the babbling fellow shuffling along at his side. "Mr.
Pettigill, I don't want to keep you from your work for too long, so I'll
just get a few notes and make up the bulk of the story back at the
paper." Bartle searched the room with his eyes. "Don't you have a chair
in this place?"

"Oh, my gracious, yes. There goes that old discourtesy again, eh?" the
little man, Pettigill, said with a dry laugh. He scurried about the room
like a confused squirrel until he spotted a chair behind his desk. "My
chair. My chair for you, Mr. Bartle!" Again the dry laugh.

"Thanks, Mr. Pettigill."

"Arthur. Call me Arthur. Formality really isn't necessary among Mid
Echelon, do you think? Section Secretary Andrews has often requested I
call him Morton, but I just can't seem to bring myself to such
informality. After all, he is Sub-Prime Echelon. It makes one
uncomfortable, shall we say, to step out of one's class?" He stopped
talking and the corners of his mouth dropped quickly as if he had just
been given one minute to live. "You--you _are_ only Mid Echelon, aren't
you? I mean, if you are Sub-Prime, I shouldn't be--"

"Relax, Mr. Pettigill--'Arthur'--I _am_ Mid Echelon. And I'm only that
because my father was a man of far more industry than I; I inherited my
classification."

"So? Well, now. Interesting--very. He must have been a great man, a
great man, Mr. Bartle."

"So I am told, Arthur. But let's get on with it," Bartle said, taking
some scrap paper and a pencil stub from his tunic pocket. "Now, tell me
about yourself and the Melopsych Center."

"Well," the little man began with a sigh and blinked his eyes peculiarly
as though he were mentally shuffling events and facts like a deck of
cards. "Well, I--my life would be of little interest, but the Center is
of the utmost importance. That's it--I am no more than a physical
extremity that functions in accord with the vital life that courses
through the great physique of the Center! No more--I ask no more than to
serve the Center and in turn, my fellow citizens, whether they be Prime,
Sub-Prime, Mid, or even Sub-Lower!"

He stopped speaking, affecting a martyr-like pose. Bartle covered a
smile with his hand.

"Well, Bartle, as you know, the Center--the Melopsych Center, a
thoroughly inadequate name for the installation I might say--is the
point of broadcast for these many taped musical selections contrived by
Mass Psych as a therapeutic treatment for the various Echelon levels. It