Even as he had that thought, he saw a slight change in the features of the man before him, as if a momentary shadow had passed over his soul... that face, too—something about it rang the bell of some distant familiarity. . ..
He dismissed the thought, reminding himself that this man must still remember the first time they had impinged on each other's lives; Hal Mayne would never be able to see Bleys without remembering his tutors, killed on the terrace of their home. Perhaps one day he could be brought to see it was not Bleys' doing.
To cover the moment, he turned and stepped over to the desk Hal had just left. It was a float desk, apparently made of a reddish wood that concealed the metal frame of its technology.
The room appeared to be an office, but it seemed unusually bare. Half a dozen float chairs were scattered about, some with high, winged backs covered in an antique gold floral pattern on a muted dark red field. They seemed incongruous against the off-white walls and neutral-colored floor—unless this was one of those technologically enhanced spaces that could be commanded to change its color and shape as easily as the lighting, one which had been put into neutral settings.
Intelligent! He's not giving away any clues.
He felt a new sadness: for all that he had prepared himself, mentally, to find Hal Mayne an enemy, he regretted that the young man saw him as a predator.
It was Hal Mayne who looked the predator, Bleys reminded himself. ... Again he felt that tiny ring of familiarity, even as he pivoted to sit down on the edge of the desk.
He turned his attention back to Hal, who had himself turned, as smoothly as a trained athlete, even as Bleys moved to the desk.
How could he have changed so much, so fast?
"A big change to take place in a year," Bleys said. Sitting on the desk, he was now looking upward at Hal. The angle gave him a slightly different perspective on the younger man's face, bringing out the strength of the chin and opening the caves of his eyes, under the heavy brows, to better view.
Without a word, Hal moved back past him, returning to his chair and forcing Bleys to swivel. Now Bleys was looking down on his host, although not at a great angle.
He doesn 't care. He's beyond size games.
"The biggest change took place in that Militia cell in Ahruma, in the day or two after you left me," Hal said, responding to Bleys' comment of a moment before. "I had a chance to sort things out in my mind."
"Under an unusual set of conditions," Bleys said. He had to look sideways, from where he sat, to see Hal fully. "That captain deliberately misinterpreted what I told him."
"Amyth Barbage—have you forgotten his name?" Hal said. For all the sharpness of the words, the tone in which they were uttered was not accusatory. "What did you do to him, afterward?"
"Nothing," Bleys said. "It was his nature to do what he did. Any blame there was, was mine, for not understanding that nature, as I should have. I don't do things to people, in any case. My work is with events."
"You don't do anything to people? Even to those like Dahno?"
For a very short second Bleys was startled into wondering just how much Hal knew of the workings of the Others' organization; then he shook his head, both in answer to Hal and in denial of that concern.
"Even to those like Dahno," Bleys answered. "Dahno may have created the conditions that could lead to his destruction. All I did was give the Others an alternative plan; and in refusing to consider it, Dahno put himself in other hands than mine. As I say, I work with larger matters than individual people."
"Then why come see me?" As Hal said those words, Bleys finally put his finger on something else that had been bothering him about this whole meeting: Hal Mayne was being entirely too still.
It was not, Bleys thought now, the stillness of someone trying to be motionless; rather, it was the utter stillness one sometimes found in the very old, or the very wise—a stillness of simple waiting.
"Because you're a potential problem," said Bleys. He felt almost removed from his own answer, as if his mind were trying to deal with another concern and letting his body speak on its own. He didn't like that image, and made himself smile, trying to become more immediately engaged.
"Because I hate the waste of a good mind—ask my fellow Others if I don't—and because I feel an obligation to you."
And even as he said it, he knew his answer, while true, was not complete, and he felt a small twinge of shame.
CHAPTER 36
This meeting was not going as he had expected. He had thought the encounter would be an emotional event, one he would be able to direct with his superior experience. Almost always, in the past, he had been able to find the things that really motivated people— things hidden deep inside them—and use those needs to lead those possessed by them. But in the face of Hal Mayne's imperturbability and self-control, he had so far been unable to find the handle that put the man in a ready frame of mind.
"And because you have no one else to talk to," said Hal, responding to Bleys' statement of a moment before.
For a bare fraction of a second something seemed to turn over in Bleys' chest, as if his long-dead hope of friendship had abruptly raised its head.
No, that could not be; not with our history. Bleys quashed his reaction fiercely. Was Hal being clever, trying to manipulate Bleys' own emotions—did he recognize Bleys' tactics, and seek to turn them back on Bleys himself?
Was he even more like Bleys than Bleys had known?
Bleys put on a smile that denied weakness.
"That's very perceptive of you," he said. He kept his voice soft, concealing the effect of Hal's words. "But you see, I've never had anyone to talk to; and so I'm afraid I wouldn't know what I was missing. As for what brings me here, I'd like to save you if I could. Unlike Dahno, you can be of reliable use to the race."
"I intend to," said Hal.
"No." Bleys' control almost deserted him once more—this time out of fury. Fury that this man, whose similarity to Bleys teased him, should be at the same time so persistent in his wrongness.
"What you intend," Bleys said, "is your own destruction—very much like Dahno. Are you aware the struggle in which you've chosen to involve yourself is all over but the shouting? Your cause isn't only lost; it's already on its way to being forgotten."
"And you want to save me?"
"I can afford what I want," Bleys said. "But in this case, it's not a matter of my saving you, but of you choosing to save yourself. In a few standard years an avalanche will have swallowed up all you now think you want to fight for. So, what difference will it make if you stop fighting now?"
"You seem to assume," said Hal, "that I'm going to stop eventually."
"Either stop, or—forgive me—be stopped," said Bleys. "The outcome of this battle you want to throw yourself into was determined before you were born."
"No," said Hal, slowly, "I don't think it was."
The ember of anger in Bleys continued to grow, fanned by Hal's stubborn refusal to see the obvious. He was just like his tutors, Bleys thought—particularly the Exotic, the one who had been reading poetry.
"I understand you originally had an interest in being a poet," he said. The memory of that poetry-loving tutor reminded him again of his search of the boy's house—the search in which Bleys had come upon the boy's handwritten poetry.
"I had inclinations to art, too, once," Bleys said. "Before I found it wasn't for me. But poetry can be a personally rewarding lifework. Be a poet, then. Put this other aside. Let what's going to happen, happen; without wasting yourself trying to change it."
Hal only shook his head, at first; but then gave a longer answer:
"I was committed to this, only this, long before you know," he said.
Bleys was disappointed that this man, of whom he had come to expect so much, should indulge in childish melodrama, repeating lines straight out of old novels.
Or, was he? Maybe that answer was deeper than it appeared. Bleys reminded himself of the need not to underestimate this man. Give h
im the benefit of the doubt, and try another key in the lock that led to his motivations.
"I'm entirely serious in what I say," Bleys said. He was sure Hal would not be persuaded, but possibly he could be brought to explain himself a little more, giving Bleys something to read meaning into.
"Stop and think," he continued, trying to put into the words all of his persuasiveness. If there was any doubt inside this man at all, any desire to avoid what he must surely recognize would be a disastrous war, he must be brought around to seeing the certainty within Bleys—must be made to feel unsure, hesitant. .. enough that he might want to be freed of that burden.
"What good is it going to do to throw yourself away? Wouldn't it be better, for yourself and all the worlds of men and women, that you should live a long time and do whatever you want to do— whether it's poetry or anything else? It could even be something as immaterial as saying what you think to your fellow humans; so that something of yourself will have gone into the race and be carried on to enrich it after you're gone. Isn't that a far better thing than committing suicide because you can't have matters just as you want them?"
"I think," said Hal, "we're at cross-purposes. What you see as inevitable, I don't see so at all. What you refuse to accept can happen, I know can happen."
Bleys shook his head, the disappointment rising up once more. Gould the man really be so blind?
"You're in love with a sort of poetic illusion about life," Bleys said. "And it is an illusion, even in a poetic sense; because even poets—good poets—come to understand the hard limits of reality. Don't take my word for that. What does Shakespeare have Hamlet say at one point... 'How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world'?"
Hal was smiling, and for a brief moment Bleys felt a small fear. He quelled the sudden memory, of how his attempt to quote poetry to Hal's tutor had blown up in his face.
"Do you know Lowell?" Hal asked.
"Lowell? I don't believe so." The name sounded like something out of North America, Bleys thought. Where could Hal be going with this?
"James Russell Lowell," Hal explained. "Nineteenth-century American poet." And he seemed to rise a little in his chair as he spoke a few lines:
"When I was a beggarly boy,
And lived in a cellar damp,
I had not a friend nor a toy,
But I had Aladdin s lamp "
Bleys felt as if he had been hit in the pit of his stomach. Hal only sat there watching him, as within himself Bleys struggled to control the sudden welter of emotions the words had evoked.
"You've been researching my childhood, I see," Bleys said. It seemed to him as if it had taken a long time to get himself under enough control to say the words without unwelcome emphasis. Somehow, he thought, this man knew him—knew his past, knew the virtual captivity of the years with his mother . .. but that could not be: Dahno had long ago altered the historical records—and even if some correct record remained somewhere, how could it tell the sort of life that had been imposed on a young boy twenty years ago?
Could Hal Mayne somehow see so deeply into Bleys, as to be able to pick up that hidden hurt?
Or—the idea sprang suddenly into his mind—had Hal been talking with Dahno? Had they come to some agreement? Was that why Hal had mentioned Dahno, earlier?
Instinctively, Bleys rejected that idea; but he recognized it had shaken him.
It was time to leave.
He got to his feet, seeing Hal stand at the same time.
"You're better at quoting poetry than I am," Bleys said. He regretted the words instantly, but could think of no way to recall them.
"I think," he said finally, "that those events that took place at your estate keep you from listening to me now. So I believe I'll have to accept the fact I can't save you. So I'll go. What is it you've found here at the Encyclopedia—if anything—if I may ask?"
He suspected Hal recognized his victory; and forced himself to meet the other man's eyes, as if denying any such result.
"As one of my tutors would have said," Hal answered, "that's a foolish question."
Bleys went cold once more ... had the boy somehow been close enough to that terrace to overhear his conversation with the boy's tutors? Those were the exact words the ancient Exotic had said— no, that was impossible.
"Ah," said Bleys. The syllable felt lame even to his own ears.
He turned and began moving toward the door, feeling loss and pain rising up in him. Somehow, this man had been too clever for him, had beaten him back at every turn. It was his own fault; he had gone into this insufficiently prepared.
At that moment, Hal's voice came once more from behind him. And the voice was vastly different—younger, somehow.
"How did it happen?"
Bleys stopped and looked back over his shoulder; then turned.
"Of course," he said. He felt, suddenly, a desire to reach out to the younger man before him; a desire that had not been in him only a moment before, and which was followed almost immediately by a determination to quell the stir of sympathy within him ... in the same moment he recognized he might have been presented with a way to penetrate Hal's armor.
"You'd like to know more, would you? I should have seen to your being informed before. Well, I'll tell you now, then." He paused, collecting his thoughts and planning how his next words could carry the connotations he wanted.
"The men we normally use to go before us in situations like that had found two of your tutors already on that terrace, and the third was brought to join them a minute or two after I stepped out onto the terrace myself. It was the Friendly they brought. The Dorsai and your Walter the InTeacher were already there. Like you, he seemed to be fond of poetry, and as I came out of the library window, he was quoting from that verse drama of Alfred Noyes, Sherwood. The lines he was repeating were those about how Robin Hood had saved one of the fairies from what Noyes called The Dark Old Mystery. I quoted him Blondin's song, from the same piece of writing, as a stronger piece of poetry. Then I asked him where you were; and he told me he didn't know—but of course he did. They all knew, didn't they?" "Yes," said Hal. "They knew."
"It was that which first raised my interest in you above the ordinary," Bleys said. There was no point in letting the man know that Bleys had researched him. "It intrigued me. Why should they be so concerned to hide you? I'd told them no one would be hurt; and they would have known my reputation for keeping my word."
He paused for a second.
"They were quite right not to speak, of course," he added softly. The admission burned in him, but he felt compelled to make it... he knew now he betrayed nothing by telling the truth, this time.
Hal Mayne gave him no sign.
"At any rate," Bleys continued, "I tried to bring them to like me, but of course they were all of the old breed—and I failed. That intrigued me even more, that they should be so firmly recalcitrant; and I was just about to make further efforts, which might have worked, to find out from them about you, when your Walter the InTeacher physically attacked me—a strange thing for an Exotic to do."
"Not—under the circumstances," Hal said, a peculiar emphasis in his voice.
"Of course, that triggered off the Dorsai and the Friendly," Bleys went on, watching closely now for the reactions that might come with the climax of his report.
"Together, they accounted for all but one of the men I had watching them; but of course, all three of them were killed in the process. Since there was no hope of questioning them, then, I went back into the house. Dahno had just arrived; and I didn't have the leisure to order a search of the grounds for you, after all."
"I was in the lake," Hal said. "Walter and Malachi Nasuno—the Dorsai—signaled me when they guessed you were on the grounds. I had time to hide in some bushes at the water's edge. After... I came up to the terrace and saw you and Dahno through the window of the library."
"Did you?" Bleys' response was almost perfunctory. Suddenly he felt dull, exhausted, as if he ha
d expended all his energy in some burst of effort.
The two of them stood there silently, just facing each other; and at last Bleys shook his head, recognizing finality.
"So it had already begun between us, even then?" he said. It was not really a question.
Bleys turned to open the door; and stepped through it. In the corridor, he tiredly forced himself to be gentle as he closed the door behind him.
No one was in the corridor, but when he got to the door at its far end, that door opened on the entry bay; and the woman who had escorted him before took him to his shuttle. He managed to thank her politely, and then to direct his driver to return him to Favored of God. But those were the only words he said for some time.
As the misty, silver-gray orb of the Final Encyclopedia dwindled behind, and now above, his shuttle, Bleys pulled his eyes away from the sight. He wanted to think, but it was as if the phase-shield panels that protected the satellite also fractured his thoughts, breaking them into tiny bits that scattered about the Universe, beyond recall.
What was it about Hal Mayne that had such an effect on him? He had known there was something unusual about the boy, and had come to believe the man had the potential to become a friend of the sort that might alleviate his perpetual loneliness. But he could not explain why he felt that way, any more than he could explain the mystery of Hal's childhood beneath the Final Encyclopedia.
The only similar feeling Bleys had ever had in his life had come on a day long ago when he began to discover the works of the great artists and writers of the past. For a while he had believed he had found a bond with them, dead people who had once lived lives made full and rich by their unique abilities; was he recognizing a similar talent in Hal Maync? Was that what drew him?
Antagonist - Childe Cycle 11 Page 36