Other

by Gordon R. Dickson

  He turned and stalked out.

  “And that’s it,” said Dahno, after he had reset the bubble of the security device. “Take my advice. Let them do without you, tomorrow. Make that code call and head for Favored right now.”

  “I know it’s good advice, on the basis you see the situation, Dahno. But I’m not just dealing with Newton alone. I’m working to gain control of a three-world group—five-world, if you count Harmony and Association—and it’s like capturing a python. I’ve got the three meters from its tail forward tied down; but the meter and a half of its front body and head are still free. This is my job for life, and I can’t take any steps backward; but you don’t have to stay and go down with me if I lose, Dahno—” he looked at Toni and Henry—“or any of you.”

  They both started to speak, but Dahno got his words out before them.

  “Never think I’ll leave you, Brother,” he said. “I’m having more fun with you, whether it’s Hell or Heaven. But I’ll remind you of one thing. The invitation you just accepted was the equivalent of a Royal Command Appearance, on this world that’s the den of the tigers I was talking about. You may end up getting what you want here. But be warned. You’ll be playing with their dice, which will be loaded against you. I don’t think you’ll escape being clawed.”

  Chapter 26

  “I’m Sean O’Flaherty,” said the young man in the white uniform with the blue piping on sleeves, lapels and trouser seams. “I’m a Council intern, and I’ve come to guide the Great Teacher to the Council now for their meeting. My first name’s spelled S-E-A-N, by the way.”

  “S-E-A-N?” Toni said. “Not ‘Shawn,’ as pronounced. I see. Another Scottish name.”

  “Irish,” said Sean.

  “Oh, Irish, of course,” said Toni, so warmly that Sean, eighteen years old, fell in love with her at once.

  “But,” said Toni, “you’re forty minutes before the time of the meeting. If the Council Room’s in this hotel, which we were given to understand, it can’t take you more than five minutes to walk there. He’s in conference right now, and can’t possibly be ready to go for another half an hour. You’ll have to wait.”

  “I don’t mind,” said Sean.

  Bleys and Dahno had been listening to this interchange, for it was Dahno with whom Bleys was presently in conference. The blue bubble was up around them; and, true to the promise of its maker, air, sound and everything else was coming nicely through it—only their conversation was being cut off from anyone outside by the shimmering surface of the bubble in all directions.

  “Toni’s been a little different lately,” said Bleys, returning to what they had been talking about. “Ever since I told her that I had no intention of obeying McKae’s orders to come back to Harmony immediately. She has this quality of lighting up inside—you’ve noticed?”

  “I’ve noticed.”

  “It evidently confirms something she must have been thinking about what my ultimate aims might be,” Bleys said. “I haven’t told her, as it happens, just as I haven’t told you or anyone else about my future plans. I’m sorry I can’t take any of you into my confidence about them. A large part of the reason is that I have to decide how I’ll do something just before I do it.”

  Bleys tried to keep any trace of guilt out of his voice. None of the reasons he was withholding the information would sound really complimentary to the person he was withholding it from. Henry would find his ultimate aims blasphemous—a literally Satanic infringement on the powers of the God Henry believed in. Toni, he was afraid, would find him less than the person she had been able to work with so far—perhaps turn from him in disgust. And Dahno would read in it a contempt for all human beings—including him—and Bleys firmly believed that Dahno could not bear contempt from anyone, least of all from him.

  “That’s all right as far as I’m concerned,” said Dahno. “It’s the way I’d work it myself. I never tell people where I’m aiming, either.”

  “I think, to a certain extent, it’s been all right with Henry and Toni, also—for the present, at least,” said Bleys. “Henry’s obviously waiting for some signal that I’ve either gone completely into what he calls ‘Satan’s hands’ or broken free of them. But with Toni, I never knew exactly why she was content to put up with not knowing—but I begin to imagine a possible future for me; and for some reason my taking a firm stand in ignoring McKae’s orders to come back immediately confirmed it. I wish I knew what she thinks she saw or understood.”

  “I’ve no idea,” said Dahno. “But if she’s happy for the present, why don’t you just accept that and go with it— since you have to build things as you go.”

  “You’re right,” said Bleys.

  He returned to the topic they had been discussing when they had heard the interchange between Toni and Sean O’Flaherty.

  “You were promising me,” he said, “that the Council couldn’t possibly already have the secret of this bubble, and possibly a way of listening through it. With the powers you say they have, I’d think they’d be able to learn any secret that any laboratory’d have on this planet.”

  “That’s the point. There are always some ways in which power is limited,” Dahno had answered. “The one principle on which this whole planet stands is that you can sabotage the work of other laboratories, kill its workers, attack it politically in every possible way—but the one thing you must never do is attempt to find out its current secrets. That’s because those secrets are not only the lifeblood of every lab that exists here, but the lifeblood of the planet itself.”

  “I understand.” Bleys nodded.

  “Because”—Dahno went on—“otherwise, there’d be anarchy here on Newton. You’d have people from one lab? kidnapping workers from other labs, questioning them—and they have all sorts of means available for that—until all secrets were revealed. And that would threaten the whole structure of scientific research this planet depends on for its bread and butter.”

  That explanation was simple enough, Bleys thought, but ultimately pragmatic and possible. A society had to be built upon at least a few generally-accepted agreements. This certainly could be one of Newton’s. And surely they would believe that if they stole knowledge from each other, it would make it easier for outsiders to steal from them—and that would threaten the livelihood of the entire planet.

  Of course, it would be only a principle—a socially fixed point—but what Bleys worked with were either such fixed points in a planetary society, or what that society’s people considered fixed points.

  “Now,” he said, “about my talks here on Newton—the first is two days from now. What can I expect?”

  “Well,” said Dahno, “for one thing, you’d better think in terms of talking to a small audience. You’re used to speaking to thousands. Here you’ll be lucky if you have fifty or sixty people.”

  “Now, that’s interesting,” said Bleys. “Why so few?”

  “You remember I said yesterday,” answered Dahno, “that the Others, here on Newton, don’t want to draw attention to their membership. A great many of them just don’t want it known they’ve ever been Others. So it’ll only be the braver ones—the rebels and risk-takers—and some government spies, of course, who’ll come. Not that that means your words won’t be carried quickly by those there to everyone else who ever was an Other. In fact, your speech will be available, eventually, word for word, to the population here at large—anyone, that is, who’d be interested in what you said. There may be as large an invisible audience out there for you as you got openly on New Earth. But we’ve no way of counting them right now. They don’t want to be counted.” Bleys chuckled.

  “Any objections, then, to talking to such a small group?” Dahno asked.

  “I can’t think of any,” Bleys answered. ‘The very fact there are so few will point up a good deal of what I’ve been saying all along: that is, it’ll give me a chance to emphasize some points I’ve made all along about our problem with Old Earth—by hinting that the same sort of blindne
ss applies to this world.”

  Dahno glanced for a second, almost suspiciously, out through the blue sheen of the bubble, at the now-azure lounge about them.

  “I thought you were sure that the Council didn’t have the secret of this device,” said Bleys. “The Council didn’t have it, and no one else did.”

  “That’s what I said,” Dahno answered. “All the same, it doesn’t do any harm not to mention anything that you’d like to be absolutely secure about. I wish you were in my position and could move around among these people without being seen the way most people see you—five meters tall and floating in midair—so they’d be as relaxed with you as they’ve been with me. Though”—he added—“admittedly, with those I could get any useful information from, I’d already put each in a position where they didn’t have much choice but to tell me what I wanted to know.”

  “Yes,” said Bleys. “Henry seems to be under the impression you actually used blackmail. According to him, that may not be an official sin but it’s certainly a Godless thing to do.”

  “I let them infer it—that’s all. Anyway, I’m never going to please Henry with how I do things,” said Dahno, and for a second they grinned at each other. “But the point I was making is that you’re going to get an audience that’s all of one certain type of character. Knowing that, is it worth your talking to them?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that point,” replied Bleys. “Actually, I think I can turn it into an advantage.”

  “How?” asked Dahno, bluntly.

  “It’s just an idea at the present moment,” Bleys said. “Let me think about it a bit.”

  He rose to his feet. “I’d better meet this guide the Council sent me. I got the impression that the Council wants to see me alone. I think in this case I won’t test them by trying to bring either you or Toni to the meeting with me, the way I did with Toni at the CEO Club on New Earth.”

  “I think that’s wise,” Dahno said. “It’s been pretty clear from the start they want you to themselves. In any case, remember those claws I mentioned. Keep your eyes open and your guard up.”

  Chapter 27

  Bleys saw that Sean O’Flaherty was a lean young man, a little like a younger and much less fanatic version of Amyth Barbage, the Association Militia officer.

  One thing was very clear. He was not easily awed into social behavior by having Bleys stalking along beside him. From what he now said, he had spent his half-hour wait talking to Toni, presenting himself as agreeably to her as she had become agreeable to him.

  Now, however, he and Bleys had left both the suite and Toni behind, and he was guiding Bleys toward the Council. He had no one left to talk to but Bleys; and, clearly, what he very much wanted to talk about was Toni. But lacking any knowledge of her relationship with Bleys, he was also clearly feeling blocked, to a certain extent.

  As far as Sean knew, Bleys could be Toni’s lover, employer or even a close relative; and many of the comments he much wished to make to Bleys now about this magnificent woman might turn out to be unwise.

  However, the urge to talk still plainly moved him; and accordingly, he spoke almost as soon as the door to Bleys’s suite was closed behind them, the words bubbling out of him as if he had been a bottle of sparkling wine just uncorked.

  “Possibly I should introduce myself more fully,” Sean said rapidly. “I’m an Accredited Council Intern—of course, that’s why I was sent to bring you. You’re an Honored Visitor, Bleys Ahrens—but of course, you know that.”

  “Am I indeed?”

  “Oh, yes. Otherwise they’d have simply sent an ordinary Council Intern. I know Antonia Lu introduced me to you. But my name is spelled S-E-A-N, a little differently than it’s pronounced.”

  Even with most of his mind concerned with meeting the Council, Bleys smiled to himself. It was unusual, on one of the New Worlds, that anyone’s name could attract attention; since most people carried names that announced a mixture of different heritages. This name was an exception; but from what he had already learned about the people on Newton, it was a common exception there, as it was on the Dorsai and in areas on some of the other New Worlds. In the case of Newton, it was evidently a point of social pride to have exactly the sort of name that might be encountered back on Old Earth. On most of the Worlds it was not unknown for families to cling to ancestral names; but on Newton the compulsion seemed unusually strong, as if by this they could identify themselves as being above the other New Worlds and very much still on a level with those on the rich and populous Mother World.

  “So I understand,” Bleys answered.

  The greater part of his attention was concentrating on observing his surroundings and working to deduce from them what he could of this world’s present social pattern and its weaknesses, as well as his own situation here.

  They had started off down a hotel corridor empty of other people and appearing even wider than it actually was. Bleys decided this was partially so because of the unusual decor. The walls on either side of them were not recognizable immediately as such, resembling rather floor-to-ceiling banks of mist, though solid enough to a casual touch of Bleys’s finger.

  These were interrupted at intervals by obvious doorways closed by ordinary brown doors. But Bleys had already been given to understand that a simple technical order, sent from a desk or wrist keypad, could cause such an entrance to vanish into the mist-wall around it; so that no access at all was to be seen—if someone within did not want to be disturbed.

  Otherwise, the walls were pleasant in their own right. Through them moved, faintly, all the colors of the rainbow, in a calm, slow, steady progression; so that the eyes were not invited to focus for any length of time at any one point. Only, at one place there was what looked like a shallow indentation in one wall, which Bleys had been told signaled an opening to another corridor, branching off at right angles.

  In the indentation, the mist was darker; it was impossible to tell how far back that corridor ran, or what it might open into.

  Bleys pondered possible advantages of this unusual architecture and found none. None, but perhaps the desire to appear technically advanced and ostentatious. On the debit side, there was the danger of turning into one of the semi-hidden side corridors and running into someone coming out.

  Come to think of it, however, he told himself, there were probably technological fail-safes of some kind, that would keep people from colliding in such a way.

  Since leaving the main lounge of his suite, he and O’Flaherty had proceeded past a number of the rooms belonging to it. They now came to a turn that should, according to his reckoning, be the corner of the building; and Bleys saw before them a shorter and narrower hall which ended abruptly in a further mist-wall.

  Hurrying on his shorter legs to get a half-step ahead of Bleys, O’Flaherty led the way right into the mist and vanished.

  Bleys followed, and stepped into a hallway that was entirely different. Suddenly he heard the heels of his shoes and those of his companion rapping noisily on the uncarpeted floor in something very much like a tunnel; for the walls and ceiling were now of bare concrete. Moreover, there were neither windows nor three-dimensional pictorial displays, let into them; so that it seemed as if they had suddenly begun to traverse some service area of the hotel.

  “…I have to say that I was very much impressed by your Antonia Lu,” Sean was saying at last, in desperation; since Bleys, with the greater part of his mind occupied, had failed to rise to any of the leading statements Sean had been putting forth continuously as they walked, to start Bleys talking about Toni. “I didn’t feel right about asking her directly what her position was, the position in which she works for you. She’s not your secretary, I suppose?”

  The last words came out on a slightly higher note, betraying hope. If Toni was no more than Bleys’s secretary; and particularly if Bleys had no interest in her, or relationship with her beyond her duties in that job, then it just might be that he, Sean O’Flaherty, might possibly…

 
“She’s one of the few people who work with me, rather than for me,” Bleys said, “so the things she does cover a wide area, too wide for any one title, even if such a title existed. Like a few other people around me, what she does only she could do.”

  “Oh,” said Sean, still uninformed and obviously disappointed.

  An awkward silence—at least on Sean’s part—fell between them. Luckily, however, the tunnel-like hall they were in was not long. They came to an ordinary heavy, brown, metallic-appearing door, set in the wall at its far end. Sean opened it and they passed through—again into a totally different kind of passage.

  This was a long, high, wide and pleasant stretch of the building—almost too wide, in fact, to be called a corridor—with tall and broad three-dimensional views set along its walls, so that now they seemed to be looking out through windows at solid ground, level with the surface

  Bleys and Sean walked on, although Bleys knew very well that they were over twenty stories in the air.

  The scenes were all pleasant, mainly of lawns, carefully trimmed trees, hedges and flower beds, all matched by plants growing in earth-holding areas just inside the false windows, so that this part of the trip became like passing through a home on one of the Exotic worlds, where his mother’s people had been in the habit of building habitations in which it was hard to tell whether you were outdoors or still within walls.

  The ceiling, at least double the height of the ceilings in the suites Bleys and his people occupied, was vaulted and apparently of stone—or imitation stone—colored a blue like that of an Old Earth sky. The walls were paneled in what seemed to be warm brown wood. The floor was covered by something like darkly-rich, thickly-growing grass with earth below it. A greater contrast to the concrete tunnel they had just left could not have been imagined, and it was overwhelmingly obvious to Bleys that the contrast was deliberate.

  He and Sean had walked in silence about a third of the way along this hall when the world around him made a sudden violent and brutal turn, that for a moment destroyed all sense of orientation he possessed.