The Mirror’s eye dipped back under the webbing. Shaken, angry, excited, afraid, the folk from the tents converged on the largest of the camouflaged clearings. Some were silent, turned inward in their struggle to cope with this new threat. Others came in small groups, talking urgently, voices held to whispers as if they feared something would overhear what they were saying. At first it was a confusion of dazed and worried people, but gradually the villagers sorted themselves out and settled on the dirt and grass while three men and two women took stools to the far edge of the clearing, set them in a row and climbed up on them so they could see and be seen. The low buzzing of the talk grew louder for a short while, then died to an expectant silence as one of the five, a lean tall man with thick glasses he kept pushing up a rather short nose, came to his feet and walked a few steps toward the gathered people. “We got a little problem,” he said. His voice was unexpectedly deep and carried through the clearing without difficulty.
Laughter, nervous, short-lived, rippled across the assembly.
“We also got no answers.” He clasped his hands behind him and ran milky blue eyes over the very miscellaneous group before him. “Seems like some of you should have some questions. Don’t want to drag this out too long, but…” he smiled suddenly, a wide boyish grin that took years off his age, “… your elected councilors need to do a bit of polling before we make our recommendations.” He glanced at the timepiece strapped to his wrist. “You know the rules. Say your name, say your question or comment, keep it, short and to the point. You want to argue, save it for later. You stand, I point, you talk.” There was a surge as a number of the listeners jumped up. He got his stool, climbed up on it, looked them over and snapped a long forefinger out. “You. Tildi.”
The dumpy gray-haired woman took a deep breath, then spoke, “Tildi Chon. Any chance they’re bluffing?”
The finger snapped out again. “Georgia, you know them better than most.”
The chunky blond man got to his feet, looked around at the expectant faces. His own face was stolidly grim. “Georgia Myers,” he said. “No. Not this time. For one thing, they’ve already hit a camp south of here, got that from one of our friends in the city. For another, same friend says they’re just about ready to put up new spy satellites.”
“Any chance we could ride it out?”
“Always a chance. Most of us beat the odds getting here. You know that. Almost no chance if we stay together. Have to scatter, groups of two or three, no more.”
Tildi Chon nodded and sat down, shifting her square body with an uneasy ease, settling with her hands clasped in her lap, her face calm.
“You, next, Arve.”
The pudgy little man wiped his hands down his sides. “Arve Wahls,” he said in an uncertain tenor. “Something not for me, but anyone who needs to know and don’t like to ask. What happens to anyone wanting to surrender? Who can’t take the pounding any more?”
One of the rescued prisoners; the history professor, jumped to his feet. “Don’t,” he burst out. He smoothed a long handsome hand over a rebellious cowlick, looked around, made a graceful gesture of apology. “Simon Zagouris. Sorry. New here.”
“Samuel Braddock, professor. From what I hear, you’re one to know well as any what would happen. Finish what you got to say and keep it short.”
Zagouris looked down at his hands, then took a few steps out from the others and turned to face them. “If you’re lucky, you’ll be shot.” He waited for the shocked murmurs to die, then went on. “Look at me. Tenured professor, fat cat in a fat seat, doing what I enjoyed, no worries about eating or rent, fighting off a bit of back-stabbing, office politics, nothing serious. When they leaned on me, told me what I had to teach and how I had to teach it, I sputtered a bit, they leaned harder, I caved in. But they didn’t trust me even then. My classes had watchers with tape recorders. My lectures had to be cleared through someone in the Chancellor’s office. And a blackshirt truth squad searched my office, my house, clearing out anything they thought subversive or immoral. My books…” His mouth snapped shut as he fought to control his anger and distress. “Came back again and again. Stealing whatever they fancied, daring me to say boo. Time and time again I was called in to listen to some airhead rant. I remind you, I didn’t fight them, I didn’t do more than protest very mildly at the beginning. Kept my mouth shut after, did what I was told like a good boy. And still they kept after me, never trusting me a minute, just looking for an excuse to haul me in for interrogation. And when they pulled me in, my god, you wouldn’t believe the shit they tried on me. Until you have to listen to them, you can’t imagine the stupidity of those men. Twice I was taken out of the University and held in a room somewhere-I don’t have the faintest idea where it was-just put there and left, not knowing what was going to happen. I started looking about me for some way to fight them that wouldn’t get me killed. I say that for my self-respect, but I’m not going to talk about it more than that. The ones that questioned me never got near anything that was really happening, it was what was in my head that bothered them. This last time, though, it wasn’t questions and a few slaps, it was cattle prods and purges, and wanting to know about friends of mine, what they were doing, where they were. Again I remind you, I didn’t challenge them, I didn’t reject their claims on me or work against them, not in the beginning. If any of you think about surrendering, consider how much more they’ve got against you. Say they use you for propaganda to get other holdouts to come in, let you live awhile. As soon as you’re beginning to feel safe, they come to your house and question you, then they take you away and question you. They’ll question you about things so crazy you can’t believe they’re serious, until you start thinking there has to be something more behind what’s happening. But there’s nothing there. They’ll come back at you again and again until you’re crazy or dead. No matter what happens here, I’m not going back alive.” He returned to where he’d been sitting, settled himself, waiting with a calm that didn’t extend to his hands, long fingers nervously tapping at his thighs.
Braddock pushed his glasses up. “Right,” he said. “Connelly.”
“Francis Connelly. Anoike just busted me out of an introg. What Zagouris said ain’t the half of it. But he’s got the right idea. Go back down as a corpse or not at all.”
Half a dozen tried to speak at once. Braddock came back onto his feet. ‘‘Siddown and shaddup,” he yelled at them. Into the ensuing quiet he said, “You talk, Tom. Rest of you keep still and listen or I’ll have Ombele sort you out.” He flashed one of his sudden grins at another of the council, a man three times as wide as he was, half a head taller; even standing still the muscles visible in arms and neck were defined and shining like polished walnut in the shifting light.
He, chuckled, his laughter as rich and dark as the rest of him. “Yeah,” he said. “Papa Sammy’s muscle.” The assembly laughed with him but there was no more disorder. “Like the man said, Prioc; you’re up next.”
“Tom Prioc. We can’t stay here. Can’t go down either. Seems to me there’s three choices left. We can do like Georgia says and scatter. We do that, I see most of us starving or getting picked up one by one and put in the labor camps they’ve set up down south, or some of us, the ones without families, we can keep moving, living outta garbage cans, picking up shitwork now and then from scum too greedy to pay the legal wage. We die and don’t get nothing to show for it. Me, I want the bastards to know I was here before they wipe me.” He folded his arms, nodded his head, his wispy brown hair blowing out from his face. “Or we head north tonight with as much as we can haul, split up in small groups so we can run round the roadblocks and copter traps they’ll have waiting for us. Cross the border how we can. The Condies’ll try shoving us back, don’t want our trouble, they got troubles enough with the death squads coming across to hunt down what they call enemies of the UD. Won’t be that easy, getting in and getting set up. Have to watch out for Condie feds, but we can stay together, that’s worth something.” He chuckled, looked about the crowd, eyes lingering on a face here and there. “That’s one hard border to close. Me and some of you, we did our bit in trade across it. Tempts me. I know those mountains and the trails.” He paused, rubbed at his nose. “But I’d kinda like to take me out a copter or two. Georgia and his bunch, they got us a good supply of rockets and launchers. There’ll be gunships, but a single man’s a hard target when he knows how to be. Third choice. I’d really like to take me out a copter.” He sat.