As soon as they were inside and the door had closed automatically behind them, Barbage held up his free hand to bring them to a halt.
"Stay here," he said.
He turned and walked through the wall with the shimmer, revealing it for the projected sound-barrier image that it was. Hal and Jason stood silently waiting for several slow minutes; then suddenly the imaged wall vanished to show a large, pleasant hotel bedroom with the drapes drawn back and a bed float contoured into a sitting position—and, propped up in it, Rukh.
Barbage was standing by the bedside, frowning back at them.
"Her strength must not be wasted," Barbage said. "I do this only because she insists. Tell her briefly what you have to say."
"No, Amyth," said Rukh from the bed, "they can talk until I ask them to stop. Hal, come here—and you, too, Jason."
They stepped to the bedside. Clearly, Hal saw, Rukh had never recovered from the thinness to which her ordeal at the hands of the Harmony Militia had reduced her; and now, with her upper left side and shoulder, farthest from them, bulky with bandages under the loose white bed dress she wore, she looked even more frail than when Hal had seen her last. But her remarkable beauty was, if anything, more overwhelming than ever. In the green-blue light reflected into the room by the vegetation and water outside, there appeared to be a translucency to her dark body, framed by the pale buttercup shade of the bed coverings.
Jason reached out to touch the arm of her unwounded side, gently, with the tips of his fingers.
"Rukh," he said softly. "Thou art not in pain? Thou art comfortable?"
"Of course, Jason," she said, and smiled at him. "I'm not badly hurt at all. It's just that the doctor said I was needing a rest, anyway—"
"She hath been close to exhaustion for some months, now—" began Barbage harshly, but checked himself as she looked at him.
"It's all right," she said. "But Amyth, I want to talk to Hal alone. Jason, would you forgive us… ?"
"If this is thy wish." Barbage lowered the pistol, turned to the shimmering image wall and passed through it. Jason turned to follow.
"Jason—I'll be talking to you, too. Later." Rukh spoke hastily. He smiled back at her.
"Of course. I understand, Rukh—whenever you want to, I'll be here," he said, and went out.
Left alone with Hal she lifted her good right arm with effort from the bedspread covering her and started to reach out to him. He stepped close and caught hold of her hand with his own before hers was barely above the covers. Still holding it, he pulled a chair float up to her bedside with his other hand and sat down close to her.
"It occurred to me you'd be showing up here," she said, with a smile. Her hand was warm but narrow-boned in his own much larger grasp.
"I wanted to come the moment I heard," he said. "But it was pointed out to me that there were things to do, decisions I had to make. And we didn't know where you were until a few hours ago."
"Amyth and the others decided I ought to vanish," she said, "and I think they were probably right. This is an area where the people like me."
"Where they love you, you mean," said Hal.
She smiled again. For all its beauty, it was a tired smile.
"Duty kept you from searching for me right away, then," she said. "Did duty bring you now?"
He nodded.
"I'm afraid so," he said. "Time can't wait for either of us. Rukh, I had to make a decision to start things moving. We're out of time. I've sent word to the Dorsai they're to come here; and a phase shield-wall, like the one about the Final Encyclopedia, is going to be thrown around the whole Earth—including the Encyclopedia, in orbit. From now on, we're a fortress under siege."
"And the Exotics?" she said, still holding his hand, and searching his eyes. "All of us thought it would be one of the Exotics you'd chose to fortify and defend, with the help of the Dorsai."
"No." He shook his head again. "It was always to be here, but I had to keep that to myself."
"And Mara and Kultis, then? What happens to them?"
"They die." His voice sounded unsparing in his own ears. "We've taken their space shipping, any of their experts and valuables, and whatever else they could use. The Others will make them pay for giving us those things, of course."
She shook her head slowly, her eyes somberly upon him.
"The Exotics knew this would happen?"
"They knew. Just as the Dorsai knew they'd have to abandon their world. Just as you and those others from Harmony and Association who came here knew you came here not for a few months or years, but probably for the rest of your lives." He gazed for a long second at her. "You did know, didn't you?"
"The Lord told me," she said. She drew her hand softly from within his fingers and put it around them, instead. "Of course, we knew."
"All things were headed this way from the beginning," he said. His voice had an edge like the edge found in the voice of someone in deep anger. He knew he did not have to lay the cold truth out for her in spoken words, but his own inner pain drove him to it. "In the end, when the choosing of sides came, the Dorsai were to fight for the side of the future, the Exotics were to make it possible for them, at the cost of everything they'd built. And those of you from the Friendlies who truly held faith in your hands were to waken the minds of all who fought on that side so they could see what it was they fought for."
Her fingers gently stroked the back of his hand.
"And Earth?" she said.
"Earth?" He smiled a little bitterly. "Earth's job is to do what it has always done—to survive. To survive so as to give birth to those who'll live to know a better universe."
"Shh," she said; and she stroked his hand gently with her thin fingers. "You do the task that's been set you, like us all."
He looked at her and made himself smile.
"You're right," he said. "It doesn't change how I feel—but you're right."
"Of course," she said. "Now, what did you come to ask from me?"
"I need you back at the Encyclopedia," he said, bluntly, "if you're able to travel at all. I want you to make a broadcast to all of Earth from the Encyclopedia; and I want all of Earth to know you're speaking from the Encyclopedia. I need you to help explain why the Dorsai are coming here and why a phase-shield-wall's been put around this planet, both without anyone asking the Earth people's permission. I can talk to them at the same time you do and take any responsibility you'd like me to spell out. But no one else can make them understand why these things had to be done the way you can. The question is—can you travel?"
"Of course, Hal," she said.
"No," he replied deliberately. "I mean exactly what I say—are you physically able to make the trip? You're too valuable to risk losing you for the sake of one speech, no matter how important it is."
She smiled at him.
"And if I didn't go, what would happen then, when the Dorsai start arriving down here and they discover the shield-wall?"
"I don't know," he said. His eyes met hers on a level.
"You see?" she said. "I have to go; just as we all have to do what we have to do. But don't worry, Hal. I really am all right. The wound's nothing; and otherwise there's nothing wrong with me a few weeks of rest won't cure—once the Dorsai are here and the shield-wall's up. There's no reason I can't have time off then, is there?"
"Of course there isn't."
"Well, then—"
But what she had started to say was cut off by the sudden eruption through the wall of a man of ordinary height with thin, fading brown hair, a bristling gray mustache and a face that seemed too young for either. He was wearing a sand-colored business suit that looked as if he had been sleeping in it and had just been wakened. The expression on his face was one of bright anger. Amyth Barbage was right behind him.
"You!" he said to Hal. "Get out of here!"
He swung to face Rukh, on the bed.
"Am I your doctor or not?" His voice beat upward under the pale, white ceiling of the quiet room. "If I'm n
ot, tell me now; and you can find yourself someone else to take care of you!"
"Of course you are, Roget," she said.
Chapter Sixty-three
Dawn came up bright and hard on the waters of Lake Qattara, with a little chop to the waves and an on-shore breeze. With dawn came also a man in his fifties with a tanned, sharp-boned face and bright, opaque eyes, who wore his civilian suit like a uniform and was called Jarir al-Hariri. It appeared he was the equivalent of Police Commissioner for the large district surrounding the lake. With his coming the hotel began to swarm with activity. The instincts of Hal and Jason on entering the hotel had not lied to them. The great majority of guests who now appeared were plainly Earth-born and non-military; but their protective attitude toward Rukh was more like that of the members of her old Command on Harmony than that which might have been expected from casual converts to the message she had been preaching.
Hal himself was up before dawn. He had sat with Rukh until her breathing deepened into heavy slumber, then eased himself gently and with great slowness from the position in which he sat holding her. Detached, finally, he had laid her gently down in the bed and covered her up, leaving her to sleep.
Back in the room to which the clerk in the hotel led him after Amyth had called down to the lobby, he dropped onto his own bed; and slept heavily for nine hours—coming awake suddenly with a clear mind and drugged feel to his body that told him he was still far from normally rested. He rose, showered, ran his clothes through the room cleaner, and ate the breakfast he had ordered up to his room.
Then he went in search of Jason and Amyth, found them deep in consultation with Roget the physician over the problem of moving Rukh safely, and was himself drawn into the talk. But by nine in the morning, local time, the move was underway. They would go from the hotel to the spacepad outside Alexandria, some two hundred and seventy-three kilometers distant, by surface transportation. Medically, Roget had reservations about an air trip. These were slight, but existed nonetheless. There were, however, very strong security reasons for sticking to the ground. Any atmosphere craft could be vulnerable to destruction by a robot drone with an explosive warhead—something any wild-eyed fringe group could put together in an hour or so—given the materials—out of any number of industrial atmosphere-operating robots, doing the work in any handy back room or basement.
Spacepad security would destroy any such drone automatically at its perimeters, so there would be no worries once the spacepad was reached; and beyond the umbrella of that security any shuttle on its way to the Encyclopedia would be either too high or moving too swiftly for a drone to reach it.
Once in the Encyclopedia, of course, Rukh would be utterly safe.
"I take it," Hal had said to Jarir al-Hariri, early in this discussion, "security's been strict about letting the information spread beyond these walls that Rukh's leaving today?"
The stony, bright eyes had met his almost indifferently across the table at which they sat with cups of coffee—real Earth coffee, pleasant but strange now to Hal's taste buds.
"There has been no leak through my people," Jarir had said.
The pronunciation of the words in Basic were noticeably mangled on the Commissioner's tongue; surprising in the case of anyone speaking a language that had been the majority tongue of Earth, as well as that of the Younger Worlds for three hundred years; particularly when teaching methods had been in existence at least that long which made it possible for nearly everyone to learn any new language quickly, easily and without accent.
Jarir was evidently one of those rare linguistic exceptions who had trouble with any tongue he had not been born to. The Commissioner turned to Roget and spoke to him rapidly in what Hal recognized as Arabic. Hal did not speak that particular language himself, but he caught the word "Es-sha'b" which he identified by the Exotic cognate methods Walter the InTeacher had taught him, as meaning "people" in Arabic.
Roget answered with equal rapidity in the same language, then broke back to Basic, looking at Hal.
"I go in and out of this hotel all the time," he said. "None of those with Rukh have left it since you came in; and the hotel staff is as loyal to her as anyone else."
There was a casualness with which both of them seemed to dismiss the problem of necessary secrecy that disturbed Hal. No doubt what both had just said was true enough. Nonetheless, he had seen people beginning to congregate there at first light, outside the low white stone wall with its wide, low gates, that marked the limits of the hotel's grounds before its entrance.
Later, when their convoy of vehicles finally drove out through those same gates, the crowd assembled there was several hundred people in size, standing closely massed on both sides of the road. As the gates opened and the convoy of vehicles moved out, they waved—still silently, at the opaqued windows of the ambulance in the center of the convoy line. While their appearance was friendly, it was impossible that so many should have known to gather there unless there had been little or no attempt to keep word of the trip from them; and if Jarir's security was so lax in that respect, what did that promise for the other areas of possible danger they might encounter on their way to the Alexandria spacepad?
The waving hands were clearly directed at Rukh; but in fact, Rukh was not in the ambulance. She rode on the curved banquette seat of the rear compartment of one of the following police escort cars, seated between Hal and Roget, with Jason occupying the single facing seat. The transparent safety window between the rear and driving compartments was up and locked, additional and effective enough shield against any small arms fire short of that from power rifles or handguns—which were unlikely to be found outside the hands of the military or paramilitary here on Earth.
Through the window as the convoy left the hotel, Hal could see the countryside before them, framed between the backs of the heads of the police driver and Jarir. As they went through the gates, Jarir glanced back for a second at Rukh, and through the transparency, Hal saw the stony eyes go soft and dark. Only half a kilometer or so down the road the wayside was free of people watching and waving, and the convoy speeded up. Ahead, the roadstead was a wide strip of closely-growing dwarf grass, green as spring leaves between the low white siderails that warned off pedestrians. Hal could see even this short, thick grass flatten beneath the supporting air cushions of the vehicles as they picked up speed.
The green road ran in a long curve steadily toward the horizon, bordered on each side by open fields interspersed with the low transparent domes of hydroponic farms. Occasionally a few people were to be seen, standing waiting for the convoy to pass and waving as it did so.
"So much for security about Rukh's leaving the hotel," commented Hal.
"I can sympathize with those who leaked the word, though," said Jason. "Particularly after those news broadcasts last night."
"What news broadcasts?" Hal looked at him.
"You didn't—no, that's right, you went to bed early." Jason's face lit up. "You don't know, then!"
"That's right," said Hal, "I don't. Tell me."
"Why," Jason said, "evidently it took about ten hours for news about the assassination attempt to sink in around the world. Then some groups in a few of the major cities—you know, it's just like back home, here. The people outside the cities are all on our side. It's in the cities that they don't care—but as I started to tell you, some of these groups who'd picketed Rukh's talks and spoken and written against her came up with the idea of celebrating the fact that someone'd tried to kill her. And that triggered off the landslide."
"In what way?" demanded Hal.
"Why, it brought out all the people who'd heard her, and understood her, and had faith in her!" Jason's face was alight. "More people than anyone'd imagined—more people than we'd believed or imagined. News services came out with large stories on her side. Government bodies started to debate resolutions to protect people like her from other assassination tries like that. Hal—you actually hadn't heard about this until now? Isn't it unbelievable?"
>
"Yes," said Hal, numbly.
He felt like someone who had been preparing to move a mountain out of his way by sheer strength of muscle, only to have it slide aside under its own power before he could lay a finger on it. He had gambled, making the decision to move the Dorsai in and put up the shield-wall, hoping only that enough of Earth's population could be brought to listen—only listen—when Rukh spoke, so that she would have a reasonable chance of convincing them that what had been done had needed to be done.
Now, apparently, there was to be little problem in getting a majority of them to listen. He sat back on the banquette, his mind teeming with wonder and sudden understandings. No wonder Jarir, and even Roget, had seemed to dismiss so lightly his concern over keeping secret Rukh's drive to the Alexandria spacepad. Given the kind of attention that had erupted all over the world, it would have been foolish to imagine that all of those there, including the staff of the hotel, could be kept from letting out word of the trip to those closest to them. Also, those now lining each side of the roadstead were security themselves, of a not inconsiderable kind.
As they approached the coast the number of people on either side of their way, held back by the white barriers, became more and more numerous; until there was an unbroken double band of humanity ahead of them as far as the eye could see. When they began at last to come into the built-up areas surrounding the spacepad, so that storefronts and other structures enclosed the route, leaving only a narrow walkway between themselves and the barriers, that space was filled four and five bodies deep—all that the walkway would hold—with those waving as they passed.
But it was when finally they passed out from between the buildings, into the open space required by law in a broad belt outside the high-fenced perimeter of the spacepad itself, that the shock came. The tall structures had held them in shadow; so that they burst out at once into sunlight and into the midst of a gathering of people so large that it took the breath away.
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