After a while he got restless and started pacing, so I said, “Why don’t you go out for a walk?”
“That’s a good idea,” he said; then, “I just wish you could go with me.”
“I’m okay,” I said.
“I know,” he said. “You’re always okay.” He made it sound like a character flaw.
He left, but was back before ten minutes were up, looking flustered. “They wouldn’t let me out,” he said. “Emissary’s orders. I suppose he’s worried I might cause another scandal. You’d think he’d have more trust in me than that.”
I didn’t say anything. It didn’t sound good to me.
Over the next few days we both adjusted to life as virtual prisoners. We read books and co-wrote a report on the events at Tapis, and watched the debates on the viewscreen with a growing sense of unreality. On the third day, Magister Galele received a long transmission from Capella Two that cheered him up immeasurably. The next day he announced that he wanted me to take another test. I groaned. He was always giving me tests, never willing to believe I was no good at them.
“This one is really important,” he said. “You have to try hard on this. The original test is in Capellan, so I’ve gotten permission to translate for you.”
By now I was quite good at conversational Capellan—we scarcely spoke anything else between ourselves any more—but academic writing still gave me problems. When I saw the test, though, I realized it wasn’t the language that was difficult.
“Answer the ones you’re sure of,” Magister Galele instructed me. “Then, if you get stuck, I’ll help translate.”
I started in. Before long he saw me puzzling over something, and, in a wild mix of Gammadian and Capellan, he explained what the question meant in a little mini-lesson that left it perfectly obvious what answer he wanted me to give. A little puzzled, I filled it in. In this collaborative fashion we managed to complete most of the test. At the end, it asked for my name, and I typed in “Tedla.”
“You’ll need a last name,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I’m sending this to Capella Two.”
“What sort of name do they want?”
“It can be any name you like.”
He was watching me with anxious expectation. I could tell this was another question he wanted me to get right, but this time he didn’t want to prompt me. “Can I—” I started, then fell silent, embarrassed by how presumptuous it sounded. I was only a bland, after all. But he was still watching me, so I gathered my courage and said, “Can I use yours?”
He looked perfectly delighted. “Do you want to?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“Tedla, I would be honored. Thrilled.”
I typed it in and sat looking at it. Tedla Galele. I had a name now, just like a human. My birth name, and the name of my sponsor, the person I wanted to honor by carrying his name for the rest of my life. He was letting me have part of him, as if I were his protégé. “Thank you,” I whispered.
“Thank you,” he said, touching my hand. I wanted to put my arms around him, and knew I didn’t dare. Suddenly, I found my eyes were watering. “Tedla, what’s the matter?” he said tenderly.
“Nothing. It’s just that you’re so kind to me.”
“My dear child,” he said, deeply moved. “My dear, dear child.”
***
We had been in Magnus a little over a week when, one evening, Emissary Ptanka-Ni came to see Magister Galele. When I ushered him in the door, I saw that the emissary was grandly dressed in formal wear. “I can’t take long,” he said to Magister Galele in Capellan, ignoring me. “I’m on my way to a reception. But I think you ought to know the latest developments.”
I went into the bedroom to do some unnecessary task or other to give them the impression of privacy. Of course, I listened sharply.
“Has there been something that’s not on screen?” Magister Galele said.
“Everything, Alair. All the real action is happening behind the scenes.”
“So tell me.”
“Ovide Hornaday’s impeachment is a fait accompli. All they’ve been arguing about for the last three days is the venue for her trial. It will be held here. That’s not in her favor. The reformers and atomists have been losing round after round. The climate has really shifted.”
“Poor Ovide. She’s nothing but a scapegoat. What does it mean for us?”
“It’s not good. As you know, Ovide and her allies were quite open to our presence, and we got associated with them in many people’s minds. The communitarians are not nearly so welcoming. I’ve had to send out a communiqué to all the research teams, warning them to be extremely cautious. If we can just keep our heads down and our noses clean, we may weather this.”
Magister Galele gave a sigh.
The emissary went on, “The other thing that’s been going on is the investigation. They’ve been questioning everyone at Tapis, even the blands. I expect there will be some executions before all is said and done.”
Magister Galele exclaimed, “They execute people here?”
“Not people. Blands.”
“Oh.”
The emissary’s voice dropped very low; I strained to hear it. “I’ve received a warning from a friend that Tedla’s name keeps coming up. Alair, have you told me everything about Tedla’s involvement? We can’t shelter it if it had a role in the conspiracy.”
Slowly, Magister Galele said, “Everything Tedla did, it did on my orders.”
“That’s not what I wanted to hear.”
“It’s what I’ll say. No matter who asks me.”
There was an icy silence. Magister Galele went on, “That’s why we’ve got to prevent them from examining Tedla. It will link us directly to the uprising—or directly enough for the paranoids. You ought to get Tedla out of here, for good.”
“No. I told you, it is too easy for them to trace the bland here. If it disappeared, people would think there was a cover-up. Everyone would say we had something to hide.”
“We do have something to hide, damn it!”
The emissary’s voice went up a note in pitch; he sounded very angry. “Alair, I have no idea why you have gotten this Quixotic notion that it’s your duty to defend this bland. If we can protect ourselves by handing Tedla over and blaming your mistakes on it, we’ve got to do that.”
“No.”
“Do you want to jeopardize all the years of work establishing a relationship between our planets?”
“Do you want an innocent person executed for helping us?”
“For helping you, you mean,” the emissary said.
“That’s us, Ptanka-Ni. You can’t cut me loose. I’m Capellan. You’re tarred with my brush.”
The emissary rose. “You’re not rational. I’ve got to go. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Oh, one more thing,” Magister Galele said, then called out, “Tedla?”
I came to the bedroom door. Magister Galele said, “Tedla speaks fluent Capellan.”
The emissary’s gaze switched to me, and he flushed scarlet. “Thank you for telling me,” he said in a voice the temperature of dry ice, and left.
***
Everything the emissary had told us became public the next day. We sat together on the couch, watching the reports like addicts. Elector Hornaday was formally impeached by the electors and mattergraves before noon. The vote went through with so little debate it was obviously prearranged. By afternoon, there were pictures of her being brought by aircar to Magnus, looking grim and angry. She asked to make a public statement, but wasn’t allowed to.
But the bit of news that made both of us start alert was reported only as an allegation to be investigated by the trial commission. Someone had accused Elector Hornaday of basing her decision to negotiate on the advice of one of the rebel blands. It was a damaging accusation, the way they put it—as if she had been duped by a conspiracy more devious and elaborate than anyone had suspected up to now.
Our Gammad
ian trials are very different from yours. They are not modeled on war, as yours are—two sides battling to win a confrontation. We do not have hired legal mercenaries to fight in proxy for us. The purpose of our trials is to reach a just reconciliation that serves the best interests of the community. The object is not to decide who wins or loses, but to determine what will benefit everyone most.
But few trials are as politically charged as Ovide Hornaday’s.
They wrangled for days over who should sit on the commission of judges. Who, after all, was fit to judge an elector, except other electors? But virtually all were aligned on one side or another. I couldn’t follow the maneuvering, not knowing any of them, but when five judges were finally chosen, the emissary told Magister Galele it was a moderate panel, though slightly tilted against her—but then, so was most of the world.
We watched the testimony on screen for days. Everyone told their version—the supervisors, the postulants, the martialists, the investigators, none of them getting close to the truth. “When are they going to ask some blands?” Magister Galele said impatiently.
“We can’t testify in court,” I said.
“But they’ve questioned them all. Surely someone knows that this so-called rebellion was no such thing.”
If they knew, they obviously didn’t believe it.
Through all of it, the emissarium received no requests for anyone to come and examine me. I expected it every day. I grew very jumpy whenever the supervisor called me over, or a knock sounded on Magister Galele’s door. It was no secret who I had worked for, so it should not have been difficult to track me down. As the days went by, I could only conclude that something was holding them back.
“What should I say, if they question me?” I asked Magister Galele.
“Play dumb,” he said. “You know how. I’ve seen you do it.”
“But—”
“They won’t ask you, Tedla,” he said positively. “Ptanka-Ni will see to it.”
Elector Hornaday was the last one scheduled to testify. She was very good at it. She spoke not in the contrite or evasive tone of the guilty, but in a plain, straightforward manner, with a little of the righteous indignation of the unjustly accused. There was more than just her power riding on her testimony. The emissary was right that humans were never executed—those found guilty of major crimes were allowed to choose between ending their own lives and expulsion from human society.
I crouched tensely on the couch, watching, as they got to the crucial part. One of the judges said, “We have heard several people testify that you consulted with a bland before making the decision to talk them out.”
“Yes, that’s true,” she said quite calmly. “It was a bland I was familiar with, and knew to be loyal. I had chosen it myself, from Brice’s, and knew it was attached to humans, myself included.”
“And what did it say to you?”
“It had escaped from the refectory shortly before the doors were barricaded, and knew the mood of the blands. In its judgment, they were not dangerous.”
One of the more hostile judges said, “Was that opinion confirmed by the supervisors?”
“No,” the elector said with only the slightest hesitation. “But none of them had actually been down there, and their judgments were influenced by rumor and fear. I thought an eyewitness account was valuable information.”
“So you believed the bland over the supervisors?”
“No,” the elector said. It was the only thing she could say. “I took their opinion into account. I just decided that negotiation was a viable first option, always keeping the possibility of force in reserve.”
She made it sound so well-reasoned, in retrospect. When I thought of the confusion and panic of the actual events, the contrast was almost comic.
“Did it never occur to you that it might be part of the conspiracy to plant a so-called ‘loyal’ bland to feed you disinformation?” the judge demanded.
“Do you think they are that foresighted?” the elector said in an ironically amused tone. “You give them more credit than I do.”
It was a masterful answer, instantly deflating the impression that she was a kindly dupe.
The questioning went on, and I waited for her to challenge the sequence of events surrounding the explosion. But it turned out she had been confused and preoccupied at that point, and didn’t remember. I felt a sharp disappointment. Her case would have been so much better.
“I still believe you, Tedla,” Magister Galele said.
Even so, by the end of the hearings that day, I felt the worst danger was past. They had seemingly asked all the questions they were going to ask about my role, and had never even mentioned Magister Galele. Elector Hornaday had performed well: slyly ridiculed the conspiracy theories and projected a no-nonsense, feet-on-the-ground demeanor. Acquittal seemed likely to me.
The elector’s opponents must have felt the same.
I had just brought some new towels up from the laundry, and was alone in the room, when I heard voices outside the front door, and stepped to the window to look. Emissary Ptanka-Ni was coming across the plaza toward the building. Three vestigators who had apparently been waiting outside the door were rushing toward him, one of them with a handheld recorder. He stopped, clearly surprised, and there was an exchange of questions and answers. I could tell the emissary was growing very tense, from the way he held himself. At last he broke away from the group of vestigators and headed for the emissarium. They pursued him, but he speeded up his pace and finally escaped through the bronze doors below my window.
Less than a minute later, I was in the bathroom when the door opened and I heard the emissary’s voice saying, “Alair!”
I came out to say, “I think he’s in the com room.”
The emissary turned to go when I said in Capellan, “What’s going on, emissary?”
He was startled enough to hear the language that he turned back. “Turn on your viewscreen,” he answered in the same tongue, and left.
Quickly, I did. There was a man on it I had never seen before, with a square face and a head shaved like a martialist’s. He was talking so fast it took me several minutes to catch on. When I did, my heart started knocking. He was talking about a Capellan conspiracy to provoke insurrection among the blands. The word I kept hearing over and over, till it seemed to be ringing in my ears, was “Galele.”
They had found a voicepad in his rooms at Tapis, containing rough notes for a report. Somehow, in my hurry, I had missed it. In a gravelly, ominous voice quite unlike Magister Galele’s, the man read passages:
***
It’s not that the blands aren’t alienated. They are—profoundly so. The problem is, this hasn’t resulted in any sense of solidarity or ideas of collective action. The whole notion of class consciousness was quite alien to Tedla at first. They have no inkling of their own power.
***
This evening I provided them with some liquor, delivered by Tedla, to act as a social lubricant. We shall see if it jars loose anything beyond mere sorcery. A little experiment in chemical warfare, you might say.
***
There were other passages, all seemingly quite recent. I groaned aloud. The man on the screen looked up as if he had heard me, and said, “This alien agent infiltrated the very roundrooms that rebelled at Tapis, to infect them with his poisonous notions of ‘collective action.’ Is this a coincidence? Is it sheer chance that the provocateur Galele was present at the crisis, trying to distract and influence our people? Is it coincidence that his trained proxy was the very bland who deceived Elector Hornaday into thinking the revolt was harmless?”
At that moment Magister Galele came barreling into the room, saying, “What’s going on? They told me—”
“Shhh! Be quiet!” I said.
“...And where are these conspirators now? Being sheltered in the Capellan Emissarium at Magnus Convergence, being rewarded for their good work!”
“Good god, does he mean us?” the Magister said.
&n
bsp; “Yes,” I said. “You’re a provocateur, and I’m your proxy.”
“Oh, no.”
I sank onto the couch. I felt like the game was over, and we might as well give up. Whatever happened from now on, there was only one conceivable outcome. The only question was how long it would take.
The man on the viewscreen began repeating the incriminating passages. Magister Galele listened, thunderstruck. “Those are my private notes!” he said, indignantly.
“I’m sorry I missed them,” I said.
“They weren’t in the studium. They were in my bedroom. I’d been dictating on the little voicepad in bed. It must have gotten hidden in the covers.”
The man got to the part about “chemical warfare,” and Magister Galele exclaimed, “That was a joke!” In his accuser’s mouth it sounded like anything but.
The emissary came in. He stood in the doorway with his arms crossed, staring at Galele. “Is there any hope we can deny this?” he said.
The Magister shook his head.
The emissary’s gaze was steely, but his voice was controlled. “My god, Alair. How many times had I warned you? How many times did I say, don’t pick at the scabs of their culture? What is it that drives you to uncover whatever shames them most?”
He paused, but Magister Galele didn’t answer. The emissary’s voice changed as he went on, “Please don’t leave this room, either of you. I’ve already got three factions demanding custody of Tedla, and I’ve got to work out who has the most legitimate claim. As for you...” He looked at Magister Galele with a mix of despair and contempt. “...I suppose I can’t deny you belong to us.”
When we were alone, Magister Galele sat down beside me on the couch. I had turned off the sound, but the man’s face was still on the screen, silently mouthing accusations. The Magister said, “It was my job, Tedla. They sent me here to understand this world. There’s no way I can understand them without understanding what shames them. That’s what self-knowledge is all about, exposure of those things you least want to know. We can never really know ourselves until we know shame.”
Halfway Human Page 39
