"Across from me," she said, "are representatives of an informal group that we—I mean, the New People—have come to call the Families. They are, as a group, largely unknown to outsiders."

Now her smile contained an edge of anger.

"They've been blackmailing the New People for several decades."

There was a stir in several portions of the room, but Bleys forestalled any other comment by leaning forward to look directly into Deborah's face.

"Deborah," he said, his tone stern and authoritative, "you need to control yourself. If you continue to try to antagonize our guests, you—and your people—will be removed from this meeting, and the rest of us will continue without you."

Deborah was silent for a moment, her face blank; but then she spoke once more, seeming to adopt once again the professional manner Bleys had come to expect from Gelica Costanza.

"I apologize if my tone was offensive," she said. "The facts I mentioned were correct, which I believe these members of the Families will verify." Across the table the elderly woman was now openly glaring at her.

"The lady across from me is Serafina Leng," Deborah said. "In order down the table beyond her are her sister, Camille Porter, Paul Tombas, Coley Milan, Fallon Porter, Bree Somosa, Melin Somosa, and John Haroun. Together, they represent—"

"That is enough, Deborah," Camille Porter interrupted her. "We can speak for ourselves."

She turned at an angle, so that she could look directly at Bleys across the front of her sister.

"Deborah has some resentment for us," Camille Porter said; "it's justified, but it can be ignored for the moment."

At that, her sister made a noise, as if about to protest, but then subsided. Further down the table, Coley Milan was not bothering to hide his amusement. Ignoring them all, Camille Porter continued, looking straight at Bleys.

"We here are indeed members of a group that the so-called New People have referred to as the Families," she said. "It's an appropriate enough term that even some of the younger members of our group began, some time ago, to use it. But the fact is that the group, as I referred to it, actually has no name, for the simple reason that it has never had any sort of formal structure. Rather, we are merely members of various Cetan families who have found reason to work together— and you should be aware of the fact that none of us has any power to speak for, or commit to, anyone else."

Bleys nodded gravely, looking the woman in the eye; but he said nothing. After a moment Camille Porter spoke again.

"Implicit in our lack of any representational capacity," she said, "is a question as to the usefulness of having this meeting at all." Her comment was clearly directed at Bleys, and he responded.

"You're asking what the point is in having negotiations, when one side—allow me to use those terms for the sake of brevity, please— can't deliver on anything agreed upon," he said. He nodded, putting on a face of serious consideration.

"We're aware of that potential problem," he said. He had decided, on the spur of the moment, to try to match Camille Porter's pontifical speaking style. "But the same lack of any representational capacity you allude to also makes apparently impractical any other form of communication with your Families. Yet we feel that opening up some form of communication between our sides is vital."

"Vital to you, maybe!" Serafina Leng burst out.

"Vital to the Families as well, I think," Bleys said mildly. "If any of you think such a thing is totally impossible, then may I ask why you've chosen to come here at all?"

In the ensuing silence, Bleys swept his eyes down the line on Serafina Leng's side of the table.

"We're the ones who asked for this meeting," he went on, finally, in a more conciliatory tone, "and we recognize that places us in a somewhat supplicatory posture—particularly in light of the fact that we're the ones who are new to this planet. However, any lack of seniority on our part should not be taken to mean we have nothing of value to offer you."

" 'Offer'?" Paul Tombas spoke up. "In exchange for what? I can't think of anything you could offer us that would be worth our giving you control of our planet."

"I could contest your implication that your Families 'control' Ceta," Bleys said, "but I won't. Because it's irrelevant to the point of this discussion."

There were frowns among the members of the Families; and in the silence Camille Porter spoke up once again.

"Then what is that point?" she said. "Deborah, in acting as your emissary to suggest this meeting, told us she believed you had something to say that would be worth the hearing. We were unable to conceive of what that might be, but Deborah has proven intelligent and useful in the past, and we were willing to explore the situation. However, thus far we've seen nothing to back up her claims for you."

"Deborah was proceeding on the basis of the things I told her, after we captured her," Bleys said. "Moreover, I'm sure she's capable of making deductions from her observations; and she may have told you some of that, as well." He smiled.

"But can you possibly believe I would share, either with her or with you, everything we have?"

"Still just talk," Paul Tombas said.

"We believed Deborah," Camille Porter cut in, "when she told us you were here to take Ceta away from us—it fits with what you've done on other planets."

"She told you just what I told her, along with others," Bleys said. "It was a ruse, designed to flush out whoever had prevented the proper functioning of our organization here."

"Are you saying you don't want to take control of Ceta?" Camille Porter asked.

"Of course we did," Bleys said. "But we couldn't see any feasible path to that outcome, and so we weren't very serious about it. In any case, we had no idea someone else was already in charge here ... that information totally altered the situation as we had analyzed it."

"in charge' is perhaps not an accurate description," Camille Porter said. "Nor do we pretend to completely rule this planet. But our forebears gave us a position that allowed us to have a large, but quiet, influence on matters here, and we have been careful to maintain that heritage."

"It was that 'position' of yours that the New People ran afoul of, when they orchestrated their scheme to defraud some Cetan institutions, then?"

"More to the point, it was our experience with them that led us to place a watch on your own Others," Camille Porter said.

"By that time, of course," Bleys said, looking thoughtful, "the New People had been under your control for a long time." He looked across at her. "Under threat of exposure, I presume?"

"Among other things," she said, her tone carrying a dry humor.

"So although Deborah tried to convince me that the New People infiltrated our Others for their own purposes, she and her people were really working for you?"

"There may have been a certain confluence of interests in the matter," Camille Porter said. "Please don't get the notion that we enslaved the so-called New People. We treated them well, and allowed them to keep many of the rewards they had accumulated from their efforts."

"But they were controlled."

"What alternative was there? Uncontrolled, they were dangerous."

Bleys looked along the row of faces flanking Camille Porter.

"Is that what you think of us, too?" he asked.

"Do you take us for complete idiots?" she responded.

Bleys put a wry grin on his face.

"Not in the least," he said. "That's why I asked for this meeting."

"You're still offering some sort of deal, then," Paul Tombas said. "Did you not understand that we're not going to give you our control of Ceta?"

"Oh, I understood that, all right," Bleys said. "That's not what I'm asking."

The eight faces he was watching showed a variety of reactions, ranging from puzzlement to irritation to interest. He let them think about his words for a few seconds longer, and then dropped his bombshell.

"I offer you our help in destroying the Exotics and the Dorsai," he said at last.

Startlement showed on some of the faces; the rest shut down, trying to show no reaction at all.

"I don't understand what you mean by those words," Melin Somosa said finally, her tone making it a question.

Bleys simply smiled at her, and said nothing.

"What could you offer to do against the Dorsai and the Exotics?" Serafina Leng spoke up sharply. "—no, don't stop me, Camille! It's clear this man knows more than we thought, and there's no point in playing games with him!" She turned back to Bleys.

"How much do you know?" she asked.

"Only a little," he answered. "I know that you've been working to undermine the economies of three planets, with the intent of destroying their ability to survive." He shrugged.

"Exactly how you do it, I don't know," he went on. "You can't possibly have enough wealth to carry out a scheme like that by yourselves, so my guess is you're leveraging your assets somehow— perhaps by subverting influential decision-makers in important commercial and governmental positions ... a campaign of small steps, I suppose; but you've had decades to work on it, and moving by small steps over a long period of time actually works to your advantage, by making your actions less noticeable."

He stopped, but no one answered.

"The details don't matter," he went on finally, "although you may not be willing to believe me on that." He smiled, shaking his head just a little.

"But I haven't come up with a reason why you should be taking such actions—it has to have been expensive ... I confess to being intrigued and puzzled."

"Even if what you say is true, I can't think why we should tell you our reasons!" Camille Porter said.

"That would be one of the prices of our help," Bleys said quietly.

"Help? What can you do to help us?"

"More importantly, why would you want to help us?" Paul Tombas said. "I can't think what would be in this for you."

"It's really quite simple," Bleys said. "It would get those two peoples off our backs."

"How are they on your backs?" Tombas asked, apparently intrigued.

"Please don't take us for fools," Bleys said. "You know perfectly well we've taken controlling positions on five of the Younger Worlds"—there were several nods in response to that—"and it doesn't take much insight to realize that the Exotics won't stand for that situation for very long."

"Of course you mean that your group's position now represents a threat to the Exotics," Tombas said. He glanced to his left, at Coley Milan or the people beyond him. "And if threatened, you feel the Exotics would set the Dorsai on you."

"Yes," Bleys said.

"That might very well be so," Camille Porter said. "But why should we care what happens to you and your Others?"

"You don't, of course," Bleys said. "That's a good business position to take—if all you want is to maintain the status quo."

"What does that mean?" Camille Porter said.

"We want revenge!" her sister cut in. "No, I will not keep quiet, Camille! I'm getting too old to play games, and if we have a chance to strike a deciding blow in my lifetime, I want to do it!" She glared at her sister, a glare that perhaps included the rest of her companions, although at the end of the line Melin Somosa and John Haroun, apparently the two youngest on that side of the table, were nodding at her.

"Did you ever hear of William of Ceta?" she asked, turning her face back to Bleys.

"Of course I have," Bleys said. She was referring to a Cetan entrepreneur of nearly a century ago, who had very nearly succeeded in a complicated scheme to corner the interstellar market in employment contracts—a plan that more liberal historians still contended would have resulted in the virtual enslavement of the working and professional classes.

"The Prince," Bleys said. The response was simple, and it was all they needed.

"That's right," she said, nodding. "If you know his story, you know he was on the verge of taking control of all the Younger Worlds, until that Dorsai Donal Graeme interfered!" An angry tone was rising in her voice as she spoke.

"Graeme and his Dorsai used military force to stop Prince William, and they broke him—broke his spirit and broke his fortune." She paused. "Even broke his mind." She glared at Bleys.

"The Prince was ahead of the whole human race at every turn," she said harshly. "He played by the rules of business, and when his opponents couldn't defeat him, they turned to military force!" She subsided in her seat, as if worn out.

"It was vile!" Her voice was quieter, disgusted.

For a moment, there was silence in the room.

"I don't believe William had any family," Bleys said finally. Before he could continue, Melin Somosa interrupted him.

"That's according to the official records," she said. "There're some who say they're of the Prince's blood."

"The Families?" Bleys asked.

"Not all of us," Camille Porter interjected, apparently resigned now to having everything come out.

Toni, Bleys saw, was now wearing an expression very akin to her white-mind face. He suspected it was an attempt to conceal her thoughts, and he hoped no one among the Families was adept in the martial arts.

Toni held her peace until they were back in Favored’s lounge; and even then her voice was quiet.

"You must be aware that those people are insane," she said. "Did you know about them going into that meeting?"

"I knew who they were, from Deborah," he said. "She wasn't aware of their enmity against the Exotics and Dorsai, and I think she was as surprised as we were to learn that those people are consumed by their families' involvements with Prince William's downfall."

"Their fortunes were built on his rise, I gather," she said.

"William was a mercantile manipulator," Bleys said, "and anyone who followed his lead probably made huge fortunes. Donal Graeme was only interested in stopping William himself, and I suspect no one tried to take away the assets of his followers—they were likely well-entrenched in the planet's economy by then, and taking them down might well have caused a depression here." He thought for a brief moment. "And like many plutocrats before them, they probably had come to believe that other sorts of power were their right."

"But how could an attitude like that—and a resentment like that—have lasted down decades, and generations?"

"The Families, I suspect," Bleys said, "were so wealthy they never had to deal with the rest of the world. Their children lived in a world in which they dealt only with each other—intermarrying would have been prized, since it would strengthen the connections between the various families even more. In an atmosphere like that, the paranoid views of the parents were reinforced ... views like that are always emotionally powerful—particularly if they're not countered by exposure to reality."

"You can't trust them," Toni said.

"Of course not," he replied. "And they won't trust me. That won't matter."

"I think I see," she said. "It's like working with fanatics like that Militia officer you had chasing Hal Mayne."

"Barbage," Bleys reminded her. "Yes. As long as I know what they want, I can trust them to try to do exactly that."

"It only works as long as what they want matches what you want," she said.

"I know," he said. "It becomes my job to remain aware of exactly when our interests will diverge."

As they were eating, later, Toni spoke up again.

"I still don't see how they could have had the power to have such a great effect on the situation of the Dorsai and the Exotics," she said. "Planetary economies are just too large for individuals to have much force against them."

"Which is the kind of thing I told you, earlier, about the historical forces," he said. "And you're right—"

"Oh, I see!" she exclaimed, interrupting him. "Because you've been thinking about the historical forces for so long, you had a—a mental framework that helped you see how to handle the Families, too!"

"In a way," he said. "You probably noticed that when we got into our substantive discussions with them, I purposely fed their perceptions of their own strength—it's the kind of thing rich people hear all their lives: how right they are. But as it happens, they did have some effect on their enemies—because it just happened that the interstellar economic system was going in the same direction they were . . . they couldn't have stopped it if they'd tried; and instead, they rode with it."

"So in fact they didn't have the effect you found, that brought you here?"

"Not directly," Bleys said. "You're correct to say that individuals can't have such effects on planetary scales. But it's also true that every organization—every government and business—can only act if the individual people running them take some action .. . otherwise, they're just dead social machinery."

She frowned, thinking.

"I don't understand," she said at last.

"Let me give you an example," he said. "I don't know exactly what they did, but it must have been close to this .. ." He paused, thinking.

"Suppose you have one hundred million interstellar credits to spend on trying to ruin Exotic trade with Freiland," he said finally. "That amount won't go far, if applied directly. But if you use it to bribe key Freilander officials, the effect of that sum can be multiplied, since such officials usually have control over even larger economic and political capital. . . . For instance, a bribe of five million credits to a Freiland Space Force procurement officer might lead him to give billions of credits' worth of contracts—for supplies, for ships, for military consultants—to someone other than the Exotics and the Dorsai."

"I see!" she said. "That's what you meant when you referred to 'leveraging their positions,' earlier."

"Yes," he said. He smiled. "Do you see something familiar in that concept?"

"Yes," she said, thoughtfully. "It's exactly what you've been doing to take over the worlds."

"But in more ways than economic," he said, nodding. "Economic assets were all they had," she said.

"That's right," he said. "Again, they were in the right place at the right time: they were in a position to corrupt individuals in positions of power, during an era in which the interstellar system was decay-ing."

"The only thing that can really stop such corruption is an overriding sense of morality," she said, "and you've been saying for some time that that's been dying away."

"Corruption multiplies itself," he said. "The race has been under stress ever since it went into space, and the resulting corruption will kill it unless I can lead it back to Old Earth and make it face the need to renew its sense of morality and responsibility."

"So you'll be using their corruption to fight future corruption," she said. "It's a concept the aikido masters would have recognized."

CHAPTER 21

The first thing Bleys did, upon arrival back on Association, was to check the great Mayne-map, as Dahno called it, on the wall of his private lounge. He realized immediately it had been updated in his absence.

"The Dorsai!" he exclaimed, more to himself than to Toni, entering the room behind him. "I should have known he'd go there next— he's been making the rounds of all the groups that aren't in our camp." He raised a hand to massage the side of his head.

"Well, that seems logical," Toni said. "But why didn't he stay with the Exotics longer? Surely that would have been safer?"

"In the short run, perhaps," Bleys said. "But this is no longer about safety—Hal Mayne's or anyone else's. I told Dahno that Hal Mayne is actively campaigning against us, and this proves it."

"How?"

"The only reason for him to go to the Dorsai would be to try to enlist them in the fight against us," Bleys said.

"Is it likely the Dorsai would listen to a lone and unknown young man?" she asked. "They have a reputation for being pretty hard-headed."

Bleys remembered again that she was partly Dorsai herself.

"You haven't met Hal Mayne, have you?" he said. "I wouldn't put it past him to be able to get the Dorsai to listen very seriously to him. And they'd be right to see us as a threat to them. But in any case, I don't think he went there entirely by himself."

"You mean someone from the Exotics is traveling with him?"

"In a way, perhaps," Bleys said. "I don't know that. But I think he went with, at a minimum, their blessings. In fact"—he nodded to himself, the idea catching fire in his head even as he spoke it—"I'd say it's probable he carried some kind of introduction or message from the Exotics, asking the Dorsai to take him seriously."

"I see your thinking," she said. "We know the Exotics are inclined to help him because they've already done so—and if they weren't agreed on the need to take some sort of action together, he'd still be there, trying to move them."

"Exactly," Bleys said. He turned to a desk, where he could use a screen to get access to all of the Others' information files, including data that had arrived while he was off-planet.

"Let's see if we have any more detail."

"We were lucky to learn of Mayne's trip at all," he told Toni a short time later. "One of our people going to Sainte Marie was making a connection at a pad on Mara, and just happened to see Mayne passing through. He managed to observe which ship Mayne boarded. Sheer accident."

He paused to think for a moment, massaging his temples, his eyes closed.

"We need to be able to monitor travelers better," he said. "We haven't had any need for that up to now, except for trying to track Mayne himself—for that matter, we haven't had the people to put into a time-consuming effort like that. But we're entering a new stage, and we're soon going to have more of that kind of resource."

"So now we'll try to watch for him to leave the Dorsai?" she said.

"We will, yes," Bleys said. "But I'd say he's already left there."

"What makes you say that?"

"He only had one thing to do on the Dorsai," Bleys said, opening his eyes. "And he's busy." She raised an eyebrow.

"He's taken the next step," Bleys explained, his eyes returning to the great map. "Now he's recruiting his army. The war is on."

Later that day Dahno appeared. He had been back on Association for more than two weeks, and was fully recovered from his wounds. But Bleys had been quietly told that his brother, on his arrival back at Others' headquarters, had sequestered himself in his suite.

"Come up if you'd like," Toni said when Dahno called. "But Bleys is asleep and I won't wake him."

Dahno came up anyway, arriving via the interior float elevator within minutes, his face petulant. Toni thought he looked a bit drawn, underneath a layer of irritation.

"Why can't I see him?" Dahno barked. "He shouldn't be asleep. I checked to see if your flight resulted in any transit-lag, and none of you should be having that problem! I’m not tired!"

She refrained from commenting on his logic.

"He's got one of those headaches he gets ever since he was damaged by the Newtonians," she said. "They nearly blind him with pain, but he won't use blocks."

"War!" Dahno jumped as the door behind Toni was thrown open, the single word seeming to leap out at them. They saw Bleys framed in the doorway, draped in shadow; behind him the hallway that led to his bedroom seemed like some ancient cave.

Clad only in a pair of the shorts he habitually slept in, Bleys stumbled through the doorway into the light of the lounge, eyes half-closed. His forehead seemed moist and creased, and his jaw muscles were tightened.

"It's going to be war," he said, more quietly. "Would you close the curtains and dial down the lights, please?"

While Toni did what he asked, Bleys walked across the room to take his seat in front of the Mayne-map. His movements seemed stiff, but after he had looked up at the map for a few moments, his voice was calm when he spoke.

"Dahno, we've spoken in the past about using military force to get what we need from the Exotics," he said. "But we haven't gotten around to really thinking about building up forces like that."

"You know I'm against it," Dahno said, his voice louder than it needed to be. "Why should we bother? We can get more than we need to overawe the Exotics from the armed forces of the planets we control."

"Don't you sec, that won't be enough," Bleys replied. "Why not? The Exotics have no military of their own." "But what have they always done in the past, when they were threatened?"

"They hired the Dorsai, of course," Dahno said. "But they haven't—" He broke off as his eyes, following Bleys' gaze, fastened on the new line on the Mayne-map.

"Yes," Bleys said. "I thought the Exotics probably asked the Dorsai to listen to Hal Mayne, but I was a little slow off the mark— in fact, they probably had him carry a message asking for the Dorsai's help."

Dahno stepped over to look down at his brother.

"Are you sure?" he said. His voice was low and serious; but without waiting for an answer, he raised it in protest: "We can't fight that. That's not our game!"

"I told Toni, earlier, that I thought Hal Maync went to the Dorsai to try to recruit them," Bleys said. "But I didn't really believe they would respond quickly—not until it was too late; and so I didn't think it through far enough."

"What do you mean?" Toni asked.

"You yourself told me the Dorsai are—I think you said 'hard-headed,'" Bleys said. "I assumed that while they might well listen to Mayne, they wouldn't take any sort of action on the basis of his word alone. But if the Exotics have made some sort of financial offer to the Dorsai—for instance, if they've agreed to underwrite some action Mayne might propose to them—then it's suddenly a much more dangerous situation for us."

"It certainly is!" Dahno said. "War is nothing I ever intended! And particularly not war with the Dorsai—no one can beat them!"

"Well, let's stop and look the situation over," Bleys said mildly, looking up at his brother. He had not seen Dahno since his brother left Favored of God three weeks earlier, and what he saw—now that he took a moment to look more closely into his brother's face— startled him. But Bleys showed no reaction.

"What's there to think about?" Dahno said, his voice rising. "We can't match the Dorsai!" "Why not?"

Dahno looked at his brother, silent, as if unable even to comprehend the question.

"Why not?" Bleys repeated; and he sat up straighter, his movements more fluid and all signs of pain erased from his face and posture.

"Brother," Bleys said, "we knew all along the Exotics and the Dorsai would never give in to our leadership, even in the face of the greatest economic and political pressures we could muster. But our planning was based on the assumption we could neutralize the abilities of those three planets to oppose us on the other Younger Worlds—in other words, that they would play the game on the field we chose—and let time work for us."

"Yes," Dahno said, his voice not as loud as a moment before, but still carrying an edge. "I even talked about using force to take whatever resources the Exotics might deny us—but I was talking about some time well in the future. If the Dorsai come into this on the Exotics' side, we can't ever do that, and might very well lose our control of the planets we've already got!"

"You mean it might scare our allies into deserting us," Bleys said.

"I'd say that's a certainty!"

"You're no military expert, brother," Bleys said. "Neither am I, for that matter. But everything I've ever read tells me that no military force—even the Dorsai—can just pick up and launch an attack without a certain amount of preparation time. We've got time, at the very least."

"Time to what?"

"Time to build up our own forces," Bleys said.

"You want to raise an army to oppose the Dorsai?" Dahno said, his voice incredulous. "That's insane! How many people would ever join us to do that?"

"Oh, it would be a mistake to tell them, ahead of time, what we're doing," Bleys said. "Nor do I mean we just raise an army and space force and nothing more. No."

He leaned back in his chair, looking at the Mayne-map, which also doubled as a map of the whole of human civilization.

"In fact, we're merely elaborating on our original plan," he went on. His voice was still quiet, almost detached. "Even if the entire population of the Dorsai came out in force, it couldn't really stand up to the combined opposition of, say, nine worlds."

"Nine worlds?" Dahno asked. "You're including—let's see—Ceta, Freiland, Sainte Marie, and, um, Coby?—with the five worlds we already control?"

"Right," Bleys said.

"It doesn't matter!'''' Dahno said, his voice, recovered from his momentary startlement, again loud, and edgy. "Can't you see that? Even if we did manage to get control of nine worlds, and even if that control didn't disintegrate at the first threat of a war with the Dorsai—" He stopped for a moment, as if the words were exploding out of his mind so fast that he had lost his place in the argument. He took a deep breath.

"Bleys," he said—his voice was lower and softer, as if he had remembered finally to employ the persuasiveness that had been surprised out of him earlier—"even if we could raise enough of a military force to beat the Dorsai, it would ruin us!"

"I'd rather not get into a shooting war with anyone," Bleys said. "And I really believe our non-military assets will assure us of victory, and an overwhelming one—to the point where realism will make our opponents lay down their arms."

"The Dorsai don't surrender," Dahno said, scowling.

"Even if that were true," Bleys said, "they've never had to fight a war in which they didn't have a place to stand."

He swiveled in his chair, to an angle from which he could look at both of his companions. Toni and Dahno, he saw, each wore a puzzled frown, yet he perceived a vast difference in the unspoken message each face was conveying.

"One thing the Dorsai have never adapted to," Bleys continued, "is non-military conflict. We aren't armies in the field, trying to take and hold territory, so we don't present a military target along the lines of anything they've had to deal with before. Whatever action they take will have to be outside their experience."

"What kinds of actions are you suggesting they might try?" Toni asked.

"Oh, perhaps precision pre-emptive attacks on military bases of the planets we control," Bleys said. "But that would alienate the populations of those worlds, which would be a great plus for us. I think they'll realize that—and if they don't, the Exotics certainly will."

"What does that leave?"

"Not much," Bleys said. "Underground actions, such as sabotage. Or even assassination campaigns."

"Are you serious?" Dahno yelled, shaken.

"They wouldn't go in for assassination," Toni said calmly.

"Perhaps. Perhaps not," Bleys said. "People always tend to throw their principles aside when they feel sufficiently threatened. But it's not going to be a real danger to us in any case, because we'll be well protected."

"By who?" Dahno asked.

"By the peoples of the worlds we control," Bleys replied. "We, and all of our Others, can have so many bodyguards it would take a heavily armed military unit to break through them. And any attempt to try that would be dealing us a winning political position."

Dahno looked sour.

"How do you reach that conclusion?" he said.

"Think about it," Bleys answered. "They can't act for a while yet. In the meantime, we'll be convincing the peoples of the Younger Worlds that we're peaceful philosophers seeking only the good of mankind—that's what I've been doing on my speaking tours for years. You know we can persuade at least a fair portion of the masses of that notion, especially if we tie it to something else they want, like a bigger piece of their planets' economic pies or to stick a finger in the eye of Old Earth."

"Oh, we can do that, all right," Dahno said. "Most of our top Others already have major establishments and sizable personal followings of their own . .. but how does that help if the Dorsai decide, say, to come after you—or me, or any of our top people?"

"The Dorsai aren't fools," Bleys said. "They can't afford to be seen as aggressors, and they'll know that being seen attempting to kill us would energize those who believe in us, and swing a lot of those on the fence over to our side. And if the Dorsai have any doubts on that score, the Exotics would certainly confirm it for them— because, after all, it's true." He paused as a new thought came to him.

"In fact," he continued, "we may want to think about manufacturing an assassination attempt... at the right time, of course."

"Will a few economic incentives, even coupled with jealousy, work on enough people?" Dahno asked, ignoring Bleys' speculation. "People are complex, you know that; and many of them have totally differing motivations."

"That's certainly true," said Bleys. "But it was never my intention we would stop with such a simplistic program."

He stood up, and strode over to the Mayne-map, looking up at it from its left side.

"There are all these worlds full of people," he said, "and it seems like a huge task to try to motivate them all, I know. But in fact, we don't have to motivate them all."

He looked sideways as Dahno approached the other side of the map. Toni kept her station in the middle of the room, watching.

"There are all sorts of keys to those people," Bleys said, "and we can use them all, trying one key after another until enough of them are emotionally aroused and intellectually confused to follow our lead—because whether they're motivated by simple greed, or religious fanaticism, or jealousy, all of it comes down to the desire to believe that they're better than the people on the other side, who they want to believe are undeserving of their luck, or crafty conspirators, or disbelievers...." He waved a hand across the face of the map.

"That's not the only weapon we can create," he went on. "We can add fear to the mix ... fear that the peoples they already hate will come and take what little they already have."

"You mean you think we can convince the peoples of nine worlds that the Exotics and the Dorsai are planning to attack them?"

"We can make it look even worse than that, just by adding Old Earth to the mix," Bleys said.

"But a lot of people on the Younger Worlds look up to Old Earth," Dahno said.

"True," Bleys said. "But 'looking up' to the mother planet doesn't necessarily equate to loving her; and people on pedestals make the best targets. In any case, we don't have to convince everyone on the Younger Worlds ... only enough to be a substantial—but loud— minority. In practice, a loud minority usually controls a society, because when they yell loud enough, it stampedes others, or at least makes them pause before going into open opposition . . . that's how it always works."

Dahno shook his head, as if denying he had even heard Bleys' words.

"There are other things we need to do, too," Bleys added before his brother could speak.

"After all, a shooting war may yet develop—not necessarily against the Dorsai—and it'd be a good idea to be prepared. So we need to take control of those Younger Worlds we don't yet have, as quickly as possible, while consolidating our positions on the five we've already got. If you think about it, the resources of nine worlds, when properly mobilized, will give us a large and powerful military force, which I suspect the Dorsai would rather not face."

He paused for a moment.

"Old Earth herself probably couldn't resist that. With nine worlds under our control, and the Exotics and the Dorsai neutralized, the mother planet would be alone and friendless."

"Old Earth?" Dahno said. "What are you saying?"

"Just thinking ahead," Bleys said. He looked about. "I'm hungry."

CHAPTER 22

"I think we can get the rest of the Younger Worlds into our camp fairly quickly," Bleys said later; he was dressed now, and working his way through an omelet and a stack of toast, even though it was mid-afternoon. He had asked Toni to prepare the meal, rather than having it sent up from the kitchens lower in the building; she had a way with breakfasts.

"Our people," he went on, "have been working to gain influence with the power brokers on those planets for years—something those societies are particularly vulnerable to, since they're all decaying societies with a lot of internal conflicts. That's the kind of situation in which we can work internally without appearing to be nosing into local affairs; any major conflict that breaks out will seem to be totally a local phenomenon, and won't raise any alarm bells in other places."

He paused to take another forkful, following it with a bite of toast; and chewed while thinking. No one interrupted him.

"It's all there in history," he went on. "Whenever a society begins to deteriorate, its most powerful people always decide they need to take control. Usually they start by telling themselves it's necessary to take action not just for their own protection, but to protect the society itself; because they always believe that their society's only working if it's reflecting their own beliefs and desires."

"Don't I remember some old philosopher saying that the rich always seem to believe they got that way because they were morally better than the poor?" Toni said. "Of course, once they get to that attitude, it's only a small step to deciding they have a moral right to control everyone else."

"We never did get rid of slavery," Dahno said. The venom in his voice was not directed at his brother, and his gaze seemed to be focused inward. While Bleys had dressed, Dahno had refused Toni's offer of food, but had accepted a drink, and then another; he had seemed calmer, until this subject came up.

"We just got better at disguising it," he finished.

"We've never been fully civilized," Bleys said. "That's one of the reasons I've been telling you the race needs to grow up."

Dahno subsided, almost sulking, but nodding his head a little. Toni smiled quietly, and Bleys smiled back at her over his brother's head.

"You were talking about the power-holders—I guess you'd call them that," she said.

"So I was," Bleys said. "In fact, I was about to say that they're usually smart enough to realize they can't sell a program like the one I just spoke of to the masses." He put his fork down absently. "So they work in secret, using their money and power to buy the people already in positions of influence, while using propaganda to portray the positions they favor in a positive light."

"Which of course is exactly what we've been doing," Dahno said, a sour look again on his face.

"That's what I've been saying," Bleys said. "We'll use our persuasive powers to get control of those same influence brokers on each planet—the systems and the secrecy are already in place, and we only have to insert ourselves into the picture ... the beauty of it is, the details of our control can be kept secret, because the lack of openness is already accepted in those systems.

"It's ideal for us! We can be philosophers and philanthropists for public consumption, which adds to our political clout—and the less attractive things we have to do can remain out of sight."

"All right," Dahno said, sounding rather grumpy, "you make it sound like just more of what we've been doing. But the devil is in the details—none of those planets is going to just fall into our hands overnight."

"No," Bleys said, "but we've got more leverage than we've ever had, now that a large portion of Ceta's power is aligned with us." "Ceta?" Dahno said. "What do you mean?"

"I'm sorry, brother," Bleys said, "I forgot we haven't spoken since you left Ceta."

"Something happened after I left?"

"Yes," Bleys said. "A lot happened." He went on to outline how he had located the unknown force on Ceta whose existence he had deduced.

"So I bargained with them," he continued. "They only want one thing, and I promised our help in getting their revenge on the Exotics and the Dorsai."

"It still seems impossible that they could have been so powerful."

"Oh, it is," Bleys said. "But they got lucky, too: what they wanted just happened to move in the same direction as the forces of history. Do you remember that huge storm we saw while we were hiding on that mountain on New Earth?"

"Oh, I remember," Dahno said. "What does that have to do with this?"

"I think you understand no single thing can create a storm like that," Bleys said. "They result when a large number of factors all fall out in the exact way needed ... and that's what I'm talking about: over the last sixty years, the positions of the Exotics and the Dorsai got weaker while the rest of the Younger Worlds became more competitive—and at the same time the whole system became more corrupt."

"You still haven't said what we're getting back for helping these Families," Dahno said.

"Entry," Bleys said. "They're using their influence on Ceta, and a few other planets, both to help our people get access to more of the power brokers, and to facilitate our efforts to gain control of other elements on Ceta."

"I suppose they think if we get control of people not already under their power, that will help them,'" Dahno said. "Are they really that blind?"

"They're really that obsessed," Bleys said. "Their parents and grandparents raised them on the belief that they had been unjustly deprived of their rightful place; it warped them. They're so strongly focused on revenge they don't worry about what it costs—"