"Well, okay," the guard agreed. "I'll tell him you said...!"
Then, with a gasp, the poor man's voice descended down his throat with the gritty rattle of a parcel of bones dumped into a disposal. As he watched, shaken to the very roots of his soul, the girl by the desk gradually faded into thin air....
Dusk had come to a distant land.
Toffee stood in the formidable square and looked with disfavor on the great concrete pilings that brooded over the clear area in the center and isolated it from the waning light of day. Functional architecture, with frippery—cold, grey and starkly oppressive. Very functional, like a straight jacket, and just as pleasant to look at.
There were hardly any signs of human life. A couple of men, so grey and so gross that they seemed only a part of the buildings around them, lumbered down the steps of the largest and most formidable of the structures, stopped to look at Toffee curiously, then passed on. Toffee shrugged and turned toward the building from which they had just come. The best way to obtain information, after all, was to ask someone for it. And if those men had just come from the building, life must exist inside the place in spite of appearances.
She had no more than set foot on the steps of the place, however, than life suddenly descended upon her in a rush; two grey-uniformed guards, seemingly patterned very closely on the physical and spiritual makeup of the gorilla, clumped down the steps toward her with bayonets fixed. One of them barked something that, to Toffee, had no specific meaning. The bayonets, pointing in the vicinity of her mid-section, spoke with great eloquence. Toffee felt keenly that the moment called for a disarming smile.
"Don't be silly, boys," she said with arch modulation. "There's no occasion for manly demonstrations."
There was a sputtered, incoherent exchange between the two, interspersed with moments of silence which allowed them time to stare in open-mouthed wonderment at the lightly-swathed redhead before them. Toffee listened to this for what seemed the proper social interval, then started determinedly forward. The bayonets, however, thrust a little closer, took all the verve and sweep out of the gesture.
"Now, kids," Toffee said, "I don't want to have to get rough with you." And so saying she reached out, delicately parted the bayonets, and passed between them. Their owners, obviously unused to this open flaunting of the sword, turned to stare after her in petrified astonishment. After a stunned silence, there ensued a growl-and-spit interchange of thought on the matter.