Free Book 2 - Starfishers by Glen Cook

decon chamber.
    The men and women, and occasional non-humans, who ignored the
sign were agents returning from the field.
    He closed the door and placed his things on a counter surface,
then removed his clothing. Nude, he stepped through the next door
inward.
    Energy from the scanner in the door frame made his skin tingle
and his body hair stand out. He held his breath, closed his
eyes.
    Needles of liquid hit him, stung him, killing bacteria and
rinsing grime away. Sonics cracked the long molecular helixes of
viruses.
    A mist replaced the spray. He breathed deeply.
    Something clicked. He stepped through the next door.
    He entered a room identical to the first. Its only furniture was
a counter surface. On that counter lay neatly folded clothing and a
careful array of personal effects. He dressed, filled his pockets,
chuckling. He had been demoted. His chevrons proclaimed him a
Second Class Missileman. His ship’s patch said he was off the
battle cruiser
Ashurbanipal
.
    He had never heard of the vessel.
    He pulled the blank ID card from the wallet he had been given,
placed his right thumb over the portrait square. Ten seconds later
his photograph and identification statistics began to appear.
    “Cornelius Wadlow Perchevski?” he muttered in
disbelief. “It gets worse and worse.” He scanned the
dates and numbers, memorizing, then attached the card to his chest.
He donned the Donald Duck cap spacers wore groundside, said,
“Cornelius Perchevski to see the King.”
    The floor sank beneath him.
    As he descended he heard the showers go on in the decon
chamber.
    A minute later he stepped from a stall in a public restroom
several levels lower. He entered a main traffic tunnel and walked
to a bus stop.
    Six hours later he told a plain woman behind a plain desk behind
a plain room, behind a plain door, “Cornelius W. Perchevski,
Missileman Two. I’m supposed to see the doctor.”
    She checked an appointment log. “You’re fifteen
minutes late, Perchevski. But go ahead. Through the white
door.”
    He passed through wondering if the woman knew she was fronting.
Probably not. The security games got heaviest where they seemed
least functional.
    The doctor’s office made him feel like Alice, diving down
a rabbit hole into another world.
    It’s just as crazy as Wonderland
, he thought.
Black is
white here. Up is down. In is out. Huck is Jim, and never the Twain
shall meet
 . . . He chuckled.
    “Mr. Perchevski.”
    He sobered. “Sir?”
    “I believe you came in for debriefing.”
    “Yes, sir. Where do you want me to start, sir?”
    “The oral form. Then you’ll rest. Tomorrow well do
the written. I’ll schedule the cross-comparative for later in
the week. We’re still trying to get the bugs out of a new
cross-examination program.”
    Perchevski studied the faceless man while he told his tale. The
interrogator’s most noteworthy feature was his wrinkled,
blue-veined, weathered hands. His inquisitor was
old . . . 
    The Faceless Man usually was not. Normally he was a young,
expert psychologist-lawyer. The old men in the Bureau were
ex-operatives, senior staff, decision-makers, not technicians.
    He knew most of the old men. He listened to the questions
carefully, but there was no clue in the voice asking them. It was
being technically modified. He reexamined the hands. They offered
no clues either.
    He began to worry. Something had gone broomstick. They did not
bring on the dreadnoughts otherwise.
    His nerves were not up to an intensive interrogation. It had
been a heavy mission, and the trip home had given him too much time
to talk to himself.
    Debriefing continued all month. They questioned him and
counterchecked his answers so often and so thoroughly that when
they finally let him go he no longer really felt that the mission
had been part of his life. It was almost as if some organ had been
removed from him one molecule at a time, leaving him with nothing
but a funny empty feeling.
    Five weeks after he had arrived at