us. Away off in the country silence beyond the barrack walls there was one tiny edge of sound, a handsaw keening: nothing else.
‘Ah well … Ah well,’ Asra murmured, and sighed, and rubbed his legs, making a little moaning sound that he was not aware of himself. ‘We none of us choose,’ he said.
A night or two after that he went into coma, and presently died. I had not learned what he had been sent to the Voluntary Farm for, what crime or fault or irregularity in his identification papers, and knew only that he had been in Pulefen Farm less than a year.
The day after Asra’s death they called me for examination; this time they had to carry me in, and I can’t remember anything further than that.
14: THE ESCAPE
When Obsle and Yegey both left town, and Slose’s doorkeeper refused me entrance, I knew it was time to turn to my enemies, for there was no more good in my friends. I went to Commissioner Shusgis, and blackmailed him. Lacking sufficient cash to buy him with, I had to spend my reputation. Among the perfidious, the name of traitor is capital in itself. I told him that I was in Orgoreyn as agent of the Nobles Faction in Karhide, which was planning the assassination of Tibe, and that he had been designated as my Sarf contact; if he refused to give me the information I needed I would tell my friends in Erhenrang that he was a double agent, serving the Open Trade Faction, and this word would of course get back to Mishnory and to the Sarf: and the damned fool believed me. He told me quick enough what I wanted to know; he even asked me if I approved.
I was not in immediate danger from my friends, Obsle, Yegey, and the others. They had bought their safety by sacrificing the Envoy, and trusted me to make no trouble for them or myself. Until I went to Shusgis, no one in the Sarf but Gaum had considered me worthy of their notice, but now they would be hard at my heels. I must finish my business and drop out of sight. Having no way to get word directly to anyone in Karhide, as mail would be read and telephone or radio listened to, I went for the first time to the Royal Embassy. Sardon rem ir Chenewich, whom I had known well at court, was on the staff there. He agreed at once to convey to Argaven a message stating what had become of the Envoy and where he was to be imprisoned. I could trust Chenewich, a clever and honest person, to get the message through unintercepted, though what Argaven would make of it or do with it I could not guess. I wanted Argaven to have that information in case Ai’s Star Ship did come suddenly falling down out of the clouds; for at that time I still kept some hope that he had signalled the Ship before the Sarf arrested him.
I was now in peril, and if I had been seen to enter the Embassy, in instant peril. I went straight from its door to the caravan port on the Southside and before noon of that day, Odstreth Susmy, I left Mishnory as I had entered it, as carry-loader on a truck. I had my old permits with me, a little altered to fit the new job. Forgery of papers is risky in Orgoreyn where they are inspected fifty-two times daily, but it is not rare for being risky, and my old companions in Fish Island had shown me the tricks of it. To wear a false name galls me, but nothing else would save me, or get me clear across the width of Orgoreyn to the coast of the Western Sea.
My thoughts were all there in the west as the caravan went rumbling across the Kunderer Bridge and out of Mishnory. Autumn was facing towards winter now, and I must get to my destination before the roads closed to fast traffic, and while there was still some good in getting there. I had seen a Voluntary Farm over in Komsvashom when I was in the Sinoth Administration, and had talked with ex-prisoners of Farms. What I had seen and heard lay heavy on me now. The Envoy, so vulnerable to cold that he wore a coat when the weather was in the 30’s, would not survive winter in Pulefen. Thus need drove me fast,