"I still don't understand," said Hammer, and his voice was beautifully controlled.
"All right, then," said Bleys, "we'll say no more about it."
"Good!" Relief was in Hammer's voice.
"Of course you know," said Bleys, "that I will have to tell Dahno when I get back to Association?"
"Whatever you think is right," said Hammer, tightly. He was no longer smiling.
"You see," said Bleys, quietly, "we've found that certain things are necessary in situations and organizations; or as part of an organization operating by itself; and one of those is that the person in charge necessarily has some things which must be kept secret—from everybody. On the other hand, very often they're things that he can't merely trust to memory. So, as a result, inevitably, there are secret files."
"I don't," said Hammer, "have any secret files."
"I think we should talk about them, anyway," protested Bleys, still mildly. "You see, one of the things that brings about a secret file is that anyone at all, in control or not, necessarily has a private life as well as an organizational one, and again it's inevitable that things from the private life will splash over and affect the organizational life. This is the sort of thing that needs to be kept secret. As I say, it always happens."
"You can tell Dahno," said Hammer between his teeth, "that this is one place where that rule's broken down. I never have had any need to keep anything secret from the organization; and I haven't. I repeat, there's nothing in the way of secret files here on Freiland."
"Good. I'll tell him exactly that," said Bleys. "Now, why don't we get off the subject? I'm sorry I had to bring it up in the first place; but you understand that it's something that is going to have to be asked at every stop I make?"
Hammer's tight jaw muscles stayed tense.
"Yes . . . ," he said, grudgingly moving toward a tone of better humor, "I can see that. Just as long as you make it perfectly clear to Dahno that there's nothing like that here."
"You can trust me," said Bleys, smiling at him. "I'll be bringing him the exact facts on every Others' out-world organization we have."
With that apparently touchy subject behind them, both men made an apparent effort to smooth over the emotions it had aroused, and find more interesting and pleasant topics for conversation.
Hammer began to give Bleys a description of the various teachers and trainers he was using for his trainees, and how he intended to use the trainee class once they graduated—since those trainees that the out-world organizations produced were for their own use. The aim was eventually to have an effectively-trained person at every point where highly valuable information could be garnered.
Such talk took up most of the dinner, and after that Bleys made his excuses, although Hammer hinted that he might like to look at the recreational elements of night-life on Freiland. He was, Bleys said, a little more tired out from the trip here than he had thought. The first two days' excitement had carried him through, but now it was catching up with him. When this sort of thing happened, he told Hammer, he had a tendency to sleep straight through for ten or twelve hours.
Accordingly, with dinner finished, they parted and Bleys went upstairs to his suite in the hotel.
He sat down at the writing desk in the lounge of his suite and added to the log he carried the events of the day just past, including a verbatim account of his conversation about the secret files with Hammer.
This daily duty done, he put the log away in its carrying case in his suitcase and stepped out for a moment onto the balcony of his suite, that opened off both the living room and the bedroom.
He was on the thirty-fifth floor of a forty-two-story hotel, and the city sparkled with lights at his feet as far as he could see. He did note that, possibly something like a dozen blocks away, the dark spire of an office building rose directly in line with his hotel, such that someone with a window or a balcony like this one could look directly in the direction of his room.
It would do no good, of course, to run a picture recorder from the vantage point of a floor in the other building that was on a level with his own. The flimsiest of inner drapes would be like an opaque wall to such a camera, at such a distance. But a sound-pickup gun could easily catch the slightest noise he made during the night. Of course, if he slept clear through, as he had told Hammer he might, the listening would be rather uninteresting.
It was a relief to feel safe about a long-distance camera, at least, being focused on his two rooms to see everything that might happen there.
Bleys normally locked such balcony doors as a matter of course. But tonight, when he went into the bedroom to get ready for bed, he opened wide one of the two french doors to the balcony, locked the other, and merely pulled the inner, net drapes. Then he took off his shoes and put on a robe, tying the cord at the waist. He lay down on the bed on his back, turned the light out and clasped his hands behind his head.
He lay, staring at the dark ceiling overhead in the room, that was just barely lighted by the glow of the city lights outside—so that it was a place of darkness to anyone whose eyes were not adjusted to it, but dimly visible to Bleys as his eyes adjusted to the gloom.
Shortly after midnight, two dark human bodies descended silently onto his balcony. They could only have come here by being lowered from the roof. Bleys, as silently, rose from his bed and moved over to a corner of the room where the wall met the glass that fronted on the balcony. He untied the cord which belted his robe and held it loosely in both his hands, before him. In slightly deeper shadow of the corner, he waited.
Cautiously the two intruders peered through the open door of the french window. With the outside light still enlarging their pupils, they would not be able to see from out there whether there was a body in the bed or not.
After a moment, they tried the one french door that was closed. Finding it locked, they entered in single file through the other door, pushing silently through the parting in the gauze curtains behind the open doorway and into the room. They were both carrying handguns that Bleys recognized, by their long barrels, grotesquely bulging toward the end from the wire shielding wrapped around them, as void pistols.
Assassins' weapons. The military had no use for them, because of their extremely short range and doubtful accuracy at more than ten meters. But they were absolutely silent, and they left no mark whatsoever upon the body they struck with their pulses of energy. Only the electrical activity in that part of the body that was touched, was canceled out for several minutes. A heart shot meant instant death, which could not be distinguished from simple heart failure, even in this day and age.
As the second one stepped clear of the doorway, Bleys moved into position behind him, the cord in both hands, held a little apart, so that a section of it draped between the two hands.
He threw the cord over the head of the second man and pulled it tight with a jerk around his neck, snapping it tight with all the strength of the arm muscles he had developed over the past five years. The man froze for a second, then dropped as shock and the cutoff of fresh blood to his brain hit him at the same time.
Bleys broke the fall of his body with an encircling left arm and with his right arm scooped up the void pistol that was starting to drop from the man's hand. The assassin hit the floor; and the one in front of him, alerted by the small noise, spun around to find, several inches before his nose, his partner's void gun aimed directly at him.
"Drop the pistol!"
It was Bleys' voice, with all the strength and resonance built into it during the last years of lessons, together with the note of absolute command he had learned from Henry.
"Back off to the foot of the bed."
The second assassin did so. Keeping the first weapon trained on him Bleys stooped briefly to scoop up the one that had just been dropped. He stepped wide of the bed, still keeping both the conscious and the unconscious man covered with the weapons.
"Pull your friend to the foot of the bed. Then lie down beside him—both of you on your st
omachs. And stay there. I'll have a pistol on you all the time." He obeyed.
Bleys walked around to the head of the bed, snapped on the lights, and switched on the bedside hotel phone.
With one finger he coded in Hammer's private night-time number. Wherever the other man would be, the call would be automatically relayed from this phone to him.
The call was slow enough in being answered to indicate a reluctance to answer it. Finally, however, Hammer's voice came on, thickened as if he had just been roused from sleep.
"What is it?" his voice said.
"Who is it—I think you mean," said Bleys. "This is Bleys. I've run into a rather troublesome little situation here. I'd like you to come over to my hotel suite immediately."
There was a second of unintelligible mutter at the other end and then Hammer's voice came through, still thick with sleep but clear enough.
"I'm sorry, I can't come now, Bleys," he said. "I'll see you in the morning—"
"Hammer," interrupted Bleys softly, "do you remember the signed paper that was the first thing I showed you when I met you at the spaceport terminal here?"
There was a pause. Then Hammer's voice came, no longer thick with sleep, but angry.
"I remember it!"
"Then you can come over right away. Good," said Bleys, "how soon can you get here?"
"It's not easy," growled Hammer, "I'm in bed. The best I could do would be half an hour."
"Half an hour?" said Bleys. "I don't think—" He broke off to turn his head from the phone to speak to the one would-be assassin who had been choked unconscious and had come to and was instinctively beginning to try to get to his feet.
"Stay down there!" said Bleys, but without undue emphasis, knowing his voice would also carry over the phone. "I'm afraid I can't wait half an hour, Hammer. Twenty minutes."
He broke the connection.
"Did you hear that, both of you?" he asked, stepping to the foot of the bed to stand over the two on the floor there. "You'll have to stay where you are for another twenty minutes. Just relax. If either of you tries to get up, he'll be shot."
The two neither moved nor spoke.
It was a little more than twenty minutes, but only by a minute or two, before the doorbell to Bleys' suite rang. He depressed the button that allowed him to speak to whoever was on the outside.
"Who is it?"
"You know—Hammer!"
Bleys triggered the bedside control stud that unlocked the door. He heard Hammer enter and the door close behind him; and a moment later the other had come through the entrance from the lounge to the bedroom. He stopped abruptly at the sight of the two young men on the floor and the void pistol in each of Bleys' hands.
"You know these two, of course," Bleys said.
"I? I never saw them before in my life!" said Hammer. He smiled. "You seem to be getting all sorts of strange notions tonight, Bleys."
"All right, you two on the floor," said Bleys, "you've heard his voice, now you can lift your head from the floor for a moment long enough to look at him. Go ahead."
They lifted their heads briefly and put them down again.
"You know him, of course," Bleys said.
Both of those on the floor muttered negatives.
"And you're sure you don't know them, Hammer?" said Bleys. "That's a pity. I thought this whole business could be taken care of quietly and easily. It looks like I'll have to kill them; and then you'll have to take care of disposing of their bodies; and then see to it that I'm not bothered by the police or hear any more of this . . . though I might be discharged by court, anyway," Bleys went on thoughtfully; "they're obviously intruders. They made a point of dressing up all in close-fitting black suits. And planetary customs didn't find any void pistols in my baggage when I landed. Yes, I might just get off at that but—"
He smiled at Hammer.
"—I'd rather have you take care of it."
"What do you think I can do if you kill them?" Hammer demanded. "What makes you think I can keep the law off you?"
"You don't think you can?" said Bleys. "Well, that's interesting. You're the first of the Others' world organizations to be set up outside of Association. You're the oldest group in terms of being in place the longest. You mean to tell me that after all this time here, you don't have the kind of influence to take care of something like this, even if it does get to be a matter of police and courts? I don't really believe you, you know. I think you're just being modest. I know Dahno would be very surprised to hear that you didn't have that kind of influence. In fact I'm sure you could take care of this if I killed them. I just thought it would be less trouble for you if I didn't have to kill them. You see, I was sure you knew them. Are you absolutely positive you don't?"
There was a long pause, while Bleys' gaze moved back and forth from the two on the floor to Hammer and back to the two again—and then back to Hammer.
"All right, I know them!" said Hammer. "They're mine, the clumsy idiots!"
"Now it's them you're being hard on," said Bleys. "I'm sure somewhere along the line the members of your class were told that it's the one in charge who's always the one responsible. If they were clumsy, you were responsible. Now, how about disposing of them?"
"Let them go—" said Hammer.
"In your custody, certainly," said Bleys. He spoke to the two on the floor. "You can get up now and go with this man here, or do what he tells you."
Bleys kept the pistols trained on them while they got to their feet, looked at him, looked at Hammer, and stood undecided.
"There'll be a rope or something outside," Hammer told them. "Get out there, have whoever's on the roof pull you back up again; and the two of you try to get out of here without leaving any sign of having been here—if you can!"
Somewhat sullenly, they left. They were both remarkably alike, except for a slight difference in hair color; so that if the hair had only matched they could have passed for twins in their black suits. They left without looking further at either Hammer or Bleys; simply turned around and went back out through the opening in the curtain onto the balcony.
Bleys waited until he heard the sound of what was apparently a piece of scaffolding being pulled back up toward the floors overhead. Then he put down one of the void pistols, reached out to the controls by his bed and turned on all the balcony lights. Meanwhile, the void pistol in his other hand casually pointed more or less in Hammer's direction.
Outside the lights sprang on; and showed the balcony empty.
"Now you see why I said a little earlier this evening that under certain conditions certain things are inevitable. Weren't there some secret files you were going to show me?"
"You'll see them tomorrow," said Hammer.
"And you know what?" Bleys said. "By tomorrow when I see them, they might just be a little bit different. Strange how that can happen to files sometimes. But certain things will go missing and other things will be altered so that their meaning is different. Suppose we go look at them now."
"Now?" said Hammer. "It's the middle of the night—or later!"
"That's quite all right," said Bleys, "I'm not the least tired."
CHAPTER . 23
Hammer's outer office had the same garish appearance such offices always do at such a time of night, under such conditions. The seemingly too-bright lights, the naked surface of the night-clean desks, seemed to reject any daytime sense of life about the place.
Even Hammer's inner office, with its carpeted floor and paneled walls, had something of the same look about it. As they were about to go through the door into the file room Bleys placed a friendly hand on the shorter man's shoulder, feeling the muscles under the jacket tense at his touch.
Friendlies as an ordinary rule were careful to avoid physical contact; and enough of Hammer's raising had stayed with him to make him still that way. Bleys spoke to him in a soothing, friendly tone.
"Now," he said, "you know, and I don't, how much reading there is to do in these files I'm about to look at. I'll
want you in the file room with me while I'm going through them. So why don't you bring a chair in if you think you'll need it?"
"No thanks," said Hammer tightly, "I'll sit in the desk chair there."
"I may want to use that myself," said Bleys. "In fact, I'll probably be viewing the files on the desk screen."
Without a further word Hammer picked up one of the slimmer floats in his office and carried it through the relatively narrow door of the file room to set it down at the room's far end.
He took his seat in it, crossed his legs, sat with his arms on the armrests of the float and stared at Bleys.
"How do I get into these files?" Bleys asked.
Hammer reached in a pocket and tossed him a key ring.
"It's the number seven key, there," said Hammer, "I mean, the one marked with the number seven."
Bleys used the key in the slot of the desk control pad, and saw the screen light up with, in large letters, the word personal. He tossed the keys back to Hammer and seated himself before the screen.
He began to summon up the files in alphabetical order, scanning them briefly, and moving on.
"Are you actually reading those?" asked Hammer after a few minutes.
"Yes," said Bleys, without looking up from the screen, "I'm a fast reader."
He continued through the files. It took him a little over an hour and a half to read them all completely. Then he shut off the screen and swung his desk chair around to face Hammer.
"Very interesting," he said to the other man. "Now, suppose you take me someplace quiet where we can talk—we can even go back to my suite, if you think it's safe. But I imagine it's bugged, isn't it?"
"It was," said Hammer briefly; "as you know, hotels sweep the rooms in suites for listening devices daily. We hadn't had time to set in a new microphone yet. But I can take you to a private club, where we ought to be free from interruption at this time of night, and as comfortable as you like."
Young Bleys - Childe Cycle 09 Page 23
