Antagonist - Childe Cycle 11

by Gordon R Dickson; David W Wixon

  Now that they were out of the vehicle, Bleys observed that his brother seemed to have gained some weight.

  Dahno led Bleys to a table in the far corner of the courtyard, that

  was tucked behind trees and bushes, bare though they were. Two very large chairs awaited them there, the harshness of the metal-wire shapes softened by wine-red cushioning.

  A black-haired woman in a patterned green-and-gold dress, which Bleys believed to be a modern version of an ancient oriental style, was already there, seated in one of the chairs. She stood up as they neared and took off her sunglasses. Her eyes were violet in color, he noted, and they had an epicanthic fold although her skin was pale.

  Dahno did not introduce them.

  "It's safe," she said to Dahno; as she continued speaking to him, her eyes turned to Bleys.

  "All the anti-surveillance gear is working, there's a vapor barrier over the top of the wall to inhibit pressure-sensing devices and blur out optical systems—and all the people at these tables are ours."

  "And the staff?" Dahno said. She turned her attention back to him.

  "They won't get close to you," she said.

  At Dahno's nod, she turned and walked away, gathering up the occupants of the other tables as she went. "And is ^//<?safe?" Bleys said softly.

  "Yes," said Dahno. "She's one of the Others I brought with me. You don't know her because she went through training before you did."

  "Then why don't I recognize her from our files?" Bleys asked. Dahno grinned.

  "She's had her appearance edited," he said.

  "All right," Bleys said; and before his brother could act, he took the chair that allowed him to sit with his back to the courtyard wall, allowing him to peer through the branches at the door to the restaurant.

  Dahno grinned again, and reached for the second chair, pulling it around the table so that he, too, could sit with his back to the wall.

  Are we just squabbling over seats? Bleys wondered. Or is it more than that?

  It did not escape his notice that by making them sit side by side, his brother had made it harder for either of them to look, into the other's face.

  "I've already ordered for both of us," Dahno said. "I didn't think you'd mind, since this is work, after all, rather than a dining experience."

  "Knowing you, it'll be a fine meal in any case," Bleys said. "Did you order juice for me?"

  "Several varieties," Dahno said. "You know it won't taste the same, here on Earth. I'd have gotten you Association orange juice, but I don't think anyone here imports it." He laughed.

  "I also ordered several wines," he went on. "You can try them or not, as you choose. I know you don't care for alcoholic beverages much, but you might want to taste some of these—this is Earth, after all, where wine was born."

  "I've tasted Old Earth wines," Bleys reminded his brother. "I've been on this planet before, remember."

  "Right," Dahno said. "That was our meeting in—" He paused. "—you remember. But that was half the world away and years ago."

  "Oh, I'll try some," Bleys said, relenting. "In fact, I look for you to give me a recommendation or two."

  "Count on it," Dahno said. "I've learned a lot in my year here."

  As he spoke a serving cart holding a series of shiny metal coverings was pushed through the restaurant door, to be immediately intercepted by the woman who had just left them. She took its control from the server who had brought it out and began to push it, floating above the grass, toward Bleys and Dahno. She was now wearing a costume nearly identical to that worn by the server she had replaced—black trousers and a frilly white shirt set off by a small black cravat held in place by a pearl stickpin.

  By unspoken agreement, Bleys and Dahno suspended meaningful conversation as the woman approached and began serving them, elegantly lifting the shiny covers to reveal two large china plates filled with a breaded meat that had been topped with a brown sauce, along with carrots, broccoli and a white substance that looked almost, but not quite, like mashed potatoes.

  "How is Henry?" Dahno asked. "I got your note that Joshua had a daughter some months back, and I've been wondering how Henry reacted to that."

  "They named her Miriam, by the way," Bleys said. "But you know Uncle Henry's not much for letting his reactions show." He paused to watch the woman as she reached into the cloth-obscured lower portion of the cart to produce an ice bucket, half a dozen wineglasses of varying sizes and three antique-looking bottles with paper labels.

  "He planned to take a week off to go back to the farm," Bleys continued, "but he wanted to wait until Ruth's mother left—she'd come over to help out; there wouldn't have been room otherwise. But that took about a month, and if I didn't know better, I'd say Uncle Henry was on pins and needles the whole time."

  "I can't even imagine it," Dahno said.

  The woman, Bleys saw, was having difficulty with the corkscrew. It was not surprising; cork was largely unknown on the Younger Worlds, where all bottled products were sealed by molded caps, on which a very different implement was used. Dahno, still cheerful, reached over and gave her a demonstration on how to handle the corkscrew.

  When they had been served the woman withdrew with the cart.

  "Is there anything else you haven't told me about your organization?" Bleys asked as he took a forkful of the white substance; it was mildly spicy.

  "Well, at another level up," his brother said, "we've been cultivating people who already have credentials in the academic and journalistic fields. We've got a few on the payroll already, people who will slant their reports and conclusions just a little to our side, when the time is right for that."

  "How far will they go for you?"

  "So far—not far," Dahno answered. "But time will pass while they earn their money fairly easily; and eventually they'll find it difficult to cut themselves off when the earning gets harder."

  "I suspect there's more to it than that," Bleys said.

  "True," Dahno answered. "On the one hand, we're going to have them all make the occasional small statement they wouldn't normally make—not as something we need them to say, but only to make it harder for them to backtrack on their records if the spirit of rebellion ever rises up in them."

  He paused to cut off another portion of his entree and raise it to his mouth.

  "Of course, people who can be bought so easily have likely been bought, in one way or another, in the past; so we're quietly digging into their histories. I believe we'll eventually have blackmail material on most of them."

  "Sometimes blackmail just makes people angry," Bleys said. "That can lead to even bigger trouble."

  "I know that," Dahno said, a hint of asperity in his voice. "Blackmail won't even be hinted at, except as a last resort." He paused, thinking as he chewed.

  "My own belief," he went on, the touch of emotion gone, "is that people who'd let us influence what they say aren't particularly concerned for the integrity of their work anyway."

  "What about my idea of trying to infiltrate the Final Encyclopedia?" Bleys asked.

  "It's difficult," Dahno said. "Those people really restrict access." He smiled. "But I did it," he said.

  "You!”

  "No, I don't mean me personally," Dahno said. "It's not likely I could fool them as to who I was, even with the best phony documentation. But I've got two people in already."

  "As staff?"

  "No," Dahno said. "I got a couple of our pet academics accepted as visiting scholars."

  "That's probably not as useful as a staff position," Bleys said, "but I'm willing to bet anyone who joins that staff is thoroughly checked."

  "You know it," Dahno said. "And there's not much turnover, either." He cut into the remains of his veal.

  "Your friend Hal Mayne seems to still be there," he said casually.

  A bit later Bleys leaned back in his chair. He had tried the coffee Dahno pressed on him, a very different beverage from the coffee he had drunk on this planet before. It was an old regional specia
lty, his brother had explained, for which he had developed a taste; but Bleys found he did not care for its thick sweetness, and so had been sipping lightly from a glass of a red wine whose name—Chateau La Fleur St. Bonnet—Dahno tossed off lightly.

  "The fountainhead of wines, France," Dahno said, apparently in an expansive mood once more.

  "Really?"

  "No, not really. Not in the sense of—say, having invented the idea. But the French vineyards—some of them—still rate as legendary names."

  Dahno was swirling a large amount of cognac in a huge round glass, pausing now and then to raise it before his nose, before taking a small drink.

  "You picked out a fine meal, brother," Bleys said now. "I appreciate it. But we need to do some serious talking, including going over our plans in more depth, and I don't feel comfortable talking in the open—do you have a safe place we can go?"

  "We could go to your hotel room," Dahno said. He shrugged. "Or we could pick some other hotel... with a random choice of hotels and our technology, we'd be safe enough."

  Startled by his brother's sudden casualness, Bleys agreed when Dahno suggested that he, Bleys, go back to his hotel first; Dahno himself had an errand to take care of, he told Bleys, but he would be along shortly.

  Bleys had been in his room for more than two hours when the room communicator beeped. It was conveying a printed message from Dahno, saying that something had come up.

  "Take a flight to Nairobi," the message said. "There's a room waiting for you in the Sandman Hotel. I’ll come to you there."

  With little choice, Bleys did as Dahno directed, pausing only to send a message from a public kiosk in the terminal; but he ended up waiting in his room in Nairobi for nearly a full day, until finally another message appeared, sending him to South America.

  CHAPTER 32

  The brothers finally came together again three days later, shortly before noon on a thinly grassed plaza set high in the Andes. On three sides of the plaza the gray stones of a small and ancient city's low buildings were forgiven by pastel-washed trimmings and the gaily-colored clothing of the citizens. The fourth side was a laid-stone walkway that overlooked a deep drop to the floor of a valley. From their seats at an elderly wooden table on the grass Bleys and Dahno, protected from the cold wind by a small weather buffer, could look over and beyond that walkway, across the distance-misted valley, at farther ranges of mountains layered blue and purple before the jagged horizon.

  "I think this is my favorite spot on the whole planet," Dahno said, his gaze directed out into the great chasm. "Sometimes you can look down on the eagles."

  He brought his eyes back to his brother.

  "You know about eagles, don't you?" he said. "I know you've always liked to read about Earth's animals. This whole trip ought to be a treat for you."

  "It is," said Bleys. "I even went to the animal park outside Nairobi before my shuttle left for Buenos Aires."

  "One of the great things about Earth," Dahno said, seeming to have dropped into a more contemplative mood, "is that the animals are different from continent to continent. Africa is famous for its animals, of course, but Asia and the Americas have their own, very different, animal populations. On the Younger Worlds the only variances across planets are climatic."

  "Old Earth has the advantage of a biosphere established through millions of years of evolution," Bleys pointed out. "The Younger

  Worlds can't match that in only a handful of centuries, particularly when they're limited to the commercially viable breeding stocks that can be transported over interstellar distances."

  "I imagine you saw elephants and lions in Africa," Dahno said. "Wait until we get to North America, where you can see a grizzly bear in its habitat—that is the undisputed king!"

  Bleys kept up his side of the conversation until they were interrupted by a waiter who came walking over from a small bistro Bleys had not previously noticed, tucked in as it was on the ground floor of one of the elderly buildings on the south side of the plaza. Bleys wondered what security measures Dahno could have taken in this setting; he was sure there must be something—just as he was sure he had his own measures in place.

  Once more Dahno displayed an intimate knowledge of the menu and an easy familiarity with the waiter, insisting on doing the ordering for them both.

  He's nervous, Bleys thought, as he watched his brother discussing with the waiter minute details of their meals to come. That kind of conversation isn't his style.

  The only times Bleys had ever seen his brother act in what could be described as a mercurial fashion had been those periods when Dahno had been under great stress. The spectacle disturbed him: the nervousness he believed he was seeing made him question how well he knew his brother, and that unexpected flaw in his perception, when combined with the fact that there must be something going on to make Dahno act this way... suddenly Bleys found himself in unfamiliar territory.

  Abruptly, he was on his feet and striding toward the cliff's edge only a few meters away, leaving Dahno and the waiter deep in the subject of wines. That edge was guarded by a low stone wall, from the top of which a black-enameled iron rail grew to a height just below his waist.

  He looked over that edge, as if daring himself to be uncomfortable with the height. Was he becoming nervous himself? he wondered. He had not planned the move that took him away from the table; he had been on his feet and in motion before he thought about it at all. It was unlike him to react like that.

  What was he reacting to, after all? He had only been thinking that his brother was acting unusually, but what did that mean? No human being ever really got to know another so well that he could never be surprised.

  Behind him, discussion ceased, and Bleys heard the sound of a chair being pushed back. Dahno would be walking up behind him in a moment.

  Suddenly, Bleys was very conscious that he was standing at the edge of a great chasm, his back to a brother who had become a stranger. Unbidden, his left hand tightened on the iron railing in front of him ... he could hear steps approaching from behind. . . .

  Ridiculously thought; and made himself hold his position.

  "It is spectacular, isn't it?" Dahno said, coming up on Bleys' right.

  Bleys realized that his eyes were looking out, unseeing, across the great deep drop, at the nearest range of mountains. He slowly tilted his head downward, feeling the muscles around his eyes relaxing as they refocused on the winding silver thread that was a river far below, shrouded in the hazy shadows below the mountains.

  He leaned forward a little, to look over the railing and straight down from the edge of the cliff, conscious all the while that his brother's eyes might be on him. The uneven rock face below him was pitted and scarred, and there were remnants of alien-seeming blue, red and white patches, as if someone had once painted some sort of sign on the top of the cliff. Below that, the rock of the mountain bulged outward, blocking his view of the place in the valley below where the river passed closest.

  "I've never seen anything like this," Bleys said, still looking down.

  Although the food was good—at least to Bleys' indifferent palate— the meal was a disaster. Dahno tried to keep a conversation going, jumping from subject to subject, but well before the after-dinner drinks came he had lapsed into a moody silence.

  "I've enjoyed what I've seen of this planet," Bleys said, finally determining to get to the point. "And what you've told me of the projects you've gotten up and running already—it's impressive. You've certainly done exactly what you were sent here to do."

  Dahno's head came up, eyes focusing on Bleys. His expression was bleak as he waited for Bleys to continue.

  "I think you know what I'm about to ask, brother," Bleys went on. "There's something else going on, that you don't want to tell me about. And it's important enough that you're not your usual self. I think you must know I can see that in you."

  Dahno looked back across the table at him for a long, silent moment.

  "All right," he said fina
lly, his broad face grimacing in distaste. "All right. I knew you couldn't be easily taken in, but I had to try it." He shrugged. "Because I didn't like any of the other alternatives.

  "I guess you could call me a bit of a coward," he went on. "But I've been trying to avoid having to have this discussion. You're the only family I've got, aside from Henry and Joshua, and whether you believe it or not, that's important to me."

  "I believe it," Bleys said. "I have similar feelings, I think."

  "I know you do," Dahno said. "But I don't delude myself into believing those feelings would keep you from throwing me overboard if your plans required it."

  His face had hardened as he spoke, his jaw setting. The hand that had been holding his glass clenched—and then opened spasmodically, the glass dropping to spill its contents on the tabletop.

  "Throw you overboard?" Bleys said. "What brought that into your head? I told you, when you signed on with me, that you'd always have a place with me, and that if you didn't want it, you could retire in comfort." He put his own glass down and raised both hands slightly, holding them in the air above the table, demonstrating openness.

  "You know about my long-range mission," he went on. "It's all-important, because it's aimed at saving the human race. But you're no threat to that plan, brother—in fact, you've been a great help to me, and still are, as far as I can tell. Why would I want to get rid of you?"

  "That's just what I've been wondering," Dahno said. His face was, once more, bleak; and Bleys reminded himself that his brother was a consummate actor.

  "I know you believe in your plan—your mission,'''' Dahno went on, speaking before Bleys could respond. He shook his head.

  "But I don't believe in it! I don't believe in this danger you see threatening the whole race. And I don't want to die for some theory I don't even believe in."