The Final Encyclopedia

by Gordon R. Dickson

  "I see," said Hal. "You don't happen to have some Dorsai blood in your ancestry, by any chance?"

  Amid laughed.

  "I just think I can be useful to you," he went on. "You've got your inferences; but I can give you access to specific, hard information, much of it through a network of communication the Exotics have developed and improved over the centuries. If I could set up a communication center for you, here, I think you'd find what I could bring in would be very useful to you."

  "I'm sure I would," said Hal. "All right, thanks; and welcome."

  He stood up. Amid in response got to his own feet.

  "I'm sorry to cut this short," said Hal. "But we'll have time to talk later. I've got someone else to see, now."

  "Perfectly all right," said Amid.

  Hal reached down to the console on the arm of the float he had just left and touched for Ajela.

  "Hal?" Her voice came clearly into the room, but without picture on the phone screen.

  "I'd like Amid to stay with us," Hal said. "Can we arrange quarters for him?"

  "If one of the regular rooms for visiting scholars will do, certainly," said Ajela. "Tell him to turn right when he steps out of your room and he'll find me through the first door he comes to."

  "Thank you, both of you," said Amid.

  He left. Hal sat down again and touched the phone. This time the face of Chuni, the reception leader who had spoken to them in Tam's office, came on the phone screen.

  "Hal?" said Chuni.

  "Where's Bleys now, Chuni?"

  "He's waiting in the private lounge here by the dock."

  "He's alone?"

  "Yes," said Chuni.

  "Send him—no, bring him up yourself, would you please?"

  "All right. Is that all?" Chuni looked tensely out of the phone at Hal.

  "That's all," Hal said.

  He sat down again. After only a few minutes, the door opened and he got to his feet again.

  "Here you are, Bleys Ahrens…" the voice of Chuni was saying; and the two of them came through the door, with Bleys in the lead. Chuni stopped just inside the threshold, nodded past Bleys at Hal and went out again, closing the door behind him.

  Bleys stopped, three steps inside the room. He stood, lean and tall in a short black jacket and narrow gray trousers tapering into his boots. His straight-boned, angular face with its penetrating brown eyes under straight black brows studied Hal.

  "Well," he said, "you've grown up."

  "It happens," said Hal.

  They stood, facing, little more than a meter of distance between them; and, strangely, the sight of the Other brought back the memory of Amyth Barbage, standing facing the other Militia captain who had not wanted to keep pursuing Rukh's Command. The feeling struck Hal that the room seemed suddenly to have grown small around them; and he realized that for the first time he was looking at Bleys without the stark emotion of his memory of the day on the terrace, standing like a drawn sword between them. It surprised Hal now—but not as much as he would have been surprised before he had discovered that his head had touched the same top of the doorway as had Ian Graeme's—to discover that he now stood eye to eye, on a level with Bleys. From nowhere, a strange poignancy took him. This individual before him was, in a reverse sense, all he had left of what he had once known; the only one to whom he had any connection from before the moment of his tutors' deaths.

  Bleys turned and stepped to Hal's float desk, sitting down on the edge of it, almost as if Hal was the visitor, rather than he.

  "A big change to take place in a year," Bleys said.

  Hal sat down in his chair. Perched on the desk, Bleys sat a little above him; but that advantage in position no longer mattered between them.

  "The biggest change took place in that Militia cell in Ahruma, in the day or two after you left me," said Hal. "I had a chance to sort things out in my mind."

  "Under an unusual set of conditions," Bleys said. "That captain deliberately misinterpreted what I told him."

  "Amyth Barbage," said Hal. "Have you forgotten his name? What did you do to him, afterwards?"

  "Nothing." Bleys sat still, watching him. "It was his nature to do what he did. Any blame there was, was mine, for not understanding that nature as I should have. I don't do things to people, in any case. My work is with events."

  "You don't do anything to people? Even to those like Danno?"

  Bleys raised his eyebrows slightly, then shook his head.

  "Even to those like Danno. Danno destroyed himself, as most people who love power. All I did was give the Others an alternative plan; and in refusing to consider it, Danno created the conditions that led to his destruction at other hands than mine. As I say, I work with larger matters than individual people."

  "They why come see me?" The almost painfully brilliant, hard-edged clarity of mind that had come on Hal as he sat at the head of the long dining table at Foralie, talking to the Grey Captains, was back with him now.

  "Because you're a potential problem," said Bleys. He smiled. "Because I hate the waste of a good mind—ask my fellow-Others if I don't—and because I feel an obligation to you."

  "And because you have no one to talk to," said Hal.

  Bleys' smile widened slowly. There was a short pause.

  "That's very perceptive of you," he said, gently. "But you see, I've never had anyone to talk to; and so I'm afraid I wouldn't know what I was missing. As for what brings me here, I'd like to save you if I could. Unlike Danno, you can be of use to the race."

  "I intend to," said Hal.

  "No," said Bleys. "What you intend is your own destruction—very much like Danno. Are you aware the struggle you've chosen to involve yourself in is all over but the shouting? Your cause isn't only lost, it's already on its way to be forgotten."

  "And you want to save me?" Hal said

  "I can afford what I want," said Bleys. "But in this case, it's not a matter of my saving you but of you choosing to save yourself. In a few standard years an avalanche will have swallowed up all you now think you want to fight for. So, what difference will it make if you stop fighting now?"

  "You seem to assume," said Hal, "that I'm going to stop eventually."

  "Either stop, or—forgive me—be stopped," said Bleys. "The outcome of this battle you want to throw yourself into was determined before you were born."

  "No," said Hal, slowly. "I don't think it was."

  "I understand you originally had an interest in being a poet," said Bleys. "I had inclinations to art, too, once; before I found it wasn't for me. But poetry can be a personally rewarding life work. Be a poet, then. Put this other aside. Let what's going to happen, happen; without wasting yourself trying to change it."

  Hal shook his head.

  "I was committed to this, only this, long before you know," he said.

  "I'm entirely serious in what I say," went on Bleys. "Stop and think. What good is it going to do to throw yourself away? Wouldn't it be better, for yourself and all the worlds of men and women, that you should live a long time and do whatever you want to do—whether it's poetry or anything else? It could even be something as immaterial as saying what you think to your fellow humans; so that something of yourself will have gone into the race and be carried on to enrich it after you're gone. Isn't that a far better thing than committing suicide because you can't have matters just as you want them?"

  "I think," said Hal, "we're at cross purposes. What you see as inevitable, I don't see so at all. What you refuse to accept can happen, I know can happen."

  Bleys shook his head.

  "You're in love with a sort of poetic illusion about life," he said. "And it is an illusion, even in a poetic sense; because even poets—good poets—come to understand the hard limits of reality. Don't take my word for that. What does Shakespeare have Hamlet say at one point… 'how weary, flat, stale and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world?' "

  Hal smiled suddenly.

  "Do you know Lowell?" he asked.


  "Lowell? I don't believe so," answered Bleys.

  "James Russell Lowell," said Hal. "Nineteenth century American poet."

  He quoted:

  "When I was a beggarly boy,

  And lived in a cellar damp,

  I had not a friend nor a toy,

  But I had Aladdin's lamp …"

  He sat, matching his gaze with Bleys'.

  "I believe you're better at quoting poetry than I am," said Bleys. He got to his feet and Hal rose with him. "Also, I believe I'll have to accept the fact I can't save you. So I'll go. What is it you've found here at the Encyclopedia—if anything, if I may ask?"

  Hal met his eyes.

  "As one of my tutors, Walter InTeacher would have said," he answered. "That's a foolish question."

  "Ah," said Bleys.

  He turned toward the door. He had almost reached it, when Hal spoke again behind him; his voice suddenly different, even in his own ears.

  "How did it happen?"

  Bleys stopped and turned back to face him.

  "Of course," he said, gently, "you'd have had no way of knowing, would you? I should have seen to your being informed before. Well, I'll tell you now, then. The men we normally use to go before us in situations like that had found two of your tutors already on that terrace and the third was brought to join them a minute or two after I stepped out on to the terrace myself. It was the Friendly they brought. The Dorsai and your Walter InTeacher were already there. Like you, he seemed to be fond of poetry, and as I came out of the library window, he was quoting from that verse drama of Alfred Noyes, Sherwood. The lines he was repeating were those about how Robin Hood had saved one of the fairies from what Noyes called The Dark Old Mystery. I quoted him Blondin's song, from the same piece of writing, as a stronger piece of poetry. Then I asked him where you were; and he told me he didn't know—but of course he did. They all knew, didn't they?"

  "Yes," said Hal. "They knew."

  "It was that which first raised my interest in you above the ordinary," Bleys said. "It intrigued me. Why should they be so concerned to hide you? I'd told them no one would be hurt; and they would have known my reputation for keeping my word."

  He paused for a second.

  "They were quite right not to speak, of course," he added, softly.

  Hal stood still, waiting.

  "At any rate," said Bleys. "I tried to bring them to like me, but of course they were all of the old breed—and I failed. That intrigued me even more, that they should be so firmly recalcitrant; and I was just about to make further efforts, which might have worked, to find out from them about you, when your Walter InTeacher physically attacked me—a strange thing for an Exotic to do."

  "Not," Hal heard his own voice saying, "under the circumstances."

  "Of course, that triggered off the Dorsai and the Friendly. Together, they accounted for all but one of the men I had watching them; but of course, all three of them were killed in the process. Since there was no hope of questioning them, then, I went back into the house. Danno had just arrived; and I didn't have the leisure to order a search of the grounds for you, after all."

  "I was in the lake," Hal said. "Walter and Malachi Nasuno—the Dorsai—signalled me when they guessed you were on the grounds. I had time to hide in some bushes at the water's edge. After… I came up to the terrace and saw you and Danno through the window of the library."

  "Did you?" said Bleys.

  The two of them stood, facing each other for a moment; and Bleys shook his head, slowly.

  "So it had already begun between us, even then?" he said.

  He opened the door and stepped through it, closing it quietly behind him. Hal turned back to the nearest float and touched the phone controls.

  "Chuni," he said. "Bleys Ahrens is on his way out. See that he doesn't go astray."

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Cutting the connection to Chuni, Hal called Ajela.

  "I'd like to talk to you and Tam right away," he said. "Something new's come up. And I'd like to bring Amid with me, unless there's an objection to it."

  "I'll ask Tam." Ajela's face looked at him curiously out of the screen. "But I can't imagine any objection. Why don't you just bring him along to Tam's suite? If there's any problem with that, I can meet you at the door and explain to Amid."

  "I'll be there as soon as I can collect him, then," said Hal.

  When the two of them reached the suite, Ajela was waiting, holding the door open. Inside, Tam waved them to chairs.

  "I'm afraid this is going to disrupt things," said Hal, sitting down. "I'm going to have to leave for a while—"

  He glanced at Amid.

  "—Taking Amid if he'll go."

  He had said nothing of this to the old Exotic. Amid raised his eyebrows, very slightly, but said nothing.

  "Also, I'm going to suggest we tighten security on the Encyclopedia right away. I'm afraid that means all visitors—visiting scholars included—should leave."

  Tam frowned.

  "The Encyclopedia's never been closed," he said. "Even back when it was on Earth's surface, down in St. Louis, it was always open to those who needed to use it and were qualified to come in."

  "I don't think there's any alternative now, though," said Hal. "Otherwise, one of these days a human bomb is going to be walking through an entry port. Bleys can find people willing to give their lives to destroy the Encyclopedia. Closed, we're invulnerable. Only, we'd have to look to the supply situation."

  "That was taken care of long ago," said Ajela. "Even in the beginning Mark Torre considered the chance that the Encyclopedia, being what it is, might be isolated one day. We're an almost perfect closed system, ecologically. The only thing we'd lack for the next half century is enough energy to see us through that much time. Closed up, we might go half a year to a year on stored power… but at the end of that time, we'd have to open irises to collect a fresh supply of solar energy. Of course, I can put Jeamus Walters to work on a way to get solar energy through the shield without opening up…"

  "I don't think we need to worry about obvious physical attack from outside for some time, yet," said Hal. "But for everything else, the available time looks a lot shorter than I'd thought."

  "That's what you found out from Bleys, was it?" Tam asked. "What did he say?"

  "What he told me, effectively, was that he'd like me to resign myself to the fact that his people had already won—"

  "Won!" said Tam.

  "Unfortunately," Hal went on, "what he had to say about it agrees with what Amid came to tell me. Amid, why don't you tell Tam and Ajela?"

  Amid did. When he was done, Tam snorted.

  "Apologies, and all that," he said to Amid. "But I don't know you. How can I be sure you're not someone who belongs to Bleys Ahrens?"

  "He isn't, Tam," said Ajela, softly. "I know who he is. He's the kind of Exotic who wouldn't be able to work on Bleys' side."

  "I suppose," Tam growled, looking from her to Amid and back again. "You Exotics should know each other, of course. But as far as the Others already having won goes, though—well, what did you have in mind to do, Hal?"

  "I'm going to have to go back to Harmony, to Mara or Kultis, and the Dorsai. It's become time to get our forces organized," said Hal. He turned to the small Exotic. "Amid, you were going to help me with communication. Can you get a message, now, to Harmony ahead of our own landing there? A message arranging a meeting for me with a Leader of one of the resistance Commands, named Rukh Tamani?"

  Amid frowned.

  "The Encyclopedia can put me in phone communication with the Exotic Embassy in Rheims, down on Earth, can't it?"

  "Of course," said Ajela.

  "Good. Let me see what I can do, then," Amid said. "If you'll excuse me, I'll go to that room you gave me and do my calling from there."

  "Thank you," said Hal.

  Amid smiled a little grimly, and went out.

  "He's a sensitive listener," said Hal, after the door had closed behind the small man in
the gray robe. "I think he understood I needed to talk to the two of you, alone."

  "Of course he did," said Ajela. "But what was it you didn't want him to hear?"

  "It's not exactly that I had a specific reason for not wanting him to hear," said Hal. "It's just that there's no particular reason for including him, yet; and until there is—"

  "Very good. Quite right," said Tam. "When we know him better maybe it'll be different. But for now, let's keep private matters among the three of us. What was it you were going to tell us, Hal?"

  "My conclusions about Bleys, and his visit," said Hal. "Bleys said he came here to see if I couldn't be brought to accepting the fact that his side had won; and I believe that actually was one of his reasons for coming. From which I judge that he's now ready to move against Earth; and that's why I feel the Encyclopedia's now in danger."

  "Why?" demanded Tam. "What makes you suddenly think he's ready to move against Earth; and why should that suddenly put the Encyclopedia in danger?"

  Hal looked from one to the other of them.

  "I thought it was obvious. You don't see it?" he said. Ajela, beside Tam, shook her head. "Well, to begin with, you've got to realize that Bleys is completely honest in anything he says; because he feels he's above any need to dissimulate, let alone lie outright. He told me he'd hate to waste what I could do for the race; and since that's what he said, that's the way he must feel."

  "How," demanded Tam, "do you know he's above any need to dissimulate?"

  Hal hesitated.

  "In some ways I understand him, instinctively," he answered. "In some ways, even, I think he and I are alike. That's one of the things I was forced to recognize in the Militia cell on Harmony, when I came to understand other things. I can't prove it to you—that I understand him. All I can do is ask you to take my word for it. What I'm sure of, in this instance, is that if he ever needed to dissimulate, he'd cease, in his own eyes, to be Bleys Ahrens. And being Bleys Ahrens is the most important thing in the universe to him. "