Lidia went on with her work, and for fifteen minutes there was silence in the office she shared with Algie. It was a room typical of offices throughout the Organization—gray-walled, like that of Mr. Bekkus, and floored with rubber tiles of a darker gray. Panels of fluorescent lighting were let into the white soundproofing that covered the ceiling. A wide low window sill was formed by the metal covers of the radiators, and along this ledge at various intervals were stacked small sheaves of papers—the lower ones yellowing, the upper ones filmed with the grit that found its way through the aluminum window frames. (In each office the heating could be adjusted to some extent, so that in all the rooms of the Organization its international character was manifest in temperatures that ranged from nostalgic approximations of the North Sea to torrid renderings of conditions along the Zambesi.) Algie’s and Lidia’s desks were pushed together, facing one another, and each had a gray chair upholstered in dark blue. Blue blotters were centered on the desks and surrounded by trays of papers, black desk-sets, stapling machines, and dishes of paper clips—and, in Lidia’s case, a philodendron in a cracked ceramic cache-pot. On each desk there was also a telephone and a small engagement pad on a metal fixture. There was a typewriter in one corner of the room, and a bookcase—into whose upper shelves dictionaries and bound documents had been crammed—stood with its back to the wall. On the lowest shelf of this bookcase were a pair of galoshes, a watering can, an unwashed glass vase, a Wedgwood cup and saucer, three cafeteria spoons, and a single black glove.

On one wall, a calendar—the gift of a Japanese travel concern—was turned to the appropriate month (this was not always the case in Organization offices), displaying a colorful plate which bore, to Algie’s delight, the legend “Gorgeous bunch of blooming peonies.”

From the windows, which were vast and clean, one looked on to a wide river and to its industrial banks beyond. The presence of the river was refreshing, although it carried almost continuously the water traffic—coal and railway barges, tugs, tankers, and cargo vessels—of the great city in which the Organization was laid. Oceans and rivers with their simple and traditional associations of purification and continuity are excellent things to have outside office windows, and in this case helped in some measure to express that much misrepresented, highly commendable, and largely unachieved thing—the aim of the Organization.

“Some bad news, I’m afraid.” Tong put his head round Lidia Korabetski’s door—this was literally true, since Tong’s small neat head and long neck were all of him that showed. Tong was beaming. “Some bad news, yes.” Not naturally malicious, he had developed rapidly since entering bureaucracy.

Lidia, lifting her head, could not help asking, “What is it?”