at the urinal he managed, with a little more fingering,
to get it unfolded. Obviously there must be a message of some kind written
on it. For a moment he was tempted to take it into one of the water-closets
and read it at once. But that would be shocking folly, as he well knew.
There was no place where you could be more certain that the telescreens
were watched continuously.
He went back to his cubicle, sat down, threw the fragment of paper
casually among the other papers on the desk, put on his spectacles and
hitched the speakwrite towards him. 'five minutes,' he told himself, 'five
minutes at the very least!' His heart bumped in his breast with frightening
loudness. Fortunately the piece of work he was engaged on was mere routine,
the rectification of a long list of figures, not needing close attention.
Whatever was written on the paper, it must have some kind of political
meaning. So far as he could see there were two possibilities. One, much the
more likely, was that the girl was an agent of the Thought Police, just as
he had feared. He did not know why the Thought Police should choose to
deliver their messages in such a fashion, but perhaps they had their
reasons. The thing that was written on the paper might be a threat, a
summons, an order to commit suicide, a trap of some description. But there
was another, wilder possibility that kept raising its head, though he tried
vainly to suppress it. This was, that the message did not come from the
Thought Police at all, but from some kind of underground organization.
Perhaps