Power

by Laurence M. Janifer

  “I’m not going to take up any more time,” the familiar voice said, metal somehow bred, now, with weary, understanding flesh. “I know we’re all tired. But that vote is needed, and it is needed now. I need it; your constituents need it; if we are to avoid the flash of a true panic, the Comity itself needs it.” And then the formal, necessary words: “I shall retire while you deliberate.”

  There was a flurry of applause, quickly stilled to a confusing stir, as Penn, without seeming to notice any sound or motion in the least, stepped from the low platform to the right of, and below, the Chair, and, nearly marching, went out, straight as a stick, by the left-hand double doors. Even Leverett turned his head to watch that progress, as the stir subsided and a silence fell, and silence remained at the last, not until the doors had opened but even until Penn, rigid, dutiful, aware, had become invisible in distance and darkness, and the doors had slowly and, in their way, quietly shut. Then the sound began: muttering, movement, half-a-dozen men rising at once and one leading all the rest by a small fraction, standing at his desk, awaiting the recognition of the chair.

  Reisinger got it. “Mr. Reisinger,” muttered at least as much out of curiosity—the statistician, the calculating, seldom-speaking man, had burst from character during the evening, and Leverett was still unsure of motive—as from the Chair’s vague feeling that the worst had better be over and done with as quickly as possible. For it was going to be bad; Leverett knew that before he was quite clear, in his own mind, on what he meant by bad.

  “Mr. Chairman,” Reisinger said, in that still, precise voice the Dichtung had heard so seldom, a measured voice that added crushing weight to the force of his next words. “How much of this treatment shall we have to put up with?”

  The reaction was a shock-wave: a muttering; purposeful stirs; half-checked motion at forty different desks; all, at last, descending into whispers and a strained, unbalanced, tense and frightened stillness. Reisinger stood, staring ahead and up into the wide eyes of calculating Leverett, waiting it out.

  When the silence was almost, but not quite, complete again, his dry cold voice went on. “We’ve heard about policy here, and loyalty, and very nearly everything else. What I’d like to know, however, is this: what went wrong? What went wrong with the Valor? Was it no more than a simple accident that this particular complement was aboard her at this particular time? Or was it deliberate?” Reisinger overrode the instant rise of voices all around him: “Mr. Chairman, I think that is something we would all like to know.” And with the last few words he seemed slowly, almost involuntarily, to slip back into the character Leverett had thought he had known, the precise, distant, unaccustomed man, the man of figures and proofs; not, ever before, the man of bitter attack.

  But the voices continued to rise, and members were standing everywhere in the chamber; with a sense of great relief Leverett saw Davidman, a bristling bull of a man with short white hair, dependably a follower of Penn, as were most of the scholar-group representatives like him. “Mr. Davidman.”

  Several minutes went by before the crowd began to quiet itself, and Davidman, standing in a sort of rugged ease, simply waited them out. His speech began in a normal rumbling conversational tone; but before ten words of it were out he had hardened the attack to a tone of full challenge: “If I understand the imputation just made, gentlemen, I am glad to say that I am sane enough to ignore it. Let us get on—”

  Reisinger was on his feet, active as a scarecrow: “Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman.” Leverett nodded hopelessly at him; Davidman had turned, very slightly, to watch the statistician, no expression at all on his square large face. “Point of privilege. Is the member calling me insane?”

  “I have not referred to the member.” Davidman’s most thoroughly official voice, and nothing whatever on his face. Leverett took up the statement gratefully.

  “No reference has been made. I am sure that this honorable body—”

  And Dale’s cold snarl cut through the chamber like the edge of the sword of death: "Honorable!”

  Silence, then, and a faint stirring to follow; and, before Leverett had decided to speak into the shock, Davidman went ponderously, belligerently on.

  “Yes, sir, this honorable body.” The heavy voice began to lighten and rise with the relief of a perceived plan. “I describe the Dichtung itself; as our Chairman has noticed, I make no reference to individual members.” He looked round, as if for further challenge; there was none. “As I had begun to say: I think we should get on, gentlemen, to a vote. It is late. We are tired.”

  And then, again, Dale’s snarl: “We’ll outlast you—”

  Davidman began to say something, but it was quite lost; near him and behind him, Transcome, ancient and hollow-eyed, was rising, gesturing; he spoke without waiting recognition from the Chair:

  “You Will outlast nothing, sir; you will not outlast truth.”

  And sat down again, at least as slowly, while the roar of crosstalk blanketed the chamber; what, Leverett asked himself, had happened? What had turned his Dichtung into this snarl of wild dogs?

  Knowing, perfectly well, the answer from the start: blood stained all of the trail, the blood of Norin, whose arrogance had rubbed too many raw; the chance to bring him down had overridden all other consideration.

  It was not enough. Leverett had heard some scraps of the Valor’s message; had that, he began to wonder, had that nonsense really stirred this membership? This—honorable body? Did some few snapping maniacs believe. . .

  The atmosphere had caught him, he realized; he himself was thinking in their terms, making their flat fast judgments; the single day had changed all of the world he knew, and now reached into his vehicle of knowledge, into himself . . .

  Fredericks, dependable as Dale’s second since the fight had long ago begun, was up and speaking. Leverett, thinking, lost, off balance, forced himself to listen.

  “Are we to follow the Emperor supinely, by his order? Have we no minds of our own?”

  Demeuth turned, half rose, to answer, smooth and slow as if his blinking mask were the eternal reality. “We have, sir; indeed, sir, we have. And we have used them, I believe; I do believe we have. The vote will show how we have done that—that is what the vote is for, sir.” Dale cut in, all in one harsh breath:

  “I request discussion—”

  There was more; it went unheard in the new uproar. Leverett, clinging to his duty as if it were the

  only branch holding him midway down a mountainside, struck at the desk with his gavel, beating order slowly into the mad assembly until he, at least, could be heard for a small moment: “On the Member’s request—if it be put in the form of a motion—” The rules were all he had to cling to; he would cling. Dale shot out instantly:

  “I so move.”

  Leverett continued, steadily: “Is there a vote? A show of hands—” But a cry taken up in all parts of the chamber rode him down:

  “Voice vote . . . voice vote . . . ”

  “Very well, then,” Leverett said as the shouting quieted. He stared round the great room for a second, seeing only strangers; seeing blood, and the word freedom, and insanity. “All those in favor—” he began, finding his voice grown suddenly weak and irresolute. Listening, he nodded, and, a second later, asked: “All those against—” and nodded again. “The nays rule. We shall therefore proceed at once to a vote—”

  Dale snapped two words into the late-night brightness of the room. “I appeal—”

  Leverett, with the rules, the Chair for his hold, returned the blow as quickly as it had been given: “Mr. Dale, do you appeal the ruling of this Chair? To whom do you appeal it?”

  The young man hesitated for a heartbeat; blood pumped through the body, paused, and returned. “To anyone,” he began at last, burning with some passion, choking with the necessity of its delivery; “to anyone—who isn’t a friend of the man who—” For a few seconds he was, in the storm of voices, movements, banging, inaudible —“whose son began this. Whose son has to be�
�handled carefully.” The hatred in those two words went beyond Leverett’s imagination, beyond his belief; the chamber darkened and became slowly bright again. “Whose—”

  The shouting members overcame Dale again; this time Leverett could distinguish a general word in the appeals, the strictures: “Vote—vote—”

  Dale, too, could hear it; and, when sound allowed, he replied to it. “Very well. I want to point out that the man isn’t even here, Mr. Chairman. For a recall and for a vote on this matter, he isn’t even here!” Dale’s voice spiraled upward into a scream that left the chamber ringing and silent, and into that trembling silence Leverett spoke slowly, sadly soothed to have found a simpler standing-place: the defense of a colleague and a friend; the defense, when all was said and judged, of a good man. “Members saw Mr. Norm fall ill.” he told them all, “on this floor, earlier in this day. He is—” And then a pause: tell them? Better not, Leverett decided; the line would hold for Penn, despite the hysterics of the few, and nothing would be served by stampeding members with the whip of sympathy or fright. Briefly, he noticed that his second hand-hold had been good; he was thinking like the man he thought he’d known, once again: Leverett; Chairman. He thought, and hoped, that his grip might continue. “—under the care of a doctor,” he finished, the pause barely perceptible, and not commented upon.

  The line would hold; as Leverett himself had, in the end, held; had, in the end, become simply himself again. But—for how long? Penn’s power and prestige ensured the immediate vote; nothing whatever ensured a single second beyond that vote. The Dichtung had changed; its members had changed. And what was to be left?

  He looked out at the sea of faces, out at the chamber. He saw strangers, in a strange place; certainly he had never opened his eyes to these people in this grand place before. And might never do so again; never (he found himself thinking) see them whole again. . . .

  The damned woman was somewhere else, crooning over her jewels, painting herself fit to be seen, the royal madwoman; Cannam wished he cared nothing for her: throw her to the wolves, and his problem was solved. But he could not let go; she was herself, and part of him; she represented . . .

  He did not know, and could not know. Something. That was enough, because it had to be, and self-analysis was for the feebs. Wasn’t it? But if she’d been by his side . . .

  Then everything would be worse, much worse. In the puffed luxury of his living-room, he faced Quist’s man alone. No hostages, no sidemen to defend (and no sidewomen either!), but man on man, one against one. As it was meant to be; but Cannam knew, and could not hide from himself, that he felt naked, unprotected without his “corps,” the writers, actors, technicians who surrounded him at crisis-time. Not that they were any damned good, but, still. . .

  “I’m talking to you,” he told the little man across the room. Colorless, pale, a walking cipher. Credits in his bloodstream for corpuscles. “Isn’t that enough? I told Quist—”

  “He gets impatient.” The voice, too, was any-voice: impossible to remember or identify. Nothing to be afraid of. Nothing. But Cannam heard a tiny whisper in his mind, and the whisper told him that nothing was the only thing to fear; which sounded like religious foolery, Alphard’s games. Ignore it. Cancel. “The news isn’t good, you know,” the pale man said.

  Cannam shrugged. Idly, carelessly. After all, he was an actor, wasn’t he? “There’s nothing more I can do.”

  “There’d better be,” the flat common voice said, just as carelessly. “Who’s that who came in here before me?”

  Curiosity was a weakness in any opponent; all that could hurt him was what he didn’t know, and thought he needed to. Cannam shook replies out of his mental files, picked two or three as possible, and found himself uncontrollably stammering; could Alphard’s presence do him harm?

  Cancel. “A—a—friend,” he heard himself say. “Nobody.” And stopped before he babbled on and gave himself away—whatever thing there was to give away. Cancel, all the damned frights, the damned threats...

  “Come on,” the pale man said, not moving, scarcely breathing. Credits for corpuscles. Cannam swallowed dry air.

  “A—my brother-in-law.” He hadn’t meant to say that; what was the sense in the truth? He flung words out in rescue: “He’s—not connected with—”

  The pale man very nearly changed expression—almost smiled. “The Church one?” he said, his tone broadening as faintly as the line of his lipless mouth. “The whole family, now. Isn’t that neat?” A further broadening. “Isn’t that convenient, now?”

  “For God’s sake—” Cannam burst out. Night went on outside, getting darker. The room closed in.

  “Listen,” the pale man said, quite casually. A chat, that’s what they were having—for God’s sake, a chat. “They’re not going to blow up the ship. And the old man’s disappeared. You put those together, and you see why Quist is worried.”

  Cannam blinked. “Disappeared?”

  The pale man shrugged and, once more, nearly smiled. “Gone,” he said. “They won’t just cancel out his son, you know—that’s behind it. He’s off someplace private. With the Emperor.” The smile turned to a sneer, a snigger, a faint disgust that flattened all the room like a blow. “Making plans. You know. And in the meantime—”

  “Nothing’s going to happen,” Cannam said. Firmly, he hoped; as firmly as an actor ever spoke. If he could only hold that line . . .

  “Not if you get the money up, it isn’t,” the pale man said, and the line vanished. “But you’d better get it up. Now.”

  There was no room to move or breathe. “I haven’t got—”

  “And she won’t give it to you?” the pale man interrupted. “And her brother, the Church one? Or—” He paused. “Is it you didn’t—”

  The truth: “I can’t.”

  “You’d better,” the pale man said, agent of a natural law.

  “In a little while—”

  “Now.” the pale man said, and sat back among the cushions, all of him except his eyes relaxed. “I’ll wait.”

  25.

  But apparently Heyst was not a hermit by temperament. The sight of his kind was not invincibly odious to him. We must believe this, since for some reason or other he did come out from his retreat for a while. Perhaps it was only to see whether there were any letters for him at the Tesmans’. I don’t know. No one knows. But this reappearance shows that his detachment from the world was not complete. And incompleteness of any sort leads to trouble.

  —Joseph Conrad, Victory.

  26.

  The room, dark and close, was warmer than his father liked, Alphard knew; it was his tiny study, which he kept at a temperature satisfactory to him, and his father had no business even thinking about objecting to that ... as Alphard almost convinced himself he was doing. Charity, his mind said, and followed with the beginnings of a seminary text: Since we cannot know the motive of an action (as we can know no certainty whatever), it is best that we assume the morn lives most pleasant to ourselves; and, therefore . . .

  Yes, yes, of course; the chatter of his mind threw up irrelevancies he had not readied himself for. The thing was, What was the old man here for? What did he want—sidling in secretly, not even Cardinal-explicator Jerrimine or the servants having any idea he was visiting. . . .

  Well?

  Norin looked at him with a remote, dry stare Alphard had seen many times before on his face, and had never been able to interpret. “Call it sanctuary,” he said. He spoke in a whisper; even so, his voice was not as easy, as relaxed, as usual; and what did that mean? Alphard closed his mind to it. “There are things that have to be done; there’s no one else to do them.”

  Standing, his hand touching the top rail of the room’s single chair, he waited in the darkness. He had told Alphard to leave the lights off. “What are you doing here?” Alphard asked; sooner or later the ridiculous situation would make sense to him. There was a certain logic expectable in the world: chance made some events more probable than others.
This late-night melodrama of a visit had to have some sort of explanation, didn’t it?

  “I’ve told you,” Norin said, and Alphard imagined that he really thought he had: some confusing talk about Thoth, and the ship, about needed help and the Emperor’s inability to keep faith. It made little sense to Alphard, and, besides, it hardly seemed relevant; there were other, more immediate, considerations.

  “But if the Cardinal-ex—”

  “Jerrimine’s at work on his lectures,” Norin said in a flat, tired whisper. “He tapes a lecture a week, and he spends his evenings working on them. It’s late; he’ll be asleep before long. And so will you.”

  As if that settled anything! “I can’t just—”

  “Alphard,” his father said, and the next words came like a single whipstroke. “You chose this Church. I didn’t choose it for you.”

  Guilt, guilt, the easiest of self-indulgences. And nothing more; for, if nothing were certain, then there could be no guilt. So much was plain. The argument did nothing for the spreading stain of feeling in his mind. “But—”

  “The Church you chose, Alphard, is going to have to help me.” The old man waited and took a long, shaky breath, holding more tightly to the rail of the chair. “Can you see why?”

  Ask him to sit? But that would prolong the . . . well, there was, really, no choice. Alphard made a gesture; the old man, with a pointed smile as sardonic as if he had read the mind of his son, nodded, came round the chair, and sat down. Slowly, and carefully. It had nothing to do with Alphard. It couldn’t have. . . . “There’s really nothing we can—”

  “Sanctuary: remember?” The old man gave him again that death’s-head grin. “It’s an old word, Alphard, an ancient word. But it applies. You—your Church—can give me that.”