"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–your–place 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 less than 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.