under arrest.
The magazine article had not merely been a biography,
but had contained scorchingly anti-military, anti-AC anec-
dotes which neither of us had decided, before my en-
tombment in Child’s mind, whether we should risk using
or not. She had risked it.
“When is the trial?” I asked him now. We had post-
poned further discussion until we were warm and com-
fortable in his den—at his insistence.
“A date has been docketed before the Military Court of
Emergency. Next September.”
“Seven and a half months!” I turned from the window,
furious, slopping brandy over my wrist.
“When the act is labeled treason, there are laws that
permit it.”
“What’s her bail?” I asked.
“There is none.”
“Is none?”
“What I said.”
“But the law allows—”
He held up his pudgy hand to stop me. He looked
terrible, as if telling me this was worse on him than on
me. “This is no longer a republic, remember. It is a
military state where men like the junta councilmen decide
what laws there shall be. For sedition, they now say, there
is no bail, and the rule of preventive detention has been
extended indefinitely.”
“Fight them!” I bellowed. “You fought them for me
when——”
“It’s different now,” he interrupted. “You still don’t
grasp the situation. I worked the law on them before to get
you free. But now they are the law and they can change it
to counter one. It’s like dancing on quicksand.”
I took a chair, and again I was afraid, just a little, down
deep where it hardly showed. This was beginning to feel
like the inner world of Child’s mind, where everything was
solid and tangible, but where nothing could be trusted,
where solidity could disappear, where liquid could become
solid ground beneath the feet.
“She’s not the only one,” he said, as if mass suffering
made her individual plight less important. It only made it
more important.
“Let me have the phone,” I said, reaching for it.
“Who?”
“Morsfagen.”
“This might be a mistake.”
“If the sonofabitch wants my esp, wants my work, then
he is just going to have to see that she gets out of the
Tombs!”
I found the number in Harry’s private directory of
unlisted phones, dialed it, and waited while a soldier called
a noncom to the phone—while the noncom went and got
a major who stuttered—and while the major finally went
and summoned Morsfagen.
“What is it?” he asked. Cold. Deadly. Forceful. The
sound of the well-trained bill collector.
“There’s a girl being kept in the Tombs, charged with
sedition, for god knows what reason. She——”
“Melinda Thauser,” he said, cutting me short. He
seemed to enjoy that. Like putting thumbscrews on me.
“I see you’re up on things all around. Well, catch this,
then. I want her released, and I want all charges dropped
against her.”
“That’s beyond my control,” he said—he did.
“It better not be.”
“It is.”
“It better not be, because you’ve just lost yourself an
esper if it is.”
“Services that can be commandeered in time of war—
like an esper’s services—are never lost,” he said. Color
him infuriatingly calm, cool, and collected. I wanted to
kick his damned teeth in. He probably would still have
smiled at me with that smile.
“Services cannot be commandeered unless the crafts-
man can be found,” I said.
“Is this a threat to withhold services from the govern-
ment in a time of national crisis?” he asked, smiling
through every word. Snapping turtle mouth there, looking
for one of my incautious fingers.
“Look,” I said, trying another tack, “suppose we let the
charges ride for the time being. Suppose the only thing
that you concede is the bail. A low bail, but she’ll still
stand trial.”
“Out of my control,” he said again. But the tone of his
voice said that nothing was ever out of his control.
“Like hell!”
“I’m not on the junta, you know.”
“Look, Morsfagen, suppose she also destroys the damn
book. Now it’s the book she’s in trouble for, isn’t it? The
first part of it?”
“With or without the book,” he said, “the trouble re-
mains for us. The danger does not lie within the printed