Rhodes grinned. "I'm not going to answer that," he said. He was thinking. Prolong the interview, Phil old boy. Because it's clean here, and neither too warm nor too cold, and you can sit comfortably or stand if you want to.
"Why aren't you going to answer it?"
Rhodes grinned again. "I realize this isn't very important to you...."
"Everything is important to me while I do my job."
"But it's very important to me, I was going to say. Because The Book of the Dead is an anthropological find, that's why. Because I intend to have an exclusive on it until I've finished my work here."
"What makes you think The Book of the Dead isn't very important to us?"
"Don't tell me," Rhodes said incredulously, "that I'm in jail and being tortured because I won't tell you where I've hid an anthropological curiosity which may not even be genuine!"
"No, I won't tell you. Now, as to the genuineness of The Book of the Dead...."
Rhodes felt suddenly sleepy. He'd been awakened to come here. He was always awakened to come here, sometimes after what he thought was a full night's sleep and sometimes after what seemed only a few moments. He listened sleepily as the interrogator went on, surprisingly doing most of the talking. He hardly heard the words, had all he could do to keep his head from slumping down on the desk. It just wasn't very important. It was preliminary to what really mattered, to the questions about Earth history, sociology, engineering, economy, which always followed.