The elevator slid upward steadily through the white-tiled shaft. Lampley, slowly recovering his calm after the loss of the unicorn, caught glimpses of the activities in the various sub-basements. Men were building a ship in one, laying the keel, riveting the ribs, welding the plates. Higher, dynamos of all sizes were attended by midgets who climbed and clung like flies. On the next floor hundreds of seamstresses in grecian robes cut and sewed balloons, twisted silk threads into heavy ropes, wove rush baskets and attached them to the flaccid bags; on another he saw a congregation of worshippers at prayer. There was a sub-basement that was a library, one which was a toy factory, one where alchemists turned waste into gold. There was a bakery, an automobile assembly, an iron foundry, a chemical laboratory, a college, a mortuary. They rose through moving picture stages, distilleries, warehouses, mill-wrights, armorers, perfume-makers, silversmiths, glass-blowers, gem-cutters, machine-shops, art galleries, a mint, lumber-yard, stoveworks.
Then came a series of vacant floors: bleak, void, stale. The elevator moved much more slowly now, as though dragged down by the emptiness, pulled back, hampered by the blankness through which it was passing.
"About this fellow," said the clerk abruptly.
"What fellow?" parried the Governor. But he knew.
The clerk pulled out a plastic mask and slipped it over his face. It was a replica of his own features, subtly altered, so that the Governor was filled with sick terror at the sight of mouth, nose, cheeks, eyes, superimposed on those which differed only enough to be totally alien. The clerk stopped the elevator, opened the door. Walls of rough stone towered on all sides. The Governor held back until the clerk's steady stare forced him out onto the cracked, uneven pavement. There was a sweetish, sickening, vaguely familiar smell all around.
The clerk rubbed his hands together and then over Lampley's arm in a gesture of appraisal and possession. To his disgust the Governor saw the fabric of his jacket crumble and dissolve. His jacket and the shirt beneath, leaving his skin and flesh bare and vulnerable. The touch of the fingers was loathsome but he was unable to draw away from it. The clerk brought his face close, so that Lampley saw where the mouth of the mask, the eyeholes and nostrils failed to match those beneath.
"This man, this convict, this felon. You couldn't find it in you to reprieve him?"
"He had a fair trial," mumbled Lampley.
"A fair trial," repeated the clerk. "The jurors were gods, the judge was justice incarnate?"
"The judge was properly assigned; the jurors were members of a qualified panel."