of Chamber history to see if there had been comparable crises of religious belief with practical and needed projects, discussed as planet-wide questions. He found a total of eight. All of them had been decided for the belief and against the practical necessity.
Following this bit of research, he set his equipment to searching for what eventually happened to the practical projects.
In most cases, he learned, the practical projects were resurrected and eventually passed by the Chamber as part of another, totally unrelated bill; and in a form that tried to avoid or bypass the original religious objection that had been made against it.
Before he could get deeper into the subject, the door opened and Dahno arrived. The usual twinkle was back in his eyes, and he sounded like his ordinary energetic self.
"Well? Ready to go?" he asked.
"Right away, Mr. Chairman," said Bleys, abandoning the printed sheets and going back out the door of the apartment with him.
They had dinner in another of the innumerable private restaurants where Dahno seemed to either be the best known of customers, or to have some kind of part-ownership role. It occurred to Bleys that the attention Dahno invariably got could have had its human side as well. Entertaining a giant, and one with such a capacity for food and drink, was the same sort of silent testimonial to the restaurant's quality, that makes dining out a matter of good service, in most places, for a very fat man.
This evening Dahno was in spirits to match his original mood as he had come into the apartment. He was cheerful, witty and the best of company. He talked about everything under the sun; but—Bleys noticed—he did not speak about McKae's speech that day.
Bleys had not really expected him to. Bleys, in fact, was content to sit back and flow with the tide of Dahno's humor as the meal progressed. He was interested in it, on the evening of such a day on which McKae had spoken so effectively; and also in minutely observing Dahno himself, personally, after seeing him asleep.
At the meal's beginning, he could find no flaw.in Dahno's appearance, actions and talk. The signs of exhaustion Bleys had seen in him as he slept were effectively hidden. It was the same as ever, as it had always been at these private dinners of theirs. Just as Dahno did not mention what had happened in the Chamber today, he also did not mention the whole business of Bleys' trip. Rather, he spoke of Bleys' idea that the Others should seriously, in the end, encompass nearly all the capable mixed-breeds, and control the governments of all the worlds—as if for the moment he considered it favorably.
But, as the meal wore on, Bleys—now alert—began to find cracks in Dahno's social facade, and his presentation of himself.
Dahno's voice continued to perform its duty, keeping up the flow of easy conversation on a multitude of subjects; expressing a true interest in Bleys and not forgetting Henry and Joshua. He even suggested that he might have some long-term plans for Henry and Joshua that he thought would please Bleys; but as they had not yet matured, he did not want to talk about them yet.
But, while from a conversational standpoint Dahno showed no signs; Bleys began to find, around the other's eyes and mouth, the shadows of the weariness and desperation he had seen on Dahno's sleeping face that morning.
It was not enough evidence in the ordinary way to make any more than a wild guess about the feelings and mental condition of anyone ordinarily. But Bleys had made a study of Dahno, just as he had made a study of all the other things he considered necessary to the life he wished to lead; and for Bleys now, the evidence he saw was overwhelming.
Dahno was up against a crisis. Not only that, but the marks it had left on him suggested a crisis that had been a long time building. It was more than simply a hidden reaction to McKae's covert attack on the Five Sisters in the Chamber today.
Still, thought Bleys, there was time to make sure. He remembered from his reading a phrase out of the American west of Old Earth, long before space flight, and at a time when only a few mountain men and fur traders were pushing into the wilderness that was then the western part of North America. Wilderness men of that time, following their instincts and their feelings almost on an animal level as to where they would go or where they would stay for a while, had used the phrase:
"Where my stick floats."
There was time yet at this dinner. He would wait a while and see which way Dahno's stick floated tonight.
One thing could be counted on. Dahno would not have got them together for dinner without a reason. Sooner or later, he must come out with that reason.
It came at last after the meal and the dessert itself was over; and Dahno had insisted that Bleys, against his usual custom, join him in a snifter of post-meal brandy. Bleys had no personal or specific objection to alcoholic beverages. It was simply that at no point did they offer any benefit to his plans for the rest of his life.
"You'll probably find this a bit sudden," Dahno had said, after he had taken a swallow of the cognac, and watched as Bleys followed his example. "But after putting it against a number of other possibilities and present conditions of the worlds, I've decided I'm going to go along with that dream of yours."
He paused and looked at Bleys, who let his real startlement at this sudden a decision show on his face.
"At least," Dahno went on, smiling, "I'm going to look into it this far—we'll start picking a world to set up a new suborganization on, the first of those we may be starting from now on."
He stopped speaking and cocked one eye merrily on Bleys. "What do you say?" he asked.
"You'll have to give me a second or two," said Bleys— although the truth was he no longer needed time to think. He had expected a reaction from Dahno to McKae's success in the Chamber. Plainly this was it.
Dahno nodded, and took another drink from his brandy snifter, then put it down again. He had insisted on snifters so large that even his enormous hands and Bleys' long fingers could only curl partially around them, to hold them cupped against the palm with stem between the second and third finger.
"All right," he said as he put his glass down again on the table top, "you've had your seconds to think. What's your reaction?"
"I didn't expect you to decide this quickly," said Bleys; "I thought you'd take at least a couple of weeks, if not more; and even then I thought your chances of picking up on my idea were only about half and half. Could I ask what tipped you toward it?"
"No," said Dahno, smiling at him, so that the word came out as a simple refusal rather than a rebuff.
"Well, I couldn't be happier," said Bleys. "I really think there's a large and rewarding future for us, lying that way. Maybe, even a future so large and rewarding neither of us can see just yet how big."
Dahno laughed, finished his brandy and signaled for more.
"You're really sold on the idea," he said, looking back at Bleys. "That's good. All right, is there any particular world you'd like to move in on, first?"
"As a matter of fact, yes," answered Bleys. "Old Earth."
Dahno looked at him with his head cocked a little on one side. If it had not been for his utter lack of resemblance to anything so small and curious as a bird, the head-cocking would have been like that of a bird taking a closer look at something possibly eatable.
"I'd have thought you'd learned by this time that Old Earth would probably be the toughest nut for us to crack," he said. "There's not merely one government there. There's literally hundreds. Every social, religious and ethnic group is still standing aloof from the others around it and insisting on self-government. This is the kind of situation in which we'd need more people than I can imagine to influence them all."
"There are general All-Earth participant political bodies that consider and rule on matters involving the whole planet—" Bleys was beginning, when Dahno cut him off short.
"That's worse than anything else," Dahno said, "as you already ought to know. The people who sit in those councils are nothing more than puppets, their strings pulled from the many groups they represent; and the power lies in the groups, as I said."
"—But, as I was also going to say," Bleys went on quietly, "I think our own organization could shift its pattern of working on Old Earth. Remember, it's the one world of original full-spectrum humanity—"
"That's what'll
make it the hardest nut to crack," said Dahno.
"No," said Bleys, "there are proto-Friendlies, proto-Dorsai, proto-Exotics living there today, as members of those same local ethnic organizations you're talking about, but the rest of the population is reachable. E
arth's always listened to prose
lytizers, to preachers. Our people recruited from Association and Harmony are evangelists by cultural selection over many generations. Picture someone like McKae, who spoke in Chamber today, preaching the advantage of having Others as leaders on Old Earth too. A corps of people like him could win Earth—of course, it'd take time."
He stopped speaking.
"I don't understand you," said Dahno, into the new silence, in a tone of voice that was quite serious. He ignored the new snifter of brandy that had been set down in front of him. "You want us to export preachers to Old Earth? What good could this do us, in either the short or the long run?"
"In the long run," said Bleys, "they could cut across these group boundaries you talked about. Eventually, simply because Old Earth is still so rich and powerful, we could have more influence over the civilized worlds from there than from anyplace else."
Dahno sat back against the padded curve of the booth, making it creak with his weight, and exhaled in a long slow breath. He picked up his brandy and drank from it.
"You really are looking deep into
the future, aren't you, Mr.
Vice-Chairman?" he said, very thoughtfully, and with his eyes abstracted.
Bleys noticed that the shadows of worry and weariness had come back to him in this unconscious moment.
"I think it's necessary," Bleys said, "to set a goal so far ahead we can be sure there's all the time in the world to reach it. Then we can always work back from that to what should be done immediately."
Dahno's eyes came sharply back to him.
"Maybe," he said, "but I'm thinking about how what we do is going to affect all the organizations already in place on other worlds."
"I thought of that myself," said Bleys. "Those on the already established planets will want to be sure that they aren't being pushed into the background. What I had in mind is that perhaps we should hold a meeting of all the heads of the organizations on the planets on which we currently have them—all the people I talked to on my last trip—on some neutral planet. And what better neutral planet could there be, than the one we're going to move in on? In this case, Old Earth?"
"Yes
..."
said Dahno.
He slapped his fingers on the table. It was a light slap but one which could be heard throughout the restaurant. Other diners looked in their direction.
"All right," said Dahno, "I'll leave right away in that case. I'll want to pick out the meeting place myself and, come to think of it, I might just take a little vacation while I'm at it. I haven't had a vacation for as long as I can remember. So don't be surprised if it's a matter of a few weeks before I get in touch with you and tell you I've found where we're going to meet and when you ought to be there, along with everybody else."
"You'll leave tomorrow?" asked Bleys. "Can you take off that suddenly?"
"Why, yes," said Dahno light-heartedly, "you know the saying—all ships get you to Old Earth eventually. Whatever spaceship is leaving tomorrow is one I can take part way and then transship to another, eithe
r going directly to Earth or to
someplace close to Earth from which I can pick up a third ship for the last leg. I'll let you know where I am from time to time. But don't expect a lot of contact. Meanwhile, you'll be in charge here."
He broke off and fished in his pocket, coming up with something that his huge hand hid.
"Here you are," he said. "I mink we can regard you as a full partner now, Mr. Vice-Chairman. Here's a surprise for you—" and he threw a small, bronze key on the table in front of Bleys.
Bleys could see the microcircuitry glinting on the surface of the key's blade. He looked back at Dahno.
"More files?"
"Yes," Dahno replied. "I gave you the secret files long ago, after you deduced their contents. Now, here's access to the secrets behind the secrets."
He paused to grin at Bleys.
"Did you deduce these files, too?"
"I'd been wondering a bit," Bleys said.
Chapter 29
For almost the
first time in his life Bleys was caught unprepared. He told himself it must never happen again.
There had been times before this when he had found himself thrust into an unknown situation, or an unexpected situation had happened to him without warning. But in this instance, he told himself, he should have foreseen and planned for a twist in events like this.
He had not.
He had planned to get Dahno and the heads of the other organizations to Earth for a meeting. He had planned to win Dahno eventually to his idea of a larger Other organization. He had intended eventually, one way or another, to get at any further secret files. He had expected many things that could cause problems in these plans.
He had taken into account the fact that Dahno might abruptly agree with the idea of enlarging the organization. But he had hardly expected Dahno to want to leave Association.
And he had never entertained the possibility that Dahno was cracking under his present situation and his load of work.