by Matt
On his first day there, Shane was surprised to pass in one corridor an Aalaag of the twelfth rank whom he recognized. The alien took no notice of Shane—which was to be expected. But Shane recognized the other as Otah On, the officer who had been with Laa Ehon in Milan as the two considered Maria through the one-way glass to the room where she had then been held captive by them. For an officer as young as Otah On to be of the twelfth rank could only be explained by the fact that he was being considered for senior position ahead of his normal time—and that could only mean that he was the Aalaag equivalent of an aide-de-camp to Laa Ehon. Which should mean that Laa Ehon was here—but officially, at least, he was not.
Otah On could, of course, thought Shane as he went on his way, have been sent out by Laa Ehon to check into the state of readiness of this new Unit. But there was really nothing to check on here, yet. Both Aalaag and humans were merely going through the motions of running the Unit, which was too new to have received, from the local, already established offices of human and alien control, the information it needed to do any effective work.
Shane finished his own perfunctory tour of inspection, left and returned to his own hotel, where not only Maria but Peter waited for him. Maria had signaled the local Resistance people three days before where she and Shane were to be found, and Peter had flown in just that morning. Peter had arrived as Shane was leaving for the Government Unit and they had had no time to talk. It was not surprising, therefore, that he erupted out of his chair as Shane entered the parlor of the suite in which he and Maria had set themselves up.
"Good! You're back!" said Peter. "I've got half a dozen urgent things to talk to you about—"
He broke off.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
Shane saw Maria also standing back and looking at him, concerned. He was at once startled and alarmed to find that these two—that even Maria—could read his expressions so correctly. He thought back uneasily to the twenty minutes or so he had spent at the Unit after running into Otah On; but he had had no extended conversations with any of the local staff, human or alien, in that time; and in any case none of them had ever seen him before and were no more likely than any other stranger to interpret the look on his face.
On second thought, he told himself, it was hardly likely that, after two years of carefully schooling himself in the House of Weapons to give nothing away, he would have wandered about the rooms and passageways of this local Aalaag institution with anything less than an unreadable face, whatever he had been showing to Maria and Peter here as he came in.
He dropped into a chair, letting fall beside it the attache case that held his pilgrim robe.
"Nothing's wrong," he said—and now he had no doubt that his face was back under control. "What were you going to tell me?"
Peter looked at him penetratingly for a minute, but since Shane stayed unmoved, he shrugged.
"Remember how I told you the last time I saw you that the word of the Pilgrim was everywhere, and all sorts of people were beginning to wear the robes?" he said. "Well, it's still going on—even more so, it's like an avalanche the way people are adopting the robes and staff. They're even sitting in board meetings now, in robes, with staves leaning against the backs of their chairs!"
"Good," said Shane.
"In fact, those people I told you about—" Peter broke off suddenly.
"Go ahead," Shane said, and was surprised to hear a weary note in his voice. "I think we can talk safely here. This time, I checked."
"Those people I told you about, the Organization, are thinking of making a distinctive sort of robe and staff to be sold to those who want to identify themselves specifically with the Pilgrim—"
"Fine," said Shane. "Have them make four billion of them."
"Four billion?" Peter stared at him and smiled uncertainly. "You said four billion?"
"And I meant four billion," said Shane. "That's the population of the world, more or less, isn't it?"
"You're making some kind of a joke...," said Peter. "How could they possibly manufacture four billion robes? And what makes you think everyone on the planet's going to want to wear them?"
He ran down into silence, continuing to stare at Shane.
"You're serious?" he said finally.
"I'm serious," said Shane; he made himself shake off the weariness that he now felt. He had slept badly again the night before, once more with the same nightmare he could not remember on waking. "It's all right. I know they can't make that many. I know they won't be able to believe that everyone would want to wear them. But that's what's going to happen. You'd better tell them—just for the record."
"God!" said Peter.
Shane, with an interior twinge of shame, saw that the other, at least, was halfway along the road to taking Shane's unsupported word for what he had just said. Shane was suddenly sick of the continuous need to mislead even those closest to him; but at the thought of opening his mouth now, before these two, and telling them the full truth, his courage trembled and retreated.
"Nevermind," he said. "What else?"
Peter went on to talk further about the "Organization." Apparently the professional Intelligence and other special groups of a large number of nations were now setting up the worldwide network that was to be in effect a coming together of the forces of all the major governments; plus some governments less than major to the point of being tiny. Once more, these people had sent a message imploring Shane to meet with their representatives and discuss a plan of action.
"... They say it's impossible for something as massive as their organization, no matter how well coordinated, to operate totally in the dark," Peter wound up. "They'll meet you under any conditions you want to name. They say the people who'd come to meet you are aware of what could happen to them at the hands of the Aalaag as a result of their having met you, and they're ready to take that risk for the sake of what could be accomplished by the meeting—"
"They've got it wrong," said Shane. "I'm the one who's not willing to take the risk. There's always more of them. There's only one of me and I'm irreplaceable."
The last word was bitter in his mouth, but he got it out firmly enough.
"Tell them I've got something instead for them to do," he said, "if they're all that eager to be part of the action."
"They'll do it, of course," said Peter. "But about this business of your meeting with them—"
"I've said no to that one too many times already. I'm not going to talk about it anymore," Shane said. "This other is a job they can do, though. There's a possibility Laa Ehon is meeting with some other very high-ranking Aalaag—and maybe that meeting's taking place right here in Cairo."
He had come to this final, farfetched possibility after exhausting all the others he could think of for Otah On's presence at the local Government Unit. Such a meeting, of course, would be entirely reasonable—undoubtedly any other Aalaag invited were from areas where Laa Ehon either planned to or already had begun to set up new Government Units. It was entirely plausible that such Commanders should meet; and that they should meet without also inviting Lyt Ahn, whose rank would put him above personal involvement with details of a project already in the hands of a subordinate officer.
"This can show me how good they are, these people who want to meet me so badly," said Shane. "See if they can find out where Laa Ehon is, if not in Milan. See if they can find out if other Aalaag of equivalent rank are there, too; and if all those aliens get together, see if these people can bug the meeting and get me at least a sound—preferably a sound and picture—recording of that meeting." He grinned, grimly.
"The discussion, of course, will be in Aalaag," he said. "You can tell them they have my permission to try and translate what they've recorded before they pass it on to me."
Peter looked at him strangely.
"You sound as if you think they can't find anyone to translate it," he said.
"Not to any real purpose," Shane said. "The only ones who could make anything much more than a s
tab at translating the talk at such a meeting are in Lyt Ann's Courier-Translator Corps; and even the best of those would only be able to give you what's said there, not its implications for us—us humans."
"But you can?" said Maria.
She had been so silent all this while since he had come in that the sound of her voice jolted Shane. He looked over at her, sitting in a chair not two meters from him.
"Yes," he said, "because I know something of the internal politics of the Aalaag that I don't think any other translator in Lyt Ahn's Corps does. Anyway, have these Organization people of yours check into it and do what they can."
"They will," Peter said. "I'll have a recording for you inside of a few hours after any such meeting's held."
"Don't be so sure, even if they find it, that they can record it," said Shane. The weariness he felt crested within him like a wave. "There's a privacy tool the Aalaag use... but have them try, anyway. Now, what about the rest of those half-dozen things you urgently needed to talk to me about?"
Peter looked grim.
"They all have to do with your meeting the people we've just been talking about."
"In that case, there's no use discussing them," said Shane. "Anyway, I've got something else for you to do as well. I want to talk to the local Resistance leaders in this area, and every other area as I get to it."
"You didn't do that at Milan," said Maria.
"And I made a mistake by not doing it," said Shane to her.
"I let Marrotta's attitude concern me too much. It wasn't until I got to know Johann—" He turned back to Peter. "He was the Milanese Resistance member who drove me down to Rome and back—that I got a clearer idea of what I'm going to have to do; and it means I talk to the Resistance people everywhere I go. Does anybody know you here? Could you get them together to listen to me?"
"I know someone to ask here," said Peter. "I think they'll fall all over themselves at the chance to have them speak to you. You realize, I hope, that some of the Resistance people you'll be talking to, here and elsewhere, are going to turn out to have been Organization members, too?"
"I know," said Shane. "I don't worry about Organization people who'll be doing nothing but sitting and listening to me. Now—also what I need the Resistance to do is to get together thirty or forty men about my size, all dressed in brown pilgrim robes—this color of brown—" He reached down to open his attache case and pull out his robe. He passed it to Peter. "Let them use that as a model, but get it back to me by tomorrow evening. Thirty robes, say, like that and with staves; and have those who are going to dress up gather at a spot I'll be telling them about through you."
"For an appearance of the Pilgrim?" Peter asked quickly. "Or demonstration of some sort?"
"An appearance," Shane said. "I'll keep the details to myself, as usual, if you don't mind. The point I'd like you to concern yourself with is that they should be in the vicinity I'll tell you about until a certain time. Then at that certain time a few minutes later, I want them to gather quickly into a clump, a small crowd I can walk into wearing my own brown robe and with my own staff, and get lost. They're to gather at that time, break up the minute the word is given to scatter, and all go in different directions, so that I can go in mine and can't be traced. It'll be best if they don't know why they're dressed that way and doing what they've been told to do—better in fact if they aren't actual Resistance members but just people sympathetic to the Resistance, or even hired for the occasion —so that's all they know."
"I can tell the local people that," said Peter.
"Fine," said Shane. "Now, on another point, if I give you a list of places verbally, can you remember them all, and in order? I don't want them written down."
"I can," said Peter.
"All right, then. My next stops—as far as I know them now—are to be Moscow; Calcutta; Bombay; Shanghai; Beijing; Sydney, Australia; Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, Brazil; Mexico City, New York City and then back to the House of Weapons. It's a list that can be changed at any time by orders from Lyt Ahn; but as far as I know it now, it sets up some more jobs for those people you mentioned. I want transportation of all kinds—air, land and water—available and waiting for me if I need them, at each one of these cities. Also, they're to contact each city's local Resistance people and help to bring in from close outside the city any other particularly prominent Resistance leaders, so that I can talk to them as well as the locals."
"They won't like the idea of acting as transport for people you're willing to meet with and talk to, when you won't meet them," said Peter.
"Too bad," said Shane. "I'm not having life exactly the way I want it, either."
"It's just that I can't understand why you'd want to go with the amateurs when you have professionals begging to help you," said Peter. "I really can't."
"Because the amateurs just want to see the planet freed," retorted Shane. "The professionals want that, and something as well for themselves in the process."
"Some of them—perhaps," said Peter. "But there have to be a lot of them—"
"Even one would be too many," said Shane. "Can't you see that if there's even one we can't trust, then anything we set up could come crashing down around our ears when he or she decided to act alone out of self-interest?"
Peter opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again.
"Besides," said Shane, fighting another wave of weariness, "there's plenty for the professionals to do. I'm counting on them to organize—and move when I call on it to move—an army of part of that four billion, in pilgrim cloaks and carrying staves."
Peter frowned suddenly.
"Do you mean—," he began and checked himself. "Is there some way you know of turning staves into weapons?"
Shane laughed... and his laughter continued until he recognized the hysterical note in it and cut it off with an effort.
"That's right," he said, "they'll be weapons. The fact is, they're already weapons. Except on this last trip to the House of Weapons with Maria, I've spent at least an hour of every day there in fighting practice with the staff. There's half a dozen different martial arts schools for use of it as a weapon —if you don't believe me, get a staff of your own some time and try me out."
Peter stared at him with a puzzled expression.
"But that sort of use isn't what you've got in mind, surely?" he said. "Besides, didn't you tell us all in London that the last thing we could do was meet the aliens head-on, force to force, and expect to win?"
"That's what I said," answered Shane. "I didn't say we might not have to meet them head-on and take a few million casualties, just to convince them we meant what we said."
He laughed, without pleasure, at the look on Peter's face.
"You think it'll come to that?" said Peter, after a long moment.
"It well may," said Shane. "Did you think that somehow I was going to give you a bloodless victory?" Peter stared at him.
"God help me!" said Peter. "I think I did."
He dropped into a chair himself, his face very still; and with lines noticeable between his eyes and around his mouth that Shane had never noticed there before. Shane felt a sudden spasm of guilt, combined with sympathy for the man. It was followed by a rush of anger at the fact that these emotions should have to be awakened in him simply because Peter had not thought the present situation all the way through to its inevitable consequences—consequences to Peter himself, as well as others like him.
"Well, now you know," he said harshly to the Englishman.
"He's only human, you know!" said Maria to Shane. Her voice and her eyes were angry.
"I suppose so," said Shane wearily. "But a tiger in the road is a tiger in the road. You can't just wish it away. Look, Peter, you'd better get busy setting up that gang of imitation Pilgrims for me."
"When do you need them?" Peter's voice was remote.
'Tomorrow afternoon, if possible," said Shane. "Call me as soon as you find out if it's possible, and I'll give you a meeting time."
"Ve
ry well." Peter rose from the chair, a little slowly, like an aging man. "I'll be calling in an hour or two, I think."
"Good." Shane struggled briefly with his conscience and lost. "I was wrong about the safety of public phones and bugged rooms. When you call me up, talk about this as if we were planning lunch tomorrow."
Peter nodded.
"Good evening then," he said to Maria, going out.
As the door closed, Shane turned to look at Maria in his turn, and found her expression still angry.
"You expect too much of other people," she said.
"Perhaps I do," he answered exhaustedly. He got to his feet and headed on leaden legs toward the bedroom. "I've got to get some sleep."
The next afternoon, just past 2:00 pm, Shane got off the bus which stopped at the circular area in front of the main entrance through the outer wall of the Citadel, and was pleased to see a large number of other figures standing or moving around the general vicinity in brown robes and carrying a staff, as he was. In spite of their relative numbers among the more ordinarily clad people near the entrance, they did not look out of place with the gold buff color of the outer wall as a background for the earth color of their robes. The area was only lightly crowded. He went across the street toward the wall to the right of the ramps leading up to the entrance.