Other

by Gordon R. Dickson

  “Not that specifically,” said Bleys. “But I’m pleased with the whole evening as more than fulfilling my expectations.”

  “I’d have called it a standoff,” she said. “We walked out of that dining room when we wanted to, but on the other hand, Henry’s men were captured and helpless; and we ended up being attacked by their—what do they call it on this world? Tough Squad. We ended up getting attacked by that Tough Squad in the alley. We did take care of them, but if we’d had a few less of Henry’s Soldiers with us, we might not have been able to.”

  “The point is, we had enough people with us,” said Bleys. “Remember, Jack and Jill briefed Henry on the Tough Squads, so looking ahead, perhaps he had an idea of how many men they might send to give us a lesson. And, of course, it was planned to be just that: a lesson. They wanted to knock us around a bit, not do any real damage—nothing that could cause interplanetary complications.”

  “Well, then, why isn’t it a draw?”

  “They gave themselves away,” said Bleys. “They tried to impress me, then made their offer—and neither one worked. I posed them a rather hard question. I’m obviously a potential danger to them; and obviously I’m not going to be easy to take care of quietly, without violating my diplomatic status, or even making the kind of fuss that would arouse their jobholders when they don’t want them roused. If they let me go, I may rouse the jobholders, myself. If they don’t let me go, and stop me—but the word gets out—the jobholders may be kindled to action by that. It’s a no-win situation for them both ways. That makes it a win situation for me.”

  “Possibly,” said Toni. But she lifted her wrist control pad to her lips and spoke into it.

  Back at the hotel, Bleys paced up and down their private lounge while they waited for Henry, who had left them to get a medical check on those of his men who had taken any possibly serious damage in the alley.

  Bleys had not taken off his cloak, which swirled and flapped about his legs at each turn, as he paced the room. He was aware of Toni’s watching him from a sofa-float, and of Henry’s arrival, shortly after; but only with the edge of his mind. At the center of it, it was as if the energy being generated inside him by his thinking would burn him up if he did not burn it off.

  His eyes were focused nowhere in particular. He was concentrating on nothing and everything at the same time; including the possibilities suggested by what they had experienced at the dinner. These possibilities engaged the full cognitive machinery of his mind. The room, Toni and Henry—even the world around them—for the moment had only a shadowy existence. Only his thoughts existed.

  “It’s all right,” he came back to his surroundings to hear. Toni was saying in a low voice, “He’s well into it.”

  Bleys looked and saw Henry and Toni sitting with their heads close together; and, since he was still pacing, he saw they did not realize he had come out of his whirlwind of thought.

  “How are your men?” Toni was asking.

  “Fine,” Henry answered. “No one got seriously hurt.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” answered Toni. She nodded at Bleys. “Was he like this as a boy?”

  Henry shook his head.

  “No,” he said.

  “When did it start?” asked Toni.

  “I saw it first a few months before he left my farm—my son’s farm—to go to Ecumeny and be with Dahno. That was shortly before he tried fasting to find God—and did not. It was at least half a year after that before I saw him again; and somewhere in that time he’d made the decision that brought me to him now.”

  “The choice for Satan?” said Toni.

  “Not a choice for,” said Henry, shaking his head again. “No, he wouldn’t do that. He’s too big in soul—too big in every way—for that. But it was a decision that put him in Satan’s hands, whether he admits it to himself or not.”

  “If he really doesn’t know,” said Toni, “can you still hold him responsible for being the way he is and doing what he’s doing?”

  “Yes,” said Henry flatly.

  “Why?”

  “No one who walks with Satan can avoid the guilt of it,” said Henry. “A man may try to hide it from himself, but the hiding is known by him, even if what’s hidden is not admitted.”

  “You’re very hard in some ways, Henry,” Toni said.

  “I’m very sinful in many ways, myself,” said Henry. “But in the end—for me as for Bleys and everyone—the answer’s the same. Alone, you take the responsibility for any decision. And alone, you bear the consequences.”

  “It’s cruel to think that way.”

  ‘To live in God’s way is not easy,” said Henry.

  Bleys stopped his pacing abruptly and stood facing them. Their heads lifted and their faces turned to him.

  “Henry,” he said, “are there any of your men who won’t be able to move on to Blue Harbor tomorrow?”

  “None,” said Henry. “But I thought we were going to stay here another day or two.”

  “That was my first plan, yes,” Bleys answered. He looked at his wrist control pad. “Just a little after nine in the evening, now. There’s plenty of time yet. Toni, will you take the phone and make arrangements for all of us to fly tomorrow, late afternoon, for Blue Harbor? Make it about dinnertime.”

  Toni frowned.

  “I don’t know if I can arrange scheduled transportation for as many people as we’ve got at that short notice,” she said. “At the very least, the local space-and-atmosphere lines are going to want to split us up into groups on different ships.”

  “Charter a space-and-atmosphere ship if you have to,” said Bleys.

  “There’s that, of course,” said Toni. “Maybe I’d better ignore the regular flights and go directly to that.”

  “I’ll leave it to you,” said Bleys. He came over and took a chairfloat by them. She keyed in the phone by her sofa, spoke briefly to a travel agency and broke the connection.

  “You look pleased,” said Henry, watching him steadily.

  “Things are moving,” answered Bleys, stretching his long legs out before him toward the fire in the fireplace, which the hotel staff had replenished. It crackled as merrily as if there were not a problem in the universe. It was ridiculous that something originally designed to heat a room should be retained for merely decorative purposes. But Bleys enjoyed watching it, as—for very different reasons—he appreciated the starscape in the ceilings of his bedrooms.

  “They could be moving much faster than I expected,” he went on thoughtfully. “There are some possibilities—”

  He was interrupted by the chiming that signaled a phone call. Toni answered. It was a return of her travel agency call, and she was immediately immersed in the details of the move.

  “Interesting that none of those who jumped us in the alley used anything but sticks or clubs,” Bleys went on to Henry.

  “They planned to hurt us—but not seriously,” said Henry.

  “So I just said to Toni,” Bleys answered. “That’s why it’s interesting. Whoever sent them did it with orders to hurt and scare us, but not to do real damage—to the important ones among us, anyway.”

  “Also,” said Henry, “to give the appearance of being a simple gang off the street. Not part of any organization.”

  “That, too,” Bleys said. They looked at each other and nodded. Bleys turned to Toni, who had now finished the call. “Everything set?”

  “Everything. I set takeoff for six P.M. tomorrow,” said Toni. “All right?”

  “Fine,” said Bleys, gazing at the fire again. “Now, we wait. I think we’re going to have a late visitor.”

  “A visitor?” Toni asked. “Who?”

  “That I can’t guess,” answered Bleys. “We’ll wait and see. Whoever it is should be here by midnight.”

  However, it was less than an hour and a half later that their phone chimed. Toni picked it up and spoke into it.

  “Bleys Ahrens’ suite. Yes?”

  She listened a moment, then thumbed he
r control pad to mute and turned to Bleys.

  “For you,” she said. “A Guildmaster Edgar Hytry. News travels fast in this town.”

  “And decisions are just as fast,” said Bleys, a second before he thumbed the phone stud on his own pad to talk. “Guildmaster Hytry?”

  He listened a moment.

  “Not at all,” he said. “I’m usually up later than this. If you’ll go to the north tower of this hotel, and press the stud of private elevator A2, its door will open, and you can come directly to me, up here.”

  A pause.

  “Not at all.” Bleys said. He touched the stud again and cut off contact.

  “What does this mean for me and my men?” Henry asked.

  “Nothing,” said Bleys. “The Guildmaster’s coming to suggest a lunch with him and some of his associates tomorrow, he says. I’ll agree to it, but here in my suite. They’ll agree—after tonight, it’ll only be natural caution on my part. Your men—most of them, anyway—can rest until we go to Blue Harbor. I suppose we’ll have to leave the hotel a couple of hours ahead of time to be sure of getting clear of the city and out to the chartered ship—not that it wouldn’t wait for us.”

  “I’ll go tell them, then,” said Henry. “Both about the change in plans and the fact that they can relax. A few of them who were in that CEO alley might like to celebrate a little tonight.”

  “Your Soldiers of God aren’t going to fit the popular New Earth idea of a Friendly in many ways, besides the ability they showed as alley fighters,” Bleys said, smiling.

  Henry looked at him grimly. He did not return the smile.

  “They are what they are,” he said.

  Bleys nodded, becoming serious. “I’d like them to stay in the hotel, however, if you and they don’t mind,” he said. “Outside of that, as long as they get enough sleep, then-off-duty time is their own. But they should stay in touch at all times. We just might have things for them to do, once we get to Blue Harbor.”

  Henry got up and moved toward the door.

  “But don’t go yet,” Bleys said. “I’d like you here when this Guildmaster comes.”

  Henry came back and sat down.

  Guildmaster Edgar Hytry, when he appeared, was a round-faced, round-bellied man with thinning black hair and a pleasant, smiling round face. Like New Earth men in general, he was closely clean-shaven. The dark purple business jacket and narrow purple pants of his business suit seemed at odds with his overweight body, as if he had put on some extra kilos of weight since he had acquired it.

  Nonetheless, he beamed at them all, halting just inside the door through which he had entered.

  “Bleys Ahrens!” he said in a thick tenor voice. “It’s good—very good of you—to see me at this time of night.”

  Bleys looked at him across the distance that separated them. “As I told you on the phone, it’s no intrusion at all. Sit down.”

  “Thank you,” said Hytry.

  He came around the chairs between them and took one opposite Bleys, cautiously perching himself toward the forward edge of his float, as if he might need to jump up from it at any minute.

  “You’re wondering what brings me, of course,” he said to Bleys. “I’m a member of the Select Council of the Guildmasters here.” His voice had added a ring of importance. “In a way, I suppose, you could say we speak not only for the Guildmembers of this city, but of all cities on New Earth. We welcome you here to New Earth, Bleys Ahrens. In fact, we were hoping to give you some more solid indication of our welcome than just a few words from one of us. But we understood you were going to be here several days longer, and, well, word has it—” he waved vaguely at the city beyond the windowed walls of the lounge—“that you’re leaving tomorrow evening. That doesn’t give us much time to make you properly welcome. I was hoping I might be able to persuade you to go back to your original plans and stay an extra day or two, here in the city.”

  “I’m afraid not.” The tone of Bleys’s mild answer passed over any question of how Hytry had learned about their leaving so swiftly. “We’ve been going over our schedule and come to the conclusion that I’ve less time before needing to be back on Association than I thought originally. A shame, but what can you do?”

  “A shame, indeed,” said Hytry, managing to smile and frown at the same time. “The whole of New Earth City, of course, knows you had dinner at the CEO Club here tonight, and we’d be ashamed if you left with… what should I say? Say—without a balancing opinion, from our

  Steering Committee. Our Committee, Bleys Ahrens, would like to have a meal with you. That is to say, we’d like to have you as our guest at a dinner worthy of a visitor like you. But with the time so short… you’re sure you can’t at least put off leaving until perhaps midnight, tomorrow night?”

  “No,” Bleys said slowly. “We’ve just been talking about the immediate schedule, and I leave at six P.M. These tours take it out of us, you know.”

  “Oh, I do—wait a second!” said Hytry. “I’ve got it! There’s still time for lunch tomorrow. It’s not going to let us really give you the kind of welcome we’d like to show you, but it would give all our Steering Committee Members a chance to meet you—which they very much wanted to do; and if I do say so, Bleys Ahrens, it’d be to your advantage to meet them, seeing we’re the First Guildhouse, the leading one on our world.”

  Bleys shook his head slowly.

  “I’m afraid not,” he said. “I’d planned to spend all day working here tomorrow before I left, getting my talks ready, as well as other pieces of business. To take time out for even a lunch would mean going to meet you, eating lunch, and then getting back here again and back to work. No, no. It’d kill off the best of my available afternoon and, in any case, I don’t want to leave this hotel tomorrow until I go to the spaceport.”

  “I quite understand. I quite understand,” said Hytry. “How about this? We’ll have lunch right here at your hotel. It won’t take more than a couple of hours of your time. I promise you.”

  Bleys shook his head again, regretfully.

  “An hour and a half, then?” said Hytry. “I guarantee we won’t keep you longer than an hour and a half. No? How about an hour?”

  Bleys smiled ruefully. “I don’t see how you can have a lunch for me even here in the hotel, that’ll give us time to eat at all. Wait… perhaps. Yes, possibly. We could use part of my quarters here, and set the lunch up in that. You people would pick up the cost, of course.”

  “A splendid idea!” said Hytry. “Of course. Absolutely. We planned to be the hosts. What time would you like it?”

  “Twelve noon,” said Bleys. “Twelve noon sharp, and you’ll have to leave at one o’clock sharp—I warn you.”

  “That’s quite all right. We understand,” said Hytry. “Just leave it to me. I’ll talk to the hotel and take care of everything. All you’ll have to do is to get up from whatever room you’re in and move to another that’s large enough to hold us all and the lunch table.”

  “Very well, then.” Bleys rose. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I still have some time before I’ll be going to bed, and there’s work still, tonight.”

  Hytry was on his feet in an instant.

  “Yes. Of course.” He was already moving toward the entrance to the lift. “I’ll say good night, then. Good night to you all. Good night to you all!”

  Bleys had already touched the stud on the control pad of his chair. The door to the room slid open, Hytry stepped through, and the door closed again, swallowing him up. Bleys sat back in his chairfloat, almost grinning at Toni and Henry.

  “Well,” he said to them. “There we have it. The bidders of the opposition. On second thought, Henry, in spite of all his agreeableness, you can expect him to show up with an armed guard of his own people. I suppose we ought to display a guard of our own.”

  “I guessed as much,” said Henry. “I’ll have Soldiers out of sight but ready.”

  “As a matter of fact, you can put them right in sight,” said Bleys. “They�
�ll expect that, I think, knowing about the attack on us tonight. They’ll also expect me to be jumpy about another attack—but I don’t think there’ll be one—this time.”

  Chapter 9

  “Bleys Ahrens,” Edgar Hytry said, sweating lightly at the head of the table that had been set up in one of the lounges of Bleys’s suite. “We’ve looked forward to your coming. Unlike the attitude you probably encountered at the CEO Club, ours is that a Great Teacher like yourself will always be welcome on New Earth. Let’s all drink to that!”

  There were twelve men and women around the table, counting Bleys, Toni and Henry. The other nine were Guildmasters, Council-people all. Now, these lifted glasses holding a curious, sweet white wine with an acid aftertaste, and drank.

  Bleys lifted his glass barely to his lips with them and set it down again. He noticed that Toni was avoiding having to actually drink the orange juice in hers. There was nothing wrong with it—for anyone born and brought up on New Earth. But of course the hotel could supply only New Earth orange juice, and it tasted little like the Association orange juice that the CEO Club had been able to produce.

  Henry, sensible man, was drinking coffee; made, of course, with New Earth water, but the different taste of which was less apparent, since the taste of coffee could be standardized, though it was expensive to do so. Dahno was not with them. Some errand of his own had taken him away.

  “Thank you,” said Bleys. “It’s always cheering to hear that your coming is welcome.”

  Since he had specified no more than an hour for lunch, it had necessarily ended up being more of a snack than a meal, though the Guildmasters had arranged for it to be served with as much ceremony as the hotel could manage; and this was the first time anyone at the table had shown any intention of approaching the subject that must have caused them to want to meet with him. Half the hour had already gone by.

  “You see,” Hytry was leaning forward confidentially, although the full length of the table was between him and Bleys, “we know—we have ways of finding out these things—how the dinner you had with the CEOs went. Naturally, they’d be suspicious of anyone like you coming in. They feel they own this planet—though they don’t. I’m proud to say they don’t, because we of the Guilds hold them back from becoming absolute tyrants. We of the Guilds speak for the common jobholders. We know you speak to the jobholders. Therefore you’re with us, and we with you.”