He gave in, finally, and sat upright on the bench, drawing in his legs until he perched in lotus position with his back to the wall. His knees and a good part of his legs projected outward into thin air; but in this position the center of his mass was closer to the edge of the bench that touched the wall behind him and he could relax without falling off. He dropped his hands on his thighs carelessly and hunched his shoulders a little to make it appear to any observer that his position was unthinking and habitual rather than practised. Then he turned his mind loose to drift. Within seconds, the cell faded about him; and, for all physical intents and purposes, he slept…
The cell door clashed open abruptly, waking them. Hal was on his feet by the time the guard came through the open door and he saw out of the corner of his eye that Jason was also.
"All right," said the man who had entered. He was thin and tall - though not as tall as Hal - with a coldly harsh face, and captain's lozenges on his black Militia uniform. "Outside!"
They obeyed. Hal's body was still numb from sleep, but his mind, triggered into immediate overdrive, was whirring. He avoided looking at Jason in the interests of keeping up the pretense that they had not talked and still did not know each other; and he noticed that Jason avoided looking at him. Once in the corridor they were herded back the way Hal remembered being brought in.
"Where are we going?" Jason asked.
"Silence!" said the captain softly, without looking at him and without changing expression, "or I will hang thee by thy wrists for an hour or so after this is over, apostate whelp."
Jason said no more. They were moved along down several corridors, and taken up a freight lift shaft, to what was again very obviously the office section of this establishment. Their guardian brought them to join a gathering of what seemed to be twenty or more prisoners like themselves, waiting outside the open doors of a room with a raised platform at one end, a desk upon it and an open space before it. The flag of the United Sects, a white cross on a black field, hung limply from a flagpole set upright on the stage.
The captain left them with the other prisoners and stepped a few steps aside to speak to the five other enlisted Militiamen acting as guards. They stood, officer, guards and prisoners alike, and time went by.
Finally, there was the sound of footwear on polished corridor floor, echoing around the bend in the further corridor, and three figures turned the corner and came into sight. Hal's breath hesitated for a second. Two were men in ordinary business suits - almost certainly local officials. But the man between them, tall above them, was Bleys Ahrens.
Bleys ran his glance over all the prisoners as he approached, and his eye paused for a second on Hal, but not for longer than might have been expected from the fact that Hal was noticeably the tallest of the group. Bleys came on and turned into the doorway, shaking his head at the two men accompanying him as he did so.
"Foolish," he was saying to them as he passed within arm's length of Hal. "Foolish, foolish! Did you think I was the sort to be impressed by what you could sweep off the streets, that I was to be amused like some primitive ruler by state executions or public torture-spectacles? This sort of thing only wastes energy. I'll show you how to do things. Bring them in here."
The guards were already moving in response before one of the men with Bleys turned and gestured to the Militia officer. Hal and the others were herded into the room and lined up in three ranks facing the platform on which the two men now stood behind the desk and Bleys himself half-sat, half-lounged, with his weight on the further edge of that piece of furniture. To even this casual pose he lent an impression of elegant authority.
A coldness had developed in the pit of Hal's stomach with Bleys' appearance; and now that feeling was growing, spreading all through him. Sheltered and protected as he had been all his life, he had grown up without ever knowing the kind of fear that compresses the chest and takes strength from the limbs. Then, all at once, he had encountered death and that kind of fear for the first time; and now the reflex set up by that moment had been triggered by a second encounter with the tall, commanding figure on the platform before him.
He was not afraid of the Friendly authorities who were holding him captive. His mind recognized the fact that they were only human; and he had been deeply instructed in the principle that for any problem involving human interaction there was a practical solution to be found by anyone who would search for it. But the sight of Bleys faced him with a being who had destroyed the very pillars of his personal universe. He felt the paralysis of his fear spreading all through him; and the rational part of him recognized that once it had taken him over completely he would throw himself upon the fate that would follow Bleys' identification of him - just to get it over with.
He reached for help; and the ghosts of three old men came out of his memory in response.
"He is no more than a weed that flourishes for a single summer's day, this man you face," said the harsh voice of Obadiah in his mind. "No more than the rain on the mountainside, blowing for a moment past the rock. God is that rock, and eternal. The rain passes and is as if it never was. Hold to the rock and ignore the rain."
"He can do nothing," said the soft voice of Walter the InTeacher, "that I've not already shown you at one time or another. He's no more than a user of skills developed by other men and women, many of whom could use them far better than he can. Remember that no one's mind and body are ever more than human. Forget the fact he's older and more experienced than you; and concentrate only on a true image of what he is, and what his limits are."
"Fear is just one more weapon," said Malachi, "no more dangerous in itself than a sharpened blade is. Treat it as you would any weapon. When it approaches, turn yourself to let it pass you by, then take and control the hand that guides it at you. The weapon without the hand is only one more thing - in a universe full of things."
Up on the platform Bleys looked down at them all.
"Pay attention to me, my friends," he said softly to the prisoners. "Look at me."
They looked, Hal with the rest of them. He saw Bleys' lean, aristocratic face and pleasant brown eyes. Then, as he looked at them, those eyes began to expand until they would entirely fill his field of vision.
Reflexively, out of his training under Walter the InTeacher, he took a step back within his own mind, putting what he saw at arm's length - and all at once it was as if he was aware of things on two levels. There was the level on which he stood with the other prisoners, held by Ahrens like animals transfixed by a bright light in darkness; and there was the level in which he was aware of the assault that was being made on his free will by what was hidden behind that bright light, and on which he struggled to resist it.
He thought of rock. In his mind he formed the image of a mountainside, cut and carved into an altar on which an eternal light burned. Rock and light… untouchable, eternal.
"I must apologize to you, my friends and brothers," Bleys was saying gently to all of them. "Mistakenly, you've been made to suffer; and that shouldn't be. But it was a natural mistake and small mistakes of your own have contributed to it. Examine your conscience. Is there one of you here who isn't aware of things you know you shouldn't have done…"
Like mist, the beginnings of rain blew upon the light and the altar. But the light continued to burn, and the rock was unchanged. Bleys' voice continued; and the rain thickened, blowing more fiercely upon the rock and the light. On the mountainside the day darkened, but the light burned on through the darkness, showing the rock still there, still unmarked and unmoved…