“He’ll never understand,” Chester said, stripping the colonel’s uniform off. “He’ll think we did it just to humiliate him, the poor man.”
Carl went back around the corner and approached the sergeant. “The colonel wants you,” he said.
“Where is he?” the sergeant asked.
“Right around there,” Carl said. “I’d better take you.”
“Excuse me, sir,” the sergeant said respectfully to Mr. Effingham. “Be right back, sir.”
“Of course,” Effingham said, impatiently waving him away. Clearly he didn’t bother with sergeants.
Carl led the way around the corner and Chester knocked the sergeant cold with no preliminaries. “Two out of three,” he said. “Not bad.”
“I have no idea of how to get that civilian out of his chair,” Carl said.
“Know his name?” Chester asked.
“Effingham.”
“Fine. Let me handle him. You just concentrate on getting this sergeant’s uniform off his back and onto yours as quickly as possible. Then roll him under the barracks with his boss.” Chester straightened up and adjusted the dress sword at his waist. “How do I look?”
“Like my daddy told me,” Carl said, “clothes do make the man. You look every inch the officer. But Effingham is going to know you’re not Colonel Nottoway.”
Chester glared at him. “Of course,” he said. “There are, after all, other colonels.” He walked casually around the side of the building and over to the civilian. “Mr. Effingham?” he inquired.
Effingham looked up and then did a double-take. “Yes?” he said. “Who are you?”
“Arthur’s the name. Colonel Chester A. Arthur. May I sit?”
“Of course, of course.” Manners came to Effingham’s aid, and he nodded the colonel to a seat. “I didn’t know any other representatives of the Confederacy were here now. What are you doing here, if I may ask?”
“On business much the same as your own, Mr. Effingham,” Chester said. “That’s what is causing the problem. It seems there is a question as to just who has prior claim to those men out there.” Chester waved a negligent hand.
“You mean the persons being prepared for transport?” Effingham asked. “The ones in the field?”
“The very ones in front of us,” Chester said.
“But that’s impossible,” Effingham said, his voice rising. “I have documentation and authorization from the highest authority. . . .”
“I’m sure we can get it amicably straightened out,” Chester said. “I will, of course, bow to higher authority if you have such documentation.”
“I can assure you, sir—” Effingham began, rising from his seat in agitation.
“No need, no need,” Chester said, also rising. “We’ll merely show your documentation to the Adjutant, and I’ll wait for the next batch. Let’s get it straightened out now.” He strode toward the fatal corner, and Effingham came after like a carp rising to the bait.
Chapter Ten
The three bogus representatives of the Confederacy waited impatiently for the island authorities to finish preparing the prisoners for transport. Now that the shackles were in place, two men were going down the line of prisoners dying their faces and hands black; a time-consuming process.
“What’s that for?” Carl asked. “Make them easier to spot?”
“Harder for them to escape,” O’Malley said.
“It’s the tradition,” Chester told them. “Apparently on Earth at this time a race of black people were slaves of this group called the Confederacy. They were put to work picking cotton. The country to the north, called the Union, wanted to free these blacks so they could come up north and work in the factories. So they had a war.”
“Another war,” Carl said. “Is that the only thing in Earth history—war?”
“It’s the only thing worth watching, just about,” Chester said. “Or at least that’s what the fives think.”
“If they find any of our friends which we’ve left lying about before we get out of here,” O’Malley said, “we’ll have a nice little war of our own here.”
“Let us hope that doesn’t happen,” Chester said.
One of the guards trotted up to the group and saluted. Then he got a good look at them, and frowned. “Are you the Confederate gentlemen I escorted here?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Chester snarled. “All you people look alike to me. Is that group ready for transport?”
“Yes, sir,” the guard said, still looking puzzled.
“I’ll inform Colonel Nottoway as soon as he gets back from the Adjutant’s office,” Chester said.
“Yes, sir,” the guard said, looking relieved. There was a rational explanation. His was not to reason why, anyway. “The forms have to be signed.”
“Of course they do,” Chester agreed. “Hand them over.”
“Yes, sir.” The guard handed him a clipboard with a variety of varicolored forms attached to it. “On the bottom line on the green ones,” he said. “Anywhere on the red ones. Just initial the pink master sheet. And sign the blue one where it says ‘I accept delivery of the items enumerated on this form.’”
Chester signed Chester A. Arthur, Colonel, Army of the Confederacy, wherever he could find a spot. “There,” he said. “Can we take them away now?”
“In a few minutes, sir,” the guard said. “Someone will come for you.” He saluted again and trotted away.
“He knows!” O’Malley whispered urgently. “Did ye hear what he said? ‘Someone will come for ye!’ No doubt!”
He didn’t impress me as being that subtle,” Chester said. “Just relax. We’ll be on our way in a couple of minutes.”
It seemed like an hour before another guard headed in their direction, but it probably was only a couple of minutes. This one didn’t seem to have any preconceived notion of what they should look like; he was perfectly happy with them as they were. “If you’ll come this way, gentlemen, please,” he said, “we’re about ready to load.”
He took them into the guardhouse, through a series of corridors, and into a large room. A minute later the shackled persons were led into the room. Then the door closed, and the room began to descend into the ground.
Carl’s first reaction was panic, a feeling that apparently many of the prisoners shared. They began shrieking and jumping up and down, to the extent that their leg shackles would permit.
One of the guards had obviously experienced this reaction before, and knew just how to reassure his charges. “All of you just shut up and stand still,” he said, hefting his club in his hands, “or I’ll take the wind out of you with the point of my billy.” This had a strong calming effect on the prisoners, especially after he demonstrated on one man and left him doubled up in a corner, retching and gasping, for air.
“I’d like to speak to that lad sometime,” O’Malley said, in a violent whisper to Carl and Chester. His doubled-up right fist beat spasmodically against his left palm.
“I hate to take your mind away from pleasures of the flesh,” Chester said in an undertone, “but we have more important considerations right now. Do nothing to attract attention.”
“Aye,” O’Malley agreed sourly.
The elevator reached the bottom of its passage, and the big doors opened again. They were on the train platform, and the train waited in front of them: a great, windowless, black slug, segmented down its length by shiny metal bands. The doors opened as they watched, sliding upward into the body of the train. The interior glowed with a slightly greenish light.
“Residents to the left, hurry now,” the lead guard said, starting the line of prisoners out of the elevator.
“That would put us to the right, I would imagine,” Chester said. They waited for the file of prisoners to pass, and then walked over to the open train door to the right of the elevator.
The door was so low that even O’Malley had to stoop over slightly to enter the car. The interior held two rows of benches along the sides of the car
, broken only for the doors. The benches had molded depressions for the individual seats, which were further segregated by short metal bars that jutted out from the side of the car and served as handrails. The green light came from concealed panels in the walls of the car.
They were alone in the car. O’Malley settled into one of the seats opposite the open door. “We’ll never get off this train alive, ye realize,” he said pleasantly. “They’ll be waiting for us at the other end with instructions to shoot on sight.”
“Don’t be a pessimist,” Chester told him.
“Pessimist!” O’Malley said. “Why, that’s the optimistic viewpoint. What will probably happen to us is too frightful to think about. I have a sense of deep foreboding.”
Two guards got on and settled across the car from them. One of the guards pulled a leatherbound book from his pouch bag and started reading, and the other took some large copper coins from his pocket and practiced palming them and moving them across the tops of his fingers. Neither paid any attention to the three Confederates.
“Ye see,” O’Malley whispered, “it’s a plant! They’re on to us.”
“Shut up!” Chester mouthed, as the reading guard glanced curiously over at them. “You see,” he continued in his normal tone, “the structure of this car is very interesting, and tells much about the people who designed it.”
The door slid down and sealed, and the train lurched gently to a start.
“They were shorter and squatter than humans, for one thing,” Chester continued, “as is evidenced by the height of the door and the width of these seats.”
“Yes, Colonel,” Carl said in a respectful tone as befits a sergeant, “and is there anything else?”
“They did not originate on this planet, but were visitors much as we are,” Chester said. Both guards were interested now, and their looks were guileless and free of suspicion.
“Your pardon, sir,” the book reader said, leaning forward across the aisle. “This is a subject that is of interest to me. Why do you say that the elder race, the builders of this underground railway, were not of this planet?”
“Simple and easily explained,” Chester said. “The lighting that permeates this room is green and not white. The sun around which we revolve gives, to our eyes, a perfectly white light; which means it is of the same spectral class as the sun under which our race evolved.
“These people, whoever they were, evolved around a cooler sun, and the center of their visible spectrum was shifted into the green. It is also possible that a difference in the composition of their home-world atmosphere, and the light it would let through, was responsible. At any rate, it was not this world.”
“That seems perfectly clear, sir,” Carl said, resolving to have Chester explain at the earliest opportunity what some of those words meant. It was obvious that insufficient education was a serious handicap.
“I don’t mean to dispute you, sir,” the guard said. “But find your reasoning interesting, and would like to pursue the logic to the ultimate conclusion. Is it not possible that the builders of this train merely found the green light more stimulating, or conversely more relaxing, than natural light? On the other hand, could it not be that the light panels themselves, over the course of the many years since the elder race disappeared, have shifted up in frequency until they are centered below the blue, and thus appear green to our eyes?”
Chester thought this over. “Possible,” he admitted, “but improbable. One does not wish to attempt to predict the thought processes of an alien mind, but I find it hard to imagine why one would wish to stimulate the necessarily passive riders of a subway during their journey. Conversely, would not the passengers who found it necessary to conduct some business on the train—writing perhaps, or reading, assuming they did such—complain about relaxing lighting that made it harder to accomplish their ends? Do you not find it difficult to read under this green light?”
“I do, sir, you are right,” the guard admitted.
“As to the light panels shifting spectrum over the course of years, would we not find, then, that some had shifted more than others due to slight inconsistencies in the manufacture? And yet they all seem to glow with the same brightness and constant hue. Thus it seems to me that they are as they were when installed long years ago.”
The guard nodded. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “You have given me much to think about.”
They lapsed into silence, and the guard resumed his book. The train continued on its way with unabated, if unknown, speed.
After a while the two guards began a soft argument between themselves about the relative merits of day shift versus night shift, and Carl ventured a quiet question to Chester. “What is the plan, sir, when we arrive?”
“We reconnoiter as rapidly as possible, and then we disappear,” Chester told him.
“Sounds good,” Carl agreed. “Sir.”
“That’s right, keep up the front, Carl, my boy,” Chester said. “I am your superior officer as long as we’re in these uniforms. It adds an air of verisimilitude to our otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.”
The train slowed to a stop and opened its doors. Neither of the guards moved, so Chester signaled his two companions to keep their seats, and they nervously waited for the doors to close again.
Chester leaned forward. “I would like to survey this station,” he told the guard with the book. “How long will the doors be open?”
“If you stay put, about five minutes,” the guard told him. “If you get out, they will slam closed behind you.”
“Curious,” Chester said.
“It’s the automatic machinery,” the guard told him, “operating by an alien logic.”
The doors dropped closed, and the train started again. “I wonder how many more stops before we get off?” Carl whispered. “And I wonder if we get off at the same stop as the guards?”
“An interesting question,” Chester admitted. “We shall have to watch carefully for cues.”
The train went on. Time passed, and Carl wished that he had a book to read. A textbook on infantry tactics, perhaps, although it looked like that would never be useful to him again. That phase of his life was clearly over. He would never be a knight. His father would have to be happy with his pension, if they didn’t cut it off when they discovered that Carl had escaped.
Carl sat brooding about it, and felt a terrible sense of injustice. Not at his present situation, but at his past. His whole life had been a lie. He had not only been a prisoner all his life, but he hadn’t even known it. Now, for the first time, on this train, with the threat of capture or death a few hours off, he was free. His destiny was, for the first time, his own, if he were clever and fast enough to stay in front of his pursuers.
The train stopped and the door slid up. Carl tensed, watching the guards. They stood up and nodded to their fellow passengers. “Good-bye!” the book reader said. “Give our regards to Atlanta, next stop.” And the two of them left the train, carefully ducking through the low door.
“Well,” Chester breathed, and his shoulders sagged. “Thank the Lord for small favors. Now we know where to get off.”
The door dropped shut, and the train started off again.
“Atlanta?” O’Malley asked. “Where’s that?”
“In the heart of the Confederacy,” Chester told him. “And only two sectors over from Sanloo.”
Carl continued his brooding as the train went on. This time his thoughts turned to Alyssaunde. Why had she left him? He felt particularly betrayed. Even if there were nothing she could do about his imprisonment, she could have at least come to see him. Well, she was a five and he was an ex-corporal-turned-prisoner, and what could she care about him?
“How do we proceed?” O’Malley asked Chester.
“In a westerly direction,” Chester said. “And cautiously. It would be silly to attempt to make plans, for we have no idea of what lies ahead. We must just stick together and use our heads. And remember, O’Malley, no precipitous actio
n. If you have one minute to act in, spend the first thirty seconds planning—then move fast.”
“My scheme exactly,” O’Malley agreed.
“Hm,” Chester said. “I hadn’t noticed.”
The train slid to a stop and the door lifted. Carl peered out at the great tile station. A wooden sign had been erected against one wall that read: Atlanta—persons depot.
“What is this ‘persons’ business?” Carl asked.
“That is what the Confederates call their black-faced workers,” Chester said. “It dates back to an ancient document of some sort.” He waved his hand at the wide station. “Shall we?”
“We’d best, before the door closes,” O’Malley said. “Who knows where we’d end up then.”
They stepped off the train, and the door immediately dropped behind them.
Chapter Eleven
The “persons” were being led off the back car. The guards turned them over to a group of waiting gray-clad soldiers, who lined them up and inspected them. One of the soldiers approached the trio and stopped in front of Chester. “Are you the accompanying officer?” he asked, performing a casual salute.
“I am,” Chester snapped. “Is that the way you usually salute a superior officer?”
“No, sir,” the soldier said, snapping to attention. “Sorry, sir.” He gave a crisp salute.
The soldier didn’t seem particularly surprised or resentful, Carl noted. Evidently officers were officers regardless of the period or culture.
“Will you sign this please, sir?” the soldier requested, thrusting a clipboard in Chester’s face.
Chester surveyed the document on the board, studied it closely for a minute, then scribbled something illegible on it at the bottom with Colonel Nottoway’s pen. “Here you are, son,” he said, handing it back.
“Thank you, sir,” the soldier said, tendering a second crisp salute, doing a perfect about-face, and stalking back to his companions.
“We’d best let those lads and their charges go up first,” Chester said. “I don’t think he’ll be particularly anxious to wait for me.”
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