Young Bleys - Childe Cycle 09

by Gordon R. Dickson

  "He's a remarkable man," said James. He went on to talk about Dahno at some length. But nothing he had to say provided Bleys with information of the importance of what Bleys had discovered in the first few words the other man had had to say.

  After lunch they had a short hour more of classroom work, and then they moved into the gymnasium, for some more martial arts, men instruction by a swimming instructor.

  As soon as Bleys was free he headed directly to the office. Once more Dahno was not there and he was free to work in what he now had dubbed in his mind the research room.

  He went over some of the material he had read the day before, looking for new clues. What he found confirmed the rather astonishing thing he had learned from James. Dahno was deliberately enlisting mixed-breeds from the three main Splinter Cultures into an organization that was given the idea that it was to be the controlling influence on government for the New Worlds.

  In the days that followed he continued his afternoon researches, and dug even deeper into the mass of available information. He discovered, however, very little beyond what he had found out from James originally. Whenever he got on an interesting track of developing information, it ended, blocked, up against the area Dahno had cued to be secret. Breaking the code that would let him into that secret part of this knowledge repository was beyond Bleys' ability. From what he now knew about his older brother, he doubted that anyone else besides Dahno had the ability to enter the secret area.

  Nonetheless, by carefully applying what he had found out in the research room to the trainees themselves, and by gradually beginning to build a mental structure around what he did know, with what must be there to support it, Bleys finally got a picture of the organization. It was set up to be controlled by Dahno and spread out over at least eight of the New Worlds. It consisted, what with the recruits his trainees had brought into the organization, of something between ten and fifteen thousand people.

  In theory, they were all Others, as Dahno had evidently named them. In actuality the only thing they had in common was a particular type of personality, very like that of the Friendlies, themselves, in mat they had a fixed picture of the universe and followed without question. At the same time, they were both hard-headed and persuasive. The sort of profile that would ideally fit a lobbyist.

  Unfortunately, it was at this point that he appeared to be blocked. It was frustrating. Undoubtedly there was more to be got from the files that were open to him, if he had only more background of information to knit them together. What was needed, he saw clearly, was time. While he had already decided that the days measured by his lifetime were precious, now some must be given to more studying and gathering of information.

  Above all, he needed more information from the other trainees. It occurred to him suddenly that there could be no better time than now for conversation with those other trainees whom he had already made into friends. Since it was a weekend; undoubtedly they would be free to do what they wanted, and there would be time for conversation.

  He went to the trainees' apartment building.

  It was no different there than always before, although another old man was acting as guard on the desk inside the front door. But when he rode up on one of the disks of the elevator to the floor which housed the trainees and let himself into their quarters, he was startled to find no one there at all.

  He smiled at his own stupidity. Of course, after being penned up here all week, they would find places outside to go to. And it had never occurred to him to check with any of those he knew as to what sort of place, if any, they gathered in on these, their two days off. He left and returned thoughtfully to the apartment he snared with Dahno.

  The apartment was empty. Dahno, of course, was not there. He made himself something to eat and drink and lay down on his bed. He could have studied or simply read; but just at the moment he did not feel like either.

  Lying there, he found himself slipping back into his image of himself as if he stood alone out in space, light-years from the nearest inhabited worlds, solitary, forever set apart from other humans.

  He would never have a friend, a friend on his own level. He' faced that fact squarely. That was the drawback to being what he was. The advantage was that from this lonely distance he could look and see the universe as a single and understandable whole.

  He had half hoped that Dahno would turn out to be someone with whom he could feel a closeness. But it was clear to him now that Dahno had found fullness of occupation in what he was building; and what he was building was far too small for Bleys.

  Dahno thought only of the present and his immediate lifetime. Bleys thought of all time in the future. The means to help the race he had envisioned were still hidden; and would only be revealed as he learned more about his fellow humans and the situation on all the worlds. There was no question of the goal. It was to produce a humanity equal to any future challenge. A race of people gifted as he, himself, was gifted. His problem would be to start them on the route that it was his duty to put them on. Otherwise—why had he been born?

  He could not yet understand it all, nor would he be able to in his lifetime. But nonetheless he knew what it was. And he saw a possibility for himself as a tool for the human race. It could be the one thing he could do that would save the race.

  They would not know, they would not understand, they would never be able to grasp what he had done. Possibly at some time in the far future, they would have grown to the point where they could look back and see that it was he who took them off the dangerous path he saw them now on, and put them on a proper way to an unlimited future.

  But for now—it occurred to him—he must make the best possible use of things immediately at hand to be learned and mastered. That meant gathering the skills and information to make himself a leader, and to understand Dahno's full network, together with Dahno's control of the people who made it up.

  He could begin immediately by improving his own learning process. His work with the trainees was useful up to a point. But the abilities of his mind galloped ahead of them. It struck him that his greatest need was to be charismatic. Where he could not gain acceptance as an equal, he could as the superior he had been bom to be. No more would he attempt to be accepted as one of them. Let them accept him as their director and commander.

  It was so obvious he could not believe how simple and straightforward it would be. In every direction that involved book learning he was already far ahead of them all. Only in physical matters, like this study of judo, did he have to progress at a more normal pace—but even that normal pace could be improved as his understanding interpreted what he was told and fitted in into a whole pattern of action.

  Meanwhile there were other things that he could be learning in the time he was now wasting in the classroom at the apartment building.

  He must talk to Dahno about that.

  He sat up on the edge of the bed and called Dahno's bed phone to leave a message on it.

  I haven't seen you but I need to talk to you. Arrange your schedule so that we can get together for a short while at least. This is important.

  Ironically, he was just completing this message when he heard the door of the apartment open.

  He met his half-brother in the lounge; and Dahno smiled at him, but started to brush past him.

  "I've got to dress for dinner," Dahno said. "How are things with you?"

  "Things are such that I'm badly in need of a moment's talk with you," Bleys answered. Dahno kept going.

  "Not now if you don't mind," his voice floated back, as he disappeared into his own bedroom. "I've got just enough time to get dressed and get down to the restaurant."

  "You can be fifteen minutes late, I think," said Bleys. He had quite boldly followed Dahno into the bedroom. His half-brother turned around and stared at him.

  "What's this?" he said. "I told you I barely had time enough to get ready. As for being late—"

  "If you'd kept in closer touch with me, I wouldn't have to delay you now," sai
d Bleys, "but time's being wasted."

  "Yes indeed," answered Dahno, "my time."

  "Ultimately yours, but right now mine," answered Bleys. "Unless you can spare me fifteen minutes of your time now,

  I'll walk out of this apartment and out of your plans for the future. I don't know how much you've counted on me, but it ought to be worth fifteen minutes."

  "You'd walk out?" said Dahno, half-smiling. "You'd starve."

  Bleys thought gratefully of the interstellar credit paper still in the secret compartment of the belt around his waist.

  "That was taken care of before I left mother."

  "Oh? Indeed!" said Dahno. "All right, let's go back to the lounge and talk."

  They did so and sat down in facing chairs.

  "Well, what's on your mind?" said Dahno in a mild tone. There was no sign that he had been at all disturbed by Bleys' interruption of his plans.

  "It's very simple," said Bleys. "Some things like the judo classes are useful. For the rest of it, though, I'm as out of place among those people as I would have been in the little schoolhouse in Henry's district. I'll still keep going and joining them and working until I get to know all of them well, and I'll still take advantage of things where I need partners to work out with. But aside from that there are a number of specialized things in which I'd like to have instruction. A lot of that can be done with tutors or specialists that can come to me here. Unless that's more than you can afford."

  Dahno laughed.

  "The funds come when they're needed," he said, "haven't I mentioned that to you before? The thing to do is to have power, which lies in influence. If you have that not only credit, but everything else follows automatically."

  "And on that theory, the more capable I am, the more useful I am, and the more influence I should be able to gather. So the more of everything else should follow," said Bleys. "Am I right?"

  Asking that question was almost more bold a thing than following Dahno into his bedroom and insisting on talking to him. Hidden in it—and Bleys knew Dahno would recognize the fact—was a requirement of Dahno to state what he considered Bleys was worth to him. If he was not in favor of hiring the special tutors and teachers and trainers that Bleys had in mind, then obviously the future he had in mind for Bleys was not one as lofty as he had always implied.

  "That's a good point," said Dahno thoughtfully. "What do you think you might want?"

  "I'd better make you a written list," answered Bleys. "It'll be quite a list, including special training with sensei, if that's possible; a speech therapist to give me a larger range of voice; and someone who teaches fencing to improve my balance. I also want a tutor to begin the study of phase-shift mechanics and phase physics. Then, as soon as I'm ready to go on to studying those two things, I'll want tutors in them too. There's at least a dozen other things. I'll make you a list, as I say."

  "All right." Dahno smiled and got up. "I'm free to go dress then, Mr. Vice-Chairman?"

  "Absolutely," said Bleys, "but you might keep it in mind that it would be a good thing if the two of us had time to talk with each other at least once a week."

  "It won't always be possible," said Dahno, "but—I'll make it as possible as I can."

  He went off to his bedroom. Bleys sat where he was, feeling the beginnings of a glow of satisfaction. He had not only gotten what he wanted, but he had plumbed the depths of Dahno's interest in him. Clearly, Dahno was willing to do a great deal rather than give him up. The reasons for that were something that Bleys would have to discover somewhere along the line. But for now, it was enough to realize that such an interest was there.

  In the next week he discovered where at least a good share of the trainees were to be found on a weekend, as well as making several new friendships among his fellow trainees. He now was on good terms with close to a majority of the group; and he expected—and was later proved right—that after a certain number had been won over to him, the rest would come almost automatically.

  Rather like Dahno's rule about influence leading to power and power leading to everything else.

  At the same time, he was a little sadly amused at the way they responded to what were essentially Exotic techniques— the same Exotic techniques on which they were lectured weekly, and some of which had already been explained to them. Such a discovery no longer made Bleys contemptuous of his fellow human beings, it only saddened him with the reminder of his own difference from them.

  The place to which most of them went for their weekends was a particular hotel in town. Not all chose to go there, and in fact, he learned from James, from time to time they would drift to different hotels; but this information was unimportant compared to the fact that he discovered something else very interesting indeed. That was, that there was also a class of women trainees, who were evidently sent through much the same classes but differently and apart from the men. Not all, of course, but a good share of the men and women came together in their free time at the currently-used hotel.

  Bleys had already come to understand that he was attractive to women. But he was still young and therefore still, to a certain extent, self-conscious. He was slow about making friends with the women; and he tended to shy away from those who seemed in any way aggressive. This reaction in him cropped out unexpectedly, to the surprise of all the rest, but to himself as well, when one of the women with whom he had had little to do came up and sat down on the arm of his chair.

  "Just look at that hair," she said, and ran her fingers through Bleys' dark brown, slightly wavy, hair.

  "No more of that, if you don't mind," said Bleys, instinctively pulling his head away from her hand.

  Not so much the words, but the tone in which he spoke turned the heads of all the others within hearing toward him. The woman who had been about to say something teasing about his self-consciousness, on second thought said nothing. She got up from the arm of his chair and walked away.

  Bleys suddenly realized he had spoken in a voice that he did not know he possessed. But he recognized whose voice it was. It was the voice of Henry, who was used to making no statements that were not orders, amplified and made even more potent by Bleys' recent training. At base was the fact that

  Henry had never emphasized what he had to say, nor identified it as a command. But the absolute certainty that it would be understood and obeyed had always been clearly- broadcast in the tone of it. As it had been just now—only more so—in Bleys' voice.

  Unconsciously, Bleys had taken that tone and put it to use. A feeling of sudden guilt in him was overwhelmed by the feeling of surprise. He could hardly believe that an attitude of command had come to him that easily. With that understanding came another one, close on its heels: that it would be a mistake for him now to apologize, as he had just been about to do, to the woman who had run her fingers through his hair. At one stroke he had taken the attitude of someone to be obeyed by all the rest of them.

  Immediately, he was concerned by the fact that by doing so, he might have made enemies of all of them, all over again. But; looking around at the faces around him, he did not see resentment on any of them. Just as he had assumed that they would do what he said, so they had assumed that he was in a position to tell them what to do.

  It was a very large discovery indeed. He tucked it away in the back of his mind to be thought of when he had more time to himself.

  In the weeks to come he tried to make some amends for any harshness the others might have felt in his words; and went so far as to make easy friendships with a number of the women. Affection he found. Love, he could not find; by consequence of the very fact he was committed to setting himself apart from all other humans.

  So he could not talk to any of them about his plans for the future, his vision of a race purified and set right upon its way; and the result was to leave him feeling more isolated even than before.

  Still, in other ways during the next weeks, months, and years, he made as much use of this situation as possible; gathering information almost as one
might gather a bale of straw, a single straw at a time. Likewise, he did the same with the several new classes of trainees that succeeded his first one.

  At the same time, his own private lessons were beginning to have their effect. The fencing instructor and the special sessions with the sensei developed him amazingly, not merely in the area of physical strength but also in the way in which he handled his body. Eventually, these instructors passed him on to those who could give him more advanced teaching in the same areas.

  The same thing took place as well with most of those who came to give him special or private lessons. The speech therapist extended his vocal range a full octave and a half both upwards and downwards and a teacher of singing eventually brought his voice to a resonance that made the voice itself arresting; so that he discovered he could use the tone of it alone as a means of focusing the attention of someone on whom he wished to use his personal control of the Exotic techniques—in which he took further tutoring from a true expatriate Mar an Exotic.

  In the process, he stumbled upon a discovery. He had always studied what he had to, before. In the beginning, that had been those fields of information handed him by the caretakers; then, here on Association, it had become what he felt he required to reach the goal he had set for himself.

  But now, he was free to learn anything he liked. Dahno was as good as his word. Bleys could spend whatever he wished on teachers and materials. For the first time he began to poke his intellectual nose into geology, archaeology . . . and other systems; ending finally with the arts—painting, sculpture, music and writing.

  It was with these last that he made a marvelous discovery. He had never encountered any human, even Dahno or his mother, who had the power to stretch his own understanding to -the limit. But in the arts, he found it—in the time-proven classics of brushwork, knife-work, and the mind-work that went into poetry and literature.