Way of the Pilgrim

by Matt

  "Well, it's an interesting thought, at least," he said, sitting back in his chair and twirling the stem of his glass once more between his fingers.

  There was a moment in which the other three said nothing. Clearly, they were giving him time to think over what had been said. Then the waiter reappeared and there was a further moment of thinking time in which the added cognac was ordered. When the waiter left again, Shane had his reaction ready.

  "What makes you think anything like that could come out of it?" he asked Tom.

  "Isn't it obvious? We're being set up as a piece of administrative machinery to make sure the aliens get the production they want in this District. That's really all they want—the production. Give them that, and they won't care about how we part our hair, otherwise. All right," said Tom energetically, "let's say we do it—give them the production they want from the British Isles and Ireland. If it works here, they'll want to try it elsewhere, wouldn't you imagine?"

  "Yes," said Shane dryly, remembering Laa Ehon at the Council meeting describing this as a pilot project to his fellow officers.

  "All right, for every new place they set up, they're going to need cadre, some old experienced hands to help get the new offices off the ground. Where are cadre like that to come from, but from us, once we've got our machinery working here and know what operates and what doesn't? In other words," said Tom, "while the aliens don't have to think ahead in this respect, we do. I do, particularly, since I'm the administrative head."

  "Not only that—" Jack broke off. "Sorry, Tom, I imagine you were about to explain it to him."

  "Yes. In addition to the responsibilities involved in looking ahead this way, there's a unique chance in it—the chance that we could have no little influence on the way newer stations are set up. Which of course means that in the long run we could have an influence on the whole intermediate government that's finally set up. It could be sculptured to a great extent by what was wanted by we humans who knew how it worked. That could mean more autonomy—eventually even a chance to deal with the Aalaag as equals; or at least the way a strong labor union might be able to deal with the management that controls its working conditions."

  "I see," said Shane.

  And indeed he did see. The sort of integrated, worldwide organization Tom was suggesting would have to have overall managers—individuals in positions of tremendous power. Individuals with ambition. He looked about the table at the three faces closely studying his reactions.

  "The possibilities are tremendous," said Tom.

  "I can understand that," said Shane.

  "Of course," Tom went on, "it all depends on our making this first project go. But I think we can do that, one way or another. Our only blind side was the one where the aliens sat; and providentially, here you are, in a position to relate our goals to that, too."

  "Or relate it to your goals," murmured Shane.

  "That too, if possible." Tom waved a generous hand.

  Shane let them sit and wait a moment. Then he sighed.

  "You know," he said, "you've given me a lot more to think about than I expected."

  To himself he was thinking that indeed they had.

  10

  It was on the fifth day after the dinner that Shane came back to his hotel room and found a note shoved under his door that said merely, "Kensington Gardens. 4:00 pm."

  Since it was already eighteen minutes past six in the evening, Shane angrily tore up the piece of paper and dropped it in the wastebasket beside the tiny desk with which his room was furnished. He had just had dinner downstairs in the hotel. He dropped into the room's one easy chair and opened the first of the dossiers he had brought back with him from the office they had assigned to him at Unit Headquarters.

  The pattern of the Government Unit had turned out in practice to be little more than one of requiring reports and setting quotas for human government offices that already had had a responsibility for getting goods produced to the requirements of the Aalaag. Nonetheless, it took Shane most of the next four days to read and comprehend it all. The dossiers on the staff members, whom he had met in person the morning following his dinner with Tom, Jack and Rymer, held no particular surprises—including those on the three heads of staff.

  Shane was used to finding at least a touch of self-interest obvious in almost all those who seemed to find authority comfortable under the Aalaag; and this was certainly so with two out of the three in question.

  The exception might be Walter Edwin Rymer, who had been a captain in the British Air Force and had been drafted by the Aalaag for the Interior Guard because of his height. He was enough taller than Shane for Shane to be unable to guess that height closely; but certainly Rymer was more than six feet four inches and most likely six feet six or better. Which raised a curiosity in Shane's mind. He had had a notion that the British military forces, like the U.S. ones, had maximum height limits as well as minimums for those who wore their uniforms. It had never occurred to him before, but most of those now in the Aalaag's Interior Guard must have been overheight for the military services of most nations before the Aalaag came.

  At any rate, Rymer had been given no choice about becoming an Interior Guard—although his rise in rank from captain in that body to full colonel in two years was suspiciously rapid for someone who did not find some reason for self-interest in his occupation.

  Thomas James Aldwell and Jackson Orwell Wilson, on the other hand, had both effectively volunteered to work for their alien masters, Tom as a member of a Consultation Committee to the Aalaag, made up of former Members of Parliament— one of which Tom had been at the time of the Aalaag conquest—and Jack as a volunteer accountant, when the Aalaag had passed down through that same Consultation Committee a requirement for members of that profession to work in the human administrative units they were setting up.

  Not only had both men volunteered—although there could always have been good and unselfish reasons for that—but both had, like Rymer, risen swiftly ever since in rank and importance under the Aalaag. The pattern of their lives in the brief time since the Aalaag had come, in other words, agreed well with the ambition that Shane felt both had betrayed to him at the close of their dinner together.

  He settled down now to reread both their dossiers. He had discovered that in his case multiple readings of such documents tended to generate not only more accurate conclusions, but also inspired guesses, which more often than not later helped to fill out his understanding of the individuals concerned. He was a third of the way through Tom's dossier when a faint rustle of paper made him raise his head and see another note being shoved under his hotel room door.

  He threw the dossier onto the soft surface of the bed, jumped noiselessly to his feet and took three long, silent steps to the door, jerking it open as he reached it.

  But he was too late. The corridor without was empty. He bent, picked up the note that had just been left, closed the door, and went back to his easy chair to read it.

  "Trafalgar Square, nine pm," this one said.

  He was at Trafalgar Square at the appointed time. It was a cold night but not wet, for which he was thankful—an umbrella went awkwardly with his pilgrim garb; and he did not want to advertise himself by the fact that, thanks to a minor touch of Aalaag technology, this particular robe, which he had brought with him from the House of Weapons, would shed any water falling on it.

  No particular meeting point in Trafalgar Square had been specified by the note; so as much to avoid whatever notice he would attract by obviously standing still and waiting, he began to stroll around the circumference of the square. He was less than a third of the way around when Peter appeared and joined him.

  "This way," said Peter, leading him away from the square. A minute later, a car pulled to the curb beside them, stopped, and a back door was opened. Peter pushed him in and followed. The door closed, the car took off.

  "Why in Christ's name," snapped Shane, "didn't you just call me, instead of going through this cloak and dagger ro
utine of slipping notes under hotel doors?"

  "Your phone might be bugged," said Peter.

  Shane burst into laughter.

  "I mean it," said Peter, angry in his turn. "That Interior Guard unit you've got working with you would only have to pass the word to the proper branch of the police here to have a phone tapped; and of all the easy phones to tap, one in a hotel room leads the list."

  "You don't understand," said Shane, sobering. "The Interior Guard at the Project might be ready to give anything you could name to tap my phone; but its commander—a colonel named Walter Rymer, by the way, I've met him—would have to know better than to try. Anything he did, Laa Ehon would eventually be responsible for; and not only wouldn't the Aalaag think in terms of such spying, it would be a direct insult by Laa Ehon to Lyt Ahn. In effect, it would be Laa Ehon spying upon Lyt Ahn. I explained to you that they just don't violate their own laws, rules and mores. They die first."

  "How can you be so sure your Colonel Rymer knows that?"

  "If he's been an officer in the Interior Guard for two years—and he has," said Shane, "he must have learned the first rule of survival as a kept beast—never to do anything that might be construed as interfering between two Aalaag. He knows, all right. You can call me at that hotel room safely, any time you want to. I'm in no danger." Peter was quiet for a long moment.

  "I think," he said in a lower, calmer voice, "you may be forgetting something. It may be all right for you to ignore what other humans, and other human organizations, can do to you; but the rest of us aren't in your position as a servant of the First Captain, or of any alien, for that matter. Maybe you've forgotten, but nowadays the human police forces are committed to enforcing the Aalaag laws; and that makes us in the Resistance fair game for any London police officer who has reason to suspect we are what we are. Maybe you can forget that fact. We can't."

  Shane found himself unexpectedly ashamed.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "I am sorry. I do forget what it's like to be without the protection of my master."

  "And I wish," said Peter, angry once more, "you wouldn't keep referring to them as masters, and particularly to Lyt Ahn as your master. It's that very attitude we're fighting."

  "That," answered Shane a little grimly, "I won't apologize for. You can't take time to tailor your speech when you live cheek to cheek with the Aalaag. You have to think the right way, so that when you're required to answer with no time to think, you say the right thing. But since we're getting into mutual irritations, how about you and the rest calling them by their real name, instead of always referring to them as 'aliens' as if they were something just landed from outer space, dripping slime?"

  "It's not an easy name to say."

  "Try it anyway."

  "Lull... ull..." Peter tried to get the second syllable properly into the back of his throat, gargled, and then literally gagged with the effort.

  "All right," said Shane more soberly, "I stand corrected a second time. But a native English speaker should have the easiest time with it. I can teach you how to say it—or rather approximate it—if you're willing to practice; and it may help you someday to be able to say it properly. The Aalaag tend to rate the intelligence of humans according to how they're able to speak the Aalaag tongue; and to value the humans according to their intelligence—which to them means trainability. Let's forget all that for now, though. What did you want to see me about? Have you heard from the Resistance leaders on the Continent, any of them?"

  "Just from Anna ten Drinke in Amsterdam. She'll come," said Peter. "There really hasn't been time to get an answer back from the others. But I've got some large news for you. It turned out there was someone going directly all the way to Milan the day after you spoke to me. Maria Casana not only answered your letter, she answered it in person. She came. She's here now."

  "Maria Casana? Is Casana her last name? You say she's here now?"

  "I have to admit I didn't expect it myself," said Peter. "Apparently you had a strong effect on her. Yes, it's Casana. Anyway, we're taking you to where we're putting her up."

  Where they were putting her up turned out to be a flat occupied by a young male member of the Resistance with a wife and two children, one still of cradle size. As the husband of this family let them in the front door, Shane could hear women's voices coming from farther back in the flat, one of which he recognized as Maria's voice. Casana, he thought, it was a strange-sounding name, now that he thought of it. It reminded him that he still did not know Peter's last name.

  He listened to the voices with part of his attention as he was introduced to the Resistance member who had let them in. Maria spoke English, as Peter had said, with fair fluency but a recognizable accent. That, however, would not be the major problem, except as to what it might indicate about her aptitude for learning new languages.

  Maria, the wife and the older child came into the front room of the flat.

  "My wife," the younger Resistance man was saying, "and you already know Maria Casana."

  Shane acknowledged the introductions hardly knowing what he was saying. His eyes were on Maria. She was as he remembered her, slim, dark-haired, brown-eyed and with something remarkably alive about her. The sight of her stirred him more deeply than he had had any expectation of being stirred; and he forced himself not to stare at her.

  "Look," he said, turning to Peter as soon as the introductions were over. "I've got a lot to do with Maria and only a few days to do it in. We haven't got even minutes to waste. I need a place to talk to her alone—some restaurant, preferably. Someplace where no one, not even your Resistance people, are going to recognize us."

  "Well," said Peter, "there's no lack of places. We could—" "Not we," said Shane. "What I've got to go into with Maria is something for just the two of us. It'd only be dangerous for anyone else to know—and that particularly includes you."

  "I see," said Peter. His tone was stiff. "In that case, you can take the car and get the driver to drop you where you want, or simply step outside and start walking. But if you don't want to be conspicuous, you did the wrong thing coming out in your pilgrim getup. Even here in London, in any restaurant good enough to give you some privacy, the sight of a pilgrim at dinner with a good-looking girl having an Italian accent, or the two of you talking in some foreign language like Italian, is going to be remembered by the waiter and anyone nearby who's looking around him at all."

  "Don't worry about that," said Shane. "I've been wearing ordinary business clothes to the Project Headquarters. I just put my robe on over them when I came out tonight because I didn't know what I might run into. I can leave my staff and robe here—"

  He paused.

  "I'm afraid I'll have to ask everyone but Maria and Peter to leave the room," he said.

  He had half expected objections from the husband and wife owning the flat. He had certainly expected some resentment at being ordered out this way. But the two went without protest, disappearing around the corner of the entrance to the hall that ran the length of the flat. He heard a door close a second later.

  He laid his staff against the overstuffed chair beside him and pulled his robe off over his head, dumping it on the same chair. Maria laughed.

  "Your hair," she said.

  There was a rectangular mirror hanging on the wall across the room. Shane glanced at himself in it and saw his own brown hair standing up like a clump of wild autumn grass, upright but already killed by the first frosts.

  "Um," he said, and tried to smooth it down with his hands.

  "Just a second," Maria told him.

  She went out of the room for a moment and came back with a comb, with which he finally put his hair in order. The mirror showed him an unremarkable man in blue coat and gray slacks with a dark blue tie on a light blue shirt.

  "All right?" he said, turning to Peter.

  "You'll show up less this way, I'll give you that much," said Peter, somewhat grudgingly.

  "We'll take the car," Shane said. "You tell the driver somep
lace to take us. He can leave us there and forget about us. We'll take taxis home afterward."

  In the car, Maria was silent—agreeably silent, but no source of words. Shane was both grateful for this, which was probably a learned precaution on the part of a Resistance member such as she was, and made self-conscious by it.

  He felt very much at a loss. In the case of other women he had known, the cause that had brought them together had been open and obvious. Something that he knew could be taken for granted, if not immediately referred to. Something, at any rate, that he could be honest about. Also, by and large, he realized for the first time, he had always been in this position before with women like Sylvie, who had taken the initiative in bringing them together.

  Here, neither condition held. Much of what he would be telling Maria this evening would not be the truth. In fact, it would add up to the sort of lie she would not stand for if she knew the truth. Secondly, it was his initiative, not hers, which had brought them together; and he found he did not know what to do first.

  There was that feeling of difference and isolation in him, the same feeling he had lived with all his life, except that it was particularly present and painful in this moment. He wanted to reach out to Maria, to make her smile, laugh. He wanted to touch her... and he had no idea how to go about any of these things, even if they had been part of the order of business for the occasion—which they were not.