It Looks Like You're Writing a Letter
Chapter 10

The road was dead straight. They could seefor miles, and an eerie breeze was starting to whip the dust across theasphalt.

David was asleep across the back seats,Jeopardy was dozing with her head lolling against the headrest in the passengerseat. Thorner was tired and his back ached. They had stopped intermittently bythe side of the road for various people to piss and stretch out, but the longdrive was taking its toll. The old Volvo's seats were sagging and threadbare,any semblance of lumbar support long since decayed.

Conversation had been as sparse as thelandscape. It had given Thorner more time to think, something he didn't reallyneed. The others had been stuck to their arm pieces, their pupils reflectingback scrolling news feeds and status updates. David spent hours playing somekind of game, which involved firing bubbles at jewels - it was asinine. Whenchallenged on it, he reported that his profile stated he was a big fan, and hada high score. He pointed out that if he stopped playing all of a sudden, it wouldbe incongruent, so Thorner had to put up with the bleeps and squeaks of David'sscore increasing, a database table somewhere thousands of miles away beingincremented, benefitting nobody, creating nothing.

They had been tracking the news constantlyfor updates on Griffen's activity, as well as homing in on his avatar andtracking its progress across the map. They were closing on each other, like amatador and his bull. As the two icons crept imperceptibly towards each other,so the tension in the Volvo increased.

So far there were still no reportedvisuals, even though the Tanner Griffen manhunt seemed to be big news - todayat least. No doubt tomorrow there would be another killing, kidnapping,torturing - something horrific to keep people in a permanent state of fear.Corporate greed, espionage, sabotage, tax evasion, dirty dealings and fatbonuses were relegated to one-line items on the more obscure news reels. Theyjust didn't sell, so nobody was really interested. A stream of numbers justwasn't as sexy as a photograph of a fresh cadaver.

Griffen had continued to travel east, atroughly the same speed. They were travelling west, much slower, but had managedto get onto the same road. They estimated they would come face to face with himin about three hours.

Jeopardy roused from her sleep, her headrolled round to face Thorner and her eyes were wide, taking her bearings. "Whereare we?"

"We're on Route 40 right now,"replied Thorner.

"Is he still on this road?"

"You tell me."

Jeopardy checked her arm piece. "Yep,we're heading straight for him."

"What exactly is our plan, by the way- when we catch up to him?" asked Thorner.

"Stop him, first of all. Find out someanswers. Why he killed the senator, who was paying him, where he's going now."

"And after this little chat - what?"

Jeopardy sighed. "You're quitemelodramatic, aren't you Thorner?"

"I'm old fashioned. I think murder ispretty melodramatic."

"Whatever."

"Do you think you'll be able to killhim? By all reports he made short work of Big Joe and his man Friday."

"Don't worry about me, Thorner. I canhandle myself."

"I don't doubt it."

"What the... what is that?" Itwas David, who had awakened unbeknownst to either of them, and who now stuckhis head between the front seats. He was pointing out of the windshield.

They followed his finger. In the distance,on the road, was what looked like a huge pile of twisted metal, glinting in theafternoon sun.

"Shit," intoned Jeopardy.

Thorner looked at her. "Trouble?"

"Yup. Roadblock. Out here, most likelyFreemen."

"Who or what are Freemen?"

Jeopardy was already pulling weapons fromher belt and loading them. "The Freemen, half biker gang, half crazedcult. Lead by Dankar Freeman, total fucking lunatic."

"Shit. I mean... shit," panickedDavid from the back seat. "Give me a weapon."

Jeopardy ignored him.

"What shall I do?" asked Thorner.

"They've seen us now, probably beentracking us all night. Just keep driving, we'll try and wing it."

Thorner tightened his grip on the steeringwheel. The sun was now smouldering at the bottom of the light cloud cover. Theroadblock was getting nearer much faster than he had time to think about a planof action.

"How many of them? Armed?"

"No idea," responded Jeopardycurtly. "They're off-Gridders, fervently so. They won't show up onanything, pointless even looking. You'll like these guys, Thorner - they'rejust like you." There was little humour in her voice. She sounded scared,which just made Thorner all the more terrified. He felt old, unarmed andunprepared.

As they got closer to the roadblock itbecame clear that what had from a distance looked like a pile of twisted metalwas actually a collection of vehicles, adorned with scrap metal spikes andpoles, like giant barbed wire on wheels. Every vehicle was unrecognisable, suchwas the level of customisation and vandalism effected on each. Covered in rustand in very poor repair, they were still ruggedly effective for these kinds ofambushes.

As they neared, a man jumped down from theflatbed of one of the trucks and started walking towards them, his hand raisedin a 'halt' signal. He was tall, skinny, and heavily tattooed. Long blonde hairsprouted from his head seemingly at random and he was clad in chunks of darkbrown leather, which was itself daubed with spray paint splashes and the logosof automotive parts manufacturers. His weaselly face sported an amused sneerand his left forearm had a sawn-off shotgun strapped to it where an arm piecewould normally be.

Thorner slowed to a stop in front of theman, who walked casually to the driver's side door and bent over to knock onthe window with his weapon. The electric window button did nothing when Thornerpressed it, so he wound it down manually. A stubbly, sun-browned face filledthe window.

"'Ello. May I ask what you are doin'?"his tone was one of mock friendliness, which didn't fool any of them. Thornerwas about to speak when Jeopardy saved him.

"We want to get past. We're on our wayto Oklahoma City."

"Oh yeah?" the man grunted andspat on the road. He turned back to the car. His breath stank of chemicals. "Well,see - I don't think that's gonna happen today. You lot, as they say, are nowroyally fucked. You, this car, and everything in it now belong to the Freemen.Think of it as a toll for using our road for the last 300 miles."

"Your road?" asked Thorner, andinstantly regretted it. He could feel Jeopardy tense as soon as he'd finishedthe sentence.

The gang member looked frustrated, thennodded and in one swift movement wrenched the car door open, pulled Thorner outof his seat and threw him onto the road. Thorner landed painfully on hisshoulder and right side. Before he could get back to his feet, the Freeman hadswung and landed a solid right hook to his temple. Thorner crumpled and coveredup.

Jeopardy had jumped out of the passengerside and had her hands in the air. "Okay! Okay! Calm down, we get it. Caris yours, we don't have anything with us - check if you want."

"I fuckin' do want, missy! Get thegimp out of the back seat and shut the fuck up."

Jeopardy pulled David out of the far door.He was mute and wide-eyed but beyond that, his mood was unreadable.

The gang member marched to the back of theVolvo and threw open the trunk. He pulled out the three rucksacks and threwthem back towards the roadblock, where another gang member scurried to collectthem. Jeopardy and David darted out of his way as he stomped around the car tothe passenger side door, reached in and ransacked the glove compartment, whichwas full of trash and nothing else.

Looking back towards the barricade,Jeopardy now saw that the vehicles were festooned with Freemen. All dressedsimilarly to the man currently dissecting the borrowed Volvo. Some had facepaint, all were heavily armed. They looked like an African tribe who haddiscovered huffing paint thinners was fun. Scrawny, wiry bodies missing earsand fingers, bristling with knives and guns. They were watching silently, as ifwaiting for something.

Their assailant had finished roughlyransacking the Volvo, and replaceing nothing he could drink or sniff was dulyupset.

"You fuckin' skeezes. Why you going toOkie? Answer me!"

Thorner was still down, groaning quietly.Jeopardy looked the Freeman in the eye. "Visiting friends."

"Visiting friends," parroted theFreeman, in a mocking tone. "Fuckin' bullshit. Get in that truck overthere." He motioned to the nearest truck, a modified camper van with noroof. He whistled and another member of the group jogged over and jumped behindthe wheel of the Volvo.

Jeopardy picked up Thorner and helped himacross to the camper and they climbed inside. Another Freeman, this one shortand stubby but just as aggressive, demanded their arm pieces. David andJeopardy gave theirs up grudgingly. The Freeman threw the devices into a nearbyflatbed truck, giving them the deference of roadkill. He then searched both ofThorner's arms and came up with nothing, which gave him pause like a gorillaseeing a television for the first time. A walkie-talkie on his belt chirped andfuzzed.

Up close, the Freemen smelled worse as agroup - a mixture of household cleaning products, sweat, gasoline andexcrement. A giant of a man sat on the remnants of the roof at the front of thecamper and casually span the barrel of his revolver as he looked them over.

Someone in the group whistled and the roadblocklurched into life, splitting up slowly like a melting iceberg to become a dozenchugging, vibrating trucks and cars.

They travelled in a convoy off the road andover the cracked, dusty earth. At the head of the collection of random,barely-functional utility vehicles, Dankar Freeman sat in the passenger seat ofa decaying flatbed truck. A huge man, large of bones but powerfully muscledunder a thick layer of fat, his dark skin glistened like a ripe olive. His headwas shaved to the skin and shone in the midday sun. White face paint and blacktattoos gave him a mottled, almost camouflaged appearance. He was dressed inthe same patchwork of black and brown leather as the other gang members, hisheavy spiked biker boots propped on the dashboard.

Dankar used to be an engineer, and a verygood one back when he was Dankar Odebe. He had lived a contented and uneventfulthirty-nine years working hard and bringing home a pay check until one day sixyears ago he saw a speech by Senator Joe Rigsby on a video stream. It provokedsome kind of an awakening in him. The child of deeply religious parents, nowboth dead, he harboured some long-standing guilt about abandoning their faithbut saw nowhere in the modern world where he could make amends for this.Senator Rigsby's words targeted that part of his brain responsible forsublimation to a higher power and the rest of his journey seemed automatic.

He moved out of his family home, afterputting his arm piece in the microwave and setting it to 'high' for ten minutes.He left behind a wife and a young son in order to follow Senator Joe around theMidwest and east coast, always in the front row of his speaking engagements,staring intently at him and nodding at every point he made. Dankar got so wellversed in Big Joe's rhetoric that he could mouth many of his speeches alongwith him as he gave them.

But being off-Grid himself didn't seem likeenough and before long Dankar was organising off-Grid sit-ins in squats andabandoned buildings. Attendances were not large at first, until he had arevelation and took his crusade out of the densely packed cities and out intothe suburbs, and then the countryside. When people weren't quite so tightlypacked together, it was easier to be truly off the OraCorp radar and peoplefelt more at ease speaking their minds, knowing that their geo-location datadidn't track them directly into and out of a building as part of a regularpattern.

The quality of attendees, however,disappointed Dankar. Whackjobs, conspiracy theorists, runaways, junkies andcriminals - it was all far from the religious utopia he had originallyenvisioned. Rigsby's message was fine up to a point, but in Dankar's opinion hedidn't go far enough, he didn't deliver these new free souls back to God. So,Dankar took it upon himself to convert these off-Grid co-conspirators to theword of God, using a mishmash of ancient Catholic dogma and vague spiritualism,and he filled in the gaps with good old-fashioned fire and brimstone preaching.

It was much more difficult that he expected.The problem with being off-Grid for a long period of time, and outside ofcivilisation to the extent that was necessary to evade investigation fromgovernment or company forces, was that humans tended to revert to base, primalarchetypes. These were exacerbated by the poor backgrounds most of them hadendured. Thus, violence, murder, rape and crime followed his God-fearing troupewherever they went. At first, Dankar was appalled and petitioned for calm andrighteousness, but within a few months decided to take the line of leastresistance. He started instead to justify any action his disciples made asbeing the hand of God, smiting those worshipping the false idol of the Grid.Retribution, then, for turning their back on the God he had rediscovered.

So this was the life he now led -committing highway robbery out in the dusty plains, relieving the unsuspectingof their high-end consumer goods and bartering or selling them for supplies andenergy cells. Dressing like savages, living in filth and decay, nomadic - allthese sacrifices were worth it for Dankar Freeman.

Thorner, Jeopardy and David didn't speak,but instead exchanged worried glances. While they weren't tied up or restrainedin any way, they each knew that flight would be futile from such heavily armedcaptors. They watched the beige landscape crackle past until a farmhouse andoutbuildings loomed on the horizon, surrounded by yet more vehicles.

The camper rustled to a stop in a plume ofdust and grit. The fat Freeman jumped down and roughly manhandled them out ofthe camper, pointing his revolver at them with a splintered grin on his face.He spat some coarse slang into his radio. They were ushered towards thefarmhouse, then around it to the rear, where a garden once was - now neglected,overgrown and desperate-looking. It looked like a family photograph left out inthe sun to fade. At the far side of the garden was a child's swing set, builtfrom tubular steel and heavily augmented with vehicle parts, a sports car'sbucket seat and with various blades and tools welded around it to create a kindof rude metal throne.

Already sat on this throne, perhaps threefeet above the ground, was Dankar Freeman. As they were prodded towards him, hestepped down from the swing set and folded his arms. A large machete swung athis waist.

"Welcome!" he bellowed.

"That's Freeman," Jeopardywhispered to Thorner.

"So, what do we have here? Jenkins,you found them?" he didn't look at the scrawny gang member who originallystopped their car, but Jenkins answered anyway, from behind them.

"Yeah I sure did boss. We'd tailed 'emfor a few hundred miles down the road, figured they were in need of conversion."

Freeman nodded and started to pace in frontof them. "You know who I am?"

Jeopardy once again took the role ofunofficial spokesperson. "You're Dankar Freeman, leader of the Freemen."

"That's right, girlie. Do you know whyI had you brought here?"

The group stood silent, assuming it was arhetorical question. It wasn't.

"Well? Answer me when I ask you aquestion." His manner was schoolmasterly, but severely threatening. Histhick patois accent seemed fake, but gave him the air of a third worlddictator.

Jeopardy eyeballed him, showing no fear. "You'regoing to rob us of the few possessions we have, then kill us, I expect."

Dankar laughed uproariously. "Girlie!You must have heard some bad stories about Mr Freeman and his friends, yes?"

Jeopardy said nothing. Dankar shook hishead in amusement.

"I might kill you. I might." Hepaced some more, looked up underneath his brow at them. "But I really wantyou here to save you, we'll see how that goes eh?"

"Save us? From what?" The fog hadlifted from Thorner's head and he was starting to feel annoyed. Nothing annoyedhim more than people not killing him when he was expecting them to.

"Old man! You can talk! Ha ha ha...tell me your name."

His temple throbbed to a beat that wasslowly increasing in tempo. "Henry Thorner."

"Nice to meet you Henry Thorner, canyou please introduce me to your friends?"

Thorner saw no reason to be secretive atthis point. "This is David Wilkinson, and this is uh... Jeopardy."

Freeman made an uninterested face, andcarried on. "The world today, Thorner - the world is fucked. When we foundyou out there on the road, you were lost."

David looked like he was going to denythis, but thought better of it.

"You were lost! Just like everyoneelse out there. We've already helped you take the first step towards beingfound by removing those evil windows to oblivion from your bodies!"Thorner took a moment to realise Freeman meant the arm pieces.

"Everybody is glued to those things,they only experience life through the updates, through the data. They don'tfeel life anymore. We are the Freemen! We are free from the shackles of OraCorpand their repugnant death grip on our identities and our souls, and ourrelationships and our love! You see?"

Thorner didn't really see. He didn't seehow being off-Grid naturally equated to not washing and kidnap and robbery andmurder.

"Look around you, Henry Thorner. Noconnections, no wireless, no satellites - we are truly free! Where we go is ourchoice, and the only people who know about it are the people we meet. We makeour own choices and nobody tells us what to do! Those devices on your wristsare the devil's grip, leading you to sin and damnation!"

Jeopardy kicked her toe in the dirt,starting to look dangerously bored. Their weapons had not been taken from them,which struck Thorner as strange. Perhaps the fact that it was only Jeopardy, ayoung girl, who was bearing weapons left the gang feeling reasonably secure -plus, the Freemen were armed to the teeth and vastly outnumbered them. Thornerwas wondering if Jeopardy was about to do something drastic and took theopportunity to turn Freeman's diatribe into a conversation and get back tosomewhere near his comfort zone.

"Mr Freeman," he began, "yourmen may not have told you this, but I also have no profile, never had one. Iwasn't wearing an arm piece when your colleague picked us up. I'm curious as tohow you got to be so... uh... marginalised? I mean, nobody is forcing you tohave an Ora profile, and while it's inconvenient, you can live a normal life insociety without one, I'm living proof of that."

A darkness descended over Freeman's mood. "Youthink we want to live like this? Like animals, out in the desert, scroungingfor food and hiding in old buildings? Shitting on the ground?" he took afew steps towards Thorner and stood towering over him. Thorner could smellgasoline, sweat and hashish. "You might think you're free, Henry Thorner,but all the time you're in the city, surrounded by the infected, you're just asmonitored as if you had your own ident. Don't kid yourself! You can't walk downthe street without people checking you in, putting a visual on you, tagging youin the background of a photograph. You think the system doesn't know you? Don'tbe a fucking child, Henry Thorner. You think the heart doesn't know about theliver? If you're in the belly of the system you are part of the system. Youmight be the space between the data, but the space is what gives the data itsform, do you understand?"

Thorner looked down. He did understand, andin a way Freeman had a point. He was always just one phone call to Linda awayfrom being able to use the massive power of the information Grid. Even thoughit was by proxy, his connection to that vast treasure trove was complicit andabsolute. He wouldn't even have found Kruke and Griffen without a simple Oralookup.

"Maybe you're right, Mr Freeman. MaybeI'm taking the easy way out of being outside of the system, but I don't hurtpeople in the process. You and your... people, you steal and you kidnap and Idon't even know what else. How are you making society a better place byscavenging from it?"

Freeman looked amused, entertained. Thornergot the impression he was enjoying the cat and mouse game that theirconversation had become. "Okay Henry Thorner, let me tell you somethingright now. We do what we have to do to survive. We didn't make the rules ofthis so-called society. The people we steal from are already lost, they'repawns of OraCorp, so when we steal from them we steal from the corporation.Every one of them sold their rights as people away when they accepted the Oraterms and conditions. We give them the opportunity to join us and live as freemen, but if they are happy to be meek little sheep, then the wolves will keepon snatching them in the night until they decide to evolve. We are theevolution, Henry Thorner! We will chew on the system from around the edges untilinfection takes hold, mark my words!"

Thorner looked around the garden at thethirty or so filthy, scrawny specimens dressed in trash. "This is the hopefor mankind's future? This is what everyone has to look forward to? Becoming adesert thug, on the run from Sec for some petty theft or other?"

"Henry Thorner, you do not understand!Sec don't know we exist. They can't track us, we talk to each other on these,"he brandished the old radio walkie-talkie tied to his belt with a length ofbungee cord, "nobody uses radio waves anymore, they belong to us! We arelike ghosts, when we are gone we leave no trace."

Thorner was almost starting to feel sorryfor Freeman and his faithful flock. "But, if we're being tracked, thosearm pieces you stole from us will lead Sec right to your door."

Freeman was unfazed. "Sec aren'ttracking you. If they were, you wouldn't have been so easy for us to watch youand catch you. Besides, your geo-data just shows you paying a visit to an emptydeserted farmhouse, that's all."

"What if you're wrong? What if theabsence of biometric life signs triggers a warning?"

"Then Sec show up, two men at themost. We kill them, strip their vehicle of useful parts and bury their bodiesin the desert. Sec are like wasps, you kill one and then more flock to thedying creature's last calls. As soon as we're over the horizon, we no longerexist."

"So you're always on the run."

"Hmmm, no. We like to think of it asalways on the move. What's the point of being tied down to one place anyway?Sooner or later civilisation will come to you, swallow you up and take awayyour privacy and your rights as a human being. Better to go where you will,live free and smell the air like God intended."

"So you really think God has a part inthis?"

"Of course Henry Thorner! Everythingis for God's glory! You think God wanted us to live your way, worshipping thosefalse idols strapped to your arms? No!" Freeman was becoming more and moredemonstrative. The beat in Thorner's temple got stronger and faster - he couldsee it now at the edges of his vision. Sweat ran down his back underneath hisovercoat.

"How do you know God doesn't want usto be this tightly connected? How can you be sure the Grid isn't part of hismaster plan to bring humanity closer together?"

Freeman smiled, giving Thorner theimpression he'd answered this question many times. "God does not live inthe Grid, he cannot live there in the digital jungle, there is no soul there,no humanity. It's a gathering of zeroes and ones and nothing else. The peopleconnect using Ora but it's not a real connection, it's flimsy... superficial.They no longer go to church, apart from to log on to the Grid and ignore eachother."

Thorner thought back to the Reverend andhis conversation with him. The Reverend was resigned to the new world order, heknew God had left the building, replaced with the multiple glowing eyes of theGrid. He'd accepted it, made the most of it, welcomed the same people in to hishouse as before, but now the landlord was absent. Freeman on the other handseemed to think he was living under God's gaze, sleeping under the stars, fullyexposed to His love once again.

"So," asked Thorner, "theway you see it, God never went away, humanity did?"

"Yes, that's right. God still lovesevery one of his children, even those who have turned their back on him. Theysit in God's house and immerse themselves in this abomination, we couldn'texpect Him to stay in those old crumbling buildings - they were just meetingplaces anyway. Now, God doesn't look in the city, in the churches. He sees onlythose of us who are looking up at the heavens, and forsakes those who look downat their wrist screens."

David and Jeopardy were getting restless.They weren't enjoying listening to Thorner and Freeman's theologicaldiscussion. It was hot under the thick afternoon sun and they still had gunspointed at them.

"Okay, so what's your plan Freeman?What if we don't want to be converted?"

"Huh. That would be a shame, but yourcar is a good runner, we'd take that. If you really have denied God and Hislove, then he has no use for you and neither do we and we will kill you andbury your bodies in the desert along with all the rest."

Thorner looked at Jeopardy. She lookedintensely annoyed. "That's not much of a choice, we'll choose conversion."

"Excellent!" boomed Freeman. "Men!Ready the ceremony!"

There was a flurry of activity. The Freemenscuttled around like insects, busying themselves. Jeopardy's belt was takenfrom her, along with the weapons fixed to it. Thorner was frisked and his overcoatremoved, which he was grateful for in the short term. David was frisked also,but in a more perfunctory manner due to his unassuming appearance. The Freemenlaughed at his clothes and mocked his silence.

Their hands were tied behind their backs andthey were led inside the mercifully cool house. It was dilapidated. Portions ofthe first floor had fallen through and lay either in the middle of rooms, orswept roughly to the side. The whole place felt structurally unsound andsmelled of urine and rot. Judging by the state of the place, the Freemen hadbeen based here for some time - trash and discarded food wrappers covered everyavailable surface.

The three of them were taken to what usedto be the dining room. It was the least untidy room they'd seen and was devoidof furniture. In the centre of the room was a threadbare rug, like a magiccarpet with the magic long beaten out of it. In front of it was a makeshiftaltar, created from furniture that had been smashed and then nailed roughlytogether again.

They were each thrown to their knees in aline facing the altar and told to wait. A skeleton-like member of thecongregation stood in the corner of the room, by the door, with a badlymaintained looking revolver gripped in each hand. He was young, perhaps still ateenager. There was a dense, pregnant silence.

"Hey," Jeopardy suddenly saidover her shoulder, "what's this ceremony all about?"

The guard seemed unwilling to speak.

"Come on, I think we deserve a littleprep time, you know what I mean?"

The guard cleared his throat and spokequietly, nervously. "The ceremony is a great honour. To be converted byDankar Freeman himself - you should be humbled."

"Did he convert you?" saidJeopardy, still not looking at their captor.

"Yes!" the young man became animated,"I was fortunate enough to be saved by Mr Freeman just two years ago, hemade me see the error of my ways, how shallow my life had been!"

"What was your life like before youjoined the Freemen?"

"Oh, terrible. Horrible. I was livingin the sour bosom of so-called civilisation, going to school, following thecommands of my arm piece unquestioningly. I was so concerned about getting goodgrades so I could become a programmer for OraCorp, I lost my soul! I was anempty shell, my relationships with others were digital, disconnected. I waslost."

Jeopardy continued her line of questioning."So, you were getting good grades, on target for a cushy job for thebiggest employer in the world, and this guy comes up and convinces you to gowith him to live in the wilderness eating rats?"

"Show more respect!" spat theFreeman. "Dankar spotted me on the street, I was walking without lookingwhere I was going, absorbed in my arm piece like a slave, and he stopped mefrom walking into traffic. I would be dead today if it wasn't for him! Straightaway he started to tell me about his mission, about his vision for the newworld free of the shackles of corporate control, free from their scrutiny andtheir judgment! I left the very next day and went on the road with him. It wasthe best decision of my entire life."

The boy's tone was reverent, sincere. Hehad the fervour of a true religious fanatic. Jeopardy thought that whateverDankar was, he was definitely very good at it.

"So this ceremony, can you tell meabout it?"

The boy paused, obviously this was againsthis orders. "All I can say is, you will be cleansed. Dankar will demandthat you throw away all trappings of your previous life, all technology must besurrendered to him. Then he will speak words of wisdom to you, and if you aretruly saved, you may get the chance to join us."

Jeopardy tried to suppress her sarcasm. "Well,that would be... great," she said.

The door of the room opened, and a mutteredconversation took place that none of them could make out. When the door closedagain, the young guard was silent, obviously chastised for conversing with theprisoners. The ceremony was about to begin.