"So if we tried to shift to Old Earth from—let's say the orbit of Mars—we couldn't be sure we'd come out inside that wall of theirs."
"Yes," Bleys said. "And if we sent a fleet, it'd be statistically certain some of them wouldn't get it right; the greater the range from which a ship makes a phase-shift, the greater the likelihood of errors—such as coming out on the wrong side of the wall, coming out so near it that they touch it and are destroyed—or coming out inside some other solid object, such as the planet itself."
"Which would create a big explosion?"
"About the size of a large nuclear weapon," Bleys responded— somewhat absently.
"It's not that we can't shift our fleets through the shield-wall any time we want—once we have our ships and people ready," he went on musingly. "But our people would know they were being asked to make a fairly long-range shift into a fairly small pocket of empty space—it's going to be hard to motivate them."
Toni was silent; and after a moment he turned to look at her.
"Ask the captain to pick a place for us to sit, on Old Earth's side of the star," he said. "Perhaps somewhere in Mars' orbit—although of course she's not there—and then give those coordinates to Many Colors, so she'll know where to come once she's delivered the message I'm about to give her. I want it to go to New Earth."
He sat back, returning his gaze to the screen. While he had been talking with Toni, Favored’s path had moved the planet out of sight; but then, it was the stars he wanted to see, anyway.
"The captain has decided on a rendezvous point," Toni said a short time later, "and the information's been passed to Many Colors. Since she's only going back to her place in the chain, she doesn't need to calculate a jump, and is ready to go."
"All right," Bleys said. "Take a look at this." He touched a control, sending the file to her own screen, and she sat down to read what he had written.
To all who believe in the future for ourselves and our children:
I have been reluctant to speak out, since it has always been my firm belief that those like myself exist only to answer questions— once they have been asked, and if they are asked.
However, I have just now received information, from people fleeing Old Earth, which alarms me. It speaks, I think, of a danger to all those of good intent; and particularly to such of us on the new worlds. For some hundreds of years now, the power-center worlds of the Dorsai, with their lust for warlike aggression, the Exotics, with their avarice and cunning, and those the Friendly people have so aptly named the Forgotten of God—these, among the otherwise great people of the fourteen worlds, have striven to control and plunder the peaceful and law-abiding Cultures among us.
Toni looked up from her screen. "It's a declaration of war," she said.
"No, it's a call to arms," Bleys said. "I'm not calling for war. I'm trying to tell people that someone else had already started a war, and we need to work together to defend ourselves."
Toni looked back to her screen.
"Let me rephrase that," he said. "It's—" He stopped as she made a movement with her lips, but her eyes never left her screen and she did not speak. He stayed silent himself.
For some hundreds of years we have been aware that a loose conspiracy existed among these three groups, who have ended by arrogating the title of Splinter Cultures almost exclusively to themselves, when by rights it applies equally, as we all know, to hundreds of useful, productive, and unpredatory communities among the human race. We
among you who have striven quietly to turn our talents to the good of all, we whom some call the Others but whom those of us who qualify for that name think of only as an association of like minds, thrown together by a common use of talents, have been particularly aware of this conspiracy over the past three hundred years. But we have not seen it as a threat to the race as a whole until this moment.
Now, however, we have learned of an unholy alliance, which threatens each one of us with eventual and literal slavery under the domination of that institution orbiting Earth under the name of the Final Encyclopedia. I and my friends have long known that the Final Encyclopedia was conceived for only one purpose, to which it has been devoted ever since its inception. That purpose has been the development of unimaginable and unnatural means of controlling the hearts and minds of normal people. In fact, its construction was initially financed by the Exotics for that purpose; as those who care to investigate the writing of Mark Torre, its first Director, will find.
That aim, pursued in secrecy and isolation which required even that the Encyclopedia be placed in orbit above the surface of Earth, has been furthered by the Encyclopedia's practice of picking the brains of the best minds in each generation; by inviting them, ostensibly as visiting scholars, to visit that institution.
"Won't this bring Old Earth against us?" she said. She did not look up as she said it, but continued reading, intent.
"I was hoping Old Earth would resent that Mayne put up his shield-wall without getting their permission," he said. "For a while there, the reactions down there gave me hope of that. But things have calmed down."
She looked up.
"You mean you now think Old Earth is going to accept Mayne's acts?" she asked.
"Yes," he said. "That assassination attempt seems to have been a watershed event. A lot of people there are still against the Encyclopedia's actions, but those who are for it—they're most for Tamani— have been energized."
Her eyes returned to her screen.
Also, it has continued to be financed by the Exotics, who, records will show, have also had a hand in financing the Dorsai, who were from the first developed with the aim of becoming a military arm that could be used to police all other, subject worlds.
Those conspirators have now been joined in their unholy work by the people of Old Earth themselves—a people whose early, bloody attempts to keep all the newly settled worlds subject to themselves were only frustrated by the courageous resistance of the peoples on all those Younger Worlds. But it took a hundred years of continuous fighting, as you all know from the history books you studied as children.
Now the people of Old Earth, under the leadership of the Final Encyclopedia, have finally thrown off all pretense of innocent purpose. They have withdrawn the unbelievable wealth accumulated by the Exotic Worlds by trade and intrigue from such people as ourselves, moving it to their treasury on Earth. They have also, openly, in one mass movement, evacuated the Dorsai from their world and brought them to Earth; to begin building the army that is intended to conquer our new worlds, one by one, and leave us enslaved forever under the steel rule of martial authority. And they have begun to ready for action those awesome weapons the Encyclopedia itself has been developing over three centuries.
They are ready to attack us—we who have been so completely without suspicion of their arrogant intentions. We stand now, essentially unarmed, unprepared, facing the imminent threat of an inhuman and immoral attempt to enslave or destroy us. We will now begin to hear thrown at us, in grim earnest, the saying that has been quietly circulated among the worlds for centuries, in order to destroy our will to resist—the phrase that not even the massed armies of all the rest of mankind can defeat the Dorsai, if the Dorsai choose to confront those armies.
But do not believe this. It was never true, only a statement circulated by the Exotics and the Dorsai for their own advantage. As for massed armies, as you all know, we have none. But we can raise them. We can raise armies in numbers and strengths never dreamed of by the population of Old Earth. We are not the impoverished, young peoples that Old Earth, with Dow deCastries, tried to dominate unsuccessfully in the first century of our colonization. Now, on all the worlds our united numbers add up to nearly five billion. What can be done against the courage and resistance of such a people, even by the four million trained and battle-hardened warriors that Old Earth has just imported from the Dorsai.
United, we of the Younger Worlds are invincible. We will arm, we will go to meet our enemy—and
this time, with the help of God, we will crush this decadent, proud planet that has threatened us too long; and, to the extent it is necessary, we will so deal with the people of Old Earth as to make sure that such an attempt by them never again occurs to threaten our lives, our homes, and the lives and homes of those who come after us.
In this effort, I and my friends stand ready to do anything that will help. It has always been our nature never to seek the limelight; but in the shadow of this emergency I have personally asked all whom you call the Others, and they have agreed with me, to make themselves known to you, to make themselves available for any work or duty in which they can be useful in turning back this inconceivable threat.
The unholy peoples of Old Earth say they will come against us. Let them come, then, if they are that foolish. Let us lay this demon once and for all. How little they suspect it will be the beginning of the end, for them!
Signed, Bleys Ahrens.
Toni, after reading the announcement, was silent for a long moment.
"For immediate release to the media on all the Younger Worlds," Bleys said.
"Just your name, no title?" she said at last.
"No," he said. "No title would have any meaning here. And it's psychologically more effective this way—it's meant to tell people that we're at war, and that I'm just another human being in it with them."
"Why do this at all?"
"I have to get out in front," he said. "Mayne stole a march on me, and to maintain my credibility as the leader of the Others, as well as of the Younger Worlds, I can't let it be seen that I've been surprised."
"This letter does more than that," she said.
"You mean it's deliberately inflammatory," he said. He nodded without waiting for her reply.
"It is that. But that's necessary—people have to be pumped up for a war; they wouldn't want to do it, otherwise. Give it to Many Colors and send her on her way—I want my letter published on all the Younger Worlds before the Dorsais' movement becomes public knowledge."
Chapter 44
Favored of God had been at the new rendezvous point for just under half a Standard day when the in-system communications its technicians had been monitoring began to carry reports of the arrivals of the first of the Dorsai ships. It was most likely, the captain explained, that they had come out of shift on the fringes of the system, before recalculating and shifting inward; and they were all coming out of their final shifts well in-system from where Favored lay quietly in Mars' orbital plane.
For the next half-day the arrival of the Dorsai was a media sensation, and Bleys' people were able to relay to him broadcast coverage as the Dorsai ships were passed through irises opened in the shield-wall and assigned orbital parking slots just inside the wall. But as the process continued it quickly became old news, and the media turned to other interests.
"It's time to go in," Bleys said to Toni. "Mayne's had time to digest the press of events, so he'll be able to meet me."
"Why would he meet you?" she asked. "For that matter, why do you want to meet with him—again?"
"You don't think I should?"
"I don't think it's good for you," she said.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean . . . well, I've never been there when you've talked to him, but it's always seemed to me as if you come back from those meetings—different."
"'Different'?"
"For a while. ... I mean, you're usually—distracted. And unhappy."
"I though you said I was sad a lot, anyway?"
"Yes, but this is different. I mean—" She stopped, thinking. "It's different from that.... You're more ... stirred up—"
"I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to say," he said, "but it seems to me you're talking about some effects Hal Mayne has on me personally."
"Well, yes," she said.
"That doesn't really matter, then," he said, nodding to himself. "It doesn't matter?"
"If it's only me, it doesn't matter," he said. "As long as meeting him doesn't harm my mission." She remained silent.
Favored of God was less than an hour from Old Earth when the listeners in her communications room alerted Bleys that an announcement had been made: the new Director of the Final Encyclopedia was going to address the planet shortly.
"Well, he won't be able to talk with you for a while yet, then," Toni said. Her look said she was asking what he wanted to do.
"Have the captain slow our approach a little," Bleys said. "And have Mayne's speech piped in here." As she reached for the control pad on her desk, he stopped her.
"And would you, please, contact Jeamus Walters yourself?"
"The Final Encyclopedia's—what did he call himself?—Chief Engineer?’
'That's right, we were told to contact him personally to set up this meeting."
"Yes," Bleys said. "I think by the time you and he make the necessary arrangements, Hal Mayne will be done speaking."
"It sounds as if you don't expect him to make a long speech."
"Not him," Bleys said. "It's like pulling teeth to get him to talk, usually."
"All right," Toni said. "I'll review what we were told before, and be ready."
"Thank you," he said; and turned his attention to the screen, which was set to pick up a broadcast channel. The time lag in the signal from Old Earth was irrelevant, at this point.
Bleys stared into the screen as Hal Mayne made his opening remarks. The face he saw there looked as strong and powerful as before, and Bleys, despite his recognition of the primitiveness of his visceral reaction, was finding himself captured by its aura of power and certainty. Since the very first days of humankind, people had been instinctively drawn to those they could feel were powerful enough to take care of them, and Bleys now had no doubt that many Earthmen would find in that face the comfort and security of leadership.
"I've been honored," Mayne was continuing, "by being chosen by Tarn Olyn, Director of the Encyclopedia for over eighty years, to follow him in that post. As you all know, the only Director before Tarn Olyn was Mark Torre; the man who conceived of, planned and supervised the building of this great work from its earliest form, on the ground at the city of St. Louis in the northwestern quadrisphere of this world.
"Mark Torre's aim, as you know, was to create a tool for research into the frontiers of the human mind itself, by providing a storage space for all known information on everything that mind has produced or recognized since the dawn of intellectual consciousness. It was his belief and his hope that this storehouse of human knowledge and creativity would provide materials and, eventually, a means of exploring what has always been unknown and unseeable—in the same way that none of us, unaided, can sec the back of his or her own head.
"To that search, Tarn Olyn, like Mark Torre before him, dedicated himself. To that same faith that Mark Torre had shown, he adhered through his long tenure of duty here.
"I can make no stronger statement to you, today, than to say that I share the same faith and intent, the same dedication. But, more fortunate than the two men who dedicated their lives to the search before me, I may possess something in addition. I have, I believe, some reason to hope that the long years of work here have brought us close to our goal—that we are very near, at last now, to stepping over the threshold of that universe of the unknown which Mark
Torre dreamed of entering and reaping the rewards of exploring, that inner exploration of the human race we have never ceased to yearn toward; unconsciously to begin with, but later consciously, from the beginning of time.
"When the moment comes that this threshold is crossed, the lives of none of us will ever be the same again. We stand at perhaps the greatest moment in the known history of humanity; and I, for one, have no doubt whatsoever that what we have sought for over millennia, we will find; not in centuries or decades from now, but within our lifetimes and possibly even in a time so close that if I could tell you certainly, as I now speak, how long it would be, the nearness of it would seem inconceivable to us all.
/> "But in any case, I give you my promise that while I am Director of the Final Encyclopedia, I will not allow work toward that future to be slowed or halted, by anything. There is no greater pledge I can offer you than that, and I offer it now, with all the strength that is in me.
"Having said this about myself and the Directory, I will now turn from that subject to introduce someone who, I think, means so much to so many of us, that this, too, would have seemed inconceivable a short year ago.
"Peoples of Earth, it's my pleasure and honor to introduce Rukh Tamani."
Bleys had not been expecting Hal Mayne to turn the broadcast over to the woman who had so recently escaped assassination. He gazed into the dark, beautiful face on the screen as if entranced. He had met the woman in person once, in her full armed power in a wild environment beyond Bleys' own control. At that time she had been a wild, uncontrollable figure of danger; now—he searched her face— now she was . .. what?
That she had been mistreated, hurt, was obvious. He had seen images of her, taken soon after she arrived on Old Earth; even then she had seemed thin and fragile—the result, he was sure, of her imprisonment in Barbage's cells.
She still looked thin, and he thought it was obvious she had been wounded—wounded badly. She seemed almost to be made of some glasslike substance that would break at a loud noise. But her voice, low and vibrant, demanded attention, convincing anyone who listened that this woman carried special truths in her frail body.
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