Other

by Gordon R. Dickson

  They watched it for a while even after it had clearly reached the limit of its ability to climb. It was so malignantly alive, it seemed that now it should acknowledge its failure to go any farther. But, mindlessly, it continued its attempt to climb the slope, on and on and on.

  “It’s like an animal,” said Toni, staring down at it. “How can Anjo, his relatives and these other people face living under it, maybe for days? You get the feeling that when it finally goes away the houses will be ruins, and the people inside them will be nothing but bones scoured clean.”

  “It’s only a cyclonic movement of the atmosphere,” said Bleys, “made visible by the sand it carries.”

  Toni flashed a glance at him that was very close to being angry. “You think I don’t know that?” she said. “How you can”—she broke off suddenly, her eyes steadily watching him—“you like it, don’t you?”

  “No.” Bleys shook his head.

  “—And I was not lying when I said it,” he wrote to himself later in the privacy of his office lean-to, setting down one of his Notes to Memory. “I was not lying because Toni would have known it if I had been. But perhaps she saw through my answer to the lie beneath it? I could honestly say I did not like it because I did not. I felt a repulsion, an anger against it, just as she did. But somehow, at the same time, I was feeling a kinship with it—an identity—the right word for what I felt does not exist. In any case, whatever I felt was something that linked me to it on a very deep level. I think this is a matter I should give to the mechanism of the back of my mind, with a special tag to note that the answer is important.

  “The longer I know her, Dahno and Henry, the better I understand them; and, apparently, the better they understand me. Toni, I’m sure, to those looking at her with me, seems to do nothing for me except be a companion to me. In reality she is uniquely valuable—a counterweight to the decisions of my own purpose, the stone against which I can sharpen the edges of my understanding and decisions.

  “When, just that short while ago, she flashed out at me with ‘You like it, don’t you?’ I answered without thinking with what I thought was the truth. The storm repelled me—just as it did her. But she was right. Also, something about it fascinated me. It was almost as if I was glad it was there; so that I could go out and meet it, fight it, and single-handedly finally drive it back over the horizon from which it came.

  “What signal had there been in me or my words to understand that?

  “I do not think she realizes how much I would like to tell her about how I feel, but how hard it is for me to imagine anyone else being able to live with my vision of what I am trying to achieve; and how much, with this necessarily locked inside me, I depend on her, Dahno and Henry—Henry, whom I had not even thought of including until he brought himself, and his own reasons for joining me—to me, just weeks past in Ecumeny.

  “But the bigger problem in all this is not with how well they see through me—or into me. It is the matter of my utter dependence upon them. How would I go on if I was to lose any one of them, let alone all three? Yet, when the back of my head—against my will—goes looking forward at the future with them it seems to see only dark possibilities; in which at least one, but often all three, are eventually lost, or turn against me. That must not happen."

  “I don’t know; I simply do not know. I’ll have to wait for the moment that comes and face it then.”

  Bleys put down his stylus, looked for a moment at the sheets he had filled, and then, carefully, he reduced them to ashes in the heating unit of the lean-to, as he had done with the note he had made before.

  Three days later, he was still keeping up his pace of recording two speeches a day. It was the second this day, and he was beginning to blunder from weariness…

  “…have explained that growth is inevitable in all of us—” he was saying into the recording equipment.

  He broke off.

  “No, scratch that. I’ll rephrase it.” One of the women technicians brought him a glass of water. He drank thirstily.

  It seemed far longer to him than three days since the coming of the sandstorm. The madly whirling sands were still filling the level land of the horizon and attacking the mountain slopes. The atmosphere among the locals was still tight-lipped and silent. But they worked with him as long as he was willing to keep going.

  “All right. Starting again from just before.” He cleared his throat. “I have explained that growth is inevitable in every one of us. It is one of our instincts as a race and part of our natural urge toward survival from the time we are born. Instinctively, we learn and adapt.

  “Just as flagstones laid down to cover the earth at first prevent plants from coming up, when the shoots from the germinating seeds reach the impenetrable stone; but, in time, the shoots learn to grow sideways and come up between the stones—or to exploit cracks already in them, eventually splitting the stones apart with their determination to grow so that in the end we have stones broken and hidden by the victorious plants—”

  He broke off.

  “Stop,” he said. “This isn’t coining out the way I want it. Mark a ‘hold’ at that point and note that what follows will be a brief tie-up of points and conclusion—and I’ll stop recording here for today.”

  Wordlessly but patiently, the technicians operating the equipment obeyed.

  Their silence was not aimed at him. It was part of the common attitude among the local people throughout the camp. Before the sandstorm came, Bleys would have assumed that all of them up here in the pine island, safely above the whirling sands, would have felt, if anything, protected and snug beyond the reach of what was below.

  He had come to realize now how many of these people must have experienced living under sandstorms before this one; and nearly all would have relatives down under the storm right now—wife, husband, children, other family, friends. If anything, it was harder on those up here because they could not physically share the imprisonment and deprivations of those who were enduring the storm down below, right now.

  “Print what I’ve said on this one out for me, will you, please—as far as I’ve gone?” Bleys went on, now, to the chief technician. “I’ll go over the copy and make what changes I want in the printed form. It’s not that I’ll be changing how I say things, so much, as I’ll be changing the order I say them in. The part about the plants pushing aside and breaking through the stones is something I might use earlier as a preparation, before I get off on the inevitability of growth. Maybe the example should come first.”

  The small gray-haired man who led the technicians nodded.

  “What time is it now?” asked Bleys.

  “Sixteen hundred,” said the tech-leader.

  “Time for us to stop anyway, then,” said Bleys. “I’ll see you here at seven hundred hours, tomorrow morning.”

  He left the recording building. His first feeling was that he wanted only to lie down and collect the myriad of thoughts that had been galloping through his mind for the last couple of hours. But, smelling the aroma of food from the dining hall, he realized he was hungry and went in that direction instead.

  He had not reached the hall, in fact he was only a little more than halfway there, when Polon came out of it and walked quickly to him, holding up his hand to stop him.

  “What is it?” Bleys asked.

  “Anjo came back. He was just here,” Polon said unhappily, “and left again almost immediately. Dahno Ahrens went with him. Neither of them told me why. You were busy recording, and Dahno said not to disturb you. Anjo backed him up on that, and they went away down the mountain.”

  “I thought you told me—” Bleys was starting, when he saw Toni emerge from the hall and come hastily to join them. He waited until she was with them, then looked at Polon again. “I thought you told me no one could get up or down the mountain while the sandstorm was on.”

  “I meant it, Great Teacher!” said Polon. “They’re taking their lives in their hands. They’ll be like blind men going back down the slop
e. Even if the goats can dig their feet in solidly the minute they feel the cart tip any way it shouldn’t, the chances are they’ll already be in a situation where all of them—the cart, the goats and everything—are just going to fall, either to their deaths or so they’re so badly hurt they just lie there until they die. That is, if they don’t suffocate on the way down!”

  He stopped and stared at Bleys. Bleys did not say anything immediately but looked at Toni, and waited. Toni, on the other hand, was already looking at Polon.

  “Polon,” she said, “would you go back to the dining hall and have them send some lunch over to my personal lean-to? I have to talk to Bleys Ahrens, privately.”

  Polon looked at Bleys, who nodded. Polon turned about and went back toward the dining hall. Toni caught Bleys’s eyes and nodded toward her shelter.

  “Do you know why Dahno left, or Anjo came?” Bleys asked as soon as they were inside.

  “No,” answered Toni. “That’s what I was going to ask you. Sit down there. Take the sofa—it’s the only piece of furniture that’ll fit you—and I’ll pull up an armchair.”

  They sat, and Toni leaned forward in her seat.

  “I don’t know why Anjo came either,” she said. “According to Polon, the odds of his getting safely up the mountain were ten to one against him, and the odds against the two of them getting down again as little or less. Polon did say they could follow the land-line the technicians laid for Dahno our first day here, so he could phone-connect with Mordard Cruzon’s house; and, through the phone there, connect undiscovered through a communication satellite to anyone on New Earth. I do know Dahno’s been busy using that phone and land-line ever since the storm came.”

  She paused and looked at him questioningly.

  He nodded.

  “I knew that, too,” he said. “But Dahno works best left alone. He didn’t tell me what his calls were about.”

  “Well,” she went on, “Polon did say, too, when I asked him, that there were sealed vehicles capable of operating in the sandstorm—atmosphere vehicles—that could fly in and pick Dahno and Anjo up from the Cruzons and take them out, over the storm. Dahno could’ve set up something like that by phone. Of course, that kind of atmosphere transport is too expensive for any of the ranchers around here to own. But it’s available on a hire basis in large cities, if Dahno or Anjo could convince someone at the other end that his credit was good enough so that they could simply send such a vehicle, like a taxi, to pick him up.”

  She looked intently at Bleys. “I didn’t say it to Polon, but I think Dahno could convince anyone over the phone that his credit was good enough to send anything out to him.”

  Bleys nodded again, slowly.

  At that moment, lunch came, and their talk was interrupted until the man who had carried it in had gone out again, pulling the door branches closed behind himself.

  “Go ahead and eat,” said Toni, gathering the dishes that had been brought in on a coffee table, which she pulled between Bleys and herself. “I’ve already had lunch. Then, if you know something and want to tell me about it, it would ease my mind a lot to hear it. I don’t like to think of Dahno—or Anjo, for that matter—lying broken or dead at the foot of a cliff under that sandstorm.”

  “Yes.” Bleys said nothing more, but began on the food that had been brought in. Eating gave him a few minutes’ excuse not to talk, so that he could gather his wits.

  It was not really so unusual for Dahno to do something like this—to take off on some project without leaving word for him about it. But Dahno was cautious; for him to take off under such conditions suggested that something serious was in the works, somehow.

  Bleys had begun their history together on Association as Dahno’s inferior and, later, pupil. One who took orders and did not question them, rather than one that gave them and could question anything Dahno might do. But that situation had reversed itself, with Bleys becoming the leader, Dahno the follower. Still, Bleys had always believed that most of the people he worked with—but particularly Dahno—did best with a free hand. It boiled down to how much he trusted Dahno—not merely to be loyal, but to do nothing that was not wise or safe for all of them.

  Bleys pushed away the dishes in front of him. Much of what Toni had brought was still uneaten. He sat back on the sofa and looked into the eyes of Toni’s perfectly calm face, which was still waiting.

  “No,” he said, “I was never told Anjo was coming or Dahno was leaving with him when he went. Neither one said anything to me about it.”

  Toni continued to watch him steadily.

  “That doesn’t mean you can’t come up with a very good idea of what it was all about,” she said, “if I know you. So tell me what you think he was up to.”

  Bleys smiled and shrugged.

  “I’m not omniscient, you know,” he said mildly. “Also—”

  He felt an inward twinge, remembering his listening-in on Toni and Henry over the spy-system on the first day they had all been here.

  “There are private areas I try not to stick my nose into,” he went on. “Dahno, of all people, hates anyone looking over his shoulder as he works. To even guess at his reasons for going—and if I guessed wrong, that wrong guess might confuse my own thinking later on. I’d rather leave the whole matter with a question mark for now. I’m sure his reason was good, and Anjo’s reason—whether or not it was connected with Dahno’s—was good.”

  “So,” said Toni, “we simply sit here and wait for an answer?”

  “Yes,” Bleys said. “I don’t think it’ll be long coming. My guess is they’ll be back here shortly after the sandstorm ends and it’s safe to get up the mountain.”

  Toni sat where she was for a moment, and Bleys saw she was still not satisfied. She got to her feet abruptly and picked up the tray on which the food had been brought, putting back on it the few dishes that he had lifted off.

  “You’ve got your speeches,” she said, “but I’ve had nothing to do except walk around the camp here in the trees, talking to people and putting in time. I think I’ll get busy to Ana Wasserlied on that land-line of Dahno’s, examining the plans for our leaving as much as possible, ahead of time. It won’t hurt to have another mind look them over and know them thoroughly—in case we leave on the spur of the moment.”

  She was starting to turn away toward the door, even as he answered.

  “That’s a good idea,” he said.

  Toni completed her turn and went toward the door.

  “You mustn’t overestimate me,” Bleys said, but so much to himself that he did not think she heard him as she went out. It was just as well. His last words had been a sudden, emotional statement that he never should have made, a naked plea for her understanding.

  Chapter 15

  Bleys’s hope as to when Dahno and Anjo would return, turned out to be justified. The sandstorm lasted only another two days, whirling off along the mountain range to the north, as Polon had said, and taking its load of fine dust with it. Abruptly, the air was clear all along the horizon again. On that first clear day, Anjo and Dahno came back up the mountain by goat-cart—only, with something Bleys had not anticipated; a third person along with them. The third person was unconscious.

  “You agreed with me when I said you wanted at least one more development in the situation here before you left New Earth,” Dahno said. He had come alone to Bleys so that they could talk privately, in Bleys’s personal shelter, first. The unconscious—sedated, it turned out—person had been left with Anjo in the first-aid building. “I thought with time possibly being shorter than you’d planned, you might need the pot stirred, so I stirred it.”

  “Be a little more specific,” said Bleys. He had stood up when Dahno had first come in and Dahno had not sat down, so they were now standing facing each other.

  “Don’t tell me I misunderstood you,” Dahno said. “You generally don’t open your mind to me very much, but I haven’t been concerned with politics and government so long without being able to see what you’d
hoped to get done before we left New Earth. You wanted to push the Guild and the CEOs into combining to make a single enemy for the jobholders. Right?”

  Bleys nodded, slowly.

  “It was something that would happen eventually, anyway,” he said. “But I did want to see some sign of that before we went on to the other worlds I was going to talk on, and then had to go back for the elections on Association and Harmony. All right, you were correct. Now, what did you do?”

  “The simplest way to get people to do things,” said Dahno, “is to tell them that the doing of them is already in progress. I just put the word out, starting with people like that lawyer I talked to on the phone from the hotel in Blue Harbor. I let drop the impression that the jobholders had already more or less combined, under your influence, and that a full-scale revolution was brewing. That, with the coincidence of the two bombings—but we really didn’t need them—”

  “Nobody did,” said Bleys.

  “—As I say,” Dahno went on, “all this did the trick.”

  He grinned at Bleys.

  “It’ll be true enough eventually, anyway,” said Bleys, “but under ordinary conditions, if I didn’t exist, it would take some time yet to build to a situation so intolerable for the jobholders that they’d threaten to erupt in open revolution. Then it would turn bloody right away. Societies have centers of gravity, just like other bodies. If that center gets too far out of position, the society rolls back in proportion, to get itself back into balance; usually in a process that involves a lot of bloodshed, as in the eighteenth-century, Old Earth French Revolution. By threatening it early, I was hoping to avoid that. But I wanted to time it just before the elections, back on Association and Harmony.”