The Road To Industry

At first, walking is not so hard, but after a few hours, their poor shoes, no food, and their lack of conditioning begin to tell a story of aching knees and ankles on the verge of rolling.

"We've got to get some food. Some place to rest." Lan looks at the others. "Anyone have a map?" They look embarrassed.

Taskov shakes his head at their ignorance. "Wouldn't do us much good anyway. The Council controls the maps. They wouldn't be accurate enough to find anything. We're heading north, that's good enough for now. This road will get us to the next port, which is probably Delgrane. Then maybe we can try again for a job."

"So what do we do?" Oloron rumbles. "Keep walking?"

Lan looks around, and then his eyes rove up. "No, I have an idea."

The stems are stiff, but sway slightly under his weight. He braces himself between them and squirms upward toward the gas head. Where the stems join the head, they branch out into a shield of foliage. He forces his way past the stems and balances himself on them and the large, bulging envelope. Though there are other trees around him, the terrain slopes away toward the north and he can see the road bending in a series of curves as it descends into the valley. Near the horizon he can see a town.

He looks down and calls "There's a town, down in the valley. Maybe a river, too."

Large clouds are building above in the haze. He climbs carefully through the screen of branches and slides down the trunks to the ground.

At the bottom, one hand still on the trunk, he looks upward. "You know," he muses, "there is another way."

"What do you mean?" Oloron asks, peering in the direction of Lan's gaze.

"Well... we could fly. I mean, untether an envelope and float with it on the fringes."

Taskov walks over and grips his arm. "You're crazy. Those things drift at fifteen thousand feet. They're menaces to air traffic. Besides, it would never hold us."

Lan shakes his head. "Of course it would. Look, the gas head's an ellipsoid, so the volume is, what, maybe a few hundred cubic feet of hydrogen. Even allowing for the matrix, that should be not only enough to carry us and more, but we won't go nearly as high as they usually do, because of the extra weight."

"But if we release it, it's going to pop, bang!" Oloron protests. "And then we'll be in trouble."

"Well... OK, but let's think about this, maybe it would last long enough and we could make a little leak..."

As they debate, a convoy of steam trucks rolls by below with a mournful hissing and a low plangent tone. Behind the trucks is a column of men. They are not soldiers - they are prisoners, flanked by uniformed patrollers.

No one notices the three on the hill. Lan buries his face in his hands and feels his eyes heat with tears as the column passes and stretches into the distance.

The prisoners are ragged and clearly even more exhausted than the watchers. Many walk with the irregular motion of blistered feet and bruised muscles. One stumbles and a nearby patroller strides forward and strikes him with a black rod. The man cries out and collapses to his hands and knees. The patroller draws a weapon and shoots him in the head with a projectile. The shot echoes up and down the road as the blood spreads in a dark pool. The other patrollers roughly shove at the prisoners to keep them moving, but there is a rumble of protest, quickly damped.

The dead man is left behind in the road. The shadows of the trees shift with the breeze.

Suddenly, Lan is rooting through Oloron's sacks. He is stunned to realize that one sack contains rolled canvases... but he has no time to think of that. The second bag contains the ammunition, musty but sharp smelling. He pulls out a strip, flips open the burn chamber on his weapon and slaps home the carefully bound metal tipped rockets. The burn chamber snaps shut over the first shot, and he looks up with a feral grin. But Taskov is watching with horror.

"What are you thinking!"

Lan glares up at him. "I'm thinking that's the last time I'm going to watch a man be killed and not do anything. Are you with me?"

Taskov steps backward slightly, shaking his head slowly, as Oloron steps forward. "I'm with you," he says firmly. Lan grins and pulls a second weapon from the bag and tosses it and a strip to Oloron, who catches them awkwardly. He then stands and turns expectantly toward Taskov. "Well?"

"No... I can't."

Lan feels a sharp moment of disgust. "Fine." He thinks furiously for a moment. "Here's the plan. I want you to run across the road, right there, and run down the other side of the embankment to past the curve and wait for the lead truck. I'm doing the same thing on this side. Go past the curve. You'll have to run fast. When you get there, fire into the boiler of the lead truck. I'll do the same. That's probably going to bring some of the patrollers to the front. Run backward past the trucks, about halfway up the column. If they fire, kill them." He digs out another clip and tosses it to Oloron. "Let's go - we've got to be fast." Then, to Taskov, "I understand you don't want to fight. The prisoners will probably run this way. Stop them here. Ask them to stop. We need them." Back to Oloron, "Don't miss. We don't have a lot of shots."

He waves Oloron off, and as he starts to run, his heart is pounding hard. Tree trunks flash past and the dried leaves and sticks crunch under his feet. He tries to force thought out of his mind. He has made his decision, now he has to stay the course.

To his side he can hear the wheezing of the steam trucks. Then he is ahead of them and the embankment overlooking the curve is ahead. Quickly he comes to a squat and watches, hand trembling slightly, as he waits. The truck is rumbling slowly toward him, at the speed of a slow walk. It seems to take forever, but in gasps, he is glad, because it should give Oloron a chance.

Then, it is as if time has jumped ahead, and the truck is almost past. He raises the weapon in a slow motion dream and pulls the trigger. The rockt ignites, and the dual plume of exhaust jets forward from the burn chamber. Then the rocket is gone with a quick slip of smoke and there is the sound of a vast bell and hammer followed by the shriek of high pressure steam from the opening. He fires again, - suddenly there is a massive thwang, and the boiler splits at its narrow seams, emitting a huge burst of steam that rises into the canopy. The concussion is so surprising that he almost falls backward, but he catches himself and remembers - run. He turns and hurries swiftly back toward the curve. Below, he can see the patrollers moving toward the lead truck, as he had hoped. And then he is back around the curve, and across the road he sees Oloron.

Two patrollers are left, one on each side of the prisoners, but they are watching the prisoners. Quickly, he hurries down the slope to the nearest. He is right behind the man when he finally speaks. "Don't move." The man stiffens and he looks around wildly. Across the double line of prisoners. he can see Oloron alternating between watching the guard and looking to Lan for a guidance he can't communicate. Finally, Oloron smashes his hand across the side of the other guard's face, and the man falls. "On your knees," Lan orders. He looks up for a moment - to see every eye on him. "You three," he orders. "Come here." He prods the guard with the barrel of his gun. "Lie down." For a moment he thinks he will laugh, but it should work. "You, sit on his shoulders. You, his waist, you his ankles. Don't move till I come back." The former prisoners, bewildered at first, smile, each in his own time as he realizes the idea. They take their places as Lan signals Oloron to move forward.

The patrollers are helping the driver from the lead truck as Lan and Oloron approach. Lan steps quickly along the side of the second truck, looking up as he passes the cab. His arms and legs feel almost fevered. He notices that the window on the front of the cab has been smashed by debris. The driver's head lolls from the side window - he is clearly injured if not dead - and with a shudder he returns his attention to the men ahead, who are now looking at him. He holds up his weapon. "Enough," he calls. "Lay down your guns or you'll be killed. Now!"

The ones in the front reach slowly for their weapons. Lan realizes he may have made a terrible mistake. "Hold it!" he cries. "Lie down on the ground. Hands away from your guns." He watches their eyes gain resolve - and raises his weapon. "Make no mistake - these aren't the soft projectiles from the Council armory. If I fire, my target, and the one behind him, at least, will die. So lie down!" Their eyes are uncertain. Desperate, and not daring to show it, Lan swivels the weapon and fires a hole through a large fragment of the boiler. Instantly their expressions change to fear, and they lower themselves to lie on the ground.

Suddenly Oloron is behind him. "Are you all right?"

Lan grins with relief but doesn't take his eyes from the patrollers. "Find something we can use to restrain them."

Taskov walks slowly down the road. He hears a single bellowing ring and is momentarily worried. He can see the figures ahead of him in the dappled light begin to shift, as if they are moving toward him. What am I going to do? he wonders, realizing that they are.

He sets the bags down in the road and holds up his hands. "Stop!" he calls. Panicked eyes balk and the column bunches behind the leaders. "Everything's all right. Just hang on." He wonders if he is telling the truth.

"Who are you?" asks one dark man with wild white eyes.

"I'm.. with them." Taskov replies, thinking fast. "Look, there's nothing to be gained by running off. There's nowhere to run to. Wait for them to tell you... the plan."

He decides to shut up before he gets himself into additional trouble. "Who are you?" he asks. "And what did you do?"

The gathering is behind the first trailer. Alongside, braced against the side of the road, trussed with their own arm bindings, gagged with rags from the toolboxes, some of the patrollers glare at their captors - others sit back, disconsolate. One young man seems to be crying. Lan casts worried looks at them every few minutes. It is hard to believe that they won't somehow squirm loose.

"I am... Phillippe." He eyes Taskov and Oloron. "This is... Laurence and Basceau." Two famous scientists. He smiles awkwardly.

"Are you with an organized group?", someone asks.

Lan stirs his mind quickly, realizing the possibility of informers. "We're called Liberty's Militia. We're new, but growing. We're actually on another mission, but we saw that killing."

"That's right!" someone in the back screams. "They killed Rastas, Mikar, and Twyla! They should be dead." A susurrus of agreement sweeps the group. Then someone pushes through and shoves Lan aside as he runs toward the prisoners. But Oloron brings him up short. Lan watches the others warily as he walks toward the protestor. He gestures and Oloron releases the man.

This fellow is hollow-cheeked and poorly shaven. His breath is foul and his hair is oily and matted. Bloodshot eyes keep returning, narrow with hatred, to the patrollers, one of whom seems even more afraid than the others. Lan feels an immense sadness as the adrenaline of immediate success segues into his enduring anxiety. "Don't you know?" he says quietly. "I understand. We all understand how you feel. They've taken my life, my family, my wife." His voice seems to slow and finally catch on the last word. "But we have to be better than they are. We have to find some way to take our world back without ruining what makes it worth having. I understand you want retaliation. So do I. But nothing right will happen here if we harm these people without a trial. Are you with me? We will have as trial. But not now. We have more important problems."

The man nods slowly.

"What's your name?"

"Chatain DePuys. I was from Enterais, until the mines collapsed. We couldn't work, and they found us guilty of underproduction, so they took us away. This is the third train I've been on. I liked Mikar. He shared his clothes with me." His eyes are weak, but the words spill out as if he is desperate to tell, as if the injustice may just disappear back into unreality if he tells it to some rational man.

"I understand. Keep yourself available. We'll need to hear from all of the witnesses, but later. Now go back and wait."

DePuys nods. Finally, he states "I had a wife, too." His eyes are edged with tears. Lan touches his shoulder as they share a look, and the saddened man walks back to the group.

"Before we're going to talk about our plans, we need to get back on the move. That means getting the first trailer attached to the second truck, and disposing of the first truck. We also need to inventory food, fuel and medical supplies. Once we're started, everyone is going to eat. But we have to be on the road as soon as we can. So I want anyone who knows how to drive or anything about steam trucks to stand over there. Laurence is going to pick three people to work with him on checking our supplies. And we're going to need the strongest of you to help unhitch, move, and reattach the first trailer. Are you with me?"

A murmur rises to a cheer, and Lan's face reddens.

The engine rises to a roar, and emits a plume of overpressure steam. Some of the onlookers clap.

"Nice touch, that Liberty Militia thing," Taskov mocks quietly.

Lan turns quickly to face him and leans close, frowning. "What did you expect me to say? That we're a physicist, a foundry worker and a schoolteacher on the run? Now that would inspire confidence, wouldn't it?"

"I understand." Taskov is taken aback, but tries to maintain his composure against his young friend's vehemence.

Lan relents. "Probably not. I'm not even sure what I've got in mind yet." He sighs. "Anyway, we've got food and medicine in both trailers?"

"What there is of either," Taskov replies, pushing his glasses up his nose with a forefinger.

"Let's get everyone going, then."

The truck starts to move slowly, tugging at the weight of the two trailers filled with people. Lan sits in the rear trailer with the patrollers and some of the strongest of the prisoners, his weapon held loosely, wrist resting on his thigh. In the trailer ahead, among the weakest of the prisoners, Taskov tries to help organize food and medicine. Oloron drives, though Lan wishes he had Oloron to watch the patrollers.

But it is, he has decided, important to get off the main road. Oloron knows what he is looking for.

Ahead of them, the partly destroyed truck rolls faster and faster toward a curve that overlooks a steep descent into the river valley. It smashes through the railing and spills down the slope, coming to rest on the rocks, half buried in water. Lan hears the crash and then can see the break as his trailer completes the curve. "Well, that's something," he mutters. With any luck, thinking there had been an accident should slow pursuit.

He remembers looking at the wrists and ankles of the patrollers to verify their manacles, applied by prisoners whose eyes were wide with excitement. He had looked around. "Has anyone searched them for keys?" He had looked back at the patrollers, and their eyes were very different. Weakly defiant, angry, embarrassed... But what does he feel? For the time being, he forces down the energies that mass behind his emotionless face, deciding to feel nothing until later, when he can afford to.

By now the truck has taken on some speed, and he can feel the rough surface of the road in the motion. So he asks the others what they had done.

They drive for an hour and then pull to the side. Lan jumps from the back and meets Oloron by the cab. "Well?" he asks.

"I found a map. Here."

They unfold the precious paper carefully. Oloron has obviously been looking at it - he points. "I think we're here. That's the city you saw. Biko River Zone 9."

"I hate these new names."

Oloron grins.

"I suppose we don't want to go there?"

Lan sighs. "Probably not. That's where this convoy is probably expected. We'd get there early, but I can't see that helping us. No, we have to stay rural until we can figure out the best way to get up north. Besides, tomorrow we're going to have to resolve what we're going to do with the patrollers."

Oloron shoots a hot glance at the second trailer. "I have a few ideas. I bet the guys you're riding with have some suggestions, too."

"I know." Lan's jaw tightens painfully with unexplored emotion. "But we're not going to do it that way. According to this, we've got what, another hour in the forest?"

"Maybe."

"Find a turnoff. Gravel, dirt, something unimproved. We'll camp out tonight."

Oloron leans closer. "What are we going to do with these guys?"

Lan shakes his head. "I don't know yet. but I want to keep our options open for another day or so."

"Okay."

"Hey, listen."

"Yeah?"

"I saw those canvases in your bag."

Oloron's eyes fall away. "So?"

"They're hers, aren't they?"

Oloron shrugs.

"I'm glad you saved them," Lan finishes.

Oloron smiles, just a bit.

At an intersection with a dirt road, Oloron spins the large steering wheel while he levers the throttle down. The truck rumbles onto its new course, shaking with the ruts and stones of the disused road. White stalks of brach rise to either side and the nests of bluish photosynthetic fibers brush the cab and boiler. After a while, the road widens, and Oloron pulls to the side. The boiler wheezes and hisses, emitting a faint steam from the pressure valve. Then, with a hoot, it emits a cloud of unused steam.

The sun is low and reddened as he steps down onto the road. Lan has already stepped down and is looking around. The dust of their passage smokes behind him, laced with the last rays of the sun. Then the light is subdued and there is only the sea colored sky above them and its cool light.

"Good spot," Lan remarks, smiling.

Oloron nods. "It might be a little cold tonight."

"Yeah, we'll have to deal with that. Among other things. Come on."

He leads Oloron to the back of the second trailer. "Come on out, fellows." He looks to Oloron. "You have your gun?"

"Yes."

The former prisoners climb down to the road. They look tired. But Lan addresses them directly and cheerfully. "Listen, we've got a number of things to get started with, can you help?" They agree with a variety of nods and gestures.

In the meantime, Taskov has joined them, rubbing his brush cut and looking around. "What's up?"

"You got anyone up there who can start looking for tinder and logs?"

"Maybe. Everyone's pretty tired."

Lan shrugs. "They'll be pretty cold if we don't get organized. Pick four and send them out. Make sure they don't go too far and get lost."

He turns back to Oloron. "I want to park this trailer in the middle of the road. We're going to unhitch it, and then park the engine down the road before we shut it down. Any idea how long it might take to start up in the morning?"

"Ten, fifteen minutes? Depends on how cold probably. Assuming I can figure out how to start it. It's not the same as the Milamor's I learned on. And if we have enough fuel. It's not very efficient. I think we have a half tank of oil left."

"But can you park like that?"

"Sure."

"Let's do it."

The truck moans and whistles as it moves in the twilight to the center of the road. It pauses while four men hurry to unhitch the rear trailer. Then Oloron drives backward to block the road.

"Chatain?"

The thin man whirls to face Lan.

"How are you?" Lan asks.

"I... I'm all right, thank you." Surprisingly, he smiles. "I've had some food, some drink. Some rest." His thin, lined face becomes bleak in a moment. "What about them?" He looks pointedly and then angrily toward the trailer as if rediscovering that he has a variety of emotions.

"I need your help." Lan's feet crunch on the road as he shifts nervously. The fading light makes it a little hard to assess Chatain, and Lan is worried about the extent and persistence of his previous madness. And yet... what lay beneath that could have its use.

"You saved me from prison. I'll do whatever you want."

Lan is even more uncomfortable, but he makes himself continue. "I need someone to watch the trailer and the camp from a distance. To make sure someone wakes me, or the others, if anyone tries to leave or escape." What he leaves unstated is his worry that at least one or two of the prisoners may be informants, biding their time, and that he needs someone to begin with in an effort to expand the circle of trust.

"I can do that."

"You understand, if anyone tries to leave, we need to stop them. We can't risk anyone being caught. Right now, we're safest here."

"All right." Chatain's voice is distant as he eyes the trailer.

It is dark by the time arrangements are complete. The trailer is in the center of a circle of four fires around which the escapees huddle as the temperature drops. Around it, the patrollers are chained to to the chassis and shiver with the cold. Lan sits against a barrel from one of the trailers, watching the flames, trying to wind down, unable to take his eyes from the central trailer. Intellectually, he knows that exposing them to the elements, keeping them hungry and thirsty - and weak - is the best safeguard for them. But the tension between them and the escapees, added to the uncertain future, keeps him restless and worried.

Some of the men start to sing - an old song from the highlands above Goslin. Others join in and Lan smiles.

Oloron comes to hunker down beside him as the song trails away into laughter. Lan's eyes soften with the thought that this may well be the first time in a very long time that these people have had a reason to laugh. The song slides up out of the laughter again.

"You know that one?" Oloron asks.

"No. I've heard it." He grimaces.

"What's the matter?"

Lan is tapping his finger on his knee. "We've got forty five men, seven women, and then six patrollers chained up with their own gear. Tomorrow, we're going to have to do something with all of them. Sooner or later, someone is going to notice this convoy is gone, and when they do, they'll be after us with air, satellites, you name it. We've got three days food and water under the floorboards of those trucks. Before then, someone's going to panic, run-off, or one of those patrollers will get out. And we can't stay awake forever."

Oloron nods and sips from his cup. "So get some rest. You've got Chatain and a couple of others watching. Nobody'll get by for a few hours anyway." He downs the rest of the drink. "Come on, I've got a bed for you in the other truck."

He awakens to the drum of rain on the corrugated metal roof of the truck and the murmur of voices crowded into a narrow space. He opens his eyes with a start and sits up. Crowded near the back of the truck, looking out on the rain-filled darkness, shadowed figures huddle - some sleeping, some talking quietly.

He stirs, rolls over, pulls his blankets around himself, and tries to force himself to sleep.

The camp is bustling with motion and the smells of rations heated with fire. Lan slides from the back of the truck and wonders why he was left to sleep. He sees Taskov hunkered down, sipping from a metal cup, watching the dull flames and faint whitish smoke of the fire. He balances a folded paper on his thigh, pinning it down with his elbow.

"Hi," Lan stops beside him. Taskov looks up, glasses blind with the reflection of the torn grey clouds. "Hey." He reaches down and holds up a metal pot. "Jarran?" Lan nods. "Here - " Taskov holds out the cup. "I've had enough for now." Then he pours hot liquid from the pot into the cup and passes it to Lan. Lan sips and the hot stimulant rolls sweet down his throat. "What's that?" He gestures toward the paper.

"That? The map. I was just looking it over."

Lan squats beside him. "Anything interesting?"

"Well, as I thought, the road passes Biko River Zone 9 and heads up to Delgrane. We could make it in a day or two without all of these people to take with us."

"Mind if I have a look?" He sets cup down on the moist road and takes the map. His legs are still tired and he nearly overbalances, so he stands and shakes out the folds.

After a while, he asks "What's this 'abandoned'? There's four or five of them scattered around, what, a hundred miles?"

Taskov stands and looks over his shoulder. "Those three are old industrial facilities. Must be closed now. Maybe old plants from the 50s when the New Men were first pushing to collectivize manufacturing. A lot of work was moved to central facilities. That one's... an old airport, I think. This legend stinks. That one looks like some kind of apartment buildings. Wonder why they'd abandon that?"

Lan shrugs. His eyes are distant, looking beyond the paper. "That's it," he says finally, voice abstracted. He looks up and around at the people around him. "But we have a lot to do first. I want you to do a formal census - we need to know who we have, what they did, and what they did before they were jailed."

Taskov's eyes narrow behind his glasses. "I don't recall signing up to work for you."

"Fine, we're in a tough spot here. You don't want to do it? I'll ask Oloron. I just need someone I can trust for this."

"It'd be nice to know why."

"I know, but if I take time to explain now, and I'll have to explain again later - we just don't have the time. Trust me, Franck." His blue eyes are earnest, and Taskov feels anger melt into a faint fondness.

Finally, he replies, "This time."

"After that, we've got to do something unpleasant." Lan says quietly, looking across the clearing.

The sky is still sullen, and Lan stands behind a portable table with a pitcher beside him. "Please, please, I need your attention," he calls. Heads turn his way, and the ragged assemblage gathers, feet shuffling on the packed moist earth.

Lan places the pitcher carefully on the center of the table in front of him. In that moment, though his face is the unlined form of youth, it is the embodiment of a cold seriousness that brings age from the future to the present. His blue eyes rove across the people in front of him. People, he reminds himself with a surge of pride, that he has saved.

He looks down at the pile of papers in front of him, and his elation ebbs.

"Before we continue, we must take on a serious duty. We must pass judgement and penalty on these men who harmed you."

For a moment, he sees the shock on their faces, and then a wave of anger and vengefulness, as they all begin to talk at once.

Lan holds up his hands. "We are not going to act as they did. There will be a trial - though our time is short. I have here papers with fifteen numbers on them; the rest are blank. Those who have the numbers will be the jury. But if you are to be on the jury, you can not be an accuser. And to be an accuser, you must be the one who was harmed, and you must have been harmed by these men above and beyond your imprisonment. If you plan to accuse, stand aside, over there. Those who will not accuse, stand before this table. Make your decision, now."

The jury numbers fifteen and the accusers number twelve. The six patrollers, chained, bedraggled, still wet, and panicked, are kept in line only by the leveling of Oloron's weapon. Their chains make a soft sound.

"Why so many jury members?" Taskov asks. Lan smiles . "Statistics. Actually, anywhere, twelve might do. But this jury is not a normal jury. I hope fifteen will make it more fair."

Taskov shakes his head. "Fair," he mutters.

"All right," Lan calls, quelling the rumble of voices. "We haven't as much time as we'd like. Which of you will speak first?"

Each accuser speaks, pointing to whom they accuse, and stating the crime. Abuse, beatings, theft, and murder are told of in great detail, sometimes with tears or terror, sometimes with a coldness of face or an anger that is frightening in itself.

At the end of each accusation, Lan calls forward the accused man to make a statement in his defense. One or two tell convincing stories to justify their actions or to attribute the accusation to mistaken identity.

But for the murder of two of the prisoners, one of which Lan himself had seen, the patroller accused is stolid and silent. He is a stocky man with a slab-like face and dull eyes narrowed within angry lids, unshaven, his hair straggly from the rain.

Lan is angry. "If you refuse to defend yourself, you admit your guilt. Defend yourself, confess, do something."

The man shakes his head and snarls. "I have nothing to say to you, zek. You, these, all the same. Nothing, Traitors. Useless human garbage that causes more trouble that it's worth." And as he speaks, the rumbling from the crowd grows into a storm of insults and curses.

"Quiet!" Lan yells, hands pushing. The sound subsides. He turns back to the man, who is eyeing Oloron's weapon with resentment. "For one last time, one last chance - are you guilty?"

The man says nothing, only holding up his chains.

Lan turns to the jury. "Please retire and decide." It is the fifth time today that he has said this phrase. He walks around the table and helps Oloron return the patroller to his spot chained by the trailer.

Back at the table, he stares down at the list of names - each with its own crimes, each with a verdict - and each in his hand. His fingers beside the names are sweaty and dirty and the nails are limned with grime. He feels strangely detached, in a situation barely real.

Taskov is suddenly beside him. "I suppose you've thought this through?" he asks, but his tone implies he is sure Lan has not.

"It's the best of a lot of bad alternatives. What else can we do? Let them go? They tell the authorities about us, our people are mad at us, and we have Patrol resources after us with a pretty good idea of where we are. Kill them outright? That's just murder. Trust me a while longer - you're going to see this will work." His voice is kept only slightly shaky by an effort of will as he allows himself to think of what he will have to do. "It's just going to be unpleasant." Taskov wonders if the faint gleam in Lan eyes is an incipient tear.

"This is getting bad, my friend. We are getting in deeper and deeper."

Lan's expression shifts to exasperation. "And it was different before? We're going to go back to the old way of living. A house in the suburbs? A farm away from everything? Satisfying work? Our old positions? Sad news for you, but that was gone the moment we were swept up - and certainly when we ran. Have the courage to live with your choice."

Taskov shakes his head sadly, then looks up as the jury returns. Lan waits. "Guilty," their leader announces. Lan writes the word "guilty" beside the name Jean-Paul Guinard. The word is spindly and ragged.

The last patroller is not accused of any abuses. Lan does not allow anyone to rest.

"Thank you for your veridicts," he states. "I hope you'll understand that there are certain sentences we cannot impose. Keeping these men as our prisoners is not possible. But I will not simply execute them for crimes short of murder. Can you accept this?"

One woman steps forward, and her eyes are angry. In a way, Lan is pleased to see that her look is no longer that of a beaten prisoner. "And what will you do with the murderer Guinard?"

He waits a moment, not for effect, but because he is afraid his voice will crack under the strain if he speaks right away. Finally, the words come slowly. "He will die before we leave here."

He walks from behind the table. "It's time to get ready to go. Don't leave anything behind - not a scrap of paper, a wrapper, or clothing. Oloron, please get the trucks ready, but don't move the trailer our prisoners are chained to. Get everything ready to go, and both trailers hitched to the engine. And while that is being started, I'm going to tell you what happens next..."

At his orders, and under his weapon and Oloron's weapon, Guinard is unchained from the chassis, but still restrained, and made to stand away from the wagon.

"Take off all of your clothes," Lan orders. The big man shrugs, hefts his chains.

"Fine, fine, " Lan snarls. "Then move, or die right here." He points off into the forest. Guinard shambles off the edge of the road and onto the narrow ways between the white trunks of the brach, with the dried remains of the photosynthetic webs crunching under their step. "Stop," Lan orders. "Turn around."

Guinard stares at him contempuously.

"Jean-Paul Guinard, you are a murderer, and you have been convicted." He steps closer. Behind him, he can hear the sound of the others, who have come to watch. But he puts that from his mind. He forces himself to think only of this face and of the murder he had witnessed. He raises his weapon to that face, and fires.

The face is gone in a sudden smoke and stench of fire. The back of the skull explodes and spews its contents onto the forest floor. The body topples and falls. Lan turns away, his gorge rising - he barely stops himself from vomiting.

The crowd stands before him, silent.

Then one of them walks forward and stops in front of him. "Thank you," the man says. It is Chatain. Chatain bows his head and walks away. He is followed by the others, who one by one walk up to him, thank Lan, or squeeze his arm. One woman leans up and kisses his cheek. He remains standing, waiting as the nausea drains away.

When he looks up again, the group has filed away and started to dig a hole for the corpse with shovels. Oloron is standing beside him, looking serious. "I'm sorry," he says. "But it was the right thing to do." Lan nods mechanically. But with a fierce effort, he pulls his mind back to reality and context. "Let's get this over with."

Blindfolded and naked, hands loosely tied, the patrollers are one by one walked into the forest in different directions, spun around, and left behind. The trucks rumble away down the packed dirt road, in the late afternoon light, leaving behind nothing but tire tracks.