Chapter 6 - Jack York’s Office
“Mr. Grey, you look as haggard as I feel,” said Ms. Maysey. She chuckled weakly, chewed nervously on the end of her pipe, and her hair mice sniffled emphatically.
Had Mr. Grey actually looked as bad as Ms. Maysey felt, he’d have been better off. On top of the many five-line scratches covering his face and hands from the bat attack, Mr. Grey had acquired a cold. His skin took on troll-spit gauntness, making the claw cuts stand out with ruby clarity. He had changed robes (to the exact same cut, fit, fabric, and grey as his torn ones); that part of him still looked correct.
Mr. Grey and Ms. Maysey waited in a crowd of employees outside the Regional Justice Center. The Gaunt, Brooding, Hungry Wind had dragged her clouds busily all about town that morning. She covered the hopeless sun with such a shroud, that the assembled workers were regularly checking their pocket tickers for reassurance that they’d arrived to work the correct half of the day. The sky was bleak; the air, chill.
Ms. Maysey shivered and wrapped her hands around the bowl of her pipe. Mr. Grey stiffened his own into his pockets. He said, “Still the same bug you had last eon, Ms. Maysey?”
“And the eon before that. And the one before that, don’t you know,” said Ms. Maysey. “On my existence, I shiver to think I might not last to my sabbatical. I should have gone ages ago.”
Mr. Grey nodded, with as much sympathy as is expressible without outwardly changing one’s expression. Ms. Maysey took her sabbaticals on a scheduled basis. Neither the king’s government nor Mr. Grey held it against her. Mr. Grey knew she needed them, he had been present at her seventh interview at the Regional Justice Center. Her application came with a note from her doctor. Her diagnosis: ‘hopelessly neurotic and intractably hypochondriacal’. Knowing this from the outset, the government hired her anyway. The Regional Justice Center authorized the sabbaticals as a necessary treatment.
Ms. Maysey shivered. “I wish they’d let me leave at my first sniffle,” she went on. “I’m sorry to say I think I passed it onto the building.”
“Don’t blame yourself, Ms. Maysey.” Mr. Grey looked at the Starharbor Regional Justice Center. His eyes passed up and up and up, scaling the unforgiving creation; this cloud-puncturing, artificial menhir; bolted, welded, and mortared out of glass which gave no shine, and the deepest, darkest granite. Mr. Grey, despite his own words, thought Ms. Maysey’s were the probable truth.
Whether from Ms. Maysey or some other sickly visitor, the Justice Center did have its own cold. The entire megalith stood encased in glistening, frozen snot. Snot covered the giant foundation, which jiggled in a feeble way, as though it sat on quakesome ground. Snot clung to the granite walls that seemed to sag and droop. Snot lacquered the glass windows and the heavy iron doors, shivering noisily in their frames. Snot blocked the entry. TheJustice Center workers waited outside, in the bitter cold, beside the jelly canal.
Ms. Maysey craned her neck and set her mouse-eyes looking down the street. “Could the building shiverer possibly - sniffle - be any slower this morning?”
Mr. Grey said, “It’s probably freeing up some sick, small buildings in other burgs. I think skyscrapers need special shaking clamps. So I’ve heard, anyway.”
“There’s so many employees waiting here… I’d prioritize better, that’s all. I’m not saying the shiverers do a bad job, of course I’m not!”
Mr. Grey didn’t know what to say. For a few moments he listened to the ambiance: other workers’ grumbling, The Wind making airy remarks about the weather, the chattering teeth of Ms. Maysey’s mice. Mr. Grey finally broke the silence by saying, “Got all your parchmentwork done for the trip?”
Ms. Maysey smiled wanly. “I do! And if you’ll forgive me for expressing myself strongly; I do think a few of these clients we assist perhaps complain a little too much.”
“There’s always one or two in a day who come with grievance baggage.”
“Yes indeed. You know, I filled in a dozen of the visa forms before my first appointment. And let me tell you, the pencil pusher I met with didn’t get any of our regular games over on me!”
“Our regular games?”
“He tried the usual redirects. ‘Go to this department.’ ‘Talk with that administrator.’ But when I showed him my Transport Authorization Report File - filled out and pre-approved - you should have seen his face! The poor pusher nearly tipped his word machine. A-stonishing!”
“I do think the office eases visa restrictions for employees. It’s a handbook clause.” The handbook had its own hillock down in the parchmentwork mines. If anybody knew its contents it was Mr. Grey.
Ms. Maysey stepped back verbally. “Of course! I didn’t say employees don’t have ANY privileges. I appreciate them for…”
Ms. Maysey’s words picked up speed, as though warming up for an improvised speech on the subject of employee benefits. At that moment, however, the building shiverer arrived.
The vehicle - a tiny, dragon-engine tractor the size of an office cubicle - attached itself by heavy crab claws to the side of the Region Justice Center. Its engine growled high as the machine jackhammered the icy snot. A quiver moved across the building’s foundation, beneath the cobblestones of the nearest streets, up the spines of the cold, complacent employees. The structural mucus fell away in huge sheets, exploding on the ground in frozen-snot shrapnel. The Wind rushed over the workers as the shiverer worked. She tossed hair and robes hither and thither, working herself into a flurry of last moment badgering.
After unclogging the Regional Justice Center’s sickly sinuses, the building shiverer rumbled back down the sidewalk. A night shift member of maintenance who’d been locked inside the Justice Center threw open its heavy iron doors. As one, the employee herd shuffled into the cold, glaring hallways. Mr. Grey walked stiffly in the center of the crowd, a position calculated to avoid his manager, Jack York.
“Grey! Ears front!”
Jack York shouted at Mr. Grey from behind a wide metal desk, in a scratchy voice like a gramophone. This was the first command he’d issued, after dragging Mr. Grey into his private managers’ office from the Cubicle Hedge.
“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Grey.
“Keep ‘em sharp. And closer than that.”
Mr. Grey tried leaning forward, though he preferred a stiffer spine, and little space remained between his torso and the desk. He heard Mr. York struggling with something on the other side of the desk. Grunting and stomping sounds came from there, but Mr. Grey couldn’t see the object of his boss’s efforts. A set of wooden telecards, each personally traced with the name ‘York’ in calligraphy letters on the backs, stood stacked in a receiving-house of cards for incoming messages. The card house blocked Jack York from Mr. Grey’s eyes.
Mr. Grey heard Mr. York stop. His boss spoke in a warbling growl. “In exactly seven moments and twenty-seven tocks somebody’s walking through that door behind you. You’ll need to grasp my order within that time.” With a sudden upward pitch of voice, he added, “Those ears still honed, Mr. Grey?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll begin.” At that point Mr. York fell incongruously silent. He renewed his terrific struggle with whatever irritated him on the other side of the telecard house. His growls became vicious snarls. Mr. Grey saw elbows and shoulders emerge temporarily into view from the edges of the card house, before plunging back into the fray. Looking through the gaps in the card house, Mr. Grey thought that Jack York’s opponent looked like a thermos. Unsure what was coming, but quite sure speaking would only draw Mr. York’s ire on himself, Mr. Grey idled an eye about the office.
Jack York’s personal office sidled alongside the Cubicle Hedge, high among the upper stories of the Regional Justice Center. I must tell you, to avoid confusion, that the office sidled; and that it was alongside the Cubicle Hedge, not in it. Jack York’s office was a glass bubble fixed to the exterior of the Justice Center. It roamed horizontally along the windows of the hedge floor, pulled along by insectlike, piston-and-strut legs, while Mr. York’s subordinates clicked and clacked at their word machines on the same floor. The office roamed, though locked on a horizontal track, unpredictably. Sometimes the office crawled slowly tockwise, sometimes countertockwise. Sometimes it darted suddenly from one side of the building to the opposite. Mr. York often sprang out of the office door and through the nearest window from unexpected directions, taking his employees unawares. That was how Jack York had caught Mr. Grey before he reached the safety of his cubicle.
Through this glass bubble, Mr. Grey had a swoon-worthy view of the sky’s endless expanse. He sat before the desk and the house of cards, unnerved by the feral gusts raging just beyond the room’s transparent walls. The Wind dragged her overcasting clouds above, in front of, and below the office. In a bitter humor The Wind rattled the room’s windows and wriggled the room’s shadows. Each time the room moved it either raced the cumuli along the Justice Center’s exterior, or plunged directly into the vapors.
Mr. Grey reached a not-so-dry hand into one pocket of his robe. Knowing himself stuck in Jack York’s ethereal office for an exact period of time, he could at least figure out how long before that period expired.
Just as Mr. Grey’s fingers closed around the ticker wrapped in cold folds of pocket, he heard Mr. York bark a mad laugh. Mr. Grey saw something arc over the telecard house. Mr. Grey withdrew his hand in time to catch the object - a sleek metal thermos - before it struck his face.
From the other side of the cards Jack York said, “Grey, get that thermos open.” Mr. Grey wrung the neck of the metal flask with his Hands. The hands were slick, and the lid was tight, and Mr. Grey struggled.
“Where was I?” said Jack York. “Right! Your client ratio. Down 6%.”
Mr. Grey heard Jack York strike a stack of parchment on the other side of the desk. The wooden telecards clattered nervously. He paused in twisting his fingers around the thermos lid. He said, “Well sir, I feel there’s been additional restrictions placed on the address filers since my last review. Perhaps it’s harder for clients to get approved in general.”
“Did I call it a bad ratio? Did those words desert me without my knowing?”
“No sir.”
“That’s good to hear, Grey. We’ve got-” Mr. Grey heard Jack York rifle a pocket for his own ticker, “exactly five moments and sixteen tocks left. Time’s precious. Words are dear.”
“You were talking about my client ratio, sir?”
“Ears front, Grey. Notices are boarding the Sunshine Post right now that’ll make quakes in every frontier of the Justice Center.”
“It sounds like those travel reforms the king was cons…”
“Don’t interrupt, dammit! We’ve no time. Yes, it’s the travel reforms. Speaking plainly; your ratios won’t fit the new system.”
The glass room stirred into a countertockwise motion, forcing Mr. Grey to lean in his chair. A cloud racing with the office plunged Mr. Grey’s side of the desk into shadow; though, of course, Mr. Grey’s personal shading remained the same. Mr. Grey twisted hard on the thermos cap, and the grey veins popped under the skin of his hand.
Mr. Grey said, “I’m not sure I understand, sir.”
“Of course not,” said his boss in a grumbling way.
Jack York stalked around his desk, emerging from behind the house of telecards. He wore a steel-drum robe with a suspender-stripe pattern arching over the shoulders. Jack York kept his face shaved and his head bald. The former hid behind his hand as it scratched his cheek, while the latter hid beneath a rusty iron worker’s cap.
He didn’t circle up to Mr. Grey, but stomped towards some furniture sitting against the office’s glass wall. For a moment Mr. Grey thought Jack York was marching towards the gun cabinet. Firearms and ammunition of every conceivable variety fanned out like peacock feathers behind the windowed weapon-box. Nobody in the office knew how Mr. York had acquired the guns. Or, how he kept them from the city bouncers, since guns were the most illegal weapons.
Instead of his arsenal, Jack York walked to the cabinet beside it. This one held liquor. He selected a brackish looking substance in a teardrop, crystal decanter. He turned to Mr. Grey and said, “You crack that thermos yet?”
“It’s rather tight, sir.”
Mr. York growled. He walked up to Mr. Grey and snatched the thermos. Tucking the crystal bottle in an armpit like an iron jaw, Jack proceeded to open the thermos by twisting the cap like a combination lock. He turned it tockwise, countertockwise, then back again, with a click at each stop. When the thermos opened, Jack York poured most of his selected liquor inside. He handed the teardrop bottle with its dregs to Mr. Grey, and said, “Drink.”
“I couldn’t…”
“Drink!”
Mr. Grey reluctantly introduced the liquor to his lips. The littlest taste set a tingly fire on his tongue. Jack York, meanwhile, took a healthy swallow of his thermos. He stalked back around to the other side of the card house.
The cloud shadows passed from Mr. Grey’s side of the desk to Mr. York’s. The Wind rattled at the windows.
“She’s in one of her fits?” asked his boss with a distracted-sounding voice.
“Who, sir?”
“The Wind.”
“She mentioned feeling a little rainy.”
Mr. Grey waited. Jack York fell silent again, this time with no commotion. Mr. Grey still twisted his wrists in the air where he’d been holding thermos. He realized what he was doing, and forced his hands to relax. He said, “May I say something, Mr. York?”
“Time’s ticking.”
“I think I could do better, for the department sir, if I weren’t so often interrupted. I could get my ratio wherever it needed to be. But… sometimes I’m continuously getting pulled away for trivialities. Yesterday, for example. This girl, Jodee Coats, came to my desk without appointment. Of course I tried helping. But she wasn’t the most patient client. If you could call her a client. And impromptu arrangements like her rarely prepare for the process.”
“Did you say the name ‘Jodee Coats’?” His boss’s voice scratched loudly.
“Yes sir.”
Mr. Grey heard Jack York’s shoe pound the glass floor. He heard the glass floor crack. He watched the transparent surface beneath his chair bloom with spiderweb fractures.
The floor held. Mr. York didn’t seem to notice, and railed on at Mr. Grey. “This is exactly what I’m charging at. Do you know what I read in the telecards just before you reported in?”
Mr. Grey examined the cards for a clue. They were stacked in the indifferent structure of the house used for receiving messages, and gave none. He said, “Sorry sir, but I don’t.”
“Your miss Jodee Coats broke the Odormoat. Left without a visa. Without a damned notice. It’s the fourth case I’ve heard today alone.” Mr. Grey’s fingers wrinkled the grey fabric of his robe, but he held his silence. “And it’s not the first cite-worthy error you’ve made lately. Rampant typos in your form submission.”
“But sir, how could I handle her situation? Properly? It wasn’t an appointment. And reaching a focused state is difficult with clients and non-clients shouting the whole time. I think it’s the circumstances themselves dragging down my efficiency ratio.”
“You’re wasting time. This isn’t a ratio problem.” His boss stopped and, to Mr. Grey, sounded as though he struggled to choose his words. Mr. Grey heard grumbling and growling from the other side of the cards. The clouds rolled darkly around the office bubble. Mr. Grey and Jack York’s pockets ticked silently together.
Mr. York stamped his foot again - Mr. Grey lifted his feet involuntarily from the cracking glass - and said, “What do you think of Ms. Maysey?”
“Ms. Maysey, sir?” Mr. Grey asked, confusion evident even behind a flat tone of his caliber.
“Ms. Maysey. How do you feel she’s getting on?”
“Well… You’d have to speak to that, Mr. York. I couldn’t possibly say.”
“Does Ms. Maysey seem happy to you?”
“She seems… good enough? Harder working than some employees, sicklier than others.”
“What do you think of her sabbatical?”
“I think she’s looking forward to it.”
“Will a rest do her good, grand-scheme-wise?”
The room jumped tockwise, sending the shadows scurrying to new corners. Mr. Grey grabbed the arms of his chair to remain stiff. “I wouldn’t speak for someone…”
“Is taking time off a bad call?” On the cards’ other side his boss growled low. Jack York hated bad calls.
After a nerve-gathering moment Mr. Grey said, “In the short term there will obviously be a loss of total working eons on her part.”
Mr. Grey heard Mr. York gulp an enormous swallow of burning liquor from the thermos. “In the long run-” his boss paused to breathe out a long sigh, and Mr. Grey smelled the alcohol fumes, “she needs it.”
“I don’t imply Ms. Maysey does wrong by…”
The telecard stack on the desk suddenly collapsed in a heap, though at that moment the room crawled languidly along the building, and Jack York was standing still. An incoming message had toppled it. The message showed in the carved art of the cards which landed face up. Mr. Grey turned politely away to avoid eavesdropping. He did notice ‘The Empress’ fell face up, which usually meant the message involved treasure.
The Interruption threw Jack York into rage. He bounded to the telecards, took a sweeping read of them, and began pounding the desk with his fist; the glass floor groaned. Mr. Grey thought it must have been bad news.
“Damned telemarketers,” Jack York said, stalking back from the desk. Mr. Grey started building the cards back into a receiving house, but his boss waved off the courtesy. Jack York turned to face Mr. Grey. He screwed on the thermos lid and brandished it at Mr. Grey to emphasize his point. “Grey, you need a holiday.”
Mr. Grey’s hands clung to his chair, though the room had stopped moving. “Sir, I’m not sure that would suit me. Not in the way it suits other workers.”
“You are deliberately wasting my time. We’re down to a pair of moments.”
“Sir, I’m sorry, that wasn’t…”
“I’m saying you need a break. You calling me a liar?”
“Sir…” said Mr. Grey, with an uncharacteristic, exhausted exhale. “I’m having some trouble getting my meaning across, I think.” But then Mr. Grey stopped himself before continuing. His hands relaxed. As the shadows of the clouds passed beyond his face, an idea seemed to replace them, as a furrowing angle in his brow, and a harder pressing of his mouth.
His boss noticed the change and took it as acceptance. Jack York growled happily, and set the thermos on the desk with a satisfying metal bang. “You’ll receive the standard job perks. Expedited visa parchmentwork. Expedited dispensation of travel towels and odor cologne. I’ll even assign it a priority-one status. Get things churning. It’ll be good for you, passing through the Odormoats. You’ll see all the sights: the ruins of Antiquity, the Wine Medo flower gardens. When you return you’ll be fresh for these reforms.”
Mr. Grey’s thoughts had turned inward, and he missed most of his boss’s words. Mr. York caught him, and said, “Didn’t I tell you to keep those ears trimmed?”
Mr. Grey jumped - internally - and looked square at his boss. He said, “My mistake and my apologies. I was thinking about this leave though. What if I took a few necessary forms along with me? Change of address, visas, notices to vacate. I could track down Ms. Coats and some of the others who’ve been causing you trouble, sir. I’d close out some of those telecard cases you’ve been receiving.”
Jack York shoved his hands in the front pocket of his robe, closed his eyes, and breathed through his nose. Wrinkles troubled his features. He began, “What functioning citizen wants to waste vacation eons tracking…”
But Jack York was interrupted. The door behind Mr. Grey opened with a metal creak. One of Mr. Grey’s coworkers entered. Mr. Grey saw the man wringing his hands nervously. Mr. Grey sympathized — internally. Everyone got nervous during performance reviews.
Mr. York looked at Mr. Grey with a face wearing the exact same serious expression as the conversation had begun with; as though nothing had elapsed between Mr. Grey’s entering and Mr. Grey’s leaving. Only the fallen telecards revealed the passage of time. Jack York said, “Time’s up, Grey.”