The Final Encyclopedia

  "I won't have time to run it," he said, as he had known he would say at this time to either Tam or Ajela.

  "I know," she answered, as he had known she would. "I'll do that part of it, as I—as I'm used to doing."

  The door to the suite opened and Rourke di Facino came quickly in, followed by Jeamus. Hal, whose height allowed him to see over the heads of others in the room, caught sight of them immediately; and Ajela, following the sudden shift in direction of his gaze, turned and saw them also.

  "Hal—" Rourke had caught sight of him. "Jeamus' system is working and we've just got a picture of the first transports beginning to lift from the Dorsai—"

  He had needed to speak across the room and over the sound of the crowd. His words reached everyone; and he was suddenly interrupted by a cheer. When it died, Rourke was still talking to Hal.

  "… come and see for yourself?"

  "Pipe it in here!" shouted a female voice; and the room broke out in a noise of agreement.

  "No!" Ajela's clear voice rode up over the voices of them all. "Everybody out, please. You can watch it in one of the dining rooms. Out, if you don't mind."

  "Hal—" it was Tam's voice, unexpectedly. "Wait."

  Hal checked his first movement to leave and stepped around to face the chair. Ajela had already moved around on the other side of it. Behind them, the suite was clearing quickly. Tam reached out and Hal now felt his hand taken between the two dry knobby ones of the old man, the bones of which felt too large for the skin enclosing them.

  "Hal!" said Tam. He seemed to struggle for words a moment, then let the effort go. "… Hal!"

  "Thank you," said Hal softly. "Don't worry. I'll take good care of it."

  "I know you will," said Tam. "I know you will…"

  He let Hal's hand slide from between his own, which dropped back down on his knees. He sighed deeply, the burst of energy gone, sitting back in the chair with his eyelids sagging almost closed. Hal's eyes lifted and met those of Ajela. She moved her head slightly and he nodded. Quietly, he turned and went toward the door as she sank down on her knees beside Tam's chair.

  As he went out, Hal looked back. Tam sat still, his eyes completely closed now. Still kneeling, she had put her arms around his waist and laid her head against his chest.

  Hal closed the suite door and went off down the corridor outside. The second dining room he tried held everyone who had been in Tam's suite and a great many more of the people momentarily off duty in the Encyclopedia, all of them watching the one side of the room Jeamus had used as a stage for the projection equipment of his communications system.

  Jason was standing just outside the entrance to the room, obviously waiting for him.

  "Hal?" he said, as Hal came up to him. "There's a lot to be done…"

  "I know," said Hal. He closed one hand briefly about the nearer of Jason's lean shoulders. "I'll only step in for a minute."

  He went past the other man through the doorway, and stepped aside from it to put his back to the wall and watch the projected scene over the heads of those between him and the stage area. The images projected were not perfect. A halo of rainbow colors encircled the pictured three-dimensional action, which it seemed was being recorded from some distance. The images went in and out of focus as the Encyclopedia's capacity to calculate strove to keep pinpointed the exact distance between it and the light-years-distant transmitter, continually correcting with small phase shifts, as a ship might have to do to hold a constant position in interstellar space, relative to any other single point. The sound was irregular also—one moment clear and the next blurred.

  The scene showed the large pad at Omalu where Hal had last parted from Amanda. The pad was full of spaceships, now; most of them obviously Dorsai but a fair number identifiable as having been built to Exotic specifications. The ship in closest focus at the moment had a large group of people slowly boarding it; mostly young adults and children, but here and there an older face could be seen among them. The scene blurred in, blurred out of focus, the sound wavering; and Hal found himself caught by what he watched as if he had been nailed to the wall behind him.

  "They're singing something, but I can't catch the words," whispered the man just in front of him to the woman beside him. "Clea, can you make out the words?"

  The woman's head shook.

  Hal stood listening. He could not make out the words either, but he did not have to. From the tune he was hearing he knew them, from his boyhood as Donal. It was the unofficial Dorsai anthem, unofficial because there was no official anthem, any more than there was an official Dorsai flag or the armies the anthem spoke of; the Dorsai they were singing about was not the Dorsai they were leaving, but the Dorsai each one of them was carrying within them. He turned and went back out the door to find Jason waiting for him.

  "All right, now," he said to the other man, as they went off down the corridor together. "What's most urgent of the things you've got in hand?"

  Chapter Sixty-five

  "The things I had in mind can wait," Jason said. "I just got a call from Jeamus. He's been trying to locate you, quietly."

  "Jeamus?" Hal glanced toward the dining room where people were still watching the images from the Dorsai.

  "Jeamus isn't there," Jason said. "It seems he got called back to Communications as soon as he stepped out of Tam Olyn's suite. He had a crew with him to set up the reception—he'd hoped to do it in the Director's suite, too—and he just left it to them to carry on to the dining room with it. He went back down to Communications himself, and he's just called me from there."

  "He didn't say what about?"

  "Just that he wanted you to come down there as quickly as possible, without telling anyone he'd called you."

  Hal nodded, and led off down the corridor in which they were standing with long strides.

  Within the door of the Communications Department, Jeamus, his face tight, caught sight of them the minute they entered, and came to hurry them into the privacy of his own small, personal office.

  "What is it?" asked Hal.

  "A signal," said Jeamus, "from Bleys. It just came in, via orbit relay private for me. I don't have a written copy because he asked me not to make one. The call came in without identification, to me, by name. I didn't even know he knew I existed. He said you'd know the call was authentic if I referred to him as one of the two visitors you once had in your library; and he gave me a verbal message for you."

  Jeamus hesitated.

  "You're Director now," he said. "It's only fair to tell you that fifteen minutes ago I'd have checked with Tam before passing this message along to you."

  "That's all right," said Hal. "I assume you thought there might be something in it that might affect the security of the Encyclopedia. Fine. I'll appreciate your having the same sense of responsibility toward me now that I'm Director. What's the message?"

  Jeamus still hesitated. He looked at Jason.

  "It's all right," said Hal. "Jason can stay."

  "Forgive me," Jeamus said. "Are you sure… I mean, this might affect more than the Encyclopedia. It might affect everything."

  "I know Bleys; better, I think, than anyone else." Hal's eyes fastened on Jeamus' brown ones. "Any secrecy he's concerned about is only going to matter with those who're uncommitted—to being either for or against him. Jason can stay. Tell me."

  "If you say so," said Jeamus. He took a deep breath. "He wants to meet you, secretly—here

  "Here in the Encyclopedia?"

  "No. Close to it," Jeamus said.

  "I see." Hal looked about the small, neat office. "Tell him yes. Have him signal you, personally, once he's here. Then you yourself see to it that an iris no bigger than necessary to let him, personally, in is dilated in the shield-wall close to here. I'll meet him inside the shield-wall."

  "All right," said Jeamus.

  "And of course you'll tell no one," Hal said. "Including Ajela. Including Tam."

  "I—" began Jeamus, and stuck.

  "I know,
" said Hal. "The habits of years aren't easy to change in a minute. But I'm either Director or not; and you're either the head of my Communications Department or not. You expected me to go to Tam or Ajela as soon as you'd told me this, didn't you?"

  "Yes," said Jeamus, miserably.

  "Tam's out of it now," Hal said. "And Ajela I'll tell myself, in my own time. If you're tempted to go to either one in spite of what I've just said to you, stop first and think who'll take the Encyclopedia over if I don't. Ajela can keep it going; but I think you've heard Tam say often enough it's meant for more than this."

  "Yes." Jeamus sighed. "All right, I won't say anything to either of them. But—" he looked suddenly up into Hal's face—"you'll tell me when you've told Ajela?"

  "Yes," said Hal. He turned to Jason. "Come on. Didn't you have a whole list with you of things you wanted me to attend to?"

  Jason nodded.

  "Thanks, Jeamus," said Hal; and led Jason out of the Communications Section.

  In the corridor outside, Jason stared at him as they walked.

  "Can I ask?" he said. "What does it mean, this business of Bleys wanting to talk to you secretly?"

  "I think it means he discovered he'd made a misjudgment," Hal answered. "Now, weren't you the one who told me how much work we had to do?"

  The work was real enough. It was nearly four days, local time at the Encyclopedia, before Rukh was strong enough to make her address to the world; and Hal chose to put off his own first speech as Director until it could also act as an introduction to what Rukh would say. Meanwhile, the days were frantic ones, with the Encyclopedia like a fortress under siege. A full third of the non-specialist staff was busy in shifts around the clock, fielding queries from the surface of Earth from governmental bodies or planetary agencies like Space and Atmosphere.

  The primary difficulty for the staff was the keeping of tempers. From sheer habit the various governments and authorities below had begun by demanding attention and answers. Only slowly had they come to realize that not merely was there no way they could force or threaten the shield-walled, independently powered and fully supplied Encyclopedia to do anything, but there had not been for the last eighty years. So they had finally backed off the path of bluster to the highway of diplomacy; but by that time the damage to the frayed patience of the Encyclopedia's relatively tiny staff had been done.

  "Who'd have thought it'd be like this?" Ajela said exhaustedly to Hal at mid-morning of that fourth day. Like everyone else, she had been operating on little food and less sleep since Tam's speech. "Ninety per cent of this is unnecessary. If some of those people in control down there would only face reality—but I suppose there's no hope of that."

  "They actually are facing reality; and, in fact, it actually is necessary," said Hal.

  They were in Ajela's office suite, and Ajela had just been talking to the Director of the planet's Northwest Agricultural Sector, who had been only the latest of a large number of officials needing to be reassured that the interposition of the shield-wall between the particular area of his responsibilities and the sun would not somehow have an adverse effect on the ripening grain of that year's upcoming harvest. It was clear he had no idea what kind of adverse effect this could be, but rather, hoped Ajela could tell him of one.

  She frowned at Hal; suddenly he was emphatically conscious of how exhausted she was. In anyone but a born Exotic that frown would have been an emotional explosion. He hurried to explain.

  "A man like that one you just heard from," Hal said, "is struggling to make an adjustment to the concept of the Encyclopedia as not only a politically potent, but a superior entity. This is a situation that even a week ago was so far-fetched it was inconceivable. But now we've become the main power center, up here. So it's necessary for each member of the power network below to make contact with us and make sure we know they, personally, are also on the political map."

  "But we haven't got the staff to play those kinds of games!" said Ajela. "That isn't what's important, anyway. What's important is handling four million Dorsai as they get here and seeing to their resettlement; and even if that was all we were trying to do, we don't have staff enough for it, now that the ships have started arriving; even if we do have all that wealth from the Exotics and can use the Encyclopedia as if it was an automated bureaucracy!"

  "All right," said Hal. "Then let's have a communications breakdown."

  She stared at him.

  "I mean a breakdown as far as conversations with the surface is concerned," Hal said.

  Ajela was still staring. She was, Hal realized, more tired than he had thought.

  "We can simply simulate an overload, or a power failure—Jeamus'll know what to do," he said. "Either respond to all calls from below as if our phones were tied up, or simply not answer at all with anything but static. We can have the difficulty clear up just as soon as I've made my speech and Rukh begins hers; and that leaves you free to fold up from now until I start talking. That ought to be good for at least four hours sleep for you."

  "Four hours," she echoed, as if the words were sounds in some peculiar, unknown tongue. Then her gaze sharpened and she frowned at him again.

  "And are you going to fold up too?"

  "No," he said. "I don't need to. You've been running things, not me. All I am is ordinarily tired. In fact, it'll give me the chance I haven't had to work on my speech—which is my main concern."

  She swayed a little as she sat at her desk, puzzling over what he had said, instinctively feeling the deception in it; but too dulled by fatigue to pinpoint the lie.

  "You really think…" she began at last—and ran down.

  "I do," he said. He rose and went to her; and over her protests literally lifted her from her float by her elbows. Setting her on her feet, he steered her into her adjoining personal suite and made her lie down on her bed. He sat down in a float beside her.

  "What are you doing there?" she demanded, drunk with the exhaustion that was taking her over completely, now that she had let herself admit to it.

  "Waiting to make sure you fall asleep."

  "Don't be ridiculous," she said. "I'm wound up like a spring. I'm not going to fall asleep just like that…"

  She stared at him fiercely for all of twenty seconds before her eyes fluttered, closed, and she slept. He set the temperature control above her bed and left.

  He went directly to his own quarters, now enlarged into a suite to provide space for the kind of conferences his new obligations as Director required; and sat down to put in a call to Rukh, Nonne, Rourke, Amid and Jason.

  "Conference in two hours," he told them. "Here."

  Having passed that message he went to the same bay into which he, Rukh and Jason had arrived less than a week before. The same bay commander was on duty.

  "Chui," he said to her, "I need a skidder to go visit the Dorsai transports parked in orbit."

  A shuttle was unloading; and a man in a pilot's uniform had just stepped out of the airlock among the passengers. She broke off to shout at him.

  "No, you don't! Back in there! Passengers only. No crew allowed off the transport at this end!"

  Her voice was considerable. He would not have thought it of her. She turned back, saw him watching her and looked, for a second, a little flustered.

  "We've all changed, I guess," she said. "You want a driver?"

  "No."

  "If you want to go up to the front of the bay, out of the passenger area, I'll have one unracked and brought up to you right away."

  Five minutes later Hal drove out of the Encyclopedia in his mosquito of a one-man craft and headed toward the parking area of the spaceships from the Dorsai. The gray orb of the Encyclopedia dwindled swiftly behind him at steady acceleration until his instruments warned him he was at midpoint from the nearest of the still-invisible ships. Then he flipped the power segment beneath his seat and rode in toward his destination on metered deceleration; as, with his viewscreen ranging ahead on normal telescopic setting, the first of the s
pacecraft which had just crossed twenty-three light-years of interstellar emptiness began to come into view.

  These, lying ahead of him at protectively spaced intervals, were some of the largest vessels, troops transports of the Dorsai and luxury spaceships that had followed regular schedules between the stars under Exotic ownership. The hundreds of smaller craft that would also be making the trip would lift later from the outlying, smaller community centers like Foralie; and even from personal spacepads built by Dorsai families such as the Graemes who had mustered and trained soldiers on their own land for specific off-Dorsai contracts. But first had come the big ships, loading up from the few cities and larger populations centers.

  They were fully visible now in his screen on a scan that compensated for the distance they covered, their parked ranks stretching away from him in a long curve that was part the illusion of distance and space, part actuality. They lay in sunlight translated through the screen, next to the great, apparently vertical wall of it on his right, that stretched upwards and downwards from his viewpoint until all view of it was lost in the blackness of space.

  To his left, also in bright sunlight, floated the white-swatched blue orb of the Earth, looking close enough in the compensated view of the screen so that he could reach out at arm's length and touch it. Unimportant in the space that went also between them, and seeming only to crawl along, his tiny skidder crept up on the nearest of the huge vessels. Far ahead, and far behind, where the gray of the shield-wall seemed to vanish, the blackness of space showed the lights of stars, which from that angle and distance were perceptible through it.

  A stillness took him. He felt the presence of the universe that dwarfed not only men and women but ships, planets and stars—even galaxies that were no more than scatterings of dust across its inconceivable face. The universe that knew nothing and cared less for the microscopic organism called the human race, that in its many parts tried so hard for survival. It was all around him, and its remoteness and vastness confirmed the isolation of his own spirit. Not on Earth, nor in sky nor space, he floated apart, even from his own kind. A crushing loneliness closed around him; but the call of what he had seen, what Donal had seen, gazing out at the unknown stars in that moment when Padma had at last had a chance and failed to recognize him for what he was, drew him on. With the failure of Padma he had set aside all hope of being touched again by human understanding as one touched one in the race of his birth; and he had left it set aside through two lives since… until this one. Until now…