by Matt
—Which would be never, thought Shane to himself. He had been overjoyed that Maria was already gone when Laa Ehon had chosen to make this visit to the class.
"You are now, then, conducting the teaching of these cattle yourself?" Laa Ehon asked. "I would like to hear how well they have approached a workable use of the proper tongue."
"At the moment," said Shane, "I am having my second officer practice teaching the others. If the immaculate sir wishes to watch and hear it on such duty, I can give the necessary command and the demonstration will be made."
"Do so."
Shane spoke to Ramarco in Italian. Ramarco, who was already down in front of the class, turned about and began obeying. Laa Ehon listened.
"They speak as well, or perhaps a little better than, some of the cattle who have been in supervisory positions for a year or more, here at this Headquarters," he remarked, interrupting after half a dozen questions and answers had been made. He turned to the trainee standing closest to him.
"What are you called?" he demanded.
"Immaculate sir," stammered the trainee in Aalaag, "this beast is called Luciano-beast."
"Well enough," said Laa Ehon thoughtfully. "That one understood me and answered correctly, if barely understandably—"
He touched the belt around his waist and there was the momentary gray flash of a privacy tool going into operation around the Commander and Shane. The trainees could be seen staring into the space where, to their vision, Shane and Laa Ehon had suddenly disappeared.
"I would not wish to compliment you in front of these lesser cattle, Shane-beast, such being prejudicial to discipline," Laa Ehon said, "but you are doing properly and I find it interesting that you have made this much progress so quickly."
Shane had been lying awake nights trying to think of a way to lead Laa Ehon into saying something he could report to Lyt Ahn as evidence of "unhealthy" thinking. The best idea he had come up with had not been planned for a moment such as now; but it was as if the psychic entity that was the real Pilgrim of whom he had spoken took control of him. He found himself replying almost before he had time to think.
"I am honored that the immaculate sir is pleased," he said. "May I say that I am pleased with the trainees that the immaculate sir has caused to be selected for me to work with. I can see them learning much more quickly than I would have imagined. It will be only a matter of time until the immaculate sir has his own working Corps of courier-translators. I can see them moving to and fro to the lesser offices of the immaculate sir's Command; and when one of those lesser offices is faced with the problem of dealing with a beast that knows no Aalaag at all and speaks a tongue none of the local sirs' cattle can speak, I can see them becoming available to the Officers in those lesser offices—"
"Silence!" said Laa Ehon.
As Shane had expected, there was no change in the other's tone of voice; but, as Shane had also expected, the focus of Laa Ehon's eyes were drilling a single hole between Shane's eyebrows. The Milanese Commander towered over Shane, motionless, as Shane was motionless. Like predator and prey, frozen, they stood confronting each other.
Shane said nothing. Laa Ehon said nothing for a long moment.
"It is not for a beast to make plans for the use of my cattle," said Laa Ehon finally. "It is not for a beast to exceed its orders. I, myself, will make plans for these cattle. Their use is already in my mind, and you will learn of it when you are commanded to play your part in that use. Do you understand me, Shane-beast?"
"This beast understands, immac—"
"You can have no conception of what would be a proper use of such. I have told you, you are not to teach them the courier-translator tricks that you yourself learned under the eye of Lyt Ahn. As one who may become First Captain myself, if need arises, I have my own uses for cattle, my own view of the future. Do you understand this, Shane-beast?"
"This—"
"That is good, because my needs and envisioned uses vary greatly from what another's might be. Indeed—" Laa Ehon's gaze was still focused on Shane's forehead, but now he seemed to be looking through the flesh and bone at something far beyond—"what I have in mind has never been envisioned before. In fact, I will tell you this much, that those you train may find much of their time spent in my Government Units around the planet, as I radically alter the structure of relationship between Aalaag and cattle. It is true that in the last few days, the last week or so, there have been some small problems with the efficiency of these Government Units, yet the concept is too sound to be so impeded more than briefly."
He stopped speaking; and, as once before, Shane was left with the clear impression that the Commander had meant to say more, but had interrupted himself. He found Laa Ehon's eyes plainly upon him, and him only, once again.
Laa Ehon touched the privacy tool on his belt and without warning they were visible to the room and the trainees, these gaping at their appearance. Then, as suddenly as he had appeared among them, Laa Ehon turned and walked out of the room.
"Ramarco," said Shane, staring at the door to the classroom, which, having opened itself before Laa Ehon as he exited, had now closed again behind the Aalaag, "take over the class. I may not see you until tomorrow, or not even for longer than that. But in any case, until you do see me next, you're in charge of the daily classes and the Corps." He went out himself.
He signed out of the Headquarters building and began the walk to the apartment. It was afternoon now, and the sun was out, with only a few clouds in the sky; but the temperature had lowered and the wind had even a keener edge than it had had the morning a few days before when he had come home to find Peter and Maria on the back balcony. He was grateful for the Aalaag-designed temperature controls built into the business suit he wore, as into his pilgrim garb.
He noted the greater proportion of people in robes, however, as he went. There were even more than he had noticed yesterday, but they were still far from numerous enough for him to imagine them gathering around the Milanese Headquarters in the numbers he would need. On the other hand, there were enough of them so that it was not impossible to imagine the Aalaag taking some notice of their presence, even now. While his permission to leave Laa Ehon for the House of Weapons took precedence over every ordinary order that could hold him here in Milan, there was one situation in which it could be denied.
That would be if a state of military necessity was declared by the local Aalaag authorities—in effect, by Laa Ehon himself. It was unreasonable to suppose that Laa Ehon would declare a state of military necessity merely to stop him from leaving, considering all the extra duty complications which the order would entail for those Aalaag serving under him; but it was not completely inconceivable that the presence of so many pilgrim-dressed cattle could become a reason for declaring such a state to exist. Now that he had something to report to Lyt Ahn about Laa Ehon, Shane must get out of Laa Ehon's area of authority as soon as possible. He reached the apartment and bounded up the stairs.
"I'm leaving Laa Ehon," he told Maria abruptly, as soon as he gained the apartment. "I'm going to check out on the basis that I have to go back to the House of Weapons—I told you about that."
"Yes," said Maria. "And we leave tomorrow?"
"I leave tomorrow. You leave tonight, separately," Shane said. "I want you on a plane for someplace other than Minneapolis, so Laa Ehon can't find you and use you as a lever against me."
"Could he?"
"Could he what?"
"Use me as a lever against you."
"Of course he—" Shane broke off suddenly. He took one step to her and held her. "You know that."
"Sometimes," she said. "Sometimes I don't know anything. Sometimes I wonder."
"Well, don't wonder anymore. And please get on the phone right now. Find a flight out tonight—use the names on those fake papers Peter's Organization got us, to make the reservations both for you and me."
"Where should I go, then?"
'To..." Shane hesitated. "I'll tell you what. Peter went bac
k to London when he left the day before yesterday, didn't he?"
"Yes," she said.
"Well, go to London. Stay with Peter. I'll follow tomorrow by commercial plane, too, and find you there."
"All right. We'd better hope there's a flight to London tonight with a seat available."
But mere was. That night, alone in the apartment, Shane lay in the darkness on the bed, newly large with emptiness, staring at the ceiling and unable to think. It was not that his mind would not let him sleep. His mind was empty, but sleep would not come, did not come, until well after midnight.
He woke early to the alarm, dressed and went out to the Headquarters building. It was barely dawn as he entered and signed in at the desk just inside the entrance.
"Now that I'm here," he told the Interior Guardsman on duty behind the desk, "I'm going right out again. I'm signing out for an unknown number of days to make a necessary trip to the Headquarters of Lyt Ahn, the First Captain. If you check your orders, you'll find my permission to do that."
The Guardsman—a subaltern—keyed the screen set in the level top of his desk and read the message it returned to him.
"Yes, here it is," he said. "There's an additional insert from Laa Ehon ordering you to leave word of when you'll get back, if you know when that is."
"I don't," said Shane. "Note that in your record."
He signed out, and left the building again. Two hours later he, himself, was on a plane to London, traveling with a ticket in the name of William Anderson which Maria had bought for him with cash before leaving the terminal, and left for him to pick up at the British Airlines desk.
Once at Heathrow, he got through customs and immigration with a minimum of delay. He had been traveling up until now in ordinary business clothes and for a moment, seeing the large number of pilgrim-dressed people around him, he was tempted to find a private corner long enough to take his own robe from his attache case and slip it on over his ordinary clothes.
On second thought, he decided that for the moment anonymity lay more in seeming to be apart from the Pilgrim movement. He took a cab into the city, to Peter's address, which was a house in one of those semi-circles of dwellings in parts of London that surround a small, fenced area of park. He paid off the cab, walked up to the door, suitcase in hand, and rang the bell.
Maria let him in.
"All right?" he asked—in English, in case someone else should be in the house and listening. "All right," she answered.
He held her tightly for a moment; and during that little time, the absurd thought crossed his mind that they could avoid everything that was due to happen, simply let it pass by without ever touching them, if he just continued to stand like this and hang on to her, forever. Then common sense returned and he let her go.
"Is Peter here?" he asked.
"He'll be home in an hour or two," she said, taking him by the hand. "Come into the sitting room."
The warm comfort of the sitting room—Shane would have called it a "living room"—with its thick blue rug, its fireplace, overstuffed armchairs and the heavy red-blue drapes at the windows, moved him deeply, suddenly, almost to tears. The still air of the place enfolded them both like a pair of comforting hands. A room like this might have been part of a home the two of them could have had together—once, in ordinary times, when things had been different.
He sat down numbly in one of the chairs flanking the fireplace. She sat down on the floor at his feet, leaning against his leg, and they both gazed into the fireplace, though there was no fire in it.
"I love you," he said, his fingertips moving over her dark hair.
She looked up at him.
"And I love you, dearest," she answered in Italian.
The early winter afternoon twilight darkened as they sat there, the light coming through the windows with the heavy drapes. Coming in to land at Heathrow, Shane had seen the sun like a red ball dim enough to be looked at directly and not far above the horizon, although it had been only early afternoon. The outdoors had been colder here, too, than in Milan —clearly winter was upon this more northerly land—and the pilgrim robes were more numerous. There was also an excitement in the general atmosphere, a strong current of feeling in the crowds of people he moved through, that he had not noticed in Milan.
Now, however, the room was quite dark and they were becoming conscious of its chill. Maria knew where the makings of a fire were kept in the house and they built one in the fireplace. The flames of this, plus the lamps they turned on, drove the darkening of the day back into the corners of the room. A little over an hour later, there was a sound of a key in the front door lock and the sound of the door itself opening. Footsteps came into the hall outside the sitting room.
"Anybody here?" called Peter's voice.
"We're in the sitting room!" Maria called back. She was seated decorously in the armchair on the other side of the fireplace from the one where Shane sat. The footsteps came toward them, loud and sounding oddly multiplied on the bare, wooden floor of the hall and muffled suddenly by the blue carpeting as he entered the room.
"So you made it all right," he said to Shane, coming in. "I've brought some people to see you."
Before Shane could answer, two more people entered the room. They were Mr. Shepherd and Mr. Wong.
Shane smiled.
"I thought you two might be along," he said, watching as the three men pulled up other chairs into a rough semi-circle between his chair and Maria's.
"It's good news," said Peter, "the Organization's got a definite date for you now."
He stopped and looked at his two companions.
"You can have your crowds ready to storm the gates of the alien Headquarters five days from today," said Mr. Wong. "We began passing the word two days ago that the Pilgrim would have a message to all those who gathered at the nearest alien Headquarters in seven days from then. That leaves five days almost to the hour from this moment, in Minneapolis—if you want it. We can trigger the exact moment for you with people of our own in the crowd that'll be surrounding the Headquarters there, if you'll tell us just what exact moment you want."
"What makes you think I'm headed for Minneapolis?" Shane asked.
"Pilgrim," said the tall, upright Mr. Wong, his voice deeper than Mr. Shepherd's, "there are ways of calculating answers. Crowds have their natural boiling points. It varies from culture to culture, but it's calculable—it goes back to the moment when one tribe of savages, after jumping up and down and yelling for half an hour, would suddenly begin the attack on the enemy tribe it was facing. Also, how can the Pilgrim speak to the Aalaag as a whole, except when the Aalaag as a whole is represented by the person of Lyt Ahn, First Captain of Earth, and owner of the beast Shane Evert, who talks face-to-face with that alien from time to time?"
There was a pause in all conversation.
"I see," said Shane thoughtfully. "Five days, you say?"
"Yes," said Shepherd, "so you see we need to know things. For instance, do you want to set a time to trigger the crowd at the Minneapolis Headquarters? Or do you want to trigger it yourself? If so, how are you going to let our people in the crowd know when?"
"I'll trigger it," said Shane. "If what I'm going to do is going to have any chance at all of working, I'll have to be the one to trigger it. You don't need a signal to your people in the crowd. They'll have no doubt about the time, when the time comes."
"We'll go ahead in any case," said Wong, "but just for the information of those of us who've worked for this moment, what's your estimate of how the Aalaag will react—and the odds? Our own figures are forty percent odds that you get rid of the aliens, forty percent that they leave, but incinerate the surface of the world before they go, and twenty percent they come up with some solution that negates the crowds and you; and leaves us right where we are, their slaves—those of us that're left—but wearing heavier chains."
"I've never thought of odds," said Shane slowly. "They don't matter to the Pilgrim; and, for myself, I can't think beyond th
e point when I face Lyt Ahn. After that whatever happens is up to him, and the other Aalaag; and while I think I know more about them than any other human, the truth is I could live a thousand years and probably never understand them. Their minds are in some other universe than ours— guessing what they'll do is useless."
"You must have a hope of success, surely," said Shepherd.
Shane shook his head.
"I'm only going to do what I have to do," he said. "Well, then," said Wong, "is there anything we can do to help you?"
"Not that I know of," said Shane. "Oh, come to think of it, the crowd will already be thick around the Headquarters by the time I get there. You can see that I get safely through the people there. I'm supposed to be en route to there now, and I left the Headquarters in Milan today—as you probably know. I'm going to have to report to them that I was held up somehow getting there, and hope I'm believed; but I don't want to report in until just before I see Lyt Ahn, to speak to him as the Pilgrim. Maybe you can arrange my flight by commercial airline to Minneapolis, so I arrive at just the right hour."
