In the outer office a girl looked up from a card she'd just pulled from her own order box. “Ronald Bronston?”
“That's right.”
She handed the card to him. “You're to go to the office of Ross Metaxa in the Octagon, Commissariat of Interplanetary Affairs, Department of Justice, Bureau of Investigation, Section G.”
In a lifetime spent in first preparing for United Planets employment and then in working for the organization, Ronny Bronston had never been in the Octagon Building. He'd seen photographs, Tri-Di broadcasts and he'd heard several thousand jokes on various levels from pun to obscenity about getting around in the building, but he'd never been there. For that matter, he'd never been in Greater Washington before, other than a long ago tourist trip. Population Statistics, his department, had its main offices in New Copenhagen.
His card was evidently all that he needed for entry.
At the sixth gate he dismissed his car and let it shoot back into the traffic mess. He went up to one of the guard-guides and presented the card.
The guide inspected it. “Section G of the Bureau of Investigation,” he muttered. “Every day, something new. I never heard of it.”
“It's probably some outfit in charge of cleaning the heads on space liners.” [pg 012] Ronny said unhappily. He'd never heard of it either.
“Well, it's no problem,” the guard-guide said. He summoned a three-wheel, fed the co-ordinates into it from Ronny's card, handed the card back and flipped an easy salute. “You'll soon know.”
The scooter slid into the Octagon's hall traffic and proceeded up one corridor, down another, twice taking to ascending ramps. Ronny had read somewhere the total miles of corridors in the Octagon. He hadn't believed the figures at the time. Now he believed them. He must have traversed several miles before they got to the Department of Justice alone. It was another quarter mile to the Bureau of Investigation.