Grubbage
“I believe the actual term is ‘Grubbage’.”
“Eh?”
“Grubbage, Capitis Pingo.”
Clamm slammed shut the drawer he had been fumbling in. He eyed the Janitor Angelicus with distaste. He sipped his ultra-reinforced Ovaltine, wishing the janitor could bring himself to quit using epithets of dubious Latin pedigree.
“And the ‘grubbage’—as you like to put it,” Clamm said fastidiously. “The grubbage is . . . er, building up?”
“There’s too many, Capitis Pingo.”
‘Many’ threw Clamm off for a while. He supposed ‘grubbage’ to be an uncountable noun. Then he realized that the janitor was speaking of the people responsible for the phenomenon he had designated ‘grubbage.’ Clamm idly toyed with the idea of eliminating the irritating janitor. It was not the first time he had toyed with the idea, but as on other occasions, he knew it was not, however splendid, an idea he could seriously entertain because of the janitor’s connections.
“Like where?” Clamm asked, irritated now that the janitor should be his most reliable source of information. Clamm had, after all, a huge and monumental bureaucracy at his disposal. It had build the most efficient sewage system known to human kind, and therefore it irritated Clamm when things like this were sprung on him unawares by a creature of unidentifiable species such as the janitor.
“Like on earth,” the janitor replied.
Clamm stifled the urge to just ask the janitor who was in charge there. He scribbled on a piece of paper with his thick blue pencil and he put this in a drawer.
“An operative who goes by the alias Felonious Assault,” the janitor remarked casually, as if in answer to Clamm’s stifled urge.
A fly had entered the office. It was about to be exterminated by the janitor—who had some practice with these matters—and the strange thing was that the fly was vaguely aware of its impending doom. When the janitor, much to Clamm’s astonishment, deftly splattered the fly’s guts over the top drawer of a filing cabinet, a green, octagonal chip was seen glimmering on the smear.
“What?” the janitor said, leaning closer. Then he started. “A consciousness chip!”
“What! How do you know that?” Clamm had come to peer at the former fly and its chip.
“Know what?” the janitor asked, relaxed again, drawling slightly. “Know about Felonious Assault? Well, I have my ways. I don’t . . . uh, I’ve suddenly run out of time,” he explained. He pulled a large set of keys from his belt and picked one. He inserted it into the space between another drawer and the side of the file cabinet, turned the key, and opened an ideational trap door.
“Bye,” he said, and Clamm was left alone.
Clamm returned to his desk and checked the drawer. There was a long slip of green paper curling inside, and he took it out. It contained a list of names and had the infuriating title: IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER. Three quarters of the way down the list Clamm found what he wanted: OPERATIVE 612; ASSAULT, FELONIUS. He crumpled the list up and threw it at the fly’s remains.
“And what is a consciousness chip anyway?” he asked aloud.
In a room far away, the inevitable Yumar Canapia laughed.
Unknowing 