“To hell with the clothes,” he said.
Stubbornly, I said, “You’ll need something to wear, and I know the records backwards and forward. Trust me.”
It was the absolute reverse of the way it ought to have been, but he was too worn down to put up much of a fight. He meekly trooped into the bedroom, and I made for the studium.
All the recent, incriminating information was electronic, so I set the terminal to wipe every entry since I’d arrived, and began shoveling backup disks into a valise. I knew I ought to destroy them, but there wasn’t enough time to sort them out, and Magister Galele would be heartbroken to lose the whole last year of work. I spied a stack of printouts that never should have been made, and stuffed them in on top of the disks. Then I began to systematically search the room for anything damaging. I had barely done the sweep when the Magister showed up.
“I’m done,” he said.
“Did you pack your toothbrush and razor?” I asked.
“Oh. Right.”
“Here, I’ll do it. You go through the closet here for anything recent.” I didn’t think there was anything in there, but it was best to be safe. I jerked open his suitcase to see how well he had done. Better than I had expected, but he’d still forgotten socks and shoes. I raced to his bedroom to fetch them.
We left our rooms with him dragging the suitcase and me toting the valise. When we got to the aircar pad, the pilot already had the motor running. We threw the luggage in the back, climbed in, and belted ourselves. As the aircar began to rise, Magister Galele looked back at me anxiously. I said, “Don’t worry, Magister. If we just stick together, it’ll be all right.”
I was reminded that I had once said the same to Joby.
Chapter Ten
It was drizzling rain when we came to Magnus Convergence, and I saw nothing of the landscape but gray pavement and fog. But inside, the aircar port was bright and busy. At the luggage desk, we found that the blands would deliver our bags to our residence so we wouldn’t have to carry them. I looked to Magister Galele to see where we were going. “Capellan Emissarium,” he said.
The supervisor handling the luggage put Magister Galele’s suitcase on a moving belt. I didn’t want to let go of the valise with all the data, so I looked at the supervisor to see what I ought to do. He nodded at a graydoor. I started off toward it.
“Tedla!” Magister Galele called out. “Where are you going?”
“With the luggage,” I said. “I’ll meet you there.”
“I want you with me,” he said.
I stood hesitantly, not wanting to argue with him in front of the supervisor, but not wanting to obey him either. I knew I ought to let the blands show me the way through grayspace.
“Come on,” he said testily.
The supervisor was shaking his head at the eccentricities of aliens. I realized that residents of Magnus were much more used to Capellans, and might make allowances. So I shifted the valise to the other hand and followed Magister Galele.
Magnus was a much bigger convergence than Tapis. It had over a hundred shafts, each serving a separate order or community. At the very center were three massive supershafts arranged in a triangle and connected by broad, high-ceilinged hallways, so that you could almost always see sunlight. Everywhere were fountains and air sculptures and corridor cafes. I thought that the staff of blands maintaining it all must be immense.
The emissarium was located on one of the central shafts. It was set far back from the edge to make room for a broad plaza full of cafe tables, plants, and pigeons. As we crossed toward the bronze double doors, scarcely anyone spared us a look.
Inside was a quiet, lushly carpeted lobby. Behind a curved information desk a Gammadian receptionist sat. Magister Galele said to her nervously, “I need to talk to one of the First Contact team.”
“Emissary Ptanka-Ni is in,” she said.
“All right. Tell him it’s Alair Galele.”
Less than a minute later an alien emerged from one of the doors. With a quirk of surprise I realized that he was one of the original aliens we had seen so much of when I was in the creche, though his hair was now gray and he looked more world-worn than he had on screen. I also realized, from what Magister Galele had taught me, that the caste-stone on his forehead meant he was Vind.
“Alair!” he said, coming up to clasp the Magister’s hand solicitously. “I have been trying to contact you since yesterday, when we heard the news about Tapis. I was getting worried. Are you all right?”
“Oh, yes, perfectly,” Galele said. “I’m just going to have to impose on your hospitality a little.”
The Vind’s face didn’t lose its look of cordial concern, but his voice became sharp. “Why, what’s the matter?”
“A little political hot water, I’m afraid.”
The emissary abruptly switched into Capellan. “This uprising. Can we be linked to it?”
“Well...I think...mistakenly...but there’s some potential for that.”
“We’d better talk in my office,” the emissary said, and turned back to the door he had come through.
“Can someone take care of Tedla?” Magister Galele said in Gammadian.
“I will,” the receptionist answered.
She placed a call to the bland supervisor, then directed me down a hallway to his door. When I entered his tiny office, I found he was an elderly man with a “what-now?” expression, as if nothing surprised him any more—even new blands being dropped on him out of the sky.
He looked me over, human clothes and all, with an expression that seemed to say the world was completely topsy-turvy and there was nothing he could do about it. At last he sighed and said, “Who are you and what are you doing here?”
“I’m Tedla, Magister Galele’s Personal. We came from Tapis.”
“How did he get a Personal?” the supervisor said, as if it were more evidence of the insanity of the world.
The real story was too complicated, so I stretched the truth and said, “Elector Hornaday assigned me to him.”
His face changed, and I realized it was because he had heard Elector Hornaday’s name. “Tapis?” he said sharply, as if things had begun falling in place in his mind.
“Yes, sir.”
I was afraid he was going to ask more, but he didn’t. He just said, “How long will he be here?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“We’ll have to put him in the guest room, I suppose.” He rose slowly and opened the graydoor behind his desk, sticking his head through. “Misery!” he yelled.
“Yes, sir!” said a bright, cheerful voice.
“Come here.”
A young bland appeared in the door. The supervisor said, “We’ve got someone staying in the guest room. This is Tedla, his Personal. Show it around, will you?”
“Yes, sir.”
When we were alone in the bland-run I said to my companion, “Why do they call you Misery?”
“Because I love company,” it said. The bland must have told the joke a thousand times in its life, but it acted as amused as if it were the first time.
The guest quarters proved to be a luxurious three-room suite. In the sitting room, one whole wall was glass, looking out on the sun-filled plaza on the shaft. We were just above the emissarium’s entry door. I put the valise in a closet.
“Is that all his luggage?” Misery asked.
“No, the rest is being delivered.”
“Don’t expect it today, then.”
Since there was no unpacking for me to do, and the room was all ready, Misery took me on a tour of grayspace. The emissarium was a separate building, only four stories high, and unconnected to the rest of the convergence, except at certain points: the front door I had come through, a back door for the humans, and a shipping door into grayspace, where food and supplies came in. The top three floors held the humans’ living quarters, dining and entertaining rooms, offices, a library, and a communications room for talking to their ship. The bottom floor was grayspace. I
was relieved not to be in a massive, anonymous place again. This building had a cozy, small-house feeling, though much busier than Menoken Lodge. There were only fifteen blands on the staff, and they worked hard. They had their own roundroom, and looked down on the convergence blands outside.
When we got to the kitchen, the blands were just beginning to work on dinner. When they heard I was from Tapis, they gathered around me to ask about the uprising. I was astonished at the story they had already heard: that some of the blands had risen up and murdered their supervisor, then occupied their refectory and held off all human attacks for hours, till the martialists had brought in explosives to blow down the door. Then the humans had gone wild—shocked some to death, and mutilated others with kitchen knives.
I started to deny it all, but realized how little I really knew. I could only say, “I’ll tell you what I know tonight in the roundroom.”
“Were you there?” the cook, an older bland named Deen, asked.
I nodded; then, to convince them, I unbuttoned my shirt and showed them the burn on my shoulder. “That’s where they got me with a shocker,” I said.
There were horrified whispers all round. “Were you one of the rebels?” Misery said, round-eyed.
“No, I was trying to help the humans.”
“And that’s what you got for it?”
“That’s right.”
I could see that their trust in the basic reason of humans had slipped a notch.
“Our humans wouldn’t do that,” Deen said for the benefit of the younger blands; but somehow, its voice lacked conviction.
Just then the supervisor walked in, and the blands scattered. I shrugged my shirt back on. When I turned around, I saw the supervisor watching me with a wary expression. I had never seen such a look on a human’s face before: as if I had given him some terrible foreboding. But all he said was, “You can get a uniform from the laundry.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
Contrary to Misery’s prediction, the suitcase arrived soon after. I hauled it up to the guest room to begin unpacking. When I came through the graydoor, I found the lights on. Out in the shaft, the sunlight had faded, though the balconies were full of little starlights. Magister Galele was moving restlessly around in front of the window, whispering to himself. I could tell it had not been a pleasant interview. When he looked up at me, he said, “He says we can’t grant you a refugee visa.”
“Oh,” I said. I wasn’t terribly sure what a visa was.
“He gave some excuse about not having worked out the legal status of blands,” he said. “Never mind, we’ll just have to think of something else. I promise you, Tedla, I will think of something else.”
He looked so agitated, I went up to him and put a hand on his arm to calm him. “Don’t worry. You ought to be thinking of yourself, anyway.”
“I’m already in so much trouble it doesn’t matter any more,” he said, laughing edgily. “I don’t care. My career’s a lost cause. All I care about now is having gotten you involved. I’ve got to see that nothing happens to you.”
I felt a terrible, dangerous warmth for him, then. He looked at me, and must have seen the tenderness in my face, because he said in a whisper, “You understand why, don’t you, Tedla? You understand that I—”
We were very close, when I realized that his impulses were taking over and he was going to kiss me right there in front of the window. I flinched away and went to pull the curtains. By the time I turned back, he was grappling to get control of himself.
“I’m sorry, Magister—” I said.
“No, you were right,” he said, turning away so he didn’t have to look at me. “Please don’t...I’m terribly ashamed of myself. It won’t happen again.”
I ached for him. He thought I had rejected him. “Magister, it’s not that—”
He gave a shaky laugh. “You’d think there was nothing I could do to make this situation any worse. But trust me to think of something. Thank god one of us has some sense, eh?”
He was back in his old self-mocking mode. I stood there, wanting to ease the terrible strain on him, wanting to let him know I didn’t mind. Caution stopped me, even though his self-blame filled the room. The odds of exposure were huge, here; it would only bring him into more danger than he was in already.
I went into the bedroom to unpack his clothes. When my back was turned, he slipped into the bathroom and turned on the shower for a while. When he came out his eyes were bloodshot. I pretended not to notice.
Presently, he turned on the viewscreen in the sitting room. As I hung out his clothes, I listened to the news reports. Absolutely all anyone was talking about was Tapis. Before long, I was irresistibly drawn to the door to watch.
It was then I learned for the first time what had really happened. After Elector Hornaday and I had gone downstairs, the officer of the martialists had decided on her own to lead a party around to the other refectory door—the one into grayspace that I had locked—to prevent any blands from escaping that way and scattering through the bland-runs. For some reason, she had decided to put explosives on the door. With a sense of disbelief, I watched an interview in which she said in her cool, metallic voice, “It was an emergency measure, to ensure quick access in case the elector needed our help. At that stage, she had more or less forbidden us to take action. But when the fire alarms went off, and we realized the mutineers were jeopardizing the safety of the convergence, I decided on my own to intervene.”
“It sounds like that was a good thing,” the interviewer said sympathetically.
“As it turns out, it was. We were able to enter the room and quickly put an end to the whole incident without any loss of life except the one unfortunate woman.”
“Was she already dead when you arrived?” the interviewer said.
“No, she died later in the curatory.”
Unable to contain myself, I exclaimed, “Of what?” But the interviewer didn’t ask.
As the interviewer congratulated the martialist on her decisiveness and heroism, the screen changed to a diagram of the refectory, so everyone could follow the action. I said, “That was a pack of lies!”
Magister Galele looked at me. “What do you mean?”
“We heard the explosion. I didn’t know they were blowing the doors down, but all the blands started screaming. It was after that the fire alarms went off. It was probably the explosion that set them off.”
The Magister said, “Then the blands hadn’t set any fires. That’s been the whole excuse for what happened, you know. That they were endangering the convergence.”
“It was the damned martialists endangering the convergence,” I said angrily.
I went back into the bedroom to finish my job, but couldn’t stop listening. A woman began talking, attacking the martialists for their ferocity. Now I learned that seven blands had died. She cataloged them indignantly: one of head trauma, two from internal injuries, and four from repeated electric shock. “Just one shock will incapacitate most blands,” the woman said. “Two will paralyze them or induce convulsions. The third, fourth, fifth, and sixth shocks must have been administered to blands lying helplessly on the ground, presenting no threat to anyone.”
The rumors about mutilation were also, apparently, true. “I don’t need to say a thing,” the woman said. “I just ask you to look at these pictures, and ask if this was the work of civilized humans.”
I moved to the door, but when I got there, Magister Galele had blanked the screen. He turned to me, looking sickened. “You don’t want to see this, Tedla,” he said.
“Was there anyone I know?” I asked, dreading the answer.
“I don’t know. They didn’t show names.”
I came out and sat next to him on the couch, the unpacking forgotten. I was terribly afraid again. I had felt safe since leaving Tapis, and now that was gone. There was something volatile in the air, an infectious hysteria, and the viewscreen was spreading it. Magister Galele turned on the picture again, and we watched together, m
esmerized by the sight of frenzy feeding on itself.
Everyone was attacking everyone else. A communitarian came on, criticizing Elector Hornaday for her spineless handling of the situation, claiming her delays and vacillation had only escalated the problem till the whole convergence came into danger. “The humanitarians have brought this on all of us, through their laxity,” the man said. “We’ve got to take the warning and crack down. It’ll be too late when we’re all murdered in our beds.”
Then there was the expert who pointed out how vulnerable all the convergences were to an uprising. “You ask, Could it happen here? The answer is, of course it can. The way our cities have been built, they can infiltrate anywhere, through their warrens. We have given them complete access.” He argued for riot doors on all the bland-runs, and remote-controlled pipes of knockout gas, and even implanted chips so every bland’s movements could be tracked.
“We don’t trust each other any more,” I said numbly.
“Did you ever?” Magister Galele said.
“It was all built on trust. The humans trusted the blands to be dumb and docile, and the blands trusted the humans to follow their own rules. Even if we didn’t like it, we could predict it. Now it’s like we’re strangers. We don’t know each other any more.”
“There’s only one good thing,” Magister Galele said. “No one has said the word ‘Capella.’”
***
The next morning, right after his breakfast, Magister Galele went to the communication room to send a message to his home planet via the orbiting ship. I, meanwhile, dumped out all the data disks we had rescued onto the bed, and began sorting them. When he came back in, he was in a much more cheerful mood. “Let’s take all that stuff to the library to work on,” he said. “They’ve got a big table in there. It will be much more convenient.”
“Am I allowed in there?” I asked carefully.
“This is a Capellan place, Tedla,” he said. “You’re allowed anywhere you want to go.”
I knew it wasn’t as simple as that, but I didn’t argue. When we got to the library, it was empty. I spread out the piles of disks and printouts, and he began browsing the shelves, finding assorted Capellan classics he thought I ought to read. Soon he had assembled quite a pile of them, and began telling me what was in each one and why it was important.
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