Other

by Gordon R. Dickson

  The room had no furniture. Only, a little back from the wall that held the large door, there was a cloth-sided, very military-looking booth, with green plastic framing.

  “If you please.” The officer gestured toward the booth.

  Bleys stepped forward and into it without a word.

  Inside, there were a couple of men in white, one of whom spoke to Bleys.

  “If you’ll be so kind as to strip, sir,” he said.

  “This is very foolish of you,” said Bleys.

  “Strip. Please,” the man repeated. Bleys did so.

  After a thorough search of his clothes and his person with hand-held scanners. Bleys was allowed to dress again and was led out the far side of the booth. He found himself facing the large closed door. The officer who had brought him was standing beside it.

  “This way, Bleys Ahrens,” said the officer. He turned toward the door, and it swung backward, opening before them. Bleys walked in.

  The officer did not follow. The door closed again and Bleys stood, apparently alone in a room that was only slightly larger than the one in which he had been searched. But in all of its walls but the one through which he had entered were windows—or, much more likely, three-dimensional picture screens—that together gave a panoramic view of surrounding mountain terrain, from pine-clad slopes to snowy peaks.

  The room was warmer than the temperature of the rest of the building through which he had been taken—almost too warm for comfort; and at its far end, in the one empty area between two windows, stood a large fireplace. In it, a generous wood fire blazed merrily behind a metal screen. Two high, winged-back, non-float armchairs with their padded backs to him, stood solidly facing the fireplace. Bleys moved closer and saw that in one of them sat a man who, at first glance, looked in late middle age. Not yet far enough advanced in years to be called old, but barely short of that point.

  The furniture and the inoffensive appearance of the seated man should have made the room seem comforting and reassuring. For some reason—possibly the more-than-necessary warmth—it did not.

  “What’s all this about?” asked Bleys. “Are you responsible for my being brought here?”

  He walked forward and around to face the man.

  “Yes, and no. But come,” the man said in an age-hoarsened voice, “do come and sit down, Bleys Ahrens.”

  He waved a hand toward the vacant armchair facing the fire.

  Bleys walked forward. As he got closer, he saw that the chair he had been offered had an extra seat cushion, so perfectly blended in color and shape to the chair that it had not been noticeable until he had been just about to fit his own long frame into it. He also took notice of the fact that the middle-aged man was using a footstool, which disguised the fact his own chair seat had also been raised with a similar extra cushion.

  Bleys sat.

  “What’s been done with Antonia Lu?” Bleys said. “And the rest with me?”

  “She’s quite all right—waiting for you in another room. This is all routine, actually.” The man was older than Bleys had thought at first glance, and his eyes were the first Bleys had seen that could undeniably be said to twinkle. “I particularly wanted to talk to you for my own enlightenment, without interruption by anyone else.”

  “I see,” said Bleys. “Then let me ask you another question. How is it that against all rules of international diplomacy, my party and I are put under arrest and brought here?”

  The man’s eyebrows raised. They were pleasantly graying eyebrows in a round face with a generous mouth and smile wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. Above those eyes, his hair was solidly gray and cut short; but the eyes themselves had that impression of a twinkle in them. It was only on studying him a little more closely that Bleys realized that the twinkle was not simply one of good humor, but an “I’ve-got-you-now” sort, of twinkle.

  “Arrested?” the man answered. His eyes lost their twinkle abruptly and looked shocked. “No, no, that can’t be.”

  “That’s what the officers who picked us up off the spaceship told us,” Bleys said.

  “They did? It’s no such thing. I only wanted to talk to you. I’m so sorry! Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Pieter DeNiles, Secretary to the Development Board of our world, here. Did those officers really use the word ‘arrest’?”

  “That was the word,” Bleys said.

  DeNiles shook his head.

  “The military!” he said. “They always have to overdo it. No, it was supposed to be only an invitation to you and your people, Bleys Ahrens.”

  “And the complete body and clothes search?” asked Bleys. “Also, no doubt, a similar search of everybody else with me?”

  “That, now,” said DeNiles, “is, unfortunately, a matter dictated by certain governmental procedures which I’m sure someone like yourself will understand. I’m afraid you’ll just have to take my word for it that nothing personal was intended. Neither I, nor whoever searched you, really expected to find anything dangerous. But I’m legally obligated to take certain precautions.”

  “Legally?” Bleys watched him.

  “Unfortunately, yes,” said DeNiles. “I’m just a governmental functionary, actually—in actual practice, all but retired. I only advise. But since in name I’m a member of the Planetary Development Board, I’m required to be protected at all times, as if I were an elected official like the other members.”

  “That doesn’t seem to back up the word ‘arrest,’ however,” murmured Bleys.

  “No, no,” said DeNiles. “It wouldn’t, of course. But the whole matter’s simply a combination of unfortunate coincidences. Arresting an accredited visitor with diplomatic status—you’re quite right, it’s legally not possible.”

  “Then why are we here?”

  “As I say—coincidence, misunderstanding,” said DeNiles. “No, you see what happened is that in addition to being a member of the governmental Chamber on Association, you also happen to head an interplanetary organization, whose branch on our world has been declared illegal. As a result, those on the Development Board have to show the voting public that they checked to make sure this visit of yours had no illegal purpose or connection. So they chose me to be the one to make this certain; and—my deepest apologies, because the responsibility is mine—with the misguided help of the army, I seem to have bungled it. My only excuse was I did want to meet you and talk with you, and this looked like the chance.”

  “I see,” said Bleys. However, he did not. He still had no idea what was behind everything that was happening. But he would find out. None of this since their landing could be accidental. There had to be a purpose behind it.

  DeNiles was smiling again, even more warmly, now, the wrinkles deepening around his eyes. “—Though it does seem, a number of your party had weapons shipped in, in bond, to be claimed after they got here.”

  Bleys laughed.

  “As a member of the Board here,” he said, “you’ve got to be familiar with the fact many diplomatic visitors have security people with them who need weapons and bring them in bond.”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, of course,” DeNiles said. “But it was one more reason for the Board to seem concerned. We really aren’t frightened about what fifty-three men might do with hand weapons against our own forces.”

  Bleys smiled back at him. “I’m sure. Anything else?”

  “Well—forgive me”—said DeNiles—“but there’s the fact you’re here to give a series of talks to our people; from what we learned, when you did the same thing on New Earth, the result was some considerable public unrest—even a few scattered terrorist-type bombings. That does bother some of our members. Do you really blame them?”

  “I don’t know,” said Bleys. “Should I? It seems to depend on how seriously they take my connection with the Others and the weapons of my escort in bond, plus whatever else seems considered matters of public alarm.”

  “None of it, Bleys Ahrens. I assure you. We’re just going through the motions here, and I took the opportunit
y to meet you because what I know of your philosophy is very interesting.”

  “I can understand your Board having the security of your world always in mind,” Bleys said. “But did you, yourself, listen to recordings of any of my talks?”

  DeNiles looked directly at him; for a moment, the twinkle was missing. “One.”

  A lesser official might have dodged answering, or lied. Bleys began to get something very close to a warm feeling for the other man. One recording would have been considered enough by a conscientious individual, interested only in confirming evidence that already had convinced him.

  “Of course I’d also had a complete digest of your personal history and of everything of interest in your other talks.” DeNiles said.

  “Then hearing one should have been enough,” Bleys answered. “If you already had a complete background on my philosophy. All my talks have the same message, though the words may vary, as I adapt to the viewpoint of the people I’m talking to. But the message is always the same. My concern is never with individual planetary societies. It’s with the society of humankind in general.”

  “Yes,” DeNiles said thoughtfully. “I remember you saying that, several times, in that one speech I listened to.”

  “That and the other key points—they’re always repeated,” said Bleys. “Most important is the fact that I deal with the broadest of fronts. That’s the answer for an improved humanity and a better life for us all, particularly we of the Younger Worlds. A single universal attitude, plus the self-improvement of all individuals.”

  DeNiles nodded, listening.

  “I also point out,” Bleys went on, “that this self-improvement, which ordinarily would have come farther by this time, has been held back by Old Earth. Old Earth has always tried to maintain as much control as she could over us, covert if not overt, so that we haven’t been as free to go as far and as fast as we might have, left alone.”

  Bleys paused, looking significantly at DeNiles.

  “You must know that, yourself.”

  DeNiles’ face and body gave no clues. Bleys’s opinion of him went up another notch. A less intelligent individual would have suggested that Bleys was lecturing to him, in hopes of being taken for someone of more limited capacity than he really had. A much less intelligent individual would have felt insulted by what could be assumed an attempt to talk over his head, and burst out angrily with something like “Is this the way you do your preaching?” But DeNiles, he saw now, was seriously, even avidly, listening.

  As it happened, Bleys was being thoroughly truthful—even if the truth in this case was limited—to someone who might be capable enough to listen with a view to learning. He was suddenly, remarkably, tempted to speak to DeNiles as if he was that rare thing, a highly intelligent mind all but completely free of reservations or prejudice.

  “Old Earth clings to us,” Bleys went on, “hoping to hang on so we’ll be controllable by her in the long run. What’s behind that wanting to control is fear. Fear rooted in the survival instinct of a people who thought themselves an evolutionary end product and now begin to feel threatened by what may be a new and better version of themselves. Just as the now-extinct dire wolf of Old Earth was eventually replaced by the modern wolf. With that fear below the surface of consciousness, Old Earth is driven to compete against all of us on the New Worlds.”

  “You’re exaggerating, don’t you think,” said DeNiles, “in that comparison of the Old Earth people with dire wolves?”

  “There’s no equation, except in Old Earth minds,” said Bleys. “But that kind of fear makes them dangerous to us. Old Earth’s people have dreamed of the superhuman for a long, long time. The ‘overman’ of Friedrich Nietzsche’s nineteenth-century philosophy, the unconquerable character in innumerable books and fantasies who’s been part of human cultures everywhere, in myths and legends, since the dawn of time. A figure to defeat all devils. But Old Earthers always assumed this conqueror would be a refinement of them—not of those who’d left them for other stars, other worlds.”

  “Hmm,” said DeNiles.

  “But not on Old Earth or on any of our Worlds is there any real possibility of a superman or superwoman,” Bleys went on. “Our New Worlds men and women may on the average be a little taller than those on Old Earth. But the concept of a true evolutionary jump forward out here or anywhere is no more than the illusion it’s always been. Society’s evolving—and still has a long way to go. But the human individual isn’t and couldn’t if he or she wanted to.

  The superhuman is a dream only, just as that has always been.”

  Bleys watched DeNiles closely on these last words. For if DeNiles believed in the Superman, then he had misjudged the man completely as someone he could speak frankly to. But DeNiles only nodded thoughtfully.

  “You see,” Bleys said, “I feel strongly about the possibilities—the great possibilities—of every individual human being everywhere. But they’re only possibilities, if each of us is left free of outside controls and influences, including Old Earth’s. That’s what started me speaking on my home world of Association, in the first place—and now I’m here on Cassida to talk about it. The possibilities and the problems.”

  DeNiles nodded again slightly—the head movement could have meant agreement, or merely that he was listening.

  “In brief,” said Bleys, “I tell people we need to be aware of this fear on Old Earth and educate ourselves to understand it; and—if necessary—work to protect ourselves against it. That’s all my talks boil down to, telling people to learn and grow. Humanity’s got a long way to go. I only advise it, and there’s no danger to the public on any New World in that.”

  He stopped talking and looked at DeNiles, waiting. The ball was now in the other man’s court.

  Chapter 21

  There was an indefinable tension between them; as if they stood facing each other across a narrow but bottomless chasm, and there was a contest between them as to who should step into it first.

  “You make yourself sound very commendable, Bleys Ahrens,” DeNiles said after a long moment of silence. “But forgive me. Officially, it will take more of an explanation than that to be ammunition the Board can use to justify their considering you harmless.”

  “Why?” Bleys said.

  “Well, you see,” said DeNiles, steepling his fingers before him, “you’ve given me rather a circular argument in which your assumption that Old Earth has a certain fear proves your assumption that your talking about it poses no threat to public peace. You can be completely honest; and what you say can even have applied on your home world of Association. But what makes you think people of other worlds—and particularly our Cassidans—need this message? You seem to assume a oneness of the human race on the New Worlds that I don’t see, myself. Can you name me one vital aspect all societies of our different Younger Worlds have in common, other than the ability to interbreed?”

  “Certainly,” said Bleys. “Credit.”

  “Credit?” DeNiles dropped his hands into his lap. “How can different societies interact, or individuals in a society, without a medium of exchange? The creation of credit was surely one of the early steps toward modern civilization. But to make it a basis for a rather ambitious philosophy of a future in which we’re all wiser and better off should seem rather farfetched—even to you.”

  “I didn’t say it was the basis of my philosophy,” said Bleys. He was enjoying the fencing in this argument, and he more than suspected this small, frail old man was also. “You asked me for something we’ve all got in common. I gave you an example—all the worlds can exist on a roughly similar civilized level only because of interstellar credit and local credit.”

  “But how would we exist without them?” DeNiles demanded. “Do you see some kind of future that’s better because, among other things, transactions between individuals and worlds take place without credit?”

  “The other way around,” Bleys said. “Once individuals have developed to the point where they understand that al
l humanity depends on the honesty and personal sense of responsibility in every other individual, credit as we know it is no longer indispensable. Useful but not indispensable. Then, nothing more than the memo of agreement should be all that’s needed—in exchange for goods and services.”

  “Isn’t that sort of memo what a letter of credit really is?”

  “Not at all,” Bleys answered. “Historically, money and letters of credit always had to be backed by material worth. I’m talking about memos backed only by universal trust, and I’m saying the achievement of trust like that will be evidence that improved understanding between people has been achieved. A dwindling importance of credit reserves and that better understanding will signal an advanced social attitude—not vice versa. Remember, this was an example you challenged me to produce. It’s not credit and what will happen to it, it’s the advance in social attitude I’m interested in.”

  “Then what I should tell the rest of the Board is that you’re really nothing more than a sort of very religious person seeking converts?”

  “If you like,” said Bleys, “and if you can tell me where social science ends and religion begins.”

  DeNiles shook his head doubtfully.

  “Well, you asked about my philosophy,” Bleys said. “I’m telling you and everyone else what I see us all coming to, inevitably and eventually. I just believe it’s going to come that much sooner if more people can clearly see the road to it.”

  “Sounds like a Utopian dream,” said DeNiles. “You can’t expect me to simply take your word for it?”

  “Perhaps you never will,” said Bleys. “A great many people won’t, of course. But I believe those who do will increase over the coming generations as a percentage of the race, until we finally have a humanity in which either everyone, or a sufficient majority, understands and starts to act on that trust. Then what you call a Utopian dream will start to come true.”