Hartford returned to the refresher-room where the murder had taken place. Renkei's macerated body had been removed for burning. The room had been carefully decontaminated, to the extent of hosing it down with detergent steam and individually re-refreshing each safety-suit in the huge hall's rows of lockers.
There was nothing to be done against Nef's madness, Hartford thought. He sat on the bench where Renkei had sat. The ultimate breakdown in communication is silencing one side of the dialogue, he thought. That's why killing a man is the ultimate sin; it removes forever the hope of understanding him. It ends for all time the conversation by which brothers may touch one another's mind.
What crap to find in a soldier's thoughts, Hartford told himself. He was an Axenite trooper, a Pioneer, a pistol-packing officer of infantry, commander of the Terrible Third Platoon. He was an Axenite, dedicated by the immaculacy of his birth to the conquest of Man's frontiers.
Hartford snapped his plastic-sheathed Dardick-pistol, death in a supermarket wrapper, from his belt and placed it on the shelf of his locker. He'd seen the village of Kansannamura burned. Pia had died across his shoulder. Paula lay buried, too. Renkei's life had been splashed out on a stream of bullets. Enough of death.
Hartford picked up a pack of field-ration squeeze-tubes and walked down the hallway toward the Syphon.
His leaving would show on the Status Board, of course, but that didn't matter any more. He was deserting the regiment.
He walked through the valley of desert that was the Hot Gut, and down into the birth-canal that was the Wet Gut, to emerge in the evening air of Kansas. The motor sergeant, stationed outside to guard the vehicles, saluted. "Going for a walk, sir?" he asked.
"If you'll lend me a jeep, I'll go for a ride," Hartford said. "I'd like to see how things look, down in the village."
"It's against regulations, but if you'll have the truck back by dark I can let it go, sir."