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by going to them for a defensive gun?"
"I did."
She hesitated; then asked coldly, "What was the matter. Did your courage fail you
when it came to the point of using it to defend yourself from arrest?"
Watching him, she knew she shouldn't have said that. It left her open to a retort
which, she realized, might be devastating. Her fear was justified.
Sanders said, "No, Your Majesty. I did exactly what some of the other-uh-
deserters did. I took off my uniform and went to a weapon shop, intending to buy
a gun. But the door wouldn't open. It appears that I am one of the few officers
who believe that the Isher family is the more important of the two facets of Isher
civilization."
His eyes had been bright as he spoke. Now they grew depressed again. "I am," he
said, "in exactly the position you want to put everybody into. I have no way to
turn. I must accept your law; must accept secret declarations of war on an
institution that is as much a part of Isher civilization as the House of Isher itself;
must accept death if you decree it, without a chance to defend myself in open
battle. Your Majesty," he finished quietly, "I respect and admire you. The officers
who deserted are not scoundrels. They were merely confronted with a choice and
they chose not to participate in an attack on things as they are. I doubt if I could
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put it more honestly than that."
She doubted it too. Here was a man who would never understand the realistic
necessity of what she was doing.
After she dismissed him she noted his name in her check-file, commenting that
she wanted to hear the verdict of his court martial. The action of writing the
words reminded her of her inability to remember the name of the man whom
Colonel Medlon was to produce by morning. She leafed the pages, and found it
immediately. "Cayle Clark," she said aloud. "That's he." She realized that it was
now time to go to the Treasury Department and hear all the reasons why it was
impossible to spend more money. With a tired smile, she went out of the study
and took a private elevator up to the fiftieth floor.
CHAPTER XXIV
WE WERE married (said Lucy in her disjointed report to the coordination
department of the weapon shops) shortly before noon, Friday, the day he landed
from Mars. I do not know how to account for the fact that a later check-up
revealed he had not landed until 2 o'clock, nor have I confronted him with this
information. I will ask him about it only if I am specifically requested to do so. I
do not desire to guess how he was able to marry me before the hour of the ship's
arrival. There is no question in my mind, however. The man I married is Cayle
Clark. It is impossible that I have been fooled by somebody representing himself
to be Cayk. He has just made his daily 'stat call to me, but he doesn't know that I
am making this report. I'm beginning to feel that it is wrong for me to make any
reports whatever about him. However, the general circumstances being what they
are, I am as requested, trying to recall every detail of what happened. I will begin
with the moment that I received a 'stat call from him on the morning of his
arrival from Mars.
The time as I remember it was about half past ten. That conversation was
extremely brief. We exchanged greetings, and then he asked me to marry him. My
feelings about Cayle Clark are well known to the head of the Coordination
Department. And I am sure Mr. Hedrock will not be surprised that I agreed
instantly to the proposal, and that we signed our marriage declarations on the
registered circuit a few minutes before noon the same morning. We then went to
my apartment, where, with one interruption, we remained the rest of that day
and that night. The interruption came at a quarter to two when he asked me if I
would take a walk around the block while he used my 'stat for a call. He didn't say
whether the call would be incoming or out-going but, on returning, I noticed on
the 'stat meter that it had been an incoming call.
I do not apologize for leaving the apartment at his request. My acquiescence
seems to me, normal. During the course of the day and evening, he made no
further reference to the call but instead described to me everything that had
happened to him since I last saw him in the House of Illusion. I do confess that
his account at times was not so clear as it might have been and he more than once
gave me the impression that he was relating events which had happened to him a
considerable time ago. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]