Other

by Gordon R. Dickson

  “All right, then,” said Bleys. “You each know what you’re after. Why don’t you go ahead with it? Talk it over with each other, and so forth. We’ll get together in about three hours here for dinner and see where we stand at that time.”

  “And now, Bleys,” Toni said, “you’ll see the medician?”

  “There’s no hurry. I’ve got the twenty-six hours at least, even if those people on the Council weren’t bluffing—and considering my diplomatic status, a bluff is quite possible—”

  “Hmm,” said Dahno, looking doubtful.

  “I need to rethink this whole Newtonian situation; and since I usually do that best when I let my unconscious work on it first, I’ll leave the situation to you three for the moment.”

  He got to his feet. “So I’m going to take a nap. We’ll talk again in a few hours at dinner. Then the medician can check me out.”

  For a moment, Toni looked as if she might argue with him, but she said nothing.

  They dispersed.

  While Bleys was an ordinary insomniac as far as night sleeping went, and often lay with his mind galloping faster and faster until finally it drove him from the bed—in his afternoon naps, he usually dropped off as soon as he closed his eyes.

  This time, happily, was no exception. He lay down in his bedroom with the door open to the balcony so that the afternoon breeze came through; but with the window wall dialed to obscurity, to the point where the room was in a night-like gloom. Lying so—it seemed—he merely blinked his eyes.

  A blink only—and he opened them on a small, interior sense of pleasure, to see Toni coming toward his bed. His mind still held the tag end of a dream that had been about her; so that he was not surprised to see her there and smiled up at her.

  “It’s dinnertime,” she said, “and we’re all together with things to tell you. Are you ready to eat with us?”

  “Right away.” Bleys shrugged off the last heaviness of his nap and swinging his legs over the edge of the bed as he rose to a sitting position.

  In the dining room, the table-float had been reduced to a size suitable for just the four of them, and the meal was already on the table. As they sat down, Bleys saw Henry’s lips moving silently and realized that Henry was saying his own private prayer before the meal. For a moment, it brought back memories of his first meal at Henry’s farm and himself as a boy; and then the memories were swept away by other concerns, and they had all begun to eat and drink.

  The late-afternoon light of Alpha Centauri B came through the window wall and filled the room with a warm but revealing light that emphasized the fact they were alone.

  “Oh, almost forgot.” Dahno put down his large goblet of wine and reaching into his pocket. A moment later, the blue globe of discontinuity that made them private enclosed them once more.

  “By the way,” said Bleys, “where are those two volunteers that showed up—Will Sather and Kaj Menowsky? Is someone seeing to it that they’re fed and taken care of?”

  “I’ve got a Soldier with them to make sure they have everything they need. Toni gave them a lounge with an adjoining sleeping room at the far end of your suite here,” Henry answered. “All right, Bleys?”

  “That’s fine,” said Bleys. “I’ll see that medician—Kaj—Kaj Menowsky—as soon as possible when we’re through here. Did he object to my putting it off until then?”

  “He wasn’t happy about it,” Dahno said. “I had a little talk with him. The sooner the better, on general principles, he says; but a proper diagnosis calls for equipment we haven’t got and don’t dare try to get for fear of alerting the Council. The ship’s clinic will have the necessary equipment, above and beyond the few things he’s carrying with him, to build you an antidote—only he called it a ‘counter-antagonist.’ Eat your dinner and let us catch you up on present information. Then you can have your examination.”

  “Good,” Bleys said. He was, in fact, both hungry and thirsty. He began to eat and drink even as he waved his hand at the rest of them. “Go ahead, then. Tell me what you’ve found out and whatever you think I ought to know.”

  The three looked at each other.

  “You start, Dahno,” Toni said.

  “All right,” said Dahno. “Bleys, I’ve already briefed Henry. There are actually four different, armed outfits the Council could put into action to stop us, if we try to move you off-planet. The first and most available is the undercover squad of the city police. But the Council may not want information about us to be circulating in the Woolsthorpe police force, from which it could easily leak into the public news. The news media is controlled by the Council, but that control is so automatic, and so self-censoring, normally, that in this case the information might not get censored before it was made public.”

  Bleys nodded.

  Dahno went on. “The second bunch are the Lab Security Inspectors, who have their headquarters here. They’re actually a paramilitary outfit that normally operates in uniform—and I doubt the Council would want people in uniform going against you in the public eye—away from that eye would be different. Of course, they could send them in in civilian dress; but again, they’re a large and semi-public body, and it’d take time to get them out of uniform and into action. More likely are the Woolsthorpe police Special Squad. That’s actually a number of individual small squads—any number of which, however, are trained to be integrated and used as a single larger unit. Also, they’re particularly trained in city fighting. Henry agrees that they’re the most likely opponents to ran into—and probably the first we’ll see.”

  He stopped.

  “Well,” said Bleys, after a second’s silence, “you mentioned four.”

  “Sorry,” said Dahno. “So I did. In addition to the three I just mentioned, there are the Council Guardians. Specially trained individual security people, belonging to the Council alone and having the job of protecting and guarding the Council members and the people of its various subsidiary units. These could possibly be sent after us fastest, but they’re not trained to fight as a coordinated military unit. Oh—and there’s the spaceforce barracks units—that makes five, not four—Woolsthorpe is Headquarters for Newton’s Space Force, such as it is; and they’ve got barracks here for the regular military units that act as subsidiary troops and guards for the Council, itself. But these last are pure space-and-surface military; and the least likely, Henry thinks, to be used against us. They simply aren’t trained for guerrilla fighting, and most of their weapons will be far too powerful, from the Council’s point of view. In other words they might get us, but they could also visibly damage parts of the city or spaceport, in the process.”

  “I see,” said Bleys. “And Henry, what do you think of all this?”

  He looked at Henry.

  “I think as Dahno has told you, Bleys,” said Henry, “I’ve got a clear idea of what will need to be done—”he glanced at both Dahno and Toni, then back at Bleys—“thanks to the help of these two, and what they were able to find out.”

  He glanced at Dahno and Toni again.

  “So, if you don’t mind”—they both nodded, and he turned his attention back to Bleys—“Bleys, you’ll do nothing, except let yourself be carried along. In this case, you’re in the same situation as Dr. Kaj Menowsky—I should say Medician Menowsky—and the blue-bubble inventor. You’ll be a passenger we’re getting safely on to the spaceship.”

  He stopped and looked at Bleys sternly.

  “I understand,” Bleys said.

  “Good,” said Henry. “The afternoon performance of the Symphonie des Flambeaux runs late in the afternoon, so we’ll be into twilight almost from the time we pick you up and well into darkness on the way out to the ship. That will help. The Soldiers have a large advantage in fighting at night—that should be useful against the sorts of Newtonians Dahno tells me could be brought against us. You go to the Flambeaux with Toni, and she’ll take you away just before the end of the performance. Do what she says and leave the auditorium with her. The two of you will be
picked up in a driver-controlled vehicle, driven by a Soldier.”

  “One driver-controlled vehicle?” asked Bleys.

  “One,” said Henry. “Each Soldier will have his own task and go about it separately, including picking up a vehicle for himself and perhaps one or two others, depending on the job of each. They will each perform these tasks at points far separated in the city, after seeming to be just putting in the day wandering around and enjoying themselves. The vehicles will be stolen; their alarm systems and any outside control connections put out of order, so that they are completely free to go anywhere. It’s necessary that we don’t gather all our people together during the first stage of the escape.”

  “Fine,” said Bleys. “It’s your department, Henry. If you think that’s best, we’ll do it. But you plan on us all getting together at some point or other?”

  “Yes,” said Henry. “Now, there are four points where they are most likely to try to stop us. One is just where we’ll be coming out of the inner-city trafficways onto the main spaceport route. The next: well outside the city, at the highway bridge over the river Da Vinci. By the time we hit the bridge, though, it should be dark enough so that while they’ll have had a chance to set up a roadblock, we’ll have the night to work in.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” said Bleys. “But I’d think any military, paramilitary or even ordinary security unit would have facilities for lighting an area they wanted to defend; lighting it so brightly that there wouldn’t be much darkness for any opposition to take advantage of.”

  “That’s right,” said Henry. “Still, we’re going to be moving as fast as we can, and hoping that they won’t have time to set up the kind of lighting and other equipment they might usually have with them. They’ll probably have some ground-level lighting; but, within limits, our Soldiers can take care of that.”

  “I see,” said Bleys. “Go on, Henry.”

  “Once past the bridge, the next best point for them to set up a roadblock is going to be at our entrance point to the spacefield area. We can theoretically come in by any entrance to the spaceport pad—and you know how much ground it covers—which should mean they’re going to have to cover all possible entrances and therefore spread thin whatever forces they have available. That, along with a diminished but still-useful darkness, is our advantage as far as getting onto the field goes.”

  “Do we know where Favored is parked on the spacepad?” Bleys asked.

  “Yes.” said Henry looked briefly at Dahno.

  “Nothing to it,” said Dahno. “I just called spaceport general information. An automated system told me where.”

  “They won’t know exactly what we’re headed for on the pad, at first,” Henry said, “but they’ll start to pinpoint it, the closer we get. As soon as they know what sector of the pad, they’ll be able to cluster a makeshift—but maybe effective—defense there, to keep us from getting past them. This will be the last opposition we’ll have to crack before we can get to the ship; and when we do, we’ll face opposition. They’ll have force waiting to stop us even while we’re taking off. Dahno tells me, legally, they’ll have to leave us alone once we’re off the pad and headed into space; and once in space, we can phase-shift beyond their finding. Don’t need to waste time talking about that.

  Now, go and see Med Kaj and have him examine you, Bleys.”

  “I’ll do that.” Bleys frowned slightly. “But—forgive me, Uncle—you’ve given me a lot of general information but no specifics at all. Have I suddenly become someone not even my own people trust?”

  Both Toni and Dahno started to speak, but Henry’s voice cut through theirs.

  “This is my responsibility. Bleys, in this case, that’s what you’ve become. Kaj’s told us about what was done to you. While the main purpose of what the Council put in you was to kill you if no antidote was given in time, there was undoubtedly something else: an added regular drug—to make you an informant.”

  “Informant?” Bleys frowned.

  “A chemical, that would make you talk,” Toni explained. “It’s been known for centuries that there’s no such thing as an actual truth drug. But there are drugs that will make you talk uncontrollably; the way someone who’s drunk might reveal more under the influence of alcohol, say, than they would if they had been sober; only much more effective. The person might even babble things he wouldn’t ever normally want whoever was around to hear. Imagine the drunk-talk tendency multiplied, to where it’s a compulsion.”

  There was a moment’s silence.

  “You see, Bleys,” Henry said, in his immovable tone of voice, “if you know my plans in detail and you’re taken by the Newtonians, the Council could find out nearly all—if not all—you know, along with the assignments of all of us—including my Soldiers. And I have a duty to protect those who fight for us, where I can.”

  His last words came out with the same calm but unyielding finality in which he announced all his decisions. But Bleys, looking at him, saw in the tiny wrinkles around his eyes, the same signals of pain he had seen once before. It had been shortly after Bleys had been sent to live with Henry on Association; a time when Henry had found it necessary to beat his oldest son because he believed it a father’s duty to do so.

  But the fact he had done this had almost destroyed Bleys emotionally. He had been brought up by his mother, a native of Kultis, one of the twin Exotic worlds, where they believed that to willfully cause any pain—but particularly physical pain—in another human being, was not only the worst of crimes; it was essentially unthinkable—unimaginable.

  Blindly, muffled in an unfamiliar nightshirt, Bleys had tried to go to his slightly older cousin. Henry had intercepted him; and with an understanding beyond that of Bleys, had stopped him gently, turned him around and sent him back to his own bed. But it was then that Bleys had seen the pain he saw now and the stern will that leashed it, in and around Henry’s eyes.

  But this time the pain was not for the other, slightly older boy—his cousin Joshua. It was for Bleys himself.

  Chapter 30

  Bleys stood in one of the smaller lounges of his suite, with Kaj Menowsky and three tabletop machines, which surrounded him, viewing him from three separate angles with the irritable red eyes of their onlights. In this modern day and age, he had not been required to strip in order to be viewed from the uppermost hair on his head to the skin on the underside of his feet, with these parts and everything in between examined in three dimensions of microscopic sections.

  The machines tolerated clothes by ignoring them. However, they were quick to object if he so much as twitched a muscle. They each complained about the movement immediately, with a sharp beep the moment sight was lost of whatever had been under examination—and now had to be found again.

  “They’ll get it eventually,” Kaj said. “But every time you hear a beep, they have to go back and start over to find it. The less you move, the quicker the examination will be over.”

  Kaj was abstractedly reading a series of hieroglyphics that clicked out on a tape from a fourth machine that evidently gathered and condensed the information from the three observing Bleys.

  The medician’s words were like something pointed and sharp jabbed into Bleys’s back. For someone who had trained himself as strictly as he considered he had, they struck him as very close to an insult.

  He told himself grimly that he should be able to stand absolutely unmoving for any reasonably necessary period. He had simply been careless until now, letting bis mind run free and his body take care of itself during this examination. But from now on… I am a statue, he told himself. A statue of pure and solid marble all the way through. That is what the machines will find. Marble. Unmoving. And my time sense will be compressed, so that however long I have to stand still, it will seem like only a few seconds more to me.

  Bleys closed his mind down on what he had just thought and achieved it. The machines did not beep anymore… time had no importance until Kaj spoke again.

  “Well, t
hat takes care of it,” said a voice, waking Bleys to an awareness that the red lights on the machines had gone out. Kaj went on, “It’s pretty much as I thought. The Council piggybacked a compulsive-talk drug—which won’t be hard to identify and neutralize—on the back of a genetic invader—set to attack your DNA; almost certainly the result of the attempts here and on Old Earth to recreate some of the animal forms that were lost through human hunting or pollution caused by early modern technology and the population explosion on Old Earth. I can’t do anything about either intruder until I’ve got the facilities of the ship’s clinic on your space vessel. But now I know where to look and what to look for.”

  “That’s quite a bit to find out, isn’t it, medician—what’s it been—half an hour?”

  “A little longer than that,” said Kaj. He tore off his strip of hieroglyphics, folded its length into a reasonable package and slipped it into one of his jacket pockets. He gestured at the devices, their eyes now a dull, uninterested gray. “These did the work for me. That’s one thing. Another’s that, pretty much as I expected, the Council didn’t show much imagination in what they picked for you. The babble-drug’s a standard one, and its variforms are limited. Given that much, it’s merely a matter of working down the list of possibilities until I find the one they used. The genetic intruder, which will be some alien—alien, that is, to you; perfectly normal human-style DNA otherwise—is going to call for a little imaginative detective work. But, as I say, nothing I didn’t expect.”

  “How could you expect anything at all, specifically?” Bleys asked curiously. “By the way, I still feel fine.”

  “You probably will, right up to within an hour or two of its effective deadline—which may or not be the time they gave you. You might begin to feel something before the deadline, but the sensation ought to be slight. But you’ll go downhill rapidly after you pass the time limits. By that time we’ll hope to have you in the ship, and I’ll be able to make you more comfortable, as well as start doing something about what I believe needs to be counteracted. As far as expecting anything, it’s a matter of knowing what’s convenient under the conditions and physiologically possible.”