Necromancer

Chapter 15

Paul was, he learned in the next few days, now a part of the more or less "Cabinet" group in the Guild, which operated directly with and under Blunt himself. The other Cabinet members consisted of Jase, Kantele, Burton McLeod - the heavy broadsword of a man Paul had met earlier in Jase's apartment - and an elusive gray wafer of a little man whose name was Eaton White. White, it seemed, was posted high on the personal staff of Kirk Tyne, and the first thing he did was take Paul in to see Tyne about a job in the World Engineer's office.

"I suppose," asked Tyne, when he had shaken hands with Paul in the clear morning sunlight coming through the high windows of a luxurious office lounge two hundred levels above the Chicago traffic, "you wonder why I seem so little hesitant to have a member of the Guild on my personal staff? Sit down, sit down. You, too, Eat."

Paul and Eaton White took comfortable chairs. Tyne also sat down, stretching his slim legs before him. He looked as fit as a well-kept bowstring, and as unfrayed by the demands of his work. His eyes, glancing directly into Paul's under neat brown eyebrows, were startlingly perceptive.

"I was a little surprised, yes," said Paul.

"Well, there's a number of reasons," said Tyne. "Did you ever consider the difficulties of changing the present?"

"Changing the present?"

"It's impossible," said Tyne, almost merrily. "Though very few people stop to think about it and realize the fact. When you pick up an inch of the present to move it, you also pick up several thousand miles of history."

"I see," said Paul. "You mean, to change the present you'd have to first change the past"

"Exactly," replied Tyne. "And that's what reformers invariably forget They talk about changing the future. As if doing so was some new and great feat Nonsense. Our main business as living human beings is changing the future. In fact, that's all we can change. The present is the result of the past; and even if we could monkey with the past, who'd dare to? Change one tiny factor and the result in the present might well be the whole human race blown apart. So your reformers, your great changers, are kidding themselves. They talk about changing the future, when what they really mean is that they want to change the present, the present they're living in right at the moment. They don't realize they're trying to move furniture that's already nailed down."

"So you think the Chantry Guild is made up of furniture movers?" asked Paul.

"Essentially-essentially," said Tyne. He sat forward in his chair. "Oh, I want you to know I have a high opinion of the Guild, and the Guild members. And I have something more than a high opinion of Walt Blunt Walt awes me, and I don't mind admitting it. But that doesn't alter the fact that he's barking up the wrong tree."

"Apparently," said Paul, "he thinks the same of you."

"Of course!" said Tyne. "He'd be bound to. He's a natural revolutionist I'm a real revolutionist. I know the present can't be changed, so I concentrate on changing the future. Really changing it - by hard work, discovery, and progress; the way it actually gets changed."

Paul looked at him interestedly.

"What's your idea of the future?" asked Paul.

"Utopia," said Tyne. "A practical Utopia that we've all adjusted to. That's all that's really wrong with the present, you know. We've achieved, through our science and technology, a practical Utopia. Our only trouble is that we aren't adjusted to it yet. We keep feeling there must be a catch somewhere, something to be fought against and licked. That's Walt's trouble, incidentally. He can't help feeling he ought to be revolting against something intolerable. And since he can't find anything intolerable, he's gone to a great deal of trouble to work up a revolt against what's not only tolerable, but infinitely desirable - the very things we've been working for centuries. Comfort, freedom, and wealth."

"I take it," said Paul, and frowned for a second as the ghost of a small gray squirrel scampered for a moment unbidden across his thoughts, "you don't worry too much about the increases in crime, suicides, mental disorders, and so forth?"

"I consider them. I don't worry about them," said Tyne, leaning forward with argumentative relish. "In the Super-Complex - I mean by that, the reconciling units here in the Headquarters building - we've got the greatest tool ever forged by Man for solving all Man's problems. It'll take a few generations, no doubt, but eventually we'll iron out the essentially emotional reaction that's causing these things you talk about."

"Emotional reaction?" asked Paul.

"Of course! For the first time in the history of Man, for the first time since he first stuck his nose out of a nice safe hole in the ground, people have absolutely nothing to be afraid of, nothing to worry about. Is it any wonder that all their little individual quirks and idiosyncrasies sprout wings and fly off with them?"

"I can't believe," said Paul slowly, "that the causes for what I read about in the newssheets and periodicals now are caused just by idiosyncrasies in the individual."

"Well, of course, it isn't that simple." Tyne sat back in his chair. "There are strong group elements in the human character. Religion, for one - that's at the root of all these sects and cults. The tendency toward hysteria and mob action that's been the cause of the marching societies. We're getting a social fragmentation. But just because Utopia's new, and there's no reason not to run hog wild. As I say, a generation or two will see us settling back down."

He stopped talking.

"Well," said Paul, when it seemed to be up to him, "this is all very interesting. I take it you're trying to convert me."

"Exactly right," said Tyne. "As I say, I don't agree with Walt, but he recruits some of the best material in the world. Eaton here's an example. And poor Malorn was a Guild member."

"Malorn!" said Paul, looking closely at the World Engineer.

"Yes - in a way you might say I owe you something for having been unfairly accused in connection with his death. It was a breakdown misfunction in the police machinery, and I'm responsible for the smooth working of all machinery."

"But that isn't why you'd give me a job?"

"Not by itself, of course. No. But Eat here speaks highly of you and says you don't seem to be completely blinkered and blinded by all those theories of Walt's. I'm willing to take a chance on talking you over to my point of view, if you're willing to take the chance of being talked. And of course, Walt will be tickled to have you on the inside, here. You see, he thinks he's outsmarting me by being completely open and aboveboard about planting his people on me."

"And you," said Paul, "think you're outsmarting him."

"I know I am," said Tyne, smiling. "I have an intelligent friend who tells me so."

"It seems to be settled, then," said Paul. He stood up. Tyne and Eaton rose with him. "I'd like to meet your intelligent friend, sometime."

"Some-day, you might do that," said Tyne. They shook hands. "In fact, I imagine you will. It was this friend's recommendation that rather clinched this matter of taking you on here."

Paul looked at the World Engineer sharply. With his last words something had come and gone so swiftly in the other man that it was impossible now to say what it might have been. It was as if a metal edge had shown itself for a moment.

"I'll look forward to it, then," said Paul. And Eaton led him out

Outside the World Engineer Complex Headquarters they parted. Eaton went back in to work. Paul went on to Jase's.

As he stepped through the entrance to Jase's apartment and put his key back in his pocket, he heard voices. One was Jase's. But the other - he stopped at the sound of it - was the deep, resonant, and sardonic voice of Blunt

"I realize, Jase," the voice of Blunt was saying, "that you find me a little too much of a playboy at times. It's something you'll just have to bear with, however."

"I don't mean that at all, Walt!" The younger man's voice was charged and grim. "Who's going to lay down rules for you, of all people? It's just that if I find myself having to take over, I want to know what you had in mind."

"If you take over, it's your own mind you'll follow, and that's the way it should be," said Blunt "Let's cross such bridges when we come to them. You may not have to take over. Who just came in?"

The last words coincided with Paul's stepping around the corner from the entrance hall into the main lounge of Jase's apartment The wall entrance to the office in Kantele's apartment next door was open, and through it Paul now saw the wide shoulders and back of Blunt, with the dark, startled visage of Jase beyond.

"Me. Formain," answered Paul, and he walked toward the office. But Jase stepped swiftly past Blunt and came down into his own lounge, closing the office entrance behind him.

"What is it?" asked Jase.

"It seems I'm now on the immediate staff of the World Engineer," said Paul. He looked past Jase at the closed wall. "That's Walter Blunt in there, isn't it? I'd like to speak to him."

He stepped around Jase, went to the wall, and opened it. Within, the office was empty. He turned back to Jase.

"Where did he go?"

"I imagine," said Jase, dryly, "if he'd wanted to stay and talk to you, he'd have stayed."

Paul turned again and went on into the office. He went through it into the farther reaches of Kantele's apartment It was a feminine dwelling, but empty. Paul paused by its front door, but there was no clue about it to signal whether Walter Blunt had walked out through it in the last few minutes.

He went back to the office, and through it. Jase was no longer in his own lounge. He seemed to have left the apartment. Paul was about to leave, too, in a mood of puzzled disturbance, when the entrance to Jase's apartment clicked open - he heard it - and someone came in.

Expecting Jase, Blunt, or both, he was turning toward the entrance hall when Kantele came out of it, carrying some sort of package, and stopped.

"Paul!" she said.

It was not a happy, or even pleased, sounding of his name. Rather, it was on a note of dismay that she said it.

"Yes," he said, a little sadly.

"Where's" - she hesitated - "Jase?"

"And Walter Blunt," he said. "I'd like to know where they disappeared to, and why, myself."

"They probably had to go someplace." She was ill-at-ease. It showed in the way she held the package to her.

"I hadn't realized," he said, reaching for a neutral topic, "that Blunt wrote that 'apple comfort' song of yours. Jase told me."

She looked abruptly a little sharply at him. Almost challengingly.

"That surprised you, did it?" she asked.

"Why-" he said. "No."

"It didn't?"

"I don't know," he said, "exactly whether to call it 'surprise.' I didn't know the Guildmaster wrote songs, that was all. And-" He stopped, feeling her bristle.

"And what?"

"Nothing," he said, as peaceably as he could, "I only heard the first verse before you came in that day, and the one time I heard it before. But it seemed to me more a young man's song."

She strode angrily past him. He got the impression that she was rather pleased than otherwise to find something to get angry about. She punched buttons on Jase's music player and swung about with her back to it.

"Then it's time you heard the second verse, isn't it?" she asked. A second later her own voice swelled from the player behind her.

In apple comfort, long I waited thee And long 1 thee in apple comfort waited.

"Young man's song," she said bitingly.

In lonely autumn and uncertain springtime

My apple longing for thee was not sated.

The clear, mountain rivulet of her recorded voice paused, and then went on into the second verse. She looked across at him with her eyes fixed and her lips together.

Now come thee near anigh my autumn winding.

In cider-stouted jugs, my memories

Shall guard thee by the fireside of my passion,

And at my life's end keep thy gentle lees.

The music shut off. He saw that she was profoundly moved by it and deeply unhappy. He went to her.

"I'm sorry," he said, standing before her. "You mustn't let what I think disturb you. Forget I had any opinion at all."

She tried to take a step back from him and found the wall behind her. She leaned her head back against the wall, and he put out his long hand to the wall beside her, half-convinced for a moment that she was about to fall. But she stood with her shoulders against the wall and closed her eyes, turning her face away to one side. Tears squeezed from under her closed eyelids and ran down her cheeks.

"Oh," she whispered, "why won't you leave me alone?" She pressed her face against the wall. "Please, just leave me alone!"

Torn by her unhappiness, he turned and left, leaving her still standing there, pressed in sorrow against the wall.