THE INSIDE OF Pavun's command tent had become bogged down in paperwork since Winnow had entered it yesterday. Without the computer to process all the orders required for the running of a military base, however temporary in nature, the army had been forced to resort to an antiquated system of paper orders.
Pavun sat behind a folding table, reading one of a pile of papers. When Winnow entered, Pavun looked up as though a breeze of fresh air had just entered the room. Relief flooded his face.
Pavun put down the paper and said, "Citizen Unpo. The transport still has not come then?"
Winnow sat down across from the twelve-foot tall man and said, "I've waited for it, but it still hasn't arrived."
Pavun waved a hand to indicate the paperwork before him. "I wouldn't be surprised if the delay has something to do with the blasted computer system. Do you know how hard it is to keep track of all the new personnel assigned to my command without a computer database? Germinating impossible, that's what it is. I can only imagine how it might to be to keep track of every arrival and departure at the sky station."
Winnow, who had heard what had happened between the Black Brigade and Unquill at the sky station, said, "The sky station can operate even when the computer is offline, as it is doing now." He thought about mentioning that the Yesterday had been cleared to depart without any problems, yet looking at the cloud upon Pavun's brow, he kept that thought to himself.
Pavun put an elbow upon his desk. "Hmph. The things they don't tell you. Odd, isn't it? Well, in any event, I've called you here because I wanted to conclude the interview I began with you and citizen Hester yesterday."
Winnow forced himself to relax. He didn't want to show any part of the frustration that had gnawed away at him since he'd woken up on his own late in the morning. "I assume this pertains to his status as an enemy of humanity?"
Pavun let out a deep breath. "Well... it does, actually. Neither myself nor the United Solar Army as a whole has any standing orders to apprehend such persons to whom the Council of Thirds might ascribe that label. That's the official law, anyhow. Unofficially, my decision to let citizen Hester go along on the mission yesterday has been frowned upon by Jungle Command, which likely means that people higher up in the command chain don't like it either. My officer, so they tell me, proved more integral than citizen Hester. Yet who knows? Perhaps things may have turned out for the worse had I not sent him along."
He paused, putting his other elbow on the table.
"My question is this: do you know why they have branded him an enemy of humanity?"
Winnow, who knew full well that all information pertaining to enemies of humanity became sealed as soon as the declaration was given, said, "No. I do not know."
Pavun clenched one hand into a loose fist. "I know about the records being sealed. But without access to the computer, they can't seal the records, can they? Anyone can find out anything, isn't that so?"
Winnow nodded slowly. "Yes, that is so. However, I have not taken it upon myself to question the orders of my superiors."
Pavun grunted. "Nor would I ask you to. Since I have your answer, though, I will move on to my next question. What happened to the ship that crashed two days ago?"
"It's in the official statement I gave to the messenger from Jungle Command; you were there."
Pavun unclenched his fist. He leaned back in his chair, taking both arms off the desk. "So you have omitted no details when you said that you were about to discharge a nitrogen bomb upon a light-shielded base where citizens Hester, Yardrow and Proehl were hiding? Am I to believe that, after citizen Var's robots boarded your ship, they knocked you unconscious, preventing you from recalling the bomb and that, since the bomb's outer casing had been breached by solar radiation, citizen Hester chose to let it explode in the atmosphere?"
Winnow, who recalled the details of that day only too well, only replied, "I say this in confidence. It is not to be repeated."
"All right, you have my confidence. I will not break it."
Winnow paused, considering how best to state his response. "I believe someone in the Unbroken Tower may have interfered the normal function of the ship. I tried to detach a transit tube in which robots were ascending. Even after I entered my override code, the tube would not detach. As a result, I could not complete my mission."
"The capture or elimination of citizen Hester."
"That's correct."
Pavun sat up straight in his chair. "And after the ship crashed, you were unable to active the self-destruct?"
Winnow hadn't thought of doing so during the chaos of the preceding the day. Then he remembered how the ship was designed to self-destruct. "The fusion bomb is the ship's self-destruct mechanism. It had already exploded."
"I see. Thank you for telling me. I will keep the confidence we have agreed upon today. I have only asked these questions to satisfy my curiosity. You're not under suspicion of anything, nor will I make any statement to the contrary to anyone who may ask. For what it's worth, I believe you've done the best job you could."
Winnow looked down at his hands. "Thank you, Indigo."
"You're welcome. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to get back to all this germinating paperwork. Let the communications officer next door know if you'd like to speak with someone skyward. We'll be moving out tomorrow and I'd like to have you returned to your post by then."
"Yes, I think I'll do that," Winnow said.
SAVANNAH HAD MANAGED to stay awake during the ride across the Lotus Lion Bridge and the trip into the heart of Africa.
Yet, when the Estonite transports stopped to refuel somewhere north of Mozambique, Savannah Proehl had fallen asleep.
The transport involved several vehicles in a row, one behind the other, driving forth as a convoy. Savannah, Kenneth and Unquill had been given places in one of the middle cars, used for sleeping. In order to maximize efficiency, the transports carried two different crews: one to drive in the day and the other to drive at night.
When the transports had stopped to refuel, they had also stopped to change shifts. The men who had driven across Madagascar during the day, encountering the ruins of rebel encampments as they went, lay down to sleep. At the refueling station, they'd had some of the gray mush that Savannah had eaten aboard the skycraft which had flown into Hensen Var's base.
With hunger gnawing away at her stomach, she had eaten some of that. Shortly thereafter, consciousness had departed.
She had a dream for the first time in a long time.
She floated back to consciousness in the middle of it, imagining that she had grown bright, multi-colored wings that she used to soar above the busy streets of her home. She had been doing nothing more than that when it occurred to her, somewhere in the back of her mind, that Unquill had once had a dream, too.
And his dream had come true.
Savannah thought it would be nice if her dream came true as well. That thought stirred her mind into wakefulness.
She opened her eyes to find a ceiling directly above her. She had elected to sleep on the top-most bunk of three. She'd had to climb a series of rungs to get up to it but once she had, the feeling of being so high above everything had lulled her to sleep.
Or had it been the food she had eaten at the refueling station? She couldn't say for sure, and, stretching her body out on the long bed, she decided that it didn't matter very much.
During her sleep, she had tossed and turned as she always did. The two thick sheets she had pulled over herself lay sprawled out about her legs. The large pillow she had rested her head upon had all the stuffing on one side. She punched the pillow once, then pulled her legs out from under the covers.
Climbing down the wooden rungs she'd ascended to reach her bunk, she found that both Kenneth and Unquill had awakened before her. She had a brief thought that they could be anywhere, then remembered that, unlike a train, each vehicle in the convoy was not connected to one another. Unless they had stopped again, Unquill and Kenneth would both be in the passenger car, somewhere.
She found them at the back of the vehicle sitting at one of two tables which unfolded from the wall. All the other crew members remained asleep.
Savannah cast a questioning glance in Kenneth's direction. If he saw it, he paid it no mind.
She sat down next to Unquill, her stomach gurgling. She tugged at Unquill's sleeve. "Where's the shower?"
Unquill shook his head. "Not here. You'll have to wait until we get to Alexandria."
Savannah didn't like the way her body had begun to smell. "How long will that be?"
"Another hour at most. You'll like Alexandria. It's nothing like it was during your time."
Savannah looked down at her thighs and said, "I'll like it better if they have somewhere I can get clean."
THOUGH SAVANNAH HAD never seen the city of Alexandria even in a picture book, she imagined that the Golden City of the 73rd century was nothing like the city of Alexandria as it had been in her time.
As the transport vehicles approached, she fully understood why Unquill had said she would like it. Instead of the boring glass and metal skyscrapers she had seen so often on television, she saw something else. Those images had all looked the same to her. Not so for the shining golden spires of Alexandria.
If someone had set out to build a city just for Savannah, they had succeeded because she could not imagine anything better.
Each building, stretching higher into the sky than she thought possible, looked like a golden rocket ready for takeoff. Savannah briefly entertained the notion that this once might have been so, for how else could she explain how these buildings had been shaped?
Each edifice had a wide bottom which looked like rocket engines, a long tall middle and a conical top. The windows she saw in every building did not dissuade her of the notion that perhaps, once upon time, someone had tried to construct skyscrapers that could travel into space.
The closer they got to the city, the more shops they passed. The shops at the edge of the city increased in size until they resembled large department stores instead of the roadside stands Savannah had witnessed earlier.
Signs advertising all manner of products lay along the road and in front of the stores. She saw a sign depicting a shaggy Labrador retriever looking skyward with a wooden sword clenched between its teeth. Another sign flashed neon letters in a language she had not seen before.
She also took a moment to confirm that the letters flashed from right to left, instead of the left-to-right approach she had known her whole life. To her, the language looked like dots and scribbles.
A billboard over the road showed a black cat walking along, followed by a monstrously huge woman dressed up as a witch. The witch winked. Another message in the same odd script flashed across the screen. Savannah gave up trying to understand what it all might mean.
Inside the city, people walked about everywhere. Women made their way through the world, some of them not wearing clothes, some of them wearing so much black cloth that only their eyes could be seen. Savannah gasped in surprise when she saw a man riding a tiger- a real live orange and white tiger with a saddle on its back. The man riding the beast stood about five-and-a-half feet tall, which in 73rd century terms made him a midget, Savannah supposed.
Vendors sold trinkets by the side of the road. As Savannah looked out the open window, she saw a gnarled old woman thrusting a shrunken head in her direction, proclaiming something Savannah didn't understand. Another woman, this one looking young enough to be Savannah's mother, held out the jaw bone of a very large animal, speaking in English about how it brought good luck. It had been her good luck to find the jawbone, after all.
Beside the stall where the woman sold the jawbone, a man descended straight down from the sky. He wore on his back a jet pack that didn't operate on combustion-based principles.
Gentle blue energy emanated from the jet pack as the man landed. He unwrapped white cloth from around his mouth and called out an offer to the woman. The woman selling the jawbone became the woman who had sold the jawbone.
The transport convoy came upon a wide underground entrance. Each vehicle drove downwards into the vast parking lot which, if Savannah had judged correctly, lay just below a completely empty unclaimed lot of sand. White lights illuminated the parking lot. A group of men waited at the far end of the parking lot, their hands in their suit coat pockets. Each vehicle took its place in a parking space.
Right around this time, the crew members who had remained asleep awakened. Big yawning men and women left their beds to stretch, together as one, in the row between the bunk beds.
One of the crew, a tall man with a friendly face and bushy eyebrows, said to Savannah, "This is our stop. The men up there," he pointed to the three tall men waiting at the far end of the parking lot, "will convey you to your next destination."
As much as Savannah wanted a shower, she mistrusted men in suits. She asked, "Not prison, or anything weird?"
The friendly man laughed. "No, those are company men. Rayston Mining International employees. They'll take you anywhere within the city."
Savannah thought about her response for a moment. By the time she had thought of what to say, the friendly man disembarked.
Savannah supposed she would have to save her question for the employees waiting for her.