The Final Encyclopedia

by Gordon R. Dickson

  He stopped speaking.

  She sat for a moment longer; and then when it became clear that he was not going to go on without an answer, she closed her eyes for a minute and sat blindly, tense and upright, in her chair for a long moment. Then she opened her eyes.

  "You're right," she said. Her voice was brittle. "I've got no alternatives to offer. Go on, then—there's nothing more I can say, at this time."

  "Thank you," said Hal in the following silence. He looked back around the gathering. "All right, we've already used most of our time before I'm to say my piece and introduce Rukh. I take it you understand the process by which the Dorsai are to be resettled here on Earth, with the help of the financial resources of the Encyclopedia and what we've been given by the Exotics? If not—if you want details—will you ask Rourke for them?"

  He looked over at Rourke, who nodded at them all.

  "We've no intention of announcing ourselves as coming here to be a defense force for Earth," Rourke said. "Our activity in that regard is only the subject of a private contract between our people and the Final Encyclopedia. We'll only fight for Earth if asked by the people of Earth, themselves; and with the Final Encyclopedia's permission, of course, which we take it won't be refused. So we'll wait until Earth asks us for help—if indeed that's what they want. All Rukh is going to say about us in her speech now—and she'll be the one to explain to Earth why we're here—is that we're refugees from the expansionism of the Others; and that the Exotics sacrificed all they owned to make sure we'd be refugees who'd be able to pay their own way and not be a burden on Earth—"

  He broke off. The door annunciator had chimed.

  "Forgive me, Hal," said the voice of Jeamus. "I've got some urgent messages for you."

  "Bring them in," said Hal. "Go on, Rourke."

  "That's all, actually," answered Rourke.

  Hal turned back to the others.

  "As I think I've said, I'm going to give the barest minimum of speeches," he said. Jeamus had entered and was circling the room to come up quietly at his shoulder. "I'll simply confirm the fact that Tam has given me a chance to take over the Directorship from him and I've agreed—thank you, Jeamus—"

  Jeamus had slipped him a sealed envelope and a folded sheet of the single-molecule material used for hard copies in the Encyclopedia.

  "The envelope's personal to you, brought by hand from the Dorsai," Jeamus whispered in his ear. "It's from an Amanda Morgan. The message is a picture-copy of a public letter Bleys had published on New Earth less than a standard day ago. It's even got his name signed to it. The Exotic Embassy on New Earth got hold of and sent it here by the new communication system. They also messaged they think that same letter's also being issued on those other worlds the Others control."

  "Thanks," said Hal.

  He slipped the letter from Amanda into his jacket's inner pocket and opened the folded sheet on his knee to read the message.

  "Sorry again to bother you all," said Jeamus; and slipped out.

  Chapter Sixty-six

  As the door closed behind Jeamus, Hal was glancing over the sheet on his knee.

  "I'll read this to all of you," he said. "It's a dispatch from an Exotic Embassy, which is still functioning in the city of Cathay on New Earth. Jeamus just got it over the new phase communications system. It's a copy of a letter to the New Earth people published by Bleys, and, the embassy thinks, to the peoples of the other worlds under Other control.

  " 'To all who believe in the future for ourselves and our children:

  "I have been reluctant to speak out, since it has always been my firm belief that those like myself exist only to answer questions—once they have been asked, and if they are asked.

  " 'However, I have just now received information from people fleeing Old Earth which alarms me. It speaks, I think, of a danger to all those of good intent; and particularly to such of us on the new worlds. For some hundreds of years now, the power-center worlds of the Dorsai, with their lust for warlike aggression, the Exotics, with their avarice and cunning, and those the Friendly people have so aptly named the Forgotten of God—these, among the otherwise great people of the fourteen worlds, have striven to control and plunder the peaceful and law-abiding cultures among us.

  " 'For some hundreds of years we have been aware that a loose conspiracy existed among these three groups; who have ended by arrogating the title of Splinter Cultures almost exclusively to themselves, when by rights it applies equally, as we all know, to hundreds of useful, productive, and unpredatory communities among the human race. We among you who have striven quietly to turn our talents to the good of all, we whom some call the Others but whom those of us who qualify for that name think of only as an association of like minds, thrown together by a common use of talents, have been particularly aware of this conspiracy over the past three hundred years. But we have not seen it as a threat to the race as a whole until this moment.

  " 'Now, however, we have learned of an unholy alliance, which threatens each one of us with eventual and literal slavery under the domination of that institution orbiting Earth under the name of the Final Encyclopedia. I and my friends have long known that the Final Encyclopedia was conceived for only one purpose, to which it has been devoted ever since its inception. That purpose has been the development of unimaginable and unnatural means of controlling the hearts and minds of normal people. In fact, its construction was initially financed by the Exotics for that purpose; as those who care to investigate the writings of Mark Torre, its first Director, will find.

  " 'That aim, pursued in secrecy and isolation which required even that the Encyclopedia be placed in orbit above the surface of Earth, has been furthered by the Encyclopedia's practice of picking the brains of the best minds in each generation; by inviting them, ostensibly as visiting scholars, to visit that institution.

  " 'Also, it has continued to be financed by the Exotics, who, records will show, have also had a hand in financing the Dorsai, who were from the first developed with the aim of becoming a military arm that could be used to police all other, subject worlds.

  " 'That unholy work, over the last three hundred years, has now borne fruit. The Encyclopedia and its backers—including the people of Old Earth themselves, whose early, bloody attempts to keep all the newly settled worlds subject to them—were only frustrated by the courageous resistance of the peoples on all those worlds, after a hundred years of unending fighting; as you all know from the history books you studied as children.

  " 'Now the people of Old Earth, under the leadership of the Final Encyclopedia, have finally thrown off all pretense of innocent purpose. They have withdrawn the unbelievable wealth accumulated by the Exotic Worlds by trade and intrigue from such people as ourselves, moving it to their treasury on Earth. They have also, openly, in one mass movement, evacuated the Dorsai from their world and brought them to Earth; to begin building the army that is intended to conquer our new worlds, one by one, and leave us enslaved forever under the steel rule of martial authority. And they have begun to ready for action those awesome weapons the. Encyclopedia itself has been developing over three centuries.

  " 'They are ready to attack us—we who have been so completely without suspicion of their arrogant intentions. We stand now, essentially unarmed, unprepared, facing the imminent threat of an inhuman and immoral attempt to enslave or destroy us. We will now begin to hear thrown at us, in grim earnest, the saying that has been quietly circulated among the worlds for centuries, in order to destroy our will to resist—the phrase that not even the massed armies of all the rest of mankind can defeat the Dorsai, if the Dorsai chose to confront those armies.

  " 'But do not believe this—' "

  Rourke snorted.

  "He can say that again, right here and now," he said in an undertone, unfortunately a little too loudly not to interrupt Hal's reading, "and keep on repeating it until it penetrates a few thick skulls down on Old Earth!"

  His eye caught Hal's.

  "Sorry. It's j
ust that we're all braced to hear a loud group down there, saying, 'but what do we need to do anything for? We've got the Dorsai; and they like to fight.' "

  He coughed.

  "Sorry, again. Go on, Hal."

  " '… Do not believe this,' " Hal continued, " 'It was never true, only a statement circulated by the Exotics and the Dorsai for their own advantage. As for massed armies, as you all know, we have none—'

  "Not true," commented Amid. "Sorry. My turn to apologize, Hal. Go on."

  " '… we have none. But we can raise them. We can raise armies in numbers and strengths never dreamed of by the population of Old Earth. We are not the impoverished, young peoples that Old Earth, with Dow deCastries, tried to dominate unsuccessfully in the first century of our colonization. Now, on nine worlds our united numbers add up to nearly five billion. What can be done against the courage and resistance of such a people, even by the four million trained and battle-hardened warriors that Old Earth has just imported from the Dorsai—' "

  Rourke snorted again, as the number was mentioned, but this time contained himself and said nothing.

  " '… United, we of the nine worlds are invincible. We will arm, we will go to meet our enemy—and this time, with the help of God, we will crush this decadent, proud planet that has threatened us too long; and, to the extent it is necessary, we will so deal with the people of Old Earth as to make sure that such an attempt by them never again occurs to threaten our lives, our homes, and the lives and homes of those who come after us.

  " 'In this effort, I and my friends stand ready to do anything that will help. It has always been our nature never to seek the limelight; but in the shadow of this emergency I have personally asked all whom you call the Others, and they have agreed with me, to make themselves known to you, to make themselves available for any work or duty in which they can be useful in turning back this inconceivable threat.

  " 'The unholy peoples of Old Earth say they will come against us. Let them come, then, if they are that foolish. Let us lay this demon once and for all. How little they suspect it will be the beginning of the end, for them!

  " '… Signed, Bleys Ahrens.' No title, just the signature."

  Hal handed the message over to Rukh, who was closest to him. She scanned it and passed it on around the circle of listeners.

  "That business of four million battle-ready veterans!" Rourke said. "I tell you, I can see trouble coming from Earth about that. We'll have hell's own job to make them understand that we brought in families—families! If there's six hundred thousand battle-age and combat-fit adults among them, we're lucky; and at least two-thirds of those are going to have to be sleeping and eating, not to mention out, sick or disabled, at any given time. Not to mention where the replacements are going to come from when we start taking losses. And they expect us to guard a perimeter considerably larger in area than the planet Earth, itself? Wait'll they discover they're going to end by putting more of their own people than our whole population into the firing line to defend an area that size."

  "That's something the future'll have to take care of," said Hal. "Once they realize what's needed to survive, there'll be those who'll be ready to help. But my hope is that we can find another way to win, here in the Encyclopedia, itself, than by trying to match, one for one, the literally millions of soldiers he'll need to, and can, raise in order to put any iris we open in the shield-wall instantly under an attack that won't be halted until we close it again. But never mind that, too, for now. If you've all had a look at that message sheet—"

  They had. Even Nonne had studied it.

  "So there's another instance of what you meant by Bleys possibly making the mistake of moving too soon or too late!" burst out Jason. "He waited too long to come out with this letter, didn't he? If he'd brought it out even a month ago—certainly if he'd come out with the same sort of talk about a coalition against us, even if he hadn't been able to cite the Dorsai moving to Earth—he could have sowed a lot of doubt down below and panicked a lot more of Earth's people into taking hard positions, that could have shut out the Dorsai before they could get here—"

  He broke off. His eyes were bright on Hal.

  "And that's why you were working so hard to set up the idea that the Dorsai were going to move to one of the Exotic Worlds!"

  "It's true," said Rukh, "that this letter's going to be all it takes to solidify public opinion on Old Earth against the Others. It's what was really needed to make them realize down there what the Others are after. We probably could have managed without it; but now that it's here, it couldn't have come at a better time. Hal, I think I ought to read it as part of my speech."

  "Yes," said Hal.

  "He must have jumped the gun when he heard we were coming in here—" Rourke broke off, thoughtfully. "No, he wouldn't have had time to have found that out and still get this published so that we'd have a copy, now."

  "Yes, he would," said Amid. "One way on Mara and Kultis we used to get information between the worlds in a hurry, faster than anyone thought it could be done, was to set up a chain of spaceships holding position between any two worlds at an easy single phase shift apart. When there was a message to be sent, a ship would lift off one world with it, make one jump to rendezvous with the first ship in line, and pass the message on to it. The second ship'd make one jump and pass it on to a third jump—and so on. There'd be little search-to-contact time in the target area of each jump, since each one was so short; and the necessary calculation would already have been made by the ship ready to go; and because each pilot made only one jump, there'd be no problem with the psychic effects of enduring too many phase shifts close together. The only requirement of the system was that you needed to be able to afford to tie up a lot of ships, standing idle in your message line and waiting. We could, then. Bleys can afford it, now."

  "Hmm," said Rourke.

  "Yes," said Amid, looking at him, "I understand Donal Graeme also came up with the same system, independently, in his later years after he had the ships to do it. At any rate, if Bleys had been keeping a watch like that on all worlds potentially hostile to him, he could've known within twenty-four hours, standard, when the first of the Dorsai transports lifted; and in the same amount of time when the first of them began to appear above Earth. And he'd have already known that none were appearing above Mara or Kultis."

  "So he panicked and moved too soon," Jason said. "I thought that letter didn't sound like him."

  "I wouldn't call it panic, with someone like Bleys," Hal said. "His plan would have been to beat the news of the Dorsai moving to Old Earth with his own announcement. He'll have gained that—it's just that he's lost in another area—and if he'd decided Old Earth was lost for now, in any case, he may have simply written off the effect his letter would have there—though he couldn't have expected Old Earth's people to read it so soon."

  He paused.

  "As for sounding like him," Hal went on, "there are sides to him that none of the worlds have seen, yet."

  He had captured their attention. He went on.

  "I've got one more thing to tell you," he said. "Bleys has also sent a message asking me to meet him secretly; and I told him I'd do it—inside the shield-wall. I've been interested in why he'd want to talk just now. This—"

  He pointed toward the message sheet, which now lay on a table beside Rourke's chair.

  "—tells me what he's after. He'll need to sound out the effect of the successful move of the Dorsai to Earth on my thinking. As soon as Jeamus lets me know he's here, I'll be going to meet him; and that could be at any time now."

  "But if he had to get the message, then leave from New Earth—" Rourke interrupted himself and sat musing.

  "He may not have been on New Earth," said Amid. "Even if he was with Sirius at under nine light-years of distance from here, he could make the trip by crowding on the phase shifts and using the old crutch of drugs in two standard days."

  "How would he know we knew about it yet?" demanded Rukh.

 
; "I don't think there's much doubt he knows we have some newer, faster means of communicating," said Amid. "He just doesn't know how we do it, yet."

  "It's almost time for us to talk," Rukh interrupted. "Hal, have you got your speech ready?"

  "I don't have it written out, but I know what I want to say," Hal answered, as the others began to move their chairs and floats back out of picture range. He pressed a stud on the arm of his chair.

  "Jeamus," he said. "Any time the transmission crew's ready, we'll get going on those speeches."

  "We've been waiting outside in the corridor," Jeamus' voice answered from the door annunciator. "We'll come in now, then?"

  "Come ahead," said Hal.

  The technical crew entered.

  "Are you going to wake up Ajela?" Rukh asked Hal. "If she's going to introduce you in a minute or two, she'll need a few seconds to come to."

  "I suppose so," said Hal, reluctantly.

  He got up, went over to Ajela and stroked her forehead. She slumbered on. He shook her shoulder gently. For a moment it seemed she would not respond even to that; but then her eyes opened suddenly and brightly.

  "I haven't been sleeping," she said.

  Her eyelids fluttered closed and she went back to breathing deeply.

  "Jeamus can introduce me," said Hal. He picked up Ajela, carried her into one of the two bedrooms of his suite and laid her on the bed. She woke as he put her down.

  "I'm not sleeping, I tell you!" she said crossly.