Free Memoirs Found In a Bathtub by Stanislaw Lem

instructions.
    “There you are,” he said, handing it over with a broad grin. “Your instructions—and in a yellow folder, yet!”
    “The color signifies something?”
    My innocence amused him.
    “Does it signify something, he asks. That’s great! But no more jokes, let’s be off. I’ll show you the way…”
    I hurried after him, holding the heavy folder tightly under my arm. We went through an office as large and long as a classroom. On the walls above the heads of the clerical staff were blueprints of aqueducts and dams, and above those, almost at the ceiling, huge maps of the Red Planet—I recognized the canals at once. Major Erms opened a door for me and we passed between rows of desks. No one looked up from his work. Another room: an enormous chart representing the body of a rat, and rat skeletons in glass cages, looking like empty walnuts tied together with wire. The walls curved. Around the bend several people peered into microscopes, each surrounded by slides, tweezers, jars of glue. Farther on, people were ironing out and meticulously assembling tiny bits of dirty paper. There was a sharp smell of chlorine in the air.
    “By the way,” said Major Erms in a confidential whisper when we were walking alone down a white corridor, “if you ever need to throw anything away—an unimportant document, a note, or a rough draft of something—never use the toilet for that purpose. It only makes unnecessary work for our people.”
    “How come?” I asked. He frowned impatiently.
    “Must everything be spelled out for you? That was the Department of Sanitation we just passed. I use it as a shortcut. All our drainpipes are monitored, the sewage carefully filtered, every bit of it, before it can be cleared. These are, after all, roads to the outside, hence potential information leaks. Ah, our elevator.”
    It opened and an officer in a trench coat stepped out with a violin case tucked under his arm. He asked us if we would mind waiting while he moved his packages off the elevator. Suddenly there was a loud bang, quite close—he leaped from the elevator, tossed his packages at us and dashed up the corridor, frantically opening the violin case. One package caught me in the chest and I fell back against the closing elevator door. The chatter of an automatic began around the comer; something cracked overhead and a cloud of chalky dust came down the walls.
    “Down! Down!” yelled Major Erms, pulling my arm. We hit the floor together. The corridor thundered from one end to the other, bullets whined above our heads, plaster sprinkled down. The officer fell, his violin case flew open—confetti came swirling out like snow. The smell of gunpowder seared our nostrils. A small capsule was pressed into my hand.
    “When I give the signal, put that between your teeth and bite!” Major Erms shouted in my ear. Someone was running.
    A deafening explosion. Major Erms pulled out several envelopes, stuffed them in his mouth and chewed like mad, spitting out stamps as if they were pits. Another explosion, a grenade.
    The fallen officer gave the death rattle, his left leg beat against the hard floor. Erms counted the kicks, got up on his elbows—and gave a cheer:
    “Two plus five! We won!” He sprang to his feet, dusted himself off and handed me the folder. “Come on, we’ll try to get you some meal tickets.”
    “What was all that about?” I gasped, still shaken.
    The dying man kicked the floor twice, five times, twice, five times…
    “That? An unmasking.”
    “And … now we just leave?”
    “Sure. This,” he pointed to the twitching body, “is not our Department.”
    “But—”
    “Section Seven will take care of him. There, you see? Here come the Theologicals.”
    A chaplain approached, preceded by an altar boy ringing a Sanctus bell. As we entered the elevator, I could still hear the dying man’s coded agony. At the tenth level Major Erms held out his hand instead of getting off.
    “Well?”
    “Well