The reply was bitterly sarcastic. "Fergot to get a license, Fergot to get the next ration card, Fergot to apply for compensation.... Fergot to do practically anything but eat ... and be a drag on everybody else. I got three of them myself to look out for and if I don't look out I'll be going Eyefer myself and then what?"
"All right, then what?"
The young man clenched his teeth, thinned his lips. "There won't be any 'then what.' I'd hang myself."
Concealing his startlement, Herl asked as coolly as he could, "Tell me about these Eyefers. We don't have them where I come from and I can't say I exactly understand the score."
"No Eyefers, huh. Ask Crawford." And the driver clenched his teeth again and drove on. Herl was unable to get anything more out of him until the cabter turned and drew up a long ramp into the side of a pretentious pseudo-Greek edifice that filled a whole block.
"Civil Building. Crawford's office is here. Straight ahead," he stopped the cabter beside a gateway in the railed concrete walkway paralleling the road, which apparently went clear through the building, "and take the fourth elevator to your right. Crawford has the whole sixth floor."
Herl grabbed his case full of credentials and applications, opened the door, and stepped onto the walkway. He turned to thank the driver, but the cab was already gathering speed along the way.
II
He looked after the dwindling cab a moment, then walked quickly along the concrete toward the elevators. To his left, a procession of assorted vehicles hurried in either direction through the tunnel. Occasional cabters, long-cars, and congyribles pulled up to openings in the railing to let out passengers who approached one or another of the elevator doors. Herl passed three clumps of people waiting for transportation to other floors and noticed that the panels beside the doors, which listed the offices to be found on the ninth, eighth, and seventh floors respectively, were all listings of headquarters of some sort of civil control ... health insurance, building permits, fire inspection, inoculations, etc.