Hot Sleep- The Worthing Chronicle - By Orson Scott Card Page 0,45
to give her confidence. As if he felt any himself. They were led away - but not out into the corridors. Instead they were taken into a door that said, "Employees Only," and Mother's Little Boys took them deeper into the Department of Colonization.
Chapter 5
IT CONTINUES to amaze many people that the Doon Expeditions could have been set up and sent out in utter secrecy, right in the heart of Capitol. Those who understand Capitol society, however, find nothing surprising in this. Our present open society has almost nothing in common with the authoritarian, byzantine way of life in the corridors of Capitol. Doon, because he controlled the instruments of power - the Cabinet, the secret police ["Mother's Little Boys," as they were less than affectionately called], the Service, and above all, the Sleeproom - was able to construct, populate, and send a dozen colony ships, filled with the elite of the Empire, to destinations far beyond the pale of human settlement. It hardly needs repeating, of course, that the Doon Expeditions, conceived of by one man and sent in spite of an empire, have done more to influence the post - Empire history of humanity than any other single event.
Solomon Harding, Abner Doon: Worldmaker, 6690 p. 145.
Hop Noyock was sitting in a tree. His legs dangled from the branch. His hands were touching wood, and a slight breeze tousled his hair. Overhead, the imitation sun moved discernibly across the arch of an imitation blue sky.
Below him, the garden was populated with many dozens of men and women, who had been moving around aimlessly for the past several hours. Enough hours, in fact, that the sun had risen, set, and risen again in its hurried pattern. Hop had gathered very quickly that everyone in the overgrown park was one of the conspiracy. Each bit of news was eagerly seized on: this man dead, this woman yet uncaptured, this man probably a traitor, this woman seriously injured but accounted for. Hop knew none of the names, except in their more official roles. Here and there he recognized the name of an undersecretary of chamberpots or some other such meaningless title. But he personally knew no one, except Arran Handully, and he began to appreciate how important she had been in the conspiracy from the fact that practically everyone spoke to her and of her with respect.
But Hop gave up quickly on making any acquaintance. Many had already learned that Jazz Worthing was one of the chief manipulators of somec, and even though he had been mentally stripped under the probe, Hop Noyock was still his manager - worse, was not and never had been a part of the conspiracy - and worst of all, still felt that Jazz Worthing was a decent human being and made the mistake of saying so.
And now he sat on a branch of a tree. No one noticed him, because in the corridor society no one was used to looking up. He sat and thought, and grew more uncomfortable and miserable the more he thought.
He remembered Jason, and wondered what had happened to him.
He remembered that he was a prisoner (but of whom? And what was going to happen?).
Most of all, however, he thought of Arran. It was childish (and I am several centuries old, he reminded himself) but when suddenly Arran was embraced and wept over by so many friends, he felt left out (self - pity, dammit, I haven't let myself feel that in years), he felt used. He had been an escape route - but escape had proved impossible. He had thought himself a friend. Wrong again.
(I'm as bad as the other billions of gonad dominated oafs who ogle the holos and dream of Arran Handully. I wish Jazz had broken another rib. Damn childish attitude, of course.)
And then the milling groups fell still. The sun did not set - it darkened, and no stars came out. In a short time the entire room was pitch dark. Hop wondered idly if this was the first step to execution - the garden, then darkness, then a gas. But it seemed unlikely. Why plant trees when a sterile room was all that was needed?
The silence, almost palpable when the darkness first came, was gradually nudged aside by whispers. But in the darkness no one moved, and the conversations were soon exhausted.