the area that homed in on your capsule signal.”
“Go on.”
Damon stayed silent a moment as if he were thinking on it, as if he would not.
He grew more and more anxious, his stomach taut. “You were brought onto
station,” Damon said finally, “aboard a merchanter—a stretcher case, but no
injuries. Shock, cold, I suppose… your life-support had started to fade, and
they nearly lost you.”
He shook his head. That much was blank, remote and cold. He recalled docks,
doctors; interrogation, endless questions.
Mobs. Shouting mobs. Docks and a guard falling. Someone had coldly shot the man
in the face, while he lay on the ground stunned. Dead everywhere, trampled, a
surge of bodies before him and men about him—armored troops.
They’ve got guns! someone had shouted. And panic broke out.
“You were picked up at Mariner,” Damon said. “After it blew, when they were
hunting Mariner survivors.”
“Elene—”
“They questioned you at Russell’s,” Damon said softly, doggedly. “They were
facing—I don’t know what. They were frightened, in a hurry. They used illegal
techniques… like Adjustment. They wanted information out of you, timetables,
ship movements, the whole thing. But you couldn’t give it to them. You were on
Russell’s when the evacuation began, and you were moved to this station. That’s
what happened.”
A dark umbilical from station to ship. Troops and guns.
“On a warship,” he said.
“Norway.”
His stomach knotted. Mallory. Mallory and Norway. Graff. He remembered. Pride…
died there. He became a nothing. Who he was, what he was… they had not cared,
among the troops, the crew. It was not even hate, but bitterness and boredom,
cruelty in which he did not matter, a living thing that felt pain, felt shame…
screamed when the horror became overwhelming, and realizing that there was no
one at all who cared—stopped screaming, or feeling, or fighting.
Want to go back to them? He could hear even the tone of Mallory’s voice. Want to
go back? He had not wanted that. Had wanted nothing, then, but to feel nothing.
This was the source of the nightmares, the dark, confused figures, the thing
that wakened him in the night
He nodded slowly, accepting that.
“You entered detention here,” Damon said. “You were picked up; Russell’s;
Norway; here. If you think we’ve thrown anything false into your Adjustment… no.
Believe me. Josh?”
He was sweating. Felt it. “I’m all right,” he said, although it was hard, for a
moment, to draw breath. His stomach kept heaving. Closeness—emotional or
physical—was going to do this to him; he identified it now. Tried to control it.
“Sit there,” Damon said, rose before he could object, and went into one of the
shops along the hall. He rested there obediently, head against the wall behind
him, his pulse easing finally. It occurred to him that it was the first time he
had been loose alone, save for the track between his job and his room in the old
hospice. Being so gave him a peculiarly naked feeling. He wondered if those who
passed knew who he was. The idea frightened him.
You will remember some things, the doctor had told him, when they stopped the
pills. But you can get distance from them. Remember some things.
Damon came back, bringing two cups of something, sat down, and offered one to
him. It was fruit juice and something else, iced and sugared, which soothed his
stomach. “You’re going to be late getting back,” he recalled.
Damon shrugged and said nothing.
“I’d like—” To his intense shame, he stammered. “—to take you and Elene to
dinner. I have my job now. I have some credit above my hours.”
Damon studied him a moment. “All right. I’ll ask Elene.”
It made him feel a great deal better. “I’d like,” he said further, “to walk back
home from here. Alone.”
“All right.”
“I needed to know… what I remember. I apologize.”
“I’m worried for you,” Damon said, and that profoundly touched him.
“But I walk by myself.”
“What night for dinner?”
“You and Elene decide. My schedule is rather open.”
It was poor humor. Damon dutifully smiled at it, finished his drink. Josh sipped
the last of his and stood up. “Thank you.”