Other

by Gordon R. Dickson

  “Come in,” he said. Anjo appeared.

  “Great Teacher!” he said. “I just took a chance and thought I might find you here. They said you’d just left the recording building, and I didn’t find you in your own private place.”

  “I thought we’d seen the last of you for a few days,” said Bleys, smiling.

  “You would have,” answered Anjo, “but something’s come up. I was hoping to take care of it without bothering you, but it seems it’s bothering Ana Wasserlied, this woman who leads your Others here on our world. She wanted to talk to you, and I took the authority on myself to have her brought here—though she didn’t at all like traveling in a closed van; but we don’t want her to be able to find her way back here, later.”

  “Perfectly understandable,” said Bleys.

  “At any rate, she just got here,” Anjo went on. “She’s at the eating hall, and I’ll go get her for you if that’s what you’d like. She wanted to talk to you alone, but this is something that concerns me and my people as much as it concerns her and hers. Shall I get her?”

  “By all means,” said Bleys.

  “I rather expected—” said Ana Wasserlied, once she was seated with Bleys and Anjo in the office lean-to. She darted a glance with no friendliness in it at Anjo. “—I rather expected you’d keep me informed of where you were going to be.”

  Bleys looked at her with mild concern. “You did?” he said.

  Ana’s mouth opened, closed and opened again.

  “I certainly did!” she answered. “After all, I’m Head of the Others, here on New Earth, aren’t I? It was we Others you were going to work with while you were here, I thought.”

  “Ana,” Bleys said mildly, “I work with everyone in the whole human race.”

  Ana stared at him for a moment. “Well, I don’t understand! I naturally assumed we were to be kept informed of your arrangements while you’re here—all of your arrangements! And then suddenly you disappear, and I have to find out where you are from the organization he belongs to!”

  She darted a momentary pointing finger at Anjo.

  “I’m always happy to take advantage of the help of any of the local Others’ organizations,” said Bleys. “But I’m here to talk to all the people on this world, not just those that belong to the Others. So, sometimes, I have to make my own plans; and, in emergencies, change them quickly without necessarily letting the Others know. Anyway, you’re here now.”

  “Yes, I am,” said Ana, “after days of desperately trying to get in touch with you.” She looked at Anjo once more.

  “—And hours more in a sealed van with a little glowworm of illumination I could hardly read by,” she wound up.

  “That wouldn’t have been pleasant, of course,” said Bleys. “But did you have something—some particular reason for wanting to get in touch with me? Or were you just worried because I wasn’t at the hotel in Blue Harbor any more?”

  “Something, indeed!” said Ana. Once more she looked angrily at Anjo, then back at Bleys. “His organization has started blowing things up, and we’re getting the blame for it—we Others!”

  “Are you?” said Bleys. “That’s interesting. Why? Is it because I’m connected with the Others?”

  “No!” Ana almost shouted. “Because some of their people have gone and joined our organization, so they belong to both.”

  “And how many would that be?” asked Bleys, glancing in his turn at Anjo, whose face was still immovable. He looked back at Ana.

  “I don’t know, of course!” said Ana. “These people don’t tell us when they join that they belong to this thing of his!”

  This time it was Bleys who held his gaze on Anjo.

  Anjo looked back.

  “You’ve got over four hundred thousand members in your New Earth Others’ organization,” he said. “A good twenty percent of them are our members.”

  “Twenty percent”—Ana stared at Anjo—“I don’t believe you.”

  Anjo shrugged.

  “I do, Ana,” said Bleys. “It’s possible the people you have checking on new members haven’t been doing quite the job they should. I take it you two have known each other some time, then?”

  “We know about each other,” Ana said. “I never met him until today. I don’t even know if he’s just one of their members, or their leader, or what.”

  “Well?” Bleys asked Anjo. “What are you, Anjo?”

  “Technically I lead the Shoe—as it’s called,” said Anjo. “But I don’t really control everyone in it. No single man or woman does. If I had, what she’s excited about wouldn’t have happened.”

  “What, specifically, happened?” Bleys asked.

  “Two explosive devices,” said Ana. “One went off in that side alley of the New Earth City CEO Building. The other in the doorway of the CEO Club building in Bjornstown. The second one hurt some people and may have killed some—so far the CEOs aren’t letting us know exactly. But they say it was our people doing it, and of course they’re right. But it was people of ours who were also members of this ‘Shoe.’ “

  She took a deep breath.

  “—And I emphatically don’t believe that twenty percent of our people belong to that group! There may be a few who slipped in through our normal checks; but not that many!”

  Bleys had been watching her as she spoke. But now he moved his gaze back to Anjo.

  “We’re twenty percent, all right,” said Anjo.

  “And why so many?” Bleys asked the other man gently.

  “Simple enough,” said Anjo. “The Shoe’s an illegal organization. Both the CEOs and the Guilds supported that measure through our rubber-stamp government, forty years ago—the Shoe’s been growing for nearly a century. But your Others is a perfectly legal organization, and we needed a place where local leaders could meet openly and frequently without attracting attention to their positions in the Shoe.”

  “That seems reasonable enough—” Bleys was beginning, when Ana cut him off.

  “I tell you he’s lying!” she said. “Our Others can’t be—can’t—simply can’t—be made up of twenty percent Shoe people. It’s inconceivable.”

  “No,” Bleys answered her. “I don’t think it is. Our Others organization was started on Association by my brother less than fifteen years, Absolute, ago. After I became active with it, a little over four years ago, the general pattern of it was loosened considerably. We didn’t exactly invite other organizations to make use of our group on the various worlds, but we left openings, so to speak.”

  Now Anjo as well as Ana stared at him.

  “You knew of the existence of the People of the Shoe four years ago?” Anjo asked.

  “Not more than about two and a half years, Absolute,” said Bleys. “I did a little private checking on all the Worlds where we have branch organizations, starting about that time.”

  Anjo continued looking at him in the ensuing second silence.

  “If you knew about us, Great Teacher,” he said, then, his voice hardening, “why didn’t you get in touch with us, either before you came or right after you got here?”

  Bleys answered, “My way has always been to let people like you come to the Others in your own time, rather than having the Others try to push a connection with you.”

  Anjo’s eyes narrowed.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “On this world, where everybody knows everything about everybody else,” Bleys said mildly, “you probably know that when I talked to the CEOs at dinner in New Earth City, I told them an anecdote as an illustration. An anecdote about what to do if you’re on Old Earth and are attacked by a grizzly bear. If you know about that—”

  “I know,” said Anjo.

  “Then you realize the point,” said Bleys. “People tend to act on advice only when they can see a clear reason for doing so. I didn’t want anyone joining the Others unless they came with a real willingness and a reason for joining.”

  “But”—Ana began, then broke off, stared at Anjo for a second�
�and they both looked back at Bleys.

  “You’re wondering,” said Bleys, “how the parent organization of the Others, and particularly myself and Dahno, could think to reconcile different-thinking people on a number of different worlds, when on each world they had their own aims. Am I right?”

  They both nodded.

  “To answer that,” said Bleys, “think of your own People of the Shoe, Anjo. Aren’t they made up of many different occupations, many different ways of looking at matters on New Earth—and with very many different ideas about what should be done about it? And yet they all belong to one organization that has a general purpose—which is taking the feet of the Guild and the CEOs off the necks of the jobholders. Am I right?”

  “You’re right in that, anyway,” said Anjo.

  “But that wasn’t why you formed us, certainly?” Ana said angrily. “The Others organization I joined was one that was looking to a greater future for all of us; that greater future for the race that you mention so often when you speak.”

  “But there are almost half a million people,” Bleys said, “in your branch of the Others, here, Ana. You’ve got to be as aware as I am, and as anybody would be, that each one of them probably has his or her own idea of what the future ought to be like. Isn’t that true?”

  “Well, of course,” Ana agreed. “But meanwhile they ought to all work together.”

  “Exactly,” said Bleys, “including those who also belong to the Shoe, wouldn’t you think?”

  He looked at Anjo, who met his gaze with no expression at all. Ana said nothing, and Bleys took advantage of her momentary silence to go on.

  “But this is all somewhat beside the point, isn’t it?” he said. “You’re actually here because you’re both concerned about these bombings some Shoe/Others members have committed. And that isn’t what I meant by the Others working together. I’m right, aren’t I, Anjo—you aren’t too happy yourself about that?”

  He broke off. In the silence they all listened to what he had just heard, a distant droning on the air, growing swiftly in volume. He rose and led the way out of the lean-to. They followed him.

  Outside, everything that was going on in the camp at the moment had come to a standstill. Those Shoe members who were still at work erecting camp buildings, aided by those of Henry’s Soldiers who had reached the camp, were hastily putting any bright objects, such as carpenter’s tools, out of sight. This done, they all waited and watched, although the droning could have only one meaning.

  Approaching them from the southwest, at a low altitude—perhaps less than a thousand meters—was a fan-powered atmosphere ship. Not a space-and-atmosphere ship, but the type of airship built to operate only in atmosphere, at low altitudes, and capable of traveling only at slow speeds—down to the point of hovering overhead.

  Bleys looked at Anjo as the most likely to have an answer for him.

  “Can you estimate how fast that ship is coming toward us?” he asked.

  “At a guess,” said Anjo, “no more than two hundred and fifty to three hundred kilometers an hour.”

  “And will they come directly over us?” Bleys asked.

  “If they don’t, they’ll come pretty close,” Anjo said. “For the record, he’ll want to investigate any clump of pines like this.”

  “By ‘he,’ ” Bleys said, “you mean whoever’s driving the ship?”

  “Yes,” said Anjo. “It won’t hurt if we all stand perfectly still until the ship passes over. Don’t look up when it’s passing. It should be over us in a minute and gone again in another two or three.”

  They stood. The whole camp was still and silent. The ship went by overhead, its drone suddenly rising in the last moment, when it was directly above them, to a muted roll of thunder, which as quickly faded away again in the distance.

  “I don’t see how we can hide from that,” Bleys said, thoughtfully. “It’ll have camera facilities, and the pictures can be studied later by machines and experts to make out what’s down here.”

  “They aren’t using cameras,” said Anjo. “New Earth doesn’t have the experts—for that matter, it doesn’t even have the atmosphere craft—to do a complete close-coverage of all the land surface of this world in anything less than a couple of years. The wealth this planet has built up has been put into other types of assets. So these Militia observation ships have drivers who’ve just been told to look for possible signs of a camp like this. Besides, since most of them are our people, they have nearly all promised us they’ll report they found nothing. I’d bet you that ship was on automatic, and that its driver was doing anything from taking a nap to listening to a recording of one of your speeches.”

  Bleys did not answer immediately. He was looking among the people who had watched the ship pass above the thick net of pine branches that shielded then from direct view overhead, searching out Toni and Dahno. He found them both standing just outside the entrance to the eating hall. He beckoned then and, as they started to move toward him, he turned back to Anjo and Ana.

  “We’ll go back inside now,” he said. “Toni and Dahno will be here in a minute, and then we can go on.”

  Ana, Bleys noted, had been silent since the craft had passed overhead. It seemed to have convinced her of Anjo’s better knowledge of the planet.

  “There you are,” he said, as the other two entered. “Sit down here and join us. Ana and Anjo have come in because of something that’s happened as a result of my New Earth visit. Anjo, you haven’t been doing much talking yet. Why don’t you tell Toni and Dahno what the situation is.”

  Anjo did so.

  “Well, there you have it,” Bleys said to the now-seated Toni and Dahno. “In addition to what Anjo’s just told you, he was telling me just before you came over that we didn’t need to worry about this airship that passed above us because most of the people belong to his organization of the Shoe and had committed themselves to give no report, even if they did catch sight of us here.”

  He turned to Anjo.

  “I didn’t say anything to that outside, Anjo, but I’ll say it now. I don’t operate simply because the odds are in my favor. I operate only on certainties; and there’s no certainty that the driver of that craft wasn’t someone not a Shoe, or else an agent for the CEOs or the Guild.”

  “You don’t mean you want us to abandon this place, where they’ve only gotten started?” Toni said.

  “I do,” said Bleys. “But not right away. I think we can risk staying here another week, and in that time I’ll try to record as many speeches as I can. I ought to be able to do at least a couple a day. Then, Ana, you work with Anjo here and make sure these speeches are broadcast to crowds at outdoor meetings like our one in Blue Harbor, at the rate of one speech every four or five days—always in a different location. You needn’t emphasize the fact that I’m not available in person. On the other hand, if anyone asks, you don’t need to hide it.”

  “I don’t usually offer opinions. You know that,” Toni said.

  “Go ahead,” said Bleys. “That’s the reason I asked you and Dahno to join us—to hear any opinions either one of you had.”

  “Then I think you ought to take into account the fact that Anjo ought to know his own world,” she said. There was a steady look in her eyes, more than a little determined. “If he thought this would be a safe place for you for the rest of the time on this planet, you ought to give some weight to his opinion. It doesn’t seem to me, just because one airship happened to fly over, that we’re necessarily in danger of immediate discovery. And it seems rather hard on Anjo’s people, after they’ve gone to so much trouble to build this place, for us to leave it before it’s even half-done.”

  “It is that,” said Anjo. ‘The fact is, even if your worst fears about whoever was flying that aircraft are right, still—with nothing reflective down here and no one moving—he wouldn’t see anything through the pines over us, anyway. Also, there’s a great difference, Great Teacher, between your being here with us on New Earth, even if you are in
hiding, when your tapes are played to large outdoor audiences. A big difference between that and your being off-planet completely when they’re played for the first time.”

  Bleys nodded thoughtfully.

  “You could both be right,” he said. He looked across at his brother. “Dahno?”

  “I’m still thinking about it,” said Dahno. “But, in any case, I always did believe you were crowding too many things in, trying to get here and make this speaking tour and still get back to Harmony or Association for the Eldest and Chamber elections. As it is, you’d have to leave in just a few weeks, anyhow.”

  “That’s right, Anjo,” Bleys said. “I was due to be back on the Friendlies before the elections, in six weeks, in any case. If nothing else, there’ll be an election for the seat I presently hold in the Association Chamber.”

  “Still,” said Anjo, “if you stayed even that one week you talked about, we’d still have you on hand for at least the start of your recorded tapes—at the rate you said you could make them. We People of the Shoe have fought for over a hundred years to free ourselves. All we ask of you is a little time. Do you know where our name comes from?”

  “I think so,” said Bleys. “As I understand it, you picked it up from a revolt on Old Earth in the year 1525, Christian calendar. The revolt of some German peasants who called their group the Bundschuh—‘the Union of the Shoe.’ “

  “That’s right,” said Anjo. “And when their revolt was put down, a hundred thousand of them were killed. Many more than a hundred thousand here are fighting for their survival as human beings under the situation we live with on our world. Over the last century, we’ve lost our own thousands, taken, tortured, and killed by our so-called forces of the law, which are under the thumbs of the CEOs and the Guilds. Still, the Shoe survives. But it has to do more than survive—and your talks can help it manage that. Your speeches can make a unified force out of people in all sorts of occupations, people with all sorts of different attitudes, as you were pointing out a little earlier. All you have to do is take a small chance—by staying here, with the odds you won’t be discovered and nothing will happen to you. I promise you our people will give their lives for you, if necessary, to keep anything from happening to you!”