s [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

of brute strength than by whatever lift the stubby wings were able to
generate. Once aloft, the alien aircraft started to climb.
The humans, packed cheek to jowl in the shuttle s cargo compartment, felt the
additional gs, heard their ears pop, but were powerless to move. Manning was
reminded of Styrofoam pellets. Only these pellets were made of flesh and
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blood.
Making an already uncomfortable situation worse was the fact that most if not
all of the humans were from North America, a place where people value
 personal space and go to considerable lengths to establish and maintain it.
The security chief, who had spent time in other cultures, understood the
problem but discovered that understanding didn t make much difference. Soft,
warm flesh pressed in from all sides and threatened to engulf him. That,
combined with total darkness, was extremely claustrophobic, and Manning fought
to maintain his composure.
Manning remembered his watch and how the woman had died over something
equally mundane. He d been lucky. He realized how ironic the thought was and
suppressed a chuckle.
It was difficult to drag his arms up in front of his face, but the security
chief managed to do so. He touched a button, saw the circle of light appear,
and felt better somehow. Others weren t so easily comforted.
Voices came out of the darkness, crying, pleading, desperate for relief. They
were tolerated at first, but each voice seemed to trigger another, until those
with more control started to assert themselves. They lashed out verbally,
instructing the voices to  shut the hell up, and, when that failed to elicit
the desired result, inflicted punishment via their knees and elbows.
The  voices complained, tried to move away, and, like a bowl of gelatin,
sent shock waves rolling from one side of the compartment to the other.
That resulted in reprisals both against the voices and the largely innocent
 transmitters who tried to defend themselves.
Finally, after what Manning estimated to be ten or fifteen minutes of such
activity, it finally wound down. The voices were reduced to an occasional sob,
the enforcers let up, and peace reigned. Conversations had a tendency to die,
somebody muttered the Lord s Prayer, and another person started to snore.
Now, with nothing beyond his own thoughts to occupy his time and energy,
Manning thought about Marta, felt the usual sense of guilt, and realized that
he d been wrong. Shewasn t safe. Not in prison not outside. None of his
attempts to protect to her, to guide her, had made any difference. Something,
he wasn t sure what, had gone terribly wrong during the years after their
mother s death. Years during which their father would trudge off to work, put
in his eight hours, and trudge back home. His was a life of duty, of doing
what  Mary would want me to do, but empty of joy.
Marta, who had been a rambunctious little girl prior to her mother s death,
had started to wilt, to fade, until the smiles disappeared.
At some point she turned to boys, and when they failed to deliver what she
was looking for, to groups of people. Scumbags for the most part who tried to
transform their largely meaningless lives by hating others. Self-proclaimed
soldiers of God who dreamed of a Christian nation free of mosques and
synagogues, and a culture based on Aryan values.
And it was there, in the context of hatred, that his little sister found the
support she d been looking for. A fact that came back to haunt Manning after
he and his team were accused of racism after someone named him  The Butcher of
Pretoria, and his picture appeared on the World Wide Web, plastered right
next to one of his sister dressed in full Nazi regalia.
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That had been it, the end of the end, and he still couldn t hate her. Only
his father, for giving up, and himself for doing the same.
The transition to weightlessness came with very little warning. There was a
good four feet of space between their heads and the ceiling or what navy
personnel would refer to as the  overhead. It wasn t long before some of the
captives were squirted upward, and swore as they hit their heads on bare
metal. It was natural to flail about. Boots connected with faces, victims
sought revenge, and chaos prevailed. The security chief entertained the notion
of trying to restore order, but only briefly, because although he saw himself
as something of a leader, he had no talent forthat kind of leadership, the
kind that volunteered itself.
Not everyone felt that way, however, which was good not only for the
prisoners, but for humanity in general. A deep bass boomed through the
compartment. It was loud enough to be heard over everything else. The syntax
had a military ring.  All right, people that ll be enough of that. Those of
you who wound up as floaters need to control your movements. Go horizontal,
gently now, and stay that way. Use the overhead to orient yourselves. Everyone
else as you were. You ll have increased elbow room, so go ahead and enjoy it.
Keep one thing in mind, however: The chits could activate some sort of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]