When he turned again, Villiers was nowhere in sight and Admiral Beagle was approaching. The Admiral’s pace and form had never been good. On this final slope, his pace had slowed to less than a walk and his form had disintegrated into a wamble. His breath was harsh and helpless. His color red. His eyes lost. His face a graphic illustration of the principle of osmosis. The only thing neat and orderly about him was the case which he convulsively shifted from left hand to right. Sir Thomas looked again for Villiers, and then stepped forward, cup in hand.
“My dear Admiral,” he said. “Have some water.”
* * *
With a sense of real adventure, Ralph led John and Fillmore down the easy footing of a leaf-filled gully, the meadow out of sight to their left. He turned, hands high, mandolin in one, and motioned for the others to slow.
“Quiet now. Shh.”
Ralph leading? Ralph?
Well, after all, it was his uncle. But if you doubt, I can prove it to you. Simply bear in mind that if three people see themselves as a group, one will be placed in the center by the other two as they walk.
Imagine John walking between Ralph and Fillmore. Ralph is comfortable. John is relatively comfortable being in the middle with Ralph there to talk to. Fillmore is not comfortable—he feels pushed outside. He lowers his head and drops back a pace and then around to Ralph’s far side. The group stabilizes, John trading the security of the middle for relief at being rid of that twit at his elbow.
Imagine Fillmore walking in the center. Ralph is comfortable. (Ralph is always comfortable.) Fillmore is a trifle uneasy because he isn’t completely sure he belongs in the middle. John is acutely unhappy. He raises his head and picks his own path over rough ground or strides ahead and waits. When the group reforms, Ralph is back in the middle.
So, inevitably Ralph. And after all, it was his uncle.
He motioned up the gully side, and keeping low began to climb. The other two followed. Ralph lifted his head at the top with the care of a fawn trifling with the forbidden. Then he ducked again.
“Can’t see anything,” he said. “But there are rocks ahead and we should be able to see from there.”
They slipped and rustled their way to the rocks and wormed among them. John elbowed Ralph.
“Torve’s sitting in the field,” he said. “I think he’s eating something.”
“I can’t tell,” Ralph said.
Admiral Beagle was intermittently visible through trees below and to their right. He was drinking from a cup and panting.
“Where’s Villiers?”
“I’m here,” Villiers said. When they looked around, he was buttoning his jacket. It was growing cooler. He pulled the jacket smooth and there was a lump underneath on the left.
John said, “Mr. Villiers!”
Ralph ducked lower and said, “Not so loud,” to both of them.
Fillmore, who knew Villiers less well, held out his copy of Morgenstern, suddenly and acutely aware that it was rather more battered than when he had acquired it. “Here is your book that I borrowed.”
Villiers accepted it. “Thank you,” he said. “I thought we had agreed that you weren’t to be a bother.”
Ralph hung his head. “I’m sorry, sir, but my uncle came. We had to run.”
“Did you?” Villiers asked. “But whom is he looking for?”
Slowly, “Us, I guess. Me.”
“Why don’t you come along to the camp and we’ll all talk to your uncle?”
“Oh, no, sir. Please.”
“Sometimes directness is the easiest way,” Villiers said. “You won’t? Well, in all honesty I must admit that there are times when directness is not the easiest way. When your uncle has gone, come join us for dinner. All three of you. We’ll talk then.”
* * *
Admiral Beagle did not believe in altruism. He believed in solid rational motivations like hate and greed and fear. He had risen to Commodore by showing the knee to superiors and the boot to inferiors. Consequently he felt uneasy when he was offered a cup of water by a stranger out of apparent sheer goodness of heart. His mind was foggy and his knees were weak, but he still knew better than that. When his eyes were able to focus, he looked about him and spotted a familiar red tricycle.
He looked at his erstwhile shadout from beneath half-mast eyelids, and then with a nicely calculated wrist flick threw the remaining water from the cup. Last of the third cup.
“Did you think I wouldn’t notice if you kept me distracted?” he asked coolly. “I’m sharper than that, may I tell you, sir. Where is he?”
“Who?”
“Don’t fence with me, sir. The damned Trog!”
The young man who had been in company with the Trog on Pewamo called attention to himself by saying, “Admiral Beagle, how pleasant to see you. Sir Thomas, your pardon. Someone wished to return a borrowed book, and hadn’t patience to wait.” He held a book up in his left hand.
The silver-haired water-bearer next to the Admiral said, “I was beginning to suspect you a coward. Our shy young friend?”
The man stepped lightly down the slope. “You are very quick, Sir Thomas.”
Admiral Beagle said, “Who are you? What’s your name?”
The young man came too close, salaamed, and said, “Anthony Villiers.” He stepped a pace back, turned a hand to Sir Thomas and presented him: “Sir Thomas Edmund Fanshawe-IV. Admiral Walter Beagle, censor on Shiawassee and in the Tanner Trust.”
Sir Thomas asked, “Retirement promotion, Admiral?”
Beagle said, “I thought you were leaving the Tanner Trust?”
“My dear Admiral, I’m not now in the Tanner Trust.
“You said you were traveling to Mandracore.”
Admiral Beagle’s memory was faulty. Villiers had not told him any such thing, and a seizer of easy opportunities would have immediately said as much. Villiers knew better. For his own reasons he had led the Admiral to take a blind step from inference to assumption and it seemed to him that to admit this might well be impolitic.
He stepped around deception’s tangled web. He appealed to higher truth—though not much higher. He said, quite politely, “It would seem that subsequent to our conversation my plans changed and that I neglected to inform you. Forgive me.”
Admiral Beagle said, “Let me inform you of something, young sir. The same laws I mentioned yesterday still apply to you.”
Villiers showed a surprised face. “Admiral Beagle—how can you say that? Your authority doesn’t extend to Pewamo and neither do your laws.”
“Well, try this, then. Do you intend to spend the rest of your life on Pewamo? The only ships are for Shiawassee, and when you change ship, then you will be under my authority.”
“Come now, Admiral. Let us be more honest with each other. We both know quite well that whatever local laws may be, spaceports always operate under Empire Law. Ships wouldn’t land otherwise.”
Throughout, Villiers spoke respectfully and politely, if not deferentially. However, what Admiral Beagle heard was smart-ass defiance. That it was politely expressed made it more intolerable, if anything.
“If you want to play by Empire Law, let me see your camping permit. And let me see the Trog’s papers.”
Villiers nodded. “Very well. As you can see, Torve is sitting there in the field. I’ll have to withdraw for a few minutes to locate the permit, but I’ll have it when you return from speaking to Torve.”
So Admiral Beagle found himself walking through the shadowed grass, feeling ponderous, seething, but keeping tally. When he was young he had kept a notebook of slights, insults, and grudges, but as he had grown older he had found that he remembered them quite well without having to write them down. So much for those who speak of memory failing with age.
Sir Thomas spoke to Villiers. “You don’t have to show him anything, you know.”
“I do know, sir. But it does seem easier.”
“How could it be easier, milord? I happen to know that your Trog has no papers.”
Villiers looked at him. “I think you will find it makes small difference.”
“Are you sure that you are able to cope with this man? It would be foolish to take him too lightly.”
“Without taking him too lightly, I would nonetheless give him a relatively low position on my order of worries.”
“Low?”
“Relatively, Sir Thomas.” Villiers smiled.
“In that case, sir, it may well be imperative that you be reconsidered. I tell you that he disquiets me. If he does not do as much for you, then either your judgment is poor to a fault or your life is more uncertain than any temperate man could like. I will take whatever steps prudence makes necessary.”
“Fred wouldn’t care for intervention. Meddle warily. Better nothing than a major exercise of force.”
* * *
There were no chairs around the camp and would be none unless Villiers should be inspired by Thalia, the Muse of wicker weaving. In consequence, when Villiers entered the tent in search of their camping permit, Fred was sitting tailor fashion watching and listening to his father’s message. He looked uncomfortable, but he did not look unhappy.
The major lesson that Fred had learned from the Big Beavers and the course of his life was that comfort is antipathetic to change and the most comfortable are the dead. Consequently he valued his discomfort as evidence that he was still alive—and the knowledge gave him comfort. To that extent he was a life-lacking man.
His father was saying as much, though in other words. He was saying that Fred ought to think of something larger than sugar grass paddies and bucolic vacations. “You’re hiding from the reality of life. You’re avoiding the larger world.”
And to the extent that Fred would have found this world discomforting—as he had and would—his father was, of course, absolutely correct.
“How’s it going?” Villiers asked.
“I’ve listened and answered,” Fred said, turning the message off. “I’m listening again to see if there was anything I missed. It’s the same old stuff. Why don’t I stop running away and what poor payment this is for the privileges I’ve enjoyed. And he’s still threatening me with Gillian U. He’s talking about bringing her to meet me if I won’t go to meet her. What do you think I should tell him?”
“You might suggest a meeting on neutral ground halfway between.”
“Tony, that isn’t very useful.”
“If you want to stay on good terms with your father, you’ll meet the girl. Soonest begun, soonest done, like taking medicine.”
“That’s damned blithe.”
“If you’ll remember, my father asked something of the same sort from me, and I didn’t oblige him. I simply know what it takes to stay on good terms with fathers. I’m willing to bet that in . . . say a year . . . you’ll be married anyway.”
“Why do you say that?” Fred asked, pleased for the perspective but uncertain of Villiers’ premises.
“Because you’re ripe for it,” Villiers said.
I leave to your imagination whether Fred was pleased or not.
Villiers and Fred emerged from the tent. Villiers held the message box while Fred put on a jacket against the growing chill. Then Villiers swapped the message for the camping permit. The rising wind flapped it in his hand.
Admiral Beagle was returning down the hill. The clouds were smoldering ashes, white during the day, now showing orange fire with the coming of night. The fields were darkening.
Fred yawned in the coolness. He looked at the Admiral and touched his mustache. In the center of his philtrum, the toboggan run in the center of his lip, there was a mole. Fred felt this mole was particularly identifying, and while he was sure that it was covered adequately, he was not serenely sure.
As he joined them, Admiral Beagle looked back over his shoulder at Torve. “Very very odd. Very odd. He kept turning his back and gobbling something from a jar.”
Sir Thomas found this intriguing and would have been pleased to hear more. However, as is so often true of life, there was no immediate amplification. He filed the questions, “What was in the Trog’s jar?” and “Why did the Trog turn his back?” with a million other unanswered random curiosities. He never learned the answers, but about six months before he died he remembered the questions and wondered again.
Villiers handed the camping permit to Admiral Beagle. “Here you are, sir.”
Admiral Beagle held it up and looked at it probingly. In fact he knew no better than you or I what a camping permit should look like. He merely knew that one was required, and had struck out ad libitum.
Villiers said, “It couldn’t be better if it were signed by the Emperor.”
“Watch your tongue, sir!” Admiral Beagle said. “I’ll thank you to speak with greater reserve.”
“But, sir—” Villiers said, quite startled.
Admiral Beagle cut him off. “It is a point on which I am most particular. There are laws against abuse of the Emperor’s name.” He moved his eyes skyward in respect. “Empire laws.”
Villiers said, “I think these gentlemen can attest that I spoke no ill of the Emperor, nor intended none. Your pardon, sir. I think you will find that the camping permit is valid. I will accompany you to speak with the I.S. who stamped it on our arrival if you like.”
Villiers was standing uncomfortably close to Admiral Beagle as he spoke. Every human has a zone in which he is neither too close nor too distant for easy conversation, but comfortable. This zone varies from one culture to another and when men of two cultures meet, one may place himself on the far side of a desk in order to be at ease, and the other may unconsciously climb over the desk in pursuit of greater intimacy.
Villiers had noticed that Shiawasseans valued their distance. His schools had taught him to notice things like that—it’s part of being a lord. Admiral Beagle had flinched when Villiers had made his presentations and that had not escaped notice. Now Villiers crowded Admiral Beagle’s perception, not so blatantly as to arouse hostility, but in the subtle manner one might expect from so polished a gentleman.
The Admiral stepped back a pace and was lost. He folded the permit and handed it to Villiers and retreated another step. A pigeon, treated with respect, can be made to walk the length of a street in this manner.
“Thank you,” Villiers said. “Will there be anything further, Admiral?”
The poor baffled man looked about him. And retreated another step. “Let me tell you, young man,” he said. “You had best mind what you do. I’ll be keeping my eye on you.” And retreated.
Sir Thomas wheeled his bicycle out, but did not mount it. He said, “Admiral Beagle, I’m returning to the landing field. I would be pleased if you would bear me company.”
Honor saved, Admiral Beagle half-turned from Villiers and then swung back to say, “I’m sorry I ever recommended Mrs. Waldo Wintergood to you.”
When Sir Thomas and the Admiral were gone into the twilight, Fred said, “Can you explain that?”
Villiers said, “I’ll try later.”
He said that because Ralph and John and Fillmore were popping out of the nearest rocks, and he was sophisticate enough to believe in portents. John and Fillmore had discovered David in hiding. John held him by the hands, Fillmore by the feet. Ralph stood to one side with his mandolin. David kicked and struggled silently.
“Look who we caught spying on you,” John said.
“Put him down,” Fred said.
Villiers said, “You had better put him down. He’s another dinner guest.” He turned to the darkened hill and put his hand to his mouth. “Torve—it’s dinner time.”
7
EARTH MEDITATES, AIR QUESTIONS, WATER DREAMS. Fire lives, and fire rules the night.
Earth mulls deep brown thoughts of time past, while fire dances.
Air touches the world with pale wondering fingers, and fire dances.
Water sings of freedom’s illusion, but fire dances.
Fire brief. Fire bright. Fire brilliant. Fire inspires,
and fire rules the night.
* * *
An ordinary man might have accepted the fact that whatever immoralities Villiers was engaged in were beyond his power to affect. An ordinary man might have accepted the fact that his nephew had no intention. An ordinary man might have gone home.
Feeling extraordinary, Admiral Beagle made his way up a forest gully near Villiers’ camp. The night was dark and he wished he had night glasses. He demanded nothing of others that he did not demand of himself and tomorrow he would mark a demerit down in his notebook. Lack of foresight, Mr. Beagle. A good officer is prepared for all contingencies.
He wasn’t altogether sure what he meant to do, but he couldn’t leave without a reconnoiter. He’d been taught while young that when in doubt the best thing was to have a recce, and he had assimilated the principle so thoroughly that now, some fifty years later, he found himself sneaking up a hillside for a long secret look at the enemy.
As he sneaked, he mumbled over a phrase in his mind like a dog seeking the sweetest grip on a bone. He had served himself a demerit for his lame exit speech to Villiers. As a connoisseur of the pithy, he felt he should have departed only on delivery of an apt and witty capping blow. If another occasion should be presented, he meant to make the most of it. A simile had occurred to him—that Villiers seemed as ripe with evil as a veined cheese (all of which he loathed, from blue to Bagnasco)—but so far the best refinement he had produced was, “You are as corrupt as Gorgonzola,” and that wasn’t much, not even a metaphor.
From the top of the gully, he could see a fire flicker. In the afternoon he had noted a rock tumble on the north side of the camp. He honored himself with the removal of a demerit when he reached those rocks. He felt supremely woodwise. He could see figures moving and hear the sound but not the substance of conversation. A light suddenly flashed at him from the camp and he ducked. After a few seconds the light went out. He lay quietly and panted, and flattered himself for his quickness.
The rocks continued even into the camp, where several had been pressed into service as chairs and tables. By degrees, the Admiral worked his way down among them until he could hear those about the fire—and see them, too, when he dared to look.
New Celebrations: The Adventures of Anthony Villiers Page 23
