slant off toward some angle of behavior neither parallel nor quite opposite to
their own. Union tried to break them down… this bizarre game with Marsh, which
was surely a case of divide and conquer. Therefore he refused to engage Marsh.
Marsh, Bela, and Dias did not have detailed information in them; they were
simply Company officers, and what they knew was not that dangerous. He had sent
back to Earth the two delegates who, like himself, knew too much; sent them back
to say that the Fleet could not be managed, and that stations were collapsing.
That much was done. He and his companions here played the game they were given,
maintained monastic silence at all times, suffered without comment the shifts in
lodging and the disarrangements which were meant to unbalance them—a tactic
merely aimed at weakening them in negotiation, Ayres hoped, and not that more
dire possibility, that it presaged a seizure of their own persons for
interrogation. They went through the motions, hoped that they were closer to
success on the treaty than they had been.
And Marsh moved through their midst, sat in their sessions, regarded them in
private with a bruised, disheveled look, without their moral support… because to
ask reasons or offer comfort was to breach the silence which was their defensive
wall. Why? Ayres had written once on a plastic tabletop by Marsh’s arm. In the
oil of his fingertip, something he trusted no lens could pick up. And when that
had gained no reaction: What? Marsh had erased both, and written nothing, turned
his face away, his lips trembling in imminent breakdown. Ayres had not repeated
the question.
Now at length he rose, walked to Marsh’s door, slid it open without knocking.
Marsh sat on his bed, fully clothed, arms locked across his ribs, staring at the
wall, or beyond it
Ayres walked over to him, bent down by his ear. “Concisely,” he said in the
faintest of whispers, not sure even that would fail to be heard, “what do you
think is going on? Have they been questioning you? Answer me.”
A moment passed. Marsh shook his head slowly.
“Answer,” Ayres said.
“I am singled out for delays,” Marsh said, a whisper that stammered. “My
assignments are never in order. There’s always some mixup. They keep me sitting
and waiting for hours. That’s all, sir.”
“I believe you,” Ayres said. He was not sure he did, but he offered it all the
same, and patted Marsh’s shoulder. Marsh broke down and cried, tears pouring
down a face which struggled to be composed. The supposed cameras… they were
eternally conscious of the cameras they believed to be present
Ayres was shaken by this, the suspicion that they themselves were Marsh’s
tormentors, as much as Union. He left the room and walked back into the other.
And swelling with anger he stopped amid the room, turned his face up to the
complicated crystal light fixture which was his chiefest suspicion of
monitoring. “I protest,” he said sharply, “this deliberate and unwarranted
harassment.”
Then he turned and sat down, watched the vid again. His companions had reacted
no more than to look up. The silence resumed.
There was no acknowledgment of the incident the next morning, in the arrival of
the day’s schedule, carried by a gun-wearing mannequin.
Meeting 0800, it informed them. The day was starting early. There was no other
information, not topic nor with whom nor where, not even mention for
arrangements of lunch, which were usually included. Marsh came out of his room,
shadow-eyed as if he had not slept “We don’t have much time for breakfast,”
Ayres said; it was usually delivered to their quarters at 0730, and it was
within a few minutes of that time.
The light at the door flashed a second time. It opened from the outside, no
breakfast, rather a trio of the mannequin-guards.
“Ayres,” one said. Just that, without courtesies. “Come.”
He bit back a reply. There was no arguing with them; he had told his people so.
He looked at the others, went back and got his jacket, playing the same game,
taking time and deliberately irritating those waiting on him. When he reckoned