by Matt
Shane laughed, a little bitterly.
"What's funny?" said Peter behind him.
"Nothing," said Shane, without turning his gaze from Shepherd and Wong. "I was just remembering how the Pilgrim had been born. Nevermind. Next question. Since you've had the Pilgrim explored as a symbol and realize he's a symbol only, how can people like yourselves commit yourselves to working with me—except with your tongue in your cheek?"
Both Shepherd and Wong stared at him. Wong's face seemed unemotional, but Shepherd was clearly registering shock.
"It—it may be possible to make logical explanations for why the idea of the Pilgrim has caught on," said Shepherd. "But that's not the point. Sooner or later we're going to have to fight the aliens, even if we end up doing it with only our bare hands and no plan of battle at all. From somewhere there'd have to have come someone to lead us, someone to direct the outrage in all of us. You happen to be the one who has, Pilgrim. You're real, you're there, and people are going to follow you, whenever and wherever you want to lead them. And those people include me—"
He glanced at the man beside him.
"And I think Mr.—Mr. Wong, too, is ready to follow you anywhere you want to lead him."
"That's right," said Wong calmly. "Not to follow you— even if you seemed to be taking us all to nowhere but death— would be unthinkable, to me, at least."
Shane took a deep breath. This was what he had encountered with Johann, in a slightly different form. But the last thing in the world he had expected had been that there would be true believers among the professionals. Then he remembered what he, himself, had said to Maria and Peter just shortly before—that he, himself, was not the Pilgrim, but something used by the Pilgrim, which was a being made of the substance of human belief. A coldness washed through him and he was glad of the cloak and the closed cowl that hid his reactions from the others in the room. He was as much in the power of the Pilgrim as any of those here. It controlled him, now, rather than the other way around. It had become too big for him to control. He felt like someone held prisoner, invisible and undetectable, inside a ghost.
He shook off the feeling.
"Tell me," he said, "and bear in mind I'd be spreading the word through the Resistance as well as through you, how long would it take to set things up so that in twenty-four hours we could have every Aalaag Headquarters in the world surrounded by people dressed in cloaks and carrying staves?"
Wong and Shepherd looked at each other, then back at Shane.
"Surrounded by how many?" Shepherd asked.
"As many as possible—but at least enough to make it seem as if the whole countryside had come marching against the Aalaag," he answered.
"You're talking about thousands," said Wong.
"Tens of thousands. Every one of those Headquarters is in one of the great cities of the world. I want it to look as if all the city and all the countryside around it are moving in on the Headquarters building."
"We'd have to study the situation—," began Shepherd. Shane interrupted.
"I don't have time for studies!" he said. "All I want from you is a guess; but I need it now. Give me an estimate—I don't care how rough it is. The important thing is that all over the world people dressed like the Pilgrim should gather around Aalaag Headquarters buildings as if they were going to attack them. The two things that have to be is that there has to be an overwhelming number of them in each case, and that it has to happen all over the world at the same time."
"You mean you don't want to announce this generally ahead of time?" said Wong. "You want men and women ready to dress and march, but not to know when or what for?"
"That's right," said Shane. He thought he heard Maria draw a sudden breath behind him, but he could not be sure.
"If anything like that happens, they'll send the Interior Guard out against them with the strongest weapons the aliens let them carry," said Peter's voice behind his other ear.
Shane kept his gaze on Shepherd and Wong.
"Ah, I see," said Wong. "That's what you want. You want them to let themselves be shot down by the Interior Guard and still keep coming. The sort of thing Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi used against the English in India."
"Not at all," said Shane. "The Aalaag wouldn't understand nonviolence. To them it would only mean the people involved were sick beasts. No, I want them to fight back—but only with what they have with them—their fists, their teeth, their staves. I want them to fight back, and by sheer numbers eventually kill all the Interior Guard sent out against them."
This time there was no doubt in Shane's mind that he heard an indrawn breath from Maria.
"But why that, rather than nonviolence?" said Wong. "In the end it makes the same sort of statement, and what you're suggesting sounds bloodier and worse...."
"You're right in one thing," said Shane. "The people involved will be making a statement by what they do; and I don't like what'll happen any better than you do. But the Aalaag are only going to pay attention when they see there's no more of their Interior Guard left."
"Then they'll come out themselves with their own weapons," said Shepherd. "They may wipe out everyone in sight, clear to the horizon."
"They may," said Shane. "But first they'll want to know why we beasts are acting in this unusual way. The Pilgrim will tell them."
As he said the words, he felt as if some great change took him over. He had just stepped across a line into territory from which there was no retreat. He had never intended to come this far; but already he was here. He had ended by completely accepting what he had believed was a fairy tale, when he had started out telling it to Peter's Resistance people—that the Aalaag could be convinced to leave the world, leave the human race to itself, if the proper statement was made to them.
"I see," said Wong. "You—"
"Not me," said Shane emptily. "The Pilgrim will tell them. I wouldn't know how—but the Pilgrim does. He's known from the beginning."
The two men on the couch were staring at him; and, out of sight behind him, no doubt, Peter and Maria would be staring, too.
"I see," said Maria, proving him wrong. "Yes, I see."
"I don't," said Shepherd. "What do you mean—talking about the Pilgrim as if he was somebody else besides you?"
"He is," said Shane heavily. "I'm sorry if that doesn't make sense to you; but it's true. I'm just a vehicle for the Pilgrim—or rather I'm just one of the vehicles for him and the rest of you are vehicles, too, only not in the way I am. Don't you recognize yourselves that you're vehicles for what the Pilgrim stands for? I tell you, move the people against the Aalaag Headquarters as I said, and the Pilgrim will do the rest. He'll tell the Aalaag what it means."
"And what will it mean?" said Peter.
"That we won't be cattle for them anymore," answered Shane.
"And what," asked Shepherd quietly, "if their answer to that is to destroy every human being and wipe the surface of the world clean with fire—since they're going to lose the use of us anyhow?"
"They may do just that," said Shane. "The Pilgrim has hopes they won't."
"But there're no certainties," said Peter.
"That's right," said Shane. "No certainties. None."
He was suddenly angry with them.
"I shouldn't have to tell you that!" he said. "There's no choice in this. We do what we have to!"
He made himself be calm. It was not their fault they did not understand.
"We have to go on faith in all this," he said. "As I know the Aalaag, if they don't see any hope of keeping us, they won't just destroy us, out of spite. They'd consider doing something useless like that too petty and beneath them. But they'll have to be absolutely sure we're no use to them at all; and that's my job."
He took a deep breath.
"You still haven't told me how long it would take to get the people gathered around the Aalaag Headquarters," he said.
Shepherd and Wong looked at each other.
"A month?" ventured Shepherd. "Just to get the
word out. And then—"
"Too long. Far too long. It has to be no more than two weeks from today. No more," said Shane. "The time is now. The Pilgrim knows it. Don't tell me word can't be passed in a few days—I've seen rumors travel faster than I did—when I was flying around the world with Aalaag help. And don't tell me it'd take any healthy human being more than a night to make an acceptable robe and staff for himself or herself."
"You're completely forgetting such things as food and shelter," said Peter. "Thousands coming into a city on foot; and what are they going to eat? Where are they going to stay?"
"Those who come must understand they're probably coming in to die. Food and shelter are beside the point. If they escape alive, that'll be the miracle."
"My God!" said Shepherd in an appalled voice. "And you think they'll come on those terms? Maybe some like us might, but—"
"They're part of the Pilgrim, too," said Shane, "all of them." He felt strangely certain of himself. A sort of exaltation had him in its grip. "You just do the job I gave you of getting the word to them. I'll guarantee they'll come. They have to come. Time is shorter than any of us think—"
"But—," began Wong; he was interrupted by the ringing of the phone. Maria picked it up.
"Who? Shane Evert—," she began; but before she could say anything more, Shane felt something like an invisible static spark that leaped from her to him, and suddenly, in the middle of the room, was the nine-foot figure of an Aalaag in white suit and black boots. His face turned toward Shane.
"Shane-beast!" The deep voice, speaking in Aalaag, seemed to push outward the confines of the small room that was the parlor of their hotel suite. "You are ordered to report at once to the First Captain. At once!"
The figure vanished.
"—And that time," said Shane, with bitter humor, "has just grown even shorter. I've just been ordered back to my base Headquarters."
He pushed the cowl of his robe back from his head, revealing his face to them all.
"It doesn't matter any longer if you see me," he said to Wong and Shepherd. "The Pilgrim himself is here to stay now."
He stared at the uncomprehending faces of everyone there —except Maria, who looked at him with an expression in which something like joy and fear were mingled. The words of the broadcast officer-image had not, of course, been understood by any of the others.
"Start spreading the word to get ready immediately," he told the other three men. "I don't know when I'll give the word to move, but it'll be soon. Peter—I'll probably phone you, so leave a phone number where you can be reached. I leave it to you, after that, to get the word on to these other people. Get going now—"
He got to his own feet as the rest rose automatically to theirs.
"Maria," he said, looking at her. "We're leaving for the House of Weapons. At once."
26
Some of Shanes exaltation seemed to have touched Maria as well. In the plane on the commercial flight to which they had been assigned to return to North America, she wrapped her arms around his left arm and hugged him to her.
"You really are the Pilgrim," she said, "now."
"Well... part of the Pilgrim." He turned his head to smile at her smile. "The Pilgrim is everybody, you, as well."
"But you're the most important part," she said, still holding him firmly.
"Perhaps," he said. "For the moment."
But he knew what she meant. A remarkable peace had come over him. He had not tried to sleep since earlier in the day, but somehow he knew there would be no more nightmares. His mind felt clear and light and sane; and he was no longer afraid—of anything.
"No perhaps," she said. "The rest of us were fumbling around in the dark. You knew."
"Knew?" he echoed. He felt strange with the word in his mouth. "What I really know is almost nothing."
"But it's more than anyone else does. It'll be enough. You'll see."
"I hope so," he said, from the uttermost depths within him.
For the first time in three years, he realized, he had stopped trying to understand—either the Aalaag or his fellow humans. What drove him now was a racial reflex, no more to be understood by the prehistorically recent logic of his forebrain than it was to be resolved into neat equations. And what drove the Aalaag was a like element, equally old and racial. These two forces were headed for a collision that was made inevitable by the very nature of the instincts themselves.
It did not matter if he was brave or cowardly. It did not matter if he was right or wrong. All that mattered was that the deep, unthinking mainspring of his being committed him inexorably to a meeting with another mainspring-driven race, and that one of them must turn the other aside when the time of meeting came. The potential terrors he had known of for three years were still there, waiting for him in due course. He could not avoid them and they had grown no easier to think of in the interval. But they no longer mattered because now he had accepted that there was no alternative but to go up against them.
He slept, accordingly, on the plane during the long flight over the Pacific Ocean—a deeper, quieter sleep than he had had in months. The plane landed in San Francisco in the darkness of a spring-like night; and an Aalaag courier ship was waiting to take them the rest of the way to the rooftop of the House of Weapons.
"You were ordered to return by the First Captain," said the Aalaag Officer of the Day as Shane and Maria stood before his desk in the hall leading to Lyt Ahn's offices. "Nothing was said about your being accompanied by other cattle."
"Forgive the stupidity of this beast..." The alien words flowed automatically from Shane's tongue. "This other with me has for so long been included in my orders as my assistant that it did not occur to me but what the immaculate sir wanted us both to return to him."
"Perhaps. It may be that the wording of your orders was at fault. Otherwise, the fault is yours. The First Captain will make all clear. You may proceed now to his offices."
"We hear and obey, untarnished sir."
They went up the long avenue of black and white tiles between the walls hung with long arms.
"He wants to see us right away?" Maria asked in Italian.
"Evidently. The Aalaag don't routinely think of night as a sleeping or even a nonworking time, you know. Just let me do the talking, as usual."
They reached the door of the offices, touched them and were ordered inside.
"What is this?" said Lyt Ahn from behind his desk. "I wish to speak only to you, Shane-beast."
"Forgive this beast, immaculate sir. This other will withdraw—" He spoke to Maria in Italian and saw a flash of mixed concern and relief in her eyes as she turned and went out, closing the doors behind her.
"Shane-beast!" Lyt Ahn stood up behind his desk and walked around it to the couch where he usually sat during their informal talks. He sat down. "All that is to be said at this time from this moment on is to be private between us."
As he said so, the silvery grayness like mist flashed momentarily around them, then cleared to reveal walls, furniture, ceiling and floor—everything, including the couch where Lyt Ahn sat and one chair facing it. Without waiting to be ordered to do so, Shane walked over to the empty chair, and at Lyt Ahn's nod, seated himself in it.
"This is a thing that should never be done," said Lyt Ahn to him somberly. "It is a thing for which there should never be a need. But matters are not as they should be. A beast should never be allowed a glimpse of the private matters of the Aalaag."
"I have no wish to see or go or hear where I should not, to where my master may not want me to be," said Shane—and for a moment he almost meant it. For some reason the situation, Lyt Ahn's tone of voice, or both together had touched a deep feeling that was like understanding and pity in him.
"If I did not wish it, you would not," said Lyt Ahn. "I do wish it, out of my duty as First Captain of the Expedition landed on this planet. Listen to me, Shane-beast. I have decided to give you to Laa Ehon on a permanent loan."
The last words rang in Shane's
mind for a moment without sense. Not only were they the last thing he had expected to hear, but all his plans had been based on the fact that he would have access to Lyt Ahn. It was not for a beast to protest an order of one of its own superiors and unthinkable in it to protest the order of an Aalaag; but too much was at stake here for him not to speak.
"If the immaculate sir would listen for a second," he said impulsively, "there are reasons why it would be much preferable if I could stay with the First Captain. I—"