Taken to the exercise ground on his first day out of the medical block, Tallon settled on the ground with his back to a sun-warmed wall. It was a calm morning, with almost no breeze, and the prison yard was filled with overlapping layers of sound — footsteps, voices, and other noises still to be identified — and beyond them, the audible movement of he sea. Tallon leaned his head back on the warm stones and tried to make himself comfortable.
“You’re on your own now, Tallon,” the guard said. The others will show you where everything is. Have fun.”
“How can I miss?”
The guard laughed sardonically and moved away. His footsteps had barely faded when Tallon felt something flick lightly against his outstretched leg. He froze, trying to remember if the southern part of the continent had any particularly unpleasant insects.
“Excuse me, sir. You are Mr. Sam Tallon?” The voice carried with it the image of a white-haired, red-faced, backwoods politician.
“That’s right.” Tallon brushed uneasily at his leg, but felt nothing unusual. “Sam Tallon.”
“A great pleasure to meet you, Sam.” The newcomer sat down beside Tallon, grunting fiercely in the process. “I’m Logan Winfield. You’re quite a hero here in the Pavilion, you know.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Oh, yes. None of us here have any great regard for Mr. Lorin Cherkassky,” Winfield boomed, “but neither had we the enterprise to send him into the hospital for an extended stay.”
“I wasn’t trying to hospitalize him. I meant to kill him.”
“A laudable ambition, son. What a pity you didn’t succeed. However, your endeavor has made every man in the prison your friend for life; that’s how long you’re in for, I take it.”
“I guess so.”
“You guess correctly, son. One of the great benefits of mixing Lutheranism, of the variety we have here, with government is that it simplifies the procedure for dealing with politicos. The theory appears to be that as we have cheerfully condemned ourselves to everlasting torment in the hereafter by our own actions, we will hardly even notice a mortal lifetime in prison.”
“A neat theory. What are you in for?” Tallon asked out of politeness, but all he really wanted to do was to sit in the sun and doze. He had discovered he could still dream, and in dreams his brown plastic eyes were as good as real eyes.
“I’m a doctor of medicine. I came here from Louisiana when this planet was first reached. It wasn’t called Emm Luther in those days, of course. I put a lifetime of hard work into this world, and I love it. So when it broke away from the empire I worked to bring it back to its true destiny.”
Tallon snorted with bitter amusement. “I take it that when you get down to the practical details of working to bring a world back to its true destiny, the job includes getting rid of obstinate politicians?”
“Well, son, we had a saying back home that you can’t reason a man out of something he hasn’t been reasoned into. So …”
“So you’re in prison doing life for something that would have got you the same sentence, or worse, under any other political regime.” Tallon spoke angrily, and there was a long silence when he had finished. An insect hummed near his face, then drifted away in the warm air.
“I’m surprised to hear you speak like that, son. I thought we’d have common interests, but I fear I’ve intruded. I’ll go.”
Tallon nodded and listened as Winfield struggled heavily to his feet. Again something flicked lightly against his leg. This time he grabbed for it and found himself holding the end of a cane.
“My apologies,” Winfield said. “The cane is an ancient device for the members of our fraternity, but it is undeniably useful. Without it I would have fallen over your legs, with consequent embarrassment to both parties.”
A few seconds passed before Tallon absorbed the full meaning of the other man’s rounded, rolling phrases.
“Hold on a minute, Do you mean that you’re — ?”
” Blind is the word, son. You get used to saying it after a few years.”
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier? I didn’t know. Please sit down again.” Tallon’s hand found the man’s arm and held on. Winfield seemed to consider the idea; then he sat down, again with furious grunting. Tallon guessed he was very fat and out of condition. He found Winfield’s pomposity irritating, especially his use of the word son, but here was a man who had already explored the road Tallon was destined to walk. They sat in silence for a while, listening to the rhythmic crunch of gravel as the rest of the prisoners exercised in another part of the yard.
“I expect you’re wondering if I lost my sight in the same manner as you,” Winfield finally said.
“Well, yes.”
“No, son. Nothing quite so dramatic. Eight years ago I tried to escape from this place- with the idea of working my way back to Earth. I got as far as the swamp. That’s the easy part, of course; anybody can reach the swamp. It’s getting to the other side that counts. There’s a rather nasty species of chigger out there. The gravid females go for your eyes. When the guards brought me back to the Pavilion I was well on the way to having a nest of the brutes breeding in each eye.
“Dr. Heck had quite a job to keep them from going a through to the brain. He was deliriously happy for nearly a week — whistled Gilbert and Sullivan the whole time.”
Tallon was appalled. “But what were you hoping to do supposing you had managed to get through the swamp? The space terminal at New Wittenburg is a thousand miles from here, and even if it were only a thousand yards away, you could never have passed through the checkpoints.”
“Son,” Winfield sounded sad, “your mind is too preoccupied with details. I admire a man who has an eye for detail, but not if he lets it negate his attitude to the master plan.”
“Plan! What plan? All you had was a crazy notion you could get up and walk a few light-centuries back to Louisiana.”
“Progress is the history of crazy notions, Sam. Supraluctic flight itself was a crazy notion till somebody made it work. I can’t believe you are prepared to rot in this place for the rest of your life.”
“I may not be prepared for it, but I’m going to do it.”
“Even if I offered to take you with me next time?” Winfield’s voice had sunk to a whisper.
Tallon laughed aloud for the first time since the morning McNulty had limped into his office and handed him a piece of paper containing the cosmic address of a new planet. “Go away, old man,” he said. “You really had me going for a minute. Now I want to rest my ears.”
Winfield kept talking. “It’s going to be entirely different next time. I was unprepared for the swamp before, but I’ve been getting ready for it for eight years. I assure you, I know how to get through.”
“But you’re blind! You’d have trouble crossing a children’s playground.”
“Blind,” Winfield said mysteriously, “but not blind.”
“Talking,” Tallon replied in similar tones, “but not talking sense.”
“Listen to this, son.” Winfield moved closer until his breath was brushing Tallon’s ear. He smelled of bread and butter. “You’ve had training in electronics. You know that back on Earth, and on most other worlds, too, a blind person can get many kinds of aids.”
“That’s a different case, isn’t it, Doc? Emm Luther’s electronics industry is part and parcel of its space-probe program. Every electronics specialist on the planet works on the program or on associated priority projects, or else is away on this new planet they’ve found. Besides, the Temporal Moderator has ruled that it’s against the creed to join man-made parts to bodies fashioned in the Divine Image. The gadgets you’re talking about simply don’t exist in this part of the galaxy.”