Other

by Gordon R. Dickson

  “Who speaks for the non-job-holders?” asked Bleys.

  “There are no non-job-holders,” said Hytry, and the other Guildmasters, of whom only three were women, nodded. “On New Earth everyone works; and everyone who works—at any job—has to belong to a Guild.”

  “Including farmers, ranchers and such people?”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Hytry. “Everyone. So that in the next few weeks when you talk to the people of this world, you’ll be talking to Guild members—all except the stray CEO who might come to listen.”

  “That’s interesting,” said Bleys. “Then you aren’t worried about some of the jobholders having to switch jobs or be thrown out of work, as a result of this new contract with Newton? Though I suppose a number of them will have to move to different places and face that sort of disruption.”

  The Guildmasters looked at each other.

  “Oh,” said Hytry, “it’ll all go smoothly. We know how to handle such things.”

  “Well, that’s good,” said Bleys. “I hadn’t been able to see how something so massive could be done without a good deal of disruption and people changing jobs, a general hardship on at least a certain percentage of your jobholders.”

  “Well, of course,” said Hytry, “there has to be a certain amount of re-adjustment, naturally. But we keep it to a minimum. The jobholders understand. It’s all done for their own good, for the planetary good. As a matter of fact, Great Teacher, you should realize that the jobholders don’t represent the total population of the planet. There are others of our society, also outside CEO ranks, who stand to benefit by such a contract. It’s for the good of all. I do assure you of that. But to get back to what we were talking about, your audience is going to be almost wholly made up of Guild members. You might keep that in mind.”

  “I will,” said Bleys.

  “That was why we wanted to have this lunch with you,” said Hytry. “Bleys Ahrens, you need never fear the CEOs, for the Guilds are with you.”

  “As they were last night.”

  “Yes”—Hytry broke off, frowning—“of course we were… but you couldn’t have realized it then—just what are you referring to, Bleys Ahrens?”

  Bleys laughed.

  “You aren’t going to pretend that those men who attacked us last night were CEO men?” he said. “You know as well as I do that they were yours.”

  They were just now finishing the dessert course, a frozen pudding of some kind. Hytry’s fork went down with a clatter on his plate.

  “You don’t really think those men were ours?” he said.

  “I know they were,” said Bleys. He smiled at all of them. “I believe you when you say you have ways of knowing what went on when I met with the CEO men for dinner. You would have found out very quickly, but not quickly enough—am I right?”

  “Great Teacher”—said Hytry, staring at him with a shocked expression—“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about the fact that the news of what the CEOs said to me and what I said to them reached you a little bit too late, didn’t it? You’d decided even before I got here that the CEOs would be able to invite me to a meeting before you could. So that I’d see them first before I saw you. You decided to let it happen that way, but turn the fact to your own advantage. You were sure, weren’t you, that no matter what you had to offer me, the CEOs could outbid you; and that one way or another, either by bribe or threat, they would enlist me to speak for them, in the process of my seeming to speak to everyone on the planet?”

  “Certainly not!” said Hytry. He rubbed his napkin between the palms of his hands.

  “Certainly yes,” said Bleys. “You were quite sure that I wouldn’t be able to resist the threat, if not the bribe. You were sure that, even if I was sorry later I had agreed to their terms, I’d either do what they wanted or immediately flee New Earth, to get out of their reach. Accordingly, you sent a Tough Squad to speed me to take my speaking tour to some other world.”

  “But this is ridiculous!” Hytry exploded. “How could we know you were going to come out into that alley? There was no reason for you to do that!”

  “Not unless you arranged for me to come out that way,” said Bleys. “But it wouldn’t be too hard for you to do that. You’ve got your own people, undoubtedly, in the CEO Club itself—for all I know one of them may even be Mathias, the Manager. Anyway, you arranged for the halls to be jammed with people and for us to be let out through the alley. It seemed to me at the time there was something of a guilty conscience in the way Mathias cooperated by pulling the door closed, locking it behind us and turning out the light; leaving us in the dark to be attacked by men with clubs whose vision had already adjusted to the dark there.”

  “I absolutely assure you, Great Teacher,” said Hytry with ringing sincerity, “we had no pre-judgment of you whatsoever; and we were in no way responsible for the attack on you in the alley!”

  Unfortunately for that sincerity, however, the faces of at least half of the rest of them around the table did not echo it. They showed varying mixes of guilt and resentment.

  “Do you?” said Bleys. “Then it will do you no harm if I give you the same answer I gave them. I am a philosopher. I speak to people out of my own convictions and my view of the historic situation we’re all in at its present critical moment. Both I and what I might be able to do for them would be utterly destroyed if I allowed my message to be influenced in any way by anything at all outside my own thinking. In other words, with the best will in the world, I could not associate myself either with the CEO Club, or you, or anyone else.”

  Hytry, although with some obvious effort, had made a remarkable transition to calmness.

  “If you insist on feeling that way”—he made an effort to lower his voice—“but at least you might let us tell you what we came here to tell you, what we—the Guilds— have to offer you.”

  “Go ahead, then,” said Bleys, “but please keep it within the twenty minutes or so we have left.”

  “I’ll be brief,” said Hytry. “First and foremost, we can offer you protection against the CEO Clubs. Believe me, without that protection you and your handful of security people could be chewed up and swallowed at a gulp.”

  “It would be very bad publicity on all the Younger Worlds for the CEOs, if they did anything like that,” said Bleys; “as bad, say, as if your Guilds were to do the same thing. Remember I’m a member of the Chamber on Association; and I have a diplomatic passport. Besides, either the CEOs or you would be foolish to make the first move against me, for fear of pushing me directly into the other camp.”

  Hytry stared at him down the length of the table.

  “You’re implying that we and the CEOs block each other off from taking any real action against you?” Hytry asked.

  “I’m stating a fact,” said Bleys. “You and the CEOs created a balance of power on this world. Now it seems to me you’re more or less stuck with it. In the end, you both depend upon the general population, and the opinions of the general population, for your own status and popularity. If you’ve paid any attention to the popular opinion on your world—which has already been influenced by recordings of speeches I’ve made on Association—I believe you’ll find your jobholders, as you call them, look at me as something not only harmless, but also extremely interesting. I can promise them a hope of something that will let them control their lives. Everybody, I think you’ll find, wants to be more in control of his or her future. Perhaps even yourselves.”

  Hytry waved aside Bleys’s last words.

  “What we were prepared to offer you, Bleys Ahrens, in addition to protection against the CEO Clubs, was some aid in building your audience. If the Guild, in effect, sponsors your speaking, you can be sure that our people will pay more attention to it—and that means nearly all the people on this world.”

  “Does it?” said Bleys.

  “Yes, it does,” Hytry replied. “We know what the CEOs planned to offer you—interstellar credit, a h
igh payment in interstellar credits for using your speeches to shore up the jobholders’ opinion of them. You turned them down, you say—as was quite right. We, of course, can’t match them in offering interstellar credit. But if you want the jobholders to listen to your words, believe me, our goodwill— the goodwill of everyone on New Earth we represent—is worth a great deal more than any interstellar credit could be to you.”

  Bleys glanced at his wrist control pad again.

  “I see our time is almost over,” he said. “If what you say is true, Guildmaster, it’s a shame that I can’t take advantage of it—”

  “But—” began Hytry.

  “But”—Bleys cut him off—“I’m afraid I’m going to have to give you the same answer I gave the CEO Club. Few people seem to hear what I say. I’ve no ax of my own to grind, and I refuse to try to grind anyone else’s ax. I repeat only what I’ve said so many times before this—I tell people what I’ve learned and what I’ve experienced, and leave it to them to apply it or not to anything they may have experienced themselves.”

  He stood up. Looking down on Hytry suddenly from his full height, even from the far end of the table, he towered over them all.

  “It’s been good to meet,” he said. “I tell people no experience is wasted. No interaction with another human being is without value. I’ve gained by sitting here with you and listening to you, Guildmaster, and I thank you. But now I’m afraid I’ve got to get back to work.”

  Henry and Toni had risen at the same time. Bleys led the way out of the dining room, leaving silence behind him.

  Once back in the private lounge, Bleys dropped into one of the float chairs that was adapted to his height.

  “What made you so sure?” asked Toni, as she and Henry sat down with him. “How could you know certainly it was the Guild people, and not the CEOs, who arranged to have Mathias let us out into the alley, and that the thugs out there were Guild thugs?”

  Bleys smiled.

  “I didn’t,” he said. “But how could it be any other way? The CEOs had nothing to gain by it. Also, for them, it would have been like committing a crime on your own doorstep when you could just as well do it on someone else’s. As for the Guild’s knowing we’d come out that way—I don’t doubt that Mathias is a Guild member.”

  “How can you be sure of that?” Toni asked. “Working in the CEO Club the way he does?”

  “He’d have to be a Guild member legally or illegally,” said Bleys. “Remember what Hytry just told us at lunch? Anyone who works belongs to a Guild. I think he told me more than he meant to—if you work on this world, you’re a Guild member whether you want to be or not. And Mathias would be ideally positioned to be a double agent; for the CEOs on the Guild and for the Guild on the CEOs. In fact, I’ll bet both organizations know of his double allegiance and make use of it. All he would have been asked to do, after all, was to let us out by the side door. He may not even have known the Tough Squad was there.”

  “All right,” said Toni. “But still you had to be guessing somewhat. Admit it.”

  “I wasn’t,” said Bleys. “Add all that I just said to the fact that the attack didn’t fit the CEOs’ pattern of trying to influence me, at all. Harley, as I expected, gave me the donkey’s choice: between the threat of a stick or the offer of a carrot. They were clearly reserving force as a later weapon. On the other hand, the Guilds, as I said to Hytry, had a happy chance to test my security force dropped in their lap, with the further chance of teaching me a lesson for the decision they were sure I would have made—whether I planned to stick with it or not—if I wanted to give my talks on New Earth at all.”

  He grinned at them once more.

  “Also,” he went on, “it gave me that chance to drop a bomb into their laps at lunch, to see their reaction—which was just what I expected it’d be.”

  “You told them what’s not true, yourself, however,” said Henry. “You’ve now told both the CEOs and Hytry you’ve no ax to grind. You know that’s false, Bleys.”

  “Why, Uncle”—Bleys glanced at him—“what ax have I to grind?”

  “I don’t know—” said Henry. “And it doesn’t matter. It’s enough that I know it’s not God’s ax. But I know as well as you do you’ve always got a reason for everything you do. Now, tell me I lie.”

  Bleys shook his head.

  “I’d never call you a liar in anything, Henry,” he said, very seriously. “Of course, I’ve a path of my own. If I didn’t, I can’t think of any cause I’d have for living. I don’t talk about my goal or goals, though, only because it’s too early to talk about them. I want to keep my mind open to the chances that may come up later, as they so often do.”

  “You may even believe that,” said Henry, “but I think, in your soul, you know better.”

  For a moment, Bleys said nothing.

  “Henry,” he said, then, “some day, I’ll tell you everything.”

  He looked up.

  “You, too, Toni,” he said.

  “I’ve never asked to be told,” said Toni.

  “No. You never have,” Bleys answered soberly. His attitude suddenly changed. He ceased his lounging in the float and sat up straight. “Toni, have you checked on the weather for tomorrow? We had a clear day picked out for my outdoor talk at Blue Harbor. What’s the weather to be there, tomorrow?”

  “Light, occasional showers, but mostly sunshine,” answered Toni.

  “Well, that’s all right, then,” said Bleys. “Those who come will simply wear weather-shields, if they need them. They’re invisible, won’t take up any room, and any rain will bounce off them. Henry, you said your men would be ready for the trip tonight and for tomorrow?”

  “Yes,” said Henry, “I did. They will.”

  “Good,” said Bleys, “because I want to make the last of my approach on foot to the broadcast building through the crowd; and for that, I’ll want to be completely surrounded by Soldiers. I don’t really believe there’s any danger; but there’ll be a number of spectators who’ll want to press close to me, and I want them all held off well beyond touching range.”

  “We can do that,” said Henry.

  “Well, then,” said Bleys, getting to his feet, “we’d all better get busy with the last of whatever we have to do to get ready to leave—”

  He broke off as the sliding door from the adjoining room of his suite slid open and Dahno came in, seeming to fill the doorway not only from top to bottom but from side to side as he did so. The door slid closed automatically behind him as he took several long steps to one of the larger chairfloats and dropped into it.

  Chairfloats were supposed to be engineered not to give, no matter what weight was dropped on them. But this one descended at least three or four centimeters before coming back up again. Dahno let out a heavy breath of air, stretching out in the chairfloat and extending his massive arms along its arms.

  “I had a follow-up lunch today after my dinner last night with the Governor-Mayor of this city,” he said. “I talked to her again today, but she’s a woman of straw. You’re going to have to make all your arrangements either with the CEO Club or the Guilds, Bleys. Speaking of the Guilds—I came in through the dining lounge on the way here, and it was empty. Did they leave happy, or not?”

  “Not,” answered Bleys.

  Dahno sighed again. “In that case, I guess I’ve got bad news for you. I know it isn’t credit you want, but free access to talk to the people. But if you’re alone, either the CEOs or the Guilds can tie you up completely; and if you’re talking to one of them, then the other isn’t going to agree to give you anything it doesn’t have to give—and that means nothing at all. They’ve been about a hundred years getting the present fine balance of power between them, and they’re both scared out of their skins of anything that might give their opponents the edge—and both of them see you as a potential troublemaker. Did you just touch up the Guildmasters a bit, or did you do something more on the order of burning your bridges to them?”

  �
��I think I burned my bridges pretty thoroughly,” said Bleys.

  “Well,” said Dahno after a minute, “there’s no bridge, once burned, that can’t be rebuilt. If you’ll give me the details, I’ll see how to go about putting you back into bargaining position with them. You have to understand the situation, Bleys. I know it’s ridiculous, but while New Earth’s still got all the apparatus of local and planetary government, nowadays, to all intents and purposes, it’s nothing but show. Apparently, in the last hundred years, its powers have gradually been taken away from it; and now the only people who really make decisions on anything are the CEO and the Guild. You’ve definitely got to have those two bidding against each other, because only while the bidding’s going on are you going to have any freedom of action here.”

  “But I don’t want to rebuild my bridge to them,” said Bleys.

  He was conscious of not only Dahno, but Henry and Toni watching him with a particular intensity. For a moment he felt a touch of that sense of isolation, the loneliness he could remember feeling all his life. He found himself wondering whether all of them would be with him at the end, if he succeeded. And if he was not to have all, which would he lose? He did not want to lose even one of them—in this room were all the people in the universe who meant anything to him.

  “I told them the truth,” he said to Dahno. “I said that my credit to people in general as a philosopher would be lost if I committed myself to any particular group or cause other than my own ends; and I told them those were simply giving my views of the present historic moment.”

  “But if you won’t talk to the Guild, and you can’t talk to the CEO Club—or won’t, now that you’ve said the same thing to them you said to the Guild,” said Dahno, “who in hell will you talk to?”