Beyond that his mind refused to go. Dismissal from the Store was an incomprehensible, alien idea. It was like a huge object of unheard-of shapes and colors, set down before him with a “Well—what 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 appeal.
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 indescribable in an undefined direction and at an unguessable distance.
Twice, in the half-hour Bass had been waiting, she had stood up, walked directly 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 hardness of the long bench. Murmuring excuses, he worked his way past his neighbors’ 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 entered, 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 expressionlessly 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.
“This is Bass, Your Excellency,” said the man in the black robe. “Bass, I am Manager Wooten. This is Archdeputy Laudermilk, who will interview you.”
“Onward, Your Excellency, Your Worship,” 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 scars or distinguishing marks. Yes. Both parents Consumers; both dead. Nothing extraordinary in your lineage; well, that’s as often good as bad. No surviving brothers or sisters, I see. Well. You’ve lived with an aunt and uncle since you were quite young, is that so, Bass?”
“Yes, Your Excellency. My parents, and my brothers and sisters were all killed in an accident when I was ten. I’m the only one left.”
“Yes, I see. Now, Bass, tell me something about yourself. Not this sort of statistics—” he closed the folder and leaned his forearms on it—“but just anything at all that occurs to you. What you like; what you don’t like. What you think about things.” He stared across the desk with an expression of rapt interest.
Bass cleared his throat nervously. “Well, Your Excellency—I like most things. I like my work. That is, I liked—”
Laudermilk nodded, smiling and squinting his eyes sympathetically. “What else? What do you do when you’re not in Store?”
“I have classes, four hours a day, at the University—”
“Yes, that’s right; I have that here. What do you study there?”
“It’s the usual course, Your Excellency I mean, I haven’t got a dispensation. Mercantile history, logic, rhetoric, philosophy, religious economics and Consumer psychology.”
“And do you like studying that?”
What was he getting at? “Yes, Your Excellency, I like it main we— I like if very much.”
Laudermilk ignored the slip. “Which study do you like best?”
Bass hesitated. “Well, they’re all interesting, Your Excellency, but I guess —economics and psychology. I like them a little better than the others.”
LAUDERMILK nodded. “A leaning toward the scientific,” he said. “Yes. Your Dean tells me that you have distinguished yourself in those two studies, although you have fallen somewhat behind in rhetoric and philosophy. That’s quite understandable. Yes, Bass, I have a feeling that you weren’t meant for a Salesman.” He pursed his lips, tapping a long, exquisitely manicured middle finger against the desk-top.
Something in Bass’s chest suddenly lost its buoyancy and sank to the bottom without a bubble. He had been trying hard not to allow himself to hope for anything other than dismissal, and had ignorantly believed that he was succeeding; now he knew better.
“Now, tell me something, Bass,” said Laudermilk, animated again. “Suppose you had an opportunity to study other things—things that aren’t in the ordinary curriculum—would you like that? Think it over. Do you think you would be interested enough—could you make a vocation of it?”
Bass stopped breathing for a moment. The sunken organ, whatever it was, suddenly dropped its ballast and leaped to the surface, choking him. To study the Mysteries—if, incredibly, that was what Laudermilk meant—to become a lay Doctor of Science or a Store Deacon! He would give his soul for that.
“Physics,” said Laudermilk. “Electronic engineering. That sort of thing, was what I had in mind. Take all the time you want to answer.”
Bass managed, “I’d like that more than anything in the world, Your Excellency.”
“Good. Good. I believe you would. Well, now I’d better explain what this is all about. Every year at this time, Bass, the various institutions of restricted learning have to recruit a whole new class of scholars. That’s why I’m here. We usually do most of our looking among the newer candidates for Salesmanship and other Mercantile ranks, because the type of young person we need generally does go into the Store on his own initiative. Now, the quota I happen to be filling is that of the College of Religious Sciences of California Mercantile University in Pasadena, It’s a seven-year course, leading to a degree of S. R. D., and, as a rule, an immediate Deputy Assistant Deaconship. Now, let me warn you before I arouse your enthusiasm too much—it’s a long, hard course. It has other disadvantages, too; you’ll be confined to the campus for the entire seven years, and if you marry, your wife will have to undergo the same confinement. Neither of you will see anyone not connected with the College until you graduate—if you do, of course. Not everyone succeeds. And afterwards, naturally, you’ll find yourself rather cut off from the sort of people you used to know, even your own family. I must warn you, it isn’t a thing to go into lightly.”