He hardly noticed his surroundings as he walked back into the Personnel building.
At first, there was a dull resentment—a free-floating rage—which failed to find focus, but sought for outlet in any direction.
The trouble was, he thought, in the formal way of doing things. It didn't really matter, he told himself, whether anything really got done or not—so long as an approved routine was followed.
Only the wrong people used direct, effective methods.
The anger remained nondirectional, simply swelling and surging in all directions at once. There were too many targets and it was a torturing pressure, rather than a dynamic force.
He thought of his brief explosion, then grunted in self-ridicule. He'd implied he could just pick up Sornal's record file, bring it in, and throw it before that sergeant. And for just a flash, he'd really thought of it as a simple possibility.
"Maybe," he told himself, "one of those Special Corpsmen could do something like that, but I don't see any of them around, trying it."
He looked around, startled. Somehow, he had passed the gate, identified himself, parked the skip-about, and come inside—all without remembering his actions.
"Well," he asked himself, "what do I do now? Just become some sort of thing?"