“Good,” said Bleys. “I’d have gotten in touch with him if he hadn’t come. Has he got any special news?”
“I think so,” said Toni, “but he didn’t want to tell me. He wants to tell you, in person. Anyway, he’s in the second lounge over.”
“All right,” Bleys said. “By the way, you know I’ve just come back from seeing McKae. I told him that I was going to have to leave shortly for New Earth, and I decided on the way back here that probably it’d be a good idea if I left as quickly as possible—both to drive the lesson home to him and to make sure I’m back on New Earth as soon as possible.”
“So it’s back to New Earth, then?” Toni said.
“Yes,” he answered. “I’d like to get off without too much delay. The only problem I can think of might be that I’ll want as full a complement of Henry’s Soldiers as possible; and I know he gave those who wanted it some time off. They may be scattered all over this world, or even a few gone to Association to see family. But let’s get as many together in the next few hours as we can and try to take off in the next twenty-four hours or so. Would you call the Favored of God at the spaceport and see if it could lift in that length of time? If necessary, I could wait a little longer, but I’ll hope to get together at least half of Henry’s people by then—”
“You aren’t forgetting, are you,” said Toni, “that most of these Soldiers don’t have any particular place to go? They either don’t have families, or they’ve been separated from them for so long that they’ve lost connection with them. I was talking to Henry and got the impression that most of his Soldiers are still right around Citadel here—or not too far from it. I imagine Henry could get nearly all of those ready in twenty-four hours.”
“If he can, good.” Bleys hesitated. “How many—”
“We lost or left behind thirty-three of them.”
“Thirty-three!” Bleys sat down abruptly.
“Henry’s found others to replace them,” Toni said.
“Good,” Bleys said mechanically. “More than half. How many of those were left behind?”
“Alive, and left?” said Toni. “We don’t know. At least five.”
Bleys sat still. After a long pause, Toni spoke again, gently.
“You’ll want to say something to Henry about them. Don’t, now. Later, maybe.”
“Yes,” Bleys said. “I understand.”
He sat for a moment more, then stood up.
“You said the second lounge over has Barbage waiting?”
She nodded at a door in the wall just behind her and a little to her right. Bleys started toward it.
“Do you want to come along?” he asked.
“As I said, I think he wants all the effect of telling his news to you himself, and in a one-on-one atmosphere.”
“Why don’t you listen in on our talk, then?” said Bleys, as the door opened before him and he went through it. “That way you can tell Henry or Dahno, if there’s anything to pass on; and I won’t have to rehearse it to them, or you.”
“All right,” he heard her say behind him. He stepped into an empty lounge with a sea-green motif, its window wall ablaze with the early afternoon light of Epsilon Eridani. He passed through it into the next lounge, the walls of which were stark white and the furniture upholstered in gray imitation leather. Amyth Barbage stood alone in the room, upright with his back almost against the window wall, his hands behind him, his legs spread a little apart as if he was in a position of command. In his black, perfectly tailored uniform against the strong illumination from behind him, he looked almost like a figure painted upon the wall.
But the wall dimmed abruptly, the moment the sensors in the room read Bleys as turning to face the strong outdoor illumination; and Bleys was able to see the details of Barbage’s face and the sudden change in it at the sight of him.
“Great Teacher—” Barbage began—there was the most momentary of hesitations, then a slight change in Barbage’s expression. Almost, he smiled. “Great news! I have Hal Mayne for thee!”
The words had all the ring of a sentence meditated and rehearsed. But that was a matter of indifference to Bleys. Not so the hesitation, followed by the alteration in Barbage’s expression. Like McKae, he had clearly read the difference in Bleys; but, unlike McKae, the change in his face was toward an expression of fierce glee, clearly welcoming what he saw.
Bleys stepped over to take a chairfloat and sat down in it.
“That’s good news, Amyth,” he said quietly. “Tell me more and sit down yourself.”
Barbage clearly would rather have stood. But he came forward and sat, very erect, his back not touching the back rest of the float, squarely facing Bleys. From the greater height of the seat of his own float, Bleys looked down at him. But in the same way that it had always seemed impossible to look down on Henry, so it was also impossible to look down on Barbage. Like Henry, he seemed immune to considering anyone else greater than an equal, at most.
“He hath been captured in the local air-and-space terminal in Ahruma as he attempted to escape,” said Barbage. “I have him safely for thee, in Ahruma, in a cell in Militia headquarters there. Also, I have on the roof of this hotel, a craft waiting to take thee to him.”
“You say he was captured?” said Bleys, still speaking calmly. “How?”
“It was known he was in the area of Ahruma city,” said Barbage, “and a watch was kept for him. Some of our Militia were in the terminal; and a man with them named Ad-ion Corfua, who would know him on sight, identified him. There were only five militiamen, but they blocked his escape while more Militia came from farther in the terminal and enclosed him. They took him.”
“I see,” Bleys said.
He yawned. He spoke ostensibly to his wrist control— but actually to Toni, listening to what had just been said. “If anyone wants me, I’ve been taken to Ahruma by Amyth Barbage,” he said. “They’ve a man identified as Hal Mayne there, and I want to look at him. I’ll be back fairly quickly—”
Bleys broke off, looking at Amyth.
“How far away is Ahruma?” he asked. “How long would it take to get there, let me talk to Hal Mayne for perhaps half an hour, and then get back here?”
“No more than two hours, Great Teacher. Ahruma is the better part of this continent away, but I have a Militia air-and-space craft that can get thee there and back quickly.”
“How’s the weather there?”
“Moderate, as here.”
“Then we’ll leave right away,” said Bleys. To the wristpad and listening intercom, he added, “I should be back in two hours—wait here a moment, Amyth. I’ll be right back.”
He left the room, going back through the doors and the intervening lounge to the one where Toni was.
“A private word,” he said to her, as the door from the lounge closed behind him. “What other ships of which we—the Others, that is—own a share are in the spaceport here at Citadel now, besides Favored of God?”
“I’d have to check,” said Toni. “I know the Burning Bush is also in, and there may be a couple of others.”
“Good,” Bleys said. “Burning Bush will do, if Favored isn’t available. I’d like to travel without other passengers this time if we can; and I want to send a couple of messages ahead of us to New Earth. You’d better send them by the next ship lifting for there—one message to the People of the Shoe, simply telling them that I’m going to be back. Say in about six days, their local time from now; if we leave as soon as we can here—”
“And the other message?” Toni prompted after a second, for Bleys had fallen silent, his mind galloping ahead to the literal meeting with a flesh and blood Hal Mayne.
“Oh, yes,” Bleys said. “The other message goes to whoever the commanding officer of the Friendly forces is on New Earth. This will be their top classification for ‘secret.’ Tell him we may have some trouble with the New Earth authorities when we land; and we’d like a competent body of military, ostensibly merely as an Honor Guard, to meet our shi
p when it lands and protect us in our hotel afterward. Can you think of any problem in getting those messages off in the next few hours? There must be other ships lifting from here for New Earth before midnight.”
“I’m sure there are.” Toni’s fingers were busy on the studs of her wrist control pad.
“Good,” Bleys said. “I particularly want the People of the Shoe to leak the news that I’m going to be there, so phrase that message accordingly. But the Commander’s message is absolutely top secret. Nobody but he should see it. Sign it from me officially as First Elder.”
“I can’t imagine any problem,” Toni said. “You’re on your way to Ahruma then, with Barbage?”
“Yes. If I’m delayed I’ll let you know.”
“—And the outlaw Command Hal Mayne was with?” asked Bleys, as he and Amyth Barbage were re-entering the atmosphere on their flight to Ahruma, after their Militia ship had made a sharp half-loop up clear out of the atmosphere and then back down in again, to slow to atmospheric speeds at the spaceport of their destination. “Did you get them?”
“We did not, Great Teacher,” Barbage said.
He sat stiff-backed and upright, opposite Bleys, across a small, round table in the heavily upholstered, if tiny, lounge of the militia craft they were in. In front of Bleys was a glass that had been refilled with variform apple juice twice, while Barbage had drunk none from his.
“I’m surprised that Hal Mayne was separate from them,” Bleys said. He watched Barbage closely.
“We will get him to tell us,” Barbage said. “Only those strong in their mistaken Faith have ever succeeded in not speaking when we require it. Those such as the one who barred the way of the Militia troops close behind the Command Hal Mayne had been with; troops which would have captured the Command, undoubtedly, if it had not been for this Old Prophet who barred their way—and indeed killed more than a dozen of them before they could work around behind him and kill him—it was in a wooded area.”
“Old Prophet?” echoed Bleys. “One of this same Command, you mean?”
“Yes,” Barbage answered. “One of Rukh Tamani’s Command. Would it had been Rukh Tamani herself! But this Old Prophet was one who had held to blame the Militia for the death of his wife many years before and been an outlaw against us for all that time. He was old and wise in combat; and stubborn, as I say, in his mistaken faith. His name was Child-of-God.”
“You knew him?”
“I knew the names of many with Rukh Tamani, though I had never seen them,” Barbage said. “Him I had seen. It was when I had been on Harmony before, serving as an exchange officer with a local Harmony Militia group. The Group I was with then caught up with the Rukh Tamani Command in the mountains, and there was a small interchange of cone-rifle fire—”
“Cone rifle?” Bleys said. “I know needle guns and power guns, but I’ve never heard of cone rifles.”
“Thou hast never seen how the needles are packaged for putting into the rifles?” Barbage asked. Bleys had, but said nothing. “The point of one needle fits into the hollow at the back of the one before it, so that they form together like a rod, although each one comes off separately for firing. Because of the indentation at the back and the point in front of each, they look each like a small cone; and in fact that shape aids their stability in flight, once they are fired. Needle rifles, therefore are sometimes called cone rifles on our own two worlds, which God has blessed.”
“I see,” said Bleys. “But you were telling me how you happened to see this Child-of-God.”
“Yes,” Barbage said. “It was Hal Mayne himself who disarmed me, and held me at rifle point. I defied Child-of-God, when he came, in that he should get any information from me. He recognized me as one of the Elect and knew therefore what I said was true; and so brought his own rifle around to kill me—but Hal Mayne knocked it out of line, so I took the chance and escaped.”
“Why did Hal Mayne stop him?”
“I know not. Nor does it matter. There was a chance to escape and I took it. But I remembered the Old Prophet’s face—dark, lean and ancient, a scar just in front of his right ear. It is long training with me to remember the faces of any of the Abandoned of God. Therefore I recognized him in death, even though he was broken apart by the power guns that finally ended his troublemaking. But he had managed to slow pursuit of the Command enough so that they escaped. But they will be found. Always, in the end, we find and catch them.”
The angle of descent of the spacecraft abruptly steepened, and there was a moment before the apparent equilibrium of the lounge had compensated and they once more felt as if they flew level. Barbage looked out the section of hull that was presently on transparency, beside him.
“In fifteen or twenty minutes, I shall have thee at Ahruma Militia headquarters; and within minutes after that thou shalt see Hal Mayne.”
The Militia headquarters in Ahruma had trafficways—local trafficways, but wide ones—on all five sides of it. The mag-lev vehicle that brought Bleys and Barbage in from the spaceport, at top speed for the streets and with its siren roaring, approached from the back; and going up along one side toward the front and main entrance of the headquarters, it slowed enough so that Bleys could see a traffic entrance into one side of what had appeared to be the solid building.
The entrance gave access to a sort of courtyard in which Bleys saw a couple of mag-lev vehicles, painted Militia black; a doorway and near it a loading dock—obviously a back entrance for the delivery of supplies, and possibly the discreet delivery of prisoners. There were no known outlaw groups in any of the major cities, as Bleys understood it; but there were the Cliques of the so-called Disaffected, who had contact with and aided the outlaw groups passing by the city.
For a moment Bleys considered the question of whether these outlaw groups and the Cliques would pose a problem for him once the Friendlies were well under his control through McKae—then put aside the idea. Altogether, both types of dissidents were a fraction of the populace; and the Militia, who acted as local police all over the planets, were strong enough to handle the problem, or at least keep it within some bounds.
The Militia could never cooperate with the Disaffected; there was too much history behind them for that. They were hated in their own right for their interference in inter-church warfare and their brutal handling of any who fell into their hands as suspects.
Within, the Militia Headquarters at Ahruma was like any military or paramilitary headquarters on any of the New Worlds. A place of offices and corridors, with self-cleaning walls and floors, bright lights and an air of industry—which might be actual or just an appearance. The cells to which they eventually came, however, were several flights down from the level of their entrance.
Here the lights were just as bright, but the corridors, in spite of their yellow dye and bright lights, had a more sterile look; and Bleys thought he smelled the odor of disinfectant as they went along them. The doors were blank, with little Judas windows which could be opened only from the outside.
At one of these, Barbage halted, and the headquarters militia man who had been preceding them tapped out a code on the entrance door, stood back as it slid into its niche in the wall, and let Barbage and Bleys go past him into the cell itself. He entered behind them and the door closed automatically, locking again.
Chapter 41
Bleys had ducked his head automatically as he stepped into the cell; but the ceiling, though low, was enough for him to stand upright, so he straightened again. The cell was brightly lit—if anything, over-brightly lit. The sudden glare, combined with his straightening up, kept him from looking directly at the cell’s occupant immediately. When he did, he saw that Hal Mayne was lying, obviously asleep or unconscious, on a narrow bed against the wall just to his right; and as he turned to look at Hal squarely, Bleys got one of the few deep shocks of his life.
This was not the boy of his fever-dream, the youngster whose image Bleys had been carrying in his mind all these years; in spite of knowing that Mayne
must have grown and aged in the years since he was fifteen.
This was a half-starved but still obviously powerful man, with coarse black hair and several days’ growth of black stubble on his strong jaw and lower face—and tall—very tall. He’s as big as I am! Bleys thought, still in his moment of shock.
Hal’s feet and his lower legs from the calves down projected beyond the foot of the bed on which they had fastened him; and suddenly, it was as if the figure Bleys saw lying there, was more than human; was both a giant and something beyond ordinary humanity—so that he was not only bigger than life, but had something greater than human about him, like the power of the ancient Greek Sibyl of Old Earth. So that for an instant the fear touched Bleys that the bearded lips might open; and a voice tell him something mat would destroy all the plans he had laid out for himself, turning him aside and sending him off in a different direction—and what had been said to him would stay with him forever, so that he would never find his way back to what he had set out to do in the first place.
Only then, in the glaring light, Bleys saw how they had tied him down; with cords drawn so tightly that they sank into the scant flesh of his wide-boned wrists, and into the fabric of the worn bush trousers covering his long legs. Immobile… as Bleys himself had awakened to find himself after the fever-dream of wolves. He felt again the restraints on his wrists and ankles; and for a moment Hal and he were one.
His stomach turned over. He looked away from Barbage and the Militiaman jailer. In this moment he could control his voice but not his features; and, above all, it was Barbage he did not want to see his face—in a rage even greater than the Militia captain had seen, the last time Bleys had been on Harmony.
“Get a medician!” he said.
“Great Teacher—” began the Militiaman, shocked.
“Silence!” Barbage snapped. He already had his wrist control pad at his lips and was speaking into it. “This is Captain Amyth Barbage. The medician to Hal Mayne’s cell. Immediately!”
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