disordered from sleep. He tried to comb his own with his fingers.
Marsh’s eyes. He did not want to think of them. A long time passed. “What’s
keeping them?” Bela wondered, and Ayres recovered sense enough to glance up
harshly at Bela, reprimand for that show of humanity. It was the old war; it
continued even in this, especially after this. “Maybe we should go back to bed,”
Dias said. At other times, in other places, a mad suggestion. Here it was
sanity. They needed their rest. A systematic effort was being made to deprive
them of it. A little more and they would all be like Marsh.
“Probably they will be late,” he agreed aloud. “We might as well.”
They quietly, as if it were the sanest thing in the world, retired to their
separate rooms. Ayres took off his robe and hung it over the chair by his bed,
reckoning anew that he was proud of his companions, who held up so well, and
that he hated—hated Union. It was not his business to hate, only to get results.
Marsh at least was free. He wondered what Union did with their dead. Ground them
up, perhaps, for fertilizer. That would be typical of such a society.
Economical. Poor Marsh.
It was guaranteed that Union would be perverse. He had no sooner settled into
bed, reduced his mind to a level that excluded clear thought, closed his eyes in
an attempt at sleep, than the outer door whisked open, the tread of booted feet
sounded in the sitting room, his door was rudely pulled back and armed soldiers
stood silhoutted against the light.
With studied calm, he rose to his feet
“Dress,” a soldier said.
He did so. There was no arguing with the mannequins.
“Ayres,” the soldier said, motioning with his rifle. They had been moved out of
the apartment to one of the offices, he and Bela and Dias, made to sit for at
least an hour on hard benches, waiting for someone of authority, who was
promised them. Presumably security needed to examine the apartment in detail.
“Ayres,” the soldier said a second time, this time harshly, indicating that he
should rise and follow.
He did so, leaving Dias and Bela with a touch of apprehension in the parting.
They would be bullied, he thought, perhaps even accused of Marsh’s murder. He
was about to be, perhaps.
Another means of breaking their resistance, only, he thought. He might be in
Marsh’s place; he was the one separated from the others.
He was taken out of the office, brought among a squad of soldiers in the outer
corridor, hastened farther and farther from the offices, from all the ordinary
places, taken down in a lift, marched along another hall. He did not protest. If
he stopped, they would carry him; there was no arguing with these mentalities,
and he was too old to submit to being dragged down a hall.
It was the docks… the docks, crowded with military, squad upon squad of armed
troops, and ships loading. “No,” he said, forgetting all his policy, but a rifle
barrel slammed against his shoulders, and moved him on, across the ugly
utilitarian decking, up to the ramp and umbilical which linked some ship to the
dock. Inside, then; the air was, if anything, colder than it was on the docks.
They passed three corridors, a lift, numerous doors. The door at the end was
open and lighted, and they brought him in, into the steel and plastic of
shipboard furnishings, sloping shapes, chairs of ambiguous design, fixed
benches, decks of far more obvious curve than those of the station, everything
cramped and angles strange. He staggered, unused to the footing, looked in
surprise at the man seated at the table.
Dayin Jacoby rose from a chair to welcome him.
“What’s going on?” he asked of Jacoby.
“I really don’t know,” Jacoby told him, and it seemed the truth. “I was roused
out last night and brought aboard. I’ve been waiting in this place half an
hour.”
“Who’s in charge here?” Ayres demanded of the mannequins. “Inform him I want to
speak with him.”
They did nothing, only stood, rifles braced all at the same drill angle. Ayres