Looking out across the heads of this multitude, Hal saw the brilliantly cloudless sky overhead dim fractionally and a gray sparkle seem to come into it.
"Jason," he said. "Take a look at the sky."
Jason withdrew his staring eyes reluctantly from the crowd of faces on his side of the vehicle and glanced upward.
"What about it?" he asked. "It's as clear and fine a day as you'd like—and nothing up there that looks dangerous. Besides, we're practically inside the perimeter, now."
Rukh had been dozing quietly most of their trip. Like Morelly and others Hal remembered from the Command on Harmony, her faith led her to avoid medication if at all possible. She was no fanatic about it; but Hal had noticed that apparently the same kind of discomfort touched her that he had seen in people raised under strict dietary laws and who no longer lived by them but could not bring themselves to eat with any relish what had once been forbidden. So she had refused the mild sedative Roget would have given her for the trip; and the physician had not insisted. Her general exhaustion, he had told Hal, would keep her quiet enough.
But now, the sudden glare of the sunlight through the one-way windows of the vehicle on her closed eyelids, plus the excitement in Jason's voice, roused her. She opened her eyes, sat up to look up and saw the crowd.
"Oh!" she said.
"They're here to see you pass, Rukh!" said Jason, turning to her exultantly. "All of them—here for you!"
She stared out the windows as the convoy slid along through the air, plainly absorbing what she saw and coming fully awake at the same time. After a moment she spoke again.
"They think I'm in the ambulance," she said. "We've got to stop. I've got to get out and show them I'm all right."
"No!" said Roget and Hal together.
The doctor glanced swiftly at Hal.
"You promised to save your strength!" Roget said, almost savagely. "That was your promise. You know, yourself, you can't step outside there without going right into full gear. Is that saving your strength?"
"Besides that," said Hal. "All it takes is one armed fanatic there, willing to die to get you first; or one armed idiot who hasn't thought beyond killing you if the chance comes; and the fact that all these other people'll tear someone like that to pieces afterwards won't bring you back to life."
"Don't be foolish, Hal," said Rukh. Her voice had strengthened. "How would any assassin know we'd stop along here, when we didn't know we were going to do it, ourselves? And Roget, this is something I have to do—something I owe those people out there. I'll just get out, let them see me and get right back in. I can lean on Hal."
She was already reaching forward to press the tab that signalled the front compartment of the vehicle. Jarir's head turned back and the window slid down between him and them.
"Jarir," said Rukh. "Stop the convoy. I'm going to get out just long enough for these people to see I'm all right."
"It's not wise—" Jarir began.
"Wise or not, do what I tell you," said Rukh. "Jarir?"
The Commissioner shrugged. Once more the stony eyes had gone liquid and soft.
"Es-sha'b" he said to the driver, whose inquiring face was turned toward him. He turned to the panel in front of him, touched a stud and spoke in Arabic.
The convoy slowed and stopped, the vehicles which composed it settling to the bright turf underneath them.
"Now," said Rukh, to Hal. "If you'll give me your arm, Hal. Open the door, Jason."
Reluctantly, Jason unlocked and swung open the rear compartment door on Hal's side of the car. Hal stepped out, turned and reached back in to help Rukh emerge. She stepped out and down to the ground, leaning heavily on his arm.
"We'll step out between the cars where they can see me," she said.
He led her in that direction. For the first three steps she bore most of her weight upon him; but as they left behind the vehicle they had been riding in and passed out into the thirty meters of space that separated it from the next car in line she straightened up, stretched her legs into a firmer stride, and after a pace or two let go of him entirely to walk forward by herself and stand straight, alone and a little in advance of him, facing the crowd on that side of the roadstead.
All along the route the people had waved at their passing in silence. At first this had felt strange to Hal, even though he realized those along the way must think that Rukh in the ambulance could not easily hear them if they did call out to her, and that in any case she should have to endure as little disturbance as possible. But he had grown accustomed to the lack of shouting as they went along and all but forgotten it, until this moment. But now, standing beside Rukh and looking out at those thousands of faces, the waving hands together with the quiet was eerie.
For a moment after they stopped and stood waiting, there was no change in those out at whom they looked. The eyes of everyone had been fastened on the ambulance; and few of them had even noticed the two figures that had come from one of the escort cars.
Then, slowly, the waving hands of those nearest Rukh and Hal began to hesitate, as the people became aware of them. Faces turned toward them; and gradually, like a ripple going over some wide and fluid surface, the attention of each one in the crowd was brought, one by one, to fasten upon them—and at last Rukh was recognized.
The hands had fallen now. It was a sea of faces only that looked at Rukh; and with that recognition, starting with those closest to her, the first sound was heard from the people as a whole. To the ears of Hal it was like a sigh, that like a wave washed out and out from them until it was lost in the farthest part of the gathering, then came rushing like a wave back in again, gathering strength and speed, rising to a roar, a thunder that shook the air around them.
Rukh stood facing them. She could not speak to them with the noise they were making. She could not even have spoken to them if they had stopped making it. The closest were twenty meters from her; and a few of them would have come equipped with repeaters to pick up her words and rebroadcast them to those further back. But she slowly raised both her arms, stretched at full length before her, until they were at shoulder level, and then slowly she spread them wide, as if blessing them all.
With the lifting of her arms, their voices began to die and by the time she had finished sweeping them wide, there was no sound at all to be heard from that vast gathering before her. In the new quiet, she turned about to face the other side of the roadstead; and repeated the gesture there, bringing these, too, into silence.
In that silence, she turned back toward the car and Hal moved quickly to catch her as she almost staggered once more, leaning heavily against him. He helped her back and half-lifted her into the vehicle, following close behind her.
With the closing of the door after them, and the starting up once more of the vehicles of the convoy, the voices broke out again; and that thunder beat steadily upon them, now, following them as they moved down the road past those who had not yet seen them up close, until they passed through the entrance in the high fence, past the unusually heavy perimeter guard of the spacepad in their trim blue uniforms and heavy power rifles, and went on into the relative emptiness of the pad, heading not for the terminal but for the shuttle itself, better than four kilometers distant across the endless gray surface of the pad.
Hal leaned forward and spoke to Jarir through the openness where the window between the compartments remained rolled down.
"You'll have to take my word for this," he said. "It's something I just noticed. A protective shield we've been planning to put around all of the Earth at low orbit level's just been set in place. The world is going to be hearing all about it in a few hours. But for now, if we don't get Rukh aboard that shuttle, and it off the ground in minutes, its pilots may find themselves ordered by the Atmosphere and Space authorities not to lift."
Jarir's eyes met his from a distance of only inches away, and held for a long moment. They had gone back to being bright stones again.
"She will be aboard," he said. "And it will lift."
Chapter Sixty-four
As Roget had predicted to them all in their pre-dawn session in the hotel, by the time the shuttle entered a bay at the Final Encyclopedia, Rukh was exhausted and sleeping heavily. Hal carried her off in his arms into the clanging noise and brightness of the bay and handed her over to two of the people from the Encyclopedia's medical clinic, who had brought a float stretcher. Almost beside him, the Number One pilot of the shuttle was close to shouting at the bay commander.
"I tell you I got word from the surface to turn around, to head back!" he was saying, "and I talked them out of it! I was the one who told them if they let me go on, I could get some answers up here. We could see it plain as day, coming in at this altitude—like a gray wall above us, stretching everywhere, out of sight. If it isn't all around the world and it isn't the same thing you've got around the Encyclopedia, I'll eat it—"
"Pilot, I tell you," said the bay commander, a small, black-haired woman in her thirties with a quiet, oriental face, "everything's on emergency status here at the moment. If you want to wait, I'll try to get someone down from the Director's staff to talk to you. But I can't promise when anyone'll come—"
"That's not good enough!" The pilot's voice lifted. He was a large, heavy man and he loomed over the commander. "I'm asking you for an answer in the name of the Space and Atmosphere Agency—"
Hal tapped the man on the shoulder, and the pilot pivoted swiftly, then stopped and stared upward as he found himself facing Hal's jacket collar tab.
"There'll be broadcasts from here explaining this to the whole world, shortly," Hal said. "There's nothing you can be told now that you and your superiors won't be hearing in a few hours, anyway."
The pilot found his voice again.
"Who're you? One of the passengers, aren't you? That's no good. I want someone who knows what's going on, and I want whoever that is, now!" He swung back to the bay commander. "I'm ordering you, if necessary, to get someone here in five minutes—"
"Pilot," said the bay commander, wearily, "let's be sensible. You've got no authority to order anyone here. Neither has Space and Atmosphere, or anyone else from below."
Hal turned away, his leaving ignored by the pilot. With Jason close behind, he headed toward Tam's suite, pushing his way gently through the turmoil and confusion he encountered along the way.
As he stepped through the door of the suite he found a broadcast of the sort he had promised the pilot already underway. The room was crowded. Not only were Amid and Nonne there, as well as the head of every department in the Encyclopedia except Jeamus, but there were at least half a dozen technicians, apparently concerned with the technical details of the broadcast.
It was Tam who was speaking. A desk float had been moved into position in front of his favorite non-float armchair and he looked across the unyielding gleam of the oak-colored surface as he spoke. Ajela stood to one side, behind him, just out of picture range. Her head turned to the door as Hal and Jason entered; and when she saw who it was she smiled at them. A smile, it seemed to Hal, of strong relief.
He went quietly to her along one wall of the room. It was neither a quick nor a steady journey. Everyone else in the room, it seemed, was utterly caught up in what Tam was saying in his deep and age-hoarsened voice. Hal would move a step or two, find his way blocked, and whisper in the ear of whoever was in the way. Whoever it was would turn, start, smile at him a little strangely, then move aside with a matching whisper of apology.
"… times without precedent sometimes require actions without precedent," Tam was saying to the picture receptors—and the whole Earth beyond.
"… And because we have access here at the Encyclopedia to equipment that does not, to my knowledge, exist anywhere else, I've been forced to make an emergency decision on the basis of information which we'll shortly be making available to all of you; but on which I felt I had to act at once.
"In brief, that information is that Earth is in danger of being attacked without warning and finding itself stripped of its historic freedom as an independent and autonomous world. My decision was that an impregnable barrier should be placed in position without further delay around our Mother World to make sure this could not happen.
"Accordingly, I gave an order which has since been carried out by personnel of the Encyclopedia; that a phase shield-wall, similar to the one that's preserved the independence of this Encyclopedia itself for more than eighty years, be placed completely about our planet, to lock out any possibility of armed attack from other human worlds.
"This phase shield-wall, as it's now configured, has been structured with all the necessary irises—or openings to outer space—that may be needed by space shipping to enter or leave the territory of Earth's space and atmosphere. These irises can be closed at will; and they will be, at a moment's notice, in the case of any threat against us. Once they are closed, nothing in the universe can penetrate to us without our permission.
"Even fully closed, however, this phase shield-wall, which is an improved model of that which guards the Final Encyclopedia, has been designed to allow through it all necessary sunlight or any other solar radiation required for normal and customary existence. The physical condition of the space it occupies and the space it separates us from has been in no way altered by its existence.
"It's also within the capabilities of our crews generating this shield-wall to open irises at any other points that may be necessary, now or at any time in the future. Eventually they will do so in accordance with the desires of the general population of Earth.
"In short, nothing has been imposed upon, or taken away from the ordinary quality of life on our Earth by the establishment of this protective barrier. As you know this world of ours is a closed and self-sustaining system that requires only the solar energy which will continue to reach us in order to exist indefinitely as we know it.
"Additional details on both the shield-wall and the threat that caused me to order it constructed will be made available to you shortly. There is no intention here on the part of those of us who staff the Final Encyclopedia to set ourselves up in any way as a form of authority over Earth or its peoples. In any case, we lack the skills and numbers of personnel to do so, even if this community of scholars and researchers were so inclined. Simply, we have been required by circumstances to take a single, vitally necessary, specific action without having time to consult with the rest of you first.
"For that action, I take sole and individual responsibility. For taking it without consultation with you all, I apologize, repeating only that the necessity existed for doing so. I ask you all to wait until all the information that led us to generate it is also in your possession; and you are individually in a position to judge the emergency that led us to take this action.
"Having said that much, I have only one more thing to tell you. It's that this is my last official act as Director of the Encyclopedia. As I imagine most of you know, I have held this post far longer than I'd planned, while the search has gone on for a qualified successor. Now, I'm happy to say, one has finally been found—I should, more correctly, say the Encyclopedia itself has found one, since the man I speak of has passed a test by the Encyclopedia itself that only two other human beings in its history have passed—those two being myself and Mark Torre, the founder of this great tool and storehouse of human knowledge.
"The individual who now replaces me is a citizen of Old Earth, named Hal Mayne. Some of you have already heard of him. The rest of you will shortly, when he speaks to you from here in the next day or two."
He stopped. His voice had been weakening steadily; and now it failed him. After a second he continued.
"Bless you, people of Earth. I think more than a few of you know me by reputation. I'm not given to compliments or praise unless there's no doubt it's been earned. But I tell you, as someone who's watched you for over a century and a quarter now, that as long as you remain what you've been no enemy can hope to conquer you, no threat can hope to intimidate you. I have been greatly
privileged, through a long life, to guard this precious creation, this Encyclopedia, for you. Hal Mayne, who follows me as its guardian, will keep it as well and better than I have ever been able to…"
For a moment he stopped and occupied himself only with breathing. Then he went on, raggedly.
"To you all, goodbye."
He sank back into his chair, closing his eyes, as the operating lights on the picture receptor went out. The room erupted with voices, all talking to each other around him and for a moment he was ignored, sitting shrunken and still in the big armchair.
Hal had reached Ajela's side, behind Tam's chair, some seconds back. At the sudden introduction of his own name into the speech he had looked down into Ajela's face and had been answered by something that could only be described as a hard grin.
"So," he said, as the talk rose around them. "You and Tam just went ahead and appointed me."
"You've been doing what's necessary without asking, when there wasn't any time to ask," she retorted. "So now we've done the same thing. You knew Tam's finally gone as far as he can—"
A shadow of pain darkened her eyes for a second.
"You're drafted," she said. "That's all. Because there's no one else around for the job."
He nodded slowly. It was true; moreover, he had been expecting Tam and Ajela to do some such thing as this. They knew as well as he did that he had to take on the title of Director of the Encyclopedia eventually; and that he would need it to give him a position from which to deal with the people of Earth in the future now upon them. Reflexively, he had left it to the two of them to push the job upon him, so that it would come to him only at the time when Tam was fully ready to let go. He had, he thought, been fully prepared for this moment.
But now that it had come, he felt a sudden chill to the mantle of authority that had just been draped about his shoulders. He tried to push the feeling away. He had always wanted to be a part of the Encyclopedia; and the work he had still to do required him to be here. But still, with Ajela's words, it was as if a shadow had fallen across his soul and he looked up to see tall walls closing about him. He felt an ominous premonition that he imagined as somehow being connected with Amanda.
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