* * * * * *
They must have been watching him. They knew the moment Burk had finished eating, and then a whole gang of them came in for him in a rush through the whirring, sliding door. Two of them pinioned him from behind. One of them was probably a male—Burk only caught a glimpse of them as they pushed into the cell, but he got the distinct impression that his left arm was being pinioned by someone less thuggish than the Guardian who was trying to break his right arm (despite their smaller size, the females tended to be more brutal). There was quite a crowd of them in the little cell. Burk must have done something to make himself a celebrity! Slabface was there, too, standing in the background, poised on her toes and looking as though she was simply dying to cause him grievous bodily harm, in an expert and enthusiastic manner, if only her colleagues would step aside for a moment and give her the opportunity to demonstrate her skills. A nasty-looking Grade II (two red slashes) did all the talking, or what there was of it.
“You’ve ’ad yer food. Now you’re gonna answer some questions!”
And before he could respond they bundled him out of the cell, down the gangway, round several corners, through a couple of sliding doors and into a room with a numbered but otherwise unmarked dark green door. On the way, Cruella had squawked “Move it! Yer! Move it! Go! Go!” or something similarly theatrical that she had picked up from lousy old twenty-first century movies. She had also kicked his shins in a perfunctory, Guardian-like way. Perhaps she thought she was up for a promotion, and her superiors were watching? How had she even got to Grade II, with language skills like that?
They went past numerous people, all of them in Guardian uniforms. No attempt was made to disorientate him or hide from him where they were going. They were on the lower administration level of the ship, the door-numbers had told him that. There were larger porthole windows in the gangway, through which he now saw clear starlight. That meant that, for some reason, the ship was completely out of slide and had slowed down to T- (or “terrestrial”) speed. It was good to know that they were in a public area of the Starstretcher. If they had been planning to do him serious harm, some interrogation off the record, or worse, they would have taken him somewhere else on the ship. Somewhere that was much darker and quieter.
The room they were now in was a medium-sized office, with tables, chairs, and all the usual paraphernalia of administration. Lots of communications stuff, but no obvious instruments for inflicting pain, Burk thought to himself. Except the fists, boots and tasers of the Guardians, of course, which were always available.
“Sit there!” Cruella pushed him down onto a simple office chair. Burk was aware of her standing behind him, breathing heavily and shifting her weight from foot to foot. She smelt distinctly unpleasant. She’s nervous! Maybe she really was under supervision for promotion. Or was she simply frightened of the other people in the room? Her thuggish colleagues were now gone, or so Burk thought, though he didn’t want to risk looking round to find out. Instead, he focused on who was sitting in front of him.
They had done him proud: no fewer than three Grade IIIs—the officer class. The uniforms were nicely cut, clean and well-fitting. Directly opposite him sat a fairly young woman with a sternly beautiful face and a look of high but cold intelligence. Burk was immediately reminded of lines from a Yeats poem:
Pallas Athene in that straight back and arrogant head
All the Olympians; a thing never known again.
(Minor subject Literature at college—it had to be good for something.)
On the table in front of her was a bulky dossier with assorted printouts of texts, reports and graphics. Could that be his Main File? He couldn’t see exactly. Whatever the matter was about, it must be serious. Paper was much heavier than electronically stored information. On a crowded people transporter it was a luxury, a valuable resource. Burk remembered the fuss they’d made about the couple of old-fashioned books that he’d included in his luggage. Most things were digitalized for text-readers long ago, but he liked to be holding a proper book in his hands when he read his favorite poets. Athene played with the items, ignoring Burk for the moment.
To her left was a male officer, older than she was, more delicately built, with long, thin artistic hands and a slightly distant expression. He looked vaguely familiar. Burk had once been told, by someone who had painfully good cause to know, that senior Guardian interrogators, the ones who did the more subtle, the more complicatedly unpleasant things to you, often looked like this. And they always smiled while they were doing it. Suddenly the man became aware of Burk, and stared at him in an amused manner. (Though whether the thought that was amusing him would have amused Burk, too, would be rather hard to say.)
The third officer sat away from the table, to her female colleague’s right, as though she were only there as an observer. She was the highest in rank. In addition to the three red slashes, there were two red stars, indicating that she was only one promotion away from Grade IV, the junior leadership cadre—the highest level that was normally allowed to leave Terra, and then only to assume command. If she was being posted to Lemnos on a permanent basis, rather than to carry out a specific and temporary mission, only the Governor of the planet would outrank her, with the military commander and the security chief perhaps her equals in rank. Nobody on the Starstretcher would outrank her, though, except the Commander.
She was also the most physically intimidating of the three Guardians. Her massive body caused the uniform to bulge. She had huge hands, ideal for mending metal bars or cracking open Goro-nuts without a hammer. There was nothing about her figure, as far as Burk could see, that proclaimed incontrovertibly that she was a woman (she didn’t seem to have breasts, for example). Although she was physically impressive, even attractive (in an androgynous way), she couldn’t be an android, because they were not admitted into the ranks of the Guardians. Perhaps she had been genetically modified or enhanced?
Guardians were not allowed to wear jewelry on duty (or encouraged to wear it off), but some of them—Burk thought for a heart-warming second of Milliya—managed to customize their uniforms with discreet little feminine touches. No such touches were evident here. Only two things suggested her sex.
One was the way that her hair was done, in an unmistakably female style, with patient care and immaculate taste, and undoubtedly at great expense.
The other was the Medusa-like gaze that she fixed on Burk when their eyes finally met, a look that told him that here was a woman who had had dealings with men before, and who had her own very personal reasons for wanting to wield power over them, to humiliate them, and to cause them pain.
It was a look that chilled him to the bone.
CHAPTER TWO
A MATTER OF IDENTITY
“Do let me apologize,” the Goddess rather unexpectedly began, “for the, er, robust way that you have been treated. It is connected with the nature of the charges against you. Our lower-grade colleagues are good-hearted but simple people”—Burk thought he heard Cruella behind him grunt ever so slightly—“who, confronted with behavior of a particularly despicable kind, find it difficult not to give vent to their feelings in a direct and physical manner. We don’t condone that, but we can understand it.”
She paused, then looked down at one of the papers in front of her.
“I have here a Form 26a, if you wish to make a complaint?”
That too had been printed out!
Burk shrugged. It was widely believed that asking for Form 26a could easily led to Form 27b being needed soon afterwards, and with no detour that took in Forms 26b (“Verification of Complaint by Interrogating Officer”), 26c (“Staff Affidavit / Complaints”),
