man who'd offered to shoot him was enjoying Renzo's panic rather a lot, and would have hated to cut his entertainment short, by cutting Renzo's life short.
Gills wasn't sure what to think.
Someone obviously from his own breed, but just as obviously not a pilot, but who had an unmistakable air of authority, and who obviously commanded his jailors, had come several times to see him. The man had, weirdly, insisted upon talking about God, but not as a primitive misunderstanding of the Life Force which must be rooted out from the intellectual landscape. You'd even think he thought that the Life Force was a primitive, watered down, misleading mischaracterization of God.
Well, that only served to prove that he was indeed amongst the subhumans he'd been taught to hate since boyhood – except, it didn't prove it at all. Subhumans weren't supposed to be so intelligent, or so educated.
So this had to be a psychological test, just like he'd thought at first.
But such tests never went on this long, did they?
And, surely, the government wouldn't be handing him thought-contaminated reading material?
It made no sense.
That many of the people around him seemed possessed of a peace he'd never felt also made no sense. Had he not always striven to be loyal? Did he not always do his duty? Was he not one of the best pilots around? Did he not score well on tests? Had he not felt secure, within reasonable and proper limits?
He felt a surge of anger. The activities that had given him a sense of worth were being denied to him, and he wanted to know why – but of course a loyal citizen did not ever question the government openly.
The thought-contaminated literature had mentioned something about a man's worth not being determined solely by what he was able to do. It was tempting to think so, now that he couldn't do much of anything.
He hardened his mind, and set about doing physical exercises. That was a duty they hadn't prevented him from doing, by locking him up.
Lt. Ott was relatively pleased with how things seemed to be going. According to a classified report just delivered to him, the topside government had handled the disappearance of one of its helicopters and two of its pilots by simply erasing them from the inventory. He'd half expected that, had, indeed, half counted on that.
Subterran spies in the helicopter department, properly wary, had watched for signs that there were unofficial investigations afoot, but had seen or heard of none. This also wasn't surprising. The topside government in this part of the world had gone so dully bureaucratic that it routinely wrote off even huge assets. As far as he could tell, their reasoning (if you could call it that) was that the Future, the all-glorious and apparently magical Future, would find a way to make up for it, so there was no need to concern yourself now with silly things like resources and costs that failed to add up. Again, he'd half expected this, and was relieved. It made it far less likely that there would be trouble, much less of a shooting-at-each-other-until-one-side-is-decimated type of trouble.
He felt a twinge of something like guilt. Although there was nothing wrong with wanting to avoid bloodshed if possible, or with wanting to avoid defeat at the hands of a far more powerful and populated topside, still, something in him balked at accepting the stalemate that his generation had been handed by the generation before it, and the one before that, and so on, back four or five generations. That this part of the world was one of the last to fall to the "Era" series of global governments was a source of pride, but that pride only went so far. It was humiliating to be stuck with living in tunnels, surviving your wannabe rulers only by staying undiscovered. He'd rather, far rather, find some way to live above ground, in a world made, if not right, at least right enough for free men to function in it.
On a different front, he was pleased that his men seemed to be back to behaving like a unit again. Barry's mistaken defense of the town against friendly forces had ripped the troops apart, but they were mostly back together now. Barry wasn't popular, but he'd never been popular, so there was no reason to expect it now. As long as the men worked together, that was all that mattered, really.
There was a knock on his door. "Just a minute," he called out. He turned on the room's exhaust fan to suck out the smoke and burned the classified report, before answering the door.
Anthony Davis offered to come back elsewhen, if this was a bad time.
"No, no, come in," Ott said, waving him in. "I'm in update mode. Give me whatever you've got."
Anthony got comfortable in a chair, and sniffed the air.
"It's all right," Ott said. "I've got the door closed tightly and the soundproofing curtains up."
Anthony grinned. "Was I going to say anything about the faintest hints of fresh smoke in the air? Was I?"
"Wouldn't blame you if you did."
"I thought that messenger I passed in the hall had the look of an unburdened man. It must be tough carrying news you're asked to die to protect."
Ott decided not to say anything.
"For what it's worth, I don't think the other guys noticed. They're so used to stress these days, I think it struck them as normal," Anthony said.
"Speaking of that, how's it going among the men, from your perspective?"
"It's about what you'd expect, except perhaps for one thing."
"What's that?"
"Are you sitting down mentally as well as physically?"
"More or less. Just so you know, though, I have been known to come across the desk at men who played with me. Including pastors."
"Ah, you're no fun. But, anyway, Barry is showing what appears to be real humility. Nearly killing a colleague seems to have shaken him up in a good way. He's been going around apologizing to people, repaying debts, that sort of thing."
"So, are we looking at a conversion, or somebody getting ready to kill himself and tying up loose ends first, or what?"
"Time will tell. But all the signs are toward conversion, or conversion prep. He hasn't tossed himself at the foot of the cross yet, as far as I know. But he's asking the right questions, and is appalled with himself in what appears to be a healthy way."
"And you're telling me this, why?"
"Because I'm afraid that if he converts, some of the guys are going to try to keep him the same old Barry, their favorite scapegoat. And if they do, I'm going to be going into full scale shepherd mode."
"As if you aren't that most of the time."
"Oh, no. You've never seen me protecting a baby Christian who's under attack. I go staff and rod big time for the babies."
Ott held his tongue. He never had understood the way some Christians talked about baby Christians, and mature Christians, or spiritual warfare, for that matter.
Anthony knew this, but just smiled gently at him, in a way that he knew got under the lieutenant's skin.
"Changing the subject slightly, how's Harvey?" Ott asked.
"Doing well enough to chafe at being paralyzed," Anthony reported. "Past that, you'd better ask him or his medical team, I think."
"I suppose you're about to make him a good Christian, too," Ott said.
"For the record, Warren, I can no more turn a man into a Christian than you can turn a mug of mud into gold. God does that part of the job. I just feed His flock what they need to grow, and try to chase or drag them back onto the path when they fall off it. Also for the record, I can see you're busy. If there's anything you want to talk about, I'm available. If not, I'm out of here."
"Thanks. I am busy. If you don't mind?"
"I'm easy enough to track down, if you change your mind," Anthony said. He stood. "Oh, a side question. If for Sunday's sermon I were to choose between Joseph going down to Egypt, or Saul becoming Paul, is there one you'd prefer? Or is there something else you'd like emphasized?"
"Nope. All yours."
"Not a problem," Anthony said, and left.
Behind him, it slowly dawned on the lieutenant that the pastor had, among others, meant him when he'd said he was afraid some of the guys were going to try to keep Barry their
same old favorite scapegoat. "Why, Tony, you old reprobate, you know me better than that," he thought, sliding back into thinking of the pastor as he did when they were both somewhat unpromising teens. Before, ahem, Tony had converted… Before he'd become Rev. Anthony Davis – who bore only a slight resemblance to the person he had grown up with…
"Points to Anthony," he mumbled, before turning back to work.
Renzo at first ventured out of his cave only at night, not wanting to be seen.
He carefully rationed his food. This galled him. He'd never eaten much, gladly complying with the low calorie program approved by the scientists in charge of his breed. To try to eke by on less than that was simply unacceptable.
He looked at his stash of ammo, and nearly lost his mind. He'd have been able to buy more time, if he'd been able to hunt food.
A new thought struck him. If Julia's bow and arrows hadn't been collected, perhaps he could use them? They weren't as good as a gun, but even Julia, a mere Collie, and a woman on top of that, had killed a grown wolf with a well-placed arrow.
The well-washed part of his mind reminded him that the bow and arrows belonged to the government. This held him back for a little while, until he decided that they really couldn't do worse to him than they were already doing. He wanted to get more food from the haystack anyway. That where he needed to go for something else was where he needed to check for the bow gave him a strange feeling that he really was