Part 4 (1/2)

”But you are not on my list,” said the barber, staring at me in a puzzled way, ”why do you not go to your own barber?”

Grasping the situation I replied that I did not like my barber.

”Then why do you not apply at the Tonsorial Administrative Office of the level for permission to change?”

Returning to my apartment I looked up the office in my directory, went thither and asked the clerk if I could exchange barbers. He asked for my card and after a deal of clerical activities wrote thereon the name of a new barber. With this official sanction I finally got my hair cut and my card punched, thinking meanwhile that the soundness of my teeth would obviate any amateur detective work on the part of a dentist.

Nothing, it seemed, was left for the individual to decide for himself.

His every want was supplied by orderly arrangement and for everything he must have an authoritative permit. Had I not been cla.s.sed as a research chemist, and therefore a man of some importance, this simple business of getting a hair-cut might have proved my undoing. Indeed, as I afterwards learned, the exclusive privacy of my living quarters was a mark of distinction. Had I been one of lower ranking I should have shared my apartment with another man who would have slept in my bed while I was at work, for in the sunless city was neither night nor day and the whole population worked and slept in prescribed s.h.i.+fts--the vast machinery of industry, like a blind giant in some Plutonic treadmill, toiled ceaselessly.

The next morning I decided to extend my travels to the medical level, which was located just above my own. There were stairs beside the elevator shafts but these were evidently for emergency as they were closed with locked gratings.

The elevator stopped at my ring. Not sure of the proper manner of calling my floor I was carried past the medical level. As we shot up through the three-hundred-metre shaft, the names of levels as I had read them in my atlas flashed by on the blind doors. On the topmost defence level we took on an officer of the roof guard--strangely swarthy of skin--and now the car shot down while the rising air rushed by us with a whistling roar.

On the return trip I called my floor as I had heard others do and was let off at the medical level. It was even more monotonously quiet than the chemical level, save for the hurrying pa.s.sage of occasional ambulances on their way between the elevators and the various hospitals.

The living quarters of the physicians were identical with those on the chemists' level. So, too, were the quiet shops from which the physicians supplied their personal needs.

Standing before one of these I saw in a window a new book ent.i.tled ”Diseases of Nutrition.” I went in and asked to see a copy. The book seller staring at my chemical uniform in amazement reached quickly under the counter and pressed a b.u.t.ton. I became alarmed and turned to go out but found the door had been automatically closed and locked. Trying to appear unconcerned I stood idly glancing over the book shelves, while the book seller watched me from the corner of his eye.

In a few minutes the door opened from without and a man in the uniform of the street guard appeared. The book seller motioned toward me.

”Your identification folder,” said the guard.

Mechanically I withdrew it and handed it to him. He opened it and discovered the card from the hospital. Smiling on me with an air of condescension, he took me by the arm and led me forth and conducted me to my own apartment on the chemical level. Arriving there he pushed me gently into a chair and stepped toward the switch of the telephone.

”Just a minute,” I said, ”I remember now. I was not on my level--that was not my book store.”

”The card orders me to call up the hospital,” said the guard.

”It is unnecessary,” I said. ”Do not call them.”

The guard gazed first at me and then at the card. ”It is signed by a Lieutenant and you are a Captain--” his brows knitted as he wrestled with the problem--”I do not know what to do. Does a Captain with an affected memory outrank a Lieutenant?”

”He does,” I solemnly a.s.sured him.

Still a little puzzled, he returned the card, saluted and was gone. It had been a narrow escape. I got out my atlas and read again the rules that set forth my right to be at large in the city. Clearly I had a right to be found in the medical level--but in trying to buy a book there I had evidently erred most seriously. So I carefully memorized the list of shops set down in my identification folder and on my cards.

For the next few days I lived alone in my apartment unmolested except by an occasional visit from Holknecht, the laboratory a.s.sistant, who knew nothing but chemistry, talked nothing but chemistry, and seemed dead to all human emotions and human curiosity. Applying myself diligently to the study of Armstadt's books and notes, I was delighted to find that the Germans, despite their great chemical progress, were ignorant of many things I knew. I saw that my knowledge discreetly used, might enable me to become a great man among them and so learn secrets that would be of immense value to the outer world, should I later contrive to escape from Berlin.

By my discoveries of the German workings in the potash mines I had indeed opened a new road to Berlin. It was up to me by further discoveries to open a road out again, not only for my own escape, but perhaps also to find a way by which the World Armies might enter Berlin as the Greeks entered Troy. Vague ambitious dreams were these that filled and thrilled me, for I was young in years, and the romantic spirit of heroic adventure surged in my blood.

These days of study were quite uneventful, except for a single illuminating incident; a further example of the super-efficiency of the Germans. I found the meals served me at my apartment rather less in quant.i.ty than my appet.i.te craved. While there was a reasonable variety, the nutritive value was always the same to a point of scientific exactness, and I had seen no shops where extra food was available. After I had been in my apartment about a week, some one rang at the door. I opened it and a man called out the single word, ”Weigher.” Just behind him stood a platform scale on small wheels and with handles like a go-cart. The weigher stood, notebook in hand, waiting for me to act. I took the hint and stepped upon the scales. He read the weight and as he recorded it, remarked:

”Three kilograms over.”

Without further explanation he pushed the scales toward the next door.

The following day I noticed that the portions of food served me were a trifle smaller than they had been previously. The original Karl Armstadt had evidently been of such build that he carried slightly less weight than I, which fact now condemned me to this light diet.

However, I reasoned that a light diet is conducive to good brain work, and as I later learned, the object of this systematic weight control was not alone to save food but to increase mental efficiency, for a fat man is phlegmatic and a lean one too excitable for the best mental output.

It would also help my disguise by keeping me the exact weight and build of the original Karl Armstadt.