What Leslie had said preyed on Kroll's mind all the way home. He got out of the tube and made his way to his austere room with his mind fixed on one question—the snarling words the dying prisoner had hurled at him: How do you know you're right and we're wrong?
They had to be wrong, Kroll told himself firmly. The State had to be right. It was necessary; it was logical; it was the way things had always been.
But the thought obsessed him, and the image of Neil Leslie's face, bloody but undefeated, hung before him as he went about his evening's activities. The face was still in his mind as he prepared to go to bed.
Odd, Kroll thought. This was the first time he had been disturbed after a torture session. He had seen hundreds—no, thousands—pass through the Inquisitor, come out shambling rags of bone and flesh, and it had never bothered him, because they were enemies of the State and deserved no more.
He dropped off into an uneasy sleep. But suddenly, in the small hours of the night, he sat bolt upright in bed, a cold, clammy perspiration breaking out on him.
Leslie had just asked the question for the hundredth time. And Kroll had had no answer. He didn't know who was right. He just didn't know. His mind, unswervingly loyal for so many years, swayed in an agony of doubt.
He got out of bed and paced back and forth across the floor of his room.
"The State is wrong!" he said aloud. But it didn't sound right. It couldn't be true. It wasn't true. "Stupid!" he told himself. It was stupid to distrust the State—and wrong. "Wrong! Criminally, disgustingly wrong!"
There! He felt better. He had rid himself of his foolish doubts. "How could I have been so foolish?" he said aloud. His nerves felt better now. Once again he was ready to do his duty as a loyal officer of the State.
Smiling to himself for being so easily disturbed by the remarks of disloyal traitors, he climbed back into bed and closed his eyes. A few moments later, he was asleep.