Other

by Gordon R. Dickson

  “Hmm,” Half-Thunder said noncommittally. He looked around at the others in the circle, who looked back but said nothing.

  “Well,” said Half-Thunder, with a touch of irritation in his voice, looking around the circle again, “tell me what you think?”

  “I don’t care,” Georges Lemair growled. “Whatever the rest of you want.”

  “How would we be sure he could be kept under control?” asked Anita delle Santos. There was something artificial and rehearsed about the way she asked it.

  “Oh, there are ways,” Half-Thunder said. “You remember we’ve set up that kind of control with a few of our own people here. Remember?”

  After a second, Anita nodded.

  “I say put him on trial and execute him,” Iban said. “Why take chances?”

  “Sometimes, my dear,” said Din Su, “the chance is worth taking.”

  At first Iban looked as if she would answer. Her lips parted, then closed again. She sat silent, looking hard at Din Su.

  “Well, now,” said Din Su, “I think we’ll be pretty safe in making use of him.” She looked at Bleys.

  “Do you understand what we’re talking about, Bleys Ahrens?” she asked.

  Bleys smiled. In fact, he almost grinned at her.

  “I can guess. You want to use my ability by having me adapt my philosophy to what you want people to be brought to believe. Am I right?”

  “You see,” said Din Su to Half-Thunder. “He’s extremely intelligent. It would be a shame to waste him.”

  “Possibly you’re right,” said Half-Thunder. “I don’t think so, but if everyone else does…”

  They all looked at Bleys.

  “You might consider asking me what I think about this,” Bleys said to them.

  “It really doesn’t matter what you think,” said Half-Thunder, in the gently soothing tones with which he might have spoken to a child. Half-Thunder and Din Su, Bleys told himself, were almost certainly the controlling elements in this Council. If the two worked together, the Council would probably go their way. Nonetheless, Georges Lemair was scowling, and Iban had a frown that made her look even more carnivorous than she did without it. Nor did Anita delle Santos looked pleased.

  If they were all acting, it was good acting. But then, with people like these, such acting capability should not be surprising. Bleys thought he would lose nothing by prodding them a little more.

  “Oh, but I think it does,” he said. “You see, I’d no more prostitute my message to save my life than I would to avoid a martyr’s death. My message is my life.”

  “You see,” said Iban. “He’s unusable.”

  “Not at all. Not at all,” Half-Thunder answered in a tone almost as soothing as the one he had directed toward Bleys. “I don’t think he understands the situation, for one thing. For another, there are always ways by which these matters can be guaranteed. But, in a way, he’s right. It Won’t work if we don’t have his willing cooperation.”

  He turned back to Bleys. “To begin with, Bleys Ahrens, you have to understand that none of us want you to distort what you call your message. That much about you is really harmless, after all.”

  Bleys smiled.

  “I know you don’t think that,” Half-Thunder said reasonably. “But from our point of view it’s so. It can be considered irrelevant as far as Newton is considered. At present, the villain of your scenario is Old Earth. We’ve no quarrel with that. We’d be happy to have Old Earth go on being the target of hatred by the inhabitants of the New Worlds, though we here understand the Mother World better. But you see, if we just let you go on as you plan, you might later on want to identify us and our sciences with Old Earth’s pursuit in the same direction—for example, with the scientific accomplishments claimed for the Final Encyclopedia.”

  “I thought what you were concerned with was my disturbing your people now by coming here and talking,” Bleys reminded him.

  “Oh.” Half-Thunder gave a small wave of his hand. “That was the immediate reason we decided to do something about you. But it’s the future that really matters. Now, if we could be sure you’d confine yourself simply to what you call your message, and your blaming everything on Old Earth, then I think we’d feel comfortable letting you go around talking as you want—even here on Newton.”

  “That’s interesting,” Bleys said. “I won’t bother to repeat that I never intended to speak evil of Newton or any other New World, in any case. I talk about the New Worlds as a social unit; and my vision of the future has always been, in a word, more spiritual than political.”

  “You don’t see any objection, then, to working with us?” Din Su asked, softly.

  “So far you haven’t given me reason for any,” Bleys answered. “As for one cropping up in the future, I can’t see where my interest in the race really has a great deal to do with yours. I tell people only what I’ve come to believe and leave it to them to either find that information useful, or not. If they do, it may help. If they don’t, it’s their own loss. Trying to do anything more would be going beyond the proper territory of the philosopher.”

  “Well,” said Iban, “he wants to live, after all.”

  “He’s eloquent, yes,” said Half-Thunder. “But, more to the point, he’s agreeing with Din Su’s suggestion. But I wouldn’t trust him not to change his mind in the future. I say, just put a potential restraint on him and see how he reacts.”

  He looked around at the other Council members. They all nodded,

  “What sort of potential restraint?” Bleys asked. “I’ve warned you that I don’t intend to alter my message—”

  But even as Bleys spoke, softly against the underside of his forearm, which was lying on the armrest of his chair, through his shirtsleeve and formal jacket, he felt what seemed like a touch of a cool finger for an instant. Then it was gone.

  “The health of our Council members, you see,” Half-Thunder said, “has to be of the utmost concern to our World as a whole. So a medical-response element is built into the arm of each chairfloat here—in case of some sudden physical emergency. I’m sure you understand what I’m talking about.”

  “I understand,” said Bleys. “How long do I have?”

  “I said he was intelligent,” Din Su murmured.

  “Twenty-six to twenty-eight hours from now—until roughly tomorrow at this same time,” Half-Thunder answered. “Actually, I’d suggest you come to us a good three or four hours before your limit for a second application—the antidote, as it used to be called, in cases like this. Otherwise, while another application will save your life, you may spend an uncomfortable time for a matter of hours first. If you go beyond that limit, you could still probably be saved as much as another ten hours later, but you’d be—perhaps I should say—quite sick, for a period of time that would vary in length according to the delay in getting the antidote to you—and possibly lingering aftereffects.”

  “So,” said Bleys, and he kept his voice perfectly even, “I’m already a captive of yours?”

  “We’d rather think of it as just giving you a day to think over our offer,” Half-Thunder said. “The option of martyrdom is still open to you, of course; although since we’ve already decided on this course of action, if you don’t agree to work with us, we might simply withhold the antidote and let nature take its course.”

  Chapter 29

  Sean O’Flaherty was waiting to guide him back. Once more, he kept up a steady chatter. But if anything, now, the Council Intern was a little more polite than he had been when he had escorted Bleys to the Council.

  It was as if, in his eyes, some of the grandeur of the Council had attached itself to Bleys. Sean seemed, in fact, to be somewhat astonished that Bleys himself did not feel ennobled and uplifted by having rubbed shoulders with the Council’s exalted members; and he urged a superior attitude on Bleys, even as he emphasized the inferiority of his own position.

  “…I told you you were important,” he said, among other things. “It’s only the important peo
ple they get together in the afternoon for. Ordinary meetings, like the one this week—there’s only one a week, you know—are held in the evening. That’ll be tonight, but apparently they’re going to stay overnight themselves and hold another special meeting for you again tomorrow. I’ve never known that to happen with any one person—three meetings in a row!”

  Bleys assured the younger man he would do his best to appreciate the honor done him.

  He was less obliging, however, when they got to the door of the main entrance to his suite. He politely but firmly denied the Intern’s eager suggestion that he take advantage of the fact that since he, Sean, was here, he ought to step in and thank Antonia Lu for being so kind to him during the time he had to wait for Bleys, earlier.

  Sean allowed his disappointment to show, but made no effort to push the matter. Bleys left him outside the door and went in.

  Inside, the entry lounge was deserted, but the door to the private lounges and the private rooms beyond and his own personal bedroom and others was open—but he could hear no sound. He walked on, and in the end lounge, he found himself staring at the outside of a blue bubble.

  Even as he looked, it expanded around him; and he found himself now inside it, now able to look through its surface; and in the company of Dahno, Toni, Henry—and two strangers whom he did not recognize.

  The group had apparently been talking, all standing together. They broke off to turn and face him.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “Interesting matters,” said Dahno. “Everything in and on this planet is known to anybody who wants to know, within hours, if not minutes—”

  “Not anything said by people protected by my discontinuity,” said one of the two strangers. He was a thin, half-bald young man with a few hairs sticking untidily out of his nose and ears. Incongruously, he was wearing blue sports clothes, as if he had just been out for a run or some kind of athletic game.

  Dahno lifted a calming hand that loomed so large in comparison with the weedy speaker that it seemed it must throw him into shadow; and might indeed have if there had been a central source of light instead of the even illumination coming from the ceiling and all the walls.

  “Granted, inside his discontinuity,” Dahno went on to Bleys. “Bleys, this is Will Sather”—his finger indicated the young man who had just spoken—“and Kaj Menowsky, a medician, native Newtonian with Exotic internship.”

  Kaj Menowsky was a shorter, trimmer man. He had very black hair, very black eyes and a bright aggressive look to him.

  “Honored,” Bleys said to them briefly before turning back to Dahno. “And if Kaj Menowsky is willing, this saves the trouble of looking up a medician for me. Dahno, you’re about to explain why they’re here.”

  “They want to join us,” said Dahno, “and there are some rather good reasons for letting them do so, I think. Will Sather, here”—he nodded at the man with the nose and ear hair—“is the creator of the security bubble which we’re using. He’s learned two things through his individual grapevine. One is—against all Newton’s customs, laws and order—the Council has stolen the secret of his device. The second is, he also seems to have a pretty good idea of what they planned for you. We’ll have to wait and let you tell us what the Council actually said and did, of course.”

  “Thank you,” Bleys said.

  “No thanks needed,” Dahno answered cheerfully. “But, in any case, he’s got the secret of his device still with him; and he’s willing to make us partners with him in it if we’ll take him with us—oh, he’s been an underground Other here, in any case. So is Kaj. Because of what Will Sather thinks the Council may have done to you, he offered Kaj the chance to join him in joining us. All he asks is that we protect him and eventually get him and Kaj safely off Newton. In return he’ll work for and with us as long as we want him. Kaj’s offered his services too.”

  “What does Will Sather’s grapevine tell him the Council planned for me?” said Bleys.

  “He thought they would try to make you their captive, one way or another; and that they’ve almost certainly either done this by now by using drugs, or used drugs to reinforce any agreement you made to work with them. That’s why Kaj Menowsky is along. He’s a medician with a specialty in the type of drags they might have been using.”

  “Actually,” said Kaj in a brisk, light baritone, speaking very quickly and crisply, ” ‘drags’ isn’t really the right word for what we’re talking about.”

  “I suppose,” said Dahno. “Anyway, we can go into definitions later. Bleys, what did the Council do with you?”

  ‘The grapevine wasn’t too far off,” Bleys said. “I was first told that they were going to put me on trial for sabotage, disregarding my diplomatic immunity—”

  “They can’t do that!” said Toni.

  “They could, but I don’t think they really wanted to face the cost of it. It was only their way of softening me up to begin with. When I gave them a lead in a slightly different direction, they came through with an offer to have me continue my speaking on the various worlds, but under conditions that favored them; and to make sure of this, they injected me with something they told me would begin to affect me in twenty-six to twenty-eight hours, but I should come in four hours early to play safe…”

  He ran through what had happened in a few brief words.

  “Do you feel sick now?” Toni asked quickly.

  “Not at all,” said Bleys. “The impression I got was that I wasn’t supposed to notice any change, for at least twenty-six hours, which would put me to a little later than this time tomorrow; and they ended up saying they’d meet with me again tomorrow afternoon, just about the time I’d be paying attention to the effects.”

  “I thought so.” Kaj Menowsky rose to his feet. “I’d better have a look at you right away. I’ve some portable equipment with me, and the sooner we know what we’re up against, the better. As I said, ‘drags’ probably isn’t the right word for what they introduced into you.”

  “Yes,” said Bleys, “and, understandably, I’m interested in being treated as soon as possible. However, there’s something else first. I’ll have to ask you and Will Sather to step into one of the other lounges for a few minutes, while the rest of us discuss something privately. You don’t need to have any doubts about our taking you with us. But you don’t really belong to my special comrades, here; and for the moment, you’d better consider yourself just as passengers being carried along with us. Toni, will you take them into one of the other lounges to wait while we talk?”

  “This way, if you don’t mind,” Toni said to them. Dahno opened the bubble and, with a glance at Bleys, she led them off.

  “What’s this now?” Dahno asked.

  “We’ll wait until Toni comes back,” said Bleys. “Ah, here she is. I think I’ll sit down, and the rest of you had better sit down, too. I’m still feeling perfectly all right—but let’s sit down anyway.”

  “Dahno,” he began, looking at his half-brother. But Dahno winked at him, reaching into his trouser pocket at the same time.

  “I’m way ahead of you,” Dahno said. His big hand came out half-closed, hiding the small device; and a moment later, the blue bubble from it began to enclose them.

  “Thanks,” Bleys said as Dahno put the device back in his pocket. “I’ll make this as brief as I can, because I want to see that medician. Essentially, what the Council did was throw a threat at me first—”

  In as few words as possible, he told them of his meeting with the Council, this time giving them more of his interpretations of the meeting.

  “So they actually did drug you,” Dahno grunted.

  “As the medician said,” said Bleys. “What it means is that we have less than my twenty-six hours in which to get very busy.”

  He turned, and his float turned with him as he faced Henry.

  “Henry,” he said, “you remember that when you first came to me on Association to help me, I said that you were the answer to something I had been very muc
h in need of? And you remember I said that what I might want by way of a protection unit, was really a small Strike Force?”

  “I remember,” Henry said.

  “Well, now we’re really going to use your Soldiers as that Strike Force,” said Bleys. “I’m going to give the appearance tomorrow of being an ordinary tourist, visiting the Symphonie des Flambeaux for a performance in the afternoon. Somehow you’ve got to pick me up from the Symphonie, without attracting attention, armed and ready to fight our way, if necessary—”

  Dahno grunted. “It’ll be necessary,” he said.

  Bleys nodded.

  “—fight our way to the spaceport; and to Favored of God. Better get in touch with them, Toni—as soon as we’re through talking here.”

  Toni nodded.

  “All right,” Bleys went on. “The Council won’t want to make a public affair out of this, but they’ll undoubtedly try a number of undercover ways of opposing any attempt of mine to escape, even though I’ve got this whatever-it-is in me. So, that means you, Dahno, and possibly you, too, Toni, are going to have to check into a number of situations, including the layout of the Symphonie auditorium, its entrances, exits and anything else that we’ll need to know, and all places and ways they may use to try and stop us, once they know I’m on my way. As I say, their efforts are going to have to be discreet; so we have that and surprise as an advantage. As for the actual use of our Soldiers, that’ll be your department, of course, Henry; and I’ll leave it in your hands.”

  “There’s not a lot I can do, Bleys,” said Henry, “until I have some idea of what kind of opposition we’re likely to run into, how it’ll be armed and what kind of tactics it’ll use—its advantages and disadvantages.”

  He looked across at Dahno. “Can you get me information on that?”

  “I think so.” Dahno frowned. “In fact, I may be able to get more than you’d guess. A tight society like this has its own kinds of vulnerabilities. For example, tight as Cassida was, it would have taken me four or five days, there, just to find who was the best person to tell me what the likely best available security device was. Here, it was a matter of three hours and half a dozen conversations.”