"Sit," he said to Bleys. Bleys did so and Joshua went back and retook his own chair, draping the harness over his knees and picking up the awl and the heavily threaded needle he had been using to make holes and sew on a place that needed mending in the leather of the harness. Like Henry, he continued working as they talked. With anyone else, this would have
seemed like a disturbing element to Bleys. But he knew that the two of them had to use every available hour to get all the work done on the farm; and he remembered them this way, always busy, even in the evenings. Here, it was a comfortable, almost a homey thing to sit with them, so occupied.
"You've been off-planet?" Henry asked, without looking up from his papers.
"Yes," said Bleys. He was finding the chair more comfortable than he had expected—not surprising since it had been built for Dahno; and for the past few months, Bleys had been sitting in furniture that was scaled for people a good deal shorter than himself. "I've been on all the worlds where there're extensions of Dahno's organization."
"But not on Ceta?" said Henry, still not raising his head.
"No," Bleys lied, "not on Ceta."
Henry did not say anything and Joshua stepped into the gap in the conversation.
"What were these other worlds like, Bleys?" he asked. It was not just an idle question. Joshua was interested.
Bleys smiled.
"The cities were pretty much all like Ecumeny. The people—the people were pretty much like the people who live in Ecumeny here, when you got right down to it. The same things, business and politics went on."
"Still, it must have been an interesting trip," said Joshua; and there was—for him—almost a wistful note in his voice.
"It wasn't uninteresting," said Bleys, "but nothing I ran into was mind-shaking. You haven't missed a lot by not seeing the places I saw."
"Our work is here, Joshua," said Henry.
"Yes, I know, Father," answered Joshua; in just the same way that Bleys could remember him answering many times when he had lived with them.
It was taken for granted that Bleys would stay the night at least; and hopefully for several days and nights. Joshua had torn out Bleys' old bunk in the boys' room, which in any case would have been too small for Bleys nowadays, and replaced it with a bedframe also made for Dahno, with a couple of mattresses.
This bed had been left in place, in hopes that Bleys would come by soon. So he found himself, after all, at what was now for him the relatively early hour of nine o'clock at night, going to bed in the same room across from Joshua, just as he had when they were boys.
The next day and the next, during the daylight hours, he was out with the two of them working at one thing or another. The alternative to doing so would have been to sit in the farmhouse alone by himself, which was foolish as well as uncomfortable—since he had never taken to killing time very well.
He began by working mostly alongside Joshua. As they worked, Joshua filled him in on many things previously unmentioned, from the years between the time when he had left the farm and the present; and even ventured a few opinions about his father.
"Father would never speak of it," he said, "and as far as he can he'll never show it; but the loss of Will on top of the loss of Mother some years back has lefthim feeling very alone."
They were mending one of the fences by stringing new wire.
"That's one of the reasons I've hesitated to go ahead and get married," he went on. "Right now this is still his farm. If I bring in a wife and eventually we have a family, little by little he'll feel that he's being pushed into the background, into the chimney corner. I hate to do that to him. On the other hand, RuUt—I can't ask her to wait indefinitely."
"Ruth?" asked Bleys.
Joshua stapled a top strand of wire to the fence post, nodding at the stretcher in Bleys' bands. "Take a strain on that."
Bleys' large hands closed the jaws of the stretcher on the wire, pivoting the tool's head against the fence post to draw the wire taut. Joshua drove a second staple, fastening it with the maximum degree of tightness and, using the puller, lifted the staple he had put in originally. They walked on down to the next post.
"Ruth Mclntyre," Joshua said, "you'd remember her from school here—no, that's right, you didn't go to our local school. In any case she'd have been a little bit older than you and you probably wouldn't have seen much of her. But you must remember the family of the Mclntyres." "Yes," said Bleys, "I do."
He tried to summon up the picture of the Ruth whom Joshua was talking about, but no memory would come. If he had seen her, it would have been on a Sunday, at the time of the church service to which every family went.
"Tell me what she looks like," Bleys said.
"Oh, she's tall, almost as tall as I am, with very black hair and sort of a round face," said Joshua. "I think I love her, Bleys."
"Perhaps you should get married, then, in spite of Uncle Henry. I know if you asked him, he'd be the first to tell you to do that."
"That's why I've got no intention of asking him," said Joshua, "at least not for a while yet."
"Perhaps, I—" Bleys was beginning. Joshua shook his head and stopped him in mid-sentence.
"I'll handle it myself when the time comes," he said.
They talked about the weather, the animals, farm prices and other things. Then, there were other times, in which he found himself working with Henry, usually in construction, since Henry was enlarging the barn that held his herd of goats, intending to add numbers to the herd itself Henry, by contrast, talked about the work and about a number of day-by-day things of merely passing importance. It was nottmtil the third day that he paused after finishing a part of the roofing and, having come down the ladder and wiped his brow, looked squarely at Bleys.
"Will thought a lot of you, Bleys," he said.
"I know," said Bleys, "he told me so." It occurred to him that perhaps this was the ideal time. He reached in his pocket for the letter Will had sent him from Ceta. "He said so in the last letter he wrote me. Would you like to read it?"
"If it's not an intrusion on your private correspondence, or Will's—" Henry said. But his eyes were fixed almost yearningly on the letter.
Bleys passed it over. Henry took it and read it, standing there. Clearly, he read it several times before at last he reverently folded it and held it out once again to Bleys.
"Why don't you keep it?" said Bleys. "This was Will's home and the rest of his things are here. This last letter probably should be with them."
Henry shook his head.
"It was a letter he wrote you," he said. "If you want to keep it, that's your decision."
"Be sure I will," said Bleys, reluctantly taking it. "If you ever change your mind and want it back—"
"No, the matter's settled," said Henry, picking up a new roll of roofing material and beginning to climb the ladder again. Later on that afternoon, however, Joshua managed to get Bleys alone.
"Showing Father that letter," said Joshua, "was the best thing you could have done. He reads it to mean that Will found solace in the Lord before his death. You've no idea how that thought comforts him. Could I also see the letter?"
"Of course!" said Bleys, pulling it out of a pocket and passing it to him. "I should've thought of showing it to you right away. I tried to make your father take it to keep it here; but he wouldn't hear of it."
"I know," said Joshua, reading the letter as hungrily as his father had done, "he told me not to let you give it to me, either."
He interrupted his reading to look up at Bleys.
"But if you're willing to, I'll take it," Joshua said. "Later on, he'll be glad I did, no matter what he says to me about it."
A few hours later, that afternoon, a message came from the store via one of the local people passing by, that Dahno had phoned for Bleys. Bleys took his hovercar down to the store. It was faster than taking the goat-cart, although Henry offered it to him. He reversed the charges and got Dahno on the phone.
"Sorry to interrupt
your visit," said Dahno, "but I think it's time I had you here and heard from you about your trip. Have you got transportation?"
"Yes, I rented a hovercar," answered Bleys.
"If you'll come right away then," said Dahno, "we can talk over dinner. Henry and Joshua had to come first, but it's time you and I talked."
CHAPTER 27
Bleys had read an urgency into the phone call from Dahno. But now, sitting in a small, private restaurant with his half-brother, right after having left the farm and Henry and Joshua, the relaxed attitude of Dahno took Bleys back in memory to the days when he used to be brought into Ecumeny on visits.
Dahno was talking about everything under the sun, interesting talk, humorous talk, but about nothing important except the city and some of the goings-on in it; and only a few things that were a matter of business or politics, but none of them particularly important.
Bleys waited.
After they finished the main course of the meal, Dahno ordered and got another drink and sat back in the private quarter circle of padded booth in which they had eaten. Bleys suspected the restaurant of knowing Dahno well and catering to him, for as it also was in the large restaurant where he usually held court nights, the seat and seat-backs offered leg room not only for Dahno, but for himself.
"Now," said Dahno, "if you want to tell me about how your trip went . . .".
So, thought Bleys. The long comfortable beginning of the meeting was over.
"Absolutely," Bleys answered. "There may be a few surprises in it for you. If so, I'll appreciate your waiting until I'm done wim the whole story before we talk about it. All right?"
Dahno nodded.
"Just fine," he said, taking a large swallow from his drink, "charge ahead."
"You know, I went first to Freiland," said Bleys, "and the important man I saw there was Hammer Martin—"
"Good man, Hammer," said Dahno.
Bleys held up a finger in protest. Dahno nodded an apology and waved him on.
Bleys began the recital of everything that had happened to him on Freiland, not giving his deductions or conclusions as he went along, but simply making a bald account of events. He reported what he had said and done; and what Hammer had said.
However, when he came to his final, long heart-to-heart talk with Hammer, he gave this to Dahno word for word, quoting from his trained memory.
Dahno had ordered several more drinks and drunk them before Bleys had finished talking. His expression did not change as Bleys told about painting a future in which the Others would consist of all the qualified mixed-breeds.
In the face of Dahno's silence, he went on to describe going through Hammer's secret files; and what he found there; as well as what he deduced—and later told Hammer he would have to report to Dahno. At the same time he repeated his own recommendation that Hammer stay in place.
It was a bald recital. His telling was as poker-faced in its own way as the face of Dahno, opposite him; still perfectly relaxed, and with the glint of humor that was always there unless something had specifically happened to drive all humor from him.
Bleys continued his story to Cassida and Himandi, with the story still told just as it had happened. After that, he gave, his experiences on Ste. Marie, Ceta, New Earth, and finally Harmony. Only on Harmony, he told Dahno, were there no hidden files, no secret armed enforcers, kept by the head of the organization there himself. Kinkaka Goodfellow, the leader of the organization on Harmony, had followed the rules explicitly.
"But I told him the same thing about the mixed-breeds and the future," said Bleys calmly, "and came back here. Ordinarily, he's the one leader I'd recommend replacing. But the way matters work, Harmony's almost an extension of your own command, here on Association. It's a little too close—you could appear on his doorstep any time."
Dahno nodded.
"—And while none of them," Bleys went on, "at least to begin with, suspected I could ferret out what they were doing that had not been original orders; he suspected from the first that 1 was a sort of Inspector-General."
"Did he?" said Dahno, showing a first sign of surprise.
"Yes," said Bleys, "he went deliberately to work to show me that nothing was hidden. The only reason I say this might disqualify him would be that so much suspicion could stand in the way of his accepting the future I suggested for the Others—that I offered him, too."
Dahno nodded again, but this time with his expression unreadable.
"On the other hand," Bleys said, "I think, given time, he'd be able to see it. If he did, there'd be the great advantage that he'd probably adopt it with all his heart and soul. So, even him, I'd suggest we leave in place."
There was a moment of silence between them in the padded little enclosure around the table.
"You know," said Dahno, mildly after a moment, "you weren't sent out to do anything like this with all these people of ours. That paper I gave you was only supposed to make sure you had their cooperation. Not to use as a lever to threaten them with me, and make them take on a notion of all Others eventually ruling all the planets. I know I've talked about this to the trainees. But I thought you understood it was that—just talk."
"I did," answered Bleys levelly. "Mine wasn't. I think it's a perfectly desirable and reachable goal."
"Do you?" said Dahno. "Then I'll put off hearing your answer to what you thought we—and that means I—could possibly gain from it. Suppose you tell me, instead, what reasons you might have for believing in' a future like that. You've got to have realized, long ago, that my success and theirs depends on personal, one-on-one contact."
"That's why such a future's inevitable," said Bleys. "You're like anyone who succeeds in any field. The more success you have, the more work you make for yourself to do. In spite of sending outfits out to a number of the other planets, you and your organization here—but particularly you, yourself—long ago reached the point where you put in a good eighteen-hour day, seven days a week. That's why you're on-call by phone twenty-four hours a day. Being you, you're able to do it without seeming to be frantically busy. The flaw is—the other members aren't Dahnos. But isn't it a fact that what I've said about your schedule is right?"
"Mr. Vice-Chairman," said Dahno. He emptied his glass and pressed the stud on the table's control pad to order a refill. "You're right. I take it the implication is that I myself will soon have to take on extra help."
"Isn't that one of the reasons that you wanted me as your Senior Vice-Chairman?" asked Bleys. "You could see a long time back you were moving towards a time when there'd be too much to do. You wanted to be able to pass some of that off eventually, to at least one person you could trust?"
"Correct again, Mr. Vice-Chairman," said Dahno. The glass with his drink rose, brimming but steady, through the hole that opened before him on his table; then closed again, once the filled glass was at table level. Dahno watched it, as if it were some kind of clever performer.
"Still," he said, "the sort of growth you suggested in what you told the heads of the suborganizations; and—as I gather— convinced them of, is a little hard to swallow. I don't see it myself."
"I think you would if you had time to study the matter; the way I have, these last few years," answered Bleys. "You're unique. I could almost bet on you to convince an Exotic, which I think no one but another Exotic could do."
"No, not an Exotic," murmured Dahno, gazing at his full glass. "But go on."
"Take the time to study it," said Bleys. "I think you'll see, as a future, it's definitely there. All it needs is a conscious intention by you and me to have it."
"Wrong," said Dahno, lifting his eyes from the glass to look at Bleys, "you mean it's there to be acquired, but only I've got the ability to acquire it?"
"Yes," said Bleys, "but it would come faster—in our lifetimes—only if I'm there beside you."
Dahno chuckled good-heartedly.
"You wouldn't be my baby brother—let alone being Mr. Vice-Chairman now," he said to Bleys, "if I hadn't seen
that any attempt to make you useful at all would have to accept the fact that you'd become useful to the point of being someone I couldn't do without."
"But you don't see a reachable future, as I outlined it just now?" asked Bleys.
"No. No, I don't," answered Dahno. He emptied the glass before him in one large, easy swallow; and stretched his massive arms in a gargantuan gesture of relaxation. "I can imagine it, of course. But whether I'll agree to it, or not, I think that's something I'll need to think over."
"Can I ask how long you think it'll take to think about it, Mr. Chairman?" asked Bleys.
"I don't honestly know, Mr. Vice-Chairman," said Dahno. "Maybe overnight. Maybe, a matter of months. I'm not like one of the heads of the suborganizations you talked to. I've got to take what you suggest and put it against what I see as possible. I may even want to see whether events, over a little period of time, tend to confirm it or not."
He stretched again, enormously.
"Well," he said, "should we call it a dinner? I should be getting back to my regular restaurant table; and you'd probably like to go back to the apartment and make yourself comfortable."
"Could you give me a moment more?" asked Bleys. "Tell me, do you agree with me that the business of keeping a private group of gunmen, or whatever, of keeping secret files, and making other changes in the pattern of what they were set out to do, are things that ought to be corrected—as I told the heads of the suborganizations they should be?"
"Yes," said Dahno, "in that, I agree with you. Be sure to let me know as they clean up their acts."
"Just as soon as word comes," said Bleys. "Now—just one more question. Of these—call them errors—that our Vice-Chairmen fell into, are you guilty of any yourself?"
Dahno looked at him across the table. A grin on his face began and widened.
"Sly boots," he said.
"Perhaps," said Bleys, "but you haven't answered my question."