Work at the test site peaked and ebbed. Many of the civilian workers had been sent back to Fort LeDuc. A battalion of physicists and engineers remained behind to initiate the bomb sequence and study the results. The stillness of completion had descended on the circle of cleared land; the air was cold and tense.
Clearly, Demarch thought, these were the final hours. Censeur Bisonette had flown in from the capital for a one-day tour: Two Rivers, before the end. Demarch stood on the snowy margin of the test grounds while Bisonette marched about with his press of Bureau personnel, Delafleur unctuously proclaiming each tedious landmark. This was followed by a lunch in one of the freshly emptied tin sheds, trestle tables stocked with the only decent food ever to be trucked into town: breads, meats, fresh cheeses, leek and potato soup in steaming bouilloires.
Demarch sat at the Censeur’s left, Delafleur to his right. Despite this ostensible equity, conversation flowed mainly between Bisonette and the Ideological Branch attaché. More evidence of a shift of patronage, Demarch thought, or an even deeper movement in the geology of the Bureau de la Convenance. He felt left out but was too numb to care. The wine helped. Red wine from what had once been Spanish cellars in California. Spoils of war.
After the meal he had Bisonette’s attention exclusively, which was really no improvement. Demarch rode in the Censeur’s car during what was meant to be a tour of the town itself, though it was difficult to see much beyond the bustle of security cars on every side. The procession wound eastward from the fragmentary highway, over roads full of potholes, past drab businesses and gray houses under a sunless sky. The wealth of the town and its impoverishment were both much in evidence.
Bisonette was unimpressed. “I notice there are no public buildings.”
“Only the school, the courthouse—City Hall.”
“Not much civic spirit.”
“Well, this wasn’t a city of any proportion, Censeur. You might say the same of Montmagny or Sur-Mer.”
“At least at Montmagny there are temples.”
“The churches here—”
“Aggrandized peasant huts. Their theology is impoverished, too. Like a line drawing of Christianity, all the details left out.”
Well, Demarch had thought as much himself. He nodded.
The cavalcade wound through Beacon Street and back to the motor hotel the Bureau had appropriated as headquarters. The chauffeur parked and stood outside without offering to open the doors. Demarch moved to get out, but Bisonette touched his arm. “A moment.”
He tensed now, waiting.
“News from the capital,” Bisonette said. “Your friend Guy Marris has left the Bureau.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. With three fingers missing.”
Demarch stiffened. Three fingers was the traditional penalty for stealing Bureau property. Or lying to a hierarch.
Bisonette said, “I understand the two of you were close.”
Nauseated, weightless, Demarch could only nod.
“Fortunately you have other friends. Your father-in-law, for instance. He’s fondly remembered. Though very old. No one would want to insult him or his family. Not while he’s alive.” Bisonette paused to let this wisdom sink in. “Lieutenant, I assume you want to keep your fingers.”
He nodded again.
“You have the forged papers Guy Marris gave you?”
They were in his breast pocket. Demarch said nothing, but his hand strayed there.
“Give them to me. No more need be said. At least for now.”
Demarch caught and held the Censeur’s eyes. His eyes were a mild blue, the color of a hazy sky. Demarch had wanted to find something there, the apospasma theion, or its opposite, the antimimon pneuma, a visible absence of the soul. But he was disappointed.
He took Evelyn’s pass papers from his breast pocket and put them in the Censeur’s ancient hand.