They hadn't aged at all. There had been no sign of change.
That soldier back there had said, "... _They're supposed to live
forever. They never grow old._"
"That is impossible, of course," the woman Rhone said. "Now--explain
your uniform. It is unorthodox. In fact it is a duplication of the
uniforms worn by officers of a certain army of another time and place
of which you should know nothing. Can you explain this?"
"I can and will. We do know about those certain armies in another time
and place. A hundred years ago. Earth. You think we have forgotten?"
* * * * *
Silence. The woman's eyes widened, only slightly, though a tremendous
inner emotional surge was obvious. One of the men leaned forward.
Danton was relieved. He felt a bit more secure, seeing even this slight
degree of individuality and emotion. There was the psychological
effect, he knew, of feeling a subtle lessening of the unification of
forces against him.
They hadn't aged, he thought. The same ones, without grayness, without
wrinkles, without any sign of physical degeneration.
The woman said, not to him, voicing her thoughts, "Impossible. No one
beyond the Walls can possibly know of the past. We took great pains
to assure that--Mars is the only world they have ever known, the only
world that ever was. Our world."
"We know," Danton said. "Others know too. The Revolutionists know. I'm
telling you this much because nothing you can do can stop it. It's
developed too far. Revolt. Did you think it would ever be stamped out?"
Beneath the masks, Danton could see concern, incredulous concern.
Maybe they had thought they had set up an impervious regime. And maybe
they actually had. But there was doubt here. Just enough of a doubt to
play upon. One thing he knew, and that was that there was resentment
out there beyond the Walls, whatever the Walls were, and those songs,
hopeless as they were, had been songs of revolt against oppression. The
germ was out there....
"You have a choice," the woman said. "Tell us everything you know.
That, or suffer the kind of pain we cannot describe to you, a kind you
will find out for yourself."
He could imagine. The Oligarchs had been efficient at everything.
That had been their god--efficiency, mastery of the machines, the
maintenance forever of the master-elite over the rabble.
Like an amoeba, the social forces of the world had split, the old
values solidifying, the new values pulling away, coming back again,
overrunning, defeating. But the Oligarchs had fled and here they had
developed their particular systems to some final state.
Whatever they had waiting for him, to open his mind, it would be
efficient.