Which of them, if any, were the ones he was trying to smoke out—the ones who either had been working to conceal the true situation on this planet, or had been stunningly inept?
Does the fear mean they're more intelligent? he asked himself. Or just more timid? I'll have to know them better before I can answer that.
Within himself, he knew he was hardly likely to ever get the time to do that. He thought he understood now, a little better, why Dahno so strongly resisted the need to delegate responsibilities, even to his own, handpicked people.
Be careful, Bleys told himself now. You can't afford to start believing everything you say. You 're not here to take Ceta, and you can'/ forget this is only a ruse.
But there was a rising tide of excitement in him, as if the deepest part of his mind sensed something approaching from beyond the horizon.
"The task we face is huge," Bleys continued, "and Dahno and I don't pretend to have a schematic to show you exactly how to do it. Ceta, as a large world comprised of a large number of independent states, presents a very different problem than did the monolithic planetary governments we dealt with on New Earth, Newton, Cassida—yes, and on Harmony and Association, too." He paused to sweep their faces with his eyes, one of his oldest attention-getting techniques.
"We are far too few to have any hope of really controlling the Worlds in detail," he went on. "Even after the recruiting efforts we've all been making for the past five years, our numbers remain minuscule in comparison to the populations of the Younger Worlds. And you know as well as I that many of the newly recruited Others will never receive the training some of you have gotten from Dahno and our organization—yes," he said, "if you haven't noticed, we're joined by some of your senior staff, who of course haven't had that training."
He paused for a moment, looking about the room.
"Our numbers long ago overran our ability to train people," he said. "While we will continue to train suitable candidates, more of the responsibility for training new recruits is going to have to fall on you people in the field—but Dahno will speak of that in more detail later."
Beside him, his brother nodded, now looking serious.
"You must never forget," Bleys went on, "that going through Dahno's training program is not what makes one an Other. You who are here from the staff are Others—you always have been—and neither you nor the trained Others who are your leaders can ever forget that."
There was a small stir in the room.
"There's hope," Bleys said. "I know you're all aware that one of the major keys to the success of our organization has been our unique ability to influence other people, to persuade them to trust us and follow our lead. But I tell you now, if you haven't realized it already: not all who get chosen for training displtiy the persuasive abilities that have allowed us to get this far."
There were troubled frowns among his audience now.
"That doesn't mean those people aren't Others," he said. "Never think that. Just as in the remainder of the human race, some have higher levels of talent than do others."
He paused, trying to refocus them by his brief silence.
"Dahno and I," he continued after a moment, "have been working to develop techniques that may help us multiply the effects of our powers; and before too long we'll all be talking about that. But none of you must ever forget those Others who haven't been able to receive our training—like the members of your senior staff; they've been loyal, and they, too, will share in our future."
Smiles broke out, not only on the faces of the staff people, but on those of some of the top Others.
"Now to the more specific matter of Ceta," Bleys said. Faces sobered.
"Dahno and I have been working among the Worlds," he continued. "We face different challenges out there than you do, here on your target world. But don't ever think we're unaware of your work. Your work is vital to our work; we know that... and our work /s your work, in the long run."
He paused, looking at them seriously; then leaned forward, bending over the table with his extended arms supporting his bowed shoulders while he tilted his head to look into their faces.
"At the same time, you must never forget," he said, his voice lower, more serious, less comradely, "that you were set up here for the purpose of carrying out the organization's mission. And that mission is not limited only to Ceta. The organization—the Others— we—" He raised himself from the table as he raised his voice again, sweeping his arms in great circles to include them all in his words. "—we have a larger mission, among all the Younger Worlds."
He could see them reacting positively to that message, smiling, bringing their heads up.
"You all live and work here," he went on softly. "That's your job. But Dahno and I are the ones who've been out among the Worlds. We're the ones who see the bigger picture."
He paused, looking from side to side. His next words were uttered so quietly they almost had to strain to hear him.
"That's how we've learned the things that tell us the time is now ripe for the next step," he said. "But we, Dahno and I, don't have the necessary expertise about Ceta—its situation, its needs and wants, even its idiosyncrasies.
"However—" He nodded, confidentially, at them. "—we know where to come to get that expertise: here!" Two of his audience actually laughed, as if afflicted by some spasm, before silencing themselves abruptly.
"Yes," Bleys said. "You, who have been here on the ground all these years—you're our experts. So we've come to consult with you."
The faces were smiling, the eyes gleaming.
"Of course, officially Dahno and I are here to visit the troops," he said, with an air of one letting them in on a secret. "But we've learned a lot in dealing with five other worlds, and now we think we—an 0f us—may be in a position to make something happen that will mean your work hasn't been wasted."
They spent the afternoon in collegial fashion, snacking from the extensive sideboards and discussing the prospects. Sometimes they all listened to individual comments following up on particular thoughts; at other times they separated into smaller groups, which formed, broke up, and were replaced by different combinations. There was discussion about whether to continue to work with the multitude of local governments, or whether it might in the long run be more effective to try to encourage the formation of a planetary government. A single planetary government could be more efficiently controlled by their relatively small numbers, they all clearly agreed; but they also agreed that creating such an entity within any reasonable period of time would be virtually impossible.
Bleys was pleased to hear that particular discussion; it set them up nicely for what he had planned for later.
As the afternoon drew to a close, he could see that fatigue was sapping their enthusiasm. He withdrew gracefully from the particular group he had been listening to, and made his way back to the head table, where he used his wrist control pad to play tones that got their attention.
Dahno, involved in another discussion, turned and started to move toward the head table; but after a few steps he stopped, simply listening from the crowd.
"We've had a big day," Bleys told his audience now, "and I'm going to suggest we adjourn, in a few moments, to sleep on it. But before we do, let me mention a lesson we've learned from our experiences on other worlds: the fastest route to being able to wield influence on a planetary scale, is to locate some organization already set up on that scale—and coopt it.
"For the most part, it hardly matters if that organization's ideas and purposes differ radically from ours," he went on. "If only someone has such an organization already in place, we can get them to hand it over to us, already staffed—and even to support us as we bend it to our will."
He stopped to raise both arms up and behind his head, in a lazy, tension-relieving stretch that made them all aware of how long they had been cooped up in the conference room.
"I don't know if that can work on Ceta, though," he said, as if musing to himself. "Your reports have ne
ver mentioned that any such organization exists here. In fact, not even the potential for such an organization."
He yawned, and stood up.
"Think about it," he said. "And you'll have time to do so, since Dahno and I have to appear at some minor diplomatic functions for a few days, and then go out to visit the Friendly troops. We'll be all around the planet; but if we're needed, Pallas Salvador—" He turned to look at her. "—will know where to find us at any given time. Keep in mind that we're going to have our hands full.
"For now, get some rest; then take a few days to think about all the things we've discussed. Consult with each other, if you're so inclined—or whatever helps you, individually, think better. If you can come up with suggestions for coordinated action, we'll all want to hear them." He smiled tiredly. "Shall we say, eight days from now, at noon, here?"
CHAPTER7
On the second day of their visits to leased Friendly troops, Bleys overrode his local driver and had his limousine turn off their scheduled route, separating from the rest of his official party and reaching, in slightly more than an hour, the coordinates he had been given for the place where Will MacLean, along with the rest of his unit, had been buried. They had all spent the previous night in a very good hotel, but Bleys had to wonder how much sleep Henry had gotten.
His uncle, as usual, showed no signs of either fatigue or emotional reaction.
"Was this a good idea?" Dahno whispered, as they stood beside their vehicle on the edge of an unpaved and overgrown roadway, looking out across a featureless field. Their view was poor, because the field sloped slightly downhill from their position; anything that might once have been visible was totally obscured by the brush.
"You know it was," Toni answered for Bleys. "How would Henry feel if we went back to Association without even trying to find his son's grave? Not that he would ever say anything, of course."
"I know, I know... you're right." Dahno looked about. "But where exactly is the cemetery? It's been years, and it looks like everything's been overgrown—all I see is a field full of nasty-looking weeds."
Henry, who had been standing several meters in front of the others, up to his knees in drying vegetation and facing a wide gap in the weathered wooden fence, chose that moment to stride down into the field. Toni immediately followed, accompanied by Bleys, and Dahno trailed.
If the field they were crossing had ever been under cultivation,
Bleys could not tell it. The surface, hidden by tussocks of a dried-out grasslike plant, was uneven, and he quickly discovered that a foot incautiously planted on the edge of one of those clumps of vegetation was likely to slide sideways into a hidden narrow patch of bare dirt. Henry turned to warn the others of the danger of a twisted ankle, and they slowed their pace; but Henry himself seemed to move as fast as before over the broken footing.
The going was made even more difficult in those spots where the tussocks were obscured by the longer, still-green blades of a different plant that sprang up around and among them. Three of the party, at least, quickly found that the green blades were sharp-edged and needle-pointed, able to work their way through the light material of trousers meant for urban wear. The three younger ones began to weave so as to avoid the worst-looking patches, but Henry's strides never wavered from the direct line he seemed to be set on. The others only caught up with him when he stopped.
They came up behind Henry as he looked down on a foot-high block of pale gray granite, roughly hewn on the sides but polished on top. For the first moment, the others stood in a row behind him, but as he continued to stand without sound or movement, they moved up beside him.
A simple cross had been incised into the polished top surface of the stone. Beneath it was a legend:
Here lie 27 men of the Militia of Association, who were blessed with death in the service of our God.
In the silence, a stiff breeze fluted softly among the reedlike weeds. Bleys had prepared himself to deal with some sort of emotional reaction when this moment came, but he found he was numbed, as if his feelings had been removed from his body and deposited on the other side of the planet.
The stone before them seemed to connect to nothing, to be only a neutral and dead object. It had nothing to do with his young cousin—and with that thought, he remembered the day it had been abruptly decided that he, Bleys, must leave Henry's farm and move into Ecumeny.
Will had reached up to hug his tall cousin, and Bleys had returned the hug—so strange a thing for him to do ... and with that memory the reaction Bleys had feared rose up in him after all. But it was far worse than he had imagined, and he was totally unprepared for the chaos that fell on his mind.
It was as if he had been treacherously abandoned by that rational watcher in the back of his head, who in the past had always guided him, shielded him from the dangers of emotional crises, by keeping him separate from the world. His vision blurred, and his mouth flooded with saliva, so that he had to gulp to keep from choking; the effort made his nose burn inside.
His legs trembled with a wild impulse to turn on his heels and walk away, and he knew if he did so he would have to discipline his steps, to keep that walk from turning into a run. He was vaguely aware that his breathing had become rapid and shallow, and he could not seem to order his eyes to come back into focus ... and as he hung there, motionless and struggling, some thoughtless level of his mind futilely tried to pick a tune out of the sound of the wind in the weeds.
His memories, out of his control, skipped from that leave-taking through a series of fragments, bits and pieces that he felt rather than saw: Henry holding a gun on the crowd in the churchyard . .. his mother turning from her mirror to look at him with murder in her eyes . . . the sound of a sword searching for him in a darkened corridor ... They popped into his head and then blew away, without being worked on by his rational mind at all; as if it had all happened to someone else, and he was held immobile, forced to watch someone else's life story.
Looming like a wall behind all those memories lay the searing experience of the night he had received Joshua's letter telling him of Will's death—but that memory, too, was like a story related by a stranger. He could not really remember his emotions of that moment—he remembered the fact of them, and that he had found his fist in the wall of his hotel room; but the emotions themselves were gone, as if consigned to lie here with Will.
He did not want to remember. His mind was a repugnant jumble . . . but his rational watcher still failed to reach out with a comment that could serve as a lifeline to his accustomed control.
Immobilized, afraid to react, he stood there in an agonized eternity ... and after a while he found his mind was noting the way the breeze tugged at his clothing. The tide of emotion had swept over him and passed on; he had survived it unchanged, and could begin to look outside himself once more.
In his peripheral vision he could see motion that was Toni's hair being ruffled by the breeze; something kept him from looking directly at her face. Henry was beyond her, but Bleys did not try7 to look at him.
After a few moments, Henry spoke, softly: "Thy will be done— that day, now, and forever."
What remained of the spell broke. Bleys looked at Toni, to see a tear creeping down her cheek. There must have been an earlier one, he thought, because this one was following a moistened track.
Bleys still saw no sign of emotion in Henry's face, or in his body-language.
Henry turned without another word, and started back to their vehicle, Dahno beside him. Toni put a hand on Bleys' arm, holding him back.
"Is this all there is?" she asked. She seemed to be trying to whisper, but anger made her words carry farther than she intended, and Henry stopped and looked back at them.
"What do you mean?" Bleys asked.
"Look at this!" she exclaimed, her arm swinging out in a great semicircle that took in the whole of the weed-overgrown field. "They buried these young men and just went away, and no one even bothers to—to mow these, these weeds!'"
; She blinked, looking up into his face, her eyes filling with moisture.
"They never even put those boys' names on that stone!" And she sobbed, once, so quietly that it seemed almost a gulp.
As Bleys stood there, at a total loss for words, Henry spoke.
"I know you speak out of your heart, Antonia," he said. "But you are mistaken."
He shook his head, a gentle smile on his face.
"Such things as this monument are mere vanities, placed here as a sop to our weaknesses," he continued. "These young men need them not. They have carried out their duty to the fullest extent of their abilities, and now rest with their God, Who is well-satisfied with them. And His embrace is all they need."
He smiled directly at Toni, raising a hand—almost in blessing, Bleys thought.
"If these young men lay in unmarked graves," Henry said, "unknown to all the human race, it would make no difference. For the Lord knows them, and that is all that will ever be needed."
He started to turn away; but stopped once more, turning to look at Toni again.
"I understand that your concern is for me, Antonia," he said. "And I would not have you think me ungrateful. But there is no need for concern in this matter. God has blessed my human weakness by bringing me to this place, for some purpose of His own. I am grateful, yet it changes nothing."
On their way back to their vehicle, its driver popped out of its door, waving at them.
Antagonist - Childe Cycle 11 Page 7