Childe Cycle - The Spirit of Dorsai Part 17

Padma had reached him now and was standing over him. Pel looked up into the calm face above the blue robe.

"But try it if you like." Pel said, "I don't hypnotize easily."

"No," said Padma. "I've said I would not hypnotize anyone; but in any case, neither you nor anyone else can be hypnotized without his or her innate consent. All things between individuals are done by consent. The prisoner consents to his captivity as the patient consents to his surgery-the difference is only in degree and pattern. The great, blind ma.s.s that is humanity in general is like an amoebic animal. It exists by internal laws that cohere its body and its actions. Those internal laws are based upon conscious and unconscious, mutual consents of its atoms-ourselves -to work with each other and cooperate. Peace and satisfaction come to each of us in proportion to our success in such cooperation, in the forward-searching movement of the humanity-creature as a whole.

Non-consent and noncooperation work against the grain. Pain and self-hate result from friction when we fight against our natural desire to cooperate..."

His voice went on. Gently but compellingly he said a great deal more, and I understood all at the time; but beyond what I have quoted so far-and those first few sentences stay printed-clear in my memory-I do not recall another specific word. I do not know to this day what happened. Perhaps I half-dozed without realizing I was dozing. At any rate, time pa.s.sed; and when I reached a point where the memory record took up again, he was leaving and Pel had altered.

"I can talk to you some more, can't I?" Pel said as the Outbond rose to leave. Pel's voice had become clear-toned and strangely young-sounding. "I don't mean now. I mean, there'll be other times?"

"I'm afraid not," Padma said. "Ill have to leave St. Marie shortly. My work takes me back to my own world and then on to one of the Friendly planets to meet someone and wind up what began here. But you don't need me to talk to. You created your own insights as we talked, and you can go on doing that by yourself. Goodby, Pel."

"Goodby," said Pel. He watched Padma leave. When he looked at me again his face, like his voice, was clear and younger than I had seen it in years. "Did you hear all that, Tom?"

"I think so..." I said; because already the memory was beginning to slip away from me. I could feel the import of what Padma had said to Pel, but without being able to give it exact shape, it was as if I had intercepted a message that had turned out to be not for me, and so my mental machinery had already begun to cancel it out. I got up and went over to Pel. "You'll help us find those a.s.sa.s.sins, now?"

"Yes," he said. "Of course I will."

He was able to give us a list of five places that were possible hiding places for the three we hunted. He provided exact directions for finding each one.

"Now," I said to Ian, when Pel was through, "we need those Hunter Teams of yours that were pulled off"

"We have Hunters," said Ian. "Those officers who are Dorsai are still with us; and there are Hunters among them."

He stepped to the phone unit on the desk in the room and put a call in to Charley ap Morgan, at Expeditionary Headquarters. When Charley answered, Ian gave him the five locations Pel had supplied us.

"Now," he said to me as he turned away from the phone. "We'll go back to my office."

"I want to come," said Pel. Ian looked at him for a long moment, then nodded, without changing expression.

"You can come," he said.

When we got back to the Expeditionary Headquarters building, the rooms and corridors there seemed even more aswarm with officers. As Ian had said, they were mostly Dorsai.

But I saw some among them who might not have been. Apparently Ian commanded his own loyalty, or perhaps it was the Dorsai concept that commanded its own loyalty to whoever was commanding officer. We went to his office; and, sitting there, waited while the reports began to come in.

The first three locations to be checked out by the officer Hunter Teams drew blanks. The fourth showed evidence of having been used within the last twenty-four hours, although it was empty now. The last location to be checked also drew blank The Hunter Teams concentrated on the fourth location and began to work outward from it, hoping to cross sign of a trail away from it. I checked the clock figures on my wrist unit.

It was now nearing one a.m. in the morning, local time; and the six hour deadline of the enlisted mercenaries was due to expire in forty-seven minutes. In the office where I waited with Ian, Pel, Charley ap Morgan, and another senior Dorsai officer, the air was thick with the tension of waiting. Ian and the two other Dorsai sat still; even Pel sat still. I was the one who fidgeted and paced, as the time continued to run out.

The phone on lan's desk flashed its visual signal light. Ian reached out to punch it on.

"Yes?" he said.

"Hunter Team Three," said a voice from the desk "We have clear sign and are following now. Suggest you join us, sir."

"Thank you. Coming," said Ian.

We went, Ian, Charley, Pel and myself, in an Expedition Command Car. It was an eerie ride through the patrolled and deserted streets of my city. lan's Hunter Team Three was ahead of us and led us to an apartment hotel on the upper north side of the city, in the oldest section.

The building had been built of poured cement faced with Castlemane granite. Inside, the corridors were old-fas.h.i.+onedly narrow and close-feeling, with dark, thick carpeting and metal Avails in imitation oak woodgrain. The soundproofing was good, however. We mounted to the seventh story and moved down the hall to suite number 415 without hearing any sound other than those we made, ourselves.

"Here," finally said the leader of the Hunter Team, a lean, gnarled Dorsai Senior Commandant in his late fifties. He gestured to the door of 415. "All three of them."

"Ian," said Charley ap Morgan, glancing at his wrist unit. "The enlisted men start moving into the city in six minutes. You could go meet them to say .,*** we've found the a.s.sa.s.sins. The others and I-"

"No," said Ian. "We can't say we've found them until we see them and identify them positively." He stepped up to one side of the door; and, reaching out an arm, touched the door annunciator stud.

There was no response. Above the door, the half-meter square annunciator screen stayed brown and blank Ian pressed the b.u.t.ton again.

Again we waited, and there was no response.

Ian pressed the stud. Holding it down, so that his voice would go with the sound of its announcing chimes to the ears of those within, he spoke.

"This is Commander Ian Graeme," he said. "Blauvain is now under martial law, and you are under arrest in connection with the a.s.sa.s.sination of Field Commander Kensie Graeme.

If necessary, we can cut our way in to you. However, I'm concerned that Held Commander Graeme's reputation be kept free of criticism in the matter of determining responsibility for his death. So I'm offering you the chance to come out and surrender."

He released the stud and stopped talking. There was a long pause. Then a voice spoke from the annunciator grille below the screen, although the screen itself remained blank "Go to h.e.l.l, Graeme," said the voice. "We got your brother; and if you try to blast your way in here, we'll get you, too."

"My advice to you," said Ian-his voice was cold, distant, and impersonal, as if this was something he did every day, "is to surrender."

"You guarantee our safety if we do?"

"No," said Ian. "I only guarantee that I will see that Field Commander Graeme's reputation is not adversely affected by the way you're handled."

There was no immediate answer from the screen. Behind Ian, Charley looked again at his wrist unit.

"They're playing for time," he said. "But why? What good will that do them?"

"They're fanatics," said Pel, softly. "Just as much fanatics as the Friendly soldiers were, only for the Blue Front instead of for some puritan form of religion. Those three in there don't expect to get out of this alive. They're only trying to set a higher price on their own deaths-get something more for their dying."

Charley ap Morgan's wrist unit chimed.

"Time's up," he said to Ian. "The enlisted men are moving into the suburbs of Blauvain now, to begin their search."

Ian reached out and pushed the annunciator stud again, holding it down as he spoke to the men inside.

"Are you coming out?"

"Why should we?" answered the voice that had spoken the first time. "Give us a reason."

"I'll come in and talk to you if you like," said Ian.

"No-" began Pel out loud. I gripped his arm, and he turned on me, whispering. "Torn, tell him not to go in! That's what they want."

"Stay here," I said.

I pushed forward until Charley ap Morgan put out an arm to stop me. I spoke across that arm to Ian.

"Ian," I said, in a voice safely low enough so that the door annunciator would not pick it up. "Pel says-"

"Maybe that's a good idea," said the voice from the annunciator. "That's right, why don't you come on in, Graeme? Leave your weapons outside."

"Tom," said Ian, without looking either at me or Charley ap Morgan, "Stay back Keep him back, Charley."

"Yes sir," said Charley. He looked into my face, eye to eye with me. "Stay out of this, Tom. Backup."

Ian stepped forward to stand square in front of the door, where a beam coming through it could go through him as well. He was taking off his sidearm as he went. He dropped it to the floor, in full sight of the screen, through the blankness of which those inside would be looking out.

"I'm unarmed," he said.

"Of that sidepiece, you are," said the annunciator. "Do you think we're going to take your word for the rest of you? Strip."

Without hesitation, Ian unsealed his uniform jacket and began to take off his clothes. In a moment or two, he stood naked in the hallway, but if the men in the suite had thought to gain some sort of moral advantage over him because of that, they were disappointed.

Stripped, he looked-like an athlete-larger and more impressive than he had, clothed.

He towered over us all in the hall, even over the other Dorsai there; and with his darkly tanned skin under the lights he seemed like a ma.s.sive figure carved in oak "I'm waiting," he said, after a moment, calmly.

"All right," said the voice from the annunciator. "Come on in."

He moved forward. The door unlatched and slid aside before him. He pa.s.sed through and it closed behind him. For a moment we were left with no sound or word from him or the suite; then, unexpectedly, the screen lit up. We found ourselves looking over and past lan's bare shoulders at a room in which three men, each armed with a rifle and a pair of side-arms, sat facing him. They gave no sign of knowing that he had turned on the annunciator screen, the controls of which would be hidden behind him, now that he stood inside the door, facing the room.

The center one of the three seated men laughed. He was the big, black-bearded man I had found vaguely familiar when I saw the solidigraphs of the three of them in lan's office; and I recognized him now. He was a professional wrestler. He had been arraigned on a.s.sault charges four years ago, but lack of testimony against him had caused the charges to be dismissed. He was not as tall as Ian, but much heavier of body; and it was his voice we had been hearing, because now we heard it again as his lips moved on the screen.

"Well, well, Commander," he said. "Just what we needed-a visit from you. Now we can rack up a score of two Dorsai Commanders before your soldiers carry what's left of us off to the morgue; and St. Marie can see that even you people can be handled by the Blue Front"

We could not see lan's face; but he said nothing and apparently his lack of reaction was irritating to the big a.s.sa.s.sin, because he dropped his cheerful tone and leaned forward in his chair.

"Don't you understand, Graeme?" he said. "We've lived and died for the Blue Front, all three of us-for the one political parry with the strength and guts to save our world.

We're dead men no matter what we do. Did you think we don't know that? You think we don't know what would happen to us if we were idiots enough to surrender the way you said? Your men would tear us apart; and if there was anything left of us after that, the government's law would try us and then shoot us. We only let you in here so that we could lay you out like your twin brother, before we were laid out ourselves. Don't you follow me, man? You walked into our hands here like a fly into a trap, never realizing."

"I realized," said Ian.

The big man scowled at him and the muzzle of the heat rifle he held in one thick hand, came up.

"What do you mean?" he demanded. "Whatever you think you've got up your sleeve isn't going to save you. Why would you come in here, knowing what we'd do?"

"The Dorsai are professional soldiers," said lan's voice, calmly. "We live and survive by our reputation. Without that reputation none of us could earn our living. And the reputation of the Dorsai in general is the sum of the reputations of its individual men and women. So Field Commander Kensie Graeme's professional reputation is a thing of value, to be guarded even after his death. I came in for that reason."

The big man's eyes narrowed. He was doing all the talking and his two companions seemed content to leave it that way.

"A reputation's worth dying for?" he said.

"I've been ready to die for mine for eighteen years," said lan's voice, quietly. "Today's no different than yesterday."

"And you came in here-" the big man's voice broke off on a snort. "I don't believe it.

Watch him, you two!"

"Believe or not," said Ian. "I came in here, just as I told you, to see that the professional reputation of Held Commander Graeme was protected from events which might tarnish it.

You'll notice-" his head moved slightly as if indicating something behind him and out of our sight, "I've turned on your annunciator screen, so that outside the door they can see what's going on in here."

The eyes of the three men jerked upwards to stare at the screen inside the suite, somewhere over lan's head. There was a blur of motion that was lan's tanned body flying through the air, a sound of something smas.h.i.+ng and the screen went blank again.

We outside were left blind once more, standing in the hallway, staring at the unresponsive screen and door. Pel, who had stepped up next to me, moved toward the door itself "Stay!" snapped Charley.

The single sharp tone was like a command given to some domestic beast. Pel flinched at the tone, but stopped-and in that moment the door before us disintegrated to the roar of an explosion in the room.

"Come on!" I yelled, and flung myself through the now-open doorway.

It was like diving into a centrifuge filled with whirling bodies. I ducked to avoid the flying form of one of the men I had seen in the screen, but his leg slammed my head, and I went reeling, half-dazed and disoriented, into the very heart of the tumult. It was all a blur of action. I had a scrambled impression of explosions, of fire-beams lancing around me-and somehow in the midst of it all, the towering, brown body of Ian moving with the certainty and deadliness of a panther. All those he touched went down; and all who went down, stayed down.

Then it was over. I steadied myself with one hand against a half-burned wall and realized that only Ian and myself were on our feet in that room. Not one of the other Dorsai had followed me in. On the floor, the three a.s.sa.s.sins lay still. One had his neck broken.

Across the room a second man lay obviously dead, but with no obvious sign of the damage that had ended his life. The big man, the ex-wrestler, had the right side of his forehead crushed in, as if by a club.

Looking up from the three bodies, I saw I was now alone in the room. I turned back into the corridor, and found there only Pel and Charley. Ian and the other Dorsai were already gone.

"Where's Ian?" I asked Charley. My voice came out thickly, like the voice of a slightly drunken man.

"Leave him alone," said Charley. "You don't need him, now. Those are the a.s.sa.s.sins there; and the enlisted men have already been notified and pulled back from their search of Blauvain. What more is needed?"

I pulled myself together; and remembered I was a policeman.

"I've got to know exactly what happened," I said. "I've got to know if it was self-defense, or..."

The words died on my tongue. To accuse a naked man of anything else in the death of three heavily armed individuals who had threatened his life, as I had just heard them do over the annunciator, was ridiculous.

"No," said Charley. "This was done during a period of martial law in Blauvain. Your office will receive a report from our command about it; but actually it's not even something within your authority."

Some of the tension that had been in him earlier seemed to leak out of him, then. He half- smiled and became more like the friendly officer I had known before Kensie's death.

"But that martial law is about to be withdrawn," he said. "Maybe you'll want to get on the phone and start getting your own people out here to tidy up the details."

-And he stood aside to let me go.

One day later, and the professional soldiers of the Exotic Expeditionary Force showed their affection for Kensie in a different fas.h.i.+on.

His body had been laid in state for a public review in the open, main floor lobby of the Blauvain City Government building. Beginning in the grey dawn and through the cloudless day-the sort of hard, bright day that seems impatient with those who will not bury their dead and get on to further things -the mercenaries filed past the casket holding Kensie, visible at foil length in dress uniform under the transparent cover. Each one as he pa.s.sed touched the casket lightly with his fingertips, or said a word to the dead man, or both. There were over ten thousand soldiers pa.s.sing, one at a time. They were unarmed, in field uniforms and their line seemed endless.

But that was not the end of it. The civilians of Blauvain had formed along either side of the street down which the line of troops wound on its way to the place where Kensie lay waiting for them. The civilians had formed in the face of strict police orders against doing any such thing; and my men could not drive them away. The situation could not have offered a better opportunity for the Blue Front to cause trouble. One heat grenade tossed into that line of slowly moving, unarmed soldiers, for example... But nothing happened.

By the time noon came and went without incident, I was ready to make a guess why not.