Other

by Gordon R. Dickson

  “Of course,” Toni said.

  So she did. She not only helped, she dominated the process of his getting used to being on his feet and moving around again. So he took it more slowly than he had intended. It was not quite two days—but a good thirty hours or so—before he was moving around on his own.

  Again, secretly, while his whole being struggled against the slowness of this, Bleys was grateful every time he could return to the bed and lie down. His strength had indeed been at low ebb; and now, while it was coming back swiftly, by the time he had done some few physical things, he was ready to rest, if not sleep.

  But his determination to get himself back to moving normally was so strong that finally they went twenty-four hours around the clock, with only naps at intervals. It was only when he realized Toni could have slept only while he was napping, that he noticed how tired and drawn her face was; and realized that, while putting himself to the limit of his strength, he had also been pushing her to the limit of hers.

  “How did you manage to stay by me all those earlier days?” he asked.

  She smiled. “I had a small bed brought in. When you were unconscious, I slept. There was a monitor on you that warned me when you woke up.”

  “And you did that for over two weeks?”

  She smiled again, if somewhat wanly.

  “Kaj said the fewer people you had contact with during the worst part of your illness, the better. I told him it had to be just me.”

  Bleys understood—suddenly, as if with a touch of clairvoyance. By being here alone with him she had made sure no one else heard what he was saying. Whatever effect his fever and drug-driven words had had on her, she had understood how much he would not have wanted anyone else hearing them.

  Bleys shook his head. He could not think how to thank her for her understanding. Maybe in time he would.

  Unbidden, like a serpent slipping into an unguarded corner of paradise, came the thought that—however—she had heard; and she must have realized how that might pose a problem to him. Silently, he thanked the God he did not believe in for the fact she could not know what his real concern about her hearing him had been.

  “I think I’d like to take a shower,” Bleys said as lightly as he could. “Don’t you want to get away from me now? Go off by yourself and sleep, if nothing else?”

  “No, that’s not necessary”—Toni broke off and shook her head, then smiled once more—“I could sleep. Yes, I could really sleep.”

  “Well, then, go to sleep. If I need you, I can call you. If you’re doubtful, hook up that monitor to me again. I imagine it’s something I could walk around with?”

  “As a matter of fact,” she said, smiling, “it’s still attached to you. It’s quite all right; you can take a shower with it. The water won’t hurt it.”

  Bleys nodded and watched her as she turned toward the door.

  “You’re sure you feel all right now?” Toni paused and looked back as the door slid open when she was within the length of one step from it.

  “I feel perfect,” Bleys said. “Go ahead.”

  She went out.

  The door closed behind her, and he gazed at it for a long moment. There was too much to think about right now, he thought. He would have to face what those weeks of hearing his soul poured out might have done to her. In spite of her undisturbed appearance, she had heard him, and they must talk about that, eventually.

  Bleys moved restlessly about the room. He could not imagine his future without her now. She had become a vital part—not only of his plans for coping with it, but his plans for holding himself to the stern, necessary line of his plans. He must do what he had set out to do—control, one way or another, of at least all the other New Worlds—and even that would be only the beginning.

  Deliberately, he shut the problem out of his mind, turned, and walked through a half-opened door into the attached bathroom.

  He was wearing only the shorts that he normally slept in. They were clean shorts, however. It occurred to him—and he put the thought from him again almost immediately—that Toni would have needed to have done much more than merely sit and listen. She had been his nurse in all ways, not merely soothing him when he woke, but taking care of him in what must have been less pleasant ways.

  Inside the bathroom, Bleys stepped to the mirror over the sink, running his hand over his jaw unthinkingly to make sure his face was shaven smoothly all over. It was, and he dropped his hands to look at his upper body and see what two weeks of idleness might have done to it. But he was hardly changed. The muscles of his arms and torso certainly felt more slack, because of the strength he had lost, and the food he had not eaten for two weeks. Only now, it occurred to him that Toni or others must have gotten at least some liquid down him to make it possible for him to survive that long, and they may have found some way of feeding him in the process. If so, it had happened during the periods of darkness and dreams. He had no memory of it.

  Bleys looked again at his face, and for the first time really saw it. He stood, staring at himself.

  The handsomeness of features, of bone and flesh he had been born with, that he owed to nothing but his genes and which he had turned to use, like an actor, in projecting his tall cloaked image effectively to his audiences—was still there, but different.

  It had been through the fire of his recent experiences and been changed. What he saw now was a face, the bones and skin of which were all as before, but which now seemed to project a permanent difference.

  It was as if he had become an Other in the full sense of that word. As if, as actor, he had actually become the character he displayed.

  Perhaps it was not the sort of thing that those who saw him from the audience, or on a casual basis would notice as a difference. Only someone who knew him well might realize how the darkness that had been always lurking in him had broken down the wall between itself and the rest of him. So that he and it had become one, melted together.

  Toni must have seen it happen, all through his time of blackout and compulsive talking, and all the physical and mental change that the Newtonian poisoning had put him through. She must understand now, not only his reasoning, his purposes, his goal, its cost—but how he had allowed it also to make itself a part of him. He had shaped it—and it had shaped him. She, of all people, must know him fully now. Yet she had stayed with him. He did not understand.

  Bleys’s intention of taking a shower was no longer important. He turned from the mirror and went back into the bedroom—only to catch himself up shortly as he saw Toni there, standing just inside the door, with the door itself shut behind her.

  “Toni!” he said. “You came back!”

  “I had a feeling”—she looked deeply into him now, he thought—“you might need me for something… so I thought I’d just step back and see.”

  He met her gaze with his own.

  “Toni, do you want to leave me?”

  For a moment she did not answer. Then slowly she shook her head.

  “No,” she answered.

  Chapter 40

  “I heard you were back on Harmony,” McKae said. “But it was just a general rumor, nothing specific. Then I investigated and found you here, but you hadn’t got in touch with anyone. I thought you’d call me as soon as you were free. I suppose you had some private business to deal with first. You know—I was expecting you sooner, but that’s not important now…”

  His voice ran down. Bleys sat still, looking gravely at him, from the chairfloat which had been set to a comfortable height for him, before he got there—almost certainly when he had finally called to say that he would be coming.

  They sat in McKae’s office in Harmony’s government building. A special office, larger even than that the Chief Speaker on each Friendly World ordinarily occupied. One of two identical offices, each in the Chamber building on either Harmony or Association. An office to be opened only when an Eldest had been elected.

  This one, on Harmony, occupied one full end of the government edifice.
It was actually three rooms: an office, a reception room, and a private lounge. But the walls between them could be caused to disappear into the ceiling at the touch of a command from McKae’s wrist control pad. Right now the walls were down, and they were in the office—which, interestingly, was the smallest of the three.

  They were alone. The humidity and temperature were up slightly in the office, so that there was something of a hothouse atmosphere. The effect of the melding of his ultimate purpose and the darkness within him was still with Bleys. It had not been until he came in and saw McKae’s eyes fasten sharply on him that he realized he had never thought the man a close enough observer to see the difference in him. But clearly McKae had, and the awareness of it had clearly brought a sudden change to the new Eldest’s original plans for this meeting.

  Now McKae got to his feet suddenly, still talking, and walked to a large cabinet molded into the structure of the wall at his left. He opened it and took out a couple of bottles of the same yellow wine that Bleys had seen him drinking before, along with two tall, ornately decorated and fluted glasses. He brought these close to his desk, set them down on the desk top and moved his chair around the corner of the desk, so that there was no furniture between them.

  Still standing, he beckoned Bleys to bring his seat forward to the desk.

  “…We have to celebrate our getting together.” He smiled with an obvious effort. “Things’ve been going well—very, very well. But I’m glad you’re back. There are other things to be done, and I’ll want your opinion on them—though, of course, the final decision will be mine.”

  McKae was pouring the wine into the glasses, watching it rise in them as if he was engaged in some delicate chemical experiment. He filled them full—in fact almost over-filled them, but stopped just in time—and set the bottle, now one-third empty, back on its base and picked up his own glass with hand that showed only a faint tremor as he lifted it to his lips.

  “Here’s to our being together again!”

  He drank off half the wine in his glass and set it down on the desk top. He looked at Bleys.

  “You didn’t drink,” he said.

  “In a moment, maybe,” Bleys murmured.

  McKae had continued to stand. He opened his mouth, then closed it again.

  “Why don’t you sit down?” Bleys said.

  McKae sat, staring steadily at him.

  “As I say,” he said, “I’ve been looking forward to having you back. I need your counsel in many things. I need you available.” His voice was stronger now.

  “You’ve got a great many people to counsel you,” said Bleys. “I’ll be glad to give you the benefit of my advice, though. In fact, I’ll be in touch with you regularly. As it happens, I’m going to have to leave Harmony again, almost immediately; and I’ll be gone a while. I’m due back on New Earth. I suppose you understand I arranged the conditions there that caused the CEO Club and the Guild to get together so they could hire our Friendly soldiers? By the way, how many of them are already there?”

  “I hadn’t known—why, as a matter of fact,” McKae said. “I’m not sure… I think more than half of them. That’s right. They wanted fifty thousand in all and I believe we’ve already shipped something like thirty thousand with all the necessary equipment and supplies. No, as I say, I didn’t know you actually had a hand in making them ask. How did you?”

  “Put pressure on them from several different areas in their society,” Bleys said. “The most important was through an opposition group called People of the Shoe. They’d been a problem to CEOs and Guilds anyway, but it was with the popular support and attention I gave them that they began to look like a serious threat. My part in things there wasn’t too different from the way I helped your election as Eldest.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “By the way,” Bleys went on, “did you follow my advice of making the contract on the Dorsai model, in which the troops are under the orders of their own superiors, only?”

  “Yes,” McKae said. “It’s sewn up all the way around, just the way the Dorsai contracts read. The New Earthers can only ask the Expedition’s superior officer to do what they want. He’ll consider the request, decide if it’s practical, decide how the troops will go about doing it if he orders them to; and they’ll move only on his orders, not those of anyone from New Earth.”

  Bleys nodded.

  “But I still wish you’d told me beforehand you were going to do what you say you did on New Earth,” McKae said.

  “No need,” Bleys answered evenly. “My work there is entirely aside from yours here.”

  McKae was still watching him closely. Barely glancing aside to do it, he topped up his own glass, raised it to his lips, and drank again—not quite as much as the first time, but a noticeable amount.

  “I remember your telling me that the CEO Club and the Guild would be wanting to hire the troops from us, just before the election,” McKae said, slowly.

  Bleys nodded again. “Of course. And, of course you were able to make good use of that information in your pre-election speeches,” said Bleys. “You did a good job of giving the impression that only you could bring about that hiring, and the large influx of interstellar credit it would mean to Harmony and Association, in payment.”

  “Yes,” McKae said. “But still, I would have liked knowing you had a hand in it.”

  “There was no need for you to know then,” Bleys said.

  There was another moment of silence between them.

  “And there is now?” McKae said.

  “I think so.”

  McKae looked at his wineglass for a long moment without saying anything. Then he almost seemed to shake himself like a man coming awake.

  “In any case,” he said, “we can’t have any talk of your leaving shortly. As I say, I need you here to counsel and advise me”—he smiled thinly—"that’s what the First Elder is supposed to do for the Eldest, you know—counsel and advise. It means the First Elder has to be at the El-dest’s elbow all the time.”

  “As I said a moment ago”—Bleys’s voice had kept its unvarying calm—“you’ve a great many people around to counsel and advise you. But I won’t stop telling you what you should do. You’ll hear from me regularly on that, as I said, from wherever I am.”

  “If you aren’t at my elbow—” McKae stopped to drink thirstily from his glass, almost emptying it; and automatically, it seemed, his hand went out to refill it again from the bottle that was now rapidly becoming empty. “—You can hardly be considered a First Elder. In fact, in that case there would be no point in your continuing to be First Elder.”

  “I think there is every point in things staying the way they are,” said Bleys, “for your sake.”

  “For my sake?”

  “Yes,” said Bleys. Their eyes met again. “Remember the weight that the promise of income from those fifty thousand troops had, in getting you elected. A powerful factor. You’re Eldest now, but there’s the matter of your staying Eldest. Wouldn’t you want to hold the job for a lifetime, like Eldest Bright did, a century ago? There are all sorts of possible factors; and I expect to be changing the interstellar situation—to which, as Eldest, you’ll have to respond. Conditions could work against you as well as for you. You’ll be wisest to do what I tell you when I tell you to do it.”

  McKae reached for his glass with a hand that this time trembled visibly. He gulped and set the glass down so hard that a piece chipped off its base.

  “Are you threatening me?” he asked harshly.

  “Of course,” Bleys said.

  The silence stretched tight between them. After a few moments, Bleys got to his feet.

  “I see,” he said. He turned and started toward the door of the office.

  “Wait!” McKae called. Bleys turned back. McKae had refilled his glass again and already had it at his lips. He put it down on the table, holding it to make sure it did not tip over because of the missing piece in its base. “If I—if I give you your freedom to go
when and where you want, and you simply speak to me when you want to,” he said jerkily, “things will be all right?”

  “You’ll be fully protected,” said Bleys. “And, after all, that’s the most important thing. I believe you’ll make a good Eldest for Harmony and Association—with my help. In fact, you should stay Eldest for a long time. You might even break Eldest Bright’s record.”

  He smiled reassuringly.

  “Yes.” McKae had been staring at Bleys, as if he had become limited to the point where he needed to lip-read what Bleys was saying, as well as hear it. He looked down at his glass, staring at it, and went on. “Then it’s settled.”

  “Yes,” said Bleys, “it’s settled. I’m glad we agree.”

  “Oh, I agree!” McKae drained his glass and put it back on the table. It fell over on one side.

  He looked up at Bleys.

  “I’ll be in touch with you,” Bleys said, and turned toward the door.

  “Wait!” McKae’s voice rang on the walls of the room behind him, and Bleys turned. McKae pointed with a shaking finger at Bleys’s still-full glass. “Aren’t you at least going to drink to it?” His eyes stared at Bleys a little wildly.

  “Oh, yes,” Bleys said, softly. He took three long strides back to the desk, picked up his glass and drank it empty. “To your long life and long tenure as Eldest.”

  He smiled again at McKae. McKae reached for the bottle without looking for it, poured what was left within into his glass and drank it off. Then he also smiled. As Bleys turned once more to leave, the new Eldest began to laugh—harsh, unhappy laughter; and the laughter went on as Bleys reached the door, which opened before him and let him out.

  “Barbage is here to see you,” Toni said to Bleys, as he stepped back into his suite in the hotel to which he had been brought from the Favored of God and in which all those with him were now also quartered. “He came a couple of hours ago, but said he wouldn’t go until he’d talked to you.”