“What makes you think I need help with anything?” Kelm asked.
Zeigler moved a pace closer to stand alongside him, facing the display. Having eyes and ears out and about, keeping in touch with rumor and who was saying what, were part of the things he made it his business to cultivate. “Why the Security Arm?” he asked, answering obliquely.
“Everyone contributes something. It’s where my skills are.” Kelm’s tone was that of someone stating the obvious.
“And are you satisfied with your lot there, Kelm? The future it holds? The rewards it will bring?”
Kelm shrugged. “It’s what I do. One can’t always choose.”
Zeigler glanced around. His voice fell to a more confidential note. “Perhaps you have more choices than you think. Your natural skills are military. But Kronia has little use for them and doesn’t acknowledge your true worth. We would value them highly. Eventually, the controlling power here will be decided by strength. It has always been that way. Your talents make you a natural ally of the strong. Use them where they will be most appreciated and rewarded the most.”
“You really believe you can change things? You who are so few?”
“It isn’t how many we are that matters. It is what we know and can do.” Zeigler made an open-handed gesture. “Why should your aptitudes be valued any less than those of people who, at the bottom of it all, are just technicians? Nobody has to accept second-class existence as some kind of obligation, Kelm—just because some idealists in the early days stacked the deck in a way that suited them. Eventually things have to change.” He nodded to indicate the traffic on the Miami boulevard. “You said it yourself. Without order and discipline, that would be chaos. Unmanageable. But it worked because people imposed rules. The greater human society is no different in the long run. You could be way ahead of the game, Kelm. The ones who help us now will be the ones who will command later. Why be a ranker in a police force whose days are numbered, when you could be a general in the army that will one day rule?”
As he spoke, Zeigler watched Kelm more closely than he let show. While maintaining an outwardly dubious expression—a plus-point testifying to good judgment and control—Kelm’s eyes had been flickering over Zeigler searchingly, as if probing for validity indicators. His shoulders had been turned toward Zeigler, as if unconsciously screening off the outside world. He was interested. That was as much as could reasonably be wished for the present. Kelm’s mouth turned downward briefly at the corners—but that was controlled consciously and didn’t mean anything.
“I don’t know. It’s something I’d need to think about,” Kelm said. “If I decide I want to know more, should I contact you the same way?”
Zeigler had hoped to finish on a more positive note. After thinking for a moment, he said, “I believe you were stationed at the training base on Rhea, before it was destroyed. Is that correct?”
“Yes. I was there.” Kelm nodded.
“Then you are familiar with the layout and the locations of the various facilities,” Zeigler said.
“There isn’t very much left. From what I hear, anything that can be salvaged is being stripped out and brought to Titan. The only things left will be what’s buried under the rubble.”
“All the same, that is precisely the kind of information that some people are very interested in,” Zeigler said. Kelm looked puzzled but didn’t pursue the matter. Zeigler nodded at him meaningfully. “And they could be very generous when it comes to rewarding whoever can bring it to them. Think it over very carefully,” he urged.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Rakki had no word for the number of people who lived in the caves. They were more than the fingers on his hands, fewer than the feathers on the caw-birds, which they sometimes caught in nets tied from vines. Their names meant nothing to Rakki; he couldn’t remember them, and so gave them his own names. While he sat chipping an edge along a flake of hardstone in the way he had been told, he watched Fire Keeper scraping the last scraps of meat from the bones of a long-haired horn-head, cracking open the ones with marrow, and separating the sinews for bowstrings and thongs. The sight produced an aching to eat deep in Rakki’s stomach. He had vague memories of the times of darkness, when food had been the only thought and people fought over a sprig of weed carrying berries, fungus found in a rock crevice, worms dug out of the mud, flesh from corpses—anything that could be eaten. Now there was light, and more things were starting to grow. But still the hunger was always there.