In the meantime he lay there.
He twitched again, a reflective thing, no volition entering into it. The surface under him gave a little; a bed of some sort, must be. It seemed rather too firm, a harder bed than he felt he was properly accustomed to. Not too bad though. He could—he had, apparently, rested well enough on it. Sheets? He couldn't feel any sheets, only something scratchy; a blanket. And it didn't, come to notice, feel as though he were wearing pajamas; more like ordinary clothes. And—he wiggled his toes—socks, yes. Shoes? No, at least he wasn't wearing shoes.
Now where would a man, not drunk, of course he wasn't drunk, be likely to go to bed in a hard bunk, blanket, no sheets, all or most of his clothes on except his shoes? Could be some sort of an Armed Forces outpost or ... jail? The situation seemed to fit the pattern of a jail all too closely. And how would the fine young man he was sure he must be know all this about a jail pattern? Must have read it someplace; seen it in a show. Well....
He opened his eyes to a further greyness, only less thick than that inside. And there were bars in this greyness, there in front of him, heavy steel bars; on the sides, he turned his head, walls of solid steel plate. To the rear? He lifted his head and turned it—a damp, dirty concrete wall. Oh it was a jail all right. He was in jail, in a cell. He didn't, at once, move any more. From where he lay on the cell's single bunk hung by chains from the right side wall, he could see a narrow, concrete corridor through the bars in front. A bare light bulb shone tiredly in a dirt-crusted metal reflector in the corridor's high ceiling; grey light oozed in through a high, barred window. It must be early morning, he figured.
Probably it was morning, at that. But, as he found in later time, you couldn't judge it from that window. It had only two tones, grey light or black; night or day. It was a window remote from any sun and the grey day-time quality was subject to no variations, or at least none that he could ever classify or use as a basis of measurement.
Well, assuming as he did then that it was morning in jail, what was he, whoever he was, doing in jail? The detail of his past was still solidly fogged in. But he wasn't a—a criminal. Anything like that he would surely know about, remember. It must be a mistake of some sort. Or could he be in jail for some justifiable, thoroughly respectable sin? Income tax, price fixing, collusion, something like that, actually creditable rather than otherwise? No. He hadn't been through a trial, couldn't have been; and nobody ever went to jail for things like that except, perhaps, for a month or so and that after years of trials and appeals first.
Nevertheless, he was in jail. So? It must be an accident, a mistake of some sort. Of course. That would be it.
He sat up then, on the bunk. Shoes? He swung his stocking feet over the edge of the bunk and felt; bent down and looked. No shoes in sight. Well ... he stood up. Ow! That concrete floor was cold. But he wouldn't have to stand for it—on it—for long. Whatever the mistake or misunderstanding had put him in jail, he would straighten it out quickly enough. He walked to the front of the cell to grasp bars, one in each hand, the conventional prisoners' pose.
"Hey!" he shouted, "hey!!" He rattled the cell door, doing all the normal, conventional things. And, standing there shaking his cell door, he was a conventional, non-remarkable looking young man. Middling height, not short, not tall. Young, not more than thirty or so; not bad looking. Slim enough of waist so the lack of a belt didn't endanger the security of his pants. Naturally, they drooped and, naturally, he looked unshaven, dishevelled. But his suit was of good quality. Shirt—no necktie, of course—too. He might very well have been a young executive, caught in a non-executive moment. Probably, he was, or had been. But in jail there are no executives. He was only a prisoner rattling a jail cell door.