"Maybe," said Bleys, "on the other hand—maybe not. You see, I don't really know these enemies you tell me about exist. The people who might come after me, who'd kidnap me, or whatever you were referring to, may be just your own people, putting pressure on me to get me back in line. Perhaps, if I'm not with you, you're safer off with me dead. Could that be so—Big Brother?"
"Ah," said Dahno softly, and once more sadly, "the milk-teeth have begun to fall out."
His face became very serious indeed.
"Bleys," he said, slowly and with emphasis, "I don't know whether it would be safe for me with you alive and not working with me."
"Explain," said Bleys.
"Because it depends on you," Dahno said. "Would you take it into your head to become a threat to me? Would I get in the way eventually of whatever you were doing on your own? The possibility of both things are there. That's why I don't know. But I do know that the safe way is for us to stay together, and keep working together. I think you need me."
"I do need you," said Bleys; and the back of his mind held an entirely different meaning to those words than the one he knew he was giving Dahno. "The trouble is, that doesn't change things. Even if everything you've said to me is true, it doesn't change things. I've outgrown being a pawn of yours. If I'm to be a partner, it's time that I started being admitted to the inner rooms of what's going on. Otherwise, I'm going to have to assume there's no real partnership there. I'll have to assume you're planning to use me for a pawn all my life. 1 can't live like that, Dahno."
Their eyes met.
"Believe me," said Bleys, "I can't live like that. You know I can't, being who and what I am." Dahno sighed, a little bitterly.
"You're remembering our mother," he said. "Please don't. I told you I'm not her. As I told you, if nothing else I want something much greater than she ever wanted, but while I can open things up a little bit for you I can't, I daren't for my own safety, let you know everything that I'm doing right now. If I can see—if I know—what you said just now I had to know, then you have to see and know that. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll tell you my goal for you is to be my right-hand man."
He paused, waiting for Bleys to speak. But Bleys stayed silent.
"Of course," he said, "you won't have as large a share as I will. No one ever will. But you'll have the next largest share after me. Now that's as much as I can tell you. For the rest, what I said in the first place is still true. What I'm doing, how I'm doing it, are things you're going to have to find out for yourself. Then come and tell me if you want any part of it as my right-hand man. Will that do you?"
Bleys sat in silence for a moment, turning his brother's words over.
"For now, anyway," he answered finally, "all right."
One of the huge hands was extended toward him. Bleys took it in his own narrow, long fingers.
For a moment their grasp held firmly, and a current of truth and real feeling ran between them that Bleys could feel. Then the grip broke, the feeling was gone; and the arms fell apart.
"Now!" Dahno stood up, his voice brisk, and the smile back on his face. "As I said some minutes back, let's" get to the business of introducing you to what you're going to be doing from now on."
CHAPTER 17
The visitors' gallery of the Room of Speakers, that assemblage of concentric arcs of desks mounting, amphitheater style, from the center of the room which was the center also of the government of the world of Association, was not open to ordinary visitors.
Bleys had seen Dahno pin a green and white badge on his jacket as they came down the corridor toward the gallery's entrance; and after doing this he handed a similar badge to Bleys.
"Stick it to your jacket where I did," Dahno said.
Bleys complied. By the time he had it hooked they were at the entrance, guarded by a black-uniformed, military-looking guard with a power pistol in an open holster at his side. This man smiled genially at Dahno as the two came up; but frowned at Bleys and raised a hand palm outward in front of him, stepping in front of him to examine his badge closely.
Dahno and Bleys both stopped.
"My partner in the firm," said Dahno, "also my younger brother. Tom, I'd like to have you meet Bleys Ahrens."
The guard dropped his hand.
"You're welcome to the visitors' gallery, Bleys Ahrens," he said.
It was an answer, Bleys noticed, that avoided both the "honored . . ." salutation common on the worlds generally on any formal occasion, and at the same time skirted any of the special forms of address used by the various churches.
"Thank you," said Dahno before Bleys could answer, smiling genially at the guard. He and Bleys went inside to the gallery.
"Never forget the little people," Dahno said to Bleys softly, as they left the guard behind, "they can be useful when you want an exception to a rule."
At the moment the gallery seemed empty of other watchers. There were a dozen rows of seats, capable of holding perhaps fifty observers, ranked in three tiers down to the balcony edge itself, and split by an aisle. Dahno descended the aisle just ahead of Bleys, and stepped into a seat in the front row, to his left. He sat down, and gestured to Bleys to take the seat beside him, which Bleys did.
The balcony before them was low enough so that they could see most of the space below, with its semicircle of desks for the representatives elected to the chamber. The walls were of dark stone, mounting to a high-domed inner ceiling, also of the same stone; the lighting was below the level of the balcony around the room and mainly directed downward for the use of the representatives.
The color of the dark stone drank up that light; and this, together with the somber blacks and grays of the representatives' clothes, gave the whole place a cave-like appearance, as if it had been some chamber hollowed out of rock.
At the flat end where the semicircles of seats ceased, there was a raised dais and a pulpit in which a speaker could stand with straight lines of other seats behind it arranged in two ranks. There was space for perhaps twenty-four people behind whoever was speaking.
Only one of the seats there was occupied right now, by a man who sat rather carelessly in one of the places off to the left of the speaker, with his legs crossed and no desk surface raised in front of him. He seemed more a casual watcher, than a member of the assembly itself. This puzzled Bleys, since the assembly appeared fairly full of people listening to the speaker currently in the pulpit.
"Someday," said Dahno, "I'll probably be sending you here to listen to the debates.and votes on some propositions. That's the Chief Speaker with his legs crossed, sitting behind the speaker who's talking now. The Chief Speaker's name is Shin Lee. He polled enough votes in our last election to have taken the title of Eldest from the chief representative on Harmony; but until Harmony has another election, he remains simply Chief Speaker. His church is The Repentance Church."
"How much power has he, compared to the rest of them?" asked Bleys, fascinated by the whole situation—the cave-like chamber, the empty seats behind the pulpit and full ones before it, and the odd names.
"Less, in some ways, officially," said Dahno; "he can cast a tie-breaking vote, but otherwise he's got no vote at all. On the other hand, outside this chamber he has enormous power. He controls the militia and the governmental apparatus all over the world, plus having the right to step in on any deadlocked dispute within one of the other churches, or between churches, and cast a deciding vote. But his great advantage is his prestige. He's responsible, ultimately responsible, for defense of this planet; and if he ever acquires the title of Eldest, he'll be responsible for the defense of both planets."
Bleys took his eyes momentarily off the scene below, to look at Dahno.
"Why," he said, "nobody's ever attacked a whole world, let alone two of them, since Donal Graeme attacked Newton—and that was—it must be nearly a hundred years ago."
"1 know," said Dahno, without taking his gaze from the scene below, "but whoever is Eldest still has the power, just the same. He can
also legislate, or even initiate legislation for both planets' chambers to consider. Watch what's going on."
Bleys looked back down into the room of speakers.
"The one talking right now," Dahno said, "is Svarnam Helt.
What he's saying isn't too important. It's a speech he makes every so often." He keyed the control panel on the top rail of the balcony before each of the seats, and the voice of the speaker came clearly to their ears.
"—And these temples must be cleansed. They must be cleansed now—"
"No point in listening to all of it," said Dahno, "it's a piece of general legislation, designed to deliberately attack a couple of the churches that his church doesn't like—a lot. The measure he's proposing'll go nowhere. Otherwise, though, Helt swings a lot of weight, politically. He's consulted me from time to time. In fact, probably most of the rank and file Speakers here have, one time or another. You won't remember them from my table at the restaurant, because they don't like to be seen talking to me in public—"
Bleys stored that particular, last piece of information for future use.
"—But a lot of them consult," Dahno was going on, "and a lot of them are important. Now, if you'll look over near the end of the eighth row up, there's a man with reddish-gray hair,- a rather full, red beard, and wearing a turban, seated near the end of the row. That's Harold Harold, of the Church of the Understanding. He's powerful. So is the woman you saw at my consulting restaurant, that time, sitting in the seat beyond the empty seat to Harold's right ..."
Dahno went on identifying various members of the chamber, and telling Bleys what churches they represented.
Bleys sat, absorbing the information Dahno was giving him and storing it away. This was the first time that his brother had made any move that resembled directly helping Bleys to understand what the other did.
Instinctively, Bleys felt the importance of everything being said to him. Even if he never had anything to do with the particular person being identified, knowing would help to fill in the matrix of understanding he was gradually building about his older half-brother.
"Which ones are the Five Sisters?" Bleys asked, when Dahno at last stopped talking.
Dahno looked at him curiously.
"That's stuck in your memory, has it?" Dahno said. "Well, outside of the woman I just pointed out, they aren't all five together here, all the time, like a matched set of spoons. But there's one of them down there now, if you'll look in almost the very back row, over to the right, the man wearing a business suit with a bald head and large, bushy beard that looks completely white from here but is actually sort of gray going on white. That's Brother Williams of the Faithful Church. The only time you'll see all five together will be when a particularly important bit of lawmaking is going on in which they're all united, strongly trying to swing the room to vote the way they want."
Bleys searched that part of the floor below, squinting his eyes against the way the lighting was set up, and finally identified the man that Dahno was talking about. He would have gone on to ask more questions, but at that moment somebody else walked down the gallery aisle, looking at them, and moved over into the tier of seats across the aisle from them to its very end.
"We better get going," said Dahno, in a low voice.
They got up and went out. Outside, the corridor that led to the visitors' gallery was of the same dark stone, but less oddly lit than the gallery and the room itself had been, so that it seemed almost like an ordinary corridor anywhere. Right now it was empty; except for one short, rather fat man who was passing just as they came out. They had only taken half a dozen steps when a voice behind them called out.
"Ahrens! You there! Just a minute! 1 want a word with you!"
Dahno sighed a little under his breath and turned. Bleys turned with him. Approaching them was the rather plump man who had just passed them in the corridor. He was wearing something between a kilt and a skirt, below which his puffy knees looked ridiculous. A regular shirt and jacket clothed his upper body. And on his head he wore a black beret. Red hair peeped out in untidy swatches from around the edges of the beret.
When Dahno and Bleys turned, they stood where they were
and the man walked back up to them. He ignored Bleys and spoke directly and fiercely to Dahno.
"You shouldn't even be in this building!" the man snapped.
Close up, Bleys saw that it was his extra weight that had made him look no more than middle age. Actually, he must be at least high in his fifties or even older.
"It's just a matter of time! We'll get you ruled out of here!"
"I'm sorry I'm in the way," said Dahno.
"You're not sorry at all. You're one of God's outcasts and incapable of feeling sorry!" retorted the fat man. His gaze switched suddenly to Bleys.
"Who's this?"
"My brother, Bleys Ahrens. And partner," said Dahno.
"He'll be kept out too! Anyone connected with you or knows you, shouldn't be here!"
He turned about and stamped off once more in the direction in which he had been headed when they had emerged from the gallery.
Dahno looked down at. Bleys and smiled a little.
"A few enemies are inevitable," he said softly. "Now, we'll swing by the office; and I'll see what's going on there."
So they went to Dahno's office. It was the first time Bleys had been in the place since that long-ago first long weekend with Dahno. But it was as if he had stepped out only five minutes before. The same two women were at the same two desks working through reams of paper, reading them, making notes and dropping the pieces of paper they had read, which Bleys now saw were message transcripts, into a flare box beside their desks, so that they were instantly converted to ash.
Dahno led the way toward the further door to his interior office, but Bleys turned abruptly, walked over to the nearest desk and began examining the pile of so-far unread messages there.
"Dahno Ahrens!" shouted the woman behind the desk, reaching out to cover the two piles with her hands.
Bleys looked over at Dahno, who smiled a little wickedly.
"That's all right, Aran"," he said, "this is my half-brother and partner, remember? Let him look."
Reluctantly, and still looking shocked, the woman withdrew her hands from the piles of messages. Intrigued, Bleys paged through them. They were all in code. He studied every one he came to for a moment. Then he let go, nodded and smiled at Arah, and went back to Dahno, who led him into the further office.
Dahno sat down behind the large desk which was now piled with neat stacks of paper, nowhere near as high or as loose as the ones on the desks of the two women outside. Bleys took one of the overstuffed armchairs.
"Be with you in a moment," said Dahno.
Bleys watched as Dahno rapidly read through the stacks of paper on his desk. Dahno did not read, Bleys noticed, quite as quickly as he himself did—but then the material might be something that required more minute attention. Dahno sat back and punched a button on his desk control pad.
"All right," he said, "you can come in and collect everything now, Arah."
The woman who had been behind the desk where Bleys had examined the pictures came in and gathered up the papers from Dahno's desk. She gave Bleys a tentative smile, and carried the papers out. Dahno rose.
"And now," he said to Bleys, "I want to get you enrolled with the rest of my executives-in-training."
He led the way out as he had led it in. In the white hovercar they moved through the streets again, streets now beginning to fill with traffic as the afternoon grew late, and drove until they came to a place that Bleys remembered—the apartment building in the rather run-down district.
This time there were none of the trainees in the front room relaxing, with drinks or otherwise. Dahno led the way on through and they came at last on the inhabitants of this place in the gym, clearly undergoing martial arts training under the eye of a brown, quiet man about five feet nine or ten, who in spite of his unremarkable size radiated a remarka
ble air of physical competence.
"Sit down," Dahno said to Bleys, himself taking a seat in the first tier of benches against the wall. Bleys sat down beside him.
They sat for a short while, watching. Bleys had had brief periods of instruction from various instructors, in combative sports, Earth-traditional martial arts, and combat systems that had grown up on several worlds. If the ongoing session was typical, the instruction here tended toward Earth-traditional systems. Right at the moment, the students were practicing one of the more basic judo hip throws, while the instructor walked among them offering encouragement or criticism or demonstrating some fine detail that defied verbal explanation. Bleys couldn't recall the name of the technique, if he had ever known it.
After a few moments, the instructor clapped his hands and the students separated and lined up along the edge of the practice surface.
"Randori. Fifteen minutes. Hajimer
So, thought Bleys, remembering the judo training he had had while still with his mother. This sensei was a traditionalist. Old-Earth Japanese.
The students paired off and began their free-exercise session. Bleys liked this aspect of the training less. From the one or two vid-tapes he had seen, he suspected that the exacting discipline of the formal kata led to deeper understanding and mastery: There was a beauty to a kata, properly done, like the beauty he had found in a mathematical proof.
The instructor detached himself from the class and walked over to where Dahno and Bleys were.
Dahno had risen to his feet as the other approached and Bleys followed his example. As the instructor came up to stop before them, Dahno inclined his head briefly and the instructor did the same. Bleys, aware at least of this much of ordinary dojo courtesy, bent his own head more deeply.
"Sensei," Dahno said, "this is my brother, Bleys Ahrens. I would appreciate his being trained up to the level of these others, or beyond if he wishes."
The dark brown eyes of the sensei turned on Bleys.