"Arthur. Call me Arthur. Formality really isn't necessary among Mid Echelon, do you think? Section Secretary Andrews has often requested I call him Morton, but I just can't seem to bring myself to such informality. After all, he is Sub-Prime Echelon. It makes one uncomfortable, shall we say, to step out of one's class?" He stopped talking and the corners of his mouth dropped quickly as if he had just been given one minute to live. "You--you _are_ only Mid Echelon, aren't you? I mean, if you are Sub-Prime, I shouldn't be--" "Relax, Mr. Pettigill--'Arthur'--I _am_ Mid Echelon. And I'm only that because my father was a man of far more industry than I; I inherited my classification." "So? Well, now. Interesting--very. He must have been a great man, a great man, Mr. Bartle." "So I am told, Arthur. But let's get on with it," Bartle said, taking some scrap paper and a pencil stub from his tunic pocket. "Now, tell me about yourself and the Melopsych Center." "Well," the little man began with a sigh and blinked his eyes peculiarly as though he were mentally shuffling events and facts like a deck of cards. "Well, I--my life would be of little interest, but the Center is of the utmost importance. That's it--I am no more than a physical extremity that functions in accord with the vital life that courses through the great physique of the Center! No more--I ask no more than to serve the Center and in turn, my fellow citizens, whether they be Prime, Sub-Prime, Mid, or even Sub-Lower!" He stopped speaking, affecting a martyr-like pose. Bartle covered a smile with his hand. "Well, Bartle, as you know, the Center--the Melopsych Center, a thoroughly inadequate name for the installation I might say--is the point of broadcast for these many taped musical selections contrived by Mass Psych as a therapeutic treatment for the various Echelon levels. It is the Great Psychiatrist--the Father Confessor. For where can one bare one's soul, or soothe one's nerves and disposition frayed by a day's endeavor, better than in the tender yet firm embrace of music?" * * * * * Bartle was straining to follow the train of thought that was lost in the camouflage of Pettigill's flowery phraseology. "You see all about you these many recorders, Mr. Bartle?" Bartle nodded. "On those machines, sir, are spools of tape. Music tapes, all music. My heavens, every kind: classical music, jazz, western, all kinds of music. Some tapes are no more than a single melodious note, sustained for whatever length of time necessary to relax and please the Echelon level home it is being beamed to. Oh, I tell you, Mr. Bartle, when the last tape has expended itself for the day, as our service code suggests, I leave this great edifice with a feeling of profound pride in the fact that I have so served my fellow man. You share that feeling too, don't you Mr. Bartle?"