Sword of the Lamb

by M. K. Wren

  “I don’t, Erica. And my father?”

  “Ben had a report from Fenn Lacroy last night. Your father is dealing with his grief very well, and as you’d expect him to, by channeling the emotional charge into protecting the House. Alex, this isn’t easy for either of them, but they’ll survive it, and so will DeKoven Woolf.”

  She saw the ambivalent light in his eyes resolve into something close to resignation as he turned his attention to cutting his steak.

  “They’ll survive and the House will survive. I had no doubt of that.” And the subject was closed.

  Erica leaned back, waiting for him to ask about Adrien Eliseer. But he didn’t, and she wasn’t surprised.

  He worked at his breakfast, pausing at length to ask lightly, “Well, Erica, what black machinations have you in store for me today?”

  “More of the same, with variations, but I’ll give you a few minutes to finish your breakfast.”

  “For that I’m grateful, and perhaps you’ll humor me by answering a few more questions.”

  She smiled faintly.She’d given him few opportunities for questions yesterday, but he had taken advantage of every opening.

  “I’ll answer any I’m free to at this point.”

  “The Society’s ultimate aim for the Concord is a representational form of government. Do you practice what you propose?”

  “No. We’re not in a position to enjoy the ideal we hope to make possible. For an organization officially classified as subversive, representational government is far too unwieldy. Still, we have vestiges of it in our Code of Law. For instance, we’ve provided for the removal of any councilor by a majority vote of the total membership. That rule has never been invoked, however.”

  He studied her a moment, then, apparently having reached his limit of protein-enriched approximation, crossed his knife and fork on his tray and pushed it aside. “In all your half century of existence, there have been no major disagreements?”

  She shrugged. “Of course there have, but none serious enough to force a confrontation. The harmony derives from the nature of the membership in part—generally upper-class, well educated Fesh, and all of us are here because we share certain convictions and believe in them strongly enough to make the necessary sacrifices. And all of us have survived the screening process, which eliminates any radical elements we might attract. Beyond that, we’re forced into harmony to a great degree. We’re outlaws in the eyes of the Concord, and totally dependent on good organization and tight security. We depend on one another for our very lives.”

  He nodded, frowning slightly, then rose, and she’d learned by now that no discourtesy was intended in this tendency to leave a conversation to begin pacing the room.

  “Haven’t you other HQs comparable to this one?”

  “Only small comcenters. Our outside chapters are rather loosely knit.”

  His pacing took him to the orchids; he stopped to study them as he asked, “Over half your membership is in the outside chapters, isn’t it—the double idents?” He looked around to catch her nod, then, “I can see why representational government would be so unwieldy with the members so scattered.”

  Back to the original question. She smiled to herself. “Our government, Alex, is similar to that of a House hierarchy. Our chain of command works down from the major department chiefs to unit and subunit heads. For instance, I’m Chief of Human Sciences; I have jurisdiction over several units, including History, Sociology, Medicine, and Psychoscience—which happens to be my specialty. I have ten unit chiefs responsible to me, and each of them has three to twelve subunit heads responsible to them.”

  He walked back to his chair but didn’t sit down, instead resting his elbows on the back.

  “The Council is at the top of this chain of command.”

  “Yes. All major decisions come from the Council. It’s analogous to the Directorate, except Andreas doesn’t wield as much power as Galinin.”

  “Is he precluded from that by your Code of Law?”

  “No, only by his nature. Andreas guides the Phoenix as he has from its birth by consent, and by virtue of the profound respect he commands among the members.”

  He nodded acceptance of that, but there was a brief narrowing of his eyes at the word “guides.” He straightened and began pacing again.

  “Can you tell me more about the Council? I mean, is that one of the questions you’re free to answer now?”

  He also meant, can you tell me about the councilors, but that unasked question she chose to ignore.

  “Yes. The Council is made up of the chiefs of the seven major departments, and by custom the successor to a major department head also assumes the Council seat. The original Council was elected by majority vote of the charter members. There were about fifteen hundred of them; around four hundred are still with us, and three of our present councilors were on the original Council.” She paused, then added, “New members usually don’t meet the Council until they’ve completed GT, but you’re a special case.”

  He seemed to consider that, and she wondered if it displeased him; his oblique smile offered no revelation.

  He asked, “Is that why you’ve taken personal charge of my screening?”

  “Partly, yes, but I often take personal charge of at least part of the screening of new members. We seldom accept more than twenty applicants a year. We’re a very exclusive organization. We have to be. Our survival depends on it, and a great deal depends on our survival.” She smiled wistfully. “Perhaps even the survival of the Concord.”

  He returned to his chair, and his scrutiny took on a cast of curiosity ameliorated by a solicitude that was unexpectedly personal.

  “Erica, how did you become one of the chosen few?”

  She smiled. “Well, that’s a long story, but I think I can make it fairly succinct. But I should warn you that in Fina—or in the outside chapters, for that matter—a tradition has developed over the years that makes it . . . well, a breach of etiquette to inquire about a member’s past before the Phoenix.”

  He hesitated, then, “Thank you for the warning, and you needn’t answer my inquiry about your past.”

  “I don’t share most members’ reticence on that, perhaps because my pre-Phoenix past is so many years behind me; the wounds have long ago healed.” She sipped at her coffee, noting the transient veiling of his eyes. “To begin at the beginning, I was born in Na’saki, allieged to the House of Matsune, although I wasn’t much aware of that allegiance in my childhood. My parents were teachers in the University on indefinite allegiance grants to the Concord. In other words, Independent Fesh. Mother was a psychosociologist, Academicians Guild third degree; Father was an anthropologist and a GuildMaster. After Basic School I entered the University, of course—my parents spoiled me, really; they were in a position to open almost any academic door for me—and I dabbled in sociology, anthropology, history, even theology, which explains why I’m so useful here in what we so cavalierly lump under the heading of ‘Human Sciences.’ I think I was about twenty when I decided I’d found my life’s work in medicine. I stayed with that exclusively for four years, and my error was in not stopping there and going into Conmed.”

  “Why your error?”

  “Because I became fascinated with psychology, and my doting father managed to get me a continued studies leave so I could enroll for an advanced degree in psychohygiene research. Within a year, a call went out from Conpol for psychocontrollers and, with my training and aptitude quotients, I became valuable to Lord Henri Matsune. In fact, worth ten conscript Fesh in that year’s tax levy. That’s when I learned the real meaning of independence as applied to Independent Fesh, and that’s when I was inducted into the training program for SSB psychocontrollers.”

  His breath came out in a long sigh with the words, “Holy God . . .”

  She nodded, feeling the old te
nsion in her stomach; perhaps the wounds healed, but some scars, however old, never seemed to lose their capacity to ache.

  She said lightly, “My story is rather typical, really. Many of our members were driven into our fold by conscription. Ben Venturi is another conscript recruit, by the way.”

  He raised an eyebrow, but refrained from questioning her. She answered this unasked question because Alex Ransom and Ben Venturi must of necessity come to terms with each other in the future; it was important that Alex have some insight into Ben.

  “Twenty years ago,” she said, “Ben was just beginning a promising career as an executech in the Neeth Cameroodo estate in Leda when he was conscripted into Conpol. Like me, he was well educated, with equally well educated parents, although they were strictly House Fesh. A year after his conscription, Ben saw his father arrested on charges of treason simply because he was a friend of a man who went berserk one day and nearly killed Lord James’s younger brother, Luther. The man’s grievance, incidentally, was that Luther had raped his daughter, which the ever moral Cameroodo refused to believe. He called it a revolutionary conspiracy. Ben’s father died of a heart attack the day after his arrest, and his mother was taken in by the Sisters of Solace—as a patient. And here’s the long arm of coincidence for you: one of the nuns on her ward is Andreas’s sister.”

  Alex frowned at that, but after a moment his surprise gave way to a brief laugh. “Strange, I hadn’t thought about Dr. Riis having a family.”

  “I know. I always find it hard to believe he wasn’t simply created whole in Fina. His sister is the only other member of his family who survived the Fall. She was a charter member of the Phoenix, but after Elor Peladeen’s defeat, she opted for the Sisters of Solace. But Amelia Riis is another story. To go on with Ben’s story, a short time after his father’s death, he was offered a promotion into the SSB by Conpol, and an alternative by the Phoenix. He took both. He’s one of the few members who were double idents from the beginning. Now he’s ranked a major in the SSB and is in charge of the comcenter at the Cliff in Leda.”

  Alex’s eyebrows went up. “In Leda?”

  No doubt he was considering not only the difficulty of maintaining two demanding jobs, but the practical problem of commuting on a regular basis across half a world from Fina to Leda.

  But she didn’t give him a chance to ask about that.

  “I don’t know how much longer Ben can keep up both identities, but he has a high energy quotient and excellent organizational capacities.” She added with a sigh, “He also has ulcers, but we manage to keep that under control. Anyway, one thing Ben and I have in common is that we were both offered the alternative of the Phoenix at crisis points precipitated by conscription. My alternative was presented by a friend from the University. I’d known him for several years, and knew we agreed on certain basic social concepts, but of course he’d never said a word about the Phoenix. Even after he offered it, I tried to find another alternative, another way out of my Bondage to the SSB, and my vain efforts to escape into Conmed, into the University, into my comfortable independent past, finally brought everything into focus in my mind.” She was looking at Alex, but for the moment she was seeing the face of a man, a young man then, who waited patiently and in faith for her to come to the most important decision of her life; a man who was dead now, who stayed too long in his double ident assignment.

  Then she roused herself, finding a similar patience in Alex’s eyes as he waited for her to go on.

  “It certainly wasn’t the plight of the Bonds that drove me into the Phoenix. It was my plight as an educated, sensitive human being forced to turn my talents and training to refined techniques of torture for a secret police that is in itself a symptom of the internal decay of the social system. I don’t know what I’d have done if I hadn’t been offered the alternative of the Phoenix, but I do know I was seriously contemplating suicide. And in that I wasn’t unique. I’ve done some stat correlations on Fesh suicides. A large percentage occur soon after conscription into Conpol and Confleet, and the percentage has risen in the last twenty years in direct ratio to the increasing incidence of Bond uprisings. Both are red-alarm indices, but I doubt the Concord is even aware of the first, and it refuses to recognize the significance of the second.” She stopped, then lifted her cup to finish her coffee, adding matter of factly, “But that’s why I’m here. That’s why we’re all here.”

  He recognized, she knew, the signal in the change of her tone, but at first he didn’t move, still studying her with that solicitous interest.

  At length, he said. “Thank you, Erica.”

  “For what? My life story?”

  “Yes.” Then he looked at his watch and rose. “But now I suppose you’re ready to delve further into my life story—at least as it applies to the workings of my mind.” A pause, then, “Will Val be assisting you today?”

  A guarded question, but it was clear that he wasn’t anxious for Val Severin’s assistance, and that was unusual in the young men who passed through HS 1.

  “No, not on this part of the screening.” Erica went to the console wall to set up the recording and mod-stim systems. He watched over her shoulder as she explained each operation. She’d have assuaged his curiosity under any circumstances, and she’d learned that it reduced his preconscious inhibitions when he knew exactly what to expect.

  Finally, she said, “Well, now we’re ready to get to the workings of your mind. If you’ll just sit down and turn your chair this way.”

  He started to comply, then hesitated, frowning.

  “One more question, Erica—or, rather, a request. I’d like to find out more about Rich’s work here.”

  It seemed natural enough; Alex had always been interested in Rich’s work. Yet she read a purpose behind it, something more than interest.

  “Why?”

  He responded with a self-conscious shrug. “I don’t know. Because it was Rich’s, I suppose.”

  She let the evasion stand. “All his reports are in the memfiles. I’ll get you clearance later today.”

  “Thank you.” He went to his chair and turned up his palms in mock helplessness. “Now—I’m at your mercy.”

  She laughed. That would be the day the sun didn’t rise.

  PERSONAL FILE: E. RADEK CASE NOTES: 27 JULY 3253

  SUBJECT: ALEX RANSOM

  Alex’s screening is progressing faster than I anticipated, considering his resistance to conditioning and aversion to drugs. He’s recovering physically, but still suffers insomnia. I’ve had some success under Level 2 conditioning in reaching the sources of his nightmares, but no success with Adrien Eliseer. A cathexis exists there, and I doubt it’s susceptible to manipulation short of Level 4, and I’m reluctant to attempt anything so drastic.

  Despite this one negative factor, I’m entirely satisfied with his acceptability. However, my time with him may be limited now. The Phoenix has been struck twice by lightning in two unusual recruits; first Alex Ransom, and today a young man from another extreme of the Concord’s social spectrum—an Outsider. His name is Jael, and he comes to us from Helen. We have little background information, but Harv Vandyne of the Helen chapter recommended screening. I’ve decided to take Jael under personal supervision, too, at least for the analytic screening. Dr. Hamlin can begin the objective tests, which will give me more time with Alex.

  5.

  “I have a double surprise for you today,” Erica said, looking back at Alex as they left the lift. “A reward of sorts after your grueling week in HS 1.”

  He didn’t comment, perhaps because he was too intent on their destination. The door was only a few paces down the corridor; the door marked MATTER TRANSMITTER: TERMINAL 1. It was a small room dominated by a plasteel cubicle two meters in height, a meter and a half square. The side toward them was open, but the other sides and the roof were braced with dense, ominously humming metal
coils. There was just enough room at one side of the chamber for the control console and the tech seated in front of it, a man of middle age who gave her a warm smile, and Alex a curious scrutiny.

  She said, “Good afternoon, Chan. Are you clear to give us a ride to the surface?”

  “The park? Sure, Dr. Radek.” He faced the console, his fingers moving deftly across the controls. “Just step into the chamber.”

  They did, Alex still offering no comment, and as she expected, he was notably cool about his first MT trans. Outwardly, at least. Like the Second Gens, who had all but grown up with the MT and took it very much in stride. But to Erica, it would always seem something close to a miracle to stand in this humming box that seemed to vibrate with unfathomed power on a frequency almost beneath the range of her senses, then that curious inward jar—a sensation she’d never been able to define because it was so fleeting—and suddenly to find herself elsewhere, to feel the dispersive wind of that materialization.

  The elsewhere now was the surface of the island, and the hum vanished to be replaced by the distant rumbling of surf, the MT chamber was replaced by a canopy of lacy foliage with a heavy, sweet scent, and the sunlight filtering through it was momentarily blinding.

  Alex looked around a little dazedly, then sent her a slanted smile. “That’s . . . quite a surprise.”

  She laughed and stepped down off the small platform and followed a narrow path that led them out of the foliage.

  “Come, Alex. There’s more.”

  They crossed an open area of dune netted with a low-growing, grayish plant with spidery tendrils. When they reached the crest of the dune, she stopped. Beyond a span of white beach, the sea lay before them, the sun glinting on the molten curves of the breakers, the white foam dancing jubilantly. She heard him catch his breath, but he didn’t speak, and she understood his silence. It was a vista that asked a little time, a little silence; a vista that was for Terrans poignantly connotative.