Before this question I remained mute. The first wild surge of hope was beginning to well up in my heart.
"How do you expect, young man," repeated the Inspector, growing more irate every moment, "to bring forth a capable progeny unless you have had a good fighting ancestry? No, sir, I am sorry to say I cannot approve of you as eugenic! To permit your marriage would be to encourage the growth of an unfit, non-combatant population! I regret it very much, sir, but I must stamp your application, 'Disapproved!'"
And, with that, the Inspector made a contemptuous bow, and went stamping out of the room.
A few minutes later, after Loa had heard the news and had left my apartment with heartbroken sobs, I executed a solitary dance of joy. At last I was free, completely free! And how I blessed my father and my father's father for having had no fighting experience!
CHAPTER XXI
Strike! Strike! Strike!
The "wakes" went by and gathered into months, and the months lengthened into a year, and still I performed my duties as Ventilation Inspector, and could discover no way of escape to the Overworld, and no prospect of a change in the ordered monotony of my existence. Was I to pass my whole life thus, and to end my days among the labyrinths of Wu?
So I often asked, while wondering if it would not be wise to attempt some new dash for liberty—even though the end might be arrest and the violet ray! Then all at once, when I was just finishing my first year as Inspector, my life underwent an extraordinary change.
The occasion was one of those periodic strikes which menace the economic security of Wu and enable the people to enjoy the perils and horrors of warfare even when war has not been officially declared. On this particular occasion, the strike was especially dangerous; for those guardians of the public health, the Ventilation employees, were determined to leave work. Not, indeed, had all the Ventilation employees so resolved, but in some sections they were unanimous in their revolt, and the uprising had become so serious that Dictator Thuno Flâtum was said to have interrupted a fishing expedition for nearly an hour while he debated the situation with high officials.