LE Modesitt The Forever Hero 3 The Endless Twilight

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standard, nonrefundable if the charges are dropped."
"Your print, honored counselor?"
"Certainly. Here is my card, and the verification of the credited bond
deposit." , Wadrup squinted again, fighting dizziness, trying to hold his
vision in focus.
The civilian counselor turned.
"Ser Wadrup, if you can manage another fifty meters, my electrocar is waiting
for us . . ."
"I'll manage."
Wadrup followed the heavier man through another portal and down another
corridor, passing
Planetary Police as they went. A third portal opened into the main lobby of
the University Police Station, from where the police insured order for the
complex that included five colleges and three universities. There were no
others on Barcelon, and the reasons for such centralization had become clear
to Hein Wadrup only after he had been picked up after trying to obtain forged
working papers necessary to get a job to raise the funds necessary to leave
Barcelon.
Outside the station stood a squarish, high-status electrocar, shining black.
The rear door was being held open by a narrow-faced and well-muscled woman in
a tight-fitting olive uniform.
Wadrup collapsed through the opening and onto the soft seat.
Almost immediately, the door shut, and the car began to move, smoothly, but
with increasing speed.
Wadrup relaxed, too exhausted to hold on to consciousness.
"Wadrup!"
"Just carry him. Get him to the flitter."
The former student could feel himself being half carried, half lifted out of
the car and through the dampness he had come to associate with Barcelon.
Hands strapped him to some sort of seat, and beneath him, he could hear the
whine of turbines.
Again he lost consciousness.
When he woke, he could feel the stillness around him, broken only by the faint
hiss of a ventilation system.
"Passenger is awake."
"Thanks."
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"Passenger?" he blurted, even as he tried to sit up in the narrow bunk into
which he was strapped.
"Just lie there. Nothing wrong with you that rest, food, and a good physical
conditioning course won't solve."
Wadrup turned toward the voice, but his eyes refused to focus on the blackness
that seemed to speak.
"Don't worry about your vision. You can't see me. Partly for your protection,
but mostly for mine."
"I am obviously in your debt, whoever you are, but would you care to offer any
explanation?"
"Let us say that there are few enough people around with the capability to
think, and it would be a pity if the iron-fisted government of Barcelon or any
other water-empire system wasted that ability."
"You want something."
"Yes, but not anything with which you would disagree."
"Are you going to explain?"
"Shortly, but take a sip of this first."
"Drugs?"
"No. High sustenance broth. Want you thinking more clearly."
Wadrup watched as what seemed an arm of darkness touched the underside of the
bunk, and the harness released. He sat up and took the cup of broth,
half-amused that he could not see his benefactor, even while the man stood
nearly beside him. From the light baritone timbre of the voice, he assumed
that the speaker was male, but who could be sure? Who could be sure of
anything these days?
He sipped the broth slowly.
"Be back in a moment. Please stay where you are."
The graduate student found he could drink less than half the liquid, so
shrunken was his stomach.
Holding the cup, he surveyed his quarters.
The bunk where he sat propped up was set into metal walls. Across the room to
his left was another metal wall, punctuated with a closed and narrow doorway,
four lockers, and two sets of four drawers built into the wall. The actual
floor space measured less than three by four meters, perhaps as little as two
and a half by three. The metallic ceiling was slightly more than two meters
overhead.
In the middle of the bulkhead which ran from the foot of the bunk to the wall
with the lockers was a squared archway into another compartment, but from the
bunk all that Wadrup could see was another indistinct metallic wall, lost in
the dimmer light of the adjoining room.
Wadrup puffed out his cheeks in puzzlement. He was missing something obvious.
He squinted and lifted the broth to his lips, taking another sip and slow
swallow.
"Feeling better?"
"What can I call you? Ser Blackness? I don't like not being able to see
people."
"Well . . . you could use Blackness, or Hermer. That's not my name, but it
means something to me without meaning anything to you."
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"All right, Ser . . . Hermer. You posted a fifty-thousand-credit bond. You
didn't do it for nothing. What do you want?" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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