not a researcher!" Chesley said loftily, "You don't understand. I don't do research, I investigate people who do research. Remember? Some kinds of research are forbidden. I check up on them, see? For instance, one of the first things I'm going to do is drop in on the rubber works. I want to talk to Dr. Pebrick."
"Your boss? About time!" his wife exclaimed. "I never thought I'd live to see it, Arthur, you getting up enough nerve to tell that fat—"
"It isn't a question of nerve, dear," he explained. "When I worked for him it was different. Now I'm a member of the V.G.and not a private, either! No, sir." He patted his stripes proudly. "See, dear? I'm a corporal!"
"Corporal?"
He nodded triumphantly.
She asked, with a dangerous note in her voice, "Is corporal higher than major?"
Chesley was shocked. "Oh, no, dear. Major is much higher. There's sergeant, top sergeant, lieutenant, captain—"
"Major is higher?" Mrs. Chesley stamped her plump foot. "You mean," she demanded, "that you're going to have to take orders from Elsie Morgenstern's husband? Arthur, I swear, I don't think you ever take into consideration the fact that I'm entitled to some respect in this neighborhood! Oh, I can't face Elsie Morgenstern after this! She'll put on that cat-eats-the-canary look and—Arthur, what's my mother going to say? My sister Caroline's husband's a lieutenant, and he's three years younger than you, and I always thought he was the biggest— Arthur, I never should have listened to you! Stepping stones! I go through seven years of misery and scrimping on your stepping stones, and then when you finally get a chance to make a man out of yourself with a half-way decent job in the V.G., you take the first offer they make, showing no guts, no strength, and — Arthur! Arthur, I'm warning you, don't you dare leave this house!"