“I’m glad to hear that, Bleys.”
“It was just some aftereffects that will crop up from time to time, Kaj says. Looks a little spectacular, but actually I hardly noticed it from the inside.”
This was a literal truth because of his blackout; but it was also very much a twisting of the truth as far as his reaction to it, once he was awake enough to realize what had happened to him. Secretly, Bleys regarded anything like the episode that was now passing away from him, as he would have a deadly enemy. Anything like such a disability was to be killed, squashed—destroyed as soon as possible. But it was better not to tell Henry that.
“Good,” Henry said briefly.
“But how are you, Uncle?” Bleys asked. “You were wounded, back on Newton, and we haven’t really had time to talk.”
“Perfectly healed.” Henry’s tone ended any discussion on that matter.
That was the last mention of what had happened to either of them. He and Henry talked about the surviving Soldiers, the trip back to Harmony, which Bleys could not remember, and the hotel Bleys was now in, which was the same one he had been in on previous occasions, but on a different floor than he had ever been on before. But shortly, Henry took his leave, ordering Bleys to rest and refusing to stay longer and possibly tire him out any more. Actually, Bleys was fretting at being bed-bound and would have enjoyed the company.
Then came Dahno.
Toni had stepped out of the room when Henry had come to talk. But she stayed when Dahno entered; and Bleys noticed that behind Dahno, Henry also slipped back in, and sat down in a float by Toni against the farther wall, forming an unobtrusive, two-member audience.
“How are you?” asked Dahno, dropping his large body onto the chairfloat beside the bed on which Bleys was lying—and jacking the seat up to give his legs room to stretch out.
“I’m fine!” Bleys said. “The one we ought to all worry about is Kaj Menowsky. Perhaps we should have him taken off for a general physical and mental examination, with emphasis on an attitude of runaway concern and overprotectiveness. I’m lying here now only as a favor to him. Perhaps I ought to say, a favor to his medician’s qualifications.”
“Nothing wrong with resting,” said Dahno. “It never hurts to play safe.”
“A stitch in time saves nine. Prevention is better than cure—that takes care of that subject, and I apologize to Kaj in absentia if I seemed to doubt his wisdom. We can find other things to talk about, can’t we?”
Dahno grinned.
“All right,” he said. “You’re a fox, Brother. Here you had me thinking that you’d folded up, with two-thirds of what you’d set out to do not done; and it turned out you’d done it after all. I was all set to ask you what I should do about Cassida and Newton until you were in shape to start doing things yourself, and now I find you’d taken care of it, after all.”
Bleys smiled back at him. “You worked out what happened, then,” he said.
“It was pretty plain, once I looked into it closely,” Dahno said. “Tell me something. Did you have your eye on Pieter DeNiles from the beginning? Or did he just fall into your hands by lucky chance?”
“Both,” said Bleys, thinking back to his climb along the side of the building on Newton to the balcony outside the meeting place of the Newtonian Council. “No, that’s not right. We’d have found the possibilities in him, sooner or later. But it was the best thing that could happen that he was here and made one of the CEOs’ group at the meeting—by the way, you might start a deliberate search on the other worlds for other people who have the same happy combination of intelligence, influence, and ability to control matters; but I don’t think you’ll find many. If we do find some, though, we want to try and use them in our command structure for the single-community of New Worlds. Move them in high up in the ranking with the Others we’ve been training.”
“I’ve already started to look,” Dahno said. “But you’re right—we aren’t going to find many that good, let alone already in place. I’ve got to get to know DeNiles better. Now, there’s a politician!”
“A statesman,” Bleys said.
Dahno brushed this aside with a large hand.
“Statesmanship’s only good politics on a grander stage,” he said. “But a DeNiles is something to put in a vault and treasure. He could give lessons to Richelieu—the power behind the throne of Louis the Thirteenth—that’s the King of France, in ancient times on Old Earth.”
“I know about him—Armand-Jean du Plessis, I think you mean,” Bleys said. “As you say, DeNiles could be even more capable.”
“Well, there you have it. And we’ve got the advantage of that ability, in having DeNiles himself. Evidently he’s willing to lead Cassida and Newton into the net for us without their even realizing it’s happening. Beautifully done, Brother. Maybe you’ll tell me now how you managed to do it.”
“I talked about what I wanted. DeNiles’ aims coincide with mine—for the moment, at least—that’s all. But how’d you find out he was going to work with us?”
“He called me just before we took you off New Earth this time, when he couldn’t get through to you,” Dahno said. “He effectively let me know we’d be together—not in so many words, of course. But what did you say, exactly, that captured him?”
“I wouldn’t call it capture—with someone like him,” Bleys said. “He’s still his own man, as he’s always been—”
“Just a minute—” Toni interrupted. Bleys looked up to see her and Henry coming toward the bed, with their chairfloats scooting obediently along behind them, like a couple of trained pets. They sat down beside Dahno.
“This sounds like something Henry and I should have a part of,” Toni said. “I didn’t know you’d recruited DeNiles in any way; and I don’t see how you did it in the little time from when the meeting started until he left. Certainly in the meeting—and we three were all listening in on that—there was nothing to indicate it.”
“No, it was after the meeting. And I wouldn’t call it recruited, either,” Bleys said mildly. “What happened, in effect, was that we just had time to make a deal before the blackout hit me. That’s one reason I was worried that he or one of the others might have noticed something different about me. If he knew I had a weakness, he’s still someone who could exploit it with a vengeance. He’s far and away the most capable person I’ve encountered so far—except for one.”
“Hal Mayne,” grunted Dahno, “of course.”
“Yes,” said Bleys. He remembered the bearded figure in the cell on Harmony. “Hal Mayne.”
“That’s boy’s an obsession with you,” said Dahno. “I’ve got to meet him, too, someday and find out why you rate him so highly.”
“He’s not a boy anymore,” Bleys said, “and as far as his being the best I’ve met so far—that’s excluding family, of course; I don’t worry about you.”
He smiled at Dahno.
“I think I could handle him,” Dahno said, thoughtfully. “DeNiles, I mean. It would depend, of course, whether the situation we met on was his home ground or mine. And then he’s got an edge over me as far as life experience goes. That’s two handicaps I’d be carrying, just to start out with. But I think I could do it. I agree with you, though, Bleys; I’d hate to guarantee anything like that.”
“I’ve seen some cracks in him,” said Bleys, “and that would work for us, as a weakness in me would for him. You yourself know, Dahno, any crack can be exploited.”
“Just a minute,” Toni said. “Let’s get back on track. You were telling us you made a deal with him, just before you blacked out. I was in the room with you. I didn’t hear anything like the two of you coming to an agreement.”
“It was all over in the space of a few minutes, if not seconds,” said Bleys. “He actually made the first offer.”
“How?” Toni demanded.
“I didn’t mean to keep it a secret from all of you,” Bleys said. “It’s just that I’ve been concentrating on getting well and wanting to think throug
h the possibilities. No, he did make the first move. He must already have decided during the meeting that he’d rather not fight me if he didn’t have to. He made his offer by telling me what he’d worked for all his life.”
“We heard him, listening in on the meeting,” said Henry. His eyes had lost whatever gentleness they had held when he had come in to talk to Bleys. “He’d worked for Newton’s dominating all of us on all of the other worlds.”
“No,” said Bleys. “He’s worked only for a very small group of people, on Newton alone. He doesn’t care about Newton’s plans for conquest. He doesn’t care who runs Newton. All he cares about is that the best minds among the scientists there are protected and have everything they need. As long as he can make that supply secure, he considers his life worthwhile.”
“Interesting,” said Dahno.
“Isn’t it?” Bleys said. His voice was growing hoarse. He reached out and drank from a water beaker on his bedside table.
“He’s dedicated himself to serving them—which, in fact, means he’s serving all humanity in the long run,” Bleys went on more clearly. “I think, Dahno, he’s seen and understood the forward-working of the fabric of history. He just hasn’t concentrated on it the way I have. Essentially, he simply wanted me to guarantee that his special scientists would be able to go on working for the race as a whole. I told him that as far as I was concerned, I didn’t care who ran the worlds, either; that my goal was a philosophical one. He said that was reasonable—which essentially meant he’d work along with me—then I blacked out.”
“The main thing is, he’s agreed to work for us,” Dahno said.
“With us, not for us,” said Bleys.
“Oh, I understand the difference, Bleys, believe me.” Dahno said. “I’m glad Toni made you come up with the details though, now; though I’d have dug them out of you, eventually. I think perhaps I ought to try and see DeNiles before he leaves New Earth, from what you say. If you’ll forgive me, I’ll get a letter spaceshipped off to him now. Start setting up a connection.”
He got up from his floatchair.
“Yes,” said Bleys. “Good idea.”
He rose abruptly, throwing his legs out of the bed, and got to his feet. The same excited, almost-violent surge of expectation was on him that had been in him on Association, just before the lecture tour had started and when he had been waiting to hear how Toni’s talk with her father about coming with him on the trip had been settled.
“I don’t care what Kaj Menowsky says,” he told them. “There’s too much to be done, and no real difference between now and twelve or fourteen hours from now. I’m through with that sickbed!”
Chapter 47
The ways by which they had finally come together hardly mattered. The stages had been so imperceptible and the ultimate conclusion so inevitable, that Bleys, at least, had to put out unusual effort to recall the exact steps of it.
But the exact steps really did not matter. For one thing, the inevitability of their joining had become certain from the moment Bleys became aware that he was compulsively pouring out all his innermost secrets to Toni, as she sat by him during the first stages of his reaction to the genetic antagonist with which Newton had infected him; and that certainty had been fixed in place for all time, later, when succeeding days passed and Toni made no reference at all to what she had heard.
They had drifted together, accordingly, as two bodies in space might approach each other under the pull of their mutual gravity, but without accelerating as they came closer; so that the moment of their joining was not one of violent impact, but as gentle a meeting as that of two free-floating water lilies on the deep but certain current beneath
the waters of a slow stream. So that the first time they were in bed together, it was as if they were merely continuing what had gone on over a long period before; and even what was new, was at the same time familiar, expected, comfortable and happy.
For Bleys it was a happiness such as he had never had before in his life, and never imagined having. They lay there in the dim bedroom, relaxed in the comfort of the afterwards, companionably close, side by side and looking up at the tiny lights of the starscape filling the ceiling.
“…And how about Hal Mayne, then?” Toni said after a long silence. “What about him?”
“I’ve been planning on going down to Ahruma tomorrow and seeing him again,” Bleys said. “I can’t leave him in that cell. I meant to call Barbage and say I was coming two days ago; but all this replanning that we’ve been doing since Pieter DeNiles became available’s kept me here. On the one hand, having Pieter frees up the efforts of our Other organizations on the rest of the Worlds. On the other, it pushes us ahead of schedule—we’ll have full use of New Earth, Cassida and Newton much sooner, because of him—even if a lot of the actual connections and controls still have to be put in place.”
“You expected as much or more, if you could recruit Hal Mayne,” Toni said.
“Yes. I still do,” Bleys agreed. “But I’ve never dared count on him. I’ll try again tomorrow, though. If he shows any sign at all of being willing to work with me, I’ll open up to him completely—or as completely as I can to anyone…”
He turned his head slightly for a moment to look at her profile in the darkness; then brought his eyes back to concentrate on the star points in the ceiling.
“Anyone except you. But then, I don’t know, even if I tried, if I could tell someone else as much about myself as I told you.”
“No,” Toni said quietly. “I don’t think you could.”
“That’s why I was so sure I’d lost you, then,” Bleys said. “That’s why I’d never dared open up to you at all, before. I was sure you’d be repelled, hearing what I had to do. It’s still hard to believe you weren’t.”
“Of course,” she said, still in the same soft voice. “There were things you said that shocked me, but there were other things that counteracted them. One was how wonderful humanity could be, if only it would recognize its possibilities and try to realize them. Always, you said, it had failed in that. Its individual members had ended by going after baubles and toys, each in their own lifetime; and the real effort has to be given to have its effect beyond many lifetimes.”
“There’s no other way.”
“I know there isn’t, Bleys-of-mine”—he felt her fingertips gently stroking across his chest—“I know it now. But don’t you see, with that end in view, nothing else matters—except that you matter to me.”
“That’s a ridiculous name for me!” Bleys smiled in the darkness.
“But it’s true,” she said, “and it’s mine for you.”
“I know,” he said. He reached for her hand without looking, and their fingers intertwined. “As far as I can belong to anyone, I belong to you. But I’m not free to belong completely—to anyone. I’m an artifact of the Historic Pattern. I’ve always belonged to it and will to the end of my life. It decides what I do. I can’t break loose from it any more than I can make myself subject to any other person, group or thing—nor should any person, unless that person wants to. It’s one of the ends I work for.”
‘“I knew that a long time ago,” Toni said. “Do you remember, back before we left Ecumeny and Association for New Earth at the start of all this, how I told you I had to speak to my father before agreeing to go off-world with you? It was one thing to work for you while you were there on Ecumeny; but it was something else to commit myself to being one of those who helped you anywhere, with anything you decided to do in the future.”
“I remember,” Bleys said. “I more or less paced the floor, waiting for you to get back and tell me what your decision was. I know how strongly Henry feels about certain things, and I was sure your father would feel strongly about some things himself.”
“It isn’t quite the same,” Toni said. “We’re a traditionalist family; but the observance of the things we hold important has naturally evolved since my grandfather’s great-grandfather left Old Earth. Still, there was the re
sponsibility to our family name—the Ryuzoji name—that had to be considered. Following you, I could be risking it; and I had to know whether my father trusted me to do what was right, always.”
“But he approved,” Bleys said.
” ‘Approved’ isn’t quite the right word,” said Toni. “I told him what I believed your aims to be; and that I wanted to be with you and help you reach them.”
“And what did he say, exactly?” Bleys asked.
“Inochi o oshimuna—na koso oshime!” Toni answered.
“The language of your father’s ancestors is one of the Old Earth tongues I don’t know,” said Bleys. “What does it mean?”
“It doesn’t translate literally in Basic, very well,” Toni said. “You have to understand our heritage to understand the meaning of it. Perhaps it could be rendered as ‘Put your life at risk, as necessary, but never your name.’ He was trusting me, you see? You do not know the French language of Old Earth. Have you ever run across the saying in that tongue, ‘Fais ce que dois—adviegne que peut, c’est commande au chevalier.’”
“Yes,” said Bleys, “Conan Doyle quotes it, I think, in his historical novel, The White Company—in Basic it would be something like ‘Do what you ought, no matter what comes—this is the commandment of the knight.’”
“Yes,” said Toni, “that and my father’s words don’t both say the same thing, but both have something in common. I’ve wanted to tell you what he said for a long time. But it’s only now that we can talk about such things.”
“Yes,” said Bleys, “because now you know everything, and you’re still with me.”
“I know up to the point in time where you stopped talking,” Toni said. “Since then, knowing you, I know your plans will have gone on developing, the way they’re always changing and developing. Are you still planning not to try bringing either the Dorsai or the Exotics into your community of New Worlds?”