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  “Yes.”

  “Both hands.”

  “Got it.”

  Noyock inched away from her and reached through, closed the door, spun the seal, latched the latches.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked Arran.

  “Really sick. My head aches.”

  “You breathed in the exhaust duct.”

  “Did I? Dumb. Dumb, that’s all.”

  “Dead tired, that’s all. But we’ve got to go down before you can rest. All right?”

  “I don’t want to go anywhere.”

  “You’re going to, though.”

  And so he helped her to the ladder, and this time they went down virtually together, Noyock’s feet only a few rungs below hers, so that his head was at the level of her waist as they slowly descended the ladder.

  It took forever.

  “Stay awake,” he kept telling her.

  “Sure,” she kept answering. And finally something changed, and he wasn’t behind her, and then his hands lifted her off the ladder and laid her gently down on the heating duct.

  She woke in near darkness, the air cool and musty, but clean compared to the atmosphere outside. Her head still ached, her knees smarted, and her eyes were dully tired as she opened them. But she was breathing, and felt better. Than what? Than she thought she should.

  “Awake?”

  “Alive. I didn’t worry about anything else.”

  “Head?”

  “Aches. But I can breathe.”

  “Hungry?”

  She hadn’t thought of it until he asked. “I could eat a person.”

  “I’ll stand back.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Get something to eat. Stay here.”

  “I’m coming with you,” she insisted, trying to get up. But a pain shot through her from her head down her spine and she changed her mind. “I’ll keep the home fires burning,” she said. After he left, the darkness became overwhelming and she slept again.

  “It’s morning,” a cheerful male voice said, and for a moment Arran was confused, and began speaking in character. “Morning, already? How can it be morning, and we just barely went to bed?” Her voice was seductive. But when she rolled onto her side (enhances cleavage, her manager had always reminded her) she realized she was dressed, and on a hard metal surface; more important, she was stiff and sore, with a headache. But the worst of the pain had dissipated while she slept. Noyock leaned over her, holding a bag of ragaway and another bag, this one cold and filled with—“What?”

  “Milk.”

  “Do they still make that?”

  “The only place I could make a pull was in a school lunch room.”

  She nodded, and he helped her sit up. “It’s hard to believe I worked that hard,” she said, “and there wasn’t even a loop of it.”

  Hop laughed and looked around as she put her mouth to the nipple on the milkbag and drank a little. He walked away as she ate the ragaway, and didn’t return until after she had finished and was lying on her back, looking up into the darkness.

  His footsteps were muffled by dust, of course, but she heard him long before he arrived. “How do you feel?” he asked softly.

  “I feel like getting the hell out of here,” she said.

  “Which brings us to the next item of business,” Hop said. “I’m pretty good at pulling a living out of Capitol without a credit card—but you get pretty damn hungry that way, and you’re competing with a lot of other people.”

  “Thieves? I never knew there were thieves—”

  “At your level? Not many. Thieves can only afford to prey on the poor, Arran. The rich have Mother’s Little Boys to protect them. The thieves have to live in the walls in the foulest boroughs. And I learned my trade in childhood—I doubt you’d catch on fast enough to keep from getting caught on one of your first pulls.”

  Arran smiled wanly. “It didn’t occur to me that if I couldn’t live honestly, I’d actually have to live dishonestly.”

  “There’s another alternative,” Hop said. “You could hook.”

  “Hook?”

  “Whore.”

  “Oh my. Not even looped, I assume?”

  “It pays very badly. And I’m not in love with the idea of being a pimp.”

  Arran laughed. “Do it on a loop in front of billions of eyes and it’s an art. Do it in a dirty little room with no audience and it’s a filthy career.”

  “If it’s any consolation, I’d see to it the room was clean.”

  Arran shook her head. “If it’s the only way. But Hop, that’s the part of my job I hated worst. Do you realize that in four hundred years the only time I ever made love was to Farl? And he even preferred little boys.”

  “Well, you know that leaves us with only two other alternatives. One is to turn ourselves in.”

  “Throw ourselves on the mercy of the court.”

  “Not renowned for being particularly clement, especially when someone in a position of power has a vested interest in a guilty verdict. The other alternative, Arran, won’t sound much better. The colonies.”

  “Are you joking?”

  “Was it funny?”

  They sat in silence, Hop making little balls of dust by allowing the last dregs of milk from Arran’s milkbag to drip slowly out.

  “You can’t take any money into the colonies, can you?” Arran asked.

  “You can’t take somec, either, which is more to the point,” Hop said.

  “But what would you do when things got boring?”

  “Stay awake and be bored,” Hop answered. “You actually wouldn’t lose any real lifespan, of course. Somec doesn’t add to your lifespan. Just stretches it out over a few centuries.”

  “I know, I know. But it means that only three wakings from now, I’d be dead.”

  “That is what it means.”

  They sat for a while longer, and then Arran slowly got up. “I feel very old right now,” she said, trying to make stiff muscles respond. “Dance exercises just don’t prepare you for climbing kilometers of ladders.”

  “Have you made up your mind?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But of course that has no bearing on your decision. You can stay alive as a thief.”

  “You’re going to the colonies, then?”

  Arran shrugged, moved away a little. “I really don’t have any other choice.” She laughed. “I was getting bored with the life of a looper, anyway.”

  “Then I’ll go with you.”

  “To the colonies registrar?”

  “Yes. And then to the colonies. If you don’t mind, I’d like to petition to be sent on the same ship with you.”

  “But why? You may not even be wanted, Hop. The colonies are like suicide.”

  “Whither thou goest, I will go, and whither thou lodgest I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people, and thy god, my god.”

  “What in the world did that mean?”

  Hop walked to her, put his arm around her waist, and began leading her in the direction of the nearest ladder down. “My mother was a Christian. That’s from the Bible.”

  “A Christian. How quaint. What world are you from?”

  “Here. Capitol.”

  “A Christian on Capitol! How unusual! And what did it mean?”

  “It’s from an old story that Mother told us a lot. I got very bored with it. It’s about a woman whose sons die and her daughter-in-law still won’t leave her. She just figured, I supposed, that like it or not their fates were wrapped up together.”

  “Do you really think our fates are wrapped up together, Hop?” Arran said, awkwardly, no hint of the famous Arran Handully, Seductress.

  “I’m not a fatalist. I want to go where you’re going.”

  “So have a hundred billion other men,” she said, and now the actress was in her voice again.

  “I always thought you were a disgusting, cheap little tart,” Hop said, mildly.

  Arran stiffened, and stopped walking until Hop removed his arm. “Thank you,”
she said icily.

  “Watch out for where this duct ends,” Hop said, still calm. “It’s a long drop.”

  “I can see perfectly well,” Arran said.

  “I was right, too, you know,” Hop said. “That’s all you’ve been for the last few centuries.”

  Arran didn’t answer. They reached the edge, and Noyock swung easily down to the ladder. Arran followed.

  “A pretty damn good cheap little tart,” Noyock added, sounding very casual. “Very well worth the price of admission.”

  “Haven’t you said enough?” Arran asked. But Noyock couldn’t hear the famous Arran Handully anger. Only an unaccustomed tone. On another woman, it might be considered well-disguised pain.

  “Have I?” Noyock said. “We get off the ladder here. It’s just a step backward onto this catwalk.”

  “I can see it.”

  “I was just trying to tell you,” Noyock said, lifting her down from the ladder by her waist, “that I didn’t fall in love with what eight billion other men fell in love with.”

  “What a freethinker you are,” Arran said, and they walked one behind the other along the catwalk.

  “Watch your head,” Noyock said, and they ducked as they passed under a floor. Now they had to walk stooped again, and below them the ceiling of a borough of flats stretched out for kilometers in either direction, until the dim worklights disappeared entirely in the dust and the distance.

  “What I fell in love with,” Noyock said, “was the kind of woman who could accept reality and decide to go to the colonies, giving up everything, without a qualm.”

  “I keep my qualms to myself.”

  “Three days ago I never would have believed someone who told me that Arran Handully would be capable of making the roof passage.”

  “Neither would I.”

  “And now it’s discovery time, boys and girls,” Hop said, imitating the nasal twang that always came on the daily school broadcasts. Arran laughed in spite of herself.

  “What a cheerful sound,” Hop said. “We get out here.”

  He knelt on the catwalk, reached over, and pulled up a section of ceiling tile. The room below was empty.

  “Don’t know how long it’ll last,” Hop said, “but this room is empty.”

  He dropped down through the hole, then helped Arran as she lowered her legs through. “Pull the tile back after you.” Awkwardly, she did so, and when she was on the floor, Hop jumped up and adjusted it deftly with one swift pass of his hand, so that it set firmly into place.

  “How can we get back in there?” she asked.

  “You come out of the crawlspace through ceilings. You go into the crawlspace through exhaust ducts. What a sheltered childhood you must have had. Still want to find the nearest Department of Colonization?”

  Arran nodded, then looked at her filthy clothing. “We look rather conspicuous.”

  “Not here,” Hop said, and they opened the door and stepped into a corridor. Arran had never seen poverty before—now she had ample opportunity to look. Her clothing was the dirtiest she could see, but there were many shabbier costumes on the grim-faced people who passed. No one looked at them. They just threaded their way through the corridors until they reached a main passage.

  Three ramps later, they saw the lighted sign of the Department of Colonization.

  “Home sweet home,” Hop said.

  “Shut up,” Arran answered, and they headed for the sign.

  “Chatter?” said a newsboy, with a gossip sheet in his hand. “Buy Chatter.”

  Hop brushed him aside, but Arran stopped and took a paper from his hand.

  “Four and a half,” said the boy.

  “Wait a minute,” said Arran, impatiently, using her can’t-you-servants-ever-remember-yourplace voice. “Look at this, Hop.”

  Hop looked. The item of interest was headlined: “Cabinet Minister Slain in Lover’s Quarrel.”

  The subhead said, “Shimon Rapth jailed. Says he killed ‘for love of Arran Handully’.”

  The story went on to tell how Shimon Rapth had confessed to murdering Farl Baak because he had alienated the affections of Arran Handully, who was even now secluded in her huge apartments, refusing all visitors.

  “That doesn’t look like very accurate reporting, does it?” Hop said.

  “Shimon Rapth is arrested,” Arran said.

  “You certainly have distilled the most interesting aspect, haven’t you?” Hop said in his most congratulatory tone. “Now pay the boy for the paper.”

  “I don’t have any money. Just a credit card.”

  “I take credit cards, ma’am,” said the boy.

  “Not hers, you don’t,” Hop said. “Nor mine, either. So here’s your paper and good luck selling it to someone else.”

  The boy’s curses followed them on their way to the Department of Colonization.

  “If Shimon Rapth isn’t the man who was behind the coup—”

  “He has to be,” Arran answered, disturbed. “The probe. Under the probe, Jazz Worthing said—”

  “Jazz Worthing is a man of many gifts. Ignore what he said under the probe. If Shimon Rapth wasn’t the man you were out to stop, then who is?”

  “Does it matter?” Arran asked.

  “A little bit. It might be a friend of ours. It especially matters because whoever it was, he won.”

  “We’re here.” They went into the reception room. They ignored the advertising and headed straight for the desk.

  “Would you like to register for a colony?” asked the beaming receptionist.

  “We would. An agricultural planet.”

  “A bit of the farming blood, eh?” she asked, cheerfully. “We have just the thing, a little planet called Humboldt.”

  “Put away Humboldt, lady, and show us something that didn’t have to be terraformed.”

  A bit miffed, the receptionist pulled out another folder. “Before we go any further, sir and madam,

  I will have to have your credit cards in order to get your aptitudes from the computer. You may not be suited to agricultural work at all.”

  They gave her their credit cards, which she slid into the terminal on her desk. Then they discussed the merits of Cecily, a new colony 112 lightyears away. They were still discussing it when a dozen of Mother’s Little Boys came in from all the entrances to the reception area and put them under arrest.

  “What for?” Hop demanded.

  “Preventive detention,” said the apparent leader of the faceless security men. Hop grimaced at Arran. “That means it’s political. Confess to everything. It saves time.”

  She looked at him with frightened eyes. “Can they do this?”

  “Can you stop them?” Hop asked, and then smiled at her, trying to give her confidence. As if he felt any himself. They were led away—but not out into the corridors. Instead they were taken into a door that said, “Employees Only,” and Mother’s Little Boys took them deeper into the Department of Colonization.

  5

  IT CONTINUES to amaze many people that the Doon Expeditions could have been set up and sent out in utter secrecy, right in the heart of Capitol. Those who understand Capitol society, however, find nothing surprising in this. Our present open society has almost nothing in common with the authoritarian, byzantine way of life in the corridors of Capitol. Doon, because he controlled the instruments of power-the Cabinet, the secret police [“Mother’s Little Boys,” as they were lessthan-affectionately called], the Service, and above all, the Sleeproom-was able to construct, populate, and send a dozen colony ships, filled with the elite of the Empire, to destinations far beyond the pale of human settlement. It hardly needs repeating, of course, that the Doon Expeditions, conceived of by one man and sent in spite of an empire, have done more to influence the post-Empire history of humanity than any other single event.

  Solomon Harding, Abner Doon: Worldmaker, 6690 p. 145.

  Hop Noyock was sitting in a tree. His legs dangled from the branch. His hands were touching wood, and a slight bree
ze tousled his hair. Overhead, the imitation sun moved discernibly across the arch of an imitation blue sky.

  Below him, the garden was populated with many dozens of men and women, who had been moving around aimlessly for the past several hours. Enough hours, in fact, that the sun had risen, set, and risen again in its hurried pattern. Hop had gathered very quickly that everyone in the overgrown park was one of the conspiracy. Each bit of news was eagerly seized on: this man dead, this woman yet uncaptured, this man probably a traitor, this woman seriously injured but accounted for. Hop knew none of the names, except in their more official roles. Here and there he recognized the name of an undersecretary of chamberpots or some other such meaningless title. But he personally knew no one, except Arran Handully, and he began to appreciate how important she had been in the conspiracy from the fact that practically everyone spoke to her and of her with respect.

  But Hop gave up quickly on making any acquaintance. Many had already learned that Jazz Worthing was one of the chief manipulators of somec, and even though he had been mentally stripped under the probe, Hop Noyock was still his manager—worse, was not and never had been a part of the conspiracy—and worst of all, still felt that Jazz Worthing was a decent human being and made the mistake of saying so.

  And now he sat on a branch of a tree. No one noticed him, because in the corridor society no one was used to looking up. He sat and thought, and grew more uncomfortable and miserable the more he thought.

  He remembered Jason, and wondered what had happened to him.

  He remembered that he was a prisoner (but of whom? And what was going to happen?).

  Most of all, however, he thought of Arran. It was childish (and I am several centuries old, he reminded himself) but when suddenly Arran was embraced and wept over by so many friends, he felt left out (self-pity, dammit, I haven’t let myself feel that in years), he felt used. He had been an escape route—but escape had proved impossible. He had thought himself a friend. Wrong again.

  (I’m as bad as the other billions of gonaddominated oafs who ogle the holos and dream of Arran Handully. I wish Jazz had broken another rib. Damn childish attitude, of course.)

  And then the milling groups fell still. The sun did not set—it darkened, and no stars came out. In a short time the entire room was pitch dark. Hop wondered idly if this was the first step to execution—the garden, then darkness, then a gas. But it seemed unlikely. Why plant trees when a sterile room was all that was needed?