"It was escape. You saw what they'd done to him, with their little knives, their pliers and electrodes. Noah was a hero, set by Imperial order on a pedestal. He looked directly at the Leader, man to man, his physician. He wasn't as strong as I am, this son of mine. Noah couldn't watch men killed for their ideas, defending his silence with the argument that he was a doctor, set somewhere above grubby politics." Dr. Raimazan's voice was loud enough that anyone in the car who wished could have heard him. "Your son died for talking plain," I whispered to the doctor. * * * * * We sat in silence. The Capital of the Leader of our hemisphere was only an hour away. After a moment the Surgeon-General sat straight. He brushed his uniform with his left hand, and smoothed the sling under his right arm. Then he crossed the aisle to the seat where Anna sat. I stared at him. "Do you mind if I sit beside you?" he smiled down at the girl, as gallant as though they were at a military ball. "As you wish, General," Anna answered. She was pleased, I saw, that a man with such a uniform and such position should notice her. The doctor talked to Anna the way a pretty girl expects to be talked to, emphasizing what he was saying by an occasional avuncular pat. After a while, Anna grew a little bored with a playmate who was older than her father. As the car began to slow, caught by resistance coils in the walls of the Tube, I saw the Surgeon-General pat the girl playfully once more, and pick up something she'd laid beside her in the darkness. She didn't notice. We halted on the shores of the Bay of All Saints, Bahia, the Capital. We saw no more of the Bupo man, since his compartment held the exit hatch. He was out first, scurrying somewhere with the news of Noah Raimazan's suicide, news which would either lift him a notch in his profession or push his head onto the chopping-block. The rest of us lined up, passed through the front compartment, out onto the platform. The station sparkled like a diamond tiara, glittering with slogans and brass and reminders that we'd reached the greatest city in our half of the world. A gray sedan stood on the ramp, waiting for those the Leader had singled out for audience. Its door bore those interlocked commas, the yin-yang symbol that the Leader had taken from the enemy to make his cypher. Dr. Raimazan nodded good-bye to me. Accompanied by Don Raffe, he walked over to the Imperial limousine. The Surgeon-General replied to the salutes of the bodyguards with his left hand, turning aside their references to his injury with a grin. The doors slammed shut, and the sedan roared off, carrying Don Raffe and Surgeon-General Raimazan to meet the Leader. And carrying, under the doctor's sling, the little pistol I'd seen him steal from Anna.