Sidney's Comet by Brian Herbert Page A

was a small man with a friendly, elf-like face. Tiny eyes peered from under a translucent green visor that nearly covered the upper part of his face. He cleared his throat, amplified his melodic voice with a tiny silver microphone clipped to his tie: “Good afternoon, employees of Job Station Beasley! Before getting on with the important task at hand, I would like to take this opportunity to give thanks to our gracious benefactor, Willard R. Rosenbloom.”
    Murmuring their lines on cue, the employees intoned: “Thank Uncle Rosy. We are all employed.”
    Administrator Nelson continued: “Uncle Rosy is proud of each of you. Every person in this room holds a share of the Sacred Job that was created for our benefit.”
    And the employees murmured: “Praise be to Uncle Rosy. He loves us all.”
    Nelson touched a heat switch on the metronome, setting the device into operation. Click . . . click . . . click . . . click. The pendulum swung back and forth, a passage every fifteen seconds. Sidney pressed his red button with each metronome click, activating his envelope stuffer at the rate of four per minute.
    After several minutes, the metronome automatically slowed, making a click every twenty seconds. Then it slowed again, to a thirty-second click. Sidney’s eyelids grew increasingly heavy. He dozed off. Then, half awake, he tried to catch up by pushing the button several times in rapid succession.
    “No, no Malloy!” a voice said. “You’re going too fast!”
    Startled, Sidney looked tip to see the scowling face of Malcolm Penny staring down at him through round spectacles perched on the end of a disapproving nose.
    “Oh!” Sidney said, sitting up straight. “I’m terribly sorry!”
    Penny shook his head disapprovingly, set his jaw. “And your desk, Malloy . . . it’s not organized according to standard!”
    “But I thought it—”
    “Your day calendar and auto-staple remover, man! Don’t you ever look at the manual?”
    Sidney heard a metronome click, pushed the stuffing tray button. “I’m sorry, Mr. Penny,” he said. “I’ll correct it right away.”
    The Second Assistant to the Assistant Manager straightened, still shaking his head. “See that you do,” he snipped. Then he rolled down the aisle to look for other violators.
    * * *
    Still angry over his encounter with the base sergeant an hour before, Javik stepped out of a Bu-Health surge-pool. Smelling the back of his hand, he shook his head and thought: Still a trace odor of that god-damned garbage. The skit permeates every pore in my body —
    Javik shivered as he walked dripping wet across the blue Italian tile of the main bathhouse toward a line of naked men and women waiting to get into Tanning Room Five. His leg and arm muscles ached from the weight exercises he had completed fifteen minutes earlier.
    “This old body can’t take it anymore,” he muttered.
    Finding a place in line, Javik looked around and motioned to a towel monitor standing nearby. A dark-haired young man wearing the silver and gold leotard of Bu-Health moto-shoed over, draped a long white towel over Javik’s shoulders.
    “Sign here,” the young man instructed, thrusting a Tele-Charge board under Javik’s nose. Javik unsnapped a transmitting pen from the board, squiggled his name across the tiny screen. A green imprint of Javik’s signature appeared on the screen as he wrote, and as he finished, his consumer identification number and the amount of purchase appeared. All this faded quickly, being replaced by a flashing orange “Thank You.” The young man retrieved his Tele-Charge board and rolled back to his post.
    Javik pulled the towel around his shivering body and felt its warmth take hold. The line moved quickly. Soon he had signed another Tele-Charge board and was in the warm, brightly lit tanning room. It was a high-ceilinged room, with eighty-eight levels of tanning slabs stretching upward, connected by steel ramps and clanking conveyor lifts. Harmak played