aa10a: переводы

→There was a lot of yelling and crying from the filter
center, which I'd put out by the elevators, and it looked
like Jumpers. I stabbed the transfer button on the phone
and called to Carias, my number-two man: "Witeck's
flipped or something. Handle it!"

→"You're crazy." I'd seen it happen before, good men
breaking under the strain of census taking. They say in
cadets that by the time you process your first five hundred
Overs you've had it; either you take a voluntary Over
yourself, or you split wide open and they carry you off to
a giggle farm. And Witeck was past the five hundred mark,
way past.

→"Well, Chief," he began again, "he, uh, doesn't have
any legation. He says he's from the" he swallowed
"from the middle of the earth."

→"Oh," I said. "Well, why-the devil don't you get your
facts straight in the first place? Give me his name and I'll
check his legation."

→I had to run up to Regional Control to take a little
talking-to myself just then, but I proved to them that we
were catching up and they were only medium nasty. When
I got back Witeck was on the phone again. "Chief," he
said, real unhappy, "this In is giving me a headache. I"
"Witeck," I snapped at him, "are you bothering me
with another In? Can't you handle anything by yourself?"
He said, "It's the same one. Chief. He says he's a kind
of ambassador, and"

→But we get older. I made a note to talk to Witeck as
soon as the rush was past. We were old friends; I wouldn't
have to threaten him with being Overed himself, or
anything like that. He'd know, and maybe that would be all
he would need to snap him back. I certainly would talk
to him, I promised myself, as soon as the rush was over,
or anyway as soon as I got back from Point Loma.

→Well, you can fool around with these irregulars for a
month, if you want to, but it's no way to get the work
done. I said: "Over him!" and hung up. I was a little
surprised, though; Witeck knew the ropes, and it wasn't
like him to buck an irregular on to me. In the old days,
when we were both starting out, I'd seen him Over a
whole family just because the spelling of their names on
their registry cards was different from the spelling on the
checklist.

→"Hold it!" I pushed away the rotary file and grabbed the
immigration roster. There were only a couple of dozen
names on it, of course we have enough trouble with our
own Overs, without taking on a lot of foreigners, but still
there were a handful every year who managed to get on
the quotas. "I.D. number?" I demanded.

→"Well, Chief," Witeck began, "he doesn't have an I.D.
number. The way it looks to me"

→"That's right, Chief. He-"

→"You mean he isn't from this country?"

→Witeck said, '"He don't come from any C.A., Chief.
He says"

→Along about Day Eight things were really hotting up. I
was up to my neck in hurry-ups from Regional Control
we were running a little slowwhen Witeck called up.
"Chief," he said, "I've got an In."

→Witeck sounded funny over the phone. "Well, Chief,"
he said, "he doesn't have a blue card. He says"
"No blue card?" I couldn't believe it. Come in to a
strange C.A. without a card from your own Area Boss,
and you're one In that's a cinch to be an Over. "What
kind of a crazy C.A. does he come from, without a blue
card?"

→I grabbed the rotary file with one hand and a pencil
with the other. "Blue card number?" I asked.

→I set up my Area Command in a plush penthouse
apartment. The people who lived there were pretty well off,
you know, and they naturally raised the dickens about
being shoved out. "Blow it," I told them. "Get out of here
in five minutes, and we'll count you first." Well, that took
care of that; they were practically kissing my feet on the
way out. Of course, it wasn't strictly by the book, but you
have to be a little flexible; that's why some men-become
Area Bosses, and others stay Enumerators.

→Like Witeck.

→Take Witeck. We were Enumerators together, and he
was as good a man as you ever saw, absolutely nerveless
when it came to processing the Overs. I counted on that
man the way I counted on my own right arm; I always
bracketed him with the greenest, shakiest new cadet
Enumerators, and he never gave me a moment's trouble
for years. Maybe it was too good to last; maybe I should
have figured he would crack.

→Anybody can panic, when the pressure is on like that.
Your best field men begin to crack up. But you can't
afford to, because you're the Area Boss. ...

→But they don't know what those six weeks are like.
It's bad enough for the field crews, but when you get to
be an Area Boss like me it's frantic. You work your way
up through the ranks, and then they give you a whole C.A.
of your own; and you think you've got it made. Fifty
three-man crews go out, covering the whole Census Area;
a hundred and fifty men in the field, and twenty or thirty
more in Area Commandand you boss them all. And
everything looks great, until- Census Period starts and
you've got to work those hundred and fifty men; and six
weeks is too unbearably long to live through, and too
impossibly short to get the work done; and you begin living
on black coffee and thiamin shots and dreaming about the
vacation hostel on Point Loma.