Way of the Pilgrim

by Matt

  A cold shiver threatened to emerge from its hiding place in the center of Shane's body and betray itself as a visible tremor. With a great effort, he held it under control, reminding himself that the aliens here were not watching him. For the moment, once more, he had become invisible, in the same sense that the furniture and the walls of the room about them were invisible.

  "It is"—Laa Ehon's voice drew Shane's attention back to what the Milanese Commander was saying to the rest of the table—"a matter of hard statistics. May I remind the untarnished and immaculate officers here assembled that the preliminary survey of this world, carried on over several decades of the planet's time, gave no intimation of such an attitude or such a potential falling off of production. The projection gave us instead every reason to believe that the local dominant race should be tamable and useful in a high degree; especially when faced with the alternative of giving up the level of civilization they had so far achieved, and on which, in so many ways, they had become dependent. Remember, they were given a free choice and they chose the merciful alternative."

  "I've never been quite sure, Laa Ehon," put in Lyt Ahn from the head of the table, "about the accuracy of that adjective for the alternative. It doesn't seem to me that I can bring to mind a single incidence in which a race of conquered cattle believed the alternative they had chosen to be one deserving of the word 'merciful.'"

  "It was clear they understood at the time of takeover, First Captain," said Laa Ehon, "even if your corps of translators had not yet been established. I remember there was no doubt that they understood that their choice was between accepting the true race as their masters, or having all their cities and technology reduced to rubble, leaving them at their original level of stone-chipping savages. How can that alternative not have been merciful when they also clearly understood that we also had the power to eradicate each and every one of them from the face of their planet, but chose not to use it?"

  "Well, well," said Lyt Ahn, "perhaps you're right. In any case, let's avoid side issues. Please get to whatever point you were going to make."

  "Of course, First Captain," said Laa Ehon.

  The words were said mildly enough, but for the first time there exploded in Shane's mind what he suddenly realized he should have sensed from the first: that there was a power struggle going on in this room, at this table.

  And the antagonists were Laa Ehon and Lyt Ahn.

  As soon as the realization was born in him, his mind was ready with excuses for its not being obvious to him minutes before. Even six weeks ago, he told himself, he would not have recognized the subtle signals of such a conflict, blinded by an unquestioning assumption that his master's supreme position among the Aalaag was unquestioned and unassailable. But now those same signals leaped out at him. After all, the others were theoretically the equals of Lyt Ahn. They had only elected him to leadership and could remove him by majority vote, if necessary.

  Yes, now that Shane was aware of them, the signs of conflict were everywhere, in the tone of the voices of those speaking, in the attitudes with which the various officers sat in their places about the table—in the very fact Laa Ehon could request that Lyt Ahn have Shane himself brought here; and then delay this long in giving his full reasons why he had requested it.

  Shane had not read the implications of those signals before this because he had let himself become too secure in his belief in Lyt Ahn's authority. Only now, he realized how the curious small freedoms allowed him by the First Captain, as well as the momentary Aalaag-uncharacteristic confidences and transient betrayals of emotion on the part of that ruling officer should have prepared him for this moment of understanding, but had not.

  Lyt Ahn, he suddenly realized, was vulnerable. The First Captain had to be vulnerable in this sense. Shane had come to understand how the Aalaag lived by tradition and the mores developed by that tradition. Tradition and those mores had been developed to put survival of the race first, the individual Aalaag second. They could not have failed to provide means for removing a Supreme Commander who became incapable or proved himself inept. Just how such a procedure would work, Shane as yet had no idea. But of this he was suddenly, utterly convinced. Lyt Ahn was under attack here and now; and Laa Ehon was either the attacker or the spearhead of that attack.

  As for the others present... Shane was reminded of the social patterns of a wolf pack. All those there would follow unquestioningly the Alpha leader—who was Lyt Ahn—right up until the moment when his leadership was seriously brought into question. Then, if that question was not effectively answered, they would turn to follow the questioner and aid him in rending their former leader. But, if the question was effectively answered, then the questioner would lose all support from the others—until the next instance of questioning arose. It was that moment of doubt in which the other Captains would swing about to support the questioner that Lyt Ahn must foresee and avoid.

  "... I have requested this meeting," Laa Ehon was saying, "primarily because of my own difficulties in meeting production estimates with the cattle of my Area; and hoping that my fellow senior officers could suggest ways by which I might improve the situation. I must admit, however, that it begins to appear to me lately that the problems I notice are not restricted to my District alone, but reflect a general problem of attitude which is worldwide—and may even be growing—among the subject beasts."

  "It seems to me," broke in a thick-chested male Aalaag halfway down the table on Lyt Ahn's right, "that what you say almost approaches insult to the rest of us. Laa Ehon, are you saying we others have failed to notice something that you've clearly seen?"

  "I did not say, or imply, that I had seen anything with particular clearness," said Laa Ehon. "I'm only attempting to point to the importance of something you must all have already noticed—the discrepancy between the original estimates of beast-adjustment to our presence in the time since our landing, and the actuality of that adjustment. I believe there's cause for concern in that discrepancy."

  "We've been following the patterns established by successful subjugations on other worlds in the past," said another of the female Aalaag, one whose face showed the hollowness of age beneath her cheekbones. "It is true, as Maa Alyn just said, that each world is different, each race of beasts different—"

  "And some, a rare few such races, have even turned out to be failures," said Laa Ehon.

  A feeling of shock permeated the conference, perceptible to Shane where it might not have been to any other human, even another one of the special handful of humans employed by Lyt Ahn; the expressions of the Aalaag officers there had not changed at Laa Ehon's last words. There had been only an unnaturally prolonged moment of unnatural silence; but Shane was sure he had read it correctly.

  "It seems to me, Laa Ehon," said Lyt Ahn, finally breaking that silence, his heavy voice sounding strangely loud in the room, "that you're holding back something it's in your mind to tell us. Did you ask for this conference merely to air a concern, or have you some special suggestion for us?"

  "I have a suggestion," said Laa Ehon.

  He turned to look again at Shane, and the eyes of the others at the table followed the changed angle of his gaze.

  "I suggest that the situation here—insofar as it reflects a delay in beast-adjustment to our presence—calls for some actions which must necessarily break to some small extent with the patterns of successful subjugation mentioned by Maa Alyn—"

  He glanced toward and inclined his head slightly toward the elderly Aalaag female who had recently spoken.

  "I suggest," he went on, "that we vary that pattern—oh, in no large way, but experimentally, by attempting to counter this marking on walls we've all been seeing in our Districts, this evidence of some rebellious feeling among a few of these beasts—"

  A chill passed through Shane. Clearly now, Laa Ehon was talking of the activities of foolish and doomed Underground groups like Maria's in Milan; and the marking was equally clearly his sketch of the Pilgrim figure.

  "
Such things," said the thick-chested Aalaag, "are familiar, even expected, during the early years of the subjugation of any race of beasts. Such defacements cease as succeeding generations adapt to serving our purposes, and forget the resentments of their forebears. This is far too soon to see a problem *in a few rogue creatures."

  "I beg to disagree," said Laa Ehon. "We know that of course the beasts communicate among themselves. This one standing before us now may be aware of more discontent among its race than we suspect—"

  "You suggest we put it to the question?" inquired the female Aalaag called Maa Alyn, who had been the first to reply to Laa Ehon; and the chill within Shane became a solid iciness of fear.

  "If I may interrupt," said the heavy voice of Lyt Ahn, almost sardonically, "the beast in question is my property. Moreover, it is an extremely valuable beast, as are all the talented small handful like it that I keep and use. I would not agree to its being questioned, and possibly damaged, if not destroyed, without adequate proof of need."

  "Of course I don't suggest the damaging of such a valuable beast, particularly one which is the property of the First Captain, and which I myself have seen to be so useful." Laa Ehon turned back to face Lyt Ahn. "In fact, quite the contrary. I only asked that the beast be produced in order to illustrate a point I think is important to us all. With all due respect, First Captain, I've yet to be convinced that what this beast does can't also be done by at least a large number of its fellow beasts, if not most of them. Certainly, if they have the physical vocal apparatus which can correctly approximate the sounds of the true speech—or even approach those sounds understandably—and their minds have the ability to organize that speech in coherent and usable fashion, one almost has to assume the potential to be a property common to their species as a whole."

  "I can only assure you," said Lyt Ahn, with a touch of formality in his voice, "that this isn't the case. There seems to be something more necessary—a conceptual ability, rare among them. At my orders many such cattle were tested and only the handful I use here were found capable on a level with this one you see before you. In fact, this particular beast is the most capable of all those I own. None speak as clearly as this one."

  "Far be it from me to differ with you, First Captain and immaculate sir," said Laa Ehon. "You are informed on this subject and I'm not. Nevertheless, as I have pointed out, faced as we are with a problem of adjustment on the part of this species—"

  "As you have continued to point out to us, untarnished sir," said the thick-chested Aalaag, "almost to the point of weariness since we first sat down together here."

  "If I have overemphasized the point," said Laa Ehon, "I apologize for that to the immaculate persons here assembled. It merely seemed to me that enunciating the point is necessary as a preamble to stating my personal belief; and that is that under the circumstances it's worth exploring even some unorthodox solutions to the problem, since it threatens to diminish worldwide production by these beasts. A production, which I don't need remind any of us, that is important, not merely to us on this planet, but to all our true people, on all the worlds we have taken over; not only for our present survival, but for the protection of the Immaculate People as a whole in case the Inner Race, which stole our home worlds originally, should make another move, this time in this direction."

  "As you say," murmured the voice of Lyt Ahn, "you don't need to remind us of that. What exactly is this suggestion of yours, then?"

  "Simply," said Laa Ehon, "I propose we depart slightly from past procedure and set up specific beasts as Governors in our respective Districts, holding them responsible for the production of the cattle in their Districts; and allowing them to use other cattle as subsidiary officers to set up their own structures of authority to guarantee such production."

  "Absolutely against standard operations!" said the thick-chested officer.

  "Indeed," said Maa Alyn, leaning her body slightly forward to stare down the tabletop directly at Laa Ehon, "those who've gone before us have found by hard experience that the best way to handle native cattle is to give them all possible freedoms of custom and society according to that which they have been used to, but never to allow individuals among them power as intermediaries between ourselves and the rest of the beasts. Whenever we've set up intermediaries of their own race like that, between us and them, corruption on the part of their officials has almost invariably occurred. Moreover, resentment is born among the general mass of the cattle; and this, in the end, costs us more than the original gains achieved by using intermediaries."

  "I seem to remember something just said, however," answered Laa Ehon, "about each world and each race upon it being a different and unique problem. The recalcitrance shown by the local cattle as a whole on this particular world of ours, as demonstrated by the statistics, is of an order above those shown on any previous world we have taken over. It's true there's been no show of overt antagonism on the part of the general mass of cattle—yet, at least. But on the other hand, it would be hard to show any except our directly used beasts, such as those in the Interior Guard, or this Courier-Translator Corps of the First Captain, who can be said sincerely to have made a full and proper adaptation to us, as their owners and rulers."

  "That doesn't mean your proposal is the correct solution to the problem," put in a male Aalaag who had not spoken before. He sat little more than a meter from Shane's right hand, at the extreme far end of the table from Lyt Ahn.

  "Of course," answered Laa Ehon. "I recognize the danger of making any large changes—let alone ones that go against established procedure—without having adequate data first.

  Therefore, what I'm actually suggesting is that certain measures be put into effect on a trial basis."

  He tapped the tabletop before him and screens alight with data in the Aalaag script appeared in the surface before each alien there.

  "I've had surveys made," he went on, "and you see the results of them on the screens before you. I've also had hard copies delivered to your offices by available underofficers of mine. You'll note my survey turned up three Districts best suited to the putting into effect of temporary test procedures to see if my estimations are correct. Two were island areas; one being what the cattle formerly called the Japanese Islands, the other called the British Islands. There are advantages of homogeneity and diversity in each case. Of these two, the British Islands seems the better prospect—"

  "These islands, of course, are within my District," said Maa Alyn stiffly. "But you also mentioned, I think, three— not two—areas as being possibly suitable as testing areas?"

  "I did," said Laa Ehon. "However, the third area, according to my surveys, would be this one surrounding the House of Weapons, and I didn't think we'd want to make any experiments that close to our prime seat of authority, even if the First Captain would give permission... as, of course, I would expect to wait upon your permission, Maa Alyn, before proposing to experiment in the area of the British Isles."

  There was a murmur around the table that seemed to Shane to express diverse opinions.

  "So," went on Laa Ehon, ignoring the sound, "what I would like to suggest, with the concurrence of this Council and everyone concerned, is to set up a temporary governing structure such as I described earlier; monitored directly by us, with a few officers of the true race supervising and working in parallel with each individual beast who is in a position of intermediate authority as Governor."

  There was a moment's silence.

  "I see a great many difficulties...." began Maa Alyn.

  "Frankly, I do myself," said Laa Ehon. "This is unknown territory to all of us. For one thing, as has been pointed out, any tendencies for the beast-governor and his staff to take advantage of their positions over their fellow cattle would be difficult for us to see and check promptly. This, however, it has recently occurred to me—and this was why I asked our First Captain to send for the beast who stands before us now —could be greatly helped by requiring all beast-governor staff to have contact with
their supervisory numbers of the true race in the real language."

  "But such a condition would require that the beast-governor, to say nothing of his staff, be not merely adequate, but fluent, in the true language—" The thick-chested Aalaag broke off suddenly. "Are you proposing that the First Captain lend his corps of translators to this task? If so, that immaculate sir would of course have to volunteer them for the duty. There is no way in honor this Council could suggest—"

  "Not at all—not at all," said Laa Ehon. "I was merely about to suggest that the beasts chosen to be Governor and staff be put first through an intensive course of teaching, to make them fluent in the true language, using as teachers—if the First Captain agrees—some of his translators such as the beast before us—and, of course, provided that my overall suggestion meets with the approval of the Council. The intent would be to produce cattle who would be able to explain themselves clearly to their own kind while still being clear and understandable in their reports to us, thereby making for a strong, plain link of understanding between us and the mass of cattle in general."