I'd keep an eye out for that one.

Unless she was a ghost. She'd gone without making a sound. Whatever, she was going to haunt me till I got a closer look.

Was the place haunted? It was spooky enough, in its cold way... I realized it was me. Might not bother someone else. I looked around and heard the clash of steel and the moans of those who had died to furnish all those emblems of Stantnor glory. I was packing my own haunts in and letting the place become a mirror.

I tried to shake a darkening mood. A place like that turns you somber.

The guy from the front door marched in after the girl disappeared, his heels clicking. He came to a perfect military halt six feet away. I gave him the once-over. He stood five-foot-eight, maybe a hundred seventy pounds, in his fifties but looking younger. His hair was wavy black, slicked with some kind of grease that couldn't beat the curl. If he had any gray, he hid it well, and he still had all the hair he'd had when he was twenty. His eyes were cold little beads. You could get ice burns there. He'd kill you and not even wonder if he was making orphans.

"The General will see you now, sir." He turned and marched away.

I followed. I caught myself marching in step, skipped to get out. In a minute I was back in step. I gave it up.

They'd pounded it in good. The flesh remembered and couldn't hear the rebellion in the mind.

"You have a name?" I asked.

"Dellwood, sir."

"What were you before you got out?"

"I was attached to the General's staff, sir."

Which meant absolutely nothing. "Lifer?" Dumb question, Garrett. I could bet the family farm, I was the only nonlifer in the place, excepting the girl—maybe. The General wouldn't surround himself with the lesser breeds called civilians.