walking while reading that damned report, and thinking my practiced feet knew where they were going.It dawned on me that for the last few years I’d been letting myself go where my feet led me each morning.Yeah, but my feet were following the subconscious orders of my head that said follow the rest of the commuters.This morning I’d just followed the wrong batch.

A string of yellow lights spaced far apart in the ceiling, between the regular lights, indicated the way to aline of some sort. I followed the lights for a while until I looked down at my watch, for perhaps the hundredth timethat morning, and realized it was past nine. I was late for the office.

Today of all days!

I started to get panicky and stopped a grey-suited man hurrying past with a sheaf of papers under his arm.“Say, can you tell me where the exit onto 42nd and Lex—”

“Derlagos-km’ma-sne’ephor-july, esperind,” he drawled out of the comer of his mouth and stalked past.

I was standing there stupidly till the next couple people cast dirty looks at me for being in the way.

Foreigner, I thought, and grabbed a girl who was walking with typical hurried secretarial steps. “Say, I’mtrying to get out of here. Where’s the 42nd and Lexington exit?”

She looked at me, amazedly, for a moment, shook my hand loose from her coat-sleeve, and pattered off,looking once over her shoulder. That look was a clear, “Are you nuts, Mac?”

I was getting really worried. I had no idea where the blazes I was, or where I was heading, or how to getout. I hadn’t seen an exit in some time. And still the people continued to stream purposefully by me.Subways had always scared me, but this was the capper.

Then I recognized the arrows on the wall. They were marked with the same kind of hyphenated,apostrophied anagrams on the billboards, but at least I got the message!