This, then, was the background for the inevitable conflict that had been shaping up now for fifty years between two essentially different systems of controlling what was essentially the lifeblood of the human race—its skilled minds. In fact, thought Donal, standing by the open wall—the conflict was here, and now. It had already been under way that day he had stepped aboard the ship on which he was to meet Gait, and William, and Anea, the Select of Kultis. Behind the scenes, the build-up for a final battle had been already begun, and his own role in that battle, ready and waiting for him.
He went over to his desk and pressed a stud, speaking into a grille.
"I want all Chiefs of Staff here immediately,"-he said. "For a top-level conference."
He took his finger from the stud and sat down at the desk. There was a great deal to be done.
PROTECTOR II
Arriving at Holmstead the capital city of Venus five days later, Donal went immediately to a conference with Gait in the latter's suite of rooms at Government Hotel.
"There were things to take care of," he said, shaking hands with the older man and sitting down, "or I'd have been here sooner." He examined Gait. "You're looking tired."
The Marshal of Freiland had indeed lost weight. The skin of his face sagged a little on the massive bones, and his eyes were darkened with fatigue.
"Politics—politics—" answered Gait. "Not my line at all. It wears a man down. Drink?"
"No thanks," said Donal.
"Don't care for one myself," Gait said. "I'll just light my pipe ... you don't mind?"
"I never did before. And," said Donal, "you never asked me before."
"Heh ... no," Gait gave vent to something halfway between a cough and a chuckle; and, getting out his pipe, began to fill it with fingers that trembled a little. "Damned tired, that's all. In fact I'm ready to retire—but how can a man quit just when all hell's popping? You got my message—how many field units can you let me have?"
"A couple and some odds and ends. Say twenty thousand of first-line troops—" Gait's head came up. "Don't worry," Donal smiled. "They will be moved in by small, clumsy stages to give the impression I'm letting you have five times that number, but the procedure's a little fouled up in getting them actually transferred."
Gait grunted.
"I might've known you'd think of something," he said. "We can use that mind of yours here, at the main Conference. Officially, we're gathered here just to agree on a common attitude to the new government on New Earth—but you know what's really on the fire, don't you?"
"I can guess," said Donal. "The open market."
"Right." Gait got his pipe alight; and puffed on it gratefully. "The split's right down the middle, now that New Earth's in the Venus Group's camp and we—Freiland, that is—are clear over on the nonmar-ket side by way of reaction. We're in fair enough Strength counting heads as we sit around the table; but that's not the problem. They've got William— and that white-haired devil Blaine." He looked sharply over at Donal. "You know Project Blame, don't you?"
"I've never met him. This is my first trip to Venus," said Donal.
"There's a shark," said Gait with feeling. "I'd like to see him and William lock horns on something. Maybe they'd chew each other up and improve the universe. Well .. . about your status here—"
"Officially I'm sent by Sayona the Bond as an observer."
"Well, that's no problem then. We can easily get you invited to step from observer to delegate status. In fact, I've already passed the word. We were just waiting for you to arrive." Gait blew a large cloud of smoke and squinted at Donal through it. "But how about it, Donal? 1 trust that insight of yours. What's really in the wind here at the Conference?"
"I'm not sure," answered Donal. "It's my belief somebody made a mistake." "A mistake?"
"New Earth," explained Donal. "It was a fool's trick to overthrow the government there right now— and by force, at that. Which is why I believe we'll be getting it back."
Gait sat up sharply, taking his pipe from his mouth.
"Getting it back? You mean—the old government returned to power?" He stared at Donal. "Who'd give it back to us?"
"William for one, I'd imagine," said Donal. "This isn't his way of doing things—piecemeal. But you can bet as long as he's about returning it, he'll exact a price for it."
Gait shook his head.
"I don't follow you," he said.
"William finds himself working with the Venus group right now," Donal pointed out. "But he's hardly out to do them a kindness. His own aims are what concerns him—and it's those he'll be after in the long run. In fact, if you look, I'll bet you see two kinds of negotiations going on at this Conference. The short range, and the long range. The short range is likely to be this matter of an open market. The long range will be William's game."
Gait sucked on his pipe again.
"I don't know," he said, heavily. "I don't hold any more of a brief for William than you do—but you seem to lay everything at his doorstep. Are you sure you aren't a little overboard where the subject of him is concerned?"
"How can anyone be sure?" confessed Donal, wryly. "I mink what I mink about William, because—" he hesitated, 'If I were in his shoes, I'd be doing these tilings I suspect him of." He paused. "William's weight on our side could swing the conference into putting enough pressure on New Earth to get the old government back in power, couldn't it?"
"Why—of course."
"Well, then." Donal shrugged. "What could be better than William setting forth a compromise solution that at one and the same time puts him in the opposite camp and conceals as well as requires a development in the situation he desires?*'
"Well—I can follow that," said Gait, slowly. "But if that's the case, what's he after? What is it he'll wantT
Donal shook his head.
"I'm not sure," he said carefully. "I don't know."
On that rather inconclusive note, they ended their own private talk and Gait took Donal off to meet with some of the other delegates.
The meeting developed, as these things do, into a cocktail gathering in the lounges of the suite belonging to Project Blaine of Venus. Blaine himself, Donal was interested to discover, was a heavy, calm-looking white-haired man who showed no surface evidences of the character Gait had implied to him.
"Well, what do you think of him?" Gait murmured, as they left Blaine and his wife in the process of circulating around the other guests.
"Brilliant," said Donal. "But I hardly think someone to be afraid of." He met Gait's raised eyebrows with a smile. "He seems too immersed in his own point of view. I'd consider him predictable."
"As opposed to William?" asked Gait, in a low voice.
"As opposed to William," agreed Donal. "Who is not—or, not so much."
They had all this time been approaching William, who was seated facing them at one end of the lounge and talking to a tall slim woman whose back was to them. As Gait and Donal came up, William's gaze went past her. "Well, Marshal!" he said, smiling. "Protector!"
The woman turned around; and Donal found himself face to face with Anea.
If six years had made a difference in the outward form of Donal, they had made much more in that of Anea. She was in her late twenties now, and past die last stages of that delayed adolescence of hers. She had begun now to reveal that rare beauty that would deepen with age and experience and never completely leave her, even in extreme old age. She was more developed now, than the last time Donal had seen her, more fully woman-formed and more poised. Her green eyes met Donal's indeterminate ones across mere centimeters of distance.
"Honored to see you again," said Donal, inclining his head.
"The honor is mine." Her voice, like the rest of her, had matured. Donal looked past her to William. "Prince!" he said.
William stood up and shook hands, both with Donal and with Gait.
"Honored to have you with us, Protector," he said cheerfully to Donal. "I understand the marshal's proposing you for delegate. You can count on me."
"That's good of you," answered Donal.
"It's good for me," said William. "I like open minds around the Conference table and young minds—no of-fense, Hendrik—are generally open minds."
"I don't pretend to be anything but a soldier," growled Gait.
"And it's precisely that that makes you dangerous in negotiations," replied William. "Politicians and businessmen always feel more at home with someone who they know doesn't mean what he says. Honest men always have been a curse laid upon the sharpshooter."
"A pity," put in Anea, "that there aren't enough honest men, then, to curse mem all." She was looking at Donal. William laughed.
"The Select of Kultis could hardly be anything else but savage upon us underhanded characters, could you, Anea?" he said.
"You can ship me back to the Exotics, any time I wear too heavily on you," she retorted.
"No, no." William wagged his head, humorously. "Being the sort of man I am, I survive only by surrounding myself with good people like yourself. I'm enmeshed in the world of hard reality—it's my life and I wouldn't have it any other way—but for vacation, for a spiritual rest, I like to glance occasionally over the wall of a cloister to where the greatest tragedy is a blighted rose."
"One should not underestimate roses," said Donal. "Men have died over a difference in their color."
"Come now," said William turning on him. "The Wars of the Roses—ancient England? I can't believe such a statement from you, Donal. That conflict, like everything else, was over practical and property disputes. Wars never get fought for abstract reasons."
"On the contrary," Donal said. "Wars invariably get fought for abstract reasons. Wars may be instigated by the middle aged and the elderly; but they're fougfat by youth. And youth needs more man a practical motive for tempting the tragedy of all tragedies—the end of the universe—which is dying, when you're young."
"What a refreshing attitude from a professional soldier!" laughed William. "Which reminds me—I may have some business to discuss with you. I understand you emphasize the importance of field troops over everything else in a world's armed forces—and I hear you've been achieving some remarkable things in the training of them. That's information right down my alley, of course, since Ceta's gone in for this leasing of troops. What's your secret. Protector? Do you permit observers?"
"No secret," said Donal. "And you're welcome to send observers to our training program any time. Prince. The reason behind our successful training methods is the man in charge—my uncle, Field Commander lan Graeme."
"Ah—your uncle," said William. "I hardly imagine I could buy him away from you if he's a relative."
"I'm afraid not," answered Donal.
"Well, well—we'll have to talk, anyway. By heaven—my glass seems to have got itself empty. Anyone else care for another?"
"No thank you," said Anea.
"Nor I," said Donal.
"Well, I will," Gait said.
"Well, in that case, come along marshal," William turned to Gait. "You and I'll make our own way to the bar." They went off together across the lounge. Donal and Anea were left facing each other.
"So," said Donal, "you haven't changed your mind about me."
"No."
"So much for the fair-mindedness of a Select of
Kultis," he said ironically.
"I'm not superhuman, you know!" she flashed, with a touch of her younger spirit. "No," she said, more calmly, "there's probably millions as bad as you—or worse—but you've got ability. And you're a self-seeker. It's that I can't forgive you."
"William's corrupted your point of view," he said. "At least he makes no bones about being the kind of man he is!"
"Why should there be some sort of virtue always attributed to a frank admission of vice?" wondered Donal. "Besides, you're mistaken. William"—he lowered his voice—"sets himself up as a common sort of devil to blind you to the fact that he is what he actually is. Those who have anything to do with him recognize the fact that he's evil; and think that in recognizing this, they've plumbed the depths of the man."
"Oh?" Her voice was scornful. "What are his depths, then?"
"Something more than personal aggrandizement. You, who are so close to him, miss what the general mass of people who see him from a distance recognize quite clearly. He lives like a monk—he gets no personal profit out of what he does and his long hours of work. And he does not care what's thought of him."
"Any more than you do."
"Me?" Caught by an unexpected amount of truth in this charge, Donal could still protest. "I care for the opinion of the people whose opinion I care for."
"Such as?" she said.
"Well, you," he answered, "for one. Though I don't know why."
About to say something, and hardly waiting for him to finish so she could say it, she checked suddenly; and stared at him, her eyes widening.
"Oh," she gasped, "don't try to tell me that!"
"I hardly know why I try to tell you anything," he said, suddenly very bitter; and went off, leaving her where she stood.
He went directly out from the cocktail gathering and back to his own suite, where he immersed himself in work that kept him at his desk until the small hours of the morning. Even then, when he at last got to bed, he did not sleep well—a condition he laid to a walking hangover from the drinks at the cocktail gathering.
His mind would have examined this excuse further—but he would not let it.
PROTECTOR HI
"... A typical impasse," said William, Prince of Ceta. "Have some more of this Moselle."
"Thank you, no," answered Donal. The Conference was in its second week and he had accepted William's invitation to lunch with him in William's suite, following a morning session. The fish was excellent, the wine was imported—and Donal was curious, although so far they had spoken of nothing of real importance.
"You disappoint me," William said, replacing the decanter on the small table between them. "I'm not very strong in the food and drink department myself—but I do enjoy watching others enjoy them." He raised his eyebrows at Donal. "But your early training on the Dorsai is rather Spartan?"
"In some respects, yes," answered Donal. "Spartan and possibly a little provincial. I'm finding myself sliding into Hendrik Gait's impatience with the lack of progress in our talks."
"Well, mere you have it," said William. "The soldier loves action, the politician the sound of his own voice. But there's a better explanation than mat, of course. You've realized by now, no doubt, that the things mat concern a Conference aren't settled at the Conference table"—he gestured with his hand at the food before him—"but at small tete-a-tetes like these."
"I'd guess then mat the tete-a-tetes haven't been too productive of agreements so far." Donal sipped at the wine left in his glass.
"Quite right," said William cheerfully. "Nobody really wants to interfere in local affairs on a world; and nobody really wants to impose an institution on it from the outside, such as the open market, against the will of some of its people." He shook his head at Donal's smile. "No, no—I'm being quite truthful. Most of the delegates here would just as soon the problem of an open market had never come up at all on New Earth, so that they could tend to then- own styles of knitting without being bothered."
"I'll still reserve my judgment on that," said Donal. "But in any case, now we're here, we've got to come to some decision. Either for or against the current government; and for or against the market."
"Do we?" asked William. "Why not a compromise solution?1
"What sort of compromise?"
"Well that, of course," said William", in a frank tone, "is why I asked you to lunch. I feel very hum-
Gordon K. Dickson ble about you, Donal—I really do. I was entirely wrong in my estimate of you, five years ago. I did you an injustice."
Donal lifted his right hand in a small gesture of deprecation.
"No ... no," said William. "I insist on apologizing. I'm not a kind man, Donal. I'm interested only in buying what others have to sell—and if a man has ability, I'll buy it If not—" He let the sentence hang significantly. "But you have ability. You had it five years ago, and I was too concerned with the situation Co recognize it The truth of the matter is, Hugh Killien was a fool."
"On that, I can agree with you," Donal said.
"Attempting to carry on with Anea under my nose—I don't blame the girl. She was still a child then, for all her size. That's the way these Exotic hothouse people are—slow growing. But I should have seen it and expected it. In fact, I'm grateful to you for what you did, when I think back on it"
'Thank you," murmured Donal.
"No, I mean mat absolutely. Not that I'm talking to you now out of a sense of gratitude alone—I wouldn't insult your credulity with such a suggestion. But I am pleased to be able to find things working out in such a way that my own profit combines with the chance to pay you a small debt of gratitude."
"At any rate, I appreciate it," said Donal.
"Not at all. Now, the point is mis," said William, leaning forward over the table, "personally, of course, I favor the open market. I'm a businessman, after all, and there're business advantages to perfectly free trading. But more than open markets, it's important to business to have peace between the stars; and peace comes only from a stable situation."
"Go on," said Donal.
"Well, there are after all only two ways of imposing peace on a community—from the inside or from me outside. We don't seem to be able to do it to ourselves from the inside; so why not try imposing it from the outside?"
"And how would you go about that?"
"Quite simply," said William, leaning back in his float. "Let all the worlds have open markets, but appoint a separate, individual supraplanetary authority to police the markets. Equip it with sufficient force to back up its authority against even individual governments if need be—and appoint a responsible individual in charge whom governments will think twice about tangling with." He raised his eyes calmly to Donal across the table and paused to let expectation build to its proper peak in this young man. "How would you like the job?" he asked.
"I?"
Donal stared at him. William's eyes were shrewd upon him. Donal hesitated; and the muscles of his throat worked, once.
"I?" he said. "Why, the man who commanded a force like that would be—" the word faltered and died, unspoken.
"He would, indeed," said William, softly. Across from him Donal seemed to come slowly back to him-
Gordon Dickson self. He turned narrowed eyes on William. "Why come to me with an offer like this?" he demanded. "There are older commanders. Men with bigger names."
"And that is just precisely why I come to you, Donal," replied William, without hesitation. "Their stars are fading. Yours.is rising. Where will these older men be twenty years from now? On the olfaer hand, you—" he waved a self-explanatory hand.
"I!" said Donal. He seemed to be dazzled. "Commander—"
"Call it Commander in Chief," said William. "The job will be there; and you're the man for the job. Fm prepared, in the name of Ceta, to set up a tax on interplanetary transactions which, because of our volume of trade, we will bear the most heavily. The tax would pay for your forces, and yourself. All we want in exchange is a place on a three-man commission which will act as final authority over you." He smiled. "We could hardly put such power in your hands and turn you loose under no authority."
"I suppose—" Donal was hesitant. "I'd have to give up my position around Procyon—"
"I'm afraid so," said William, frankly. "You'd have to remove any suspicion of conflicting interests."
"I don't know." Donal's voice was hesitant. "I might lose this new post at any time—n
"Tliere's no need to worry about that," said William. "Ceta should effectively control the commission— since we will be paying the lion's share. Besides, a force like mat, once established, isn't easy to disband.
And if they're loyal to their commander—and your troops, I hear, usually are very much so—you would be in a position to defend your own position, if it came to that."
"Still—" Donal still demurred. 'Taking a post like that I'd inevitably make enemies. If something should go wrong, I'd have no place to turn, no one would hire me—"
"Frankly," said William, sharply, "I'm disappointed in you, Donal. Are you completely lacking in foresight?" His tone took on a little impatience. "Can't you see that we're inevitably tending toward a single government for all the worlds? It may not come tomorrow, or even in the next decade; but any supraplanetary organization must inevitably grow into the ultimate, central authority."
"In which case," said Donal, "I'd still be nothing but a hired hand. What I want"—his eyes burned a little more brightly—"is to own something. A world ... why not? I'm equipped to control a world; and defend it." He turned on William. "You'll have your position," he said.
William's eyes were hard and bright as two cut stones. He laughed shortly.
"You don't mince words," he said.
"I'm not that kind of man," said Donal, with a slight swagger in his tone. "You should have expected me to see through this scheme of yours. You want supreme authority. Very well. Give me one of the worlds—under you."
"And if I was to give you a world," said William. "Which one?"
"Any fair size world." Donal licked his lips. "Well, why not New Earth?"
William laughed. Donal stiffened.
"We're getting nowhere," said Donal. He stood up. "Thank you for the lunch." He turned and headed for the exit from the lounge.
"Wait!"
He turned to the sound of William's voice. The other man was also on his feet; and he came toward Donal.
"I've underestimated you again," said William. "Forgive me." He placed a detaining hand on Donal's arm. "The truth is, you've only anticipated me. Indeed, I'd intended you to be something more than a hired soldier. But ... all this is in the future," he shrugged. "I can hardly do more than promise you what you want."
"Oh," said Donal. "Something more than a promise. You could give me a contract, confirming me as the supreme authority on New Earth."
William stared at him and this time he did laugh, loudly and long.
"Donal!" he said. "Excuse me ... but what good would a contract like that be?" He spread his arms wide. "Some day New Earth may be mine to write you a contract for. But now—?"
"Still, you could write it. It would serve as a guarantee that you mean what you say."
William stopped laughing. His eyes narrowed.
"Put my name to a piece of writing like that?" he said. "What kind of a fool do you take me for?"
Donal wilted a little under the angry contempt in the older man's voice.
"Well ... at least draw up such a contract," he said. "I suppose I couldn't expect you to sign it. But ... at least I'd have something."
"You have something that could possibly cause me some slight embarrassment," said William. "I hope you realize it'd do nothing more than that—in me face of my denial of ever having discussed the matter with you."
"I'd feel more secure if the terms were laid out ahead of time"," said Donal, almost humbly. William shrugged, not without a touch of scorn.
"Come on then," he said; and led the way across the room to a desk. He pressed a stud on it and indicated a grille. "Dictate," he said.
Later, leaving William's suite of rooms with the unsigned contract in his pocket, Donal came out into the general hotel corridor outside so swiftly that he almost trod upon the heels of Anea, who seemed also to be leaving.
"Where away?" he said. She turned on him.
"None of your business!" she snapped; but an expression which the inescapable honesty of her face would not permit her to hide, aroused his sudden suspicions. He reached out swiftly and caught up her right hand, which was clenched.into a fist. She struggled, but he lifted the fingers easily back. Tucked into the nest of her palm was a tiny contact snooper mike.
"You will continue to be a fool," he said, wearily, dropping her hand with the mike still in it. "How much did you hear?"
"Enough to confirm my opinion of your she hissed.
"Bring that opinion to the next session of the Conference, if you can get in," he said. And went off. She stared after him, shaken with a fury, and a sudden pain of betrayal for which she could find no ready or sensible explanation.
She had, she told herself through that afternoon and the evening that followed, no intention of watching the next session personally. Early the next morning, however, she found herself asking Gait if he would get her a visitor's pass to the Conference room.
The marshal was obliged to inform her that at William's request, this session of the Conference was to be a closed one. He promised, however, to bring her what news he could; and she was forced to rest uneasily content with that.
As for Gait, himself, he went on to the Conference, arriving some few minutes late and discovering that the session had already started. William himself had begun the proposal of a plan that made the Dorsai Marshal of Freiland stiffen to attention, even as he was sitting down on his float at the Conference table.
"... To be established by a vote of this body," William was saying. "Naturally," he smiled, "our individual governments will have to ratify later, but we all know that to be pretty much a formality. A supraplanetary controlling body—having jurisdiction over trade and contracts, only—in conjunction with a general establishment of the open market, satisfies the requirements of all our members. Also, once this is out of the way, there should be no reason why we should not call upon the present insurgent government of New Earth to resign in favor of the previous, regular government. And I expect that if we call with a united voice, the present heads of state there will yield to our wishes." He smiled around the table. "I'm open for questions and objections, gentlemen."
"You said," spoke up Project Blaine, in his soft, precise voice, "something about a supranational armed force which would enforce the rulings of this controlling body. Such an armed force is, of course, contrary to our principles of individual worldrights. I would like to say right now that I hardly think we would care to support such a force and allow it such freedom if a commander inimical to our interests was at its head. In short—"
"We have no intention of subscribing to a commander other than one with a thorough understanding of our own principles and rights," interrupted Arjean, of St. Marie, all but glaring at the Venusian. Gait's shaggy brows shot together in a scowl.
There was something entirely too pat about the way these two had horned in. He started to look over at Donal for confirmation of this suspicion but William's voice drew his attention back to the Cetan.
"I understand, of course," said William. "However, I think I have the answer to all of your objections." He smiled impersonally at all of them. "The top commanders, as you know, are few. Each one has various associations which might make him objectionable to some one or more of the delegates here. In the main, I would say nothing more than a professional soldier. The prime examples of this, of course, are our Dorsal—"
The glances around the table swung quickly in on Gait, who scowled back to hide his astonishment
"... The Marshal of Freiland would, therefore, because of his position in his profession and between the stars, be our natural choice. But—" William barely got the word out in time to stifle objections that had begun to voice themselves from several points around the table, "Ceta recognizes that because of the marshal's long association with Freiland, some of you may not welcome him in such a position. We' re therefore proposing another man entirely—equally a Dorsai, but one who is young enough and recently enough on the scene to be considered free of political prejudice—I refer to the Protector of Procyon, Donal Graeme."
He gestured at Donal and sat down.
A babble of voices broke out all at once, but Donal was on his feet, looking tall, and slim, and remarkably young amongst the group of them. He stood, waiting, and the voices finally died down.
"I won't keep you for more than a minute," said Donal, looking around at them. "I agree thoroughly with Prince William's compromise solution to the problem of this Conference; because I most heartily believe the worlds do need a watchdog over them to prevent what's just now taken place, from happen- ing." He paused, and looked around the table again. "You see, honored as I am by Prince William's nomination, I can't accept because of something which just recently came into my hands. It names no names, but it promises things which will be a revelation to all of us. I also will name no names, but I would guess however that if this is a sample of what's going on, there are probably half a dozen other such writings being traded around."
He paused to let this sink in.
"So, I hereby refuse the nomination. And, further, I'm now withdrawing as a Delegate from this Conference in protest against being approached in this manner. I could not accept such a post or such a responsibility except with perfectly clean hands and no strings attached. Good-by, gentlemen."
He nodded to them and stepped back from their stunned silence. About to turn toward the exit, he stopped and pulled from his pocket the unsigned and nameless contract he had received from William the previous day. "Oh, by the way," he said. "This is the matter I was talking about. Perhaps you'd all like to look it over."
He threw it onto the table in their midst and strode out. As he left the lounge behind him, a sudden eruption of voices reached to his ears.
He did not go directly back to his own suite, but turned instead to Gait's. The doorbot admitted him; and he made his way to the main lounge of the suite, striding in with the confidence of one who expects to find it empty.
It was not, however. He had made half a dozen long strides into the room before he discovered another person seated alone at a chess board on a little table, and looking up at his entrance with startled eyes.
It was Anea.
He checked and inclined his head to her.
"Excuse me," he said. "I was going to wait for Hendrik. I'll take one of the other lounges."
"No," she had risen to her feet. Her face was a little pale, but controlled. "I'm waiting for him, too. Is the session over?"
"Not yet," he replied.
"Then let's wait together." She sat down at die table again. She waved a hand at the pieces, presently set up in the form of a knights-castles problem. "You play?"
"Yes," he said.
"Then join me." It was almost an order the way she said it. Donal showed no reaction, however, but crossed the lounge and took a seat opposite her. She began to set out the pieces.
If she expected to win, she was mistaken. Donal won three swift games; but oddly without showing any particular flair or brilliance. Consistently he seemed able to take advantage of opportunities she had overlooked, but which had been there before her in perfect obviousness all the time. The games seemed more a tribute to her obtuseness, than his perception. She said as much. He shrugged.
"You were playing me," he said. "And you should rather have been playing my pieces."
She frowned; but before she had a chance to sort this answer out in her mind, there was the sound of steps outside the lounge, and Gait entered, striding along, fast and excitedly. Donal and she both rose. "What happened?" she cried. "Eh? What?" Gait's attention had been all for Donal. Now the older man swung on her. "Didn't he tell you what happened up to the time he left?"
"No!" She flashed a look at Donal, but his face was impassive.
Quickly, Gait told her. Her face paled and became shadowed by bewilderment. Again, she turned to Donal; but before she could frame the question in her mind, Donal was questioning Gait. "And after I left?"
"You should have seen it!" the older man's voice held a fierce glee. "Each one was at the throat of everybody else in the room before you were out of sight. I swear the last forty years of behind-the-scenes deals, and the crosses and the double-crosses came home to roost in the next five minutes. Nobody trusted anybody, everybody suspected everybody else! What a bombshell to throw in their laps!" Gait chuckled. "I feel forty years younger just for seeing it. Who was it that actually approached you, boy? It was William, wasn't it?" "I'd rather not say," said Donal. "Well, well—never mind that. For all practical purposes it could have been any of them. But guess what happened! Guess how it all ended up—"
"They voted me in as commander in chief after all?" said Donal.
"They—" Gait checked suddenly, his face drop- ping into an expression of amazement. "How'd you know?"
Donal smiled a little mirthlessly. But before he could answer, a sharp intake of breath made both men turn their heads. Anea was standing off a little distance from them, her face white and stiff.
"I might have suspected," she said in a low, hard voice to Donal. "I might have known."
"Known? Known what?" demanded Gait, staring from one to the other. But her eyes did not waver from Donal.
"So this was what you meant when you told me to bring my opinion to today's session," she went on in the same low, hate-filled voice. "Did you think that this ... this sort of double-dealing would change it?" For a second pain shadowed Donal's normally enigmatic eyes.
"I should have known better, I suppose," he said, quietly. "I assumed you might look beyond the necessities of this present action to—"
"Thank you," she broke in icily. "Ankle deep into the mud is far enough." She turned on Gait. "I'll see you another time, Hendrik." And she stalked out of the room.
The two men watched her go in silence. Then Gait slowly turned back to look at the younger man. "What's between you two, boy?" he asked. Donal shook his head.
"Half of heaven and all of hell, I do believe," he said; and that was the most illuminating answer the marshal was able to get out of him.
COMMANDER IN CHIEF
Under the common market system, controlled by the United Planetary Forces under Commander in Chief Donal Graeme, the civilized worlds rested in a highly unusual state of almost perfect peace for two years, nine months, and three days absolute time. Early on the morning of the fourth day, however, Donal woke to find his shoulder being shaken.
"What?" he said, coming automatically awake.
"Sir—" It was the voice of Lee. "Special Courier here to see you. He says his message won't wait."
"Right." Groggily, but decisively, Donal swung his legs over the edge of his sleeping float and reached for his trunks on the ordinary float beside him. He gathered them in, brushing something to the floor as he did so.
"Light," he said to Lee. The light went on, revealing that what he had knocked down was his wrist appliance. He picked it up and stared at it with blurry eyes. "March ninth," he murmured. "That right, LeeT'
"That's right," responded the voice of Lee, from across the room. Donal chuckled, a little huskily.
"Not yet the ides of March," he murmured. "But close. Close."
"Sir?"
"Nothing. Where's the courier, Lee?"
"The garden lounge."
Donal pulled on the trunks and—on a second's impulse—followed them with trousers, tunic and jacket, complete outerwear. He followed Lee through the pre-dawn darkness of his suite in Tomblecity, Cassida, and into the garden lounge. The courier, a slim, small, middle-aged man in civilian clothes, was waiting for him.
"Commander—" the courier squinted at him. "I've got a message for you. I don't know what it means myself—"
"Never mind," interrupted Donal. "What is it?"
"I was to say to you 'the gray rat has come out of the black maze and pressed the white lever.' "
"I see," said Donal. "Thank you." The courier lingered.
"Any message or orders, commander?"
"None, thank you. Good morning," said Donal.
"Good morning, sir," said the courier; and went out, escorted by Lee. When Lee returned, he found Donal already joined by his uncle lan Graeme, fully dressed and armed. Donal was securing a weapons belt around his own waist. In the new glare of the artificial light after the room's darkness, and beside his dark and giant uncle, the paring-down effect of the last months showed plainly on Donal. He was not so much thinned down as stretched drum-tight over the hard skeleton of his own body. He seemed all harsh angles and tense muscle. And his eyes were hollowed and dark with fatigue.
Looking at him, it would be hard not to assume that here was a man either on the verge of psychological and nervous breakdown, or someone of fanatic purpose who had already pushed himself beyond the bounds of ordinary human endurance. There was something of the fanatic's translucency about him—in which the light of the consuming will shows through the frailer vessel of the body. Except that Donal was not really translucent, but glowed, body and all, like one fine solid bar of tempered steel with the white, ashy heat of his consuming but all-unconsumable will.
"Arm yourself, Lee," he said, pointing to a weapons belt. "We've got two hours before sun-up and things begin to pop. After that, I'll be a proscribed criminal on any world but the Dorsai—and you two with me." It did not occur to him to ask either of the other men whether they wished to throw themselves into the holocaust that was about to kindle about him; and it did not occur to the others to wonder that he did not. "lan, did you make a signal to Lludrow?"
"I did," said lan. "He's in deep space with all units, and he'll hold them there a week if need be, he says—incommunicado." "Good. Come on."
As they left the building for the platform awaiting them on the landing pad outside; and later, as the platform slipped them silently through the pre-dawn darkness to a landing field not far from the residence, Donal was silent, calculating what could be done in seven days time, absolute. On the eighth day, Lludrow would have to open his communication channels again, and the orders that would reach him when he did so would be far different from the sealed orders Donal had left him and which he would be opening right now. Seven days—
They landed at the field. The ship, a space-and-atmosphere courier N4J, was lying waiting for them, its ground lights gleaming dimly on steady-ready. The forward lock on the great shadowy cylinder swung open as they approached; and a scar-faced senior captain stepped out.
"Sir," he said, saluting Donal, and standing aside to let them enter. They went in and the lock closed behind them.
"Coby, captain," said Donal.
"Yes, sir." The captain stepped to a grille in the wall. "Control room. Coby," he said. He turned from the grille. "Can I show you to the lounge, commander?"
"For the time being," said Donal. "And get us some coffee."
They went on into the courier's lounge, which was fixed up like the main room on a private yacht. And presently coffee was forthcoming on a small autocart from the galley, which scooted in the door by itself and parked itself in the midst of their floats.
"Sit down with us, Cor," said Donal. "Lee, this is Captain Coruna El Man, Cor, my uncle lan Graeme."
"Dorsai!" said lan, shaking hands.
"Dorsal!" responded El Man. They smiled slightly at each other, two grimly-carved professional warriors.
"We have met," lan said.
"Right," said Donal. "Now that introductions are over—how long will it take us to make it to Coby?"
"We can make our first jump immediately we get outside atmosphere," answered El Man, in his rather harsh, grating voice. "We've been running a steady calculation on a standby basis. After the first jump, it'll take a minimum of four hours to calculate the next. We'll be within a light-year of Coby then, and each phase shift will take progressively less calculation as we zero in. Still—five more calculation periods at an average of two hours a period. Ten hours, plus the original four makes fourteen, straight drive and landing in on Coby another three to four hours. Call it eighteen hours—minimum."
"All right," said Donal. "I'll want ten of your men for an assault party. And a good officer."
"Myself," said El Man.
"Captain, I ... very well," said Donal. "You and ten men. Now." He produced an architectural plan from inside his jacket. "If you'll all look here; this is the job we have to do."
The plan was that of an underground residence on Coby, that planet which had grown into a community from a collection of mines and never been properly terraformed. Indeed, there was a question whether, even with modern methods, it could be. Coby was just too far out from hospitable Procyon, and formed of the wrong materials.
The plan itself showed a residence of the middle size, comprising possibly eighteen rooms, surrounded by gardens and courtyards. The differences, which only began to appear as Donal proceeded to point them out, from an above-ground residence of the ordinary type on other planets, lay in the fakery involved. As far as appearances went, someone in the house, or in one of the gardens, would imagine he was surface-dwelling on at least a terraformed world. But eight-tenths of that impression would be sheer illusion. Actually, the person in question would have ultimate rock in all directions—rock ten meters overhead at the furthest, rock underfoot, and rock surrounding.
For the assault party, this situation effected certain drawbacks, but also certain definite advantages. A drawback was, that after securing their objective— who was a man Donal did not trouble himself to identify—withdrawal would not be managed as easily as it might on the surface, where it was simply a matter of bundling everyone into the nearby ship and jumping off. A great advantage, however, which all but offset the drawback mentioned, was the fact that in this type of residence, the rock walls surrounding were honeycombed with equipment rooms and tunnels which maintained the above-ground illusion—a situation allowing easy ingress and surprise.
As soon as the four with him had been briefed, Donal turned the plans over to El Man, who went off to inform his assault party, and suggested to Lee and lan that they join him in getting what sleep they could. He took himself to his own cabin, undressed and fell into the bunk there. For a few minutes his mind, tight-tuned by exhaustion, threatened to wander off into speculations about what would be taking place on the various worlds while he slept. Unfortunately, no one had yet solved the problems involved in receiving a news broadcast in deep space. Which was why, of course, all interstellar messages were taped and sent by ship. It was the swiftest and, when you came right down to it, the only practical way to get them there.
However, twenty years of rigid training slowly gained control of Donal's nerves. He slept.
He woke some twelve hours later, feeling more rested than he had in over a year. After eating, he went down to the ship's gym; which, cramped and tiny as it was, was still a luxurious accessory on a deep-space vessel. He found lan methodically working out in the Dorsai fashion—a procedure the large dark man went through every morning when conditions did not prohibit it, as conscientiously and as nearly without thought as most men shave and brush their teeth. For several minutes Donal watched lan on the single bar, doing arm twists and stands; and when his uncle dropped to the mat, his wide torso gleaming with perspiration and the reek of it strong in Donal's nostrils, Donal took him on at grips-and-holds.
The results were a little shocking to lan. That lan was stronger than he was only to be expected. His uncle was the bigger man. But Donal should have had a clear edge in speed, both because of age and because of his own natural reflexes, which were unusually good. The past year's strain and physical idleness, however, had taken their toll. He broke three holds of his uncle's with barely a fraction of a second to spare; and when he did, at last, throw the older man, it was by the use of a feint he would have scorned to use his senior year at school back on the Dorsal, a feint that took sneaking advantage of a slight stiffness he knew to be the result of an old wound in his uncle's deep-scarred left arm. lan could hardly have failed to recognize the situation and the reason behind the slightly unfair maneuver that had downed him. But nothing seemed to matter to him these days. He said nothing, but showered and dressed with Donal; and they went in to the lounge.
Shortly after they sat down there, there was the medication warning, and—a few minutes later—the shock of a phase shift. On the heels of it, El Man came walking into the lounge.
"We're in range, commander," he said. "If you want the news—**
"Please," said Donal.
El Man touched one of the walls and it thinned
DORSAI1B into transparency through which they could see the three-dimensional image of a Cobyman seated at a desk.
' "... Has been spreading," came the voice of the man at the desk, "following quickly upon the charges brought by the Commission for the Common Market System against Commander in Chief Graeme of the United Planetary Forces. Hie Com Chief himself has disappeared and most of his deep-space units appear presently to be out of communication and their whereabouts are presently unknown. This development has apparently sparked outbreaks of violence on most of the civilized worlds, in some cases amounting to open revolt against the established governments. The warring factions seem split by a fear of the open markets on (he part of the general populaces, and a belief that the charges against Graeme are an attempt to remove what safeguards on the rights of the individual still remain in effect
"As far as this office has been informed, righting is going on on the present worlds—Venus, Mars, Cassida, New Earth, Freiland, Association, Harmony, and St. Marie; and the governments of the following worlds are known to be deposed, or in hiding— Cassida, New Earth, and FreUand. No outbreaks are reported on Old Earth, Dunnin's World, Mara, Kultis, or Ceta. And there is no present violence here on Coby at all. Prince William has offered the use of his leased troops as a police force to end the disturbances; and levies of Cetan troops are either on, or en route to, all trouble spots at the present time. William has announced that his troops will be used to put down trouble wherever they find it, without respect to what faction this leaves in power. 'Our job is not to take sides,* he is reported as stating, 'but to bring some kind of order out of the present chaos and put out the flames of self-destruction.'
"A late signal received from Old Earth reports that a number of the insurgent factions are agitating for the appointment of William as World's Regent, with universal authority and strong-man powers to deal with the present emergency. A somewhat similar movement puts forward the name of Graeme, the missing Com Chief, for a similar position."
"That's all for now," concluded the man at the desk, "watch for our next signal in fifteen minutes."
"Good," said Donal, and gestured to El Man to shut off the receiver, which the scarred Dorsai captain did. "How long until planetfall?"
"A couple of hours," replied El Man. "We're a bit ahead of schedule. That was the last phase shift. We're on our way in on straight drive now. Do you have co-ordinates on our landing point?"
Donal nodded; and stood up.
"I'll come up to control," he said.
The process of bringing the N4J into the spot on the surface of Coby, corresponding to the co-ordinates indicated by Donal, was a time-consuming but simple procedure—only mildly complicated by Donal's wish to make their visit undetected. Coby had nothing to defend in the sense a terraformed world might have; and they settled down without incident on its airless surface, directly over the freight lock to one of the subsurface transportation tunnels.
"All right," said Donal, five minutes later, to the armed contingent of men assembled in the lounge. "This is an entirely volunteer mission, and I'll give any of you one more chance to withdraw without prejudice if you want to." He waited. Nobody stirred. "Understand," said Donal, "I want nobody with me simply because he was shamed into volunteering, or because he didn't want to hesitate when his shipmates volunteered." Again he waited. There were no withdrawals. "Right, then. Here's what we'll be doing. You'll follow me down that freight lock and into a receiving room with a door into a tunnel. However, we won't be taking the door, but burning directly through one of the walls to the service section of an adjoining residence. You've all seen a drawing of our route. You're to follow me, or whoever remains in command; and anyone who can't keep up gets left behind. Everybody understand?" He looked around their faces.
"All right," he said. "Let's go."
He led out down the passageway of the ship, out through their lock and down into the freight lock into the receiving room. This turned out to be a large, gloomy chamber with fused rock walls. Donal measured off a section of one wall and set his torchmen to work. Three minutes later they were in the service section of a Coby residence.
The area in which they found themselves was a network of small tunnels wide enough for only one man at a time, and interspersed with little niches and crannies holding technical devices necessary to the maintenance and appearance of the residence. The walls were coated with a permanent illuminating layer; and, in this cold white light, they filed along one of the tunnels and emerged into a garden.
The cycle of the residence's system was apparently now set on night. Darkness held the garden and a fine imitation of the starry heavens glittered overhead. Ahead and to their right was the clump of main rooms, soft-lit with interior light.
"Two men to hold this exit," whispered Donal, "The rest of you follow me."
He led the way at a low crouching run through the garden and to the foot of some wide stairs. At their top, a solitary figure could be seen pacing back and forth on a terrace before an open wall.
"Captain—" said Donal. El Man slipped away into the bushes below the terrace. There was a little wait in the artificial night and then his dark shadow was seen to rise suddenly upon the terrace behind the pacing figure. They melted together, sagged, and only the shadow of El Man was left. He beckoned them up.
"Three men to hold this terrace," whispered Donal, as they all came together at the head of the stairs. El Man told off the necessary number of the assault party; and they continued on into the lighted interior of the house.
For several rooms it seemed almost as if they would achieve then- objective without meeting anyone other than the man they had come to seek. Then, without anything in the way of warning at all, they were suddenly in the middle of a pitched battle.
As they emerged into the main hall, hand weapons opened up on them from three converging rooms at once. The shipmen, automatically responding to training, dropped to the floor, took cover and returned the fire. They were pinned down.
They were, but not the three Dorsai. Donal, lan, and El Man, reacting in that particular way that was a product of genes, reflexes and their own special training, and that made the Dorsai so particularly valuable as professional soldiers—these three had responded automatically and in unison a split-second before the fire opened up on them. It was almost as if some small element of precognition had entered the picture. At any rate, with a reaction too quick for thought, these three swung about and rushed one of the enemy doorways, reached it and closed with their opponents within before that opposition could bring their fire to bear. The three found themselves in a darkened room and fighting hand to hand.
Here again, the particular character of the Dorsai soldier paid off. There were eight men in ambush within this particular room and they were all veteran soldiers. But no two of them were a match at hand-to-hand fighting with any single Dorsai; and in addition the Dorsai had the advantage of being able, almost by instinct, to recognize each other in the dark and the melee, and to join forces for a sudden common effort without the need for discussion. The total effect of these advantages made it almost a case of three men who could see fighting eight who were blind.
In DonaTs case, he plunged into the dark room right on the heels of El Man and to El Man's left, with lan right behind him. Their charge split the defenders within into two groups and also carried them farther back into obscurity—a movement which the Dorsai, by common silent consent, improved on for the purpose of further separating the enemy. Donal found himself pushing back four men. Abandoning three of these to lan behind him under the simple common-sense precept that you fight best when you fight only one man at a time, he dove in almost at the level of his opponent's knees, tackled him, and they went down and rolled over together, Donal taking advantage of the opportunity to break the other soldier's back in the process.
He continued his roll and came up, pivoting and instinctively side-stepping. A dark body flung past him—but that instinct spoken of before warned him that it was El Man, flinging himself clear across the room to aid the general confusion. Donal reversed his field and went back the way from which El Man had come. He came up against an opponent plunging forward with a knife held low, slipped the knife, chopped at the man's neck with the calloused edge of his hand—but missed a clean killing stroke and only broke the man's collar bone. Leaving that opponent however in the interests of keeping on the move, Donal spun off to the right, cornered another man against the wall and crushed this one's windpipe with a stiff-fingered jab. Rebounding from the wall and spinning back into the center of the room, his ears told him that El Man was finishing off one opponent and lan was engaged with the remaining two. Going to help him, Donal caught one of fan's men from be-hind and paralyzed him with a kidney punch. lan, surprisingly enough, was still engaged with the remaining enemy. Donal went forward and found out why. lan had caught himself another Dorsai.
Donal closed with both men and they went down in a two-on-one pin, the opponent in a stretcher mat held him helpless between Donal and his uncle.
"Shai Dorsai!" gasped Donal. "Surrender!"
"Who to?" grunted the other.
"Donal and lan Graeme," said lan. "Foralie."
"Honored,'* said die strange Dorsai. "Heard of you. Hord Vlaminck, Snelbrich Canton. All right then, let me up. My right arm's broken, anyway."
Donal and lan let go and assisted Vlaminck to his feet El Man had finished off what else remained, and now came up to them.
"Hord Vlaminck—Coruna El Man," said Donal.
"Honored," said El Man.
"Honor's mine," replied Vlaminck. "I'm your prisoner, gentlemen. Want my parole?"
"I'd appreciate it," said Donal. "We've got work to do here yet. What kind of contract are you under?"
"Straight duty. No loyalty clause. Why?"
"Any reason why I can't hire you on a prisoner's basis?" asked Donal.
"Not from this job." Vlaminck sounded disgusted. "I've been sold twice on the open market because of a typo in my last contract. Besides," he added, "as I say, I've heard of you."
"You're hired, then. We're looking for the man you're guarding here. Can you tell us where we'll findhimr
"Follow me," said Vlaminck; and led the way back through the darkness; and opened a door. They stepped through into a short corridor that led them up a ramp and to another door.
"Locked," said Vlaminck. "The alarm's gone off." He looked at them. Further than this he could not in honor go, even on a hired prisoner's basis. "Burn it down," said Donal. He and lan and HI Man opened up on the door, which glowed stubbornly to a white beat, but finally melted. lan threw a concussion bolt at it and knocked it open.
Within, a large man with a black hood over his head was crouched against the far wall of the room, a miner's heavy-duty ion gun in his hand pointing a little unsteadily at them and shifting from one to the other.
"Don't be a fool," said lan. "We are all Dorsal" The gun sagged in the hand of the hooded man. A choked, bitter exclamation came from behind the mask.
(iCome on," Donal gestured him out. He dropped the gun and came, shoulders bowed. They headed back through the house.
The tire fight in the hall was still going on as they retraced their footsteps; but died out as they reached the center hall. Two of the five men they had left behind there were able to navigate on their own power and another one could make it back to the ship with assistance. The other two were dead. They returned swiftly to the terrace, through the garden, and back into the tunnel, picking up the rest of their complement as they went. Fifteen minutes later, they were all aboard and the N4J was falling into deep space.
In the lounge, Donal was standing before the hooded man, who sat slumped on a float.
"Gentlemen," said Donal, "take a look at William's social technician." lan and El Man, who were present, looked sharply over at Dona)—not so much at the words as at die tone in which he had said them. He had spoken in a voice that was, for him, unexpectedly bitter.
"Here's the man who sowed the whirlwind the civilized worlds are reaping at this moment," went on Donal. He stretched out his hand to the black hood. The man shrank from him, but Donal caught die hood and jerked it off. A slow exhalation of bream supped out between Donal's lips.
"So you sold out," he said.
The man before them was ArDell Montor.
COMMANDER IN CHIEF II
ArDell looked back at him out of a white face, but with eyes that did not bend before Donal's bleak glance.
"I had to have work," he said. "I was killing myself. I don't apologize."
"Was that all the reason?" asked Donal, ironically.
At that, ArDell's face did turn aside.
»No—" he said. Donal said nothing. "It was her," ArDell whispered. "He promised me her."
"Her!" The note in Donal's voice made the other two Dorsai take an instinctive step toward him. But Donal held himself without moving, under control. "Anea?"
"She might have taken pity on me—" ArDell whispered to the floor of the lounge. "You don't understand ... living close to her all those years ... and I was so miserable, and she ... I couldn't help loving her—"
"No," said Donal. Slowly, the sudden lightning of his tension leaked out of him. "You couldn't help it." He turned away. "You fool," he said, with his back to ArDell. "Didn't you know him well enough to know when he was lying to you? He had her in mind for himself."
"William? Nor ArDell was suddenly on his feet. "Not him—with her! It can't be ... such a thing!"
"It won't," said Donal, wearily. "But not because it depends on people like you to stop him." He turned back to face ArDell. "Lock him up, will you, captain." El Man's hard hand closed on ArDell's shoulder and turned him toward the entrance to the lounge. "Oh ... and captain—"
"Sir?" said El Man, turning to face him.
"We rendezvous with all units under Fleet Commander Lludrow as soon as possible."
"Yes, sir." El Man half-pushed, half-carried ArDell Montor out of the room; and, as if symbolically, out of the main current of the history of mankind which he had attempted to influence with his science for William, Prince of Ceta.
The N4J set out to make contact with Lludrow. It was not a thing to be quickly or easily accomplished. Even when it is known where it should be, it is far from easy to track down and pinpoint as small a thing as a fleet of human ships in the inconceivable vast-nesses of interstellar space. For the very good reasons that there is always the chance of human error, that a safety margin must always be maintained—better to fall short of your target than to come out too close to it—and that there is, for practical purposes, no such thing as standing still in the universe. The N4J made a phase shift from where it calculated it was, to where it calculated the fleet to be, sent out a call signal and got no answer. It calculated again, signaled again—and so continued until it got first, a very faint signal in response, then a stronger one, and finally, one which permitted communication. Calculations were then matched between the flagship of the fleet and the N4J—and at last a meeting was effected.
By that time, better than three more days of the al-loted week of incommunicado had passed. Donal went aboard the flagship with lan, and took command.
"You've got the news?" was his first question of Lludrow when the two of them were together again.
"I have," said the Fleet commander. "I've had a ship secretly in shuttle constantly between here and Dunnin's World. We're right up to date."
Donal nodded. This was a different problem from the N4J's of finding Lludrow. A shuttle between a planet whose position and direction of movement was well known, and a fleet which knew its own position and drift, could hop to within receiving distance of that same planet in one jump, and return as easily, provided the distance was not too great—as it sometimes was between the various planets themselves—for precise calculation.
"Want to see a digest—or shall I just brief you?" asked Lludrow.
"Brief me," said Donal.
Lludrow did. The hysteria that had followed on the charges of the Commission against Donal and Donal's disappearance had caused the existing governments, already shaky and torn by the open-market dissension, to crumble on all the worlds but those of the Exotics, the Dorsai, Old Earth, and the two small planets of Coby and Dunnin's World. Into the perfect power vacuum that remained, William and the armed units of Ceta had moved swiftly and surely. Pro-tern governments in the name of the general populace, but operating directly under William's orders, had taken over New Earth, Freiland, Newton, Cassida, Venus, Mars, Harmony and Association and held them now in the iron grip of martial law. As William had cornered less sentient materials in the past, he had just prior to this cornered the field troops of the civilized world. Under the guise of training, reassignment, lease, stand-by— and a dozen other paper maneuvers—William had had under Cetan contract actual armies on each of the worlds that had fallen into disorder. All that had been necessary for him was the landing of small contingents, plus officers for the units already present, with the proper orders.
"Staff meeting," said Donal.
His staff congregated in the executive room of the flagship. Lludrow, Fleet Commander, lan, Field Commander—and half a dozen senior officers under each.
"Gentlemen," said Donal, when they were seated around the table. "I'm sure all of you know the situation. Any suggestions?"
There was a pause. Donal ran his eye around the table.
"Contact Freiland, New Earth—or some place where we have support," said lan. "Land a small contingent and start a counteraction against the Cetan command." He looked at his nephew. "They know your name—the professionals on all sides. We might even pick up support out of the enemy forces."
"No good," said Lludrow, from the other side of the table. "It's too slow. Once we were committed to a certain planet, William could concentrate his forces there." He turned to Donal. "Ship for ship, we overmatch him—but his ships would have ground support from whatever world we were fighting on; and our ground forces would have their hands full trying to establish themselves."
"True enough," Donal said. "What's your suggestion, then?"
"Withdraw to one of the untouched worlds—the Exotics, Coby, Dunnin's World. Or even the Dorsai, if they'll take us. We'll be safe there, in a position of strength, and we can take our time then about looking for a chance to strike back." lan shook his head.
"Every day—every hour," he said, "William grows stronger on those worlds he's taken over. The longer we wait, the greater the odds against us. And finally, he'll have the strength to come after us—and take us."
"Well, what do you want us to do, then?" demanded Lludrow. "A fleet without a home base is no striking weapon. And how many of our men will want to stick their necks out with us? These are professional soldiers, man—not patriots fighting on their home ground!"
"You use your field troops now or never!" said lan shaking his head. "We've got forty thousand battle-ready men aboard these ships. They're my responsibility and I know them. Set them down on some backwater planet and they'll fall apart in two months."
"I still say—"
"All right. All right!" Donal was rapping with his knuckles on the table to call them back to order. Lludrow and lan sat back on their floats again; and they all turned to look at Donal.
"I wanted you all to have a chance to speak up," he said, "because I wanted you to feel that we had explored every possibility. The truth of the matter is that both you gentlemen are right in your objections—just as there is some merit in each of your plans. However, both your plans are gambles; long gambles—desperate gambles."
He paused to look around the table.
"I would like to remind you right now that when you fight a man hand-to-hand, the last place you hit him is where he expects to be hit. The essence of successful combat is to catch your enemy unawares in an unprotected spot—one where he is not expecting to be caught."
Donal stood up at the head of the table.
"William," he said, "has for the last few years put his emphasis on the training of ground troops—field troops. I have been doing the same thing, but for an entirely different purpose.'1
He placed his finger over a stud on the table before him and half-turned to the large wall behind him.
"No doubt all you gentlemen have heard the military truism that goes—you can't conquer a civilized planet. This happens to be one of the ancient saws I personally have found very irritating; since it ought to be obvious to any thinking person that in theory you can conquer anything—given the necessary wherewithal. The case for conquering a civilized world becomes then a thing of perfect possibility. The only problem is to provide that which is necessary to the action."
They were all listening to him—some a little puzzled, others doubtfully, as if they expected all of what he was saying to turn suddenly into some joke to relieve the tension. Only lan was phlegmatic and absorbing.
"Over the past few years, this force, which we officer, has developed the wherewithal—some of it carried over from previous forces, some of recent development. Your men know the techniques, although they have never been told in what way they were going to apply them. lan, here, has produced through rigorous training the highly specialized small unit of the field forces—the Group, which under ordinary battle conditions numbers fifty men, but which we have streamlined to a number of thirty men. These Groups have been trained to take entirely indepen- dent action and survive by themselves for considerable periods of time. This same streamlining has gone up through the ranks—extending even to your fleet exercises, which have also been ordered, with a particular sort of action in mind."
He paused.
"What all this boils down to, gentlemen," he said, "is that we are all about to prove that old truism wrong—and take a civilized world, lock, stock, and barrel. We will do it with the men and ships we have at hand right here, and who have been picked and trained for this specific job—as the planet we are about to take has been picked and thoroughly intelli-genced." He smiled at them. They were all sitting on the edges of their floats now.
"That world,"—he pressed the stud that had been under his finger all this time; the wall behind him vanished to reveal the three-dimensional representation of a large, green planet—"is the heart of our enemy's power and strength. His home base—Ceta!"
It was too much—even for senior officers. A babble of voice burst out around the table all at once. Donal paid no attention. He had opened a drawer at his end of the table and produced a thick sheaf of documents, which he tossed on the table before him.
"We will take over Ceta, gentlemen," he said. "By, in a twenty-four hour period, replacing all her local troops, all her police, all her garrisons and militia and law enforcement bodies and arms, with our own men."
He pointed to the sheaf of documents.
"We will take them over piecemeal, independently, and simultaneously. So that when the populace wakes up the following-morning they will find themselves guarded, policed and held, not by their own authorities, but by us. The details as to targets and assignments are in this stack, gentlemen. Shall we go to work?"
They went to work. Ceta, large, low-gravity planet that it was, had huge virgin areas. Its civilized part could be broken down into thirty-eight major cities, and intervening agricultural and residential areas. There were so many military installations, so many police stations, so many armories, so many garrisons of troops—the details fell apart like the parts of a well-engineered mechanism, and were fitted together again with corresponding units of the military force under Donal's command. It was a masterpiece of combat preplanning.
"Now," said Donal, when they were done. "Go out and brief your troops."
He watched them all leave the conference room— all, with the exception of lan, whom he had detained; and Lee, for whom he had just rung. When the others were gone, he turned to the two still with him.
"Lee," he said, "in six hours every man in the fleet will know what we intend to do. I want you to go out and find a man—not one of the officers—who doesn't think it'll work. lan"—he looked over at his uncle—"when Lee finds such a man and reports to you, I want you to see that the man is sent up to see me, right away. Is that clear?"
The other two nodded; and went out, to do each his own job in his own fashion. So it was that a disgruntled Groupman from a particular landing force had a surprising meeting and surprisingly cordial chat with his commander in chief, and that they went out together, half an hour later, arm-in-arm, to the control room of the flagship, where Donal requested, and got, a voice-and-picture hookup to all ships.
"All of you," Donal said, smiling at them out of their screens after he had been connected, "have by this time been informed about the impending action. It's the result of a number of years of top-level planning and the best intelligence service we have been lucky enough to have. However, one of you has come to me with the natural fear that we may be biting off more than we can chew. Therefore, since this is an entirely new type of operation and because I believe firmly in the rights of the individual professional soldier not to be mishandled, I'm taking the unprecedented step of putting the coming assault on Ceta to a vote. You will vote as ships, and the results will be forwarded by your captain, as for or against, to the Flagship here. Gentlemen"—DonaJ reached out an arm and brought the man Lee had discovered into the screen area with him—"I want you to meet Groupman Theiss, who had the courage to stand up like a free man and ask questions."
Caught unawares, and dazzled by the sudden limelight into which he had been thrust, the Groupman licked his lips and grinned a little foolishly.
"I leave the decision to all of you," added Donal, and signaled for the viewing eyes to be cut off.
Three hours later, Groupman Theiss was back on his own ship, astounding his fellow soldiers with an account of what had happened to him; and the votes were in.
"Almost unanimous," reported Lludrow, "in favor of the attack. Only three ships—none of the first line, and none troop carriers—voting against."
"I want those three ships held out of the attack," said Donal. "And a note made of their names and captains. Remind me about that after this is over. All right." He got up from the float where he had been sitting in the Flagship Lounge. "Give the necessary orders, commander. We're going in."
They went in. Ceta had never taken the thought of enemy attack too seriously. Isolated in her position as the single inhabitable planet, as yet largely unexplored and unexploited, that circled her G8 type sun of Tau Ceti; and secure in the midst of an interstellar maze of commitments that made every other planetary government to some extent dependent upon her good will, she had only a few ships in permanent defensive orbit about her.
These ships, their position and movement fully scouted by Donal's intelligence service, were boxed and destroyed by Donal's emerging fleet almost before they could give warning. And what warning they did give fell on flabbergasted and hardly-believing ears.
But by that time the asault troops were falling planetward, dropping down on city and military installation and police station behind the curtain of night as it swung around the big, but swiftly-turning world.
They came down in most cases almost on top of their targets, for the ships that had sowed them in the sky above had not been hampered in that action by enemy harassment. And the reaction of those on the ground was largely what might have been expected, when veteran troops, fully armed and armored, move in on local police, untried soldiers in training, and men relaxed in garrison. Here and there, there was sharp and bitter fighting where an assault unit found itself opposed to leased troops as trained in war as they. But in that case, reinforcements were speedily brought in to end the action.
Donal himself went down with the fourth wave; and when the sun rose the following morning large and yellow on the horizon, the planet was secured. Two hours later, an orderly brought him word that William himself had been located—in his own residence outside the city of Whitetown, some fifteen hundred kilometers distant.
"I'll go there," said Donal. He glanced around him. His officers were busy, and lan was off somewhere with an arm of his field troops. He turned to Lee. "Come on, Lee," he said.
They took a four-man platform and made the trip, with the orderly as guide. Coming down in the garden of the residence, Donal left the orderly with the platform, motioned Lee to accompany him, and entered the house.
He walked through silent rooms, inhabited only by furniture. All the residents of the house seemed to have vanished. After some little time, he began to think that perhaps the report had been in error; and that William was gone, too. And then he passed through an archway into a little anteroom and found himself facing Anea.
She met his gaze with a pale but composed face.
"Where is he?" asked Donal.
She turned and indicated a door on the far side of the room.
"It's locked," she said. "He was in there when your men started to land; and he's never come out. Nobody else would stay here with him. I ... I couldn't leave."
"Yes," said Donal, somberly. He examined the locked door from across the room. "It wouldn't have been easy—for him."
"You care about him?" Her voice brought his head up sharply. He looked at her, seeking some note of mockery in her expression. But there was none. She was honestly questioning.
"I care somewhat for every man," he said. He walked across the room to the door and laid his hand upon it on a sudden impulse, he put his thumb into the finger-lock—and the door swung open.
A sudden coldness blossomed inside him.
"Stay with her," he threw over his shoulder to Lee. He pushed open the door, found himself faced by another, heavier door—but one which also opened to his touch—and went in.
At the end of a long room William sat behind a desk occupied by a mass of papers. He stood up as Donal entered.
"So you're finally here," he said, calmly. "Well, well."
Going closer, Donal examined the man's face and eyes. There was nothing there to evoke such a notion; but Donal had the sudden suspicion that William was not as he should be.
"It was a very good landing. Very good," said William tiredly. "It was a clever trick. I acknowledge the fact, you see. I underestimated you from the first day I met you. I freely admit it. I'm quite conquered—am I not?"
Donal approached to the other side of the desk. He looked into William's calm exhausted face.
"Ceta is in my control," said Donal. "Your expeditionary forces on the other worlds are cut off—and their contracts aren't worth the paper they're written on. Without you to give the orders, it's all over with."
"Yes . .. yes, I thought as much," said William, with the hint of a sigh. "You're my doom, you know—my weird. I should have recognized it earlier. A force like mine among men must be balanced. I thought it would be balanced with numbers; but it wasn't." He looked at Donal with such a strange, searching expression that Donal's eyes narrowed.
"You're not well," said Donal.
"No, I'm not well." William rubbed his eyes, wearily. "I've been working too hard lately—and to no purpose. Mentor's calculations were foolproof; but the more perfect my plan, the more perfectly it always went awry. I hate you, you know," said William, emotionlessly, dropping his hand and looking up at Donal again. "No one in all the history of man has ever hated the way I hate you,"
"Come along," said Donal, going around the desk toward him. "I'll take you to someone who can help you—"
"No. Wait—" William held up his hand and backed away from Donal. Donal stopped. "I've got something to show you first. I saw the end the minute I got reports your men were landing. I've been waiting nearly ten hours now." He shivered, suddenly. "A long wait. I had to have something to keep myself occupied." He turned about and walked briskly back to a set of double doors set in a far wall. "Have a look," he invited; and pressed a button.
The doors slid back.
Donal looked. Hanging in the little close area revealed there was something only barely recognizable by what was left of its face. It was, or had been, his brother Mor.
SECRETARY FOR DEFENSE
Flashes of clarity began to return.
For some time, now and again, they had been calling him from the dark corridors down which he walked. But he had been busy, too busy to respond until now. But now—slowly—he let himself listen to the voices, which were sometimes those of Anea, and Sayona, and lan, and sometimes the voices of those he did not know.
He rose to them reluctantly, slow to abandon the halls of darkness where he traveled. Here was the great ocean he had always hesitated to enter; but now that he was in it, it held him warm, and would have possessed him except for their little voices calling him back to petty things. Yet, duty lay to them, and not to it—that duty that had been impressed on him from his earliest years. The things undone, the things ill-done—and what he had done to William. "Donal?" said the voice of Sayona. "I'm here," he said. He opened his eyes; and they took in a white hospital room and the bed in which he lay, with Sayona and Anea and Gait standing beside it—along with a short man with a mustache in the long pink jacket of one of the Exotic psychiatric physicians.
Donal swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood up. His body was weak from long idleness, but he put the weakness aside the way a man puts aside any irritating, but small and unimportant thing. "You should rest," said the physician. Donal looked at him casually. The physician looked away; and Donal smiled, to ease the man. "Thanks for curing me, doctor," he said. "I didn't cure you," said the physician, a little bitterly, his head still averted.
Donal turned his glance on the other three; and a sadness touched him. In themselves, they had not changed, and the hospital room was like similar rooms had always been. But yet, in some way, all had dwindled—the people and the place. Now there was something small and drab about them, something tawdry and limited. And yet, it was not their fault.
"Donal" began Sayona, on a strangely eager, questioning note. Donal looked at the older man; and he, like the physician, looked automatically away. Donal shifted his glance to Gait, who also dropped his eyes.
Only Anea, when he gazed at her, returned his glance with a child's pure stare.
"Not now, Sayona," said Donal. "We'll talk about it later. Where's William?"
"One floor down . .. Donal—*' the words broke suddenly from Sayona's lips in a rush. "What did you do to him?"
"I told him to suffer," said Donal, simply, "I was wrong. Take me to him."
They went slowly—and, on Donal's part, a little unsteadily—out the door and down to a room on the floor below. A man there lay rigid on a bed like the one Donal had occupied—and it was hard to recognize that man as William. For all the asepsis of the hospital, a faint animal smell pervaded the room; and the face of the man was stretched into a shape of inhumanity by all known pain. The skin of the face was tautened over the flesh and bones like cloth of thinnest transparency over a mask of clay, and the eyes recognized no one.
"William—" said Donal, approaching the bed. The glazed eyes moved toward the sound of his voice. "Mor's trouble is over."
A little understanding flickered behind the Pavlovian focusing of the eyes. The rigid jaws parted and a hoarse sound came from the straining throat. Donal put his hand on the drum-tight brow.
"It'll be all right," he said. "It'll be all right, now." Slowly, like invisible bonds melting away, the rigidity began to melt out of the man before them. Gradually he softened back into the shape of humanity again. His eyes, now comprehending, went to
Donal as if Donal's tall form was one light in a cavern of lightlessness.
"There'll be work for you to do," said Donal. "Good work. All you ever wanted to do. I promise you."
William sighed deeply. Donal took his hand from the brow. The eyes dropped closed; and William slept.
"Not your fault," said Donal, absently, looking down at him. "Not your fault, but your nature. I should have known." He turned a little unsteadily, to the others who were staring at him with new eyes. "He'll be all right. Now, I want to get to my headquarters on Cassida. I can rest on the way. There's a great deal to do."
The trip from the Maran hospital where both Donal and William had been under observation, to Tomblecity on Cassida, passed like a dream for Donal. Waking or dreaming, he was still half in that ocean into which at Mor's death he had finally stepped, and the dark waters of which would never entirely leave him now. It was to become finally a matter of living with it—this sea of understanding along the margin of which he had wandered all the young years of his life, and which no other human mind would be able to comprehend, no matter how long his explanation. He understood now why he understood—this much had the shock of Mor's death brought him. He had been like any young animal, hesitant on the edge of the unknown, before his own uncertain desires and the sharp nudge of circumstance combined to tumble him headlong into it.
He had had to learn first to admit, then to live with, and finally to embrace his difference.
It had been necessary that what was uniquely Donal be threatened—first by the psychic shocks of the phase shifts during the attack on Newton; and second by the manner of Mor's dying, for which only he knew how truly he was responsible—in order that he be forced to fight for survival; and fighting, discover fang and use of claw. In that final battle he had seen himself at last, full-imaged in the un-plumbed depths; and recognized himself at last for what he was—a recognition no one else would ever be able to make. Anea, alone, would know without needing to understand, what he was; it is Woman's ancient heritage to appreciate without the need to know. Sayona, William, and a few such would half-recognize, but never understand. The rest of the race would never know.
And he—he himself, knowing and understanding, was like a man who could read, lifting the first small book from a library the shelves of which stretched off and away to infinity. A child in a taller land.
Anea, Sayona, Gait and the others came with him back to Tomblecity. He did not have to ask them to come with him. Now, they followed instinctively.
DONAL
The man was different.
Already, a few people were beginning to say it. And in this fact lay the' seeds of a possible difficulty. It was necessary, considered Donal, that a means be taken to lightning-rod such a recognition, and render it harmless.
He stood in that position which was becoming very common with him of late, alone on a balcony of his residence outside Tomblecity, hands clasped behind his back like a soldier at parade rest, gazing out toward the Milky Way and the unknown stars. He heard Anea come up behind him.
"Sayona's here," she said.
He did not turn. And after a moment she spoke again.
"Do you want me to talk to him by myself?" she asked,
"For a little while," answered Donal, still without moving. He heard her footsteps move away from him into the bigness of the lounge behind him. He lost himself in the stars again; and, after a moment, there was the sound of a man's voice and a murmur of conversation between it and Anea's. At this distance, their words were indistinguishable; but Donal did not have to hear the words to know what they were saying.
Eight months had gone by since he had opened his eyes onto the full universe that was exposed to his view alone. Eight months, thought Donal to himself. And in that short time, order had been returned to the civilized worlds. A parliament of peoples had been formed with an interiorly elected council of thirty-two Senior Representatives, two for each world. Today, here on Cassida, that parliament had voted on its choice for a permanent Secretary for Defense—
Donal's mind reached out and enclosed the problem of what Sayona would, this moment, be saying to Anea.
"... And then he went around the room, a little before the voting." Sayona's voice was now murmuring in the lounge behind him. "He said a word here, and a word there—nothing important. But when he was done, he had them in the palm of his hand. It was just as it was last month when he mingled with the delegates to the full parliament."
"Yes," replied Anea. "I can see it how it was."
"Do you understand?" asked Sayona, looking at her keenly.
"No," she said, serenely. "But I've seen it. He blazes—blazes—like an atomic flare among a field full of little campfires. Their small lights fade when they get too close to him. And he hoods his light, when he's amongst them, to keep from blinding them."
"Then you're not sorry—?"
"Sorry!" Her happy laugh tore his question to foolish ribbons.
"I know," said Sayona, soberly, "what effect he has on men. And I can guess his effect on other women. Are you sure you've got no regrets?"
"How could I?" But she looked at him suddenly, questioningly. "What do you mean?"
"That's why I've come tonight," said Sayona. "I've got something to tell you ... if I can ask you a question after I'm through?"
"What kind of question?" she queried sharply.
"Let me tell you first," he said. "Then you can answer or not, whichever you like. It's nothing that can touch you—now. Only I should have told you before. I'm afraid I've put it off, until ... well, until there was no more putting off possible. What do you know about your own gene history, Anea?"
"Why," she looked at him, "I know all about it."
"Not this part," said Sayona. "You know you were bred for certain things—" He put one old, slim hand on the edge of her float in a gesture that begged for understanding.
"Yes. Mind and body," she answered, watching him.
"And more," said Sayona. "It's hard to explain in a moment. But you know what was behind Montor's science, don't you? It treated the human race as a whole, as a single social entity, self-repairing in the sense that as its individual components die off they are replaced by the birth of new components. Such an entity is manipulable under statistical pressures, in somewhat the same manner that a human being may be manipulated by physical and emotional pressures. Increase the temperature of a room in which a man stands, and he will take off his jacket. This was William's key to power."
"But—" she stared at him. '7'm an individual—"
"No, no. Wait," Sayona held up his hand. "That was Montor's science. Ours on the Exotics had somewhat the same basis, but a differing viewpoint. We regarded the race as manipulable through its individuals, as an entity in a constant state of growth and evolution by reason of the birth of improved individuals among the mass that constituted it. Gene-selection, we believed, was the key to this—both natural or accidental, and controlled."
"But it is!" said Anea.
"No," Sayona shook his head slowly. "We were wrong. Manipulation by that approach is not truly possible; only analysis and explanation. It is adequate for an historian, for the meditative philosopher. And such, Anea, have we of the Exotics been, wherefore it seemed not only valid, but complete, to us.
"But manipulation by that means is possible only in small measure—very small. The race is not controllable from within the race; such gene-selection as we did could use only those characteristics which we already knew and understood. And it repelled us from those genes which we detected, and could not understand, and, of course, we could not work with ones we did not know existed, or could exist.
"We were, without seeing the fact, crippled both at the beginning and the end; we had only the middle. We could not conceive of characteristics to breed toward—goals—which were not already presented to us, and already understood by us. That was the proper end, however—truly new characteristics. And the beginning was, necessarily, truly new genes, and gene-combinations.
"The problem was stated long ago; we deceived ourselves that the statement was not meaningful. Simply, it is this; could a congress of gorillas, gathered to plan the breeding of the supergorilla, plan a human being? Discard the line of development of mightier muscles, stronger and longer teeth, greater specialization to master their tropical environment? "Manipulation of the race from within the race is a circular process. What we can do, the valuable thing we can do, is to stabilize, conserve, and spread the valuable genetic gifts that come to us from outside our own domain.
"William—and you must have known this better than any one else, Anea—belongs to that small and select group of men who have been the conquerors of history. There's a name, you know, for this rare and freakish individual—but a name means nothing by itself. It's only a tag hung on something we never completely understood. Such men are unopposable— they can do great good. But also, usually, an equally great deal of harm, because they are uncontrolled. I'm trying to make you understand something rather complex. We, on the Exotics, spotted William for what he was when he was still in his early twenties. At that time the decision was taken to select the genes that would result in you."
"Me!" She stiffened suddenly, staring at him. "You." Sayona bent his head to her briefly. "Didn't you ever wonder that you were so instinctively opposed to William in everything he did? Or why he was so perversely insistent on possessing your contract? Or why we, back on Kultis, allowed such an apparently unhappy relationship to continue?"
Anea shook her head slowly. "I ... I must have. But I don't remember—"
"You were intended as William's complement, in a psychological sense." Sayona sighed. "Where his instincts were for control for the sake of controlling, yours were towards goals, purposes, and you did not care who controlled so long as the control was directed toward that purpose. Your eventual marriage—which we aimed for—would have, we hoped, blended the two natures. You would have acted as the governor
William's personality needed Tlie result would have been beneficial ... we thought."
She shuddered.
"I'd never have married him."
"Yes," said Sayona with a sigh, "you would have. You were designed—if you'll forgive the harsh word—to react at full maturity to whatever man in the galaxy stood out above all others." A little of Sayona's gravity lifted for a moment, and a twinkle crept into his eyes. "That, my dear, was by no means difficult to provide for; it would have been near impossible to prevent it! Surely you see that the oldest and greatest of the female instincts is to find and conserve the strength of the strongest male she can discover. And the ultimate conservation is to bear his children."
"But—there was Donal!" she said, her face lighting up.
"Quite so," Sayona chuckled. "If the strongest male in the galaxy were wrongly directed, misusing his great strength—still, for the sake of the great value of that strength, you would have sought him out. Strength, abilities, are tools; these are important. How they are used is a separate matter.
"But with Donal on the scene ... Well, he was the ruin of all our theories, all our plans. The product of one of those natural accidents, outside our domain, a chance combining of genes even superior to William's. The blending of a truly great line of thinkers, with an equally great line of doers.
"I failed to realize this, even when we tested him." Sayona shook his head as though to clear it. "Or ... perhaps our tests were just not capable of measuring the really important characteristics in him. We . .. well, we don't know. It's that that worries me. If we've failed to discover a true mutation—someone with a great new talent that could benefit the race, then we have failed badly."
"Why, what would it have to do with you?" she asked.
"It would be in the area where we are supposed to have knowledge. If a cyberneticist fails to recognize that his companion has a broken bone, he is not culpable; if a physician makes the same mistake, he merits severe punishment.
"It would be our duty to recognize the new talent, isolate it, and understand it, we on the Exotics. It may be that Donal has something he does not recognize himself." He looked at her. "And that is the question I must ask you. You are closer to him than anyone else; do you think Donal may have something—something markedly different about him? I don't mean simply his superior genius; that would be simply more of the same kind of thing other men have had; I mean some true ability over and above that of the normal human." Anea became very still for a long moment, looking beyond rather than at Sayona. Then she looked at Sayona again, and said, "Do you want me to guess? Why don't you ask him?"
It was not that she did not know the answer; she did not know how, or what she knew, nor did she know how to convey it, nor whether it was wise to convey it. But the knowing within her was quietly and completely certain that Donal knew, and would know what should and should not be said.
Sayona shrugged wryly. "I am a fool; I do not believe what all my own knowledge assures me. It was perfectly certain that the Select of Kultis would make such an answer. I am afraid to ask him; knowing that makes the fear no less. But you are right, my dear. I .. . will ask him."
She lifted her hand.
"Donal!" she called.
Out on the balcony he heard her voice. He did not move his eyes from the stars.
"Yes," he answered.
There were footsteps behind him, and then the voice of Sayona. "Donal—"
"You'll have to forgive me," said Donal, without turning. "I didn't mean to make you wait. But I had something on my mind."
"Quite all right," said Sayona. "I hate to disturb you—I know how busy you've been lately. But there was a question I wanted to ask."
"Am I a superman?" asked Donal.
"Yes, that's essentially it," Sayona chuckled. "Has somebody else been asking you the same question?"
"No," Donal was smiling himself. "But I imagine there's some would like to."
"Well, you mustn't blame them," said Sayona, seriously. "In a certain sense, you actually are, you know."
"In a sense?"
"Oh," Sayona made a little dismissing gesture with his hand. "In your genera! abilities, compared to the ordinary man. But that wasn't my question—"
"I believe you have said that a name is without meaning in itself. What do you mean by 'Superman'? Can your question be answered, if that tag has no meaning, no definition?
"And who would want to be a Superman?" asked Donal in a tone halfway between irony and sadness, his eyes going to the depth beyond depth of starspace. "What man would want twenty billion children to raise? What man would cope with so many? How would he like to make the necessitous choices between them, when he loved-them all equally? Think of the responsibility involved in refusing them candy when they shouldn't—but could—have it, and seeing that they went to the dentist against their wills! And if 'Superman' means a unique individual—think of having twenty billion children to raise, and no friend to relax with, complain to, to blow off steam to, so that the next day's chores would be more bearable.
"And if your 'Superman' were so super, who could force him to spend his energies wiping twenty billion noses, and cleaning up the messes twenty billion petulant bratlings made? Surely a Superman could find some more satisfying use for his great talents?"
"Yes, yes," said Sayona. "But of course, I wasn't thinking of anything so far-fetched." He looked at Donal's back with mild annoyance. "We know enough about genetics now to realize that we could not have, suddenly, a completely new version of the human being. Any change would have to come in the shape of one new, experimental talent at a time."
"But what if it were an undiscoverable talent?"
"Undiscoverable?"
"Suppose," said Donal, "I have the ability to see a strange new color? How would I describe it to you— who cannot see it?"
"Oh, we'd locate it all right," replied Sayona. "We'd try all possible forms of radiation until we found one you could identify as the color you were seeing."
"But still you wouldn't be able to see it, yourselves."
"Well, no," said Sayona. "But that would be hardly important, if we knew what it was."
"Are you sure?" persisted Donal, not turning. "Suppose there was someone with a new way of thinking, someone who in childhood forced himself to do his thinking within the framework of logic—because that was the only way those around him thought. Gradually, however, as he grows older he discovers that there are relationships for him that do not exist for other minds. He knows, for example, that if I cut down that tree just below us out here in my garden, some years in time, and some light-years in distance away, another man's life will be changed. But in logical terms he cannot explain his knowledge. What good would it do you then, to know what his talent was?"
"No good at all, of course," said Sayona, good-humoredly, "but on the other hand it would do him no good at all, either, since he lives in, and is part of, a logical society. In fact, it would do him so little good, he would undoubtedly never discover his talent at all; and the mutation, being a failure, would die aborning."
"I disagree with you," said Donal. "Because I, myself, am an intuitional superman. I have a conscious intuitive process. I use intuition consciously, as you use logic, to reach a conclusion. I can crosscheck, one intuition against the other, to find out which is correct; and I can build an intuitive structure to an intuitive conclusion. This is one, single talent—but it multiplies the meaning and the power of all the old, while adding things of its own."
Sayona burst out laughing.
"And since, according to my own argument, this ability would do you so little good that you wouldn't even be able to discover it, it therefore stands that you wouldn't be able to answer my question about being a superman in the affirmative, when I ask it! Very good, Donal. It's been so long since I've had the Socratic method used in argument against me I didn't even recognize it when I came face to face with it."
"Or perhaps you instinctively would prefer not to recognize my talent," said Donal.
"No, no. That's enough," said Sayona, still laughing. "You win, Donal. Anyway, thank you for setting my mind at rest. If we had overlooked a real possibility, I would have held myself personally responsible. They would have taken my word for it and—I would have been negligent." He smiled. "Care to tell me what the real secret of your success has been, if it's not a wild talent?"
"I am intuitive," said Donai.
"Indeed you are," said Sayona. "Indeed you are. But to be merely intuitive—" he chuckled, "Well, thank you, Donal. You don't know how you've relieved my mind on this particular score. I won't keep you any longer." He hesitated, but Donal did not turn around. "Good night."
"Good night," said Donal. He heard the older man's footsteps turn and move away from him.
"Good night," came Sayona's voice from the lounge behind him.
"Good night," answered Anea.
Sayona's steps moved off into silence. Still Donal did not turn. He was aware of the presence of Anea in the room behind him, waiting.
"Merely intuitive," he echoed to himself, in a whisper. "Merely—"
He lifted his face once more to the unknown stars, the way a man lifts his face from the still heat of the valley to the coolness of the hills, in the early part of the long work day when the evening's freedom is yet far off. And the look on his face was one which no living person—not even Anea—had seen. Slowly, he lowered his eyes, and slowly turned; and, as he turned, the expression faded from him. As Anea had said, carefully he hooded the brilliance of his' light that he might not blind them; and, turning full around at last, entered once more, and for a little while again, into the habitation of Man.
The End