"Bleys, you can't go running off every time one of our people gets killed," Toni said, even more softly. "You know that—it's part of the price of your position."
She had already used up her other arguments, in private.
"I agree," Bleys said, looking at her with a slight smile, but not budging. "But this isn't a normal situation. This is Dahno. If he's doing something that endangers my plans, we have to know it."
He turned his eyes back to Henry.
"You have to agree with this, Uncle," he said. "No one else—not even you—can see through Dahno like I can."
"I cannot argue with you on that point, Bleys," Henry said. "But you must let me make a few suggestions, at least."
CHAPTER 30
There were just over ninety passengers aboard the shuttle that came down to Famagusta, one early spring day, from the Sesostris II. They had filled out the necessary customs forms while still aboard the passenger liner, and had been vouched for by the shipping line; the only remaining barrier was a passage through electronic inspection of their persons and belongings. When no untoward metal objects or unorthodox circuitry or chemicals were found, they were released to Old Earth's soil.
Passengers arriving on an Old Earth-owned liner generally received a substantial amount of deference, since they were highly likely to be well-off and well-connected. Indeed, most of the new arrivals were met and escorted from the spaceport, to be conveyed to their destinations in North Africa, southern Europe or eastern Asia.
Among the few not so greeted was a tall man with blond-brown hair that was graying at the temples. His skin was deeply tanned, but he seemed to suffer from a dermal affliction that created a nasty-looking rash and an accretion of random bumps and pitting. People winced internally when they saw his face, then politely averted their eyes.
Space travel was expensive, and seasoned interstellar travelers packed lightly, knowing it was cheaper to buy most items on arrival than to pay their luggage charges. The tall man with the unsightly face had only a tiny bag as he strolled through the terminal to the area reserved for taxis.
Out on the curb, his attention was caught by the tall palm trees that lined a nearby parking area. There were variform palms on some of the Younger Worlds, varieties genetically altered to fit those
planets; but he had not seen a real one since his mother took him along on a trip to Old Earth. He remembered being fascinated by their prehistoric appearance; at the time he had just discovered picture books about dinosaurs, and those amazing creatures had been depicted moving among palmlike plants.
He would have liked to walk over and take a closer look, perhaps even feel one of those trunks, that looked so reptilian. But that would make him conspicuous; so he put the past out of his mind and walked toward the head of the cab rank.
At the Mediterranean shore north of the city he boarded an old-fashioned seaplane, carefully maneuvering his long frame into its cramped interior. He was startled when the lone pilot handed out foam earplugs to the passengers, but soon found himself grateful: they not only blocked out most of the noise inside the small craft, but also squelched any necessity to make polite conversation with his fellow passengers—or with the pilot, who had been showing signs of wanting to chat, before they were waved away from the dock.
The tall man had to crane his neck to look out the tiny window, but he rapidly found himself almost hypnotized by the water rushing away beneath them, close enough that he could see the scalloped white line that occasionally marked a wave crest. He was intrigued by the boats below; the seaplane flew low enough that he could easily make out the figures of people on their decks.
Within a short time the water lightened in color, taking on a greenish hue; he deduced it was getting shallower as they approached the Asian shore at Beirut—and then, as the plane banked into a turn, they began to parallel the wide sandy beach. Beyond it the ancient buildings of an old city rose in cluttered stacks, close enough to see laundry drying on balconies and rooftops, interspersed with communications arrays. In what appeared to be a small park, people were dancing in an intricate, figured pattern he had no time to figure out.
Most people of the Younger Worlds never got to Old Earth; like them, he tended to forget that it, too, was just another planet, rather than some fabled land of milk and honey—to use a figure out of his religious teachings. On Old Earth, too, there was dust in some places, mud in others—and always, people. Just regular people.
Beirut, he remembered, perched on one edge of Old Earth's largest continent. From his small window he could not estimate the city's size. It appeared to be strung out along the sea, penned between forested mountains and the pale beaches that stretched into the glaring, hazy sunlight in both directions.
As they taxied across an artificial harbor toward the little industrial dock that was home for the seaplane, he could see more palm trees in the distance. None were close enough to be examined.
Before he boarded the regional shuttle flight to Roma his face was smooth again; and by the time he left his hotel the next morning, his coloration seemed to have faded to only a moderate tan. Only his height would make him stand out on the streets of Wien, when he got there.
It took Bleys a day and a half to make contact with Dahno, and it was another day before his half-brother showed up on the street outside his hotel, driving a four-wheeled vehicle propelled by what was apparently a very silent motor.
"I apologize for the size of this thing," Dahno said, as Bleys carefully folded his length into the cramped passenger seat. "They frown on larger vehicles in these old cities—I think it's partly a political issue, but the streets are pretty narrow, at times."
"But you like the challenge of handling a vehicle in these streets, don't you?" Bleys said.
Dahno gave a short bark of a laugh as the wheels double-thumped over a set of parallel metal rails set into the middle of the street they were crossing.
"You felt that!" he said. "It's like being in touch with the ground. I'd forgotten the feeling of direct contact, after all these years of the fans or mag-levs we've been used to."
"Doesn't it distract you?" Bleys asked. "If you had someone driving, you'd have time to get things done—"
"Did you expect me to pull up in the back of a chauffered limousine?" Dahno said.
"Of course not," Bleys said. Me was disturbed by an aggressively sarcastic tone he heard in his brother's voice—it was not Dahno's usual manner.
"You know conditions here much better than I do," Bleys continued; "you've been here for almost a year now, after all. But I'd have been perfectly happy to hire a taxi and come to you, you know that."
"I never tell anyone where to find me." "All right. Where are we going?"
"On a tour, of sorts," Dahno said, sounding more cheerful. "It'll give you some idea of what I've been up to. Then we'll grab a bite to eat."
"All right, brother," Bleys said. "Show me."
Twenty minutes later they pulled up across the street from an ancient gray-brick building in a close-in suburb. The top two floors contained apartments, while the ground floor was given over to a few modest commercial establishments, the largest being a cafe that made a small terrace out of the sidewalk. Two doors down from the cafe, Dahno pointed out, was a freshly painted storefront that appeared to be the office of some sort of political movement.
"The signs in the window give the name of the organization sponsoring this office," Dahno said. "In several languages—this planet seems to cling to those old languages. It's one of those generic names that become anonymous when you take your eyes off it. But it's headquarters for a few idealistic volunteers who make phone calls, put out press releases and walk the streets handing out leaflets and talking to people."
"What do they say?"
"So far it's totally innocuous," Dahno said. "With variations from place to place, we're basically taking the side of the underdogs in actual, ongoing local controversies. We're establishing our credentials as idealists, against the day we c
an credibly protest that the Younger Worlds are getting treated badly by Earth."
Bleys thought about asking his brother if that was all there was to the effort, but decided not to push a confrontation just yet. Dahno, seeming to sense what his brother was thinking, spoke up again.
"All we want at this point," he said, sounding almost defensive, "is to prepare to ramp up to a 'hands off the Younger Worlds' message."
"When will that happen?"
"Not before we need it," Dahno said. "We need something specific, and controversial, to point to; so we're waiting for the right moment."
"Can I assume there're more than just this one office?"
"Oh, absolutely!" Dahno almost crowed. Bleys was beginning to find the rapid changes in his brother's mood disconcerting. "We've got seven offices like this one scattered about Europe, and similar— although apparently independent—organizations are doing the same kind of public relations on every continent. But this is only the most obvious aspect of the work we're doing."
He paused, turning to watch over his shoulder for an opportunity to pull out into the traffic rushing by.
"This was just about the hardest thing to get used to," he said offhandedly. "About being on Earth, I mean. The traffic here is almost always a constant stream."
"The Younger Worlds, and particularly Association and Harmony, have never been able to afford a lot of traffic," Bleys said. "I see what you mean."
He tucked that idea into the back of his head, thinking it might be useful one day.
"We're heading back to the center of the old city," Dahno said, swinging smoothly around the next corner and slipping into a slot in the flow of a more major street. "I won't be able to show you much on a drive-by, but we've got two more sophisticated operations working out of modern offices there. These are newer than the kind of storefront operation you just saw, and so far they haven't done much."
"What will they do, when they get up to speed?"
"What we're already starting to do," Dahno said, emphasizing his point with the tone of his voice, "is look for weaknesses in Earth's leadership structure—" Bleys noted that Dahno now spoke of the planet simply as Earth, rather than as Old Earth, in the Younger Worlds way. "—anything we can expose to the media as corruption."
"Again, giving your people credibility," Bleys said. "Yes. Of course, all our organizations claim to be independent, and to be motivated only by an interest in the public good."
"And of course they really can't be connected to any Old Earth political group," Bleys said. "I see."
"Well, that's true," Dahno said, a note of caution in his voice. "The problem is, I can't have the Others you gave me noticeably involved with these organizations—it would be bad if someone noticed offworlders getting into Earth politics. So we've had to recruit locals to handle everything but the most hidden parts of our agenda."
"What're you doing with our Others, then?"
"That depends on their skills," Dahno said. "Some are handling the details of administering the organization, others are out fund-raising. The smoothest are mingling with powerful people, making friends—and a few, the best speakers, have been getting involved in anything that'll give them a chance to make speeches ... mostly religious bodies, although those seem to be harder to rise in than we're used to seeing on Association."
"Oh," said Bleys, returning to the previous subject, "I believe I see what you were starting to say: while your organizations can't be connected to any Old Earth political faction, some of your 'volunteers' can be."
"They're not with any other faction, now,'' Dahno said. "But with only a few exceptions, the kind of people willing to do the jobs my 'public interest' groups take on turn out to be just the people who were already involved in local politics, in some form or another."
"So you have to make sure, when you recruit them, not only that they're no longer working for someone else—but that their past history contains nothing that might come back to haunt us."
"Right," said Dahno. "We don't want to find ourselves tarred with somebody else's brush."
It took Bleys a moment to figure out the meaning of the figure of speech his brother had just used; but he thought, finally, he understood. His brother was apparently taking on Old Earth customs quickly.
In the meantime, Dahno had continued.
"We don't have any targets yet," he said. "But we've been making some useful contacts, and we're beginning to learn some unsavoury secrets. When things start heating up here with concern over what the Others are doing on the New Worlds, we'll be in a position to discredit some of the people who want Earth to act against us."
"I presume that applies even if you haven't found anything to use against particular people?"
"If necessary," Dahno said. "But of course it's always more effective if there's actually some truth in the story."
"You sound hesitant about using this tactic," Bleys said.
"It's not the tactic, it's the targets," Dahno said. He shook his head, his eyes watching the traffic.
"We've got two strings to our bow," he went on—Bleys noted his brother's use of yet another strange Old Earth adage—"and I don't want to accidentally break one."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, as we discussed before I came here, my brief is to find ways to disarm any potential movement to mobilize Earth against the Others," Dahno said. "There are two ways I can do that, and I have to be careful to keep one tactic from disarming the other."
"You mean that in some way attempts to discredit Old Earth leaders—"
"I mean I have to be careful which leaders to discredit," Dahno said. "Because the dirt that I get on some of them, that might be useful to discredit them, also might be useful to make them lean in our direction when making certain decisions."
"I see," Bleys said. "And if you use the 'dirt,' as you call it, to discredit any particular leader, it won't be possible to use it to blackmail him or her."
"That's right," Dahno said; there was an involved, lively gleam in his eyes. "But there's another convolution to consider."
"And that is?"
"We still can't tell which way most of these leaders might hop— and I'm not referring only to political leaders, by the way—if the matter of the Others suddenly came to a head in Earth politics," Dahno said. "Some might be inclined to favor us, or have other motives for leaving us alone; since the matter hasn't come up, I can't tell yet exactly which ones are the enemies we'll want to get out of the way."
"So you need to learn more about all these people," Bleys said. "On a planet this large, that will be a gigantic task."
"True," Dahno said. "Can you imagine how stupid we'd feel if we destroyed the career of some politician who, it later turned out, would have been on our side anyway?"
"That might be," Bleys said, "but we'd probably never know it. In any case, I doubt you can get a dependable reading on how any one of them is liable to vote. There're just too many variables."
"Yes, that's it exactly," Dahno nodded.
"The most important thing is to build up the credibility of your groups," Bleys said. "I'd suggest you need to pick someone— probably more than one someone—to destroy. You can't wait much longer to find out where they might sit on some theoretical crisis in the future."
"That's true, too."
"At the same time," Bleys mused, fruitlessly pushing his long legs against the front wall of the vehicle—he felt cramped, and suddenly wanted very much to get out of the vehicle and pace up and down one of the streets they were passing—"you'd better be sure your first couple of exposes are dead on target."
"Absolutely! It's necessary that the first ones not only be big news, but confirmable."
"With a few correct reports giving you credibility," Bleys said, "your later accusations will have more staying power even if they can't be easily confirmed."
"In any case, it'll take time to debunk any that we manufacture," Dahno nodded again. "And in the meantime, the political process will be slowed do
wn, maybe even paralyzed."
"It becomes a nice question of timing, then," Bleys said. "I'm sure you understand that."
"You know I do, brother."
CHAPTER 31
There was silence in the car for several minutes, until finally Dahno indicated a modern office building that fronted on a tree-lined mall; and, three minutes later, another, similar building whose ground floor held the offices of a broadcast media organization. Then he took them to a restaurant, leaving the vehicle running where he had stopped it in the street and leading Bleys inside without looking back.
Bleys, thinking he knew his brother's tastes, expected to be taken to an private upstairs dining room; instead Dahno led him straight through the restaurant and out a narrow, too-low back door that opened on an interior courtyard. Eight metal-wire tables were widely spaced about the courtyard, standing on pebble-surfaced concrete islands in a sea of vegetation. The season was early enough that the grass was dried and pale; the tiny, pale green leaves on the branches of the bushes and trees seemed inadequate to their future task of growth and display.
Unthinkingly, Bleys had expected Old Earth to be in a perpetual summer, but the earliness of the season was clear here in this courtyard. He regretted it; Europe's colorful gardens were known throughout all the Younger Worlds, and he would have liked to enjoy them. There was a single variety of flower here, that he could see, blooming in tidy rows against the wall of the building, where they got the sunlight. They had produced large, cup-shaped blossoms in a variety of colors, that opened to the sky from the tops of thin tubular stems.
Antagonist - Childe Cycle 11 Page 31