slave," said the officer loftily, "that what has touched Her Highness is never suffered to be employed in less honorable work. It is due only to the extraordinary grace and clemency of his Excellency that you escape the same treatment. Go."
Winchester surveyed him coolly from head to foot.
"Why, you pompous little monkey!" he said, and spat with pointed emphasis.
With great deliberation he picked up the small ax, which of all the equipment he had brought to the scene was the only remaining bit. Then he walked away, leaving the dumbfounded guard officer blinking.
As he passed the motorcar, he tossed the ax upon it, and went on by. He expected a roar of protest and a demand for explanations from the knot of refrigeration men gathered about, but they backed away and said nothing. When he reached his own place of operations, he observed the same phenomenon.
The convicts averted their faces and pretended not to see him, while the guards looked at him with expressions akin to awe. All were uneasy and uncertain what to do.
"Well?" growled Winchester, slightly disconcerted himself. There was something uncanny about the abrupt change of attitude.
"We did not know, O Excellency," cried the head guard, breaking down and falling to his knees. "We watched from afar, not daring to go to help unless called — "
"Bosh!" snorted Winchester. "So now you think I'm a little tin god!"
He leaped to the deck of the moss-laden flat-car, anxious to hide his inner turmoil.
"Okay, men, bear a hand. Hoist me again and send up a basket of moss. We've lost a good hour with this disturbance."
Mouths gaping, the guards stood about like dummies.
The gang rode home that night in stolid silence. Winchester took his usual place in line and went through the routine of being counted. At last the mustered convicts shuffled on, eager for the comparative liberty of the vast arena, where there was at least the illusion of privacy. Winchester shuffled along with them. No one had told him otherwise. Lohan's machinery would move in due time and in its own way.
It moved sooner than he expected.
A guard plucked him by the sleeve. Winchester stepped out of line.
"This way, you," said the guard, and pushed him along a wing passage.
They went down it until it turned into another. At that corner Winchester noticed the stonework had been nicked where a fiery blast had cut through. Below the splintery face of the stone, hardened slag hung.
Winchester recognized the spot and smiled ironically to himself. The last time he had traversed this passage, a guard had fired that bolt at him — and missed! Was it an omen?
They stopped before a bronze door. The guard flashed something held in the palm of his hand against an invisible watchman. Somewhere there was a click, and the door began to swing inward slowly.
"In there, you!" and the guard gave his prisoner a vicious shove.
CHAPTER XI
Universe in a Thimble
The man seated behind the desk might easily have been taken for an American businessman of the Twentieth Century, except that he wore a gold-edged toga of deep green. Winchester checked the headlong plunge imparted to him by his guide's farewell push, and managed to keep from sprawling across the desk.
"Sit down, won't you?" said the man pleasantly, as the great bronze door clicked shut. "Sorry about the entrance, but that was staged for the benefit of the scanners at each end of the hall. We have to efface the unfortunate impression made this afternoon."
He glanced at a jeweled chronometer.
"By now all the witnesses to the incident have been executed, so we may expect no trouble hereafter on that score."
Winchester sat down limply, almost overcome by the horror of what he had just heard. That horror was heightened immeasurably by the cool indifference with which the words were uttered. All the witnesses!
"All who enter our service," the man went on smoothly, "must serve an apprenticeship. It is necessary at times to act a part. To do that effectively, you must first know the part, and what is expected of it. Upon how well you do it will depend the importance of your succeeding assignment.
"I need not tell you that great prudence and restraint is required of everyone. The penalties for failure in that respect are — well, uh — rather drastic."
He smiled at Winchester. Winchester's nails bit into his palms, and his jaw muscles were as iron, but he managed to relax them enough to mumble, "I understand."
The man in green picked up a thick folder and slid it across the desk-top toward his visitor.
"This is the dossier that will precede you to your next place of employment. So far as the chiefs there know, it is the complete picture of your life since birth. I need not remind you that it has nothing whatever to do with the real record we keep of you here."
Winchester picked up the mass of documents with numb fingers and sat looking blankly at the cover. There were a mass of code numbers and file references which meant nothing to him; but his name was there.
"You will take this dossier into the next room and study it until you know it by heart, as you will never see it again. The pages on green paper are supposed to be confidential. That is, they are things which the authorities know about you which you presumably do not know about yourself. It is important that you read these, too, as it rounds out the character you will have to assume.
"You may throw away those food pellets you brought in with you. In the room you will find better food, and a place to sleep whenever you feel the need of rest. When you feel that you are quite ready to proceed to the next step, ring the call bell on the table."
The man in green smiled again, and bowed slightly in dismissal. He indicated which of the three inner doors led to the room mentioned. Winchester got up awkwardly, hugging the false story of his life. He managed to get out of the room without stumbling, though everything he saw, he saw through a bloody haze.
He had felt anger before, but never the cold urge to kill that he had fought to suppress all through the interview. The AFPA chief, if that was what he was, inspired in him an almost overpowering hatred.
The more Winchester read, the greater grew his astonishment at the system's diabolical cunning. How the basic data had been obtained, he could not guess, unless it had been taken from him during one of his periods of semi-consciousness during torture. But there were his fingerprints, a multitude of photographs from every angle, the arterial and venous designs on his eyeballs, his blood type, and a myriad of other unfakable details.
His parentage — individual numbers given — was recorded in full, as was the mythical place of his birth. In an attached appendix were photographs of his imaginary father and mother, other relatives, the street map of his home village and photographs of it in summer and winter.
In the appendix also was an account of his early apprenticeship to the trade of gardener, and full information as to what the garden contained, as well as a treatise on what he was supposed to know about horticulture.
On, on the voluminous book went. He had been stationed in Mars, it appeared, at a much later date, and there achieved distinction as a botanical expert. In fact, he had a letter from the director of the Martian Experimental Farm praising his work highly. He had been elevated to the rank of Scientist, third grade, and later promoted to first.
That rank, a parenthetical note informed Winchester, had really been awarded to his false personality to allow him to evade the rules concerning kow-tow. First class scientists had to kow-tow only to the wearers of the yellow.
He came to the end of his life-story with something akin to admiration.