He didn’t want to explain that the antiviolence taboo had shattered and died in that gas shelter when he had had to resort to violence to save a girl he loved from the claws and teeth of a rat—or watch her die and be torn apart. He didn’t want to explain that such a thing might not be strong enough stimulus to push every modern Alliance citizen into violence, but that it was plenty for a man who had been seeking love all his life and had never found it until he had met that girl. So he didn’t explain. And refusing to explain to an Alliance officer made him feel even tougher and more of a man than he felt now—and he felt better at this moment than he had in all the rest of his life.
“Look,” he said to the mustachioed rep, “you’re going to be my hostage to see that I get public notice. Otherwise the Alliance might stick me in a back room somewhere and no one would ever hear of me. If I’m to have a fair chance, I have to be allowed a trial. If it’s splashed all over the statsheets on the next news hour, the Alliance won’t dare try to railroad me without due process. And all I want is a chance to fight the miscegenation laws.”
“Go to hell,” the rep snarled.
“You’ll call your boys off if they—”
“I’d rather,” the rep hissed, his voice tight and whispered, “order them to shoot to kill, whether or not I’m liable to be shot also. You’ve ruined a career I’ve worked years to build. They won’t ever advance me within the diplomatic corps. And I won’t be permitted back in the army. That means their going to condemn me to a civilian position, and I couldn’t stand that. I’d rather die first.”
“I believe you,” Davis said soberly. “Without power of some sort, military, or governmental, your type of pest can’t survive.”
The rep spat on him.
“That hit home, didn’t it?”
“Go to hell.”
“You’re repeating yourself. You gave me that direction only a short while ago.”
“So all you can do is run,” the rep said, managing to smile again. “And with winter setting in, how far will you get? You can’t leave the planet with her. And I think you’re stupid enough to stay here rather than leave her behind.”
Davis did not respond, except by tearing down the last two panels of drapes and ripping them up to bind the two prisoners more thoroughly. He finished the job with two tight and effective gags, then dragged them to a supplies closet behind the reception desk. He loaded the rep into the cubbyhole, then decided he might as well have as much information as possible with which to make their escape. He removed the gag from Matron Salsbury.
“When will you be missed?”
“Supper’s over. Not until breakfast. I don’t always make a room check at night anymore.”
“Where are the other girls?”
“Upstairs, in the game room.”
He stuffed the gag back in her mouth, wrapped the band around her face to keep it in, knotted it tightly behind her head. She was harder to move than the man had been, heavier and more hysterical. When he had her wedged into the closet, facing the rep, he closed the door and hurried back to Leah. She was still sleeping, but he could not afford to wait for her to wake. He lifted her, carried her outside, down the steps, and across the flat parking area to the grav car that the rep had driven up from the port in.
He placed her in the passenger’s seat, strapped her in, waited until Proteus had clambered in the back, then slipped behind the wheel and reached for the controls. It was then that he first noticed the blinking amber light above the radio that indicated a call was being made. He contemplated answering it and trying to fake it out, but knew that would end in dismal failure. Better to let it ring. Eventually, they would begin to worry, but perhaps not for an hour or two. And by that time, he and Leah might be too far along in their escape for it to matter.