"Arthur, for the love of God!" cried Ntoane, stepping forward.
"Stand back!" said Howell thickly, lifting the gun.
"Yes," said Eli. "Stand back, Ntoane. Stand back, all of you." He took a step himself toward Howell.
"Stand back," said Howell, sweating. Eli took another step toward him.
"Howell," said Eli. "You know who I am." He took another step forward. "I'm the man you made over. You constructed me, Arthur. I'm your masterpiece. Are you going to destroy me?"
"Stop," said Howell. "Stop."
"You know me, Arthur," Eli took another step toward him. "Millions of people know me. I tell the truth and I'm as good as my word. Let me tell you something…" he made one more step and saw the gun jerk in Howell's hand. "If you shoot me and kill me for Sellars, Tony'll have to get rid of you sometime later on to cover up his own part in it. You know that."
"I've got to have my work." Howell's voice suddenly shot up the scale. "Stay back, Eli!"
"No," Eli said, slowly continuing to approach him, "you'll get nothing out of it. And you're not constitutionally fitted to murder a man, Arthur. You don't want to do it. You can't do it."
"For the last time, stop!" shouted Howell. The gun straightened out in his hand.
"Look out!" cried Clyde, diving forward. The gun in Howell's hand jerked, wavered and then exploded. Eli twitched backward, stumbled, and sat down. Then Clyde and Ntoane were on Howell. Tammy was all over Eli.
"I'm all right—I'm all right. Let me up!" Eli was saying. "He was pointing clear over my head when he pulled the trigger. I just flinched and lost my balance." He got to his feet and went over to where Ntoane and Clyde were holding Howell. Howell's face was paper-white and his body rigid. He made no attempt to get away from the two men holding him.
"Let him go," said Eli. "It's all right. Let him go."
Slowly Clyde and Ntoane released him. Howell stared wildly at Eli for a moment, then suddenly the stiffness went out of him and he crumpled. Eli caught him and eased him into a chair. Howell was shaking.
"Mel!" said Eli sharply, over his shoulder to the tall young man. "Give him something to calm him down. He'll be all right." He put his hand on Howell's shoulder. "You'll be all right, Arthur."
"God! Oh, God!" said Howell brokenly, his face buried in his hands.
Eli patted him on the shoulder and turned to Ntoane. There was a weary but triumphant smile on his face.
"And now," he said. "I'm ready to go to work. I imagine you can help me?"
Ntoane stared back at him and slowly a smile crept out to erase the strain on his own features and he nodded.
"Yes," he said. "Yes, Eli, I can. Several million of us can."
10
Anthony George Sellars sat frowning at the desk before him in the Speaker's anteroom of the Main Council Room of Cable Island. Swelling up from the polished desk top a small screen showed him the station on Calayo Banks Cay, from the point of view of one of the airboats at rest beside it. The solar roof was smashed and broken where the door to the jetty had been blasted loose from its hinges, and the furniture of the solar itself was overturned and disordered, but that was all.
The storm blocks that closed the elevator shaft had not yet been cracked.
This was unfortunate—but merely as a matter of timing. An airboat with sufficient explosive to blast an entrance should make its arrival within minutes. No, the station would undoubtedly be opened. That was not what bothered Anthony Sellars at the moment. It was the fact that he had handled the whole business very badly—first by not taking care of Eli the minute his men had taken young Poby Richards and forced the knowledge of Eli's location from him, and secondly by mistakenly putting his trust in Clyde. He had thought he had observed in the young Spokesman for Communications a hardheadness equal to his own; and, as always when he allowed himself to trust to anyone besides himself, he had been disappointed.
He sighed and rose from the table. In a few moments the remnants of what had been the Council of Group Representatives would be gathering in the amphitheatre beyond the small door to his right that led into the Speaker's Section of the Main Council Room. Some would come from the lower levels of the Island where they had been virtual prisoners since his unobtrusive coup here several days back. Others would have been salvaged from cities around the world where and when his men could find them. In some cases both the spokesman and the underspokesman of a group were dead or unobtainable and a local group head had been brought in in their place. But, one way or another, there was a representative for every group; and even now they would be entering the Main Council Room, for their last official meeting.
When they were all seated, it would be his job to go in and tell them that the group system was ready to be abolished and hint that those of them who wished to co-operate would be absorbed into his own governing organization. After that there would be nothing left but the formality of a vote. It was not a prospect to which Tony Sellars looked forward with any particular triumph. Nor could it be said that it affected his emotions adversely, either. It was merely the next step that should be taken in its proper order, one more duty to be performed.
He turned and began to pace the room, not nervously, but with a measured steadiness, as if the occupation was some particularly necessary exercise. There was in his walk the same thing that marked all his action, a studied acknowledgement of duty. Tony Sellars was in fact, in the truest senses, a slave to duty.
Few people understood this man who had been Spokesman for Transportation for over twenty years. People did not warm to Anthony George Sellars the way they warmed to Eli Johnstone. Rather they were chilled by him and in many cases, repelled. The majority disliked him and were a little afraid of him. A minority found things to admire in him; and surprisingly, within the ranks of this minority, he was capable of inspiring an almost fanatic attachment to himself. But far and away the greatest asset of his nature was the strength he very obviously possessed.
Sellars was strength personified. For this reason even people who disliked him would follow him. This single virtue was obvious in him. In fact it shone through him, not like an inner light, but like the hidden molten glow of a quiescent volcano, sullen, dogged and unquenchable. The physical coercions of an earlier age would have wasted themselves on such a man. They could only have broken his body and left his will untouched. A few such men are born from time to time and Anthony Sellars was one of them.
And he was not insane; and he did not desire power for its own sake. Like Eli, he was a child of his time—but while Eli had opened himself to the uncertainty and self-doubt of his period, seeking, asking, letting himself be tossed in any direction in his hunting for a logic to life. Tony Sellars had narrowed himself, admitting only those questions that permitted of a clear-cut positive or negative answer. And when it became necessary to go farther afield into the grayness of an unclear problem, he judged as justly as he could and then forced a decision in terms of black and white. For his own purpose, he had reduced the problems of his day to his own common denominator; and the answer had been clear-cut—absolute control for the world, and by himself, the only man he could be sure would do each and every thing that Tony Sellars believed should be done if the race was to continue.
And now he had done what he ought and won what he should—with the single exception of Eli. He regretted having to destroy Eli for the loss of talent it entailed. He did not like Eli, the natures of the two men had been too antipathetic for that. But that did not enter the problem, for the dislikes as well as the likes of his emotional being had long since been whipped to heel by his imperious will. He neither loved nor hated. He neither felt joy nor sorrow. In this hour of his triumph he tramped the floor of the anteroom without elation or apprehension, or consideration of reward. Personal reward to him was a term without meaning. As near an automaton as living flesh and blood can make itself, he merely surveyed the arena of his recent victory and paced away the moments intervening before the inexorable developments of even
ts should move him to a further arena, a further struggle, and a further duty.
He looked once more at his chronometer. A few minutes yet remained.
He turned abruptly out of the path of his pacing and went back to his desk. Seating himself, he pressed the catch on a drawer and sprang it open. Then, reaching inside he took out the small white cube impressed with the notes of the speech he would make. He closed the drawer again; and, lifting the cube, placed it on the desk.
As it touched the dark, gleaming surface a sudden sensation flashed through him—as if he had suddenly come in contact with a live wire. And he froze abruptly, like a man paralyzed, one hand on the arm of his chair, the other outstretched and lying on the desk top, fingers holding the cube.
It seemed then, to Tony Sellars, so long the complete master of himself, as if contact with the desk had without warning burst open some long-forgotten unguarded door in his mind and that he now stood helpless and aghast at what entered through its rusty portal. Some thing he could neither describe nor understand reached through and held him. Caught by a strange compulsion, he sat for a moment staring at the cube in his fingers, then raised his eyes to look beyond the desk.
Before him it seemed that the air was thickening and taking form. And, as he watched, the figure of Eli Johnstone, who should by rights have been trapped in the station his men were now besieging, seemed to coalesce into shape before him. And the figure looked at him and spoke.
"I'm not really here, Tony," it said. "You and I are just in contact by courtesy of the Members."
Sellar's vocal cords broke free of their control.
"What is this?" he said.
The figure that was Eli smiled.
"I suppose you could call it a telepathic chat," he answered. "Or a meeting of minds or some such thing. I don't know anything beyond the fact that I seem to be a good subject for such things, and frankly I don't consider it important. On the other hand what I have to say, is important."
The door still stood ajar in Sellar's mind. Looking through it he was forced to accept the truth of what he saw and heard; and the truth in Eli's words presented itself to his mind like a palpable thing. It was a weird sensation, but an undeniable one. And Sellars who had trained himself to face anything, forced himself to face this.
"So you're a Member," he said.
"No," said Eli. "You'd think so, wouldn't you? But I'm not."
"What do you call yourself then?"
"That's going to be a little hard to explain," answered Eli. "I suppose you'd call the Members who had psi-abilities—freaks?"
"I would," said Sellars.
"Yes," agreed Eli. "And now suppose you consider them for the purposes of argument to be just one small minority in a much larger class of freaks in the sense that they have unrecognized abilities beyond the ordinary human."
"Such as?"
"Perhaps an eidetic memory," said Eli. "Perhaps a peculiar color sensitivity, or an instinct for putting musical sounds together so that they have meaning."
"Ordinary people can have talents."
"How about a homing instinct, an unfailing sense for direction? An immunity to all diseases? Perhaps a green thumb for growing things or a knack for handling wild animals?"
"Go on," said Sellars.
"How many of these would be recognized even by the people that possessed them as extraordinary human abilities? What if the race is multi-talented, much more so than has been recognized, but that only during these latter years of our civilization have ignorance and social pressures abated enough for the more dramatic talents to show themselves?"
"Suppositions," said Sellars. "But go on."
"Well then," continued Eli, "there might be more 'freaks' in the world than anyone suspects; and some of them might live and die without calling any undue attention to themselves because their particular ability could find no use in the society of their time."
"I can guess that this is all leading up to your own supposed ability," said the older man immovable. "Let's get directly to that."
"You want to know what I am?"
"Yes."
"I'm an instinctive leader," said Eli. He looked at the other, at Sellar's flat, expressionless face above the desk. "Not a ruler, Tony, a leader, a forerunner of the race. My instinct is to pick a path, like the bellwether of a flock of sheep, so that the rest can follow safely behind me."
Sellars smiled, one of his rare, wintry smiles.
"This is your ability?" he said.
"No," for a second Eli looked a little sad. "No, Tony, that's just my instinct, the thing that drives me. My freakish ability is something different but very handy for a bellwether. I have what you might call 'understanding'."
The hint of an impatient sigh escaped from between Tony Sellars' straight lips.
"Understanding," he echoed, with faint derision and disgust.
"Not ordinary understanding," said Eli. "Listen to me, Tony. This is something based on empathy and refined to a point of complete comprehension. It's like seeing or hearing. I must understand; I can't help myself. When I was a child it bothered me so much that I deliberately drove myself into partial insanity to escape it."
He looked at the unyielding face of the man before him.
"Anything that lives," he went on softly, "but most of all my own people. To come into contact with anyone is to know them completely. Don't ask me how I do it. Some of my understanding comes from what I see and hear them do. I meet them and I feel immediately what it is like to be each one, individually. And then I know them, mind, and body and soul." He looked at the other man and spoke gently, "As I know you, Tony."
"Of course," said Sellars, with quiet sarcasm. "You know me. You understand everybody. And you're a natural leader. So now you've shown up with the help of the Members to kill me and take over the government."
"No," answered Eli. "I can't kill anything—as you can." And his eyes accused Sellars.
"You're thinking of the Member leaders I had executed, no doubt," said Sellars, unmoved.
"Yes."
"I doubt if your understanding reaches to a comprehension of that," Sellars told him, "of the very necessary reasons for getting those troublemakers out of the way before the general population could have its inevitable change of heart."
"You're wrong," said Eli. "I do understand why you thought it was necessary. I tell you no one has secrets from me now, Tony."
Sellars made a sudden impatient effort to break loose from the compulsion that still held his body bound to the chair he sat in. A glance at the chronometer on his wrist told him it was now time for him to make his entrance into the Council Room beyond the door. But he could not move.
"Let's get this over with," he said harshly. "You're here for a reason. Get to the point."
"All right," answered Eli. "Your coup is all but completed. The world is practically yours."
"It is mine," said Sellars grimly.
"Not quite yet," said Eli. "It can still go in a different direction from what you planned."
"No, it can't," retorted Sellars. "My organization is in control. There is no possibility of going back. The groups have been discredited forever as a form of government; and no one will ever trust them again."
"You're right," said Eli. "There is no going back. But there is another way of going forward."
"No," repeated Sellars. "No one can change the path of development now. Even if I'm killed or removed the world will go on in the direction I've pointed it. No one can change that now."
"Yes," Eli looked at him. "There is a person who can. A single person."
"You?" The wintry smile was back on Sellars' lips.
"No," said Eli. "You."
"Me?" The older man stared at him.
"If you changed your mind," Eli said. "If you saw a different path and took it, even though it meant giving up your personal gains, the world would go that way."
For a moment Sellars said nothing. Then he spoke.
"You are insane," he said,
with almost a touch of awe.
"No," said Eli. "Remember, I said I know you, Tony. I can speak to you with the voice of your own conscience. That's what puts me in the bellwether position before all others. And because I understand individuals I understand the race that is the sum of the individuals; and I know which way the race should go."
"You do?"
Eli nodded.
"It should govern itself and follow me."
For a long moment Sellars just looked at him.
"Sweet Heaven!" he said at last, breaking his self-control for the first time since he had been a very young boy. "You'd talk me into letting go of the world?"
"I have no weapons but words," answered Eli. "Listen," he spoke swiftly, "let me tell you first why you want to bind the Earth together under your own single rule. You thought that people had outgrown the groups, and you were right. They outgrew the groups as they had outgrown all other forms of government in the past. Down through history, you said to yourself, the pendulum has swung, first toward the extreme of a strict rule, then toward loose rule, first toward a centralization of power. Then toward a dispersal of power. The cities of Greece to Alexander. Rome to the Caesars. Feudalism to the strong monarchies. And so on down to our own time with the groups foundering in their own dissentions, tangled in their conflicting authorities, and the world at a standstill."
"This is fact," said Sellars. "As you see it."
"As it is," insisted the older man. "The world is sick. I've operated to cut out the cancer of a sick government. My way was the only way."
"No," objected Eli softly. "There is a better way and I will show it to you. And you will take it, because you must obey your conscience. Now listen! Down through history, the same history that you surveyed, two points of view have marched side by side. One has always said, 'This is the way it has gone in the past. Therefore accordingly, this way it must continue.' And the other has said, 'all things develop or die. What is past is gone forever. The road ahead is always new.' "
"In the end everything follows the cyclic theory," insisted Sellars, "always repeating and repeating."