"Vašu putovnicu, molim!" one bull-man said sternly.
Nat proffered his passport. An ape held it up for his superior to examine,
"Imate li što za prijaviti?"
"No, I have nothing to declare. Other than my not being Croatian, I mean."
The winged bull glowered with disapproval, and switched languages. "And yet you're in this office. Why are you here, if you should be elsewhere? Do you think to make fools of us?"
"No, that's my business — see?" Smiling fatuously, Nat jabbed a finger at the papers. "Ichabod the Fool. That's me."
There was a long silence. Then the man-bull tossed his head in the direction of the rear wall. "You see that door?" One of the apes scampered to the door and opened it. "Once you walk out through it, you'll never need worry about this office again. But to do that, you've got to get past us." The ape shut the door and returned to his station. "So I recommend that you—"
"This document is a forgery!" the second agent roared abruptly. To Will's astonishment, it was not Nat's passport but his own that the agent's ape was holding up. "They are all forgeries!"
"No, no, no," Nat clucked, shaking his head reassuringly.
"The transit codes, the ports of origin—all wrong!" The winged bull turned from the passport ape to another who was holding open a book the size of a telephone directory. "According to this, you should have been taken to Ur."
"It wasn't my choice to come here," Will objected. "They put me on the train, and this is where it took me. "These are the papers that the DPC officials at Camp Oberon gave me — if they're wrong, then that's their fault and not mine."
"It is your responsibility to make sure that any documents issued you are correct and that you're legally entitled to them." The bull nodded his head and his ape shuffled another passport to the fore. "The girl's papers don't list her year of birth."
"We don't know it," Will said.
"Oh? How can that be?" The agent turned to Nat. "Surely you, being her father, ought to know that."
"I wasn't present when she was born," Nat said smoothly. "I travel a great deal. But it should be apparent that my daughter is nine years old. Just put down Year of the Grasshopper."
Esme sat atop their piled luggage, playing quietly with a corn husk doll. Now she looked up, beaming, and said. "I like grasshoppers."
"It is not our job to assist in your forgeries, bur to examine them for inconsistencies. Your own passport, for example, is a treasure trove of such. It is printed on a grade of paper never employed for official instruments. It lacks the requisite watermarks. The typeface is laughable. The transshipment stamps appear to have been applied by an ineptly carved raw potato. Even the photograph is suspect. It doesn't look a bit like you."
"Really," Nat said, looking at his watch, "I don't know why we're still here. You're being unnecessarily obstructive. I'm a citizen, and I know my rights."
"Rights?" The first winged bull snorted. "You have no rights. Only obligations and privileges. I define the obligations, and the privileges are contingent upon my goodwill. They can be revoked without explanation or appeal at my whim. Remember that."
"Further," the second winged bull said, "there is more to being a citizen than mere arrogance. You might as well save the act. auslander. We've seen it all."
For an instant, Nat seemed at a loss for words. Then, with an urbane tsk, he said, "This can all be cleared up easily enough." He drew several bills from his wallet and placed them between two mounds of yellow flimsies. "I am certain that if you examine these papers, you'll find..."
Will had not thought the bulls' eyes could open wider than they were, nor that their expressions could be any more outraged. Now he saw that he was wrong. As one, the two bureaucrats reared their heads back, nostrils flaring with horror. They stamped their hooves and flapped their wings angrily. One brushed against a file cabinet, almost dislodging the folders stacked atop it.
"Place this really quite insulting attempt at bribery in an evidence envelope," one said to the nearest ape.
"Then place the evidence envelope in an accordion file!" commanded the other.
"Add photocopies of all the paperwork introduced so far." "Open a new case number."
"Cross-reference and send copies to all appropriate offices."
"Get the forms preliminary to swearing out a criminal complaint."
"Document each step and every form in the case log."
As the apes ran wildly about, slamming file drawers open and shut, working the photocopier, and assembling great masses of paper, one man-bull brought his face quite close to Nat's and menacingly said, "You will find that an attempt to suborn agents of His Absent Majesty's governance is not taken lightly here in Babel."
"Suborn' is such a harsh word," Nat protested. "I was only—"
"Since you are transparently not a citizen," the other bull said, "you do not have the right to a lawyer. Should you have the money for one, it will he removed from you. Anything you say, think, or fail to admit can and will be used against you. You will not be told under what charges you are being detained, nor allowed to confront such witnesses as may be subpoenaed to testify to your guilt, nor be informed as how much they were paid to do so. While incarcerated, you will be required to pay room and board at market rates. If you cannot afford to do so, you will be beaten. You do not have the right to medical care. You do not have the right to convalesce. You do not have the right to a funeral. Do you understand?"
"Perhaps I was insufficiently generous. Should I throw in some silage? I've got excellent connections for some prime alfalfa mixed with clover."
Esme tugged Will's sleeve and, when he bent down to the level of her mouth, whispered. "I smell something burning."
Now Will did. too. Craning his neck about, he saw a wisp of smoke rising from the mound of papers on the table. "Um..." The others were arguing furiously. He waved his hand in the air. "I think we've got a problem, here." With a whoosh, the papers burst into flames.
The man bulls reared up in alarm. Simultaneously, Nat shouted, "Look out!" and lunged at the table, whacking at the fire with his hat. His wild efforts, however, managed only to knock the burning papers onto the file-crammed cardboard boxes behind the table.
The fire spread.
A smoke alarm went off. The apes screeched and leaped from table to filing cabinet and back, kicking piles of forms onto the floor in their animal panic. The man-bulls stumbled blindly about the room, flapping their wings noisily. In the sudden confusion, Will almost missed seeing Nat slip out the rear.
Will snatched up his passport, seized Esme's hand, and followed after, unobserved. Only at the last instant did he remember to close the door softly behind him.
Nat was already down to the end of the hall, where two bronze doors were sliding open. He ducked into a freight elevator and hit a button. "Wait for us!" Will cried—but softly. Lest he be heard back in room 102. He and Esme jumped into the elevator, the doors closed, and they began to descend. Nat reached out to hug them both. "Oh, children!" he gasped. "Was that fun or what?"
"You're completely mad," Will said angrily. "There was no reason to travel on forged papers—they were giving them away at Oberon. Now we're illegal, undocumented, and guilty of who knows how many crimes?"
"We had a good laugh. That's worth a lot."
"To say nothing of losing our luggage."
Nat flung out his arms. "And what a relief to not have all that baggage to carry around!"
The elevator opened into a drab foyer. They pushed through the swinging doors and stood outside on the sidewalk, blinking at a street paved with blue glazed bricks as mastodons in red-and-orange livery lumbered past, followed by camels, bagpipers, kettle drummers, and a brace of serpent blowers playing a Sousa march. Esme clapped her hands. "It's a parade!" Nymphs danced naked behind the musicians, ivy woven through their hair and about their horns, short goat tails bobbing. Poldies, haints, and hytersprites darted from sidewalk to sidewalk waving long silk pennants, and swan-mays turned somersaults in the air above. Here was splendor greater than anything Will had ever imagined, and it extended down the street in either direction as far as the eye could see. "What's all this about?" he asked.