"I believe that," he said. "And I know there are Friendlies like that, too." He shrugged. "Whatever it takes to produce that completely free, responsible, strong individual, our societies don't seem to have it—not enough of it. That's why I think the race needs to go back to Old Earth and retrench—look into itself until it finds the way to be mature adults."
"Is that what you believe the historical forces want?"
"I don't think the forces have any wants at all," he said. "They're just there?
"Like gravity, you said."
"We never were completely independent entities, any of us," he said. "We never will be. We're like fish: we swim in an ocean of forces—even matter is really a function of forces—and we have no prospect of ever being in a position to order the ocean itself. But that doesn't lessen us; in fact, we need the forces—it's like the ocean: if it weren't there, we could never swim at all.
"Hello?" he asked, after a long moment of silence.
"I haven't gone to sleep," she said. "I was thinking about a cosmology class I took once, long ago."
"What about it?"
"Well, I remember we explored speculations people have had over the centuries, as to what makes up what we call the 'fabric of space.' I had trouble with the idea, I remember, because I'd always understood space to be—well, empty. Nothingness! And yet using the term 'fabric' seemed to me to imply there was—is—something out there with a texture .. . something that can be touched. Or at least sensed, in some way."
"The physicists," Bleys said, "have largely accepted that even though we lack the senses necessary even to perceive that 'fabric,' as you called it, there must be something like it, to hold everything together. My thought is there's something like that going on with history ... or maybe with time."
"Are you saying you have some sort of perception of these historical forces?"
"Not at all," he said. "All I have is a construction—a sort of fictional picture in my mind, that sometimes I can use to help me envision what's going on in the Universe."
"Would you tell me about it? Do you mind?"
"I don't mind," he said. "But I've never tried to describe it to anyone before; so bear with me if this seems a little vague."
He paused for a moment.
"You mentioned the 'fabric of space,'" he said. "Now try to imagine a kind of fabric that flows through time." "A fabric of time?"
"I don't necessarily mean it in the sense of something that holds time together," he said. "What I'm thinking of is more like a ribbon, or even a tapestry—a tapestry made up of threads that each represents the life of a human being, as that life moves through time, so that the entire tapestry runs from the beginning of the race on into the future, indicating the direction the whole race is moving."
"So this tapestry is, in a way, telling you a story—the story of the human race?"
"Yes," he said. "That's why tapestry may be a better word than ribbon, even though the length of the thing is more ribbon-like. I sometimes imagine the threads are all of different colors, and I can pick out my own and those of some other people. I imagine that the great moments of the race are represented when threads of similar color begin to run together—which means some great idea has arisen and begun to influence more and more people."
"Do some people's threads—their lives—have more weight in determining the direction of the tapestry than do others'?" Toni asked.
"People, no," he said. "It's the ideas they hold that gives the weight. Or maybe weight is the wrong word; maybe color or direction would be better."
"I think I get the idea," she said.
"I know these threads aren't real," he said. "It's just a picture, a symbol in my mind, that puts my own position and plans into a form I can think about more easily. I've found that meditating on the image sometimes seems to lead me to answers for some problems . . . perhaps it's a channel into my subconscious mind, that uses my own creative abilities to analyze situations on a level below my conscious mind, when that consciousness is having trouble.
"Sometimes I feel I can see the direction the threads are going, into the future. I'm sure they're not real, but just projections from my mind's calculations—or guesses. But sometimes seeing them gives me ideas for things to do, as if I were looking at a map."
"And where do the historical forces come into this?" she asked.
"They don't, really, in any physical sense," he said. "But the forces are made up of the energies of the life-threads, and the ideas that motivate them. When a large number of people want a particular future for the race—even if they never think of what they want as influencing the race's future—their threads run together. Together they have a kind of—let's use weight for this—weight that bends the tapestry of the entire race's future in their particular direction. If other people have different ideas, their weight tends to lead the tapestry in a different direction... so that the tapestry of the future is being tugged in, at a minimum, two different directions."
"So maybe war isn't a good word for the reconciliation of these historical forces," she said.
"Perhaps not, as applied to the forces themselves," he said. "When water is released from a dam and flows down to a lower-lying body of water, it's not a war—it's only a righting of things that have been out of balance ... a simple search for a state of equilibrium."
"This feels very right to me," Toni said. "It fits with the importance of balance in the martial arts, for one thing. And I recall, too, that some of the masters suggested that the true martial artist should be like water—be infinitely flexible, able to adapt and flow without effort."
"It sounds like the opposite of war," he admitted.
"You said yourself, a while ago, that war is a conflict of opposing forces," she said. "But our art seeks to flow with an opposing force, rather than entering into open conflict with it."
"That's right," he said. "I spoke too loosely. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that although the historical forces don't go to war with each other—people do. War is always a subjective phenomenon; it's only accurately used when it's applied to the way the forces work themselves out in human lives." It took her a moment to reply.
"What it seems to come down to, if I understand you correctly, is that the historical forces themselves are largely irrelevant to the average woman or man. And if a war comes out of those forces—"
"I suspect all wars grow out of those forces," he said. "Sorry—I interrupted you."
"Well, if a war comes, it doesn't matter to the average person whether it's the result of historical forces, or not," she said.
"For the average person, it seldom matters what causes a war," he said. "It's like a storm that blows up in the late afternoon. To all intents and purposes, it's just something that happens, that the person being rained on didn't cause, didn't ask for, and didn't want—but has to endure."
"And you, knowing about these historical forces—you don't feel like you're a slave to them?"
"No," he said. "Maybe an ally. All I'm really trying to do is save the human race; and if that purpose happens to facilitate the working out of some conflict between the forces—so be it. I'm not doing what I'm doing for the sake of the forces, but for myself and for the race."
"So maybe the best analogy might be that you're trying to guide the race through that storm?" "I like that one," he said.
Again, she was silent; and finally he spoke again.
"It is sad that some of our Others have been killed," he said. "I'd've prevented that if I'd seen it coming. But in the course of events, many more are certain to be killed, both Others and ordinary people, before the race is placed firmly on its path to safety. Many of those will die because they oppose what I'm doing, and some will die to support it—and the only difference between them may be that the latter die out of loyalty to a better cause . .. even though many on both sides will never know exactly what it is their struggles and deaths are supporting."
"You said it, a few minutes ago," Toni said: "The
Others who've been killed here on Ceta were probably killed for their loyalty." "Yes."
"The converse of that idea is that any of the Others—or the staff, for that matter—who are still alive may have been corrupted."
"It may be," he said, "although I find it highly unlikely that so many could have been diverted from their loyalties. During our first meeting here, I really felt I was seeing people genuinely committed to our organization. Those Others in that meeting seemed interested, even eager, to work on our plan—and, yes, I realize I've just done exactly what you did, a few minutes ago, in talking about your reaction to Sandra Rossoy."
"They may not all be corrupted yet," she said. "On the other hand, the eagerness you saw might have been just interest in getting something from us."
"It's not necessarily the case that any of them are, as you say, 'corrupted,'" Bleys said.
"But if they're not cooperating with our unknown enemies, then they're dupes."
"In any case, we're still facing the problem of what to do about it," he said. "We can be pretty sure of the identity of at least some of the infiltrators. But we can't have them arrested, and there's no way to guarantee they'd tell us anything if we confronted them."
"We could grab some and interrogate them," she said, a questioning tone in her voice.
"That could be a very dangerous move," Bleys said. "Remember, we still don't know the extent of their power and influence here. We know that some of our enemies have taken positions on the Cetan Others' staffs, but we also know they have confederates who aren't on the staffs—and we have no idea who those people are or how many of them there might be."
"Could you try to use your persuasive power to get one or more of the ones we know of, to cooperate?"
"I could try it," he said. "There's no guarantee it would work— remember, there are people who seem to be immune to that particular ability."
"All right, I see that," she said. "But if you're right about them, what are you going to do?"
"What exactly are you asking?"
"Well, just going by the number of staff people over forty years of age—even though we don't know exactly why age might make a difference—and knowing they have confederates who aren't staff members, it seems likely we face a large number of enemies. We can't arrest them . .. can you settle for just firing them?"
"It may be that will be all we can do," he said. "I'd rather find another way."
"Another way to what?" she said. "I don't think you're clear, in your own mind, as to what you want to do—I mean, not just as to what the next step would be, after you've identified those people, but what you want to happen beyond that. Are you?"
Her voice had risen in tone as she spoke, speeding up; and even before he could answer she had turned, to poke him on the chest with a finger.
"That's why you got those blisters when you were walking!" she said, emphasizing her words with another poke. "You know it from your own martial arts work—your thinking was out of balance, and that affected the balance of your body. Mind and body are all tied together, you know that!"
He looked at her, stunned.
"I'm sorry," she said, more softly. "I didn't mean to poke you so hard—"
"It's not that," he said, recovering from the rush of thoughts that had briefly immobilized him. "It's just that—well, of course I've been told about balance, and about the link between body and mind, but it never came home to me until now!"
He put his hand on her shoulder, excited.
"Do you remember Kaj telling me, when I was very ill from the DNA antagonist, about harnessing my creative powers to heal myself?"
"I remember something about that, yes."
"He was talking about the same thing!" Bleys said. "It all fits together!"
He laughed aloud.
'it does all fit together—mind and body!"
"All right," she said, "I think I see: you got the blisters, indirectly, because your thinking was out of balance, so that was your mind affecting your body."
"Maybe it would be more accurate to say it was the body mirroring the mind," he said. "I wonder if anyone has ever tried to study that kind of mind-body relationship?"
"Are you sure, now, that you've balanced your thinking?"
"You're trying to remind me to keep my eye on my overall mission," he said. "I haven't forgotten it. But you're right, at least to the extent that I've been concentrating on finding out who the enemy are, and not thinking about what comes after that."
"Sometimes there are advantages to working like that," she said. "I can't say this isn't one of those times when a problem works itself out if you just let it run. But I've been wondering what would happen next, and I thought I'd ask what you thought about that end of it."
"I've got a few ideas," he said. "I need a lot more information before I can act on any of them."
"So we're back to the problem of obtaining information," she said. "Any plan we make might blow up in our faces if we can't base it on concrete information."
"Our problem, on the initial level at least, has two possible answers," he responded. "On the one hand, the simplest—or at least most certain—way to handle this might be to just dump the entire organization here on Ceta; but that would come at a devastating cost in the money and people we've put into this organization, as well as the influence we've built up with power-brokers on this planet."
"And the other solution is to find a way to prove whether the individual Others—and their staff people—are loyal," she said; "once sorted, you can fire just the disloyal."
"That would be preferable," he said, "if we can figure out how to do it. But even then, we're still left with people working for us who were fooled."
"There are worse crimes than being deceived," she said. "And speaking of crimes, I noticed that one thing you wanted the researchers to seek was undercover groups in the financial and criminal areas—how did you get to that?"
"Oh, that," he said. "I don't know if you'd call it a process of elimination, or just extrapolation, but if you look at what we do know about what those unknowns have been doing—manipulating markets and economies, arranging assassinations—they're good at those kinds of things. They must have had practice."
"Well, then," Toni said, "that brings up another question: why would professional criminals go through all the trouble of working for the Others? Some of them have been with us for years, although it doesn't strike me as the kind of life that appeals to criminals ... and I can't think of a lot they could gain by doing so, either."
"Yes," he said, frowning in the darkness, "that's another question."
He slid back down from the wall, to lie flat.
"We have a lot more to learn," he said.
"Not now," she said, moving down herself. "You need your sleep."
She laughed.
"I'm getting to sound like Kaj."
In the morning Toni was out of the bedroom before Bleys was ready, insisting she would prepare a hot breakfast.
"We've been badly off-schedule," she said. "A return to our usual routine will make us feel better, which means we'll think better. When you're ready, come to the kitchen and help me."
"I should check on what's been happening overnight," he said.
"By the time you get to the kitchen, I'll have breakfast ready. You can help me carry it to our desks, and you can do your checking while you eat."
Reports had already begun to come in from the researchers— most, so far, relayed from the other side of the planet, where the first day of researches had just ended.
"This is puzzling," Toni said, forwarding a new batch of reports to Bleys' screen. "I'm not sure this is of any use, but you said you wanted to see everything."
Bleys only nodded, his eyes glued on his screen while he ate largely by feel.
"A bit later, we'll get back to our workouts," Toni said. She had to repeat herself to get his attention.
Late in the afternoon, Bleys looked up from his screen as Toni appeared in the lounge, her hai
r still slightly damp—the two of them had completed a short but vigorous workout only a short time before, and Bleys had rushed right to his screen while she went off to their quarters.
"You need to shower," she said.
"I'll go in a moment," he said. "I needed to look at the data right away, to see how it fits with an idea I got while we were working out."
"I could tell you were distracted," she said. "Remember, you have to be able to let go of the world."
"I know," he said. "I just couldn't do it. . . . Anyway, I think I'm starting to see a pattern—or maybe two patterns."
"Two? What do you mean?"
"Let me think about it while I shower," he said. "If it holds up, I'll explain—and maybe we'll have some planning to do." "Is there anything I should look into while you're gone?" He sat silent, thinking.
"I'm working on another plan," he said at last. "It'll need a few of Henry's people, and I'm afraid it'll involve actions he might not be happy about."
"Will anyone get hurt?" Toni asked.
"No."
"Then—" she began; but he interrupted her. "Not immediately," he added. "All right," she said. "What else do you need?" "A medician," he said. "One with advanced pharmacological experience."
Antagonist - Childe Cycle 11 Page 16