It was not his intention to alienate them—not as long as they did their jobs as he required. So it was time to reconcile them to their losses.
"We know this hurts your efforts on your individual planets," he said now, in a soothing tone. "You've been doing good work—we know that, and you know that."
He put a little more authority into his tone now.
"But the work we've all been doing is not confined to your single planets—you know that as well."
He smiled at them, just a little.
"None of us can ever make the mistake of losing sight of the overall situation," he went on. "In fact, that's exactly what the Chairman and I are for: to not let the view from one planet obscure our organization's aims on all the worlds."
Dahno had sold these people, when he recruited them, on the idea that they were superior to ordinary people and really deserved to rule the worlds. Dahno had not really intended to seek that ruling position, but Bleys had risen to supplant him, in all but title, precisely because he had revived that notion, reinforced it in their minds, and given them reason to believe it could be done.
Behind Bleys they had risen to positions of wealth and power; and like most people who attain those things, they wanted more. They would, he knew, do whatever he wanted—even forget subtractions from their organizational domains—if they believed he could lead them even higher.
By giving them what they wanted, he would get what he wanted. The results he was aiming for would not at all be something these people would be very happy about, but that did not matter, because by the time they realized where he was going—if they ever did—it would be much too late.
"We've spent almost a Standard month here," he went on, "discussing the next major steps of our program—steps that will bring four more worlds under our control and neutralize any possible threat from the Exotics and the Dorsai." He was settling into his planned exposition now, and, all unconsciously, they were sensing that, and setting in their turns into a more business-like frame of mind.
"Three worlds remain to be considered," he said. "Well, four, if you count Dunnin's World, but—" He dismissed that most marginal of planets with a short wave; and saw unease come to faces that had calculated exactly which worlds he was referring to.
"Yes," he said. "Venus, Mars—and Old Earth."
They were stirring about a little now, as the goats had, in their pens back on Henry's farm, when someone came near in the night. He could hear an undercurrent of comment, and beside him Dahno seemed to be studiously concentrating on the data display embedded in the tabletop.
"Old Earth?" Ana Wasserlied said, her voice a little shrill. "Even if—" He cut her off.
"I know," he said, once more calm and soothing. "You were about to remind us that the population of Old Earth is about the size of that of all the Younger Worlds put together, and that we have barely enough people to do our work on those worlds as it is, without subtracting more from their ranks—and that we couldn't possibly send enough to make even a dent in Old Earth's politics." He smiled at her.
"We all know all that," he said. "Don't worry; that's not what we have in mind."
He left the podium and moved back to his chair, where he sat down, leaning across the table as if ready to take part in a serious discussion among equals.
"Really," he said, "when you think about it, what we're proposing is nothing more than a bit of preventive maintenance." He took a moment to let that innocuous term's connotations sink into their minds.
"The prospectus for this conference contained a brief summary of the political and economic situations on all the worlds," he went on after that moment, "but we know you had no particular reason to pay much attention to what our research staff had to say about Old Earth. You're all probably aware of the basic facts: Old Earth is the richest, most populous and most technologically advanced of all the planets, it's true. But it continues to be, as it has always been, a planet so disorganized as to make Ceta look simple." He smiled, and got low laughs as a reward.
"Old Earth's power structure is a maze of competing and conflicting political, economic and societal entities, consisting of everything from the remnants of ancient nation-states to independent undersea, orbital, and lunar installations, multinational economic entities, and cross-boundary social alliances." He shook his head.
"They haven't united on anything at all since the days when Dow deCastries led them to try to rule the Younger Worlds," he continued. "All we want to do is keep it that way."
He could see that the unease in their faces was being replaced by curiosity.
"So far," he said, rising to his feet once more, "Old Earth has paid little attention to what we've been doing on the Younger Worlds. But some elements there might become alarmed as our power continues to grow—within a short time we could be in control of nine worlds, after all—and we don't want the old planet to be concerned."
He looked about the room as if challenging them to dispute his argument. It was a tactic they had all been taught to use themselves, intended to convince an audience of the speaker's own certainty of the truth of what he was saying; it was a common human reaction to feel that people who were so deeply certain about a belief as to be emotional about it were probably right. Bleys knew they would recognize the tactic, but he believed that very recognition would disarm their instinctive fear reaction.
"As I mentioned some weeks ago," he went on, now in a softer, calmer voice, "we believe the Exotics have been aware of our movement for quite a while. Whether they initially confused us with the original Others group makes no difference: regardless of what went before, they're certainly aware that our plans for the Younger Worlds can only threaten them. It's predictable they'll try to raise an alarm on Old Earth, hoping to rouse it enough to provide some sort of countervailing force against us."
He moved to the podium again, shaking his head.
"It will do them little good," he said, "because they can't unite that planet any more than we can. Nonetheless, we'd be wise to try to smother that effort."
He raised a hand, as if reaching out to pull in their understanding.
"That's why we need to take some of your people," he said. "We want to send them to Old Earth—not to try to take it over, but only to counteract—to kill at birth—any impulse to take action, of any sort, against us."
Some were nodding now.
"We'd like your personal input, all of you," he continued, "as to possible leaders for this mission—in fact, if one of you would, yourself, feel particularly qualified for the task, please—"
Beside Bleys, Dahno sat up straighter in his chair; and at the same time Hammer Martin spoke up.
"It should be me," Hammer said. "This job demands the skills of someone experienced in starting a whole organization from scratch; and among those of us who were sent out to do just that on our various worlds, I'm senior." Again he wore a somewhat belligerent look on his face.
"Wait," Dahno said. He was rising to his feet, looking at Bleys.
"It's my job," he said. He turned to look out over the audience.
"I've got the skills needed to analyze the situations we find there," he said. "You know that, brother—" He looked back at Bleys for an instant. "—it's been vital to our work on the Younger Worlds."
Bleys nodded, cautiously. Dahno had surprised him on several occasions, and he had an uncomfortable feeling it was happening again.
"I know how to find the best people to cultivate," Dahno went on, again addressing the whole gathering. "And I've been on Old Earth before and have contacts already in place."
Low, approving murmurs began to arise in the room, but Bleys voiced a further objection: "You're a sitting member of the governing body on Association," he said. "More than that, you're a large part of our control on these two worlds—"
"We've got a firm controlling structure in place here," Dahno said. "We had to ensure that from early on, if only because you and I had to spend so much time off-planet. And the Eldest, McKa
e, is your own particular creature, you know that."
"But there's been a growing insurgency on both these planets for some time," Bleys said.
Dahno dismissed that with a wave of his hand.
"That's nothing," he said. "There're dissenters on the other planets we control, too, but none are much of a threat. And here on the Friendlies, your position as First Elder, along with your control of McKae, gives us complete control of the armed forces of the two worlds—the strongest armed force on any of the Younger Worlds, leaving out the Dorsai."
"Beyond these Friendly planets," Bleys said, "we also need you in the work we've planned for Ceta and the others—"
"Again, you don't need me for that," Dahno said. "Our people here"—he swept a hand across the room—"have surprised us both in how much they've learned and the abilities they've shown to control the powerful on their planets."
He looked across the head table, beaming with pride at the Others before him, every one of whom had been trained in the program he had established. Bleys followed his eyes, and saw that those looking up at them were responding to his brother.
Dahno had won them totally. Bleys had been waiting, all through the convocation, for his brother to speak up in opposition—but now that it had happened, he, Bleys, had still been surprised.
"You forget, brother," Dahno was going on, "I was the one who organized all this in the first instance. I was the one who found and recruited these people who've proven to have so much ability. And organization, above all, is what's going to be needed on Old Earth."
He looked back at Bleys.
"You won't find anyone better, brother," he said. And the faces Bleys saw behind the ranks of tables were nodding, certain. "That's true," Bleys said.
I’ll have to let this one go, he thought, but what does he have planned?
"You six were sent to me," Bleys said, "to carry out a specialized task." The meeting with the Others' leaders had ended a week ago, and the lower-ranked Others he had sent for had largely arrived at headquarters and were being trained to accompany Dahno to Old Earth.
Bleys had been watching for certain of them to arrive, however; and now he had half a dozen of them with him in a small meeting room.
While he spoke, Bleys looked with interest at the six, seated close to him around a small table. All were men, which was not surprising considering the personalities he had been looking for; but he had, he now realized, unconsciously been expecting they would look different from other people . . . somehow. They didn't, really.
"We want you to put together a special weapon for us," he went on.
None of them reacted at all, that he could see. But then, that seemed to be one index of the kind of people he'd calculated could do this job.
"To be more specific," he continued, "we want you to find us the right kind of people—people who can be depended on to carry out certain kinds of actions—and then to train them, and lead them to perform certain special tasks for us."
He paused again, looking for some kind of reaction. He got only silence.
"It was almost painful" he wrote in a note to his memory late that night. He was, unconsciously, shaking his head as he did so; and he was doing it in darkness, making it impossible for anyone else—or himself—to see what he was writing.
I never realized how much I depend on getting feedback when I speak—even if it's only from the technicians recording one of my talks. But those people today were the human equivalent of white noise.
The sheet of paper under his hands was unsympathetic.
I was looking for a particular kind of sociopath, he wrote on. The kind who can function within a system. I should not have expected them to be normal.
And I didn't. Not really. But these were all people who had learned to counterfeit normal human behavior enough to fit in—for the most part—in some societal niche. But they weren't even trying, this time, to seem human.
He paused, looking down the length of his lounge in the direction of the Mayne-map, which he could not see; and then he bent over the unseen paper, and continued writing.
And yet, when I first met with them individually, and again after the meeting, I thought they seemed close to normal. I'm still reacting to that impression.
On reflection, I think it's because initially I gave them the kind of encounter they were more or less used to—in other words, they had an idea what sort of behavior was expected of them. But when I presented a deliberately vague summary of what I want them to do, I presented them with a situation they had never encountered; and, not knowing the right pattern to adopt, they could only wait for some cue to tell them what pattern might be right.
He stopped, to look down at the paper as if rereading what he could not see; and then felt for the disposal slot and fed it in. Then he pulled out a new, blank sheet.
When the job is creating and leading assassins, I don't want people who might have second thoughts.
Will I be the one having second thoughts?
CHAPTER 27
The air was bitter in the uplands that marked the border between the two major sections of Harmony's largest continent, where Rukh Tamani's Command was snowbound in the variform conifer forest just below the pass known as the High Walk.
It was not that her followers were completely unable to move through the snow between the trees; but they were exhausted, having been harried from shelter to haven for months by a seemingly energized Militia.
Tired, they were nonetheless able and willing to move. But Rukh knew that her people—now numbering less than sixty—needed to rest. This seemed like a good time to take that rest, since the snow that had fallen in the mountains for the past day and a half had covered their tracks.
If they did not move, they would make no new tracks.
Armed opposition had been Rukh's way of life since her childhood ended in terror and death; opposition, at first, to the hypocritical religious tyranny of Harmony's governing cliques, and, later, to the insidious persuasions of the Belial-spawn, who had come to control that government—those called the Others on the rest of the Younger Worlds.
Unlike many of those in her Command—and unlike most of those Harmonyites who, though not in open rebellion, nonetheless secretly sympathized with anyone courageous enough to take up arms—Rukh had no dreams of a life of peace, nor any illusions about the likelihood of living to some older age. Yet she was not unhappy at all, and could frequently be observed, in less pensive moments, with a quiet, soft smile on her dark, and strikingly beautiful, face.
She knew some had compared her beauty to that of one or another of the queens captured in onyx in Old Earth's ancient land of Egypt, that land so often mentioned in the Bible. The idea neither pleased nor displeased her, for she knew that whatever beauty she had, had been a gift from her God, and was not of her earning.
The beauty was an ephemeral thing, and could be taken from her in an instant. Her mother had been beautiful, too; but Rukh had seen her mother's body burned and torn, and knew that beauty meant little.
The one thing she possessed that was hers alone was her soul; and while it could never be taken from her, she had given it willingly to her God. And since that day on which she had dedicated her soul, and all its worldly trappings—possessions, body and mind—to her God, she had never been afraid.
It seemed so clear, to her, that she wondered at times why other people were afraid—of injury, or of death. No foe could reach into or damage her soul; it was God's, and He was beyond fear or death. Whatever might be done to the body was a transient thing, that would pass and be forgotten in what would be, in God's time, only the shortest of instants.
She wondered why more people did not reach out to their God, to trade their cares for peace and joy. Occasionally she had succeeded in telling them, in showing them, that road; but it seemed it was her work that reached people most easily, most surely ... as if words, so easy to use, were also so easy to forget.
Still a young woman, she had already put many long
years into carrying out her task. There had been great successes, that confounded the enemies of God and drove their slave-soldiers back in confusion and despair—successes that made her name one that rang for those who still had the clarity of purpose to fight for the Lord.
In odd moments she wondered if that was truly her purpose in life. However, she was not much given to ponderings on purposes, and was content to wait for God's plan to be revealed to her, so that she could follow it.
Usually, that plan seemed to be just to keep her Command alive and functioning; and moving it about to give hope to the Lord's people . .. and, once in a while, to take advantage of some opportunity to cripple the forces of their enemy, by belying their blasphemous claim to be themselves doing the Lord's work.
Such an opportunity had come her way a few years ago, when God had led her to allow the young Earthman, Hal Mayne, to join her Command. The youngster had made no pretense of being of their faith, yet he seemed to her to have a comparable strength of moral purpose.
For all that Hal Mayne appeared, physically, to be tall, strong and rugged, she had seen, in that first meeting, that he was still a boy, still open and trusting, even naive—and one who had been badly hurt inside. But the Earthman had proven to have iron inside him also; few others had ever dared to stand up to her now much missed Lieutenant, James Child-of-God.
In the end Hal Mayne had saved her Command, by disobeying her orders and stealing the explosive materials they had been guarding as they fled from the Militia, moving them to where they could be used.
Antagonist - Childe Cycle 11 Page 28