The Ladder in the Sky by John Brunner Page B

a keyboard computer input, to select the appropriate program from the limited range required to administer the small settlement, and to interpret results. Mostly she had to handle dietary and leisure-time programming. The department was also responsible for accommodation, but that was a subject she would rather not think about now.
    True enough, she wasn’t deliberately kept away from Kazan. Although the mining area sprawled over large distances, the accommodations were concentrated for convenience together with the canteens, the leisure facilities and such ancillary establishments as the hospital and library. There was not even a need for internal transport in the dwelling area—everywhere was in easy walking distance, and helibuses were only necessary to transport workers to their jobs.
    But she was separated from Kazan in another way, and a far more effective one.
    They had allotted him to a room in the block where repair and maintenance staff lived, her to a room in the administrative staff’s block. Remembering what the supervisor had said when they arrived, she inquired and found it was permissible to apply for shared accommodation; a lot of the staff formed more or less permanent arrangements together, because they were mostly here on two- or five-year contracts. Provided you showed up in time for the transport to work, she was told, no one would mind.
    But her carefully worded application came back vetoed by Snutch.
    In charge of records and programming, and therefore of her department, was a middle-aged woman called Lecia. She was well liked by her subordinates, though she was merciless with their shortcomings. Clary demanded of her why the application had been turned down. There was vacant accommodation available, she knew from the department’s charts.
    But Lecia merely said that she could not override a decision by Manager Snutch, and gave no further explanation.
    According to the results of her examination on Berak, and the brief training course she had been through, Clary should have been a good and reliable worker. Her attention seemed to move somewhere away from her work after that. Lecia tried half a dozen times to shake her out of her apathy, but after a month she decided something was going to have to be done about the root problem.
    This was not the separation which divided Clary from Kazan, though. It was worse than physical. It was as though since coming to Vashti Kazan had become another person as different again from what he had been on arrival as he then had been from the way he was when he left Berak.
    “Why did you let him hit you like that?” she demanded of him, thinking of Snutch’s suddenly reddened face and unreasoning violence.
    Kazan frowned. “I felt sorry for him,” he said after a pause.
    “What?”
    “Yes, sorry for him. Don’t you see that the only reason he could have for doing such a thing would be because he’s not completely responsible? I’ve asked some people who’ve been here for a long time, and they tell me they think he’s bitter about having come from Marduk to run things here. He feels that if he had stayed at home he might have got further ahead in life; he thinks he’s traded his chance of fulfilling his main ambitions for a second-best job where he can rise no further.”
    “That’s his fault, then!” Clary snapped. “I suppose he’s vetoed the application for shared accommodation for the same reason!”
    Kazan shrugged. He said, “I guess so.”
    “Don’t you care?” Clary pleaded. “Don’t you want to do something, even if it’s only to complain about it? There isn’t any regulation or anything to stop us being together—only Snutch’s decision. And—and—wouldn’t you like us to be together, Kazan?”
    “But we can be,” Kazan said, and she realized with a sinking heart that he had missed her point. “And you know as well as I do that if Snutch vetoed the application for some emotional reason he won’t change his mind. Also I think