One would have thought freedom was a museum piece—some extinct creature being pickled in a jar of spirits. The voice went on, on. Jaspersen’s father, a gaunt old man who loved Schiller and had no knowledge of world affairs, would have quoted “No incantation can compel the gods” (might even, for he was getting quite eccentric, have quoted it out loud), but Jaspersen knew better; had more than once thrown in his lot with incantations in this very room and seen the gods compelled. Was it not worthwhile, this compelling of the gods in a good cause? And if so, why could Jaspersen not rejoice as he sat there this morning? The trouble was, official life had grown so remote from life itself.

“—together with adequate safeguards…”

Jaspersen was not a man to succumb to despair: in fact, with his quick walk, he had quite outdistanced it. He would never ask himself “What will become of me?”—much less the more terrible question “What has become of me?” Here, however, twenty feet underground, in filtered air and fluorescent light, amid the aspirations ratified by one hundred member nations, a certain depression had managed—God knew how—to penetrate. There is no armor, there are no adequate safeguards. Deeply rooted conflicts are within us and obstruct the evaluation process.

Leslie sauntered down the corridor, her head uncharacteristically lowered as she studied the effect of her new shoes, which buttoned across the instep. When the elevator came, she got in jauntily. She liked to have errands away from the section, and often combined them with a leisurely coffee in the cafeteria or a visit to her friends in the filing room. Her sense of responsibility took her first to the main floor, where she got out. Descending to the basement, she stood on her toes to avoid wedging her vinyl heels in the grooves of the escalator. At the end of a corridor, a guard admitted her to the Committee Room, and she discovered Jaspersen sitting in a row of seats near the door.

A speech was being made, and Jaspersen was listening so intently that she could not attract his attention. Someone motioned her to sit down behind him and wait, and she did this, feeling important as she sank into the leather seat and watched her skirt draw back above her white knitted knees. The room was brightly, hotly lit, and was decorated—somewhat datedly, Leslie thought—in blond wood and blue furnishings. Absently folding the message for Jaspersen over and over until it began to part at the creases, Leslie looked curiously up at the half-empty public gallery and the glass booths of the interpreters. This was more like the real thing: more, in fact, like television. It was the setting in which Leslie had imagined herself when she applied to the Organization, and of which she had not, until now, caught a single glimpse. Her duties consisted in the main of interleaving pages with carbon paper and typing on them at someone else’s dictation: yet Leslie had repeatedly been told by her superiors that what was wanted was someone who would take an interest in this work. What was wanted, Leslie concluded, was some kind of a nut.