5
We were halted in the inner parade facing the guardroom door and left at attention. There we stood for fifty mortal minutes while the officer of the Day strolled around and looked us over. Once a man in the rear rank shifted his weight. It would have gone unnoticed at dress parade, even in the presence of the Prophet, but tonight the Officer of the Day bawled him out at once and Captain van Eyck noted down his name. Master Peter looked just as angry as his superior undoubtedly was. He passed out several more gigs, even stopped in front of me and told the guardroom orderly to put me down for 'boots not properly shined'-which was a libel, unless I had scuffed them in my efforts. I dared not look down to see but stared him in the eye and said nothing, while he stared back coldly. But his manner recalled to me Zeb's lecture about intrigue. Van Eyck's manner was perfectly that of a subordinate officer let down and shamed by his own men; how should I feel if I were in fact new-born innocent? Angry, I decided-angry and self-righteous. Interested and stimulated by the excitement at first, then angry at being kept standing at attention like a plebe. They were trying to soften us up by the strained wait; how would I have felt about it, say two months ago? Smugly sure of my own virtue, it would have offended me and humiliated me-to be kept standing like a pariah waiting to whine for the privilege of a ration card-to be placed on the report like a cadet with soup on his jacket. By the time the Commander of the Guard arrived almost an hour later I was white-lipped with anger. The process was synthetic but the emotion was real. I had never really liked our Commander anyway. He was a short, supercilious little man with a cold eye and a way of looking through his junior officers instead of at them. Now he stood in front of us with his priest's robes thrown back over his shoulders and his thumbs caught in his sword belt. He glared at us. 'Heaven help me, Angels of the Lord indeed,' he said softly into the dead silence-then barked, 'Well?' No one answered. 'Speak up!' he shouted. 'Some one of you knows about this. Answer me! Or would you all rather face the Question?' A murmur ran down our ranks-but no one spoke. He ran his eyes over us again. His eye caught mine and I stared back truculently. 'Lyle!' 'Yes, reverend sir?' 'What do you know of this?' 'I know that I would like to sit down, reverend sir!' He scowled at me, then his eye got a gleam of cold amusement. 'Better to stand before me, my son, than to sit before the Inquisitor.' But he passed on and heckled the man next to me. He badgered us endlessly, but Zeb and I seemed to receive neither more nor less attention than the others. At last he seemed to give up and directed the Officer of the Day to dismiss us. I was not fooled; it was a certainty that every word spoken had been recorded, every expression cinemographed, and that analysts were plotting the data against each of our past behavior patterns before we reached our quarters. But Zeb is a wonder. He was gossiping about the night's events, speculating innocently about what could have caused the hurrah, even before we reached our room. I tried to answer in what I had decided was my own 'proper' reaction and groused about the way we had been treated. 'We're officers and gentlemen,' I complained. 'If he thinks we are guilty of something, he should prefer formal charges.' I went to bed still griping, then lay awake and worried. I tried to tell myself that Judith must have reached a safe place, or else the brass would not be in the dark about it. But I dropped off to sleep still fretting. I felt someone touch me and I woke instantly. Then I relaxed when I realized that my hand was being gripped in the recognition grip of the lodge. 'Quiet,' a voice I did not recognize whispered in my ear. 'I must give you certain treatment to protect you.' I felt the bite of a hypodermic in my arm; in a few seconds I was relaxed and dreamy. The voice whispered, 'You saw nothing unusual on watch tonight. Until the alarm was sounded your watch was quite without incident -' I don't know how long the voice droned on. I was awakened a second time by someone shaking me roughly. I burrowed into my pillow and said, 'Go 'way! I'm going to skip breakfast.' Somebody struck me between my shoulder blades; I turned and sat up, blinking. There were four armed men in the room, blasters drawn and pointed at me. 'Come along!' ordered the one nearest to me. They were wearing the uniform of Angels but without unit insignia. Each head was covered by a black mask that exposed only the eyes-and by these masks I knew them: proctors of the Grand Inquisitor. I hadn't really believed it could happen to me. Not to me not to Johnnie Lyle who had always behaved himself, been a credit to his parish and a pride to his mother. No! The Inquisition was a boogieman, but a boogieman for sinners-not for John Lyle. But I knew with sick horror when I saw those masks that I was already a dead man, that my time had come and here at last was the nightmare that 1 could not wake up from. But I was not dead yet. From somewhere I got the courage to pretend anger. 'What are you doing here?' 'Come along,' the faceless voice repeated. 'Show me your order. You can't just drag an officer out of his bed any time you feel -' The leader gestured with his pistol; two of them grabbed my arms and hustled me toward the door, while the fourth fell in behind. But I am fairly strong; I made it hard for them while protesting, 'You've got to let me get dressed at least. You've no right to haul me away half naked, no matter what the emergency is. I've a right to appear in the uniform of my rank. Surprisingly the appeal worked. The leader stopped. 'Okay. But snap into it!' I stalled as much as I dared while going through the motions of hurrying-jamming a zipper on my boot, fumbling clumsily with all my dressing. How could I leave some sort of a message for Zeb? Any sort of a sign that would show the brethren what had happened to me? At last I got a notion, not a good one but the best I could manage. I dragged clothing out of my wardrobe, some that I would need, some that I did not, and with the bunch a sweater. In the course of picking out what I must wear I managed to arrange the sleeves of the sweater in the position taken by a lodge brother in giving the Grand Hailing Sign of Distress. Then 1 picked up loose clothing and started to put some of it back in the wardrobe; the leader immediately shoved his blaster in my ribs and said, 'Never mind that. You're dressed.' I gave in, dropping the meaningless clothing on the floor. The sweater remained spread out as a symbol to him who could read it. As they led me away I prayed that our room servant would not arrive and 'tidy' it out of meaning before Zeb spotted it. They blindfolded me as soon as we reached the inner Palace. We went down six flights, four below ground level as I figured it, and reached a compartment filled with the breathless silence of a vault. The hoodwink was stripped from my eyes. I blinked. 'Sit down, my boy, sit down and make yourself comfortable.' I found myself looking into the face of the Grand Inquisitor himself, saw his warm friendly smile and his collie-dog eyes. His gentle voice continued, 'I'm sorry to get you so rudely out of a warm bed, but there is certain information needed by our Holy Church. Tell me, my son, do you fear the Lord? Oh, of course you do; your piety is well known. So you won't mind helping me with this little matter even though it makes you late for breakfast. It's to the greater glory of God.' He turned to his masked and black-robed assistant questioner, hovering behind him. 'Make him ready-and pray be gentle.' I was handled quickly and roughly, but not painfully. They touched me as if they regarded me as so much lifeless matter to be manipulated as impersonally as machinery. They stripped me to the waist and fastened things to me, a rubber bandage tight around my right arm, electrodes in my fists which they taped closed, another pair of electrodes to my wrists, a third pair at my temples, a tiny mirror to the pulse in my throat. At a control board on the left wall one of them made some adjustments, then threw a switch and on the opposite wall a shadow show of my inner workings sprang into being. A little light danced to my heart beat, a wiggly line on an iconoscope display showed my blood pressure's rise and fall, another like it moved with my breathing, and there were several others that I did not understand. I turned my head away and concentrated on remembering the natural logarithms from one to ten. 'You see our methods, son. Efficiency and kindness, those are our watch words. Now tell me-Where did you put her?' I broke off with the logarithm of eight. 'Put who?' 'Why did you do it?' 'I am sorry. Most Reverend Sir. I don't know what it is I am supposed to have done.' Someone slapped me hard, from behind. The lights on the wall jiggled and the Inquisitor studied them thoughtfully, then spoke to an assistant. 'Inject him.' Again my skin was pricked by a hypodermic. They let me rest while the drug took hold; I spent the time continuing with the effort of recalling logarithms. But that soon became too difficult; I grew drowsy and lackadaisical, nothing seemed to matter. I felt a mild and childish curiosity about my surroundings but no fear. Then the soft voice of the Inquisitor broke into my reverie with a question. I can't remember what it was but I am sure I answered with the first thing that came into my head. I have no way of telling how long this went on. In time they brought me back to sharp reality with another injection. The Inquisitor was examining a slight bruise and a little purple dot on my right forearm. He glanced up. 'What caused this, my boy?' 'I don't know, Most Reverend Sir.' At the instant it was truth. He shook his head regretfully. 'Don't be naпve, my son-and don't assume that I am. Let me explain something to you. What you sinners never realize is that the Lord always prevails. Always. Our methods are based in loving-kindness but they proceed with the absolute certainty of a falling stone, and with the result equally preordained. 'First we ask the sinner to surrender himself to the Lord and answer from the goodness that remains in his heart. When that loving appeal fails-as it did with you-then we use the skills God has given us to open the unconscious mind. That is usually as far as the Question need go-unless some agent of Satan has been there before us and has tampered with the sacred tabernacle of the mind. 'Now, my son, I have just returned from a walk through your mind. I found much there that was commendable, but I found also,