"So we buried it at the same time we built the basement," the prisoner finished. "Then we let the house grow over it. We had great plans." He sagged into his former position of despair but went on talking, mumbling. "There were gun mounts. Bins for bombs. We stole a sonic stunner and mounted it in the rear window. Now nobody'll ever use them."
"The car was used."
"What?"
"This afternoon. Keller escaped us last night. He returned to Kane's home this morning, took the car and flew it nearly to the Hospital before we stopped him. The Mist Demons know what he thought he was doing."
"Great! 'The last flight of-We never got around to naming it. Our air force. Our glorious air force. Who did you say?"
"Keller. Matthew Leigh Keller."
"I don't know him. What would he be doing with my car?"
"Don't play games. You are not protecting anyone. We drove him off the edge. Five ten, age twenty-one, hair brown, eyes blue--"
"I tell you I never met him."
"Good-by." Jesus Pietro pushed a button under his desk. The door opened.
"Wait a minute. Now, wait--"
Lying, Jesus Pietro thought, after the man was gone. Probably lied about the car too. Somewhere in the vivarium the man who really took the car waited to be questioned. If it was stolen. It could equally well have been supplied by a crew member, by Jesus Pietro's hypothetical traitor.
He had often wondered why the crew would not supply him with truth drugs. They would have been easy to manufacture from instructions in the ship's libraries. Millard Parlette, in a mellow mood, had once tried to explain. "We own their bodies," he had said. "We take them apart on the slightest pretext; and if they manage to die a natural death, we get them anyway, what we can save. Aren't the poor bastards at least entitled to the privacy of their own minds?"
It seemed a peculiar bleeding-heart attitude, coming from a man whose very life depended on the organ banks. But others apparently felt the same. If Jesus Pietro wanted his questions answered, he must depend on his own empirical brand of psychology.
Polly Tournquist. Age: twenty. Height: five one. Weight: ninety-five. She wore a crumpled party dress in the colonist style. In Jesus Pietro's eyes it did nothing for her. She was small and brown, and compared to most of the women Jesus Pietro met socially, muscular. They were work muscles, not tennis muscles. Traces of callus marred her hands. Her hair, worn straight back, had a slight natural curl to it but no trace of style.
Had she been raised as crew girls were raised, had she access to cosmetics available on Alpha Plateau, she would have known how to be beautiful. Then she wouldn't have been bad at all, once the callus left her hands and cosmetic treatment smoothed her skin. But, like most colonists, she had aged faster than a crew.
She was only a young colonist girl, like a thousand other young colonist girls Jesus Pietro had seen.
She bore his silent stare for a full minute before she snapped, "Well?"
"Well? You're Polly Tournquist, aren't you?"
"Of course."
"You had a handful of films on you when you were picked up last night. How did you get them?"
"I prefer not to say."
"Eventually I think you will. Meanwhile, what would you like to talk about?"
Polly looked bewildered. "Are you serious?"
"I am serious. I've interviewed six people today. The organ banks are full and the day is ending. I'm in no hurry. Do you know what those films of yours imply?"
She nodded warily. "I think so. Especially after the raid."
"Oh, you saw the point, did you?"
"It's clear you have no more use for the Sons of Earth. We've always been some danger to you--"
"You flatter yourselves."
"But you've never had a real try at wiping us out. Not till now. Because we serve as a recruiting center for your damned organ banks!"
"You amaze me. Did you know this when you joined?"
"I was fairly sure of it."
"Then why join?"
She spread her hands. "Why does anybody join? I couldn't stand the way things are now. Castro, what happens to your body when you die?"
"Cremated. I'm an old man."
"You're crew. They'd cremate you anyway. Only colonists go into the banks."
"I'm half crew," said Jesus Pietro. His desire to talk was genuine, and there was no need for reticence with a girl who was, to all intents and purposes, dead. "When my--you might say--pseudo-father reached the age of seventy, he was old enough to need injections of testosterone. Except that he chose a different way to get them."
The girl looked bewildered, then horrified.
"I see you understand. Shortly afterward his wife, my mother, became pregnant. I must admit they raised me almost as a crew. I love them both. I don't know who my father was. He may have been a rebel, or a thief."
"To you there's no difference, I suppose." The girl's tone was savage.
"No. Back to the Sons of Earth," Jesus Pietro said briskly. "You're quite right. We don't need them anymore, not as a recruiting center nor for any other purpose. Yours was the biggest rebel group on Mount Lookitthat. We'll take the others as they come."
"I don't understand. The organ banks are obsolete now, aren't they? Why not publish the news? There'd be a worldwide celebration!"
"That's just why we don't broadcast the news. Your kind of sloppy thinking! No, the organ banks are not obsolete. It's just that we'll need a smaller supply of raw material. And as a means of punishment for crimes the banks are as important as ever!"
"You son of a bitch," said Polly. Her color was high, and her voice held an icy, half-controlled fury. "So we might get uppity if we thought we were being killed to no purpose!"
"You will not be dying to no purpose," Jesus Pietro explained patiently. "That has not been necessary since the first kidney transplant between identical twins. It has not been necessary since Landsteiner classified the primary blood types in 1900. What do you know about the car in Kane's basement?"
"I prefer not to say."
"You're being very difficult."
The girl smiled for the first time. "I've heard that."
His reaction took Jesus Pietro by surprise. A flash of admiration, followed by a hot flood of lust. Suddenly the bedraggled colonist girl was the only girl in the universe. Jesus Pietro held his face like frozen stone while the flood receded. It took several seconds.
"What about Matthew Leigh Keller?"
"Who? I mean--"
"You prefer not to say. Miss, Tournquist, you probably know that there are no truth drugs on this world. In the ships' libraries are instructions for making scopolamine, but no crew will authorize me to use them. Hence I have developed different methods." 'He saw her stiffen. "No, no. There will be no pain. They'd put me in the organ banks if I used torture. I'm only going to give you a nice rest."
"I think I know what you mean. Castro, what are you made of? You're half colonist yourself. What makes you side with the crew?"
"There must be law and order, Miss Tournquist. On all of Mount Lookitthat there is only one force for law and order, and that force is the crew." Jesus Pietro pushed the call button.
He did not relax until she was gone, and then he found himself shaken. Had she noticed that flash of desire? What an embarrassing thing to happen! But she must have assumed he was only angry. Of course she had.