I offered him one of the smaller pieces, rather in fear of giving offense, but he pocketed it at once, and then, with a new aggressiveness toward the gathering crowd, took me upstairs to the Strangers’ Bureau. Here I was stripped and examined by two physicians, and photographed in three positions; my finger prints were taken, and the three indexes. Then a dapper little clerk in blue passed a tape measure in several ways about my head and beckoned to me mysteriously to come to his desk.
“It’s too bad,” he exclaimed.
“What is too bad?” I inquired.
“The difference is five centimeters, and—well, I’m afraid you’re a brach. I’d like to help you out, but—well, if I can—”
The meaning of the word suddenly revealed itself to me. “You mean my head is brachycephalic?” I asked.
“There is, unfortunately, no doubt,” he answered, and, coming closer under the pretense of measuring me again, began to whisper. “You know, the measure is flexible,” he said, glancing furtively about him. “The revising clerk passes all my measurements without referring back to the doctors. There’s an understanding between us. Now I could get you into the dolicoph class—”
“The longheads?”
“Yes,” he murmured, looking at me with an expression of mutual understanding.
“But what advantage would that be to me?” I inquired.
“They say,” he whispered, “that the Council is going to penalize the brachs several points. It is Doctor Sanson’s new theory, you know, that the brachs are more defective than the dolicophs. Now I’d risk making you a dolicoph for—would it be worth a hektone to you?”