"Oh, you fools, you young fools!" Bleys said softly to them. "Look at me!"
Guiltily, their dog-like glances came back to him.
"The Maran"—Bleys pointed—"is harmless. His people taught him that violence—any violence—would cripple his thinking processes. And the Fanatic here is worth perhaps one gun. But you see that old man there?"
He pointed at the silent Dorsai.
"I wouldn't lock one of you, armed as you are, with him, unarmed, in an unlighted room, and give a second's hope to the chance of seeing you alive again."
He paused, as the Hounds' attitudes begged his forgiveness.
"Three of you cover the Commandant," Bleys said, finally sure of having made his point. "And the other two watch our religious friend here. I'll undertake to try to defend myself against the Exotic." He smiled, encouraging them to relax from the tension with his touch of humor.
The aim of the pistols shifted, leaving the Exotic uncovered. Bleys had looked back at the Friendly.
"You're not exactly a lovable sort of man, you know," he said.
The old man stood, the very picture of a Friendly; and that picture stirred in Bleys his old response from the years with Henry. His mind brought before him the image of Henry's solidness, of Gregg's bent-backed calmness.
The old man before him—Obadiah Testator, the library information had said—seemed the proverbial Fanatic. He was stick-thin, mere weathered black skin stretched over his bones, as if shrunken in death years ago to a leather-wrapped skull. But that skull seemed to be lit from the inside, and Bleys recognized that those fierce, hawk-like eyes were burning with a kind of joy.
Bleys stared back at the old man for a moment, once more. It had been the face of such a faith as this he had been unable, either to touch or understand. And the sure old eyes looked back at him, knowing that difference between them.
"Woe to you," the Friendly said, in utter calmness, "to you, Other Man, and all of your breed. And again I say, woe unto you!"
For a second Bleys continued to stare into those eyes. Then he shook himself, mentally. His gaze turned from the Friendly to one of the gunmen covering him.
"The boy?" Bleys asked.
"We looked ..." The answer was almost whispered. "He's nowhere . . . nowhere around the house."
Bleys turned abruptly to the Dorsai and the Exotic, feeling a need for quick action.
"If he was off the grounds one of you'd know it?"
"No. He . . ." The Exotic hesitated. "... might have gone for a hike, or a climb in the mountains ..."
Bleys focused himself on the eyes in that unlined face. He poured his energies into his eyes, seeking to capture the Exotic's attention and mold it into a state of light hypnosis from which perhaps he could get an answer.
"Now, that's foolish of you," said the Exotic, quietly, simply returning the gaze blandly. "Hypnotic dominance of any form needs at least the unconscious cooperation of the subject. And I am a Maran Exotic."
The truth in the words cut the legs out from under Bleys' effort; and as he realized that he had again lost control of the situation, alarm bells began to ring within him.
"There's something going on here . . ."he said, but found himself interrupted by the Exotic.
"All that's different," the Maran said, "is that you've been underestimating me. The unexpected, I think some general once said, is worth an army—"
—And he jumped across the few feet between them, at Bleys' throat.
The attack was a clumsy thing, made by an untrained body and mind. But it was the last thing Bleys had been expecting; and his mind, thrown off-balance by the last few minutes, stood by in a kind of paralysis even as his trained reflexes brushed the Exotic to one side.
At the same time one of the Hounds guarding the Friendly fired at the Exotic, sprawled on the terrace.
In that split second of distraction, the Friendly hurled himself—not at either of the gunmen guarding him, but at one of those covering the Dorsai.
The Dorsai himself had been in movement from the first fractional motion of the Exotic's move. He had one of the two still holding pistols on him, before the first man could fire. And the other's shot missed his rapid movement.
The Dorsai chopped down the gunman he had reached with one hand, as if it was some sort of killing wand. Almost in the same motion he turned and threw the second gunman into the discharge from the pistols of the two Hounds who had been covering Obadiah; just as the remaining armed man, caught in the Friendly's grasp, managed to fire twice.
In that same moment, the Dorsai reached him; and they went down together, the gunman rolling on top of the old man. It was over.
It had taken longer for the bodies to fall than for the action that killed them, Bleys thought. The Exotic lay to his side, across from the Friendly, who seemed to be staring at his friend in death.
Once more he seemed to feel his very heart move in his chest, as he looked over the scene before him. He had well and truly lost control of the situation here, he thought.
Two of his Hounds were down, dead, and one was badly hurt, lying half on his side. The Friendly also lay fallen, with his head twisted around so that his open and unmoving eyes stared blankly in the Exotic's direction. He did not move. No more did the man the Dorsai had chopped down, nor the other gunman the ex-soldier had thrown into the fire from his companion's pistols. One other Hound, knocked down by the thrown man, was twitching and moaning strangely on the terrace.
Of the two gunmen remaining, one was still lying on top of the Dorsai; the other, still on his feet, cringed before Bleys' fury.
"You fools!" he said again, softly but fiercely. "Didn't I just get through telling you to concentrate on the Dorsai?" The only response was silence.
"All right," he said, sighing, "pick him up," and pointed to the wounded man. He turned to the gunman on top of the Dorsai.
"Wake up." He prodded the man with his toe. "It's all over."
The man prodded rolled off the Dorsai's body and sprawled on the stones. Bleys looked at him for a moment, wondering if he had ever been in control in this place at all. He felt no fear of that, though, but only his usual cold sense of isolation.
"Three of ours dead—and one hurt," he said. "Just to destroy three unarmed old teachers. What a waste." He shook his head and turned away.
He held open the french window so that the wounded Hound could be helped into the library by his companion. Bleys followed, still holding the volume of Noyes' poetry the Exotic had been reading. He closed the french doors on the dying light of day.
CHAPTER 40
Night closed in swiftly behind the twilight. Outside the french windows, now, it was dark. In the library a fire had lit itself automatically in the fireplace and its flames threw a ruddy, comforting light upon the heavy furniture, the thousands of books and the ceiling. Dahno had arrived; and he with Bleys was standing before the fire, talking.
"—So," said Dahno, "what did you do with the bodies?"
"I helped the one uninjured Hound I had left," said Bleys. "This house has a walk-in freezer. We put the bodies there."
"The freezer?" said Dahno, lifting his head suddenly, "why didn't you bury them?"
Bleys shrugged.
"Eventually, this place is going to be checked on," he said. "Eventually the local police will come. When they do they'd find any bodies we had buried within any distance that we could reasonably carry them from this house. The freezer will do just as well. Besides, the boy might prefer it, knowing eventually that his three tutors had a decent burial. They were gallant old men."
"Gallant!" Dahno exploded. "This isn't a storybook matter, Mr. Vice-Chairman."
Bleys sighed and faced him.
"No, it isn't," he said, "not for you and not for me."
"Yes, you can say that," said Dahno. He was still angry. "Your dogs made something of a mess taking over here."
"Your Hounds, Dahno," said Bleys.
The thick-bodied giant brushed the answer away.
/> "The Hounds I lent you. It was your job to set up the conference here, Mr. Vice-Chairman."
"Your Hounds aren't properly trained, Mr. Chairman. They like killing because they think it proves their value in our eyes. That makes them unreliable with void pistols."
Dahno had recovered his good humor. He chuckled. But his eyes were hard and bright.
"All the Vice-Chairmen should be here on schedule, then?"
"They'll be here," said Bleys. "I don't worry about them."
"Who do you worry about then, Bleys?" asked Dahno looking at him narrowly.
"The boy," said Bleys, "the one we didn't catch."
"Boy?"
"The ward these three were raising and tutoring."
Dahno snorted faintly.
"You're worried about a boy?" he said.
"I thought you were the one who valued neatness, Dahno. I wasn't able to find out about him from the three old men before they died. Courtesy of your Hounds."
Dahno moved a massive hand through the air—a little impatiently dismissing the matter.
"Why would the Hounds think it was necessary to keep them alive, anyway?"
"Because I didn't tell them to kill!" Bleys' voice was not raised, but it came with a particularly penetrating tone. Dahno cocked his head, looking at his half-brother.
"Why all this concern about the boy?" he said. "What can a boy do?"
"That's what I think it might be necessary to know," Bleys said. "Do you remember what you found out about this estate?
This place was set up under a trust established from the sale of an unregistered-interstellar courier-class ship which was found drifting near Earth, with a boy in it as a two-year-old child. No one else was aboard. I don't like mysteries and you shouldn't either."
"What makes him any different from any other boy?"
"There are no other boys that I know of on any of the worlds who were discovered as orphans, in space, near Earth—with the odds of discovery at hundreds of thousands to one—who were raised by three tutors, an Exotic, a Dorsai and a Friendly. All as laid down for in instructions that they found in the ship with the boy. He's a very unusual youngster. I don't like mysteries; and you shouldn't either."
This was not the whole truth. There was something more than the mystery surrounding Hal Mayne that was concerning Bleys. There was that deep-buried, uneasy feeling in him that Mayne's very existence in some way seemed to threaten all his plans.
"It's all that Exotic blood in you that doesn't like mysteries," said Dahno. "I've got control of mine, thankfully. Where would we be if we took the time to understand every mystery we came across? Our game is controlling the machinery on all the worlds, not understanding it. Tell me another way that a few thousand or a few hundred thousand of us can hope to run all the worlds, in the way you've been talking up lately."
Bleys felt a weariness. A strange weariness, as if he were a very old man, rather than a very young one. The burden of what he had to do lay heavily upon him. But the time had come.
"Let me explain that more fully when the other Vice-Chairmen get here," said Bleys.
"I don't want to wait for my explanation until tomorrow," said Dahno.
"You mean tonight," said Bleys.
"Tonight? It was scheduled for tomorrow—our meeting," said Dahno.
"I know," the weariness still held Bleys, "that's one of the many orders of yours I've changed recently. They'll be here in the next hour or so. That was another reason for putting the bodies in the freezer." There was a second of silence.
"Bleys," said Dahno slowly, looking hard at him, "you'd better tell me what you're talking about."
"It's just," said Bleys, "that I have larger plans than you had—for the organization. I have a reason for wanting to control all the worlds. I plan to change history; and for that I need a great many people and eventually enough to swing the whole population on all the worlds except the Dorsai and the Exotics."
He paused.
"Go on," Dahno continued in that quiet voice. "I've only heard part of an explanation so far; and I'll reserve judgment until I've heard it all. Why do you need to control all those planets and all the people on them?"
"Because the people out there are going to die anyway. Die out," said Bleys,"in somewhere between the next three hundred and a thousand years."
"What makes you think that?"
"Humanity went into space too early," Bleys said. "We Others are the proof of it. Cross-breeding—a last-ditch measure by the race to save itself. The penalty for going out too early is death for the race, unless I can stop it. But I can stop it, using the combined production power and fighting power of all the Newer Worlds."
"To do what?"
"To conquer Old Earth—and particularly its brain and heart together, which are the Final Encyclopedia," said Bleys. "That's the only way we'll at last get Earth. And it's only on Earth that all the mixed-breeds, we Others, we who have out on the Newer Worlds developed things that the main, full spectrum race can use, can bring them fully back into Old Earth's bloodstream. So at last we can mature, to be ready finally at last to go out safely, to go out armed, ready, and capable of establishing a place in the universe the way we should."
"Bleys," said Dahno, "I think you've gone a little bit insane. Or maybe you were insane from the start. What you're talking about is nonsense. It'd take generations. It'd take literally hundreds of years. Our bones will be turned to dust, yours and mine, before anything like that could be completed."
"That's right," said Bleys, "our bones will be. But the race itself will end up being what it should be; what it was headed toward being, before its technology went to its head and it stampeded out to settle the New Worlds too soon. It'll end up with a full race of people like you and me."
"Bleys," said Dahno gently, "I think you're no longer my Vice-Chairman. What you've got in mind is psychotic. But, more than that, it's not what I have in mind. And I made this organization. I made it, I run it, and I'm going to keep on running it. I don't know how much you've done to infect the other Vice-Chairmen who will be coming here; but none of them can seriously have bought the future you're talking about. They're out for payment in their own lifetime, not in some wild future hundreds of years down the line."
"They don't know about it," answered Bleys. "You're the only person I've told and this is the first time I've ever said it to anyone. But I've said it because I need you."
"I don't think you heard me, Bleys," said Dahno. "I said you were no longer my senior Vice-Chairman. You're more a danger than a help. I don't need you."
"It isn't your choice anymore," said Bleys. "When I toured the worlds I sowed the seed of the beginnings of the future that can save us—in fertile ground. The ambition of the men you'd already put in charge of the organizations was already set up. They've been dealing with you, they think, through me. Actually, they've been dealing directly with me. They've already expanded their organizations more than you know; and they're ready to move into a situation where we dominate all government and other powers on all the New Worlds, except the Dorsai and the Exotics."
"You sowed the seed?" Dahno said, and smiled, "just as you arranged for them to come earlier than I planned? Well, when they do get here, watch me kill that seed and put them back on the path I want for them."
"You won't be able to," said Bleys. "If you look closely at how you trained your people, you trained them to gain ever greater authority in their lifetime. I've shown them a way to do that. I even showed you a way to do that back on Association—enough, so that you were half-willing to entertain it."
"Half-willing is the word," said Dahno. "I went along with you on an if-basis. I'm not happy with you canceling the assassination. Different plans will have to be made now. But also, now that I know what you really have in mind for this expansion, I can't let it happen. And you know when I talk to the other Vice-Chairmen I can bring them around to my way of thinking."
"Perhaps you could, Dahno," said Bleys, "but you won't." D
ahno looked at him. "I won't?" he said.
"No," said Bleys, "you won't. You won't because I never should have gotten here from Association."
"I don't understand what you mean," said Dahno.
He was suddenly very large and very dangerous in the warm and quiet library. In the moment before Bleys spoke again, a piece of wood exploded with a sudden loud crack in the fire that seemed a noise ten times larger than it was because of the silence.
"No," said Bleys sadly, "I don't think you even consciously planned it this way, but it was the only way things could have worked out. Your Hounds didn't stand a chance against McKae's Defenders. Those were veterans, trained experienced veterans of many church wars, used to working together like part of an army. You had a handful of young men who had been fed full of their skill in the gymnasium and on the firing range. They would have walked into a bears' den and been chewed up. But really, it didn't matter, even if the Hounds had won. You realized that, late in the day."
"And why wouldn't it matter?" demanded Dahno.
"Because even if they won, the conflict between them and the Defenders couldn't have been kept quiet, not even with all the influence you have. Most of that influence stemmed through the power of the Five Sisters and the rest of your clients in the Chamber. The Five Sisters have already lost most of their influence; while your other Chamber clients are rushing to sever connections with them—and therefore you— like refugees running from a disaster too big to handle." He paused.
"I don't know—you may even have looked into the kind of people McKae had to defend himself with, and realized— subconsciously, as I say, even if not consciously—that your Hounds didn't stand a chance," Bleys went on. "In any case, you realized there had to end up being a public and political scandal. In a situation like this on Association, the top man rides out the storm; the underneath man goes down. McKae was already on top, before you left; so you had to see what was coming. But your only hope to save the Five Sisters, and therefore yourself, politically, was still to kill McKae and take him out of the picture completely. So you had to try it, regardless."