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communications in general. He couldn't really remember now if he'd said
anything aloud or not. He might have.
-
but surely those ships out there now, light-days away, would be unable to
gather any radiant record of what one man, on the surface of the planetoid
while the attack was going on, had said in the virtual privacy of his own
helmet
&
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His interrogator, watching him keenly, persisted: "And still you say you have
no idea why they fell back so precipitately?"
"Me? No. How could I have? Why do you ask me?" Havot, genuinely
puzzled, was beginning to slide very naturally into the role of innocent
victim of the bureaucrats. He had no problem sounding outraged. It
was outrageous that these people of the
Humanity Office, whatever that was exactly, might really have been able to
find out something about his final confrontation with the berserker.
Already Havot had almost forgotten his physical injuries, which had never been
more than trivial. His breathing was steady now and his pulse moderate and
regular, but he had no doubt that he was in some sense still in shock.
Absorbed in his own newly restless thoughts, Havot moved on, leaving it up to
the young woman whether she wanted to follow him and pursue the conversation
or not.
She chose to stay with him. "Where are you going, Mr.
Havot?" she inquired without apology.
"Walking. Am I required to account for my movements now?"
"No. Not at present. But have you any reason to object to a few
questions?"
"Ask away. If I object, I won't leave you in doubt about it."
Agent Thanarat nodded. "Where are you from?"
He named a planet in a system many light-years distant, one with which
he was somewhat familiar, far enough away that checking on him there
was going to be a major undertaking.
"And what is your occupation?"
"I deal in educational materials."
Agent Thanarat seemed to accept that. If he'd needed any reassurance
that they had not the faintest suspicion of his past, he had it now. So far no
one had come close to guessing that he had been on Imatra only as a heavily
guarded felon in the process of transportation. Well, given the near totality
of local destruction, the fortunate absence of all records and all witnesses
came as no surprise.
He was going to have to be careful, though. Obviously these investigators
were seriously wondering whether he might possibly be goodlife-or else for
some reason they were trying to make him think they entertained such a
suspicion.
What could their reason be
?
"Mr. Havot? What are your plans now?"
"If you mean am I planning to leave the system soon, I haven't decided. I'm
still rather in shock."
Havot was wondering whether he should now separate from
Agent Thanarat, or cultivate her acquaintance and see what happened,
when a very different kind of person arrived, whose objective turned out to
be the same as hers, finding Havot and asking him some questions.
Different, because elderly and male, and yet fundamentally not all that
different, because also the representative of authority.
The newcomer, a uniformed military officer of formidable appearance,
described himself as being attached to the staff of
Commodore Prinsep, who was fleet commander of the relief force that
had entered the system an hour or so too late to do much but rescue
Havot from the field of desolation.
"The commodore would definitely like to see you, young fellow."
Havot glanced at Thanarat. She remained silent, but looked vaguely
perturbed at the prospect of having her suspect-if Havot indeed fit in that
category-taken away from her.
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"Why not?" was Havot's response to the man. "I'm not busy with anything
else at the moment." He smiled at Becky Thanarat;
he much preferred to deal with two authorities rather than one, as such a
situation always created some possibility of playing one off against the
other. Still, he reacted rather coolly to the newcomer, and started
grumbling, like your ordinary, innocent taxpaying citizen, about the
unspecified suspicion to which he had just been subjected.
And got some confirmation of his own suspicions, as soon as he and the
officer from Prinsep's staff were alone together in a groundcar,
heading for a different part of the demolished spaceport. "Your real
problem, Mr. Havot, may be that there were no other survivors."
"How's that?"
"I mean, there's no one else around, in this case, for agent
Thanarat and her superiors to suspect of goodlife activity."
"Goodlife!" Havot felt sure that his look of stunned alarm was
indistinguishable from the real thing. "You mean they really suspect
me
? That's ridiculous. We were just talking."
The officer pulled at his well-worn mustache. "I'm afraid certain
people, people of the type who tend to become agents of the Human Office,
may have a tendency to see goodlife, berserker lovers, everywhere."
"But me? They can't be serious. Say, I hope that Commodore, uh-"
"Commodore Prinsep."
"Prinsep, yes. I hope doesn't have any thought that I-"
he
"Oh, I don't think so, Mr. Havot." The officer was reassuring.
"Just a sort of routine debriefing about the attack, I expect.
You're about the only one who was on the scene that we have left to talk to."
In another moment the groundcar was slowing to a stop at the edge of a
cleared-off, decontaminated corner of the spaceport once more open for
business, and already busy enough to give a false impression of thriving
commerce. In the square kilometer of land ahead, several ships-warships,
Havot supposed-had landed and were now squatting on the ground like
deformed metallic spheres or footballs. Their dimensions ranged from small to
what
Havot, no expert on ordnance, considered enormous. The surface details of
some of the larger hulls were blurry with screens of force.
He and the officer got out of the car, and together started walking
toward one of the smaller ships. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]