"No other" would mean that there was nothing required other than one of the versions of ordinary keys to open the door. This was remarkably light security, but on the other hand, Dahno had been probably counting on its isolated position to protect it, more than anything else.
From a ring of key blanks Bleys selected a number 4 key blank, and slid it into a slot on one side of the sensor itself—which was barely large enough to take it. There was a moment's wait; and then the former blank came out a slot on the far side of the sensor, cut into key shape.
He took it. It was a little warm in his fingers but not uncomfortably so. He found the lock slot of the door, pressed the key and turned the handle below it. The door swung silently open. He withdrew the key and stepped inside, closing the door as silently behind him.
Within there was nothing much more than a night light, but with his lenses this made it as bright as he could wish. He seemed to have stepped into a place of lockers and shower rooms. He went through them, found some stairs and mounted them, setting his sensors as he went for any information on people nearby or approaching.
It was, however, remarkably quiet. He climbed several levels and explored several corridors, looking into lounges, recreation rooms, one practice firing range, an indoor swimming pool; and then up to another story where the rooms were obviously bedrooms. It was exactly the sort of place in which a group such as he believed Dahno to have would be set up, with all that was needed to train and keep them; but there was a remarkable emptiness to the place. No one seemed to be around.
The unusual makes anyone wary; and in this case Bleys was doubly so. He continued his explorations and accumulated evidence that proved this was the home of a corps of anywhere from thirty to a hundred men devoted to physical training and training in combat, with or without arms. He ran into no sign of life, however, until he approached one end of the building and his sensor alerted him to a large gathering of people up ahead.
He went more slowly and carefully. After a while, he could hear chanting. A little farther and he was able to understand it. It was simply two words repeated in unison over and over again.
"Dahno Ahrens, Dahno Ahrens, Dahno Ahrens ..."
The chanting was from the floor below, he realized, now that he was almost on top of it. Instead of going down there, he searched around the floor he was on for some entry that might let him into a higher level of the room in which all these people were gathered and chanting where he could observe without being observed.
He found it with remarkably little difficulty. It was a door without even a lock on it, and it let him into a small gallery—the kind of a gallery that might have held a choir at a religious service.
In fact, the choir stalls image was a good one, he decided. He moved forward past several rows of fixed wooden seats to a balcony from which he could look down on a floor where a good fifty individuals, robed in black, were apparently squatting on their knees and chanting in unison; with one individual up on a slight stage at the far end of the room, who also squatted in his black robe, facing them. Behind the single individual was a wall with a large, three-dimensional image of Dahno—ordinarily dressed, but seated like Buddha—smiling down on them.
The walls, the arched ceiling of the room and the floor, as far as Bleys could make out, were of highly polished wood, and the acoustics were excellent. He could almost make out individual voices from those who chanted.
Observing them, he came to the conclusion they were in something like a hysteric trance. The room itself was like nothing so much as a chapel, except that there were no signs of what type of worship was involved, unless it was worship of Dahno himself—which to a great extent it resembled.
Bleys went quietly out again and set about finding his way back outside. On the way he stumbled across a door which opened into what was obviously their armory. Not only void pistols but needle guns, power pistols and—surprisingly, for they were effective only under very specialized conditions— power rifles. Like the pistols, they were devastating, but then-range was relatively short. Still, they had a tremendous potential for destruction at short range.
Bleys finally found a way out. Once he had gotten outside he discovered his exit had been through the main entrance to the building. Over the wide double doors were carved the words:
lsonian Prayer and Retreat Center
The word "Isonian" rang with no familiarity in Bleys' mind, and he knew his own vocabulary to be extremely extensive. He suspected it of being a made-up word.
Certainly, what was inside was not a prayer and retreat establishment. He went down the steps and around the building again until he came to the small door by which he had entered originally; and, following the directions of his sensors, retraced his steps.
He passed the dogs, which were just beginning to come out of their bewilderment and lift their heads from the grass, but were still in no condition to be a threat to anyone. He continued to the wall, then up and over it where the mirror-blanket waited for him; took the blanket off from the far side, returned to his hovercar, and drove to the airport.
On the very verge of flying back to Ecumeny that night, Bleys changed his mind. He made some inquiries at the all-night desk of the terminal, and followed the directions he was given to a very good hotel in Moseville—one that could have held its head up with the better hotels of Ecumeny.
The next morning he went out after breakfast, stopped in front of the gates, pressed the annunciator button and spoke to the face that appeared on the screen.
"I'm Bleys Ahrens," he said, "Dahno's brother and second in command. Let me in."
He had guessed they would react more promptly and compliantly to something that was almost a command, man to any kind of a polite request. It was so. Within seconds the-gates swung open for him and he drove up the winding driveway to park in front of the doorway by which he had left the building the night before.
The two doors, of what he now saw to be a dark wood, highly polished to bring out its grain, were opened for him as he walked up the steps. Inside, on each door, was a young man wearing the same black robes he had seen on those in the chapel the night before.
Bleys was wearing his ordinary, everyday business clothing. As he stepped inside, the man on the right-hand door bowed slightly, with his head only and spoke.
"The Kennel-Master," he said, "will be honored to see you in his office, Bleys Ahrens."
They were in small, dark wood-paneled lobby. The man who had just spoken crossed it in front of Bleys and opened another black door to his left. Bleys walked past him and inside the room beyond. The door softly closed behind him.
A man in his late thirties or early forties with a lean, brown-eyed face that spoke of high physical conditioning, and wearing a robe like those of the two who had greeted Bleys at the door, came out from behind his desk. He inclined his head slightly in a bow to Bleys.
"Honored to meet you, Bleys Ahrens," he said. "Shall we sit down?"
His arm indicated a couple of over-stuffed chairs half-facing each other and half-facing a fireplace in which some aromatic logs were burning. "My name is Ahram Moro."
"Thank you, Ahram Moro," said Bleys. He took one of the chairs and Ahram took the other.
"I assume you've been fully briefed on what my appearance here means?" Bleys said.
Once more Ahram inclined his head slightly.
"We received instructions early from Dahno Ahrens that if you appeared, you would be for the moment in authority over us, as Dahno would be. We were not to inquire as to the reasons for this, or anything else about it, but simply accept you as our leader. We are proud to do so. What can I do for you, Bleys Ahrens? Would you like a drink? Something to eat?"
"Neither," said Bleys, "my time here is necessarily short. I want to see your files."
"Of course," said Ahram; "which files in particular?"
"All of them," answered Bleys.
Ahram's face showed a faint puzzlement.
"Forgive me, Bleys Ahrens," he
said, "but you just now said your time was short—"
"It is," Bleys interrupted him; "nonetheless I want all the files brought to me."
"As you wish, it shall be done," said Ahram. He pressed a stud in the control pad among the padding of the right arm of his chair, and spoke to whatever sensor there was equipped to pick up his voice.
"Bring in all our files, also a reading table for Bleys Ahrens," he said, and turned back to Bleys. "They'll be here in just a few minutes. It'll take a little time to get them all together and bring them in. Meanwhile, are you sure you won't have something to eat or drink?"
It probably would do no harm to unbend a little at this point, thought Bleys. They could have hardly behaved more obediently and agreeably.
"Yes, I might as well have a drink, while I'm waiting," said Bleys, "if you'll have one with me, of course."
"I'd be honored, Bleys Ahrens," said Ahram. He got to his feet and opened the door of a large wooden cabinet, jammed with bottles and glasses. "Would you prefer beer or something distilled?"
"Beer will be fine," said Bleys.
Ahram selected two tall tumblers, and filled them from a tap with a dark brown liquid giving a surprisingly white, thick head. He took one to Bleys and sat down with one himself.
"This particular brew was Dahno Ahrens' favorite," he said to Bleys, "I hope you like it as well."
Bleys had already lightly tasted what was in his glass.
"It's fine," he said. He put the filled glass aside on a table near his chair as the door behind him opened and a cart wheeled in, bearing a screen and control board with a memory unit attached. A small square table that fitted comfortably across the thick arms of his chair followed and the memory unit was placed before him and turned on.
"Thank you," said Bleys to the young men who had brought it. They bowed their heads and backed out, closing the door behind them.
Bleys checked the control board, and it had its buttons and studs in standard position. He began to work through the files, not category by category, but simply alphabetically, file by file, flashing the equivalent of a page on the screen, reading it at a glance, and passing on to the next. Ahram watched him for some little time.
"Forgive an impertinent question, Bleys Ahrens," he said,
"but are you merely looking for something or are you actually reading parts of those pages?"
"I'm reading the complete page in each case," answered Bleys without looking at him.
Ahram sat silently after that, merely watching as Bleys went through the total extent of the files. He finished his first glass but did not refill it. Bleys' glass continued to sit, practically untouched, where he had left it.
The files, not extensive in Bleys' experience, took him a little over an hour to go through. When he was done he got to his feet and Ahram rose immediately with him.
"Now, what else can I do for you, Bleys Ahrens?" Ahram asked. "Would you like to see our men in competition? As Dahno has possibly told you we have here the finest body of modern ninjas—"
He broke off.
"You recognize the name?" he said. "The original ninjas were assassins."
"I know," said Bleys, dryly. He was about to refuse, when it struck him that there might be some knowledge to be picked up here that he could be overlooking.
"Yes," he said, "but merely a sample of their unarmed combat and a sample of them with the weapons, plus watching some fifteen or twenty of them run an exercise course, will have to do. As I may have said earlier, I don't have a great deal of time. I need to get back to the airport."
"Whatever you wish, Bleys Ahrens," said Ahram. "If you'll come with me?"
He led the way out and Bleys followed him. Ahram went on a little bit ahead when they came to a room that apparently housed the leaders of groups or divisions within the general body of the Hounds. He spoke briefly to these leaders and then came back to join Bleys.
"If you'll follow me," he said, "the unarmed exercise can be set up quickest."
CHAPTER 31
Bleys sat back with the atmosphere craft on autopilot, on the flight back to Ecumeny. The files he had just looked at and stored in his mind had not yet claimed his attention. He was still thinking of what he had seen in the demonstrations of the Hounds in practice.
On the surface, the young men were quite good. But after watching the first couple in action against each other, he began to suspect something, which was confirmed by the next two pairs he saw. Eventually he asked Ahram's permission to step onto the mat with one of the ones who had just finished demonstrating, and Ahram of course gave it. He knew the katas they were working with; they were the same ultimately-derived karate-type katas his earliest instructor had taught. Bleys entered into competition, and after a few moments, more or less because he assumed it was expected of him, he finished things by stretching the other man breathless on the mat, and stepped off himself.
"Thank you," he said to Ahram, "that was exactly what I wanted."
Looking into the eyes of Ahram, he could see that not even the leader had picked up on what had disturbed Bleys.
He said nothing more, accordingly, as they went on to the weapons demonstration. Again, he said nothing during the section in which a small group of them ran one of the exercise courses before his eyes.
Done with these demonstrations, he thanked Ahram; and accepted a driver to take him back to the airport. Meanwhile, two of the other members, both of them dressed in ordinary clothes for stepping outside the precincts of their own private area, took his rented car back to where he had picked it up.
Now, he sat thoughtfully with the session in his mind. What had leaped to his eye in the encounter of the first two demonstrating their unarmed martial art, was that they fought strictly at a fixed distance and in a straight line.
When he had stepped onto the mat, consequently, he had made a point of circling and either standing back beyond the distance to which they were accustomed, or moving inside it. Once he had done either of these things, he found them close to helpless and at his mercy.
What all this added up to was that they would be very successful against someone who fought under the same limitations that they had learned and imposed upon themselves. They might also be successful against someone who knew nothing at all of the unarmed martial arts. But they would be essentially useless in attacking anyone who was skilled outside the field of their training.
Later on, watching the weapons-use demonstration, he had found the same dangerous sort of limitations. A great many of them handled their weapons more by rote, than from the standpoint of having the kind of almost family-like familiarity with their weapon that a good, a really good, handler of that weapon would have had. Against a self-trained rifleman for example, who had spent his growing up years like Joshua, teaching himself how to use a needle gun to get small game, they could not hope to compete.
Finally, over the exercise course, he had seen them clearing each barrier the same way, all running in the same pattern. If this was ordinary competition with competitors a long distance apart, extreme individualism would have been shown in the way they acted.
In short, against someone who was an all-around athlete— self-trained or otherwise—but who thought as an athlete and who reacted instinctively as an athlete, they would be at a remarkable disadvantage. The thoroughly-seasoned, fully self-trained athlete would notice their weaknesses at once, and exploit them.
Well, thought Bleys, at any rate it probably did not matter. Barring the unexpected, he would be seeing that neither during Dahno's absence, nor eventually, would they be used. He put that element of the Hounds out of his mind and began to run through his memory and examine the files he had read.
The history of the Hounds ran back a little less than eleven years. That would be some five years after Dahno had left the farm and gone to live and find his own occupation in Ecumeny. Individual Hounds had been recruited when they were ten to twelve years old—an unlikely thing to happen on almost any of the settled worlds no
wadays, but oddly enough not on Harmony or Association, where over-large families and undersized or non-productive farms often caused those who considered themselves old enough to strike off on their own, usually with family and community approval.
These young Friendlies, Bleys told himself, would have been particularly susceptible to being attracted and captured by the sort of organization that Dahno's Hounds offered. It had, obviously, its aspect of near-religion, in its concentration on the person of Dahno himself; and Dahno, in person, had undoubtedly been able to reinforce that by visits to these youngsters; and by doing what he could do so well, which was win them as friends and supporters.
It was in the setup for their training, including their instructors and all else, that Dahno had made his most serious error.
Uninterested in martial arts and weapons himself because of the natural advantage of his unusual size and strength—and in fact, very probably having enough of an inheritance from his and Bleys' Exotic mother, of feeling against the use of force, he had accepted too readily the first form of training organization he discovered; and the first teachers and trainers who had presented themselves for his use in educating the Hounds.
If he had studied across a spectrum of a number of schools of unarmed combat, and an equal spectrum of weapon types and uses, as Bleys had deliberately done, he would have seen what was lacking in the training they had been given.
Happily, as Bleys had suspected, and the files had confirmed, the Hounds had never been used. They had, however, been trained in one respect that made them dangerous; and had absorbed it well.
This was the same kind of training that was more often used with guard dogs. They were given the impression that they could never lose. That they would always win. The files, now that Bleys could read them, reflected a few occasions on which the Hounds had been secretly turned loose in situations in Moseville where they could encounter physically someone who was either untrained, or whose training was not equal to matching them in the area they worked.