"You know you aren't," she said, smiling at him, the blue of her eyes seeming to stand out in the room, as if strengthened by the turquoise scarf she wore at her neck. "But I have more experience with reading you than almost anyone."
"That's true," he said.
The only other people who had much experience with him at all were Dahno and Henry, he reminded himself. Were they able to get information just from watching his face?
Once Toni had been filled in on the need to go to Ceta, and while they were waiting for Henry to arrive, the two of them laid out a rough plan for the trip.
For public consumption, it would be portrayed as a semi-official trip by Bleys, as First Elder among the Friendlics, and his brother, Dahno, an elected member of the Chamber on Association, to visit the various units of Friendly Militia that had been leased out to several states scattered about Ceta. It was a good enough excuse for the trip, that on the two Friendly worlds of Harmony and Association, images of the brothers apparently lending support to the young soldiers would be politically useful; within a few days the population at home—and, indeed, people on other worlds—would be seeing images of Bleys the philosopher listening to the concerns of young enlisted troops as they shared a meal, or imparting quiet words that obviously inspired the young soldiers.
This kind of trip, Toni pointed out, would provide great fodder for political commentary by anyone who was opposed to Bleys personally, or to the Others—or even to the McKae administration. But Bleys dismissed that worry: with the Others' steadily increasing control of both the government and the media, on both Friendly
worlds as well as on several other planets, such jaundiced views could be effectively marginalized in a number of ways.
And even the more sophisticated among the viewing audience would find themselves somewhat disarmed when it became obvious that the elected politician on the trip, Dahno, although alongside his brother and lending support, was obviously not pushing himself in front of the lenses.
"Is Dahno in agreement with all this?" Toni asked. "He doesn't usually want to be in the public eye, and I'm pretty sure he's not really interested in being re-elected to the Chamber."
She had learned a lot about his brother, Bleys reflected.
"Not in detail," he responded now. "But he'll go along with this—I've already convinced him of the need for the trip, and he'll sec the usefulness of concealing the real purpose of our trip behind this facade."
"Layers within layers," she said. "That would appeal to Dahno, all right."
"You're right about another thing, too," Bleys said. "Dahno only took the Chamber seat when I vacated it because at the time we needed someone there who could control the place—and that's no longer a worry."
"Has this trip been cleared with McKae?"
That question was, in a way, a test for Bleys, himself. Darrcl McKac was the Eldest, the highest officer of the two Friendly planets, elected by the populace of both worlds—and the man who had appointed Bleys to his position. But Bleys had made it clear to McKae some time ago that he would not be bound to the dictates of his nominal superior. And McKac, who had achieved his own position only with Bleys' aid, lacked any real desire to fight him.
Toni had reacted with strong approval, Bleys remembered, the first time he had refused an order from McKae. She seemed somehow to see that as an indication of a kind of moral ascendancy on Bleys' part. Since that time, McKae had largely been acquiescent in whatever Bleys had planned.
Darrel McKae, Bleys reminded himself now, had not gotten to his position by being a weakling. And for all that he might have become overly fond, of late, of both wine and his office—and even been repelled, or frightened, by something he had been able to see in Bleys—the fact was that in large part he had not opposed Bleys because he was smart enough to know he had very little to gain by getting into a public spat with the First Elder he himself had appointed .. . but that implied truce would work only so long as nothing happened to upset the Eldest.
"Not yet," Bleys told Toni now. "But we'll clear it with his office anyway. He won't object. Could you have the Office of the First Elder draft an official communication to the Eldest's Office?"
"I will," she said. "And may I suggest we ask both Offices for suggestions for one or two diplomatic missions you could undertake while on Ceta? It would add weight to the official purpose of the trip—"
"You're right," he said, interrupting her. "Having a second level of reasons for doing something always tends to deflect observers."
"—and also provides justification if you find you have to move about Ceta, to places where there are no Friendly troops to visit; or if you're noticed to have been moving about in secret."
"Thank you," he said. "I hadn't thought of that."
"You're not yet used to thinking of yourself as a public officer," she said.
"I know," he said, a little ruefully. "To tell the truth, I'm uncomfortable with having the extra position. It's a drag on me, holding me down from being free to go when and where I want."
"It's one of the prices you have to pay to carry out your own mission," she said. He knew she was thinking of the plan he had made his life's task, which only she—and to a much more limited extent, Dahno—knew: to gather the worthwhile elements of the human race back together on Old Earth, shutting the Mother World away from space travel and forcing the race to give up its reckless adventuring until it grew up ... a plan he knew would result in the slow deaths of all of the Younger Worlds, and likely the faster deaths of a lot of their people.
The alternative was to let the undisciplined, immature people who made up the human race continue to be distracted from the need to grow up by shiny dreams of future adventures—to let them continue to feel no concern for the hurts they did to others, or for the dangers that surely lay out there among the stars.
After a brief pause, she continued in a much lighter tone: "You'd have thought of it yourself. You just haven't had time to get down to the details yet."
She smiled at him.
"Shall I begin?" She uncrossed her black-trousered legs in anticipation of his response.
"Yes," he said. "No, wait—we also need to arrange transportation. Can you find out the status of both Favored of God and Burning Bush”
"I can, of course," she said, looking slightly puzzled. "It's standing orders that one of them's always available to go on eight hours' notice—are you concerned it won't be ready? Or is it that you want a particular ship?"
"I want both ships," he said.
"Both?"
"Yes," he said. "I want to travel, officially and openly, in one of them. But I want whichever one is able to get off first to precede us under a false name and papers, to be in place already on the ground, and in no way associated with us, before we ourselves get to Ceta."
"Are you expecting that much trouble? You have diplomatic immunity now, you know."
"I had immunity when we went to Newton," he pointed out, "and it didn't stop the Council from attacking me. While I'm certainly a much more important figure now, politically, the fact is I simply don't know what to expect. I don't know who those people we'll be looking for are, or what their reactions might be when they notice us sniffing around on their trail. We only managed to get off Newton because the authorities there didn't know which ship we were trying to reach when we crossed the spaceport pad, remember."
"Perhaps some of the Soldiers should go on the ship that travels— well, incognito," she suggested. "They won't be part of our official party, which could make them more useful in some situations."
"True," he said. "We'll have to get Henry's input on which ones would be best suited for that kind of job—it'll demand initiative and experience ... in fact, I can think of several things they can be doing on the planet before we get there."
"That sounds as if you want to send some of the technical teams," she said. "Carl Carlson might be a good choice to lead that group." She was referring to Henry's second-in-command.
"
No," Bleys said. "He's been with us too long."
At her questioning look, he explained: "We have to assume someone might know about the people who work most closely with us," he said. "Carl might be recognized."
"All right," she said. "I see that. But I was about to remind you that some of the Soldiers are originally from Ceta. They might be particularly useful on the first ship, since they'll blend better into the population."
"Unless they have some reason for not wanting to go back," he said. "We generally don't ask if our people have legal problems elsewhere, but those on the first ship won't be covered by my diplomatic immunity."
"Henry will be able to judge that." She nodded.
"Having Soldiers already in place undercover," Bleys went on, "will allow my 'official party,' as you put it, to be smaller. I know I need the bodyguards, but I worked hard to craft my image as a peace-loving philosopher who travels about the Younger Worlds giving common-sense talks, and I've been uncomfortable with the conflict between that image and my apparent need for guards."
"I don't think you really mean you, personally, are uncomfortable with that apparent contradiction," she said, after taking a moment to think. "I think you mean you don't like it because the need for bodyguards detracts from the message your image is crafted to present."
"Well, that's true, too," he replied. "But I did mean what I said, literally."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that appearing to be a philosopher is not exactly a lie," he said. "At least, whether I am one, or not—I'd like to be one."
"You are," she said. "You couldn't have seen the way to your mission if you weren't."
"I guess that's so," he said. "But there seems to be a little bit of the idealist left in me—enough to regret that I need bodyguards at all. It seems ... unphilosophical."
"Oh, there's a lot of the idealist left in you," she said—and for a brief moment a smile lit her face; but quickly vanished. "There's no reason for your mission that isn't based on ideals—and selfless ones, too.
He didn't want to go any further with the conversation, so he let the silence stretch on; until at last the subject could be considered dropped, and she left to begin her assignments.
When the spare, late-middle-aged figure of Henry MacLean stepped off the disk of the private elevator, Bleys was standing in front of the Mayne-map, waiting for him.
"Thank you for coming, Uncle," Bleys said. He felt ready to handle mentioning Ceta to Henry, now. He had lost his balance for a few moments, he told himself, but now he had recovered, just as he would after making a mistake during a martial-arts workout.
Henry wasted no time on preliminaries.
"How quickly do we leave for Ceta?" he said.
"I can't answer that so simply," Bleys said. He was determined not to let himself be thrown off balance again so quickly.
"You make it sound complicated," Henry said. "I need details on what will be required."
"Come and sit with me," Bleys said. "Toni and I have laid out a tentative plan, and I'd like to run through it with you, as well as discuss some special arrangements—we can work out what's needed together."
Henry nodded, and moved to a chair.
"How did you know this trip was to Ceta, Uncle?" Bleys asked, settling into the dark gray, oversize chair that was always his. "Dahno told me," Henry said.
Bleys nodded. It had to be so, of course. But Dahno had not known of Bleys' later decision to take two ships.
Bleys went on to explain to Henry that between having to get the second ship ready, and having to make diplomatic, political and administrative preparations, it would be five days or more before his own party could get off; but that he wanted whichever ship could take off first to take some of Henry's people. Going over the requirements took the rest of the afternoon. Neither of them brought up Will's name.
"For all that's happened," Toni said late that evening, after Favored of God had been sent off with its instructions, "it's only a few weeks since you told me you thought it would be best to leave Ceta to the last, because it would be, well, messy to try to take over that splintered world—do you remember?"
"Of course I do," Bleys said. "But I'm not really figuring on trying to take control of Ceta, just now. It's still uncontrollable. I'll be talking differently, when we're there, but don't let that distract you— we're going on what might be called an intelligence mission, and some of the talk will be a ruse aimed at smoking out whoever's hiding from us."
"I know that," she said. "And I applaud the flexibility it shows. But I wonder—I've been assuming that was only what might be called a 'tactical' shift, and that your long-range plan has not changed—"
"No," he said, interrupting her. "My goal hasn't changed." He paused, watching her face for reaction.
"I haven't changed," he said. "I never change."
"Your plan is so—" She groped for a word. "—so large! Isn't that daunting, even to someone with your abilities?"
"Is it daunting for you?" he asked. "To be in on this, I mean."
"No," she said. "I'm committed to you. You know that."
"I know," he said. "And you know you're the only one who really knows what I'm after, in the very long term. Even Dahno has no real idea of the full scope of my purpose."
"I don't know the details of your plan—"
"Most details have to await the moment," he said.
"I understand that. But what you told me when you were ill— what you spoke, perhaps for the first time out loud, tells me you expect to be strongly opposed."
He nodded.
"And that you don't intend to shrink from doing whatever might be required to quench that opposition." She looked into his eyes.
"I know you recognize the implications of that," she went on, "because it was clear, in some of the things you said. You foresaw a lot of suffering and death."
"Yes," he said. His voice seemed flat and curt, even to himself.
"I know you care about me," she said. "And about Dahno, Henry—others, too, I think, and even the whole human race. You're not some kind of conscienceless mass murderer. So aren't you bothered by the deaths you foresee?"
"Yes," he said. "Of course I am."
He looked down into her face, feeling a heaviness in the pit of his stomach. He recognized it; he felt it every time he imagined talking about the future he planned.
"You know I never told you my plans of my own volition," he said. "It was forced out of me by that—that thing the Newtonian Council attacked me with."
She nodded, simply waiting.
"I didn't tell you," he went on, feeling the words forcing their way out past his instincts, "for the same reason I haven't told anyone else: I thought you—just as I've always thought of everyone else— would be repelled, and—and leave me."
"You know better now," she said, her voice low, almost throaty.
"You have to know, too," he went on, remorseless even for himself, "that if you had decided to leave me, it wouldn't have altered my plans."
She nodded, lifting an arm to his shoulder and beginning to gently knead the hard muscles there.
"That goes for Dahno, too," he said. "And for Henry. Because no matter how much I might love them—or you—my duty to the race has to come first."
"No matter what the cost," she said. It was not a question.
"No."
"Are you prepared for the fact you could go down in history as the greatest butcher in the history of the race?" "Yes," he said.
"Does it bother you?"
He took a short moment to think that over.
"Yes and no," he said; and paused again.
"Do you know," he went on, "that question never even occurred to me before . . . because, I think, it's irrelevant." "Irrelevant?"
"Yes," he said. "If my plans succeed, I will have saved the race, and that's worth any cost; and while the price will become obvious in the near term, that result will only be seen far in the future, and I'll be dead anyway.
"And if I fail, the race will die."
"I told you once," she said softly, "about what my father said, about the need to be true to yourself, even if it costs you your life."
"Inochi o oshimuna—na koso oshime!" Bleys said. His memory seldom failed him. "That Japanese saying you quoted to me—I remember. What about it?"
"How much greater is the power of your honor," she said, "when the cost you're willing to pay is so much more than merely your own life?"
Both of them were silent for a long moment. "Don't start seeing more in me than there is," he said, finally. "I weaken, sometimes."
"There is none who docs not," she replied.
CHAPTER 5
Henry MacLean had been lying in the dark for some time, wondering if he was committing a larger sin than he knew.
When he went to his bed, after seeing his quickly picked contingent of Soldiers off to the pad where Favored of God was waiting, he had known his night would be full of memories—memories of Will, who lay buried somewhere on that planet that Bleys would soon take Henry to. Still, the self-discipline he had schooled himself in, over a lifetime of either fighting or farming, had gotten him some sleep—eventually.
And when he awoke in the darkness of his tiny room, it had been Bleys who was at the top of Henry's mind—it never occurred to Henry to think, as some might, that possibly he had somehow betrayed his real son, Will, by thinking of Bleys at this time.
Antagonist - Childe Cycle 11 Page 4