Striking a personal note, Jaspersen inquired, “Your daughter at college now?”

“He’s at the university, yes.”

“I thought—”

“Yes, yes. Just the one son.”

“What’s he studying?”

“Humanities.” Nagashima nodded, smiling.

“Only the one play?” asked Jaspersen, who thought he had said “Eumenides.”

Nagashima beamed. “Yes. Yes.” The elevator stopped at the Organization Clinic and, with a polite farewell, Nagashima got out. The doors were closing when a peremptory voice cried “Going down!” and the head of Jaspersen’s department stepped in, breathing heavily.

“Going to the meeting, Olaf? I’m on my way there myself.” The Chief made a gesture of fanning himself with his own folder of Committee papers. “My word, they keep this place hot. Wasn’t that Nagashima who just got off? I thought so. Hadn’t seen him for a while—was beginning to think he’d got lost.” The Chief laughed benevolently.

“He was telling me about his daughter—turning into quite a classical scholar it seems.” They arrived at the ground floor and Jaspersen stood back to let the Chief precede him.

The Chief looked reflective as they walked along. “That sort of thing, you know, Olaf, is the real work we do. Shaping the personal lives of our own people, right here in this building. Merging their cultures through their personal relationships; children adjusting to other environments, colleagues becoming personal friends.” They arrived at the top of an escalator leading to the basement. “We hear a lot about the Two Cultures, but I say it’s the Hundred Cultures we have to deal with. Bind them together, forge the common links—” The Chief paused at the top of the escalator to take in his vision of humanity manacled and trussed. “Never did like these things. Fell on one as a child.”

Warmly—with a ray of hope, one might have thought—Jaspersen said, “I’m sorry.”

“Oh—my own fault, of course. Didn’t understand the principle. Step on and stay on.” The Chief did this, gripping the rail tightly.

“Understandable, though,” said Jaspersen, following.

“Hmm. Got to adapt oneself to the mechanism, Olaf, not fight it.” He was making it sound as if Jaspersen were the child who had stumbled. “He who hesitates is lost.”

“It lacks,” said Jaspersen, who as a student had read the German poets, “the lovelier hesitation of the hand of man.”

“What does?”

“The machine.”

“Oh I quite agree.” The Chief took on a look of liking nothing better than the larger view. He added obscurely, “The individual comes first.” He gave his full attention to stepping off the escalator before he continued. “I want a word with you some time about next year’s manning-table. We’re getting overloaded in certain grades. Not enough slots to go round.”