He set Jord's rations before him in their plastic containers. A scientific measure of calories, proteins, vitamins, minerals and hay-like roughage.
Jord wished the idiot was able to talk, but decided against holding a one-sided conversation with him. He used to do it quite often, taking pleasure in the shifting planes of his face, until he'd become sick with longing for a complete human being. He knew no one and only his psychiatrist knew him. The fortress was to him one complete body.
The parts of that body could never be allowed to become more important than the total of those parts. It was the first thing a potential master of a Galbth II learned: The basic lesson in loneliness.
He choked down the measured kilograms of roughage, saving the concentrates until the last when he could suck out the synthetic flavoring and delude himself for a moment that he was eating food. His fare consisted of the precise amount necessary to keep him operating at maximum efficiency and maintain optimum size. A two-pound variation in his weight would require a refitting.
He smoked his last cigarette for the day and then made his way to the third section briefing room.
There were twelve warriors in his section. Except for microscopic differences in their builds, there was little, if anything, to distinguish one from the other. They had no contact with anything as personalized as officers. Each warrior was a separate unit. The centralization of authority was complete. There was only the loudspeaker to command. For a time the warriors had been allowed to designate the voice as "The General," but it was soon discovered that they felt a particular loyalty to the name. The word was dropped. To designate authority, a warrior used the word: "Authority." This word also served as his official concept of politics. With all the strength of the fortress in the warriors, this was to be desired.
Simultaneously, the speaker and the large television screen below it came to life.
The scene showed one of the fortress's carefully tilled roughage farms being looted by a large body of the natives—the enemy that was determined to erase the last remnant of an empire that once held the entire solar system in its grasp. That meant nothing to Jord. It was the faces—the faces that were, relatively, not even faces at all. Yet there were points of similarity within the gulf of difference—and the faces. Faces without masks!
The voice called "Authority" was expressionless and precise.