He turned to me, smiling. The smile had something of that sadness I had
first noticed when he sat a prisoner in the jetcopter. "You want an
explanation, don't you? Of course you do. But I'm afraid I can't tell
you very much, except that we were sent to get you."
"Sent? By whom? How did you have a key-box? And--"
He laughed. "Wait, one question at a time. I was a force screen
technician before--before we were arrested. Cells are the same
everywhere. I know how to short the screens out from the inside; it's
troublesome, but it can be done. That's how we escaped the first
time. Then they discovered we were gone, chased us, and _you_ gave
us our second chance. We came here to the rendezvous. There were six
here, including our elected leader. When we told the leader what had
happened, she arranged for us to return, find you, and help you escape.
It wasn't any problem to lift a key-box from the rack where they're
usually kept."
* * * * *
I felt as though I had been put upon the end of a huge oscillating
spring. I said, "The leader? She?"
"You'll meet her," he said. "After blastoff you'll meet her. Right now
our problem is to slip in among those prisoners without being seen."
"Among the _prisoners_?"
"Haven't time to explain more. You'll have to trust us. Unless you want
to stay here and have the Deacons hunt you till they find you."
He was right: wherever I was going, I had to go. I couldn't go back
now. Ever. I said, "I trust you. Let's go."
Slipping in wasn't really difficult. There were only one or two guards
for each group of prisoners, and they were looking for someone to
escape, not join their flock. Some of the prisoners were dressed, some
naked. Some looked bruised and beaten; some did not. It all depended on
whether they had been questioned. They all looked dull-eyed, resigned.
They paid remarkably little attention as we moved in among them, and
stood there.
* * * * *
The guards began to call out orders presently and the groups shuffled
forward, and then single lines moved up the ramp and into the
spaceship. The thin man and his woman were still with me. "They don't
bother to count," he whispered, "so we won't be noticed."
I wanted to ask him other questions, but we were divided into groups
and they weren't in mine.
Minutes later I found myself in the vast hull, sitting on one of the
tiers that hold the seats vertical when the ship is tail-based for
blastoff. It was very dim here and I couldn't readily make out the
faces of the people on the same tier with me.
A loudspeaker came to life; a deep, impersonal voice. "Fasten your
webbings carefully!"
I did that and heard the rustling sounds about me as the others did it,
too.
"Stand by for blastoff!"
There was a dead pause, then a sudden low throbbing roar and the
feeling of life in the floor plates and the bulkheads. I felt the
slightest weight of pressure against the seat. The seat began to tilt
slightly.
Suddenly a soft voice on my left spoke: "_We're on our way. They can't
stop us now, can they?_"
It was the same low, provocative woman's voice that I had heard in my
dreams!
I whirled my head. I could see only the shape of flowing hair, no
features. "Who are you?"
She laughed. "No wonder you don't recognize me. The natural voice is
different than approved standard, isn't it? Listen. Do you remember
this?" The head cocked to one side and a crisp, formal voice came out.
"Information you desire is in Bank 29."
"Lara!" I said. I pushed toward her, but the webbing held me back.
"Yes. It's I. And we're together now and we'll have a long, long time
to find out about each other. It's ten weeks to Mars."
* * * * *
I ran my hand over my forehead. "I don't get it. I don't get any of it.
Your voice--I mean your real voice, not the standard one--I dreamed
about it, and--"
"I know." I could see her nod. "It wasn't a dream, though. I _was_
talking to you. Each time. That was the way we planned it from the
beginning."
"Talking to me? But--but _how_? Through the sleep-learner?"
"No, we'd never have been able to arrange that. It was through your
identity tag, which would almost always be in contact with your skin
when you slept. It has a microscopic electrical circuit, both between
its metal halves and painted on its surface. The same principle as the
sleep-learner, tactile induction, and, of course, a highly selective
one-channel receiver. All I needed to do was put my transmitter on that
same frequency."
I shook my head. "I follow, I guess, but I'm still baffled. Why all
this? When did--"
"Wait for me to finish," she said. "We've been organized and
underground, just as the Deacons suspect, for some time. One of our
members worked on the identity tags and, when renumbering came about,
it was a perfect opportunity to plant the receivers. We picked our
people carefully. We picked doctors and hydroponic experts and chemists
and rocket pilots--and we picked you because of your knowledge of space
drive theory. Someday we'll go on to the stars; someday you'll help us
do that. Anyway, all these people we have picked--or most of them--are
joining us on Mars. There's where mankind will begin again while
Northem and Southem sit upon earth and glare at each other across the
equator and wait for war."
"But Mars--there's an equator there, too."
She laughed. "Northem and Southem prisoners there mingle all the time.
There aren't enough guards to notice it, or stop it if they did notice
it. There have even been hundreds of intermarriages."
"Marriages? You mean like the pre-atomics?"
"Exactly. But we'll get to that later. We needed you for our colony,
only it wasn't likely that you'd infract all by yourself. You were
too standard, too adjusted. We had to give you something to shake you
out of it, to make you realize that the security of the State was not
security, but slavery. And so one of our members in the renumbering
bureau arranged for you to have that four letter word of yours for
a name. One thing led to another, then, not always exactly as we'd
planned it, but always in the same general direction. Our whole plan
nearly failed when the Deacons nabbed you in the park. Fortunately,
I'd come along to stow away on this trip, and I sent those others back
after you."
"But what if I'd actually managed to get my name changed?"
* * * * *
The ship was swaying now, balanced on its rocket trail. The
acceleration was increasing. The seat was swinging back. The roar was
becoming louder.
"It was unlikely enough to take a chance on it. We felt at the very
least you'd be kept on N/P status and then we could work on you some
more until you infracted, and got sent to Marscol as a nonconform.
Funny, that seems a terrible fate to most people. Actually, it's the
only escape. From what I hear of Mars we'll like it there."
I was recovering a little now and I dared to say, "If you're there,
too, I'll like it. I know that."
"Oh, you'll like other things. You'll like everything. And on Mars
they'll call you by your present name if you wish, and no one will be
at all shocked by it." There was a slight pause and then she said, "In
fact, it's a very nice name. I--I wouldn't mind having it myself."
"Is that what the pre-atomics called a proposal?"
She laughed. "I'm not sure. But at least we have ten weeks to talk it
over--"
And then the acceleration pressed hard and the gray curtain began to
come, and I knew that when it was lifted we would be on our way through
space. I thought in that moment of the name that had brought all this
about--the unspeakable four letter word that no conformist would ever
dare voice, or even think of; the word, the dangerous word inimical to
all that the warring, efficient State meant and stood for.
The word, I realized, that eventually would destroy all that.
I dared to say it now. I spelled it out first, and then I pronounced
it. Just loud enough for Lara to hear above the growing roar.
"L-O-V-E," I said. "Love."