by Colin Kapp
"Fight?" Dam was momentarily surprised, then realized the colonel was looking at the bruises and contusions on his face. "No fight, Colonel. These are just reflections of the judicial zeal of the military police. Here a colonial is considered guilty whether or not he's committed a crime."
"Did you commit a crime?"
Dam launched once again into an account of the events leading up to his present predicament. Dimede listened carefully and asked a few questions of his own.
"It's a wretched business, Dam. I'll get a message through to our Government Agents and ask them to intervene. If we can't get the charge retracted we might be able to force the trial venue to some world where at least you'll get a fair hearing. But don't build your hopes too high. You're not the first to whom something like this has happened, and our interventions have not always been successful."
"I don't see," said Dam, "what anybody has to gain by putting me in this situation."
"Revenge?" asked Dimede. "You weren't exactly cooperative with the port marshal."
"Yet when he came here he seemed genuinely surprised to see me. Either the man's a remarkable actor, or else he wasn't involved."
"I'll send a message to Senator Anrouse. Perhaps we can get some government pressure behind this."
"That's another thing. The port marshal was interested in the senator. He thinks he has connections with Hub Intelligence."
Dimede shrugged. "Such matters are outside my province. But nobody would send an officer with your exceptional record on the simple errand of assassinating a prostituteeven if she was also a small-time security agent."
"Can it be arranged for Soo to conduct my defence?"
"We've already been forestalled there, Dam. We're invited to send an observer, but no more. We're appealing against it, but we don't have very much to use as a lever."
In spite of Dimede's attempted intercession, or perhaps because of it, Dam's appearance before a military tribunal was set for a mere three days later. In the interim the Starspite was ordered into space, leaving only Soo Corda behind to do what little she could for Dam. Each time she came to see him she appeared increasingly strained and harassed by the barriers of bureaucracy and probably conspiracy heaped before her, and no reply had been obtained from either the Government Agents or from Castalia itself.
The actual trial was, for Dam, an affair of purest nightmare. During the night the prison doctor had given him an injection of what was supposed to be a tranquilizer. This had done nothing to calm Dam's fears, but had induced a state of mental withdrawal which destroyed his judgment of time and made everything appear as though viewed through the wrong end of a telescope. Even voices seemed minutely distant and difficult to relate to experience.
Bound in the straight-jacket of an unshakable hypnotic state, Dam could only stand dumbly and let his trial proceed. He burned to dispute the certainty of the case offered by the prosecution, but the sense-depriving fog which isolated his consciousness also inhibited his power to react. He found he could respond with little more than a dull yes or no when asked a direct question. Although deeply within him a bright spark of awareness screamed for expression, it was a sullen idiot who stood trial for murder.
The whole day was clamped with an iron cast of wrongness: time contracted to simulate an impossible degree of haste, and the defence acceded all the important points to the prosecution. Dam watched it all in numb horror.
After a while there was a break, and Dam was led away while the tribunal deliberated. In less than fifteen minutesor was it seconds?he was brought back before the distant faces, waiting for the president to enunciate, in crystal-clear yet microscopic tones, the tribunal's findings.
"Major Dam Stormdragon . . . of the space territory of Castalia . . . found guilty on all counts . . . and hereby sentenced to death by military execution . . . within seven days from this time."
"What's that?" asked Damat least he thought he did, but the dark barriers in his mind were closing fast, and probably his lips did not actually move. Faced now with an almost total inability to comprehend his environment, Dam staggered to the rail and tried desperately to collect his mazed senses. All he achieved was violent nausea; after which, and far too late, he felt very much improved.
Soo was waiting for him when he was returned to his cell. She was so angry that tears were streaming down her face. Her right to attend as an observer had been disputed until the trial was half over, the notes she had wished to present to the defence had been impounded, her micro-recorder had been confiscated, and her complaint that Dam had been drugged had led to her eviction from the hearing for being a 'colonial troublemaker' . To complete her despair, she had just been handed a letter from the Castalian Government Agents regretting they had lost the original correspondence, and requesting copies. The letter had, in any case, been delayed two days before delivery. She went away with the stated intention of getting very drunk, and that was the last Dam ever saw of her.
It was several days later that Colonel Dimede made planetfall and came to see him. Dam could see from the colonel's face that he was the bearer of no good news.
"Don't lose hope, Dam! The Castalian government have not yet replied, but there's still time. And Soo has asked for a stay of execution pending an appeal. We're aiming to get the conviction declared void, and asking for a re-trial in some neutral setting. Unfortunately . . ."
"Unfortunately what?" asked Dam.
"The Starspite's been ordered into deep-space for patrol duty. We leave tonight. I'll have to take the whole ship's company, including Soo. So this whole matter will have to rest back in the hands of the Government Agents."
"Who've probably lost the correspondence again," said Dam despondently.
"Honestly, Dam, we've tried every mortal way we know."
"I know, Coloneland thanks! The truth is, we're innocents abroad. We're outclassed by the intrigue and outmanoeuvered by the system. Could I ask you to ensure Tetri gets to know my side of the story?"
"I'll have Liaison send an officer to explain it all. And your record will also bear a full account. Regardless of what happens, this won't reflect less favourably on the name of Stormdragon."
As he watched the colonel's departure, Dam experienced a welling tide of loneliness. To the misfortune of his circumstance had been added a feeling of isolation from his own kind. He was incarcerated in a far place, among people for whom he felt no affinity or kinship, and he could see no way to right the wrongs which had been done to him. After reaching a level of despair beyond which he could progress no further, he began to treat the situation as he had finally treated all the other great crises of his life.
When the guards came to investigate the noise, they were surprised to find him laughing at having travelled thirty thousand light years to achieve so pointless an end.
CHAPTER VIII
On the sixth day Dam was transferred to Death Row. Here some human consideration was shown: he was allowed books and recorded music; and a sheet of unbreakable glass gave him a brief view of a succession of rooftops and a fragment of the street below. Dam spent the entire day with his forehead pressed against the glass, watching people pass in the street and catching occasional snatches of sound from the world outside. One scene that touched him with its irony was when a wandering musicianperhaps the same he had seen that night in the cafe with Tez-anncame and played at the corner of the street. Dam strained his ears for the melody, but too little of the sound came through the glass.
To Dam's surprise, he managed to sleep most of the night without difficulty. It was only the disturbance of Terra's first-light that woke him with a churning stomach and a sick tension induced by the knowledge that this time of waking was to be his last.
There were still four hours before the execution was due to take place when he received an unexpected visitor. From a case a tall, pallid individual produced what Dam recognized as his own service record from the Starspite.
"I should introduce myself. The na
me is Abel. I'm Director of the Para-ion Technological Operations group."
"What's that to me?" Dam saw no reason even to feign politeness.
The man called Abel glanced at his watch. "I regret the late hour, but I've only recently received your records. I'm very impressed. The Hub service academies are doing an excellent job these days."
"Naturally! The Hub is where the fighting is," said Dam. "No alien ever got within ten kiloparsecs of Terra."
"Point taken! It's a record to be proud of."
"To me, it's irrelevant now. If you've something to say, get it over with. I don't intend spending my last hours discussing space academics with a Terran ."
"An understandable viewpointand one I'd share in your circumstances. But paradoxically, it was your excellent academic record which brought me here. It'd be a pity for such talents to be wasted."
"Fiends in space?" Dam was aghast. "Go tell that to the port marshal. Do you think I'm here by choice?"
"I've already spoken with the marshal. That's how I come with a proposition."
"What sort of proposition?"
"We've an experimental commando scientific task-force on Terra. It's been so successful we need to expand it rapidly. Unfortunately, it's a difficult and dangerous job and we're having a hard time getting volunteers. But from somebody like yourself, with nothing to lose and something to gain, the difficulties and hazards might assume a different perspective."
Dam tried to fold his breaking anger beneath an icy calm.
"Was this the reason I was framed for murder in the first place?"
Abel looked surprised. "I know nothing of your reasons for being here. I was unaware even of your existence until a few hours ago."
"Accepting that for the moment," Dam said, "go on with what you were saying."
"I'll make it immediately plain that what I'm offering is not life but merely an alternative to death. Should you accept, you'll be legally certified as having died. Your mind and your body then becomes our property, totally and irrevocably, to use, abuse, or dispose of as we see fit. Thus when we need to insist on iron discipline, we aren't limited by the usual considerations when it comes to enforcement."
"And if I now spit in your face?" asked Dam. "Then your execution will take place just as if this conversation had never existed."
"What makes this commando unit so special?"
"Something known as para-ion techniquerather advanced physics, I'm afraid. By a process of electron stripping and ion pairing, it's possible to transliterate a man into a sentient gaseous plasma state. In this condition he can exist under conditions where no human could exist, survive substantial degrees of weaponfire without injury, be free from a number of physical limitationsand fight very effectively with a specific range of weapons."
"Is this ionized state permanent?"
"No. Its maintenance needs a lot of power. It's therefore applied only for limited periods."
"Which is the difficult bit?"
"All of it. Both mentally and physically. Entry into ion state is equivalent to death, and emergence carries the trauma of re-birth. The only way you go through it is by iron discipline, both self-imposed and that imposed upon you. Especially in the training stages, the demands are frequently above the levels of voluntary acceptance. That's why we need apply extreme methods of coercion in order to achieve proficiency."
"I'd like a while to think it over," said Dam.
Abel glanced at his watch again. "I can give you an hour. But mark this wellthe decision's irrevocable. Should you accept, it'll be no use regretting it later."
Dam returned to his window, where a view of ancient rooftops wet from the drizzle of a grey and cheerless morning seemed fully in keeping with his mood. From Abel's approach, he judged the man to be sincere: given that premise, it was necessary not to underestimate the intimations of hardship and danger. 'Not life, but an alternative to death' seemed an apt summation. His other route was to refuse Abel's offer and accept the finality of execution.
Finalitythis was the key point. While he had life there was always the faint hope of escape. If he opted for death, that hope would be completely lost. He therefore decided to accept the opportunity for continued life, no matter how disagreeable, and work and plan for a means of escape and an eventual return to Castalia. To achieve this he resolved there were no risks he would not take nor suffering he could not endure: because having a goal and a burning ambition to achieve it, was the only mode of living that Dam knew.
When Abel returned, he needed only to look at the resolution on Dam's face to know which way the decision had gone. He took a solitary form from his case.
"What's that?" Dam asked.
"Let's call it the end of an identity. Sign this and you lose everythingname, possessions, human rightsthe lot. It's the point of truth at which so many falter. In return for a signature, we issue a Certificate of Death. If it's any consolation, this is the last document you'll ever have to sign."
Dam read through the large contractural print, with the feeling that a large lump of cold lead was forming in his stomach. At the end he reached for the offered stylus and signed his name broadly and with a deliberate flourish. Abel reached into his case and produced, already written, a Death Certificate in the name of Dam Stormdragon, formerly a major in the Castalian Space Army.
"Think about it," said Abel conversationally. "Not many are privileged to see the document certifying their own demise."
"What happens now?"
"We wait until the time of execution is passed. Then you'll be transferred secretly to the para-ion training centre. Nervous?"
"A little."
"That's good. You'll need a healthy respect for what you're getting into."
"Tell me something. Knowing what you know, yet faced with the same choice as you gave me, which way would you have decided?"
"I'm a coward," said Abel frankly. "I'd have preferred the long sleep to the anxious waking. I think you would too, if you'd thought it through fully. What sustains you is an idea that you can beat the system. It can't be done, but you won't take my word for it."
"You're damn right I won't take your word!"
Abel shrugged. "We rely on it. While you've got hope, you'll be useful. It's when that spark dies that you make the wrong moveor no move at alland I have to look for another canidate."
"Don't you ever hate yourself for what you do?"
Abel did not answer. He had turned away and was arranging the papers in his case. All that Dam could see of his expression was the jutting of his lower lip.
For the period up to the scheduled time of the execution, events continued normally. Then a strange silence came over the corridors outside, as though all the prison guards had been withdrawn. Shortly there came to his cell a squad of armed men who were not of the prison staff and who had no sort of identification on their uniforms . Unlike the rest of the Terran military, these wore cushioned shoes and moved in almost perfect silence. Dam nicknamed them the 'silent brigade', and was careful to follow their unspoken instructions as rapidly as he was able. Having acquired the status of a non-person, he was in no doubt that these grim, quiet men had their own ways of dealing with reluctance.
He was transferred to a hovertruck in which to endure the long journey. Because there were no fittings, he lay on the floor and tried to relax; wondering to what sort of establishment he was being taken, and how realistic was Abel's prediction that the training stages involved demands beyond the level of voluntary acceptance. On his release from the vehicle, his first reaction was one of mild relief. He was in a camp built within a secure compound, but the informal grouping of the huts and modern buildings set between lawns and banks of shrubs gave no hint of a penal atmosphere. His silent guards marched him to a solitary interview room, and there left him handcuffed but unattended.
Soon, a female officer whose tags proclaimed the rank of major came in and sat behind the desk. She was attractive in the sense of having a good f
igure and rare, expressive features, but it was the sheer dominating power of her presence which whipped Dam's breath away. She had no paperwork of any kind, but appeared to be reviewing a mental record before she spoke. Her-voice contained a fine edge of icy contempt.
"Technically, you're dead. That means you don't even have a name. The convention here is that we're all given call-names. Mine is Absolute, for reasons you'll learn to appreciate. What shall I call you?"
Dam opened his mouth to say something, then found he had nothing to say. The woman called Absolute smiled with some malicious vein of deep amusement.
"If my information's correct, you're here because of over-zealous attentions to a girlscarcely hours after arriving on Terra. I think I shall call you Lover. The name promises to develop an interesting irony. Do you understand that . . . Lover?"
She was amusing herself at his expense. Even the way she used the word carried a wealth of implications, none of which seemed remotely credible. With Abel's baleful predictions still fresh in his mind, he decided to adopt as low a profile as possible.
"Yes, Ma-am." he said quietly.
She slammed his cheek with a ruler with such force that it sounded like a pistol shot. Dam's eyes began to water, but he refused to give her the satisfaction of seeing him register pain.
"When addressing personnel, call-names only will be used. That's the first lesson you have to learn."
"Yes . . . Absolute."
"The training you're going to be given will be tougher than anything you've ever encountered. Physically, you can make it. Mentally, I'm going to have to toughen you considerably. I shall rather enjoy taking you through that. I shall even get a kick out of killing you if you don't make the grade. Do you understand me, Lover?"
Dam felt his old spirit returning. "I understand you're an absolute bitch, Absolute!"
He had expected her to strike him again, but instead she sat down and grinned broadly.
"That's better. I thought there must be a spark of life inside that colonial pig-skin. But actually you don't understand a damn thing. I'm talking about levels of obedience way above anything you've ever encountered. I'm talking about the kind of discipline which will make you respond when every atom in you is screaming rebellion. I'm talking about functioning in situations when your gut is tied in knots and the fear's so high it makes you vomit and go blind. I'm talking about being able to continue when your throat's raw with screaming, and death's by far the least of several grim alternatives. That's when you'll understand Absolute absolutely."
