The Summons
by Jeffrey Greene
|
Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3 |
part 1
Two days before his forty-second birthday, Mr. Andrew Aaron, a bill processor in the Financial Department of the Nysack Medical District, received a civic work notice for Monday of the following week. The impressive, emerald-green envelope, hand-delivered to his cubicle by a government courier, was stamped with the red triangle of Civil District One and provoked a good deal of comment in the crowded office, much more than the notice itself, which was simply a request in the tersest official language to report for unspecified civic work on Monday, October 3rd, at 9:00 a.m. in the District One Hall of Justice.
The notice reminded him that he could not be excused except by written proof of illness or indispensability at work. The assurance of nominal compensation for lost work time led him to think it was jury duty, but Morris Winbush from the office across the hall disagreed.
“I’ve gotten those,” he said, testing the letter’s heft in his ink-stained right hand. “They come in a white envelope through the regular mail.” He held the heavy stationary up to the light, closely examining it front and back. “What I think you’ve got here, Andy, is possibly a summons to chair a committee or preside as a judge in a lower court case. By the quality of the stationary and the sheer pomp involved, we can assume something prestigious.” He surrendered the letter, a little reluctantly, to Marsha Dixon, who was clamoring for it.
But Mr. Aaron, who hated any disruption of his routine, was doubtful. “The last one I got turned out to be eight hours on the graveyard shift at the sewage treatment plant,” he said. “But maybe this’ll be the last one. I heard somewhere that the odds against receiving more than two civic work days in a lifetime are about the same as being attacked by a shark.”
“Bad attitude, Andy,” said Morris. “These formal summons can be manna from heaven. You might make contacts on a committee that could pole-vault you right out of here. I certainly wouldn’t be sniffing at it if it was addressed to me.”
Mr. Aaron knew without asking that his supervisor, Mrs. Waldrup, with her civic fervor and religious awe of authority, would refuse to write him an excuse, even though he was already ten bills behind this week’s quota and unlikely to catch up by the time his monthly evaluation rolled around. And suppose Morris Winbush was wrong and the civic work turned out after all to be jury duty on one of the treason trials that had been dragging on for months? He knew very well that his department head valued his competence and experience, and no one, not even the Chief Administrator, questioned the primacy of civic duty, but the quotas simply had to be filled, civic work or no.
With the best intentions in the world, his department head might, after weeks or months with one less bill processor, find himself forced to move someone up from Medical Records to fill the position. Given these considerations, it wasn’t surprising that he felt rather put-upon, or that he stared at the green envelope on his desk with the same mixture of resentment and dread he had felt upon first receiving his draft notice.
His wife was a nurse on the evening shift in Pediatric Intensive Care, and he usually didn’t see her until shortly before he went to bed. She handled the envelope with the same intense interest that everyone else had, speculated eagerly about the nature of the work, and became very upset when he told her he was seriously considering “being sick” on Monday.
“Don’t you dare!” she said, in her not infrequently used tone of outrage. “Whoever sent this had your health records on his desk long before he picked you. They know you’re never sick, Andy. They’re just waiting for you to submit a faked doctor’s excuse so they can start fraud proceedings. You could go to jail!”
“Oh, come on,” he said. “My name was probably picked from an alphabetical listing of registered voters. If I don’t show, they’ll just go to the next name. Anyway, if the last one was any indication, I won’t be missing much. Garbageman for a day. Or maybe cleaning cages at the District Zoo.”
“Must you look at everything from the bottom up? They might have chosen you very carefully to be Mayor for a day, or city councilman, or any number of positions you’d be honored to hold, if you were anybody else.” She picked up the envelope and waved it at him. “Look at this: hand-delivered, official colors. It has to be important. You have to go, Andy,” she said with finality and went upstairs.
“Maybe,” he said, loud enough for her to hear. But he knew she was right.
With the reluctant approval of Mrs. Waldrup, who was under pressure from the department head to limit overtime hours, Mr. Aaron worked two extra hours each day for the rest of the week, and by Friday evening had managed to surpass his quota by twelve bills, so it was in considerably improved spirits that he faced the morning of October third.
Dressed in a gray waterproof suit with velcro buttons, he walked from the District One subway station across Marshall Park under a threatening sky toward the great marble-and-glass pyramid that was the Hall of Justice. Its apex, painted a bright crimson, seemed to have pierced and drawn blood from the low-slung bellies of the storm clouds blackening the sky from east to west.
A cool wind carrying the smell of rain gusted through a grove of sycamore trees, blowing dry leaves from the piles being raked together by convicts in gray coveralls, and whipped the green and red ties of the guards watching them with electric stun guns.
Quickening his pace, he passed within twenty feet of a convict about his age who nodded and flashed a nearly toothless grin. He pointed to the gray sleeve of his coveralls, then turned the pointing finger at him, as if comparing their respective uniforms. Smiling nervously and hurrying on, Mr. Aaron heard a bray of laughter behind him.
He passed a group of Japanese tourists posing for pictures in front of the massive statue of the Three Judges, and was stopped by a guard at the great bronze doors. He pulled the green envelope out of his pocket and the guard immediately touched his cap and said, “Fifth floor, sir. Room 511.” The doors opened inward, admitting him to a vast, echoing entrance hall.
It had been renovated in the seven years since his last visit, when he was a witness in an assault case in his apartment building. The information desks that he remembered had been replaced by monitor screens clustered in circular stations, each with a digital image of a female face repeating information in a polite monotone. At the far end of the lobby, long lines of people waited in front of barred windows.
He got on an enormous elevator with mirrored walls that stood open until at least a hundred people had crowded into it. The distances between floors seemed longer than he remembered; there were murmured conversations among the passengers, and a newsstand at the back of the car run by an elderly man wearing blue coveralls with “trustee” stitched on the chest did a brisk business in magazines and newspapers.
At the fifth floor, the doors opened onto a deserted corridor dimly lit by red triangular panels set into the walls and ending in a door that might have been a hundred yards away. Mr. Aaron maneuvered himself from the back of the elevator, mumbling, “Excuse me” several times, noticing with the acute sensitivity of one who loathes being the center of attention how quiet it had suddenly become. He could feel the silent, collective stare as he stepped off the car, but didn’t turn around until he heard the doors close.
Odd, he thought, adjusting himself to the silence, so much traffic on the other floors and not a soul in sight here. The quiet induced in him the furtiveness of an intruder, and he walked with a heel-to-toe gait toward the distant door at the end of the hall. Between the lighted triangles were heavily-bolted doors with handles but no knobs, nor were any of them numbered. He was somewhat relieved to see that the door at the end did have a knob and was clearly marked “511.”
He stepped into what appeared to be a doctor’s waiting room, with framed portraits of clowns and a stuffed largemouth bass on the wall. Behind a sliding window sat a stunning young woman doing absolutely nothing. She sat up as he approached and favored him with a smile that seemed more appropriate to a hostess welcoming a guest of honor than a receptionist greeting a new patient, if indeed that was what he had been mistaken for.
In spite of his confusion, he smiled warmly back and noticed, as he stood looking down at her, how long her fingernails were, certainly too long to do any typing, or even write without difficulty.
“Mr. Aaron, isn’t it?” she asked in a lovely contralto that was all the more fascinating for being familiar.
“Since you know me, this must be the right place,” he said. “But how did you—”
“You’re much better-looking than your picture, Mr. Aaron. Some people, like me, photograph better than they look.” She was tapping a manila folder with a two-inch fingernail. There was a small snapshot of himself stapled to the top. “Still...” she said, cocking her head in playful doubt and flashing her perfect teeth, “I could be wrong, and we ought to be sure, shouldn’t we? So, if you have your civic work notice...”
“Of course.” He pulled out the rumpled envelope and handed it to her.
“Fine. Just have a seat, Mr. Aaron, and I’ll tell the doctor you’re here.” He had hardly sat down when she opened the door and said, “He’s ready to see you now.”
He followed her down the hallway thinking, where have I seen this girl before? She pointed to a door slightly ajar, touched him lightly on the shoulder and left him standing before the door. He hesitantly pushed it open.
A huge, bearded man in a lab coat sat at a desk bare except for the manila folder and his envelope. He was slumped in his chair, his unblinking gaze focused on some remote interior place, mouth hanging open, hands resting palms up on the desk, his loud, regular breathing rattling the loose phlegm in his throat. As Mr. Aaron watched, his right eyelid began to twitch; a shudder passed through him, and his hands jerked upward from the table with insect quickness and vigorously rubbed his eyes.
He took a step further into the room and the doctor, entirely unaware of his presence until then, started violently, his right hand raised in a defensive reflex, but he recovered in an instant and tried to mask the reflex by extending the hand to be shook. Mr. Aaron shook it and obeyed the gesture of the other hand to sit down.
“Hi. I’m Dr. Filaster.” His voice was loud but unexpectedly high-pitched.
“Andrew Aaron. Your receptionist said you were ready to see me.”
The doctor stifled a giggle. “My receptionist, Mr. Aaron, is a fifty-seven-year old grandmother whose efficiency borders on obsessive compulsion. That hood ornament is Paige Deering, the TV actress.”
“I thought she looked familiar. So this is her civic work day?”
“Happily doing her civic duty, and her nails, probably. But alas, only for today.” He opened the manila folder and glanced over it. “You’re listed in our files as an agnostic. Is that your current preference?”
“Uh, yes, but I’m wondering if some kind of mix-up hasn’t occurred here, doctor. I was told to report for civic work.”
“No mix-up, Mr. Aaron. Agnostics and atheists are sent to me, instead of to a priest or chaplain. Of course, you may be equally skeptical about psychology, but as far as I know, lack of faith in my profession incurs no after-life penalties.” He giggled again.
Mr. Aron smiled politely. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. Am I supposed to help you in some capacity?”
“No.” The doctor’s smile faded. “Quite the reverse.” A wariness had crept into his voice. “Most people want to talk about it. Uh, sleeplessness, gastritis, headaches are some of the usual symptoms. What have you been feeling since you received the summons?”
Determined to be cooperative but more confused than ever, Mr. Aaron considered the question carefully. “Well, not much, really... worth mentioning, I mean. Curiosity. This is a very different procedure from the last civic notice I received.” The doctor had leaned back in his chair and was staring intently at him, his arms crossed over his chest. “But I’m all too familiar with bureaucratic quag... complications.” He corrected himself hastily, anxious to head off any inference that he was criticizing the system. “And... no,” he finished lamely, “nothing other than mild anxiety over lost, uh, work time.”
“Only job-related stress?” mused the doctor, reverting entirely to his professional manner. “Interesting. Well, I can put your mind at rest, Mr. Aaron. You won’t be inconvenienced much past noon.” There was an unmistakable tone of sarcasm in his voice. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to run a little test. It won’t take a minute, and then you can go upstairs.”
He took a sheet of paper and a pencil from his desk drawer and laid them in front of him. “There are three questions relating to a hypothetical situation. Just mark them yes or no, and I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He heaved his enormous bulk out of the chair and left the room.
Mr. Aaron picked up the pencil and bent over the paper. “On the table in front of you,” he read, “is a button that, if pushed, will cause the instant death of a person whom you have never met. You will be given three instances, and each time you must choose whether or not to push the button. Mark an ‘x’ in the box beside ‘yes’ if you have pushed the button, or an ‘x’ in the box beside ‘no’ if you have decided not to push the button.
“Number 1: Ten thousand dollars will be deposited in your bank account if you press the button.”
Unhesitatingly, he marked the “no” box.
“Number 2: The person is a suspect in several murders, and there is a five-thousand dollar reward for his capture.”
Deciding that the key word in the sentence was ‘suspect,’ he again marked “no.”
“Number 3: The person has been tried and found guilty of treason, and sentenced to be executed the following day.”
After hesitating a bit longer over this one, he marked “no” again.
Dr. Filaster lumbered into the room and eased himself carefully into his chair. He must have been eating glazed doughnuts. As he looked over the test and stroked his beard and mustache, crumbs and flakes of sugar rained down on the desk.
“Did I pass?” Mr. Aaron asked.
Copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey Greene
