He had obviously been eavesdropping. He glared aggressively at Truck, put his thumb in his mouth and ripped savagely at the nail, then said without looking at ben Barka, 'I'll take over now.'
Ben Barka shipped his stick and clasped his hands behind his back. He nodded coldly. Long, rolling dunes came back into his eyes, under a white moon. Trains full of overfed colonial infantrymen steamed out of the marshaling yards of Alexandria into the jaws of his ambush.
'I'd prefer you to sit in that chair,' said the PCO. His nose was running. When it became evident that Truck didn't intend to resist, he wiped it on his sleeve and grinned triumphantly.
'By dint of ceaseless energy and intelligence,' he began, in a vigoriously offensive voice, 'the watchful peoples of the United Arab Republics have uncovered a projected violation of their sovereignty involving an anti-humanitarian weapon built by the decadents of Centauri VII in an attempt to halt their engulfment by the equally corrupt expansionist forces of the so-called "Israeli World Government".'
He sniffed loudly. 'Well, we all know what happened there,' he said parenthetically.
'While we of the UASR would abhor and strongly protest the use of any such device as anti-beneficial to the interest of freedom-loving nationals of all the planets, there seems a possibility that in the hands of a properly-constituted Socialist democracy it would signal the overture of a new era of Socialist co-operation: the instant peaceful conversion of the Galaxy to true Marxist-Leninism, the end of the class struggle, the — '
He stared hard at Truck.
'Well?'
'Do we have to have this fucking down in here?' Truck appealed. But ben Barka, listening to the onion-skins peeling off the Saharan rock in a far-off cold dawn, only lifted one eyebrow. What did he have to do with Europe, his eyes were asking, in this or any other century -?
'You'll address me. The colonel isn't responsible for interrogation. Look here, Captain, we've started out on the wrong foot here. I'll tell you what well do. We'll cut the philosophy — fair enough, it isn't your line, I can understand that — and get down to brass tacks. OK?'
Truck shrugged stonily.
'Well then, about this propaganda machine: we know you can control it. It's in your genes.' He grinned ingratiatingly and repeated, 'Your genes,' He narrowed his eyes, as if that might enable him to spot the actual deformity, there in the bone. 'Captain,' he said, 'I'm empowered to offer you the rank of Hero of the UASR.' His eyes bulged at the thought of it 'Also — wait for it! — immediate honorary professorship in Political Philosophy at Cairo University. New Cairo, that is, of course. What do you think of that?'
It was everything he'd ever wanted, you could see that.
'I think you're a clown.'
'Captain, Captain. You're a spacer. You owe the Zionists nothing. Plenty of the hinterland people are committed to a Socialist Galaxy' — it had been fashionable, a couple of years before the New Music — 'even your wife, Captain. She was once a member of the Party — '
'Oh, shit.' Truck got to his feet, stormed across the room to confront ben Barka. 'I'm sick of this little idiot,' he said. 'Can I go now?'
'Sit down!' yelped the PCO. He danced around in the doorway, fumbling for something in his belt, his nose running horribly.
'No. Look, ben Barka, you don't really have anything in common with this wretched little commissar and his rubbish? You don't really agree with that stuff?'
The colonel blinked once, slowly. Beyond his initial nod, he hadn't once acknowledged the existence of the PCO. Now he brooded on the man's crumpled uniform and great raw ears. He smiled faintly. 'Yes, I think I do.' After a while, 'Yes, I do.' In his eyes, the remnants of an old dream, dissolving wadis, camels, and fellaheen fading into insubstantiality.
'Then you and Alice Gaw make a fine pair. God help you both.'
The PCO had succeeded in hauling out an enormous Chambers gun and was waving it about. 'I'm arresting you,' he shouted, 'in the name of the Peoples of the Galaxy.' Sick and hollow, Truck limped out. 'You'll co-operate. The exigencies of the class struggle demand it!' In the doorway, fumes from the chancy old reactor catching at his throat, Truck stared back over the greasy, bobbing head of his monkey captor. Ben Barka was sitting on the camp bed. Nothing but an old dream. Sand dunes and an old, sold-out dream.
Outside, filled with disgust, he tried to kick the PCO's face in. But the hashishin, who'd been hanging about in the gloom in anticipation of just such a contingency, grinned and threw him down a flight of steps. They were careful not to hurt him much, and he guessed their orders were to treat him decently unless the other side looked like getting hold of him. It was West Central and Nodes all over again.
They put him in the Cowper stove of the furnace. Someone had long ago ripped out the checkerwork, disconnected the blast pipes, and hacked out a crude door about a foot above ground level. What remained was a domed steel shell, all its ducts but one plugged and welded, and that one too high to reach. From it issued a sluggish trickle of warm air lighted by some peculiar inner quality caused by its passage over the reactor fire, so that his breath took on the palest yellow tinge as he mooched about sucking his split lip. He was too galled to care.
If Grishkin's lunatic violation of his innards in the Cathedral of Intestinal Revelation had robbed him of his sense of proportion — what Pater had called his 'fine vulgar iconoclasm' — ben Barka's scruffy little retreat among the rubbish was doing a lot to restore it. He knew a wrecking yard when he saw one, and he remembered the PCO from innumerable hinterland corners: snotty-nosed, one foot in the gutter, leaving small toothmarks on the bone.
It was a pusher's Galaxy all right.
After a bit, he reviewed his situation. His assault on the PCO, however satisfying, had been by nature an exploration; next time, he expected to get the Chambers pistol. He retrieved the knuckleduster from his boot, paced round a few more times — hobbling and cursing — to work the stiffness out of his bruised right arch, then squatted down to wait in a position that would put him behind the door next time it opened.
It stayed shut for nearly three hours.
He worried because he needed darkness, and the dawn must be near. He dozed off, he woke up with a guilty start. His stomach grumbled, his legs developed pins and needles. He recalled the holograms of Howell, and conceived a sudden retrospective lust for sallow Heloise, uncrowned queen of the Aesthetic Asteroid. Grinning into the luteous gloom, be clenched a fist and rubbed the cold steel knuckles against his cheek…
The sides of the Cowper stove boomed faintly as someone outside kicked at the door. He shot to his feet, sweating. He was only partly upright when the door slammed back — grabbed at it for support, found it swinging further toward him as a result, and was shoved painfully into the wall. So much for ambush. Sodding and blinding, he extricated himself and rolled out of the closing gap into the yellow arena -
White light pinned him crouching to the scaly floor like a child caught in the awful act.
'You watch it, spacer,' said a soft voice. 'What you doing in there?'
He sat on his right hand to hide the knuckleduster, blinked.
'Hey,' he whined placatingly, 'that hurts. I was having — ' Flapped his left hand in front of his eyes. The light went out.
'Fetch him here,' ordered the PCO, who'd sensibly sent a couple of commandos through ahead of him. They grinned at one another, pistols dangling negligently from their hard thick fingers. One of them shrugged and advanced.