When the Sparrow Falls

by Neil Sharpson

He had called us, but he still froze at the sight of us. StaSec had that effect on people. ParSec had quite a different one. People did not freeze when they saw ParSec coming. They ran.

a week and a half of gruelling paperwork now lay ahead of Grier, and as he gunned the engine I half wondered if he wasn’t about to plough into a wall at full speed just to avoid having to do any of it. As

you can tell a lot about who a man is from the kind of man he pretends to be,

“When the party orders you to break the law, who do you obey? The party or the law?”

EVERY SPARROW SHALL BE CAUGHT

Chernov was ParSec. That was reason enough to pity him, as well as hate him.

The wounds of two decades had been reopened and I felt like I was bleeding to death. I smiled. “I’m fine,” I told her.

The man from StaSec went up the stairs And knocked on the pearly gate “I’ve come to arrest the stars in the sky “For conspiring against the State.” —“The Man from StaSec” by Anonymous