第17节

The smell of their bodies, their huts and their food made his bile rise

and during the first week he had been physically sick several times.

Yet within a month he had become totally acclimatised, so that now, the

filtered, purified air pumped out and sucked in through the countless

vents and grilles throughout the Federation seemed positively thin and

stale; all the 'fiavour' had been processed out of it.

As he washed his hands, Steve tried to work out the reason for the

noticeable change in the attitude of his escort. He decided that

Delaney and Gazzara must be the afternoon shift. On the other hand,

they might be two of the original bunch who, having temporarily vented

their aggression, were now resting between rounds. Whatever the

answer, Steve did not intend to probe the limits of their new-found

amiability. He knocked on the door.

Delaney stepped inside and unfolded the hood.

'Thanks for giving me a chance to breathe,' said Steve.

'Don't understand why you're dressed up in this gear in the first

place,' grunted Delaney. 'A guy with your connections. If we get an

empty car at Lubbock, I'll pull it again so's you can watch some tv."

'Terrific." Steve bowed his head so that Delaney, who was a little on

the short side, could replace the hood without having to climb on the

can. So that was it, thought Steve, as darkness enveloped him. His

escort had unearthed the fact that he and the State Provost-Marshal

were kin and were hedging their bets in case he was acquitted and came

back into circulation.

Good thinking, Delaney. I'll get back to you later, you little

creep.

You can help me track down those six guys who hauled me off the

ramp...

Delaney sounded disappointed when the carriage didn't empty at Reagan

Field. Steve did not mind missing the video being shown on that

particular run and declined the offer to listen to the sound track over

one of the headsets provided for passengers. 'There are people

around,' he explained diplomatically. 'I don't want you guys getting

into trouble."

The truth was slightly different. Even before he had gone overground

and discovered the world of the Plainfolk, Steve had never been an avid

viewer of Federation tv. Apart from the vocational and archive

channels, the programming was as bland as the air being pumped by those

Zed-heads in the A-Levels; blue-sky balladeers and processed

inspirational pap interspersed with newscasts composed, of the most

part, of mind-numbing trivia.

For Steve, the turn-off had begun somewhere around his sixth or seventh

year and the inability to swallow this uninspired diet had increased as

he grew older. Roz, who was two years younger, had confessed to having

a similar rejection problem and it was this shared aversion that had

led them to believe that they were somehow different; superior. This

belief in their 'otherness' had become their secret and throughout

their brief childhood, they had been inseparable. By the time he was

fourteen - the age at which, in the Federation, you were regarded as an

adult - Steve, who admitted no other friends, was aware that the

relationship between Roz and himself went beyond the bounds of kinship

as defined by the Manual.

Leaving Roosevelt Field to begin his year of labour service with the

Young Pioneers, Steve had pretended not to care about being parted from

Roz. He had become skilled at camouflaging his true feelings, but soon

after starting work on the last lap of the shuttleway to Phoenix,

Arizona, he had been troubled by the discovery that, on certain

occasions, he and Roz were together even when they were hundreds of

miles apart.

He had said nothing about this to his sister but, in the few days he

had spent with her between leaving the Flight Academy and joining his

wagon-train, Roz had revealed that she had been in mental contact with

him during his first overground solo. She had experienced the same

heart-stopping sensation as he soared off the ramp and caught his first

glimpse of the overground; had seen, deep within her mind, the same

great glorious sweep of earth and sky.

The strength of his feelings for Roz, which he had never fully revealed

to her or dared admit to himself, were only surpassed by his response

to Clearwater, the female Mute - no, that was wrong - the Mute girl

with whom he . . . Christopher! It was too painful to think about.

From the moment he first set eyes on her on the night he had been

called upon to bite the arrow, he had been plagued by po