Adventures in the Far Future & Tales of Outer Space — page 167: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

smiling wearily at some tired joke of the man behind him. There was a scowling, black-browed peasant who muttered a curse as Jorun went by; the rest seemed to accept their fate meekly enough. There was a priest, his head bowed, alone with his God. There was a younger man, his hands clenching and unclenching, big helpless hands, and Jorun heard him Saying to someone else: “—if they could have waited till after harvest. | hate to let good grain stand in the field.” Jorun went into the main room, toward the desk at the head of the line. Hulking hairless Zarek was patiently questioning each of the hundreds who came, hat in hand, before him: name, age, sex, occupation, dependents, special needs or desires. He punched the answers out on the recorder machine, half a million lives were held in its electronic memory. “Oh, there you are,” his bass rumbled. “Where’ve you been?” “| had to do some coney work,” said Jorun. That was a private code term, among others: coney, conciliation, anything to make the evacuation go smoothly. “Sorry to be So late. Ill take over now.” “All right. | think we can wind the whole thing up by midnight.” Zarek smiled and clapped him on the back to go out for Supper and sleep. Jorun beckoned to the next Terran and settled down to the long, almost mindless routine of registration. He was interrupted once by Kormt, who yawned mightily and bade him good night; otherwise it was a steady, half-conscious interval in which one anonymous face after another passed by. He was dimly surprised when the last one came up. This was a plump, cheerful, middle-aged fellow with small shrewd eyes, a little more colorfully dressed than the others. He gave his occupation as merchant—a minor tradesman, he explained, dealing in the little things it was more convenient for the peasants to buy than to manufacture themselves. CORniclooo SS CO