Dorsai!

Part-Maran

There remained the interview with Sayona the Bond. Going up some wide and shallow steps into the establishment — it could not be called merely a building, or group of buildings — that housed the most important individual of the two Exotic planets, Donal found cause for amusement in the manner of his approach.

Farther out, among some shrubbery at the entrance to the — estate? — he had encountered a tall, gray-eyed woman and explained his presence.

“Go right ahead,” the woman had said, waving him onward. “You’ll find him.” The odd part of it was, Donal had no doubt that he would. And the unreasonable certainty of it tickled his own strange sense of humor.

He wandered on by a sunlit corridor that broadened imperceptibly into a roofless garden, past paintings, and pools of water with colorful fish in them — through a house that was not a house, in rooms and out until he came to a small sunken patio, half-roofed over; and at the far end of it, under the shade of the half-roof, was a tall bald man of indeterminate age, wrapped in a blue robe and seated on a little patch of captive turf, surrounded by a low, stone wall.

Donal went down three stone steps, across the patio, and up the three stone steps at the far side until he stood over the tall, seated man.

“Sir,” said Donal. “I’m Donal Graeme.”

The tall man waved him down on the turf.

“Unless you’d rather sit on the wall, of course,” he smiled. “Sitting cross-legged doesn’t agree with everyone.”

“Not at all, sir,” answered Donal, and sat down cross-legged himself.

“Good,” said the tall man; and apparently lost himself in thought, gazing out over the patio.

Donal also relaxed, waiting. A certain peace had crept into him in the way through this place. It seemed to beckon to meditation; and — Donal had no doubt — was probably cleverly constructed and designed for just that purpose. He sat, comfortably now, and let his mind wander where it chose; and it happened — not so oddly at all — to choose to wander in the direction of the man beside him.

Sayona the Bond, Donal had learned as a boy in school, was one of the human institutions peculiar to the Exotics. The Exotics were two planetsful of strange people, judged by the standards of the rest of the human race — some of whom went so far as to wonder if the inhabitants of Mara and Kultis had developed wholly and uniquely out of the human race, after all. This, however, was speculation half in humor and half in superstition. In truth, they were human enough.

They had, however, developed their own forms of wizardry. Particularly in the fields of psychology and its related branches, and in that other field which you could call gene selection or planned breeding, depending on whether you approved or disapproved of it. Along with this went a certain sort of general mysticism. The Exotics worshiped no god, overtly, and laid claim to no religion. On the other hand they were nearly all — they claimed, by individual choice — vegetarians and adherents of nonviolence on the ancient Hindu order. In addition, however, they held to another cardinal nonprinciple; and this one was the principle of noninterference. The ultimate violence, they believed, was for one person to urge a point of view on another — in any fashion of urging. Yet, all these traits had not destroyed their ability to take care of themselves. If it was their creed to do violence to no man, it was another readily admitted part of their same creed that no one should therefore be wantonly permitted to do violence to them. In war and business, through mercenaries and middlemen, they more than held their own.

But, thought Donal — to get back to Sayona the Bond, and his place in Exotic culture. He was one of the compensations peculiar to the Exotic peoples, for their different way of life. He was — in some way that only an Exotic fully understood — a certain part of their emotional life made manifest in the person of a living human being. Like Anea, who — devastatingly normal and female as she was — was, to an Exotic, literally one of the select of Kultis. She was their best selected qualities made actual — like a living work of art that they worshiped. It did not matter that she was not always joyful, that indeed, her life must bear as much or more of the normal human sorrow of situation and existence. That was where most people’s appreciation of the matter went astray. No, what was important was the capabilities they had bred and trained into her. It was the capacity in her for living, not the life she actually led, that pleasured them. The actual achievement was up to her, and was her own personal reward. They appreciated the fact that — if she chose, and was lucky — she could appreciate life. Similarly, Sayona the Bond. Again, only in a sense that an Exotic would understand, Sayona was the actual bond between their two worlds made manifest in flesh and blood. In him was the capability for common understanding, for reconciliation, for an expression of the community of feeling between people …

Donal awoke suddenly to the fact that Sayona was speaking to him. The older man had been speaking some time, in a calm, even voice, and Donal had been letting the words run through his mind like water of a stream through his ringers. Now, something that had been said had jogged him to a full awareness.

“…Why, no,” answered Donal, “I thought this was standard procedure for any commander before you hired him.”

Sayona chuckled.

“Put every new commander through all that testing and trouble?” he said. “No, no. The word would get around and we’d never be able to hire the men we wanted.”

“I rather enjoy taking tests,” said Donal, idly.

“I know you do,” Sayona nodded. “A test is a form of competition, after all; and you’re a competitor by nature. No, normally when we want a military man we look for military proofs like everyone else — and that’s as far as we go.”

“Why the difference with me, then’’” asked Donal, turning to look at him. Sayona returned his gaze with pale brown eyes holding just a hint of humor in the wrinkles at their corners.

“Well, we weren’t just interested in you as a commander,” answered Sayona. “There’s the matter of your ancestors, you know. You’re actually part-Maran; and those genes, even when outmatched, are of interest to us. Then there’s the matter of you, yourself. You have astonishing potentials.”

“Potentials for what?”

“A number of rather large things,” said Sayona soberly. “We only glimpse them, of course, in the results of our tests.”

“Can I ask what those large things are?” asked Donal, curiously.

“I’m sorry, no. I can’t answer that for you,” said Sayona. “The answers would be meaningless to you personally, anyway — for the reason you can’t explain anything in terms of itself. That’s why I thought I’d have this talk with you. I’m interested in your philosophy.”

“Philosophy!” Donal laughed. “I’m a Dorsai.”

“Everyone, even Dorsai, every living thing has its own philosophy — a blade of grass, a bird, a baby. An individual philosophy is a necessary thing, the touchstone by which we judge our own existence. Also — you’re only part Dorsai. What does the other part say?”

Donal frowned.

“I’m not sure the other part says anything,” he said. “I’m a soldier. A mercenary. I have a job to do; and I intend to do it — always — in the best way I know how.”

“But beyond this—” urged Sayona.

“Why, beyond this—” Donal fell silent, still frowning. “I suppose I would want to see things go well.”

“You said want to see things go well — rather than like to see things go well.” Sayona was watching him. “Don’t you see any significance in that?”

“Want? Oh—” Donal laughed. “I suppose that’s an unconscious slip on my part. I suppose I was thinking of making them go well.”

“Yes,” said Sayona, but in a tone that Donal could not be sure was meant as agreement or not. “You’re a doer, aren’t you?”

“Someone has to be,” said Donal. “Take the civi-lized worlds now—” he broke off suddenly.

“Go on,” said Sayona.

“I meant to say — take civilization. Think how short a time it’s been since the first balloon went up back on Earth. Four hundred years? Five hundred years? Something like that. And look how we’ve spread out and split up since then.”

“What about it?”

“I don’t like it,” said Donal. “Aside from the inefficiency, it strikes me as unhealthy. What’s the point of technological development if we just split in that many more factions — everyone hunting up his own type of aberrant mind and hiving with it? That’s no progress.”

“You subscribe to progress?”

Donal looked at him. “Don’t you?”

“I suppose,” said Sayona. “A certain type of progress. My kind of progress. What’s yours?”

Donal smiled. “You want to hear that, do you? You’re right. I guess I do have a philosophy after all. You want to hear it?”

“Please,” said Sayona.

“All right,” said Donal. He looked out over the little sunken garden. “It goes like this — each man is a tool in his own hands. Mankind is a tool in its own hands. Our greatest satisfaction doesn’t come from the rewards of our work, but from the working itself; and our greatest responsibility is to sharpen, and improve the tool that is ourselves so as to make it capable of tackling bigger jobs.” He looked at Sayona. “What do you think of it?”

“I’d have to think about it,” answered Sayona. “My own point of view is somewhat different, of course. I see Man not so much as an achieving mechanism, but as a perceptive link in the order of things. I would say the individual’s role isn’t so much to do as it is to be. To realize to the fullest extent the truth already and inherently in him — if I make myself clear.”

“Nirvana as opposed to Valhalla, eh?” said Donal, smiling a little grimly. “Thanks, I prefer Valhalla.”

“Are you sure?’ asked Sayona. “Are you quite sure you’ve no use for Nirvana?”

“Quite sure,” said Donal.

“You make me sad,” said Sayona, somberly. “We had had hopes.”

“Hopes?”

‘There is,” said Sayona, lifting one finger, “this possibility in you — this great possibility. It may be exercised in only one direction — that direction you choose. But you have freedom of choice. There’s room for you here.”

“With you?”

“The other worlds don’t know,” said Sayona,“what we’ve begun to open up here in the last hundred years. We are just beginning to work with the butterfly implicit in the matter-bound worm that is the present human species. There are great opportunities for anyone with the potentialities for this work.”

“And I,” said Donal, “have these potentialities?”

“Yes,” answered Sayona. “Partly as a result of a lucky genetic accident that is beyond our knowledge to understand, now. Of course — you would have to be retrained. That other part of your character that rules you now would have to be readjusted to a harmonious integration with the other part we consider more valuable.”

Donal shook his head.

“There would be compensations,” said Sayona, in a sad, almost whimsical tone, “things would become possible to you — do you know that you, personally, are the sort of man who, for example, could walk on air if only you believed you could?”

Donal laughed.

“I am quite serious,” said Sayona. “Try believing it some time.”

“I can hardly try believing what I instinctively disbelieve,” said Donal. “Besides, that’s beside the point. I am a soldier.”

“But what a strange soldier,” murmured Sayona. “A soldier full of compassion, of whimsical fancies and wild daydreams. A man of loneliness who wants to be like everyone else; but who finds the human race a conglomeration of strange alien creatures whose twisted ways he cannot understand — while still he understands them too well for their own comfort.”

He turned his eyes calmly onto Donal’s face, which had gone set and hard.

“Your tests are quite effective, aren’t they?” Donal said.

“They are,” said Sayona. “But there’s no need to look at me like that. We can’t use them as a weapon, to make you do what we would like to have you do. That would be an action so self-crippling as to destroy all its benefits. We can only make the offer to you.” He paused. “I can tell you that on the basis of our knowledge we can assure you with better than fair certainty that you’ll be happy if you take our path.”

“And if not?” Donal had not relaxed.

Sayona sighed.

“You are a strong man,” he said. “Strength leads to responsibility, and responsibility pays little heed to happiness.”

“I can’t say I like the picture of myself going through life grubbing after happiness.” Donal stood up. “Thanks for the offer, anyway. I appreciate the compliment it implies.”

“There is no compliment in telling a butterfly he is a butterfly and need not crawl along the ground,” said Sayona.

Donal inclined his head politely.

“Good-by,” he said. He turned about and walked the few steps to the head of the shallow steps leading down into the sunken garden and across it to the way he had come in.

“Donal—” The voice of Sayona stopped him. He turned back and saw the Bond regarding him with an expression almost impish. “I believe you can walk on air,” said Sayona.

Donal stared; but the expression of the other did not alter. Swinging about, Donal stepped out as if onto level ground — and to his unutterable astonishment his foot met solidity on a level, unsupported, eight inches above the next step down. Hardly thinking why he did it, Donal brought his other foot forward into nothingness. He took another step — and another. Unsupported on the thin air, he walked across above the sunken garden to the top of the steps on the far side.

Striding once more onto solidity, he turned about and looked across the short distance. Sayona still regarded him; but his expression now was unreadable. Donal swung about and left the garden.

Very thoughtful, he returned to his own quarters in the city of Portsmouth, which was the Maran city holding the Command Base of the Exotics. The tropical Maran night had swiftly enfolded the city by the time he reached his room, yet the soft illumination that had come on automatically about and inside all the buildings by some clever trick of design failed to white-out the overhead view of the stars. These shone down through the open wall of Donal’s bedroom.

Standing in the center of the bedroom, about to change for the meal which would be his first of the day — he had again forgotten to eat during the earlier hours — Donal paused and frowned. He gazed up at the gently domed roof of the room, which reached its highest point some twelve feet above his head. He frowned again and searched about through his writing desk until he found a self-sealing signal-tape capsule. Then, with this in one hand, he turned toward the ceiling and took one rather awkward step off the ground.

His foot caught and held in air. He lifted himself off the floor. Slowly, step by step he walked up through nothingness to the high point of the ceiling. Opening the capsule, he pressed its self-sealing edges against the ceiling, where they clung. He hung there a second in air, staring at them.

“Ridiculous!” he said suddenly — and, just as suddenly, he was falling. He gathered himself with the instinct of long training in the second of drop and, landing on hands and feet, rolled over and came to his feet like a gymnast against a far wall. He got up, brushing himself off, unhurt — and turned to look up at the ceiling. The capsule still clung there.

He lifted the little appliance that was strapped to his wrist and keyed its phone circuit in.

“Lee,” he said.

He dropped his wrist and waited. Less than a minute later, Lee came into the room. Donal pointed toward the capsule on the ceiling. “What’s that?” he asked.

Lee looked.

“Tape capsule,” he said. “Want me to get it down?”

“Never mind,” answered Donal. “How do you suppose it got up there?”

“Some joker with a float,” answered Lee. “Want me to find out who?”

“No — never mind,” said Donal. “That’ll be all.”

Bending his head at the dismissal, Lee went out of the room. Donal took one more look at the capsule, then turned and wandered over to the open wall of his room, and looked out. Below him lay the bright carpet of the city. Overhead hung the stars. For longer than a minute he considered them.

Suddenly he laughed, cheerfully and out loud.

“No, no,” he said to the empty room. “I’m a Dorsai!”

He turned his back on the view and went swiftly to work at dressing for dinner. He was surprised to discover how hungry he actually was.