Jesus Pietro called the power room. "You aren't doing anything right now, are you? Good. Would one of you bring us some coffee."
Three minutes more and he could resume interrogation.
Jesus Pietro paced. He walked off balance, with one arm bound immobile against his body: one more annoyance. The numbness was wearing off in his mangled hand.
Yes, the bleeding heart was something else again. A gruesome symbol on a vivarium floor. Fingers that broke without their owner noticing. An ink drawing appearing from nowhere on a dossier cover, like a signature. A signature.
Intuition was tricky. Intuition had told Jesus Pietro that something would happen tonight. And something had; but what? Intuition, or something like it, had brought him here. Surely he'd had no logical reason to keep thinking about Polly Tournquist. Did she really know something? Or did his subconscious mind have other motives for bringing him here?
Jesus Pietro paced, following the arc of the inner wall.
Presently someone knocked on the door overhead. The guards loosened their guns and looked up. Fumbling sounds, and then the door dropped open and a man backed slowly down the ladder. He balanced a tray in one hand. He did not try to close the door after him.
The slowboat had never been a convenient place to work. Ladders everywhere. The man with the tray had to back a long way down the full length of what had been a large, comfortable living room before he touched bottom.
Matt poked his head through the doorway, upside down.
There was the lab man, backing down the ladder with his coffee tray balanced on one hand. On the floor were three more men, and one was Castro. As Matt's head appeared in the doorway each pair of eyes glanced up, held Matt's stare for a moment, then dropped.
Matt started down, looking over his shoulder, trying to hold eight eyes at once.
"Dammit, Hood, help me up."
"Parlette, you can't possibly expect--"
"Help me over to the phone."
"We'd be committing suicide," said Harry Kane. "What would your army of relatives do when they learned we were holding you prisoner in your own house?"
"I'm here of my own free will. You know that."
"But will they know that?"
"My family will stand behind me." Parlette set the palms of his hands on the chair arms, and with tremendous effort, stood up. But once up, he was unable to move.
"They won't know what's going on," said Harry Kane. "All they'll know for certain is that you're alone in the house with three escaped vivarium prisoners."
"Kane, they wouldn't understand what's happening if I talked for two hours. But they'll stand behind me."
Harry Kane opened his mouth, closed it again, and began to tremble. He had to fold his hands on the table to keep them from shaking. "Call them," he said.
"No," said Jay Hood.
"Help him, Jay."
"No! If he uses that phone to turn us in, he'll go down as the greatest con man in history. And we'll be finished!"
"Oh, phut." Lydia Hancock stood up and wrapped one of Parlette's arms around her neck. "Be sensible, Jay. Parlette is the best chance we ever had. We've got to trust him." And she walked him over to the phone.
Almost time to resume the interrogation. Jesus Pietro waited while the lab man deposited his tray on the "coffin" and started back up.
And he realized that his pulse was racing. There was cold perspiration dribbling wetly down his ribs. His hand throbbed like a heart. His eyes flicked here, there, all about the room, looking for something that wasn't there.
Within seconds, and for no reason at all, the interrogation room had become a trap.
There was a thump, and every muscle in his body jumped. Nothing there, nothing his eyes could find. But he the nerveless, elephantine Castro, was jumping at shadows. The room was a trap, a trap.
"Back in a moment," said Jesus Pietro. He strode to the ladder, looking every inch the Man in Charge, and went up.
A guard said, "But, sir! What about the prisoner?"
"I'll be right back," said the Head, without slowing.
He pulled himself through the doorway, reached down, and closed the door. And there he stuck.
He'd had no planned destination. Something had screamed at him to get out, some intuition so powerful that he had followed it without questioning right in the middle of an interrogation.
What was he afraid of? Was he about to learn some unpleasant truth from Polly Tournquist? Or was it guilt? Surely he no longer lusted after the colonist girl. Surely he could control it if he did.
No Implementation man had ever seen him thus: shoulde'rs slumped, face set in wrinkles of fatigue, standing in a hallway because he had no place to go.
In any case, he had to go back. Polly Tournquist was waiting for the sound of his voice. She might or might not know things he needed to know.
He pulled himself together, visibly, and turned to face the door, his eyes sliding automatically around the bright frosted pane in the wall. Men who worked in the slowboats developed such habits. As ceiling lights, the panel would have been just bright enough. As wall lights, they hurt the eyes.
Castro's eyes slid around the pane, caught something, and came back. There was a blue scrawl on the frosted pane.
Matt was almost down the ladder when the man in the lab coat started up.
Matt addressed a subvocal comment to the Mist Demons, who made no obvious response. Then, because the lab man was about to bump into him, he swung around to the underside of the ladder and dropped. He landed with a thump. Every head in the room jerked around. Matt backed into a corner, stepping softly, waiting.
He'd known it from the beginning: He couldn't count on this power of his. At some point he would have enough of being afraid; the glandular caps over his kidneys would stop producing adrenaline...
The guard turned their eyes back to the ceiling. The lab man disappeared through the doorway and closed the door after him. Only Castro himself continued to behave peculiarly; his eyes kept darting around the room as if searching for something that wasn't there. Matt began to breathe more easily.
The man with the coffee had appeared at just the right time. Matt had been about to leave, to see if he could find a fusion control room before he got back to Castro. He had, in fact, discovered that the frosted glass in the hall light would take ink; and he was marking it to show which door led to Castro, when someone had rounded the corner, carrying coffee.
Castro was still behaving oddly. During the interview in Castro's office, Matt had never ceased to be afraid of him. Yet now he seemed only a nervous man with a bandaged arm.
Dangerous thinking, thought Matt. Be scared!
Suddenly Castro started up the ladder.
Matt nibbled his lower lip. Some comic chase this was becoming! Where was the Head going now? And how could Matt hold six eyes, two above and four below, while climbing a ladder? He started for the ladder anyway.
"But, sir! What about the prisoner?"
"I'll be right back." Matt backed into the corner again. Prisoner? Coffin. The word was nearly obsolete on Mount Lookitthat, where crew and colonist alike cremated their dead. But that box against the wall was easily big enough to hold a prisoner. He'd have to look inside. But first, the guards...
"It's the Head calling, Major."
"Thank you, Miss Lauessen."
"Jansen, is that you?"
"Yes, sir."
"I've found another bleeding heart."
"In the Planck?"
"Yes. Right above the coffin room, on a light. Now here's what I want done. I want you to close the Planck's airlocks, flood the ship with gas, then come in with a squad. Anyone you can't identify immediately, play a sonic over him to keep him quiet. Got it?"