The organization had something of the old-fashioned information network about it. The sort of pattern that had allowed eighteenth and nineteenth century banks to make fortunes by communicating special information before it was received by other, slower routes. Also, it had something in common with the networks of spy cells during the turbulent times of the twentieth century when the large nations of Old Earth struggled and fought with each other on a massive basis. However, they were in fact much more tightly organized than either of these prototypes; kept tightly in Dahno's grasp by the fact that the organization's aim and purpose was to make use of, not wealth, but information—information that would give the organization—and particularly Dahno—power on these worlds.
It was Dahno's thesis, which he always announced to the graduating members of his group just before they left for the worlds of their destination, that wealth and power would come automatically if the information was first found. He further emphasized the point that the information would be useless unless it was processed by a central mind of unusual quality— which was his.
The structure would not have worked, Bleys thought, if anyone with abilities less than Dahno's had tried to run it.
In fact, his abilities made possible something otherwise impossible for more than a single world—a network that potentially allowed him to simultaneously influence the leadership of Association, as well as other Younger Worlds.
This had only been made possible by Donal Graeme, a century before, forcing these worlds to join peacefully in a community with a common economic base. This allowed the individual world to specialize safely in the type of specialists it trained; and trade these for the other specially trained people they needed from other worlds.
This in turn was possible because it was cheaper than trading anything else, given the high cost of interstellar travel. Also it allowed a world, by specializing, to devote only a small
proportion of its population to high levels of training, leaving the rest to make use of the fruits of the labors of the experts imported in return. In sum, this was what made possible the worlds as not merely surviving, but progressing social entities.
Otherwise, an overwhelming majority of their populations would have had to have been assigned to training in a multitude of necessary areas; so that the world would struggle merely to maintain itself.
It also allowed civilization to develop—and develop at more or less a common level on the fifteen Younger Worlds. Only one of those worlds—Coby—traded anything of importance in addition to experts. That was simply because it happened to be a planet of great interior riches in the form of metals and other substances badly needed on worlds which were naturally poor in their own supplies of these things.
But it was time to return to the apartment. Bleys closed up and left, after calling for an autocar.
Bleys' monitor spoke up just as he entered the apartment, to warn him that it was getting close to dinner time. It was possible that Dahno might swing by the apartment to pick him up and take him out to that favorite restaurant of his for dinner. All the time he had been working, Bleys had kept an ear cocked, metaphorically speaking, against the unexpected entrance of Dahno.
It had started to rain outside, and Bleys watched the day fade on the rain-blurred vegetation beyond the large windows of the outer wall of the main room. The planet Association was both close to its primary and strongly inclined to its ecliptic, and therefore had a short year—of about eighty days—which included a very hot summer of a couple of weeks' duration, and a longer winter.
Outside of the sheltered cities, nobody really attempted much in the summer. Farmers worked to grow and harvest their genetically-tailored crops in the remaining days of the year. Most of the planet's land-mass was in the temperate or tropical zones, the poles having little land, and that usually lying under sheets of ice or standing water, depending on the season.
Winter, where Bleys now was, therefore, was a time of long twilights and a good deal of rain like that which was now falling. He waited it out, however, until it was dark. It was obvious by that time that Dahno was not coming. Bleys made himself a meal from the kitchen equipment in the apartment; and then, for the day had been long, he took himself to bed. Experience had taught him that he would gain as much by sleeping on the information he had acquired and letting his unconscious sort it out, as he would by staying awake and trying to puzzle it.
He slept heavily. When he woke, there was a message for him on the screen of his bedside phone. It was from Dahno.
If you'd asked me, it read, I'd have given you a key to the office. You'll find it at the base of the phone here.
—Bleys looked, and indeed the key was there.
I've taken the liberty of setting your alarm. You've got a couple of hours, then at nine o'clock each day like this during the five weekdays, you're due to join the trainees for all the various phases of their education.
As far as their classroom work is concerned, I've left copies of the books they are studying with your reader on the dining table.
Dahno
Showered and dressed, Bleys made himself breakfast and sat in the dining room, eating and scanning the books that had been left for him, in the reader Dahno had laid out for him—although he could have used his own reader in his bedroom, if necessary. But this was closest.
He was able to get through most of them by the time he decided he had to call the driverless taxi to take him to the building that housed the trainees.
The morning, he discovered, was devoted to book work in the classroom. The books he had been given, he had been surprised to see, had been concerned almost exclusively with information about the various worlds that would be the destination of this particular class.
It seemed to him that that was rather one-sided preparation for the kind of work that he had expected would occupy most of those in Dahno's network eventually. But he discovered what made up the difference. There were specialized teachers for those subjects he had assumed they would need to know.
When they came to the final hour of the morning the instructor that had been dealing with them left and was replaced by another, a pleasant-faced man in his sixties, who had something of the Exotic about him but was—Bleys was ready to swear—no full-blooded Exotic.
There had been a general feeling, an attitude to his mother, who of course had been full-blooded Exotic, that set her apart from other people. It was similar to but not the same thing as the overall impression given by people who have gone deeply into certain occupations, and who seem marked by that occupation—experienced teachers often had something about them that made them sound and look as if teaching was their lifework, long-time physicians to sound and look like medicians. This man did not seem to radiate the Exotic special aura.
He lacked that. Possibly he too was an Other, a second-generation mixture of Exotic and something else. But, whatever his antecedents, he did know a number of the Exotic developed techniques in hypnosis and persuasion.
Particularly those of persuasion, since it had always been preached by Exotics, according to what Bleys had read and what his mother had confirmed one time when he had ventured to ask her, that hypnosis, except an individual's self-hypnosis as a memory aide, was a technique of last resort.
The instructor confined himself to ways of getting and holding attention; and to ways of further improving upon that attention so that it gradually developed into a susceptibility for persuasion. He stressed the necessity of referring to things that the one addressed would either find or already believe to be incontrovertible.
Without warning he suddenly addressed himself directly to Bleys.
"Now, do you have anything to say to that, Bleys Ahrens?" he asked, from the lecture platform.
Bleys felt the eyes of the class upon him. Now was not the time for him to begin showing any of his abilities or superiorities.
"No . . ."he said, thoughtfully, "no, I don't think so."
"You'll notice," the instructor once more addres
sed the class as a whole, "how I succeeded in focusing the attention of all of you upon Bieys Ahrens. Now, if he was as qualified as I hope all of you will be by the time you're ready to graduate, and he and I were working together as a team, that business of one partner directing general attention of everyone present to the other, could be very valuable. Stop and think about ways in which it could be used."
Bleys found himself intrigued. The directing of all the attention of the class upon him, this first time he was a part of it, had certainly been a good example of a point the instructor wanted to make. However, it was not lost upon him that so singling him out might have had another purpose as well. For one thing the question asked him—whether he had any comment—almost implied that he came to the class with something of a knowledge of what the instructor was talking about.
So his words had not only served the purpose of directing the attention upon Bleys, but establishing the fact that perhaps he might be differently equipped than the rest of them. The inevitable question which must occur to the minds of at least the brighter ones among the class must be—how much then did Bleys know that they did not?
It could be, for example, that the question, on Dahno's order, was designed to give Bleys a bit of a push toward an ultimate position of superiority over the rest of them.
"You're already familiar, from past classroom sessions," the instructor was going on, "with methods of both hypnosis and auto-hypnosis. Note that they all spring from capturing the attention of the one who is to be hypnotized, even when that one is yourself. That, of course, is only the first step. Then comes the focusing of attention. This becomes important when you're dealing with people whom you have not met before and whom you ultimately wish to persuade in some direction or another, possibly to get them to give you information that otherwise they might not give.
"Literally," he went on, "any method can be used to draw their attention. But note that it should be an attention that makes it pleasant to concentrate in that direction. You can certainly attract anyone's attention—man or woman—by saying something hostile or making a hostile move toward him or her. Or, simply by challenging them in some way." He paused for a moment, looking again at Bleys.
"However," he went on, "unless what you do leads to a desire on their part to pursue the matter from an interested viewpoint; and on the basis of regarding you in a friendly manner, even if they're not yet fully prepared to trust you, it's not the best method of making use of any kind of hypnotic reinforcement to what you want them to accept."
He lectured them on this subject for about another fifteen minutes and Bleys listened fascinated, hearing many of the things that he had picked up wordlessly from observing and imitating his mother, spelled out in words. Then the rest of the hour was given over to demonstrations and practice.
The instructor would call one of the class up on stage and quietly and privately explain a specific use of the hypnotic process in gaining information—all this out of hearing of the rest of the class.
He would then place an adhesive button behind the ear of the man to whom he had talked; and from offstage, through a hand-phone that hid his voice from everyone else, would coach him through the ear-button, step by step through an interview with another class member. One who had been given no instruction except to sit at a table and talk with the man being coached.
In this manner the instructor demonstrated three different patterns of putting the uncoached member of the class into what he called a "communicative" state. None of these, he emphasized, was fully hypnotic, but only a heightened willingness to talk. Basically, it came from his planting the feeling in the other person that the one he was talking to was someone who could be confided in and trusted.
This instructor was followed by a woman who coached the class in a number of small differences in manners on the planet to which their class of trainees would be going as successful graduates.
"—Bear in mind," she said, "the differences in manners, alone, isn't going to make any large difference in attitude. But if your manners, your way of eating, talking, standing and so forth match those of the one you're talking to, it'll unconsciously foster the feeling that you're one of their own kind, and bring the two of you closer. Also to a certain extent, the idea that anyone is dealing with a person from the same family, clan, or society, relaxes the conscience about sharing essentially private information."
She paused.
"Not in all cases," she went on, "but for those met on a casual basis this hinting at a common background is normally a plus."
Following the hour with this instructor, they broke for lunch. This was served buffet style with the trainees filling their plates and taking them to small tables that held two or three together—at most four. Bleys, looking around the room, spotted the man who had trained with him in judo the day before, and was a little surprised to see him with one arm in a sling.
Bleys moved forward quickly, since the one arm was making it difficult for James to handle his plate and pick up things near the end of the line, like dessert and silverware.
Bleys moved forward and, smiling at the other, lent a hand in supporting the plate while the final things were gathered. He had expected almost any kind of reaction, but was rather surprised at the warmth of the return smile James turned on him. Bleys, carrying both his plates and one of James', led the way to a small table that could hardly hold more than the two of them and was at present deserted.
"What happened to you?" he asked James in his most friendly voice, once they were settled on the table with the plates set out. "There was nothing wrong with that arm of yours the last I saw of you yesterday."
James smiled again, this time a little ruefully.
"Punishment for my sins," he said lightly—but the phrase had an underlying seriousness of tone that betrayed a Friendly background—"It's only a pulled muscle. 1 ought to be all right in a day or two, but I'm going to miss at least a couple of days' practice. When the class was breaking up yesterday, sensei suggested I stay behind and the two of us work out a little further, together. Then he showed me how unfair it is to take advantage of someone with less experience than you. He didn't say a word and at first I didn't know why he was handling me the way he did; but at the end, after my arm had been hurt and he was helping me dress, he mentioned that there 'are always manners within the dojo—if nowhere else.' I understood then. My apologies for what I did to you yesterday."
"They aren't necessary," said Bleys. Happily he was a quick thinker. This sudden development offered almost too many possibilities to consider at once. In the meantime he asked a question.
"You understood at once?" he said. "I don't follow that."
"Why, of course sensei saw what I did to you. He sees everything that happens in class—I should have thought of that," explained James, patiently. "I shouldn't have treated you that way, and he was pointing it out to me."
"You understood all that from a few words about manners?" Bleys persisted, still buying himself time in which to consider the situation. Looked at from all angles the whole affair did not seem something that could have been easily arranged by Dahno.
"Oh yes," said James, "but of course it wasn't just that he gave me a taste of the same sort of manners I used toward you. What he did and said had to do with something we all have to learn. There was also a hint, there that I might have damaged my chance to graduate by doing it. If he did not pass me on my work in the dojo, then the fact I'd passed everything else wouldn't help. I'd be left behind when the others shipped out."
"Graduating means that much to you, then?" said Bleys.
"Doesn't it to all of us?" James stared at him in something like astonishment; then the astonishment went. "Your brother hasn't told you?"
"My brother tells me almost nothing," said Bleys, "that's part of my training."
"Why," James said, "none of us would want to turn our backs on the chance to build the future for all worlds."
"Ah," said Bleys, noncommittally.
&nbs
p; "Your brother hasn't explained all that?" said James. "Why, what else are we mixed-breeds for? If not to give the inhabited worlds the best the Splinter Cultures have produced in specific individuals; to give them a government influenced by the fittest. What else were the Splinter Cultures for in the first place, if not to develop the things every one of us in this class combines inside ourselves, depending upon our particular heritage?"
"Put that way it does seem inevitable," said Bleys.
There was implied flattery in this statement. James clearly accepted it. He leaned forward over the table, resting his injured arm upon it.
"You and I won't live to see the end results of our organization, of course," he said, "but that doesn't mean we can't help get things started. The credit goes to your brother, who had the genius and foresight to start us moving toward that end."
"Yes," said Bleys, "Dahno always was a leader."
"Yes," James' eyes almost glowed, "he's the one Other who's absolutely essential. The information we gather has to center someplace, because that information eventually has to give us the power to take the rest of the race over bloodlessly; and lead them eventually all up to our own level. Our work would go for nothing if it wasn't for Dahno."
"It's good to hear you say that," said Bleys. "As I say, you'd be surprised at what I don't know about my brother."
CHAPTER . 19
"But how does it happen that you know so little about your brother?" asked James.
"I've been with my mother all these years," answered Bleys. "My father was dead; and, as I say, my mother and I moved around a lot. We were on New Earth and Freiland and a couple of the other New Worlds and even on Old Earth itself for a while. I was on New Earth just before I came here. Neither my mother nor Dahno are great at keeping up a communication, so up until 1 came here to Association Dahno hadn't bulked very largely in my life."