CHAPTER 37
It had always been a question whether the Friendly worlds constituted one Society, two societies—or thousands of them. The vast majority of the two planets' original settlers had been made up of the most ardent members of a wide variety of Old Earth's religious communities—communities that generally had two major things in common: a shared belief in the existence of a Deity, and a shared willingness to argue over the smallest detail of the remainder of their beliefs.
On both Friendly worlds, over several centuries, the various communities splintered, clashed, splintered again—to the point where religious discord was the norm and the greatest achievement of the two planets was their sheer ability to exist as a society despite that culture of serial schism. In that fractured environment, the institutionalization of every man and woman's right and duty to dissent, if his or her conscience so directed, existed in permanent conflict with every other person's duty to correct heresy—as well as with the government's need to preserve peace and order.
In that atmosphere, even revolt was fractionalized, and every attempt to create some sort of overriding controlling body for the rebellious was doomed to failure. So every rebellion—they were unending—started out as, and remained, a matter of individuals who cooperated only as far as their varied beliefs led them.
But in a society in which dissent was as institutionalized as the government itself, rebellion could thrive, because even the most staid and satisfied of citizens had a certain antipathy for authority. And because the government was as conflicted as its citizens.
It was astounding that the Commands—roving bands of armed rebels, part guerrilla and part pilgrim—could work together at all; and, indeed, at times they, too, splintered. But for the most part each Command was a rebellion unto itself; and their only contact with each other was in the form of the news passed along informally over the networks of resisters who happened to know and trust each other. Only rarely had two Commands cooperated, for a limited time, for a common objective.
Nonetheless, each Command's very existence was an asset to every other Command, for their existence dissipated the pursuing government's resources, while energizing every Command's power base, that lay in the pool of nearly secret, unorganized sympathizers scattered throughout the lands the Commands roamed.
When Favored of God rose up out of its orbit, to push itself away from Old Earth's star in preparation for its first phase-shift of the trip home, Bleys was in his cabin; and he stayed there through that shift, through the calculation period after that shift—and through the second shift of the trip. He was writing notes to himself, and destroying them.
At last, a day and a half into the journey, near the end of the third calculation period, he left his cabin.
Prepared to fend for himself in satisfying his finally returned appetite, his first stop was the ship's kitchen. But his entrance to that facility was intercepted by Shira, who—apparently an apt student of her captain's commanding style—all but physically drove Bleys out of her way and to the lounge he had so far been avoiding while she prepared another meal for him.
For the rest of the trip he lost himself in the stars, either in the lounge or in his cabin, eating only when Shira brought him a tray; but once back on Association, he felt refreshed and alert, finally— and again lost himself in the myriad details of his work.
The Others he still led were, for the most part, carrying on their efforts to tighten the Others' control of nine worlds, to weaken the power of three other worlds, and to mobilize financial and military forces for the conflict he now felt to be inevitable; and that alone required more of his time than any single person should have to provide.
Still, Dahno's mysterious doings on Old Earth, and the attempt to have Bleys himself arrested there, demanded thought; and he spent many hours pacing up and down the length of his lounge.
His encounter with Hal Mayne, Bleys told himself, had served a valuable purpose: it had confirmed for him his growing belief that war not only had to come, but was in fact highly desirable—that a successful war could advance his plan many times faster than years of political maneuvering.... It was as if he had managed to slough off an old layer of skin, abraded by the searing meeting with the young Earthman: his intellectual energies, Bleys felt, had once again been cleansed of the clogging effects of delusion and emotion.
When the Militia officer Amyth Barbage arrived to report on his capture, three weeks earlier, of the Harmony outlaw Rukh Tamani, Bleys felt as if he were looking at the man with new, piercing eyes.
It was not the first time a meeting with Barbage had coincided with a change in Bleys' own perception of himself; shortly after Bleys had recovered from the worst of his struggle with the DNA invader the Newtonians had injected into him, Barbage had come for a meeting; and the Militia officer had, somehow, seemed to recognize that Bleys was different. It was a change Bleys himself had noticed only days before—a feeling that he had been charged with some new, and dark, upwelling of power. A power that fixed him more firmly on his course, and made him surer of his will to carry it through.
It had brought to his mind those archangels who had sided with Lucifer.
When he became aware of the change, Bleys went to a mirror, expecting to see a different appearance; but the mirror failed to reflect the change he felt. So he had been surprised when Barbage not only seemed to recognize that change, but to welcome it, with a kind of glee Bleys would never have expected could lie under that normally harsh, severe disposition.
Once again, this time, Barbage seemed to sense a change in Bleys. But this time the officer's face seemed to betray puzzlement, even uncertainty—something very rare for that self-designated member of God's Elect.
"True to thy prediction, Great Teacher," Barbage said, "the woman Rukh Tamani proved a formidable foe—not only in her own abilities to outthink and outfight many of the Militia's commanders, but in her ability to pass her satanic energies along to her cohort. Indeed, it seemed that every time my forces managed to take or kill members of her group—her Command, as these children of perdition style themselves—legions sprang up to replace those losses."
"Surely this is no surprise, Colonel," Bleys said. "The woman was able, after sabotaging the Core Tap, to shut the city down, captivating its populace with her words while appearing boldly in their midst to address the people in broad daylight—"
"Words of defiance, Great Teacher!" Barbage's face, recovered from its uncertainty, became ugly, and he nearly spat the words "—born of an evil that knows no fear, and must be destroyed!"
"But no more, Colonel," Bleys said, calmly and softly. "You've had her in a cell for three weeks now, I believe?"
"It is so, Great Teacher."
"Tell me how you managed to take her."
"It cost us dearly," Barbage said, "for thy order was that she be taken alive. But God at last favored us and delivered her into our hands."
"How did that come about?" Bleys asked.
"God led me to change my tactics," Barbage said. "Once we managed to learn what general area her group was in, we tried unsuccessfully to drive her force before us, into traps we laid, but God did not vouchsafe us success."
"That has been tried before," Bleys said, "and those people usually managed to evade the Militia, in the end."
"It is so, Great Teacher," Barbage said. "But God revealed to me that the work to repair the Core Tap—the very one Tamani and her people sabotaged earlier—had been proceeding apace, and was nearly completed. With God's help I realized that such as these Forsaken would feel a need to return. Thus, I directed that the word be given out that repairs had been completed and that work on the Core Tap was about to resume."
"And so you drew her into a trap, then?"
"Indeed," Barbage said. "We made an estimate of the time it would likely have taken for her to hear the news and come to the city; and then we made a sweep, picking up all the dregs who mingle in the population." He smiled, coldly.
"Thanks to thy foresight, Great Teacher, for the first time there existed a unified force under the command of a single officer of sufficient rank to have his orders obeyed, and sufficient numbers to block more routes than in the past—and with diligence and alacrity the mistakes that had always sabotaged the efforts of other commanders were avoided. Thus, we arrested hundreds of those unfaithful we believed to be in sympathy with her. And with the forces entrusted to me, we were able to close down all the city, and the nearby countryside besides; and keep them closed so that none could get away. Until eventually, one of those we had arrested broke, and gave us a location in which we could seek Tamani."
"I congratulate you, Colonel," Bleys said. "But tell me now: have you learned anything from the woman about Hal Mayne?"
"Although put to the test," Barbage said, "the woman continues to deny knowing anything new of Hal Mayne."
"Do you believe her?"
"I do, Great Teacher," Barbage said. "I believe she is one of those who, if she knew anything about Mayne, would merely seek to maintain silence, rather than tell an outright lie. Moreover, a lack of knowledge on her part is logical, since Mayne hath not been on the planet and the Commands have no access to off-planet communications."
"That we know of," Bleys corrected him.
"It is so, Great Teacher," Barbage acknowledged; but his eyes burned.
"I accept your opinion," Bleys said. "But tell me—what about the remainder of her Command?"
"We found none, Great Teacher," Barbage said. "The woman said she came to the city alone; and indeed, all those found near her were locals long suspected of being sympathetic to the disaffected."
"Still, she must have other information that can be of use," Bleys said. "Names of collaborators, methods of communication, and so on?"
"Undoubtedly, Great Teacher. I intend to return to Ahruma at once and redouble my efforts with her."
"Very good, Colonel," Bleys said. "Please keep me informed."
"Would it please thee to see her, when next thou comest to Harmony?"
The question brought back sharply Bleys' memory of the slim, beautiful woman he had met briefly on her own ground, one day on Harmony.
"No," he said.
Henry MacLean was disturbed. He had just completed an hour-long cross-country obstacle run, and his time had been beaten by a goodly number of his Soldiers. Being bested did not bother him; he had never been the swiftest of any group. What bothered him was that he was almost exhausted, and it was taking him longer to recover than he expected of himself.
He was still better at the skills that required calm and the ability to focus oneself, such as shooting or spotting out-of-place people or items in an environment. But he was concerned that he was losing muscle tone. It was now more than two years since he had left the farm, and he did not feel the workouts he took part in, as part of his Soldiers' maintenance program, did as much for him as the farm-work had.
Perhaps it was that he was in his fifties now; his body must age, as did everyone's. But he wondered if he might be losing some of his ability to do the tasks he had set for himself.
He had known, when he came to Bleys, that he was deficient in many areas; but he had never had any doubts about his physical abilities.
Henry had never had the sort of formal martial arts training Bleys and Toni practiced, but he had picked up a lot of tricks and techniques in his youth, as a Soldier of God; and those were in turn built on the foundation of skills developed in the country wrestling of his youth.
So when he organized Bleys' Soldiers, he was aware of the need to keep them in condition; an entire floor of the Others' headquarters building was devoted to that, and what could not be done well there was carried on in courses in the countryside.
Nor did he neglect the mental side of fitness: he had been little educated in his youth, but with the facilities Bleys could provide he had devoted a portion of every day to instruction in various technical and scientific fields—and made sure his Soldiers did the same.
What it came down to was that although he was older than most of his Soldiers, it was important to him to keep himself in the same shape he demanded of them.
He had never thought of himself as one of those who could send others out to fight while conserving their own strength—those whose value lay in their experience and intelligence. There had always been a part of him that suspected that such people put their souls in greater danger than did the common fighter.
Did he still feel that way, now that he seemed to be taking such a role? It might be a good idea to do some thinking about the meaning of his past life.
"Bleys, wake up!" Toni's voice pierced the darkness, but Bleys was already awake—he had roused when her breathing changed as her wristpad awoke her. "What is it?"
"An urgent message from Harmony," she reported. "Rukh Tamani has escaped from the Militia."
Bleys sat up, and waved a hand for some light.
"Details?" he said. "How long ago did this happen?"
"I'm still being fed information," she said. "It sounds as if it occurred about four days ago. There was a raid on the prison."
"Four days!"
"Yes," she said.
"W7hy did it take Barbage so long to report this?" he asked, intending that she direct the question to whoever she was in contact with.
"The report isn't coming from Barbagc," Toni said after a moment. "It seems he's vanished." "Was he killed?"
"Apparently not," she replied. "There were a lot of casualties—I gather there are some wild stories about some huge man hunting people down in the corridors—"
"Mayne!" he said.
"No identification was made. However, Barbage was seen after it was all over—and when he disappeared, no one who was left knew you had any particular interest in the woman; so the report took a while to get up the chain of command to us."
Bleys was silent.
"The Militia are asking if you want to order them to seal all the spaceports, to prevent Tamani from getting off the planet," she said. She waited for him to reply.
"No," Bleys said finally. "It's certainly too late."
He rose, and padded in his bare feet out of the bedroom and down the hall to his lounge. He did not turn on a light; he was not sure what his reaction to the news really was, and he did not want Toni to see his face while he explored it.
CHAPTER 38
Delivered Out of Egypt, despite its longer name, was a much smaller ship than either Favored of God or Burning Bush. The vessel had been called Poker Face IV as it came out of the shipyard on Old Earth's moon, Luna; and its size was well adapted for the in-system routes it was meant to run between the numerous ports and pads in its home solar system.
Now, having only recently become one of the steadily growing fleet owned by the Others, it had been chosen for this trip precisely because it was new to their service, which meant that its presence somewhere was less likely to alert people that Bleys Ahrens was in the area. Bleys also hoped that anyone trying to find him would be distracted by Favored ‘s trip to Newton, where it remained in orbit while Toni and Henry gave the impression that Bleys was conducting business in the privacy of the ship.
The disadvantage to Delivered's smaller size, however, was that its passageways were narrower, and had less overhead, than those in the larger ships. Moreover, its cabins were smaller, its facilities sparser and its passenger lounge less than half the size of the one Bleys used as his office aboard Favored.
The lounge was still the largest space on the ship, however, outside of the engineering areas, and so Bleys was spending almost all his time there; but he was getting sick of the place.
Delivered, using the assumed name Fanons Friend, had been in orbit at Mara for nearly six days now, pretending to have suffered a malfunction that seriously contaminated its environmental support systems—badly enough that after spending the first few days trying to fix the problems themselves, the crew had been obliged to call for help in the form of a local expert.
That particular deception, Bleys had already decided, would not be used again: the need to make the problem seem real to the expert had resulted in the ship having a pervading stale, sickly sweet smell that was making the crew increasingly surly.
Still, for all its disadvantages, Delivered had a deluxe-size viewing screen, large enough to dominate its lounge with the illusion of a gigantic picture window cut into the side of the ship. Bleys had ordered such screens placed in all the ships he was likely to use, and this one was left permanently on before his desk.
At the moment, the screen was dominated by a view of the night-side of the planet below. Mara, the smaller of the two Exotic planets— although only by a small amount—showed before Bleys' eyes as a black circle cut out of the starfield. The Exotics generally eschewed large, well-lit cities, and the planet had no moon to reflect Procyon's light onto the planet's nightside.
But already an arc of excruciating whiteness was outlining one side of that black circle. To Bleys, in Delivered’s particular attitude, that arc outlined the lower edge of the planet; and as he watched the arc grew, curving upward and away on both sides like the horns of some great animal, even as the most central portion of the arc thickened ... and abruptly, a point at the very center of the arc sparkled, glaring at him with the smallest edge of Procyon's intense face.
Bleys had watched this sight, in various versions, dozens of times already during their long stay in this orbit; and he knew that within moments the ship's movement would separate the star from the planet, and the dayside would expand below him, glowing warmly green where it was not a cooler blue.
Mara looked a lot like Old Earth, Bleys thought. That recognition was not original with him, but it had come up in his memory more sharply because he had so recently been looking down on the mother planet in much this same way.
This was no mother to the human race, though, he reminded himself, but a place occupied by a race of strangers, of people almost alien in their self-created differences from the rest of the human race ... as alien to them, in fact, as he himself; but in a different way.
And it was, he suddenly recalled, the home—no, call it the birthplace, only—of his mother.
He probed at his mind, wondering whether he might be letting his own feelings about his mother affect his perception about her birthplace.
No.
He was here only because Hal Mayne was here—had brought the woman Rukh Tamani here after taking her from the Militia's holding cells in Ahruma.
No intelligence source had given Bleys that information; rather, he had concluded it was a logical move; by all accounts, the woman had not fared well under the Militia's—Barbage's—care. The Exotics were renowned healers, and Bleys knew even that Mayne himself had come here for healing, after his own escape from that same prison—it made sense he would return here with someone in a similar position.
But where, on that large planet below, was Hal Mayne? Mara was even larger than Old Earth, by a small amount, and Bleys could not very well ask someone for that information.
Or, could he?
He leaned back in his chair, his eyes no longer seeing the screen.
He had been hanging here in orbit trying, solely by means of passive listening techniques used by the technicians he had brought along, to pick up some piece of information that might lead him to Hal Mayne's whereabouts and doings. Any more active form of information-gathering would be certain to betray his presence to the Exotics.
But then again: what could he lose if the Exotics, or even Hal Mayne, learned he was here? Neither of them would attack him physically, even here in Exotic space; he was sure of that.
By himself in the lounge, he shook his head. Not yet.
There might come a time to take that bull by the horns, but this was not it. Revealing himself to the Exotics would not be physically dangerous, but it would dissipate any chance of learning something from orbit. And it would likely expose him to pointless bouts with the impenetrably courteous blandness the Exotics so adeptly used to befuddle people. All they would ever tell him would be what they wanted him to know, as if they were running him through a maze like some experimental subject. So he went to bed.
When he awoke and made his way to the lounge, he found waiting there a recent message from Delivered'?, captain, reporting that the Maran environmental-systems expert had finished his repairs and was preparing to depart: did Bleys want to remain here in orbit?
Bleys sniffed: the air did seem better.
On a sudden impulse, he keyed the circuit for the bridge.
"Captain, is the Maran still on board?" he asked.
"Yes, Great Teacher, but not for much longer—the shuttle he called to pick him up is just three minutes away."
"Ask him to come up to the lounge, please."
"I'll have him escorted—"
"No," Bleys interrupted. "Just ask him to come up, and let him find his own way. He'll be familiar with ships and unlikely to get lost, and I don't want him subjected to any intimidation ... is that understood?"
"Yes, Great Teacher," the captain said. "But, if I may ask—what should I do about the shuttle?"
"Ask it—politely—to wait," Bleys said. "We're guests in this space, even if the Exotics don't know it."
"Then—the Maran will be allowed to leave?"
"I'll let you know."
It was only a few minutes before a figure appeared in the doorway Bleys had left open, to look enquiringly inside.
"Please come in," Bleys said from his desk across the room as he rose to his feet.
The man who entered did not in the least fit the popular conception of an Exotic. He was of medium height, and stockily built and in his upper forties, with rosy skin and a large bald spot showing through short brown hair. He was wearing a grease-stained gray-green coverall that seemed to have pockets everywhere, as well as a tool belt with both loops and closed pockets.
"Thank you for coming up here," Bleys said, gesturing to an empty chair as the Exotic approached. He did not offer his hand, knowing that the Exotics generally did not observe that custom.
"I understand there's a shuttle waiting for you," Bleys went on, "and I won't keep you long."
"He'll wait," the Exotic said. "The driver's my nephew." He grinned, and Bleys smiled in response.
"I won't sit down, if you don't mind," the Exotic said, waving vaguely at his own torso. "I got a little dirty down under the ion exchanger."
"Weren't you offered a chance to clean up?" Bleys asked.
"Oh, I was," the man said. "I turned it down—I know what my nephew's shuttle will be like; he's at the end of a long shift ferrying agricultural supplies to Ninevah—oh, that's one of the orbital manufactories."
"These chairs clean up easily, in any case," Bleys said, "but do as you like. My name is Bleys Ahrens."
"Honored," the Exotic said, continuing to stand. "My name is Tony Peterson." He seemed to peer at Bleys now, as if a thought had suddenly struck him. "I know who you are—are you here for the meeting, too?"
"Which meeting?" Bleys said, stalling for time—and as he watched puzzlement enter the other's face, his mind made a sudden leap.
"Do you mean the one with Hal Mayne?" Bleys asked. "Yes, I hope to be there."
"It should be very interesting," Tony Peterson said.
"Will you be there?" Bleys asked, trying to probe delicately.
"Oh, we'll all be there," the Exotic said. "But about your air cleaner—I'm sorry it took so long, but it turned out the problem resulted from two different things going wrong at almost the same time ... I gave the details to your officers."
"That's quite all right," Bleys said, realizing that the Exotic thought Bleys had called him up to the lounge to speak about the problem that had been created to allow the ship to stay at Mara without suspicion. "I take it you're sure you've gotten to the root of the problem?"
"I believe so." The Exotic smiled. "The problem's mended now, but of course I can't promise it won't recur."
"What do you mean?"
"No system can last if it's mishandled."
"Mishandled?" Bleys asked, wondering if the Exotic had detected the sabotage.
"I believe some of your people may have gotten careless," Peterson said. "Cleaning solvents killed one of the polymembranes."
"It sounds like improper training, then," Bleys said.
"It may be.
After the repairman left, Bleys asked the captain to contact Orbital Holistics and tell them that Bleys Ahrens was present and requesting permission to attend the meeting.
"You want me to let them know you're here?" the captain asked.
"Yes," Bleys said. He did not bother to tell the man that the situation had changed completely.
Within thirty minutes a call was patched through to Bleys in the lounge, and he found himself looking at a woman in a pink coverall, who identified herself as Nonne, the Recordist for Mara.
Nonne was black-haired, with a fine-boned face that suggested, despite the lack of scale in the comm screen, that she was small. But her voice was a calm, assured contralto that betrayed neither surprise at Bleys' presence nor indignation over his self-invitation to the meeting.
"We've been told you wish to speak to someone about the upcoming meeting, Bleys Ahrens," she said, without preamble.
"Yes," Bleys said. "It's my understanding that Hal Mayne will be addressing your gathering, and I felt it might be beneficial to all if I were allowed to present my own views."
"We are always willing to listen," the Recordist said, her tone clinical and neutral.
"When and where shall I appear, then?"
"A shuttle will be dispatched for you, that will take you to whatever site is used," Nonne said. She shrugged. "The time is not yet fixed—we await Hal Mayne's return."
He's off-planet, then Bleys told himself. But he made no comment on that subject to the Exotic on his screen.
"I'll wait, then," he said. "But please keep me advised, won't you? Oh! By the way: could you tell me the purpose of the meeting?"
"Why, the future," Nonne said. "Didn't you know?" There was something in her voice that made Bleys keep his silence.