The landing field was bounded by farms and the headquarters of the Development Area. The women set out briskly for home. The silver-haired man and the men in I.S. uniform went into the main building of the Development Area. The young man headed for the racks of rental bicycles by the landing field gate. The Admiral looked about for more acceptable transportation and, seeing none, at last went himself into the main building.
The silver-haired man was saying, “Thank you. And I apprehend I may rent a bicycle without?”
“That is correct, sir.”
Admiral Beagle said, “I am Admiral Beagle.”
“Yes, sir. May I help you?”
“I wish transportation to Green Mountain Resort.”
“If you go out to the main road, Green Mountain is a mile to the right. If you go left, it’s on the order of ninety miles. You can walk the distance or ride a bicycle.”
“Sir!”
“I’m sorry. There’s no other transportation on Binkin Island. If you want to call Green Mountain, they’ll send a pedicab down, but it will take an hour. Perhaps more.”
“Have you no official vehicles?”
“Yes, sir, but they’re not available for private use.”
“This is scarcely the attitude I expect to encounter, young man. I’m no ordinary private citizen. I am Admiral Beagle.”
“Sir, I know who you are, but I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
This was the excuse for a tantrum that relieved the ill humours of travel and restored the red in the Admiral’s cheeks. It did not, however, gain him the use of an official vehicle. He compromised by taking the name of the polite young man at the Information Desk.
The polite young man at the Information Desk waited until the Admiral’s back was turned and then he put a hand beside his mouth and said, “Old Leadhead,” in an insistent voice.
That had been the Admiral’s Navy nickname, bestowed on him by unloving subordinates. The Admiral whirled around but the young man had his head in a drawer.
The Admiral found the road and signs pointing to Green Mountain and to the various camping areas. He was not about to learn to ride a bicycle, so he began walking, adding this indignity to his nephew’s account. Not by the ear, by the nose.
Whoever had banned powered vehicles on Binkin Island (and don’t you find that familiarity has lent the name dignity?) had cared nothing for the tender sensibilities and short wind of retired admirals. It took Admiral Beagle twenty minutes to negotiate the mile to the resort, and when he came up the last hill, his case a heavy weight in his hand, his heart and lungs and legs all feeling strain, for the moment his attention was diverted from thoughts of redress and retribution.
A little man with a gray mustache and matching sweater was sitting and rocking on the veranda when Admiral Beagle took the steps. The Admiral knew him for what he was—the sort of enlisted man the younger men call “Pop.” The man nodded and said, “And good evening to you.”
The Admiral went past him without recognition of his presence, perhaps because it was only late afternoon. It was dark within and there was nobody in sight. The Admiral cast about, but found no people. He called and no one answered. He rang and no one came. After several minutes, he went back to the veranda.
The little man was still rocking and appreciating the glories of the day. In the late sunlight a plonk and its shadow performed a pas de deux. Their figures were simple, but their form excellent. The little man took no notice of Admiral Beagle.
Admiral Beagle, who made conversational points with his feet that other men make with voice or hands, nudged him with a shoe. “Who’s in charge here?”
“Oh, good evening.” He continued to watch the plonk.
“Who’s in charge?”
The man said nothing. When the silence had grown long enough, Admiral Beagle, who was not altogether a dull man, got the point.
“Good evening,” he said. “I’d like to know where I can find Ralph Weinsider.”
The man swept an ushering hand from left to right. “Ralph Weinsider is out there somewhere. But he don’t want to see you.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“He don’t want to see you.”
“Let him face me and say that! Once a knave, a knave forever.”
“He told me to say to you, ‘Go home, Uncle Walter.’ ”
Admiral Beagle inflated himself and said, “Do you know who I am?” Emphasis on “know” and “am.”
For the first time since he had returned to the porch, the little man glanced up at Admiral Beagle. He leaned forward and peered at the Admiral’s rainbows. “Oh,” he said mildly and leaned back again.
“What?” demanded the Admiral. “What?”
“It was my mistake, Admiral. I thought you had been at Adipietro.”
“I was at Adipietro!”
He leaned forward again. “Oh, yes. The decoration for Adipietro is too much like the ribbon for Supply Efficiency, don’t you think?”
“Supply is very important,” said the Admiral. “After all, you can’t make an omelet if you haven’t any eggs. Now, I’d like to know where my nephew is.”
The man swept an ushering hand from left to right again. “Still out there, Admiral Beagle.”
At that moment, a red tricycle under the command of a brown Trog with a white belly came hoving smartly round the point of the building, sailed between a tarpaulin-covered shoal and a lumber reef, and steadied for the sea road home. Admiral Beagle, of course, recognized her as a pirate lugger.
“Aha!” he cried. “Aha! I should have known. Halt, Trog!”
But the Trog did not halt. Neither did he raise more canvas. He merely sailed imperturbably onward, running before the wind.
“Insolent alien!” bellowed the Admiral, shooting a fist toward him. At the noise, the plonk broke off its dance and hung quivering.
Red of face, heavy of foot, but fully determined, the Admiral rumbled down the veranda, yelled, took the steps one at a time, yelled, and set off in vain pursuit, his case bouncing against his thigh. He lost no ground to the trike-pedaling Trog, but neither did he gain.
Soon they were out of sight of Green Mountain, down the hill and round the first tree-shaded bend. The Admiral must have felt extremely frustrated because he was still in pursuit.
Smetana continued to rock on the veranda. The plonk, a creature noted for its shy innocence, had sailed quietly away. Smetana sighed and shook his head.
6
THE NASHUITE EMPIRE IS VAST. There are enough planets within its nebulous and fluid borders that merely to number and name them all would be the occupation of months, the hobby of years. Most of these planets, of course, are uninteresting, undistinguished, and uninhabited. However, the only man to attempt to visit those remaining, the legendary Kazumatsu Ohno, died at the age of seventy-three of nervous exhaustion and chronic acute diarrhea with his life’s work only half done. Now, that is vast.
The Nashuite Empire is diverse. It contains planets occupied by single families, and planets that are population sinks to rival Old Earth. Each planet is an individual. Each has its own history. Each joined the Empire in its own way, in its own time, under its own particular conditions. Within the Empire there are free planets, and trusts, and fiefs, and satrapies, and provinces, and semi-autonomic dependencies. Diversity for every taste.
Through all human history the practice of governments has been to gather information, to assess it, to make reasonable predictions from it, and finally to act. This is patently impossible for the Nashuite Empire. In many cases there simply is no information. Where there is information it is often inaccurate or dated. In consequence it has been necessary to invent non-statistical methods of self-description as a basis for policy. Chief amongst these is the pantograph.
In the Central Administrative Offices on Nashua there is an immense building filled with pantographs, three-dimensional homologues of the distribution patterns of the Empire. The pantograph is based on the two ancient principles that the present implies the
future, and that the part implies the whole. The rest is wave mechanics.
The flaw of the pantograph is that cultures and occupations and migration patterns and the rest do not exist in isolation. They interconnect and interconnect and interconnect. To treat them separately is to be inevitably inaccurate. Still, no one has yet invented a better descriptive device, and some day the Universal Pantograph will be complete and for the first time man will know definitely what is going to happen next.
In 1457, the first pantograph to come into private hands was delivered to one Clifford Morgenstern, who put it to very different use. This pantograph described the present and future distribution of artistic traditions. However, Morgenstern cared nothing for what these might be. Instead, he chose to regard the pantograph as a form of fluid art in itself and he wrote a book defining the effective use of color within the model.
It was this book that disturbed and stimulated Fillmore Djaha. He cared nothing for pantography or color selection, and still the book spoke to him. It said, grandly, gloriously, that not only was change possible, it was inevitable. In those days, in the Tanner Trust, that was exciting news.
* * *
Sir Thomas Edmund Fanshawe-IV pedaled a wobbly bicycle up the path that led from the road to the occupied campsite. Pressed into the job of Mercury, but lacking Mercury’s winged paraphernalia, his motto was necessarily, “I Will Contrive.” He was an excellent contriver, which is to say that while he might tend to wobble, he would arrive.
He ran out of momentum before he reached the camp, stepped down in time, and wheeled the bicycle the final forty feet. A fire was burning, but no one was in sight. He leaned his bicycle against a rock and when he turned again a short, spare young man was standing by the nearer tent closing his jacket.
Sir Thomas said, “Lord Charteris, I believe.”
Villiers said, “Sir Thomas, your memory is excellent. We only met once and then fleetingly.”
And not under the best of circumstances.”
“And not under the best of circumstances. I trust I am no longer suspected of being a bad influence, or am I to be investigated again?”
“You have been, milord.”
“Ah.”
“As before, I believe you were found to be a tolerable vagary.”
This did not conflict so greatly with Villiers’ self-image that he felt need to protest. Neither did he smile, however. But then it was not his way to encourage flattery.
He said to the silver-haired executive: “Have a seat, sir. May I offer you a drink? Hot, cold, alcoholic . . .”
“Water would be excellent,” Sir Thomas said.
Villiers brought him cold water. “If your entourage is small, Sir Thomas, I can offer you all a place by our fire and a hot meal.” He cocked his head at the sky. “It is my estimate that we should have no rain tonight. However, if you wish more conventional accommodations, I believe there is a resort several miles distant.”
“I saw it,” Sir Thomas said. “As I passed on my bicycle. As it happens, however, I traveled to Duden by Navy courier, and hence necessarily alone.”
Villiers had once traveled aboard a Navy courier and would not easily be induced to repeat the experience. Villiers was right-handed. His pilot was left-handed. They had been fitted into the wrong seats and for two weeks had clashed elbows.
“Was the passage long?” Villiers asked.
“Twenty-six days,” Sir Thomas said.
“You have my sympathy.”
“Fanshawe-IV!” Fred said in delight, striding down out of the long-shadowed woods. “So you tracked me down way out here. Is something wrong?”
Sir Thomas stood and salaamed. “Nothing whatever, milord,” he said. “Merely that in a temporary shortage of messengers, I was pressed into service.”
“A message from my father.”
Sir Thomas said, “Yes.”
“Well, I’m sorry for your trouble, Sir Thomas. If it’s the usual thing, it wasn’t worth the effort. I’m afraid that we can’t offer you much here, but it is a pleasure to have you as a guest.”
“No,” Sir Thomas said. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible, milord. I was about to thank Lord Charteris for his invitation when you arrived, but I intend to return to Pewamo Central tonight. If I am fortunate, I may be able to rendezvous with the courier that brought me to Duden.”
“ ‘Een rollende steen neemt geen mos mede,’ ” Fred said.
“Exactly,” Sir Thomas said.
Fred smiled.
Villiers said, “What happened to David?” To Sir Thomas’ questioning eyebrow he said, “A young Big Beaver recruit. We’re taking him in hand.”
Fred looked around in surprise. Then he said, “He’s adept at disappearances. He was with me only a moment ago.”
“Not since you first spoke,” Villiers corrected.
“He’s shy. I don’t believe he said more than ten words in the day.”
Sir Thomas asked, “Are you sure of him?”
“Quite,” Villiers said. “I checked him out this morning.”
At Sir Thomas’ question, Fred had begun a protest that was momentarily halted by Villiers’ answer. He sighed, then pointed his left forefinger at Sir Thomas and said, “Won’t you ever let go?”
Then he swung and pointed his right forefinger at Villiers. He shook his head. “Tony, was that necessary?”
Villiers said, “As a Segosta Savoda—curiosity alone.”
“Are you really?” Sir Thomas asked. “I only managed to reach Elimosa Segosta, but then my health as a boy was not good.” He coughed experimentally. “Yes.” He patted himself on the chest.
“Really, Tony?” Fred asked. Then he held up his hands. “All right, I believe you. It’s you. Sir Thomas, why can’t you be like Villiers and give me a fair chance to go to hell?”
Uncomfortably, Sir Thomas said, “Perhaps someday you’ll understand. I ask nothing but the most routine of precautions.”
Fred rolled his eyes. “Sir Thomas, I don’t want my life directed. I want to make my own decisions. I even want the pleasure of stubbing my toe because I didn’t have sense enough to look where I was going. Why do you think I picked this place for a vacation?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, milord.” Sir Thomas looked about him.
“Well, I’ll tell you. Because I didn’t think you would find me here. That’s why.”
Villiers said quietly, “Fred, take your message off and prepare your reply. Here comes Torve and it’s dinner time, and Sir Thomas has a shuttle to catch.”
Behave badly? Fred was too well-bred. He mentally censured Sir Thomas for being unreasonable—quite rightly—and Villiers for the opposite—again rightly. He set down his pack, took the message, went into his tent, closed the flap and turned on the light.
Sir Thomas said, “Thank you, Lord Charteris. I’m forced to credit you as a man of sense.”
He watched Torve approach the last steep rise into the camp. He said, “That is your tolerable side.”
His eyes widened, then narrowed as Torve successfully negotiated the rise. Insufficient momentum—that was it.
Dust rose as Torve passed them. Villiers raised a hand in welcome. Sir Thomas raised a hand to shoo the dust away.
“And that Trog can stand as a symbol of your vagaries. I find you disturbing, Lord Charteris. You may have to be reconsidered once again. Our previous meeting was, as you say, fleeting. If it had been longer, I might have seen the resemblance.”
“Resemblance?” Villiers asked.
“Between what you are and what he would like to be.”
“You would have seen no resemblance, I think,” Villiers said. “I was a very different person ten years ago.”
“I think not that different.”
“As may be,” Villiers said. “In any case, Sir Thomas, he finds far more pleasure in agrostology than he would ever find as a remittance man, and what is more, he knows it. You have him safe. You have no need to worry.”
“I do worry,
sir. It is my occupation to worry.”
“I think he would far rather be himself than be me. If you give him fair allowance for maturity and sense, you might find that he does very well for himself. If you press him too close, the result might be too much like me for your taste.”
Torve, having parked his tricycle, pointed at the upper meadow and said, “I go to think the sun down.”
(In passing, let us note that this was a lie. Torve had no character in the presence of jellied whiteworms. Whiteworms glacé. Whiteworms in sweet cream sauce. When jellied, the opaque white of the worm turns translucent amber, an inner radiance that lends warmth and fire to any sauce. Torve had discovered an opened jar of whiteworms at Green Mountain, and hooked it. He meant to gobble it all in secret shame and could hardly wait to begin crying at his own weakness. This is speaking figuratively, of course. In actual fact, he could hardly wait to lower his nictating membranes, but it comes to the same thing.)
As Torve pointed, Villiers with sudden apprehension saw three figures fleet across the golden lake of grass. A plonk was hanging over the meadow. It took no note of their passage. When they were gone and the lake calm but for wind ripples and memories, it remained.
Villiers bent to Fred’s pack and brought out Volume II of The Pewamo Reports. He thumbed through to the section on plonks and unbuttoned his jacket and checked his curdler while he read it.
“Yes,” he said. “Here it is. ‘By nature, the plonk is shy.’ I thought that’s what it said. I’ve wanted to check it all afternoon.”
Sir Thomas said, “Someone is coming.”
Villiers looked around sharply. “Oh, yes. I believe I know him. Admiral Beagle, if I’m not mistaken.”
“It must have been a courtesy promotion. I’m not familiar with the man.”
Villiers closed the green book and replaced it in Fred’s pack. “It’s very strange. That plonk in the meadow has been drifting around here all day. I’ll have to drop a letter and suggest a footnote.”
“They may have meant reserved, rather than shy.”
“It’s a possibility, Sir Thomas. The Admiral looks in need of water. Would you draw him some?”
“Certainly,” Sir Thomas said, and turned to fill the cup he still held.
New Celebrations: The Adventures of Anthony Villiers Page 22
