oldest of all. Damon and Elene and the child they wanted… they prepared to put
everything at risk. For him.
He had no weapons. Needed none, if it were to be himself and her alone, as it
had been in her quarters. He had been dead then, inside. Had existed, hating his
existence. The same kind of paralysis beckoned now… to let things be, accept,
take cover where it was offered; it was always easier. He had not threatened
Mallory, having had nothing to fight for.
He pushed from the wall, felt of his pocket, making sure his papers were there.
He walked into the hall and through it past the unmanned front desk of the
hospice, out into the open where the guards stood. One of the local security
started to challenge him. He looked frantically down the corridor where a
trooper stood.
“You!” he shouted, disturbing the vacant quiet of the hall. Police and trooper
reacted, the trooper with leveled rifle and a suddenness which had almost been a
pulled trigger. Josh swallowed thickly, held his hands in plain view. “I want to
talk with you.”
The rifle motioned. He walked with hands still wide at his sides, toward the
armored trooper and the dark muzzle. “Far enough,” the trooper said. “What is
it?”
The insignia was Atlantic’s. “Mallory of Norway” he said. “We’re good friends.
Tell her Josh Talley wants to talk with her. Now.”
The trooper had a disbelieving look, a scowl finally. But he balanced the rifle
in the crook of his arm and reached for his com button. “I’ll relay to the
Norway duty officer,” he said. “You’ll be going in, in either case—your way, if
she does know you, and on general investigation if she doesn’t.”
“She’ll see me,” he said.
The trooper pushed the com button and queried. What came back came privately
over his helmet com, but his eyes flickered. “Check it, then,” he said to
Norway. And after a moment more: “Command central. Got it. Out.” He hooked the
com unit to his belt again, and motioned with the rifle barrel. “Keep walking
down that hall and go up the ramp. That trooper down there will take you in
charge and see you talk to Mallory.”
He went, walking quickly, for he did not reckon it would take Damon and Elene
long to reach the hospice.
They searched him. Of course they would do so. He endured it for the third time
this day, and this time it did not bother him. He was cold inside, and outer
things did not trouble him. He straightened his clothes and walked with them up
the ramp, past sentries at every level. On green two they entered a lift and
rode it the short rise and traverse into blue one. They had not even asked for
his papers, had scarcely looked at them more than to be sure that the folder
held nothing but papers.
They walked a short distance back along the matting-carpeted hall. There was a
reek of chemicals in the air. Workmen were busy peeling all the location signs.
The windowed section further, crammed with comp equipment and with a few techs
moving about, was specially guarded. Norway troops. They opened the door and let
him and his guards in, into station central, among the aisles of busy
technicians.
Mallory, seated at the end of the counters, rose to meet him, smiled coldly at
him, her face haggard. “Well?” she said.
He had thought the sight of her would not affect him. It did. His stomach
wrenched. “I want to come back,” he said, “on Norway.”
“Do you?”
“I’m no stationer; I don’t belong here. Who else would take me?”
Mallory looked at him and said nothing. A tremor started in his left knee; he
wished he might sit down. They would shoot him if he made a move; he thoroughly
believed that they would. The tic threatened his composure, jerked at the side
of his mouth when she turned away a moment and glanced back again. She laughed,
a dry chuckle. “Konstantin put you up to this?”
“No.”
“You’ve been Adjusted. That so?”
The stammer tied his tongue. He nodded.
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