Rhodes sighed. This was the polite one. He had two interrogators, one cruel, brutal, harsh, the other as polite and suave as the rustle of silk. To keep Rhodes guessing....
He sat down across a metal desk from the interrogator. The man was, Rhodes judged, in his thirties. He had the faintly purple skin of the Kedaki—not really purple, but as purple as the skin of an American Indian is red. He was slightly built, smooth-skinned, almost beardless. His eyes were very friendly but somehow very deadly.
"You have been here three months," he said conversationally.
"Three months! Yesterday, they told me...."
"Yesterday? Indeed? And how do you know it was yesterday?"
"Well, I thought...."
"You see, you have no way of knowing."
"But three months! You haven't even told me why I'm a prisoner. If I could just make a call," Rhodes said, his voice rising to an almost hysterical whine although he attempted to keep it level. "Just one call to the Earth Consul...."
"Mr. Rhodes," the interrogator said softly. "You are a student, merely a student. I do not say this deprecatingly, but merely to point out that you are not a servant of your government and as such shouldn't undergo torture because you consider it the, ah, patriotic thing to do. How old are you, Rhodes?"
"I'm twenty-one," Rhodes said.