glad to hear it. I'm going to remind you, in case you've forgotten, that if you examine your conscience and find garbage in there, it's all right to take communion after that, if you recognize it as garbage and turn away from it. I can give you private communion if you want."
Harvey hesitated. He wanted communion. Wanted it badly, but, "Better not. I've made it to the 'calling it garbage, but wanting to hang onto it' stage. Not further."
"That is a problem. Do you want to try confessing to me?"
"Wish I could say yes, but no."
"I'm around, when you're ready. In case you've forgotten, trying to do this on your own is a bad idea. Prayer, man. Prayer. Get the Holy Spirit on it."
"I know. I remember. For that matter, I thought I was doing pretty good in private topside."
"But you weren't?"
"Apparently not. Don't you have rounds to make?"
Anthony walked his brother to the Ott home. Stanley steered his charge back to base. Ott was too busy to see them, and Gills was sleeping like a baby, so Stanley took Harvey back to his suite and left him there. Having been subjected to shepherding in the meantime, Harvey looked around and thought he saw clues that there were hidden cameras and microphones. It would be only right, considering how many Subterran agents had been known to switch sides while serving up top, not because they found the topside society better, but because they fell into a need to work for the benefit of the society that held their life in its hands. People could be funny that way. Usually such folks recovered after they got back among nonserfs and out of sight again, but sometimes they didn't. People could be funny that way, too.
After deciding to rescue the cattle herder for the good of Society, Renzo immediately ran into worrisome complications.
First off, the woman was hurt more seriously than he'd first realized. In addition to leg injuries, she'd been bitten on the abdomen, arms, neck and head. This robbed him of any good excuse for not having reported her immediately to the people who determined who qualified for personhood. He decided to handle this problem by hoping she'd get well enough soon enough to put him into the right before anyone found out about the whole mess.
Second, there was no way to clean her wounds, or check for more wounds, without seeing her body, and handling her body. For unknown reasons (at least to a man who'd been raised in deliberate ignorance), this kept triggering physical reactions and waves of emotion.
Luckily for Julia, Renzo would have rather died than admit to a superior that he couldn't control himself around a woman. So he clenched his jaw, and did his best to corral his reactions, and to get her covered up again as quickly as possible.
Unluckily for Renzo, he couldn't erase the images from his mind, or the emotions from his memory, no matter how hard he tried. Worse yet (from the perspective of a man who had freshly resolved to be the best Citizen Officer ever assigned to that post), he wasn't feeling like trying very hard.
He turned some of his attention to other bothersome matters. He had only five days until his suppliers showed up, but he was certain he could hide her from his suppliers. But then there were his superiors, who communicated with him at the drop of a hat, who needed to be kept in the dark until Julia got better, or until he could come up with a good plan. His poorly educated mind made a few loops of faulty logic, and came up with the idea of turning off the power so the Informers would die again. This, he figured, would at least buy him some time. He went to the control box and flipped the switches. For good measure, after checking to make sure that Julia was sleeping moderately well and breathing more or less evenly, he jogged to her hut and turned off the power there.
He thought of appropriating some of her supplies so her supplies were diminished just as expected, while his weren't diminished more than usual. But already his mind was working on the idea that perhaps the best course of action would be to answer inquiries about her (if any) with the truthful (as far as it went) statement that they'd been having trouble with wolves, as they could see for themselves from the evidence – and then hoping that the officials would assume that Julia had been carted off and presumably devoured by said wolves. That course of action pleased him more and more as he thought about it. If she got well, she could show up again, and reclaim her post as one who had emerged victorious over exceptional hardships. If she didn't get well enough by government standards, he could keep her hidden somewhere – perhaps that cave he'd found by accident a few months ago would do – and the government could replace her with another herder, and he could have this herder all to himself.
That thought nestled into his mind, and made itself cozy. He tried to dislodge it by protesting that he wanted his neighbor to get perfectly well for the good of Society, since she was such a good cattle herder. But his pesky imagination reminded him that nearly all Era government officials had human pets, and surely, surely, given his favored status as a Citizen Officer in a solo post, surely he deserved one, too; but since he wasn't highly enough ranked for a healthy pet, it would be only right for him to settle for a scarred, second rate one, should one just happen to become available.
Besides, if he kept her hidden, all to himself, no one would ever know that he'd decided to take care of her without authorization.
Soon, he had a whole list of reasons falling over each other, justifying the idea of keeping Julia out of sight, all to himself.
It is a curious aspect of human societies that the harder those in power try to make life predictable and safe, the less people can trust one another. While Renzo hadn't come to this realization yet, Julia had, at least in a primitive way. She didn't trust Renzo, nor did she feel particularly compelled, particularly at the moment, of being trustworthy herself. If going along with the birdwatcher's cracked schemes was what it took to survive, she'd go along as far as she dared. His idea of hiding her while she was disabled was probably her only chance, whether he knew it or not. She wasn't elite enough to warrant extensive medical care, nor was it likely that those in charge of the department would see any reason to help her with even moderate care just now, given how many Collies were available, with nothing to do until an opening was made available through the death of someone in the field. On top of that, since the government counted population control as one of the highest and best aims of man, it didn't much hesitate to hasten the death of anyone who wasn't presently useful. To hope for help from anyone except Renzo was therefore pointless.
Julia couldn't decide if Renzo was trying to help her – as he'd said, quite earnestly and apparently forthrightly – or if he was a government agent, trying to trap her in disloyalty. To be on the safe side, she decided to protest anything that struck her as unorthodox enough to bother about – but feebly, hoping to not put unfortunate doubts into his head should he really be haplessly trying to help her.
Sometime during the first night, she more or less resigned herself to her fate, whatever it was. This let her get some sleep. When she woke up, the resignation evaporated. It didn't help that she had trouble moving her neck, and so had trouble looking around the room to find her rescuer/captor. Finally she saw him, sleeping in a corner of the room, on the floor, with his back to her. She might have been encouraged if she'd known that he'd retreated to the corner and turned away from her as a way of doing battle with a temptation to crawl into bed with her. But all she saw was a man who had his back to her, and was sleeping on the floor instead of somewhere more reasonable.
Renzo woke soon afterward, and fixed them both breakfast. He went out to do his bird count when it was time to do his bird count, whereupon he realized one of the shortcomings of his idea of killing the Informers. If he sent in his tally as if everything was normal, he didn't know how to square that with knowingly having no power, but not reporting it. His mind went around a few circles a few times, and finally saw no way out but to turn in the report, turn the power back on, and immediately get on with publicly pretending that Julia had probably been carted off by wolves. Her supervisors could muddle through however they wanted. Besides, that w
ould mean they'd send another herder right away, and the cattle – valuable government assets – would get the supervision they should get. His supervisors had never asked him about the herder or her business, nor should they. If they did, he could claim a proper ignorance of her whereabouts or wellbeing. A few more mental loops later, he dove into the new plan with enthusiasm. He turned in his bird tally, jogged over to turn on the power at the herder's hut, ran up the hill to his cabin and got the power back on there, swept Julia into his arms, and headed for the cave he had in mind for her.
Julia was alarmed almost out of her mind until it dawned on her that no one in politically correct mode would behave like this. This relieved her of her fear of him being a government agent out to trap her in disloyalty. However, she had understandable and growing doubts about Renzo's ability to handle the situation without getting them both killed for not behaving like good little puppets. For now, though, there was nothing for it but to be carried away, literally, if unwillingly.
Renzo's cave turned out to be the ruins of a dugout cabin used by antiserfs in the early days of totalitarianism. He got Julia