“You’re all right, Bleys Ahrens?” Sean asked.
The feeling had been similar to—but much greater than—the physical and emotional disorientation which comes when someone who believes he or she is moving in a certain direction in an unfamiliar city suddenly realizes that the movement had actually been in a totally different direction than he or she had thought. A feeling as if the whole city had, soundlessly and suddenly, been lifted up, swung about in a complete half-turn and set down again.
Bleys’s unexpected emotional reaction had been one of abrupt, powerful and instinctive fear and helplessness.
But Bleys’s body had been schooled to the point where it didn’t hesitate; and since the feeling had come upon him before he could react, his body had automatically kept walking. He was abruptly aware now that Sean, still keeping pace with him, was staring at him.
Bleys made himself glance at the young man.
“Yes,” he said.
Sean was silent for a moment, then burst out again.
“I only ask,” he said, stretching his legs to keep up with Bleys—who without thinking, had now given his long legs their usual stride, so that Sean had been forced to a half-run to keep up. Realizing this, Bleys now shortened his steps and reduced the pace.
“—because the first time people pass the portal back there, it usually disturbs them more than a little—quite a bit, actually. In fact, Bleys Ahrens, if you’ll forgive my mentioning it, since we stepped through the portal, your face looks a little pale.”
Bleys glanced down at him with a warm smile. “Does it indeed?”
He might not be able to control the blood vessels of his face; but he could most certainly control the organ tones of the voice with which he had worked so hard for a number of years now.
His tone of slightly contemptuous amusement, with a kindly smile, was effective enough that he could see Sean rethinking his belief that Bleys had been shaken—as he actually had been—by the passage through what Sean had called a “portal.” Sean’s control of his own facial expression, for someone with only the life experience of his lesser years, was good; but he could not now completely disguise his own reaction from Bleys, trained to observe small changes like the dilation of the pupils of the eye and complete control of the face around the corners of the mouth.
“Well, that’s good to hear, of course,” Sean said swiftly. “You’d be surprised. Everyone else I’ve seen go through for the first time, reacted. The first time I went through here myself, I was with a good friend of mine—he’s an Intern, too, but only in Messages rather than in Council Service. I was hard-hit myself, but he was really knocked about. I thought he was going to faint for a moment. Of course it’s bound to be different from person to person; and in the Council’s Service we don’t think of the Message people as being particularly strong—strong in self-control, that is. Actually, there’s some reason for thinking that. The way the Message people are chosen…”
Bleys noticed with inner humor that, even though his life experience might be relatively short, Sean had already discovered one of the tricks that Dahno used to perfection. This was not to stammer, or in any way show confusion, at the unexpected; but simply to become very voluble, pouring out words—any words—that would serve to lead another person away from any suspicion that he was at a loss in handling a situation.
With Dahno, this reaction slipped easily and imperceptibly into any one of his established patterns of conversation, so that it was not noticeable to anyone who did not know him well. Sean was not yet proficient at it. The increased rapidity of his speech, and his sudden flow of chatter on the subject of Messenger Interns as opposed to Council Interns, was too obvious. But the technique was still designed to give the person talking some time to collect his thoughts and work his way back to safer topics.
Bleys had, in fact, already moved most of his attention once more away from Sean. He had more than a guess at what the “portal” had actually been.
In the early days of phase-shifting, as it was used by interstellar spaceships, each phase-shift any human experienced had exacted a heavy toll—emotionally, mentally and physically. There were drugs that helped, but only partially.
Nowadays there were better drugs which, taken before a trip, were a full body and mind defense for however many shifts might be experienced. But ordinary passenger-carrying spacecraft were normally careful not to exceed a prudent limit in any twenty-four hours of ship-time; or even approach that limit too closely, since people varied in reacting to the shifts.
On his first trip with his mother between the worlds of two different stars in the human-inhabited region of space, the very young Bleys had deliberately delayed taking his medication until after the first phase-shift, simply because he wanted to experience the feeling of the shift.
So he had; and his instinctive human reaction had been one of extreme fear and panic.
The sensation Bleys had just now felt, passing through the “portal,” had been almost exactly what he had experienced as a child when he had made his experiment.
What he and Sean had just now passed through was certainly some form of phase-shift discontinuity—but a very limited one to disturb him so little, now that long training had made his senses so acute. Sean had undoubtedly been medicated against its effects. In fact, the younger man was probably habitually under the influence of medication to protect him if he had to pass the “portal.”
The phase-shift was undoubtedly the Council Room’s outer “gate.” Such a mechanism, designed to move spaceships light-years at a jump, by “redefining” their position with regard to the surrounding galaxy, could be set to effectively dispose of an intruder, just as the slot on his desk disposed of his sheets of paper, permanently. Or it could be set, as this one was, to give a “gentle” warning.
He and Sean, Bleys guessed had been moved only half a pace forward, or perhaps only millimeters of distance. But, it occurred to Bleys, such a short trip could well act to give the Council a certain advantage, in dealing with a visitor shaken out of his normal composure…
Sean had fallen silent.
It was just as well. Bleys’s mind was only peripherally concerned with his guide. The rest of it was all taken up with his speculation on what he might encounter in this meeting with the Council.
This meeting could be his first real test. Real or not, it was likely to be the sternest test he had met so far.
What he had done with the Others organization, both on the two Friendly Worlds and other planets he had visited, had been to build on and change their direction somewhat, working on what Dahno had originally created almost as a sideline, in the exercise of his political genius.
Dahno was an obvious genius. Bleys had merely accepted that fact when he had been younger; but, as he grew up, a question had presented itself to him frequently. Why had Dahno chosen such a small use for his talents, in being simply a political manipulator? Like their mother, he had been content to influence only those people immediately around him, whose actions impinged directly upon him and his life. It was inconceivable to Bleys that anyone with such ability should not aim at a larger goal.
However, that was Dahno; and it was Dahno’s business, not Bleys’s. Bleys had learned a long time ago that it was impossible to understand people completely—as impossible as it was to change them deeply once they were adult, or anywhere near to being adult.
His problem now was not with Dahno, but with the shape that historic social decay had imposed on the people he was about to meet.
All the worlds had shown the classical signs of that social decay Exotic thinking had predicted. All, that is, except Old Earth, which was, so far, largely unreadable by him, as far as its present direction of historic movement was concerned.
As also the Dorsai and the Exotics were, for other reasons. He would necessarily be concerned with them all, eventually. Socially, the Exotics and the Dorsai were hopeless candidates for the type of influencing that he had hoped to use with the rest of the New W
orlds. The people on them were simply not vulnerable to what had worked for him so far on New Earth and Cassida. He was beginning to think that Newton was a question mark.
But the difficulty in knowing that much was that it was not much help. Even being sure of that much did not give Bleys any clear idea of what he might encounter in the next few seconds.
The words “the next few seconds” were still in his mind as they passed out of the long hall with its large window scenes and went through a cream-colored door into what seemed to be essentially a blank, gray-walled lecture amphitheater.
It brought back to mind a picture he had seen of an Old Earth classroom of several centuries ago; with the seats in rows rising toward the level on which they had entered, so that the first seat of the top row brushed against his left leg as he came in, and all attention was designed to be focused down to a circular area, well lit, with a long flat table and a spot of light beamed onto it so that it was the brightest place in the room—a place where a lecturer or instructor would stand.
The chairs were unpadded, wooden and almost primitive. Once more, a greater contrast to both the hall he had just left and the concrete tunnel-like stretch before it could not have been more deliberately made.
Sean led him around the curve of the back row of seats, through another door—green, this time—and they stepped into a lounge. A lounge that, except for the fact it lacked a fireplace and a real or artificial fire blazing behind its fire screen, was a somewhat larger duplicate of the main lounge of his suite here; and those in most of the other hotels in which he had stayed on this trip and others.
Its window wall had a door opening on a balcony like the one outside his bedroom—but larger. Its door was ajar at the moment, and the afternoon air from outdoors was making a small stir in the staler, filtered atmosphere of the room.
“Bleys Ahrens!” said a brisk, slim, elderly man, getting quickly to his feet from his padded float. “Good, that’s all, Sean—you can go now. Bleys Ahrens, let me introduce you to the rest of the Council here.”
“The rest” were five in number, making six in all, the others seated in the same sort of padded armchair floats that the speaker had just left; and not one of them, thought Bleys looked the way a research scientist might have been expected to look. More like—as individuals—a sulky author, a librarian, the owner and operator of an exclusive shop selling high-fashion clothing at outlandish prices to rich women customers, and so forth… anything but World decision makers.
The man doing the talking was gesturing around the rough circle in which they were seated.
“Right next to me here, Bleys Ahrens,” he was saying, “is Council Member Georges Lemair.”
He indicated the man who had struck Bleys as looking like a sulky author. He was a little over middle New Worlds height, but slightly overweight; in his mid-forties, with red hair, he looked as if he might be outspoken.
There was a don’t-give-a-damn attitude about him; and in spite of the fact that he was dressed in the formal fashion of tight jacket and ankle-length pants—his pants were not flared at the bottom, as was common among people of his generation on most of the other New Worlds nowadays, but ruler-straight from knee to ground—he looked untidy.
The man on his feet was still introducing.
“Sorry, I probably should have introduced myself first. I’m the current President of the Council. My name is Half-Thunder—of the Phase Physics Institute. Oh, and I should probably have mentioned that Georges Lemair is of the Institute on Atmospheric Chemistry.”
“Honored to make your acquaintance,” Bleys said to Lemair.
“Honored to make yours,” Lemair said indifferently.
“—and this is Din Su, of the Mathematics Institute.” Half-Thunder was moving on around the circle, and Bleys stepped with him. Din Su was a woman in her fifties; plump, unremarkably dressed, with an almost-comfortable, grandmotherly appearance, except for an incisive look about her which Bleys found interesting.
“Honored to make your acquaintance,” Bleys said.
“Honored to make yours, Bleys Ahrens,” she replied in a comfortable voice that matched her appearance rather than his impression of her incisiveness.
“And this is Ahmed Bahadur,” Half-Thunder stopped before a float holding a man who sat very straight in his chair.
“Honored,” he said, with a touch of hoarseness in his voice. He was a tall, old man, patriarchal in appearance; and he sat broad-shouldered, upright, but at ease. He answered as easily as Din Su had done, white teeth gleaming in his ample gray beard—but gleaming apparently without humor, or perhaps with an automatic rictus of a smile that meant nothing.
“Ahmed Bahadur is a researcher in the Biological Variforms Institute,” Half-Thunder said.
“Honored,” said Ahmed Bahadur, again, in his rusty old-man’s voice.
“Honored,” said Bleys.
Half-Thunder moved on.
“And this is Anita delle Santos of Human Engineering.”
“Honored, Bleys Ahrens,” said Anita delle Santos. She was small, blond, pretty and strangely fragile-looking; but the impression she gave was one of powerful concentration on anything to which she turned her attention—which at the moment was Bleys.
Bleys replied pleasantly and was moved on to the last person in the circle, almost back to Georges Lemair and an empty float that had been obviously prepared for Bleys, since it had been positioned higher above the carpeting than any of the others, so that it afforded ample legroom. It was interesting, Bleys thought, that none of them seemed concerned about the fact that they would be looking up to him. It argued an unconscious sureness of themselves.
“And this,” Half-Thunder was saying, stopping beside the fifth person, “is Iban. For personal reasons she uses only one of her names. I’m sure you’ll understand. Iban is Systems Institute.”
They were all a little too sure of themselves in this situation, Bleys thought. It would do no harm to jolt the situation a little and see what the results would be.
“Honored,” said Bleys, and fired his first gun of the meeting in the form of a question. “Very honored to meet you, Iban. What are your other names?”
Neither Iban herself nor the others gave any large or obvious signs of disturbance. But the question was calculatedly impolite, and Bleys was aware of a slight, but general, stiffening around the circle.
Iban, however, looked back at him without a change of expression on her narrow-boned face under very black hair. She was wearing a simple, almost austere dress of deep-ocean blue.
“As Half-Thunder told you,” she said calmly, “my other names are personal. For your information, Iban is a tribal name for the Sea-Dyaks of Old Earth.”
Strangely enough, while the name “Sea-Dyaks” rang a faint bell in Bleys’s mind, he found he knew nothing in detail about that particular people, tribe, or ethnic group. But he was sure that they had been from the oriental area of New Earth—and Iban, like Toni, did not look oriental. She was slight-boned and not so much pretty as beautiful, in a knife-like sort of way. She looked almost as ready to bite as speak.
“Thank you,” said Bleys with a smile. “It’s kind of you to explain.”
“Will you sit down, Bleys Ahrens?” said Half-Thunder, now, just behind him. “We have a float for you here. As it happens, one of our number was unable to be here today. I hope it’s adjusted to your comfort.”
Bleys turned. It was possible, but not likely, that they would have had a chair identical with all the rest made for him, hastily, in order to give him the impression that he was merely filling the seat of an absent member. He stepped back and sat down. The seat was in fact just the exact height off the floor so that his legs were comfortable; and the interior of the chair, between its arms and back—which was adjustable in any case—had been expanded to accommodate his longer limbs and body.
“Well now,” said Half-Thunder, who had reseated himself in his own float, “you’re comfortable?”
“Very,”
said Bleys.
“Then, if you’ll excuse me for a second,” said Half-Thunder, “we’ll say nothing for a moment while I set up a shield.”
He touched a stud on his wristpad, and a blue bubble began to grow from the arm of his chair, expanding until it surrounded all of them right to the walls of the room and the entrance to the balcony.
Having reached the walls, the bubble stopped growing. It was identical in appearance with the security bubble Dahno had produced. Either Dahno had been lied to, or else one of the unbreakable rules necessary to Newtonian society was not all that unbreakable where the Council was concerned. Half-Thunder took his hand from the wristpad.
“A security device,” he said to Bleys. “We want to make sure that none of the Council’s deliberations are ever made public; and it’s impossible for anyone to spy through this particular shield.”
“Sensible,” said Bleys.
He gazed about at them, trying to put his finger on the common quality among them that was alerting him.
Their faces were perfectly calm; and, with the exception of Lemair’s, politely friendly, but otherwise revealing no information about their inner attitudes or thoughts. None of them showed any signs of tension or animosity. Nonetheless, there was that common element in them all that had triggered all his defensive instinct. He had not felt like this before, not even facing the CEO Club on New Earth—or even facing Pieter DeNiles. They were like DeNiles, but much more actively inimical.
It was not so much that quality in them that concerned Bleys right now. He had expected sooner or later to meet up with people like this, even a group like this, organized and united in their attitude toward him. What was concerning him was the quality in them that was signaling itself to him through one of his senses. But he had heard nothing in any voice, no sign of tension, nothing in the way they spoke or their appearances—
Then it came to him. It was in the way they all looked back at him. Steady and all curiously alike. Their eyes of all colors—from the very dark of Iban’s to the ice-blue of Georges Lemair—but all, all those eyes examined him in the same way.