Gordon R Dickson, page 17
He thought of himself again as standing light-years out and away, from the sixteen worlds on which the individuals of the human race were born, lived and died. He imagined looking at them from that great distance. They were an unorganized mass, changing even as he watched them. What good to affect any one, or any number of them, if those he affected would die and his affect on them be buried with them?
There must be something bigger, something permanent, he could do.
He tried to picture them as a race, apart. There was much, very much, that was good about them. There was much that was bad. They had spread out from their original home to fifteen other worlds. But what they were on all those worlds now was largely what they had been when they first began to stand upright and think on Old Earth. They were still the same people.
Perhaps there was some way in which he could help them up the stairs, even one step toward being something better. Something more capable—as he was capable.
The moment that thought occurred to him, he knew that he had found it. That was what he wanted to do. He wanted to help humanity up—just one step forward. Just one. Hopefully, then, with momentum helping them, they would keep climbing. But at least that one, first step should be taken; and he should bring about the taking of it. How?
That question stood like a living thing before his eyes in the pleasant dimness of the artificially-lighted bedroom. But it was not a question to be answered in this instant, or even in the next few weeks, months or even years. But it must be answered soon, so that he could be about the business of accomplishing it—
The door of his bedroom swung open suddenly and the huge frame of Dahno filled it. His smile and his voice were no different than they had been hundreds of times before when Bleys had been in visiting. It was as if what had happened at Henry’s had never taken place.
“All right, now! Let’s get to the business of planning what you’re going to be doing from now on.”
Bleys made up his mind. He took his hands from behind his head, swung himself to his feet and walked out through the doorway, as Dahno stood aside to let him through it. He went into the lounge and sat down in one of the huge chairs, his long forearms extended along the tops of the massive armrests of the over-padded piece of furniture.
“No,” he said.
Dahno came over from near the doorway where he had been standing and sat down in one of the big chairs opposite him. His face was puzzled and concerned.
“What’s this?” he asked. “I don’t understand, Bleys.”
“I’m sorry,” Bleys said, “but that’s the way it is. I’m not going along with you any further until you tell me exactly what you’ve got in mind for me.”
Dahno leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. His face was more concerned than ever.
“But I told you,” he said. His voice was warm and worried. “Remember—the first time I took you to my regular restaurant. On the way home from that visit I told you when we stopped just before getting back to the farm. I said ‘you’re remembering our mother. Don’t. I’m not her. If nothing else, I want something much greater than she ever wanted. But what that is you’re going to have to find out for yourself. Find out for yourself, and then decide if you want any part of it. That way I know you’re coming in with me completely of your own free will. All right?’—and you told me it was all right.”
Dahno had recited what he had said then, almost word for word. Bleys was not particularly impressed by this, since he could do the same thing himself. In fact, he did so, now.
“‘For now, anyway,’ was what I told you then,” answered Bleys. “Well, this is nearly five years later. Now I need something more than that. Look at me, Dahno. I’ll be twenty before very long. I’m a different person and this is a different world for both of us, than when you told me what you just said and I agreed to it—for then.”
“Do you remember,” said Dahno, “asking me a few moments before that why I was interested in you?”
“I remember exactly—as you do,” Bleys said.
“Remember then,” said Dahno, “what I told you. In brief, I said I was the only other person on all the sixteen worlds, including Old Earth, who knew and understood you, and understood what you were capable of. I also knew about your isolation—because I’m isolated the same way. But I pointed out that even if neither of us could do anything about our isolations, we could at least have a connection, a friendship, a joint endeavor between the two of us, you and I.”
“You also said you could use me,” Bleys answered, “but when I asked you how you didn’t tell me. Well, the time has come when I’ve got to know how. It’s as simple as that.”
“Little Brother,” said Dahno, almost sadly, “do you know what it means for you if you cut yourself off from me? I’m not universally loved, you know. You may not be aware of it but there are a few people who don’t like me and who I have to be on guard against. You’d be easy pickings for them, since you know nothing about them or why they’d want you. But they’d think if they took you they’d have a card to use against me.”
“And would they?” Bleys asked.
“Unfortunately,” Dahno’s face hardened for just a second, “they wouldn’t. The one thing I can’t ever afford to give in to is any kind of blackmail. Which would mean the end of you, Little Brother. You need me to stay alive.”
“Maybe,” said Bleys, “on the other hand—maybe not. You see, I don’t really know these enemies you tell me about exist. The people who might come after me, who’d kidnap me, or whatever you were referring to, may be just your own people, putting pressure on me to get me back in line. Perhaps, if I’m not with you, you’re safer off with me dead. Could that be so—Big Brother?”
“Ah,” said Dahno softly, and once more sadly, “the milk-teeth have begun to fall out.”
His face became very serious indeed.
“Bleys,” he said, slowly and with emphasis, “I don’t know whether it would be safe for me with you alive and not working with me.”
“Explain,” said Bleys.
“Because it depends on you,” Dahno said. “Would you take it into your head to become a threat to me? Would I get in the way eventually of whatever you were doing on your own? The possibility of both things are there. That’s why I don’t know. But I do know that the safe way is for us to stay together, and keep working together. I think you need me.”
“I do need you,” said Bleys; and the back of his mind held an entirely different meaning to those words than the one he knew he was giving Dahno. “The trouble is, that doesn’t change things. Even if everything you’ve said to me is true, it doesn’t change things. I’ve outgrown being a pawn of yours. If I’m to be a partner, it’s time that I started being admitted to the inner rooms of what’s going on. Otherwise, I’m going to have to assume there’s no real partnership there. I’ll have to assume you’re planning to use me for a pawn all my life. I can’t live like that, Dahno.”
Their eyes met.
“Believe me,” said Bleys, “I can’t live like that. You know I can’t, being who and what I am.”
Dahno sighed, a little bitterly.
“You’re remembering our mother,” he said. “Please don’t. I told you I’m not her. As I told you, if nothing else I want something much greater than she ever wanted, but while I can open things up a little bit for you I can’t, I daren’t for my own safety, let you know everything that I’m doing right now. If I can see—if I know—what you said just now I had to know, then you have to see and know that. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll tell you my goal for you is to be my right-hand man.”
He paused, waiting for Bleys to speak. But Bleys stayed silent.
“Of course,” he said, “you won’t have as large a share as I will. No one ever will. But you’ll have the next largest share after me. Now that’s as much as I can tell you. For the rest, what I said in the first place is still true. What I’m doing, how I’m doing it, are things you’re going to have to find out for yourself. Then come and tell me if you want any part of it as my right-hand man. Will that do you?”
Bleys sat in silence for a moment, turning his brother’s words over.
“For now, anyway,” he answered finally, “all right.”
One of the huge hands was extended toward him. Bleys took it in his own narrow, long fingers.
For a moment their grasp held firmly, and a current of truth and real feeling ran between them that Bleys could feel. Then the grip broke, the feeling was gone; and the arms fell apart.
“Now!” Dahno stood up, his voice brisk, and the smile back on his face. “As I said some minutes back, let’s get to the business of introducing you to what you’re going to be doing from now on.”
CHAPTER
17
THE VISITORS’ GALLERY of the Room of Speakers, that assemblage of concentric arcs of desks mounting, amphitheater style, from the center of the room which was the center also of the government of the world of Association, was not open to ordinary visitors.
Bleys had seen Dahno pin a green and white badge on his jacket as they came down the corridor toward the gallery’s entrance; and after doing this he handed a similar badge to Bleys.
“Stick it to your jacket where I did,” Dahno said.
Bleys complied. By the time he had it hooked they were at the entrance, guarded by a black-uniformed, military-looking guard with a power pistol in an open holster at his side. This man smiled genially at Dahno as the two came up; but frowned at Bleys and raised a hand palm outward in front of him, stepping in front of him to examine his badge closely.
Dahno and Bleys both stopped.
“My partner in the firm,” said Dahno, “also my younger brother. Tom, I’d like to have you meet Bleys Ahrens.”
The guard dropped his hand.
“You’re welcome to the visitors’ gallery, Bleys Ahrens,” he said.
It was an answer, Bleys noticed, that avoided both the “honored…” salutation common on the worlds generally on any formal occasion, and at the same time skirted any of the special forms of address used by the various churches.
“Thank you,” said Dahno before Bleys could answer, smiling genially at the guard. He and Bleys went inside to the gallery.
“Never forget the little people,” Dahno said to Bleys softly, as they left the guard behind, “they can be useful when you want an exception to a rule.”
At the moment the gallery seemed empty of other watchers. There were a dozen rows of seats, capable of holding perhaps fifty observers, ranked in three tiers down to the balcony edge itself, and split by an aisle. Dahno descended the aisle just ahead of Bleys, and stepped into a seat in the front row, to his left. He sat down, and gestured to Bleys to take the seat beside him, which Bleys did.
The balcony before them was low enough so that they could see most of the space below, with its semicircle of desks for the representatives elected to the chamber. The walls were of dark stone, mounting to a high-domed inner ceiling, also of the same stone; the lighting was below the level of the balcony around the room and mainly directed downward for the use of the representatives.
The color of the dark stone drank up that light; and this, together with the somber blacks and grays of the representatives’ clothes, gave the whole place a cave-like appearance, as if it had been some chamber hollowed out of rock.
At the flat end where the semicircles of seats ceased, there was a raised dais and a pulpit in which a speaker could stand with straight lines of other seats behind it arranged in two ranks. There was space for perhaps twenty-four people behind whoever was speaking.
Only one of the seats there was occupied right now, by a man who sat rather carelessly in one of the places off to the left of the speaker, with his legs crossed and no desk surface raised in front of him. He seemed more a casual watcher, than a member of the assembly itself. This puzzled Bleys, since the assembly appeared fairly full of people listening to the speaker currently in the pulpit.
“Someday,” said Dahno, “I’ll probably be sending you here to listen to the debates and votes on some propositions. That’s the Chief Speaker with his legs crossed, sitting behind the speaker who’s talking now. The Chief Speaker’s name is Shin Lee. He polled enough votes in our last election to have taken the title of Eldest from the chief representative on Harmony; but until Harmony has another election, he remains simply Chief Speaker. His church is The Repentance Church.”
“How much power has he, compared to the rest of them?” asked Bleys, fascinated by the whole situation—the cave-like chamber, the empty seats behind the pulpit and full ones before it, and the odd names.
“Less, in some ways, officially,” said Dahno; “he can cast a tie-breaking vote, but otherwise he’s got no vote at all. On the other hand, outside this chamber he has enormous power. He controls the militia and the governmental apparatus all over the world, plus having the right to step in on any deadlocked dispute within one of the other churches, or between churches, and cast a deciding vote. But his great advantage is his prestige. He’s responsible, ultimately responsible, for defense of this planet; and if he ever acquires the title of Eldest, he’ll be responsible for the defense of both planets.”
Bleys took his eyes momentarily off the scene below, to look at Dahno.
“Why,” he said, “nobody’s ever attacked a whole world, let alone two of them, since Donal Graeme attacked Newton—and that was—it must be nearly a hundred years ago.”
“I know,” said Dahno, without taking his gaze from the scene below, “but whoever is Eldest still has the power, just the same. He can also legislate, or even initiate legislation for both planets’ chambers to consider. Watch what’s going on.”
Bleys looked back down into the room of speakers.
“The one talking right now,” Dahno said, “is Svarnam Helt. What he’s saying isn’t too important. It’s a speech he makes every so often.” He keyed the control panel on the top rail of the balcony before each of the seats, and the voice of the speaker came clearly to their ears.
“—And these temples must be cleansed. They must be cleansed now—”
“No point in listening to all of it,” said Dahno, “it’s a piece of general legislation, designed to deliberately attack a couple of the churches that his church doesn’t like—a lot. The measure he’s proposing’ll go nowhere. Otherwise, though, Helt swings a lot of weight, politically. He’s consulted me from time to time. In fact, probably most of the rank and file Speakers here have, one time or another. You won’t remember them from my table at the restaurant, because they don’t like to be seen talking to me in public—”
Bleys stored that particular, last piece of information for future use.
“—But a lot of them consult,” Dahno was going on, “and a lot of them are important. Now, if you’ll look over near the end of the eighth row up, there’s a man with reddish-gray hair, a rather full, red beard, and wearing a turban, seated near the end of the row. That’s Harold Harold, of the Church of the Understanding. He’s powerful. So is the woman you saw at my consulting restaurant, that time, sitting in the seat beyond the empty seat to Harold’s right…”
Dahno went on identifying various members of the chamber, and telling Bleys what churches they represented.
Bleys sat, absorbing the information Dahno was giving him and storing it away. This was the first time that his brother had made any move that resembled directly helping Bleys to understand what the other did.
Instinctively, Bleys felt the importance of everything being said to him. Even if he never had anything to do with the particular person being identified, knowing would help to fill in the matrix of understanding he was gradually building about his older half-brother.
“Which ones are the Five Sisters?” Bleys asked, when Dahno at last stopped talking.
Dahno looked at him curiously.
“That’s stuck in your memory, has it?” Dahno said. “Well, outside of the woman I just pointed out, they aren’t all five together here, all the time, like a matched set of spoons. But there’s one of them down there now, if you’ll look in almost the very back row, over to the right, the man wearing a business suit with a bald head and large, bushy beard that looks completely white from here but is actually sort of gray going on white. That’s Brother Williams of the Faithful Church. The only time you’ll see all five together will be when a particularly important bit of lawmaking is going on in which they’re all united, strongly trying to swing the room to vote the way they want.”
Bleys searched that part of the floor below, squinting his eyes against the way the lighting was set up, and finally identified the man that Dahno was talking about. He would have gone on to ask more questions, but at that moment somebody else walked down the gallery aisle, looking at them, and moved over into the tier of seats across the aisle from them to its very end.
“We better get going,” said Dahno, in a low voice.
They got up and went out. Outside, the corridor that led to the visitors’ gallery was of the same dark stone, but less oddly lit than the gallery and the room itself had been, so that it seemed almost like an ordinary corridor anywhere. Right now it was empty; except for one short, rather fat man who was passing just as they came out. They had only taken half a dozen steps when a voice behind them called out.
“Ahrens! You there! Just a minute! I want a word with you!”
Dahno sighed a little under his breath and turned. Bleys turned with him. Approaching them was the rather plump man who had just passed them in the corridor. He was wearing something between a kilt and a skirt, below which his puffy knees looked ridiculous. A regular shirt and jacket clothed his upper body. And on his head he wore a black beret. Red hair peeped out in untidy swatches from around the edges of the beret.
When Dahno and Bleys turned, they stood where they were and the man walked back up to them. He ignored Bleys and spoke directly and fiercely to Dahno.
“You shouldn’t even be in this building!” the man snapped.
