But obviously, to Bleys, at least, cracking he was. Bleys' sight of him in exhausted slumber had been a warning; but the Dahno whom an alerted Bleys had talked to last evening at dinner, and whose situation Bleys had confirmed this morning, with his listening to McKae in the Chamber and his study of the newsprints, had been a Dahno scrambling for survival.
Simply, McKae had the Five Sisters at his mercy, and Dahno was unable, this time, to come up with a way of rescuing them. The Five would be overthrown politically as Leaders in the Chamber. Dahno was taking that happening, for some reason, as an end to all he had achieved.
So, now he, Bleys, must find his own solution to the situation.
His long-term plans were still good; but he would have to make fresh, short-term plans in a hurry—that showed a fault in his thinking ahead, which he had trusted completely up until this moment.
It was true there had been some unexpected elements in all this. He had not connected Linx with the Five Sisters, nor with being Dahno's client. He had not expected the remarkable effectiveness McKae might have, speaking to the Chamber— though this was something he should have checked on, and suspected from the rapid growth in members to his churches.
But what he should have considered as a possibility, was the extent of Dahno's ego-involvement with his work through clients in the Chamber.
Bleys was in the position of someone who has had an enormous fortune dumped in his lap, so suddenly that he has no idea what to do with it.
He had reached ends that he had intended to reach; but so far ahead of schedule that he was not ready to cope with them immediately. Happily, Dahno was planning on that "little vacation" of his on Earth, which would give Bleys at least a few weeks' time. But there would be a great deal to do in mat time.
But his leaving brought up a critical combination of factors. A Dahno who felt his survival was at stake could become the equivalent of a rogue elephant—in more senses of the image than one. Clearly Dahno was leaving because he could no longer keep the Five Sisters from being overthrown, politically; and he was in no position to deal with McKae—who was not the kind of person to ever be his client in any case. What he was doing seemed the obvious, sensible thing. He was getting off-planet before anyone knew he was gone. But what else did he have in mind?
Undoubtedly, Linx and the other Five Sisters would come looking for him; but by that time he should be safely away. Bleys and the office workers would be left to handle McKae alone; and they could not handle McKae alone any more than they could have handled him with the best help Dahno had to offer.
Or did Dahno still have something up his sleeve? Bleys checked himself from jumping too quickly to conclusions. Nothing with Dahno was ever quite the way it appeared on the surface. It might be that his agreeing with Bleys' plan and the meeting on Earth, or the matter of his absenting himself, was somehow tied in with a move that would protect the Five Sisters against McKae after all.
Though how he could do this without somehow removing McKae, Bleys did not know; and in any case he doubted Dahno had ever had the capacity, nor did he have it now, to somehow talk McKae from the scene entirely. Only that would save the supremacy of the Five Sisters in the Chamber.
Bleys decided there was no choice in the matter for him. He would simply have to make his plans as he went along, at least to start with. First there was information he could now get and would need.
Dahno had insisted on taking a quick trip out to see Henry and Joshua in the morning, since the first spaceship he could take out did not leave until afternoon.
"You rent a car," had been his last words to Bleys the night before, "I'll drive mine and we'll meet out there at about nine o'clock in the morning. All right?"
"All right, certainly," said Bleys, wondering why Dahno wanted them to go in separate cars. He could not be thinking of taking Henry and Joshua with him to Earth; that was too wild a thought altogether. The two would not want to go, for one thing; and secondly, there was still no reason why they all could not have traveled to the airport in one car if necessary.
Something told Bleys, however, that this was probably a minor question. It was worthy of consideration, only because every clue that could be extracted from what Dahno said and did could be useful in figuring out what he planned to do. Bleys was up early in the morning, had a hovercar—a white one like Dahno's—rented and drove on out to the farm.
This time the one he rented was a self-drive unit, like Dahno's, rather than like an autocar. There were no traffic-control strips embedded in country roads. Bleys was familiar with the controls, which were minimal, hardly used, except on those same back-roads. So, of course, to drive up the last piece of road into the farm would have to be done completely manually.
Long before he reached the point where he turned off the main highway, he had begun to enjoy using a self-drive unit. He made a mental note that, since the controls on these vehicles varied little from world to world nowadays, he would use it more often, in the future, instead of the autocar version.
Early as he was, when he got mere Dahno's hovercar was already parked in the farmyard. Bleys parked behind him— there was no room to park beside him. He got out of his own car, as soon as it had settled to the ground, and went up to the farmhouse door. He knocked, and Henry's familiar voice called him in.
Within, Dahno was sitting in the chair that had been built for him. Both Joshua and Henry had straight chairs, pulled up facing him. Joshua got up as Bleys came in to get another straight chair, on which Bleys perched, with a good deal less comfort than Dahno did in his own oversized one. Dan no was busy talking to Henry.
"—Now, I may be gone anything up to six months," he said, "but you can always get hold of Bleys if you need anything. Is there anything—anything at all—right now before I leave, that I can either arrange for you to have or give you right now?"
Henry shook his head. He had never been willing to accept any large gift from Dahno, or anyone. Bleys had also offered to get or give him things on some of his own private visits to the farm; and been decisively turned down. Henry's attitude was that Bleys and Dahno had paid for their keep while they were living there, by the work they did about the farm; and that once the farm was no longer feeding or housing them, then they owed nothing.
Small presents were acceptable, like parts for the motor he had finally built, and mounted on the frame of an old tractor; so that now at last he could plow with something better than a team of eight goats in harness before him.
But now Henry was past that. Dahno and Bleys, separately, still dreamed up small things to give him; but whenever possible Henry reciprocated with a gift of fresh goat meat, of farm produce, or even things knitted or carved by himself or Joshua—so that the giving was not all one-sided.
Bleys was a little surprised that Dahno would even try to give Henry anything at this time, knowing how unyielding the other was. But Dahno's offer had actually been one of his typically misleading preludes to something else he had in mind.
"Well, one thing I can do," Dahno said, "is leave my hovercar here for you to use while I'm gone."
Before Henry could voice a protest, he rolled on merrily, and with all the bulldozer advantage of his powerful voice. "It gets out of shape unless someone drives it often, and I'd have to hire somebody to do that. It'll be cheaper for me if I leave it with you, Henry and Joshua; and have you two exercise it for me while I'm gone. We'll call it even, whatever use the car may be to you, against my need to have it driven on a fairly steady basis."
The ground cut from under him, Henry closed his mouth on what he was about to say. After a second he yielded.
"Under those conditions, I believe we could take care of it for you, Dahno," he said.
"Now," went on Dahno, as if this had been the only possible answer that could have come up, "how's your driving? Would it be a little rusty? Perhaps I should take you out now and run you through the process of handling the controls, just in case."
"Having never chosen to have one of the vehicles," said Henry—who would never admit under any circumstances that it was poverty that kept him from owning a car—"I've never learned how to control one. Yes, I'll need lessons."
"Fine," said Dahno. He turned to look at Bleys. "Will you back your car out to the road, so I can spin mine around and take Henry out to practice his driving?"
"Right away! " answered Bleys, getting to his feet.
He went swiftly out the door, but found Joshua at his heels as he reached his own hovercar.
"Best I learn from you, while Father is learning from Dahno," said Joshua. "That way Father won't have to teach me; and if by any chance he forgets anything there'll be one other mind that can remember it. You tell him, though, that it was your idea, Bleys."
"Oh, I will," said Bleys. He opened the door. "Get in, Joshua, and move over to the other front seat."
The driving lessons were given. The truth was, there was nothing much to learn. The controls were extremely simple, being concentrated in a single control stick with a control pad having half a dozen buttons on it within easy reach of the fingers as the driver held the stick. Joshua found himself at home driving the rented car within about fifteen minutes.
They returned to the farmyard to find Dahno's hovercar already back and down on the ground, with the engine shut off. Dahno and Henry were standing beside it, obviously waiting.
Bleys parked the rented vehicle behind Dahno's car and left the engine alive; but put the vehicle down flat on the ground so mat he and Joshua could get out easily.
Joshua left by his own side of the car, this time. They went up to Henry and Dahno, last-minute farewells were said, and Bleys took Dahno into the rented car; He spun it about its own axis, once it was up on its air cushion; and headed out the driveway on to the road that would take them to the spaceport back at Ecumeny.
At the spaceport Bleys went with Dahno right up to the entry port of his ship. Dahno had been lucky in getting one that was going to New Earth, but was intending to stop there only briefly before loading with extra passengers and continuing on to Old Earth.
"Don't«do anything I wouldn't do," said Dahno lightly as he ducked in through the entry port. He looked back at Bleys and smiled broadly; but there was nothing in his face, nor had there been anything in his voice, to indicate that what he had said was anything more than a casual farewell.
"Be sure and keep me posted where you are, on Old Earth," said Bleys.
Dahno waved a meaty hand in both an assent and a final good-bye, as he stepped away into the dimness of the spaceship interior. Bleys went back to his rented car and drove thoughtfully off in the direction of the apartment.
Before he had gone any distance, however, he changed his mind. He was still on the road that led to Ecumeny generally, the twelve-lane highway with the auto-controls built into each strip of it, so he had switched to automatic, and his vehicle was essentially driving itself. He let the power strip take him into Ecumeny; but instead of turning off toward the apartment he turned instead in the direction of the office.
When he stepped into the office, it was no different than any other afternoon. Both women there were busy as usual with correspondence, opening envelopes and decoding in some cases the messages within them. There was a pile on the right front corner of Aran's desk, of unopened envelopes that Bleys knew were for himself; he stepped in and picked
them
up.
"Dahno is going to be gone for a matter of some months," he told them. "Did you know about it?"
"He phoned this morning and told us," said Aran, who commonly answered for both of them in any case. "He said not to let anybody know, though, until you authorized it; and you were to be in charge until he got back. Do you have any special orders, Bleys Ahrens?"
"Not right now, Aran," answered Bleys. He took his mail into Dahno's office and further through another door into a newly joined-on office that had been made for him only a couple of years before. His office had its own entrance to the file room, and he stepped into it, leaving the correspondence unopened on his desk. He sat down before the main review screen and slid the key that Dahno had given him the night before into the slot. The screen came alive with the words:
Special Secret Files. If you have come across these by mistake, please back out.
Bleys wondered how anyone could possibly have stumbled across the files by mistake. But he knew that strange things happened. Even stranger things could be done by the people who were wizards in the designing and building of such information storage devices as this. He ignored the request to back out and punched up an index. As with the regular files, he could sort these for viewing in any order he wanted.
He chose to go through the names of the people there, alphabetically. A moment later, he was back into his familiar routine of quickly scanning a displayed page and flipping to the next one.
These secret files were more extensive than he had expected. They were well more than double in size of the secret files he had uncovered at any of the off-world organizations.
They were not as easily readable, however; simply because Dahno had used his own shorthand for names and incidents all the way through; Bleys knew in the long run he could puzzle out what the brief notations actually said. So he only memorized them now. Understanding could wait until he had first absorbed all the material there to absorb.