working behind automated desks with what seemed quite a stack of paperwork.
"Anything important?" Dahno asked them. They both shook their heads. He led Bleys on through a grass-green-carpeted room, which was evidently completely buried in the interior of the building, for it had no windows at all, and into a further room. This one was much larger, with a single large, black, wood desk; and some very comfortable padded float-chairs about it. One, built to Dahno's size and padded accordingly, sat behind the desk. This room by contrast had windows on two sides of it.
"What do you think, Bleys?" Dahno asked when they had stepped into it.
"You must be successful," Bleys said. "What's an investment counselor? I mean—what do
you
do as an investment counselor?"
Dahno laughed.
"I give good advice," he said. "And usually the reason is because I know the advice is correct. Oh, not all the time. Maybe twenty-five percent of it, I'm guessing or estimating. But otherwise I know. What would you do with an office like this, Bleys?"
Bleys looked around the huge office, which had more floor space than all of Henry's house.
"I'd turn it into a research center," he answered honestly.
Dahno smiled. He beckoned Bleys, led him across to one of the blank walls of the room, in which there was a door, which slid aside as they came to it. They stepped through it and Bleys, following him in, checked, disbelievingly.
There was a whole section of book readers and scanning devices; and the rest of the space was taken up in shelves and compartments to hold books, in both rod and disk form.
"You see what I mean, when I say that most of the time I know that the answer is right," said Dahno. "Here's where I find out the answers, a lot of the time. Maybe you can see now why I'm so interested in you, Little Brother."
Bleys hesitated. He was intrigued and his curiosity had him by the back of the neck. He was also aware that Dahno knew this, and that his older half-brother was deliberately withholding information to lead him on.
A hidden shiver passed for a second through Bleys. Dahno was laying down an attractive trail to follow; but most surely—and Dahno had all but admitted this himself—one that would lead to a situation from which the younger brother would have no escape. Still, the curiosity fought in Bleys—and won.
"What kind of people do you advise?" he asked.
Dahno's face broke into a broad smile.
"People in all walks of life," he said. He looked at a clock on the wall of the room they were in. "And it's just about time for us to start for where we can meet some of them, now."
CHAPTER
12
They went to
a restaurant.
But this was different from any of the restaurants Dahno had taken Bleys to before. The others had been comfortable to luxurious, but in all other ways, small, discreet and away from the general center of town.
This was a very large restaurant, expensive to the point of being ostentatious, with four-story-high windows along one side, framed by heavy swag drapes. A pool about half the size of an Olympic swimming pool, but divided into grottoes and other divisions by ornamental sculptures or architecture, held variform fish, the embryos of which must have been imported at very high cost indeed. They were up to a foot or more in length, of many different brilliant colors, and swam lazily among the rich surroundings.
It was the last sort of restaurant Bleys would have expected to find on one of the Friendly Worlds, according to his picture of what the Friendlies had been before he came here, and the point of view he had picked up during the last months out at Henry's farm.
Rather, it was the kind he would have expected on New Earth or Freiland, or one of the other, non-specialized worlds; where a great deal of commerce and manufacturing was done and there were a great many people with credits to throw around. People who enjoyed throwing it in places like this; where they could show off.their ability to afford the high prices.
Dahno was recognized as they came up to the entrance of the dining room itself, and led without a word to a table; a round table with a clear, transparent top that could seat at least six people.
"Sit tight," said Dahno to Bleys, "order what you want from the waiter, but brace yourself for a long session. Eating and drinking here is just incidental."
The waiter was already with them and Dahno ordered another of the dark beers. But Bleys, to play safe, ordered another fruit juice. He was interested to find listed on the menu not only the local fruit juices but others listed as imported. They would not, of course, be imported. What they were, were clever imitations of imported fruit juices, like the New Earth orange juice he had drunk back at Dahno's apartment. For the moment he decided to be cautious, follow Dahno's lead, sit quiet and see what happened.
They were not alone more than five minutes before a tall, thin, rather elegantly-dressed man, in what looked like his late sixties, sat down at their table without asking for permission. A glass of some blue drink fizzed in his hand.
"Well, we're up against a brick wall," he said to Dahno, sipping at his drink. He paused to look doubtfully at Bleys.
"You know my rule," said Dahno. "Anyone sitting at this table is safe to talk in front of. If they weren't I'd have sent them away when you sat down."
"If you say so," said the elderly man, still doubtfully. "Well, I've worn ray feet off and I've talked to every delegate in the Chamber and I don't think we're going to get 417B."
"Who's holding out?" Dahno asked.
"There's only five of them. The Five Sisters—you know them. And each one of them, on this subject, is simply a closed mind. They want off-world trade for Association and they're going to have off-world trade; no matter whose pocket it hurts here. They all want profits, every one of them, but they see a removal of restriction as God's intent—" He shrugged helplessly.
"—I thought you might be able to think of something," he said.
"Such as?" Dahno asked him.
"I don't know," the elderly man shrugged again, "you're the Golden Ear . . ."
"All right," said Dahno, "I'll think about it. It's possible I can think of a way to swing them over. If I come up with anything I'll get in touch with you."
"Thank you," said the elderly man. He got up and left.
Almost immediately his place was taken by a short, solidly-bodied man in his thirties with black hair and a pugnacious face with bright, brown eyes. He was not carrying anything to drink and he stared hard at Bleys without saying a word.
"You know my rules," said Dahno.
The brown-eyed man turned his face abruptly back to Dahno.
"Yes, sure," he said jerkily; and it occurred to Bleys that he was possibly not so much pugnacious as unsure of himself. He continued in the same jerky speech.
"I think they're out to get me," he said to Dahno.
"Who?" asked Dahno.
"Bombay," he answered.
Bleys looked at the man with interest. The only Bombay he knew of was a city back on Old Earth. And he knew nothing more about that except that it was a port in the south of the East Indian peninsula. He assumed that it must be the name of someone local, or some local group or company.
"What makes you think so?" asked Dahno.
"Things have been happening," said the brown-eyed man. "Someone's been selling Core Tap shares heavily this last week."
"I can't stop that," Dahno grinned. "Nobody can."
"No, but you can find out who's behind it, can't you?" said the brown-eyed man.
"Perhaps," said Dahno, "if anyone is."
"Take my word for it," said the brown-eyed man, rising, "somebody is!"
He went off in turn.
There were a few moments of breathing space during which Bleys and Dahno had the table to themselves.
"Who are the Five Sisters?" Bleys asked his brother.
Dahno's face, which had sobered, got its large smile on as it turned back to look at him.
"Four old men and one woman," he said, "representatives of some of the larger church groups on Association."
"So that just now was a matter of politics, was it?" asked Bleys.
"Do you think so?" asked Dahno—and just at that moment, somebody else sat down. This time it was a woman in her forties, striking-looking if you did not—as Bleys did, having learned from his mother—-know what high-priced skin management and makeup could do. She ignored Bleys completely.
"Dahno," she said, "you have to drop in this coming Saturday afternoon. I'm having just a few people in, but I'd like them to meet you; and I think you'd enjoy meeting them."
"Charmed," said Dahno.
She rose again and went off without another word. Dahno turned to find Bleys' eyes still upon him.
"And, before you ask," he said, "she is probably the second richest woman on this world. Can you believe that she's a True Faith-holder?"
Bleys felt shock.
"She doesn't look like she'd be one," he said.
"She is," said Dahno. "She's also one of the Five Sisters."
A few minutes later, two men who looked like brothers sat down at the table, said a few enigmatic words to Dahno and got back from him a few more monosyllables even more enigmatic, then left.
So the parade continued for several hours. Bleys at last began to get weary, and to fight off his weariness ordered food, which helped for a while. But within half an hour after he'd eaten, his full stomach began to leave him feeling more sleepy and worn out than before. Outside the tall windows, night was upon the city. Back at the farm about this time, he would be cleaning up after supper and getting ready for bed.
"Enough for today," said Dahno, who, he suddenly realized, had been watching him. Dahno got to his feet, and a groggy Bleys followed. Waving off a heavy-set young man who was just approaching, Dahno led Bleys through the crowded dining room, now noisy with conversation, and out the front door. He did not stop to pay for anything he or Bleys had eaten or drunk.
Bleys was too tired even to ask questions, he merely went with Dahno from the restaurant down the lift to the basement garage where their hovercar waited, got in it, and let himself be taken back to Dahno's apartment, where he was assigned a bedroom. He sleepily undressed and tumbled into a force-field bed, such as he had not slept in since he had left his mother. He fell asleep instantly.
The next day he woke to find Dahno already gone, and several hours of daylight already passed. From his experience of the years with his mother, he knew how to operate an automatic kitchen, and produce a breakfast for himself. Then, since apparently Dahno had left no message about when he would return, Bleys took advantage of the opportunity to key-in on the lounge monitor screen the day's newsfax sheets. He sat and read them in detail.
He tried to relate what he found in them with anything that he had seen or heard the day before; but no connection appeared. But it was a fact the newsprints held much more financial and business news than he had expected, from his early exposure to an Association which was supposed to be merely a planet of poor farms and poor farmers like Henry. Apparently, Ecumeny and a few other large cities like this were at their core very little different from cities just like them on the other New Worlds.
In particular, this seemed to be true of Ecumeny. It was, he learned, the seat of the planetary government, and a number of large local companies had their headquarters there. He had assumed, particularly after what he had heard the evening before, that the Friendly governments did not like lobbyists—or what passed for lobbyists here. But their first visitor at the restaurant table last night had certainly sounded like a lobbyist. Or at least like someone whose job it was to sway the representatives in the planetary government.
Dahno, evidently, was involved in this somehow. But how this tied in with his being a financial consultant, and particularly how it tied in with that crew of obviously intelligent musclemen Bleys had been taken to see first yesterday, Bleys could not figure out.
But he had learned not to worry about such things. He tucked the information in the back of his mind, waiting for more information to start to bridge the gaps and holes in its fabric until finally the whole picture should be revealed.
But the next three days were more of the same. Each day, they went around dinner time to the same restaurant and the same table and people came by. What Bleys overheard, however, was too fragmentary for him to understand most of it without interpretation. Beyond this, even if he had been able to understand the individual conversations, he would have been a long way from putting together a general picture of what Dahno was engaged in doing.
Riding home in the hovercar, back to Uncle Henry's, Bleys simply tucked the whole four days of question marks and unexplained data into the back of his head and left it there.
He had learned a long time ago that matters like this, dealing with what he privately had named "mass-questions," were much better solved by the unconscious than the conscious. If you applied the conscious mind to a situation in which you had only partial information, you ended up going around in circles, with guesses reinforcing guesses until you were further afield than when you started.
In spite of his sleep in the force-field bed at Dahno's the three nights, Bleys found himself feeling washed-out as the hovercar approached the farm. It was the tension of the three days, rather than any physical exertion, that had wound him up.
It was a curious idiosyncrasy of his that whenever he was concerned with a problem, his whole body seemed to be concerned with it, even though it was something that only the mind could handle. The only way of getting away from it was to push it into the back of his head, as he had done with the visit just over, and consciously try to forget it. Eventually, answers would begin to come and to erupt into his conscious mind; and then he could attack it.
He had argued with himself about asking Dahno just what the other had in mind for him. He did not want to ask too soon, or until he could at least come up with some knowledge of his own about his older brother.
But riding back now, without really knowing why, but trusting the instinct that he knew to be based upon at least some of the unresolved data in the back of his mind, he depided to ask. A sort of companionship had grown up between them in these last few days, and if he did not ask now, there was no telling when he would be able to ask again. By the time his next chance came, that present feeling of companionship might have evaporated.
"Dahno," he said, hastily, for the farm was getting close now, "why are you interested in me anyway?"
Dahno looked over at him, seemed to think a minute, then pulled the hovercar to the side of the road and cut the motor.
He looked back at Bleys.
His face was utterly serious.
"I know you," he said. "I'm the only person on sixteen worlds who does. I think I know what you're capable of. You're isolated by your ability. So was I. So am I—except that I've learned to live with it. Now, it's too late. We'll always be isolated, you and I, even from each other. But the point is I can use you, Bleys, in what I'm doing."
"And what's that?" asked Bleys.
Dahno ignored the question.
"You lived with Mother until you were old enough to know how you get what you want from someone else," Dahno went on. "It's a matter of looking ahead, planning ahead, and arranging a one-way path for that person that leads only to the end you want for him or her. You know it can be done and you know how it's done. I don't want you to think that.I did that to you."
He stopped speaking. Bleys merely stared back at him. "You follow me?" asked Dahno.
"Yes, I follow," said Bleys, "but you still didn't answer my question."
"I am," said Dahno. "What I'm telling you is that I need your help, but I only want it if you give it of your own free will. There's no way—and even young as you are you know this as well as I do, Little Brother—that either one of us can really force our will on the other. So I want you to
choose
to come in with me. So, I'm letting you take a look at everything I do, and we'll keep on letting you look until there's nothing more to look at, in the hopes that you'll see that it's something you want to be involved in as well. That's all there is to it."
"Are you sure?" said Bleys, a little bitterly.
"You're remembering our mother," said Dahno. "Don't. I'm not her! If nothing else, I want something much greater than she ever wanted. But what that is you're going to have to find out for yourself. Find out for yourself, and then decide if you want any part of it. That way I know you're coming in with me completely of your own free will. All right?"
"For now, anyway," answered Bleys, "all right."
One of the huge hands was extended. Bleys took it in his own narrow, now-twelve-year-old fingers and they grasped hands. Then Dahno let go, and without another word, restarted the hovercar, swung up on the road and they drove the rest of the way to the farm.