Young Bleys - Childe Cycle 09

by Gordon R. Dickson

  "And I don't intend to," said Dahno. "Well, shall we go?"

  "Mr. Chairman," said Bleys, "I was under the impression from your phone call that you had something to tell me?"

  "Perhaps I had," said Dahno. "It may be what you've told me has knocked it out of my head for this moment. In any case it's something we'll take up at some other, future time."

  He got to his feet. He stood up from the table, and Bleys rose automatically with him.

  "Shall I give you a ride back to the apartment?" he asked.

  "You don't have to," said Bleys, "I can take an autocar."

  "It's no trouble," said Dahno, "in fact, I'd prefer to."

  They returned to the apartment, and Dahno dropped Bleys off.

  There, it was a little like the farm had been when Bleys had stepped into it on the evening of his return to Association. Everything seemed exactly the same. He went on into his own room, and found his luggage had been delivered, and obviously brought up by the concierge.

  He unpacked it, what little unpacking there was, since it consisted only of one small personal case with emergency clothing, in case he had to get by before he could buy new clothes on some other world. He put all that was in it away in various drawers and wall boxes of his apartment; undressed, put on a dressing robe and lay down on his back.

  He had almost never used the skylight over his head for star-watching while he was thinking. But tonight he pressed the proper stud on his bedside control pad and above him the opaqueness of the roof drew back to show him the sky full of stars as they were seen above Association.

  He could pick out the star of Sirius, above Freiland and New Earth. The others were too far away, or the angle of sight that his window gave him at this time of the evening and this time of the year put them outside the slice of space he could see.

  But it was of Old Earth he was thinking, just before he fell asleep. But not before first making a mental note to look closely into the situation here on Association as it had developed during the months he was gone; and also into what possible reason Dahno might have had for phoning him, seemingly so urgently, to come in from the farm.

  He woke to a bright day on Association; and—as so often happened—his thoughts were much better ordered than they had been before falling asleep.

  He could not be sure; but his feeling had been that, at least at the time Dahno had phoned him, the other had been disturbed over some problem that he wanted to share with Bleys. Possibly, he had planned to put Bleys to work on handling some part of it.

  What Bleys had told him, had made him change his mind. Why, remained a question mark. But it seemed to Bleys that the only thing that could possibly disturb his half-brother that much, and the only thing that would keep him from following his original plan of using Bleys in dealing with it, would be the sudden conclusion that, after all, perhaps Bleys was not to be trusted.

  But any connection between what he had told Dahno and anything his half-brother might have been about to tell him, was an unknown.

  Nonetheless, whatever it was, it would have to be something to do with politics. Therefore, the sooner he informed himself on the present, local political situation, the better. He had half expected to wake up to find instructions from Dahno putting him to work at something—if only something to keep him busy. But Dahno had left no message and he assumed that that meant he was free to do what he wanted.

  He dressed, made himself breakfast and ate it; then went to Dahno's office, said hello to the two faithful workers there, and let himself in through Dahno's private office into the file room.

  He began to examine whatever updating Dahno had done on the available files since Bleys left.

  The new information he studied, like all the other entries that he had examined earlier, was by its nature cryptic, referring to people and things without explanation. Very often, the name of a person dealt with was hidden under an initial, a number; or it was obviously a nickname.

  Nonetheless, from his earlier experience with these files, he was able to put most of what he found in context with the structure of the Chamber itself. From his limited acquaintance with some of Dahno's code, he had been able to pick out references to the Core Tap Project. The references themselves were not clear; but the very number of them indicated the Project had now become important enough to overshadow everything else that Dahno was concerned with at the moment:

  It looked like the reason for Dahno's phone call was an odds-on bet to have had something to do with the bill to authorize Core Tap construction.

  After gleaning what he could from the files, Bleys went over to the government building and sat in the visitors' gallery for a while; to find out what he could that way. The Chamber floor seemed populated with more than the usual run of members, a number of them conversing either so quietly that their voices did not carry up to the gallery, or within a cone of silence that made their conversation private.

  Certainly there was unusual activity going on. Almost certainly, it, too, was connected with the Core Tap Project, which clearly had not been passed by the Chamber yet, nor definitely turned down. Just to check on this, he asked Tom, the guard on the door whom he had made a point of cultivating, what was the bill of main interest under consideration in the Chamber.

  "That Core Tap Project, Bleys Ahrens," said Tom. He winked. "Lots of public interest."

  "Is that so?" said Bleys. "I've been off-planet for nearly three months. I half expected it to be settled by this time."

  The guard laughed.

  "Anything but," he said; "if anything all it's done is got itself tangled up even more. It's been through half a dozen different committees and back to the floor twice."

  "You wouldn't care to tell me who're the main people concerned with it?" Bleys asked.

  The guard smiled and shook his head.

  "You know it's an order, as well as being common sense," he said. "We don't discuss the individual representatives with either the visitors or the other representatives. In fact, you'd do better to look at the published record of what the Chamber has been doing since you were gone, rather than asking me about it, if you want to catch up on what's been going on. I'm not supposed to give that information out either—you know that, of course."

  "Of course I do," answered Bleys. "I shouldn't have asked. Forget I did."

  "That I can do," said the guard. Then, as Bleys started off he called after him. "Glad to see you back, Bleys Ahrens. If you want information there's the library downstairs."

  So there was.

  Bleys took the lift down to the sub-basement where the Chamber's official library lived. Bleys' badge got him in. It was a long, wide room with a low ceiling, as if hollowed out of the concrete that was the Chamber's foundation. Behind the desk a middle-aged man with a shock of white hair and the patriarchal smile of a generous grandfather, got him the last three months' issues of the daily Chamber Bulletin.

  It was hardly more than a sheet a day, chronicling the business done on the house floor and in its committees. Judging from what Bleys read, the Core Tap bill had been very active. In and out of committee, on to the floor, back to committee, back to the floor and generally in motion most of the time. The accounts were sparse to the point of approaching a sort of shorthand. They told him nothing about the bill, except its movement, though if it ever came to a final vote, the names of those voting on either side would be tallied. The Members who had voted yes or no on each motion about it were not listed by name. Even the bill itself was referred to only by its number, which was 417B.

  Bleys reached the end of the Bulletins and was just about to take them back to the library's custodian, when he found that custodian at his elbow again, with a much thicker stack of material.

  "Perhaps you'd like to see the newsprints from the same period,'' he said; "for many of our people who come here, newsprints accounts are the second choice, directly after the Bulletin itself."

  He laid them on the table.

  "Thank you," said Bleys. He had
not thought as far ahead as newsprints, although they were an inevitable next step in information about the political progress of the Core Tap bill. He began to go through the stack of issues.

  It would have been an extensive task, if it had not been for his ability to read so quickly and remember what he read. As it was, inside of half an hour he was taking the newsprints back to the custodian, who looked at him with a touch of surprise.

  "Find out what you want?" the custodian asked.

  "I did. Thanks," said Bleys.

  Bleys left the reading room and went back upstairs and out the front door to where he could order an autocar to take him back to the apartment.

  The newsprints had been a great deal more informative, Bleys thought, as the autocar carried him back toward the

  apartment. Of course, they were concerned with catching the interests of their readers, rather than merely setting down the facts as the Bulletin had done in dry-as-dust fashion.

  According to the newsprints, Darrel McKae—the young charismatic who had been attracting converts most freely from the other established churches—had now developed a considerable congregation. It was called the Arise! Church; and was headquartered in a small town named Newberry.

  There were pictures of the young church leader. He looked every inch of what he was, an out-and-out militant. Fanatic or True Believer, was the one question that the newsprints did not try to answer.

  But he was broad-shouldered, active-looking and apparently only a few inches shorter than Bleys. Looking at his pictures, Bleys was ready to gamble on his being a Fanatic.

  McKae had erupted out of nowhere as a pastoral leader. He had merely been one of the congregation of one of the churches in Newberry which owed its ultimate allegiance to one of the Five Sisters. McKae led a revolt of over half the congregation, off to form a church of his own, which became the Arise! Church.

  From then on his influence had evidently grown steadily, and the number of churches that looked to him as their ultimate leader multiplied.

  At first they were only rural churches. But then they began to appear in the cities. Newberry itself was some twelve hundred kilometers away from Ecumeny, and Darrel McKae had evidently kept that as headquarters for himself until shortly after Bleys had left on his trip.

  About that time the number of members in his combined churches had reached a large enough figure so that they were able to petition for the right to elect a representative to the Chamber. The petition had been accepted, the election had been held, and—surprisingly—no deputy, but Darrel McKae himself, had chosen to represent his church members as a Member in the Chamber.

  Such a decision argued either a supreme confidence in the mind of the young church leader, or a specific aim. Bleys spoke into the microphone of his autocar.

  "Cancel that destination I gave you in the city, here," he said; "take me instead to the nearest space and atmosphere port."

  The nearest such port was only about fifteen minutes away. There, a rented, atmosphere-only five-passenger ship with a hired pilot flew him over to the similar port at Newberry, which was too small to have a spaceport. Bleys left word with the pilot to pick him up the next day around ten o'clock in the morning; and took an autocar into the town.

  Newberry was indeed small, smaller than Bleys had realized. He would have stood out among its citizens like a circus freak, with his towering height and Ecumeny clothes, if he had tried to wander the streets on foot. Like it or not, his size put him under the same limitations that Dahno had to endure.

  He did, however, have the autocar stop in front of a store where he could buy a map of the city; and, using a little of the proper light hypnosis trick, picked the brains of the clerk who sold him the map, for details as to the appearance and local history of Darrel McKae before he had emerged on the scene as a suddenly radiant leader of his church movement.

  It appeared McKae had been a local youth who had attracted no particular attention until he spearheaded the movement of the dissident element in his parent church to set up the Arise! Church congregation. After that his new church had simply grown and he himself had rapidly acquired a name as a religious leader.

  Whether McKae was still in Newberry, the clerk could not tell Bleys. It seemed that as of about a year before, he had begun making the rounds of the other new churches in his Arise! congregation—and it was improbable any except his closest advisers knew where he could be found at any time.

  Outside of that, Bleys did not learn much.

  Back in his autocar, Bleys phoned the atmosphere port at Ecumeny, to cancel the atmosphere-ship pickup tomorrow; then phoned again to the local port to order an immediate ride back from Newberry. He arrived in Ecumeny just before twilight.

  CHAPTER 28

  Bleys awoke early and with a particular feeling of urgency, slight but insistent.

  After a moment, as he became fully awake, he remembered mat today, this morning, was the day that McKae was due to give an important speech on the Core Tap bill; and Bleys was determined to hear it. He had never heard McKae speak before.

  There was reason enough for urgency in the need to be up and get going; but he was experienced enough with what he was feeling to know that it meant more than that. The back of his mind had gathered enough evidence to sense some sort of approaching crisis. Something probably in the near future.

  He made a mental note with the front of his mind to keep on watch for evidence of such coming disruption, got up hastily and dressed.

  He stepped quietly into Dahno's bedroom and found, as he suspected, the other was still asleep. Considering that Dahno had probably been up until the early hours of the morning, this was not at all surprising. Too many of his clients wanted to see

  him secretly—and "secretly" often meant at hours when a good deal of the city was asleep.

  For a moment he stood looking down at Dahno. His huge half-brother lay, unarmored by sleep, one massive naked arm flung out over the side of the bed.

  Unconscious in slumber, his face was not the face that anyone saw during waking hours. Now, in this moment of deep, exhausted slumber, the customary glint of good humor was not there, only the naked face relaxed into a grayness of exhaustion. He lay on his side, and the pillow beneath the lower corner of his mouth was damp. Asleep, he looked older now than Bleys had ever seen him—the full distance of years between him and Bleys was visible upon his face. Also the shadows of weariness and worry.

  For a moment, Bleys felt an unusual stir of pity and affection toward him. He went quietly out of the room, and out of the apartment. He would pick up breakfast along the way, rather than risk stirring around in the apartment and possibly waking Dahno ahead of the other's schedule—whatever that was.

  He had breakfast in the dining room of the Chamber itself, and then went directly up to the visitors' gallery. By this time it was a little after nine o'clock in the morning—early for most of the Members, and very early for almost all viewers from the gallery. But when he reached the gallery he found it at least three-quarters full of observers. The desks on the floor of the Chamber were occupied by Members in almost the same proportion.

  Bleys had arranged with Tom, and tipped the man, to have someone hold a seat for him. When he arrived, Tom took him confidently down to the first row of the balcony, and a man sitting three people over, with a one-time-only visitor's badge, looked up, saw them, and rose to make his way out to the aisle. Bleys took his place.

  The substitution attracted some attention from those seated nearby; but not a lot. It was not an uncommon thing to have a seat held until someone with a particular reason for observing should get there. Probably, Bleys thought, at least half if not more of those in the gallery right now, with a business or professional interest in visiting it, had arranged the same thing for themselves on occasion.

  Bleys put the matter out of his mind. He leaned forward to examine the Chamber floor below, and see who was already there.

  McKae, he saw, was already at his desk. Bleys reco
gnized him from his picture. Tall, striking among the rest of the Members, who were for the most part small, middle-aged and out of shape, his athletic form dressed in polished half boots, blue trousers and blouse under a black cloak having a scarlet lining, he stood, rather than sat, as the Chamber's pages brought in, and piled, papers before him.

  Surprisingly, almost as far away from him as they could be, Bleys saw the Five Sisters, sitting together, with empty seats on either side of them, before and behind them. It was the first time he had seen all five there at once; and there was a surprise involved.

  The four he knew—Harold Harold, Shin Lee, Brother Williams and Christdotter Umaluk—had been joined by the fifth, who could only be Hugo Linx of the First Prayer Group. The unexpected element for Bleys was not so much seeing him there, as the fact that he turned out to be a fat man, wearing something between a kilt and a skirt below an ordinary shirt and jacket, and with untidy red hair in a sort of tonsure around the center of his bald head. He was the same man who had stopped Bleys and Dahno the first time Dahno had taken Bleys to the gallery, and threatened Dahno with getting him ruled out of the Chamber building.

  At that time Dahno had shrugged and explained to Bleys that it was inevitable to make a few enemies.

  Nothing, with Dahno, was ever wholly to be trusted. Now, recognizing that the man he remembered had been Linx, and seeing him with the other four, Bleys realized that the whole scene had been arranged by Dahno, to direct Bleys' attention from Linx, as having any connection with Dahno.

  There would be no way that Dahno could counsel the Five Sisters, who were politically powerful only when they worked together, if one of them was an implacable enemy of his. Any counseling done under these conditions would have been impossible.

  The whole meeting with Linx had therefore been set up by Dahno to give Bleys the idea that Hugo could never be one of his clients. That meant that of the Five Sisters it was almost certainly Linx who was the contact with Dahno and through whom he advised all five.