A Darkness in My Soul

the long attempt to get free of him had interrupted my enjoyment of that new-found peace. And now that I was back, now that Melinda and a pleasant future lay within my grasp, the world was in the hands of the madmen who threatened to tear it apart.
        But I couldn't drown. I had to ride those wave crests, had to survive to keep Melinda surviving. Damn them and their bombs and their war lusts!
        As we drove, I felt my rage grow, swell, encompass my entire mind. And I realized that it would not be good enough to ride those crests. At most, the two of us would come out alive, washed ashore after the apocalypse, with each other. But our world would be destroyed and useless, and we would have no freedom, then, at all. Life would be a constant battle for survival in a society thrown back to barbarism. No, what I was going to have to do was forget about riding the crests of the waves-and find some way to direct the tides of the entire damn ocean of our future!
        "Not that I don't find your company perfectly marvelous," I told Harry, "but could you take me to Melinda's place instead of yours?"
        He hesitated before he said it, but he said it just the same. "She isn't at her place, Sim. She's been arrested.
        She's a political prisoner."
        It took long seconds for the words to sink in. When they did, my rage became godly wrath, and I began to seek someone upon whom to vent it. I was not afraid for her safety. I basked in the certainty of my power. I still did not see that I was bound up in the same flawed philosophy that had brought me to ruin so many times before…
        

    III
        
        I stood by the window of Harry's den, holding a glass of brandy which I had not yet tasted. Beyond the window: a copse of trees, snow-covered grass, white-bearded hedgerows. The stark, wintry vista matched my thoughts, as I considered what Harry had told me on the way over.
        Melinda had become engaged in writing pamphlets for some revolutionary group and had been under surveillance. Upon the magazine publication of the first part of her biography of my life-the childhood years in the AC complex-she had been arrested for questioning in connection with the death of a copper and the destruction of a howler some two weeks before. Whether there had been any questioning or not, no one would know; she was still under arrest.
        The magazine article had not merely been a biography, but had contained scorchingly anti-military, anti-AC anecdotes which neither of us had decided, before my entombment in Child's mind, whether we should risk using or not. She had risked it.
        "When is the trial?" I asked him now. We had postponed further discussion until we were warm and comfortable in his den-at his insistence.
        "A date has been docketed before the Military Court of Emergency. Next September."
        "Seven and a half months!" I turned from the window, furious, slopping brandy over my wrist.
        "When the act is labeled treason, there are laws that permit it."
        "What's her bail?" I asked.
        "There is none."
        "Is none?"
        "What I said."
        "But the law allows-"
        He held up his pudgy hand to stop me. He looked terrible, as if telling me this was worse on him than on me. "This is no longer a republic, remember. It is a military state where men like the junta councilmen decide what laws there shall be. For sedition, they now say, there is no bail, and the rule of preventive detention has been extended indefinitely."
        "Fight them!" I bellowed. "You fought them for me when-"
        "It's different now," he interrupted. "You still don't grasp the situation. I worked the law on them before to get you free. But now they are the law and they can change it to counter one. It's like dancing on quicksand."
        I took a chair, and again I was afraid, just a little, down deep where it hardly showed. This was beginning to feel like the inner world of Child's mind, where everything was solid and tangible, but where nothing could be trusted, where solidity could disappear, where liquid could become solid ground beneath the feet.
        "She's not the only one," he said, as if mass suffering made her individual plight less important. It only made it more important.
        "Let me have the phone," I said, reaching for it.
        "Who?"
        "Morsfagen."
        "This might be a mistake."
        "If the sonofabitch