"Now," said Dahno, "if you want to tell me about how your trip went . . .".
So, thought Bleys. The long comfortable beginning of the meeting was over.
"Absolutely," Bleys answered. "There may be a few surprises in it for you. If so, I'll appreciate your waiting until I'm done wim the whole story before we talk about it. All right?"
Dahno nodded.
"Just fine," he said, taking a large swallow from his drink, "charge ahead."
"You know, I went first to Freiland," said Bleys, "and the important man I saw there was Hammer Martin—"
"Good man, Hammer," said Dahno.
Bleys held up a finger in protest. Dahno nodded an apology and waved him on.
Bleys began the recital of everything that had happened to him on Freiland, not giving his deductions or conclusions as he went along, but simply making a bald account of events. He reported what he had said and done; and what Hammer had said.
However, when he came to his final, long heart-to-heart talk with Hammer, he gave this to Dahno word for word, quoting from his trained memory.
Dahno had ordered several more drinks and drunk them before Bleys had finished talking. His expression did not change as Bleys told about painting a future in which the Others would consist of all the qualified mixed-breeds.
In the face of Dahno's silence, he went on to describe going through Hammer's secret files; and what he found there; as well as what he deduced—and later told Hammer he would have to report to Dahno. At the same time he repeated his own recommendation that Hammer stay in place.
It was a bald recital. His telling was as poker-faced in its own way as the face of Dahno, opposite him; still perfectly relaxed, and with the glint of humor that was always there unless something had specifically happened to drive all humor from him.
Bleys continued his story to Cassida and Himandi, with the story still told just as it had happened. After that, he gave, his experiences on Ste. Marie, Ceta, New Earth, and finally Harmony. Only on Harmony, he told Dahno, were there no hidden files, no secret armed enforcers, kept by the head of the organization there himself. Kinkaka Goodfellow, the leader of the organization on Harmony, had followed the rules explicitly.
"But I told him the same thing about the mixed-breeds and the future," said Bleys calmly, "and came back here. Ordinarily, he's the one leader I'd recommend replacing. But the way matters work, Harmony's almost an extension of your own command, here on Association. It's a little too close—you could appear on his doorstep any time."
Dahno nodded.
"—And while none of them," Bleys went on, "at least to begin with, suspected I could ferret out what they were doing that had not been original orders;
he
suspected from the first that
1
was a sort of Inspector-General."
"Did he?" said Dahno, showing a first sign of surprise.
"Yes," said Bleys, "he went deliberately to work to show me that nothing was hidden. The only reason I say this might disqualify him would be that so much suspicion could stand in the way of his accepting the future I suggested for the Others—that I offered him, too."
Dahno nodded again, but this time with his expression unreadable.
"On the other hand," Bleys said, "I think, given time, he'd be able to see it. If he did, there'd be the great advantage that he'd probably adopt it with all his heart and soul. So, even him, I'd suggest we leave in place."
There was a moment of silence between them in the padded little enclosure around the table.
"You know," said Dahno, mildly after a moment, "you weren't sent out to do anything like this with all these people of ours. That paper I gave you was only supposed to make sure you had their cooperation. Not to use as a lever to threaten them with me, and make them take on a notion of all Others eventually ruling all the planets. I know I've talked about this to the trainees. But I thought you understood it was that—just talk."
"I did," answered Bleys levelly. "Mine wasn't. I think it's a perfectly desirable and reachable goal."
"Do you?" said Dahno. "Then I'll put off hearing your answer to what you thought we—and that means I—could possibly gain from it. Suppose you tell me, instead, what reasons you might have for believing in' a future like that. You've got to have realized, long ago, that my success and theirs depends on personal, one-on-one contact."
"That's why such a future's inevitable," said Bleys. "You're like anyone who succeeds in any field. The more success you have, the more work you make for yourself to do. In spite of sending outfits out to a number of the other planets, you and your organization here—but particularly you, yourself—long ago reached the point where you put in a good eighteen-hour day, seven days a week. That's why you're on-call by phone twenty-four hours a day. Being you, you're able to do it without seeming to be frantically busy. The flaw is—the other members aren't Dahnos. But isn't it a fact that what I've said about your schedule is right?"
"Mr. Vice-Chairman," said Dahno. He emptied his glass and pressed the stud on the table's control pad to order a refill. "You're right. I take it the implication is that I myself will soon have to take on extra help."
"Isn't that one of the reasons that you wanted me as your Senior Vice-Chairman?" asked Bleys. "You could see a long time back you were moving towards a time when there'd be too much to do. You wanted to be able to pass some of that off eventually, to at least one person you could trust?"
"Correct again, Mr. Vice-Chairman," said Dahno. The glass with his drink rose, brimming but steady, through the hole that opened before him on his table; then closed again, once the filled glass was at table level. Dahno watched it, as if it were some kind of clever performer.
"Still," he said, "the sort of growth you suggested in what you told the heads of the suborganizations; and—as I gather— convinced them of, is a little hard to swallow. I don't see it myself."
"I think you would if you had time to study the matter; the way I have, these last few years," answered Bleys. "You're unique. I could almost bet on you to convince an Exotic, which I think no one but another Exotic could do."
"No, not an Exotic," murmured Dahno, gazing at his full glass. "But go on."
"Take the time to study it," said Bleys. "I think you'll see, as a future, it's definitely there. All it needs is a conscious intention by you and me to have it."
"Wrong," said Dahno, lifting his eyes from the glass to look at Bleys, "you mean it's there to be acquired, but only I've got the ability to acquire it?"
"Yes," said Bleys, "but it would come faster—in our lifetimes—only if I'm there beside you."
Dahno chuckled good-heartedly.
"You wouldn't be my baby brother—let alone being Mr. Vice-Chairman now," he said to Bleys, "if I hadn't seen that any attempt to make you useful at all would have to accept the fact that you'd become useful to the point of being someone I couldn't do without."
"But you don't see a reachable future, as I outlined it just now?" asked Bleys.
"No. No, I don't," answered Dahno. He emptied the glass before him in one large, easy swallow; and stretched his massive arms in a gargantuan gesture of relaxation. "I can imagine it, of course. But whether I'll agree to it, or not, I think that's something I'll need to think over."
"Can I ask how long you think it'll take to think about it, Mr. Chairman?" asked Bleys.
"I don't honestly know, Mr. Vice-Chairman," said Dahno. "Maybe overnight. Maybe, a matter of months. I'm not like one of the heads of the suborganizations you talked to. I've got to take what you suggest and put it against what I see as possible. I may even want to see whether events, over a little period of time, tend to confirm it or not."
He stretched again, enormously.
"Well," he said, "should we call it a dinner? I should be getting back to my regular restaurant table; and you'd probably like to go back to the apartment and make yourself comfortable."
"Could you give me a moment more?" asked Bleys. "Tell me, do you agree with me that the business of keeping a private group of gunmen, or whatever, of keeping secret files, and making other changes in the pattern of what they were set out to do, are things that ought to be corrected—as I told the heads of the suborganizations they should be?"
"Yes," said Dahno, "in that, I agree with you. Be sure to let me know as they clean up their acts."
"Just as soon as word comes," said Bleys. "Now—just one more question. Of these—call them errors—that our Vice-Chairmen fell into, are you guilty of any yourself?"
Dahno looked at him across the table. A grin on his face began and widened.
"Sly boots," he said.
"Perhaps," said Bleys, "but you haven't answered my question."
"And I don't intend to," said Dahno. "Well, shall we go?"
"Mr. Chairman," said Bleys, "I was under the impression from your phone call that you had something to tell me?"
"Perhaps I had," said Dahno. "It may be what you've told me has knocked it out of my head for this moment. In any case it's something we'll take up at some other, future time."
He got to his feet. He stood up from the table, and Bleys rose automatically with him.
"Shall I give you a ride back to the apartment?" he asked.
"You don't have to," said Bleys, "I can take an autocar."
"It's no trouble," said Dahno, "in fact, I'd prefer to."
They returned to the apartment, and Dahno dropped Bleys off.
There, it was a little like the farm had been when Bleys had stepped into it on the evening of his return to Association. Everything seemed exactly the same. He went on into his own room, and found his luggage had been delivered, and obviously brought up by the concierge.
He unpacked it, what little unpacking there was, since it consisted only of one small personal case with emergency clothing, in case he had to get by before he could buy new clothes on some other world. He put all that was in it away in various drawers and wall boxes of his apartment; undressed, put on a dressing robe and lay down on his back.
He had almost never used the skylight over his head for star-watching while he was thinking. But tonight he pressed the proper stud on his bedside control pad and above him the opaqueness of the roof drew back to show him the sky full of stars as they were seen above Association.
He could pick out the star of Sirius, above Freiland and New Earth. The others were too far away, or the angle of sight that his window gave him at this time of the evening and this time of the year put them outside the slice of space he could see.
But it was of Old Earth he was thinking, just before he fell asleep. But not before first making a mental note to look closely into the situation here on Association as it had developed during the months he was gone; and also into what possible reason Dahno might have had for phoning him, seemingly so urgently, to come in from the farm.
He woke to a bright day on Association; and—as so often happened—his thoughts were much better ordered than they had been before falling asleep.
He could not be sure; but his feeling had been that, at least at the time Dahno had phoned him, the other had been disturbed over some problem that he wanted to share with Bleys. Possibly, he had planned to put Bleys to work on handling some part of it.
What Bleys had told him, had made him change his mind. Why, remained a question mark. But it seemed to Bleys that the only thing that could possibly disturb his half-brother that much, and the only thing that would keep him from following his original plan of using Bleys in dealing with it, would be the sudden conclusion that, after all, perhaps Bleys was not to be trusted.
But any connection between what he had told Dahno and anything his half-brother might have been about to tell him, was an unknown.
Nonetheless, whatever it was, it would have to be something to do with politics. Therefore, the sooner he informed himself on the present, local political situation, the better. He had half expected to wake up to find instructions from Dahno putting him to work at something—if only something to keep him busy. But Dahno had left no message and he assumed that that meant he was free to do what he wanted.
He dressed, made himself breakfast and ate it; then went to Dahno's office, said hello to the two faithful workers there, and let himself in through Dahno's private office into the file room.
He began to examine whatever updating Dahno had done on the available files since Bleys left.
The new information he studied, like all the other entries that he had examined earlier, was by its nature cryptic, referring to people and things without explanation. Very often, the name of a person dealt with was hidden under an initial, a number; or it was obviously a nickname.
Nonetheless, from his earlier experience with these files, he was able to put most of what he found in context with the structure of the Chamber itself. From his limited acquaintance with some of Dahno's code, he had been able to pick out references to the Core Tap Project. The references themselves were not clear; but the very number of them indicated the Project had now become important enough to overshadow everything else that Dahno was concerned with at the moment: