Bureau was a vast system of halls and offices, occupying two floors
of the great building. I was sent from one automatic device to
another--there were no human clerks--in search of the representative who
had spoken to me before. Finally I found him in his apartment, down the
corridor only a hundred feet or so from my own. He was pouring over a
metal sheet on his table, where innumerable shifting figures were thrown
by some hidden machine, and he was calculating with a set of hundreds of
buttons along its edges. He spoke to me without pausing or looking up,
and throughout my interview he continued with his figuring as if it had
been entirely automatic--as perhaps it was.

"What is it, Baret?" he said I felt like a small child before the
principal of the school.

"I have come to ask you whether it is necessary for me to go," I
answered. He nodded slightly, never looking up.

"It is necessary," he said. "Your visit was pre-arranged and definite."
I made a gesture of remonstrance.

"But I don't want to go," I insisted. "I like this place, and I am
willing to fall into its life if I can remain under any conditions."

"It is impossible," he objected angrily.

"I have never been told why or how I came here. You said you would tell
me that."

"I have never been told myself. It is a matter known to the men who
handled it."

"If I went to them, surely they could find some way to let me stay?"

"No," he said coldly, "the thing was as definite as every event that
takes place here. We do not let things happen haphazardly. We do not
alter what has been arranged. And even if it were possible to let you
stay--which I am inclined to doubt--they would not permit it."

* * * * *

"Why not?" I asked dully.

"Because there is no place for you. Our social system has been planned
for hundreds of years ahead. Every individual of today and every
individual of the next six generations has his definite place, his
program, his work to do. There is no place for you. It is impossible to
fit you in, for you have no work, no training, no need that you can
fill. You have no woman, and there are no women for your children or
your children's children. You are unnecessary. To fit you in, one would
have to disrupt the whole system for generations ahead. It is
impossible."

I thought a moment, hopelessly.

"If I made a place?" I suggested. "Suppose I took someone else's place?"
He smiled, a faint, cold smile.