Soldier, ask not

Chapter 20

This time I did not ask for an interview with Piers Leaf. He sent to ask for me. As I went through the Guild Hall and up the elevator tube to his office, heads turned among the cloaked members I passed. For in the two years since the Blue Front leaders had seized power on St. Marie, much had changed for me.

I had had my hour of torment in that last interview with my sister. And I had had, while returning from that to Earth, the first dream of my revenge. Afterward, I had taken the two steps, one on St. Marie, one on Harmony, to set that revenge in motion. But still, even with those things done, I had not yet changed inside me. For change takes time.

It was the last two years that had really changed me - that had brought Piers Leaf to call upon me, that had caused the heads above the capes to turn as

I passed. For in those years the power of my understanding had come full upon me, in such measure that it now seemed by contrast to have been a weak, newborn and latent thing, even up through the moment in which I shook hands and said farewell to Eldest Bright, three years before.

I had dreamed my primitive dream of a revenge, sword in hand, going to a meeting in the rain. Then for the first time, I had felt the pull of it, but the reality I felt now was far stronger, stronger than meat or drink or love - or life itself.

They are fools that think that wealth or women or strong drink or even drugs can buy the most in effort out of the soul of a man. These things offer pale pleasures compared to that which is greatest of them all, that task which demands from him more than his utmost strength, that absorbs him, bone and sinew and brain and hope and fear and dreams - and still calls for more.

They are fools who think otherwise. No great effort was ever bought. No painting, no music, no poem, no cathedral in stone, no church, no state was ever raised into being for payment of any kind. No Parthenon, no Thermopylae was ever built or fought for pay or glory; no Bukhara sacked, or China ground beneath Mongol heel, for loot or power alone. The payment for the doing of these things was itself the doing of them.

To wield oneself - to use oneself as a tool in one's own hand - and so to make or break that which no one else can build or ruin - that is the greatest pleasure known to man! To one who has felt the chisel in his hand and set free the angel prisoned in the marble block, or to one who has felt the sword in hand and set homeless the soul that a moment before lived in the body of his mortal enemy - to these both come alike the taste of that rare food spread only for demons or for gods.

As it had come to me, these two and more than two years past.

I had dreamed of holding the lightning in my hand over the sixteen worlds and bending them all to my will. Now, I held that lightning, in sober fact, and read it. My abilities had hardened in me; and I knew now what failure of a wheat harvest on Freiland must mean in the long run to those who needed but could not pay for professional education on Cassida. I saw the movements of those like William of Ceta, Project Blaine of Venus, and Sayona the Bond, of both Exotic Worlds - all of whom bent and altered the shape of things happening between the stars - and I read their results-to-be clearly. And with this knowledge I moved to where the news would be, and wrote it even as it was only beginning to happen, until my fellow Guild members began to think me half-devil or half-seer.

But I cared nothing for their thoughts. I cared only for the secret taste of my waiting revenge, the feel of the hidden sword in my grasp - the tool of my Destruct!

For now I had no doubts left. I did not love him for it, but Mathias had seen me clearly - and from his grave, I worked the will of his anti-faith, but with a power he could never have imagined.

Now, however, I was at Piers Leaf's office. He was standing in the door of it, waiting for me, for from below they would have warned him I was on my way up. He took my hand in a handshake and held it to draw me inside his office and close the door behind us. We sat down not at his desk, but to one side on the floats of a sofa and an overstuffed chair; and he poured drinks for us both with fingers that seemed thinned by sudden age.

"You've heard, Tam?" he said without preamble. "Morgan Chu Thompson is dead."

"I've heard," I said. "And a seat on the Council is now vacant."

"Yes." He drank a little from his glass and set it down again. He rubbed a hand wearily over his face. "Morgan was an old friend of mine."

"I know," I said, though I felt nothing for him at all. "It must be hard on you."

"We were the same age-" He broke off, and smiled at me a little wanly. "I imagine you're expecting me to sponsor you for the empty seat?"

"I think," I said, "the Guild members might think it a little odd if you didn't, the way things have been going for me for some time now."

He nodded but at the same time he hardly seemed to hear me. He picked up his drink and sipped at it again, without interest, and set it down.

"Nearly three years ago," he said, "you came in here to see me with a prediction. You remember that?"

I smiled.

"You could hardly forget it, I suppose," he said. "Well, Tam-" He stopped and signed heavily. He seemed to be having trouble getting down to what he wished to say. But I was old and experienced in patience nowadays. I waited. "We've had time to see things work out and it seems to me, you were both right - and wrong."

"Wrong?" I repeated.

"Why, yes," he said. "It was your theory that the Exotics were out to destroy the Friendly culture on Harmony and Association. But look at how things have gone since then."

"Oh?" I said. "How? For example?"

"Why," he said, "it's been plain for nearly a generation now that the fanaticism of the Friendlies - acts of unreasoning violence like that massacre that took your brother-in-law's life on New Earth three years ago - were turning opinion on the fourteen other worlds against the Friendlies. To the point where they were losing the chance to hire out their young men as mercenary soldiers. But anyone with half an eye could see that was something the Friendlies were doing to themselves simply by being the way they are. The Exotics couldn't be to blame for that."

"No," I said. "I suppose not."

"Of course not." He sipped at his drink again, a little more heartily this time. "I think that was why I felt so much doubt when you told me that the Exotics were out to get the Friendlies. It just didn't ring right. But then it turned out to be Friendly troops and equipment backing that Blue Front revolution on St. Marie, right in the Exotics' back yard under the Procyon suns. And I had to admit there seemed to be something going on between the Friendlies and the Exotics." He stopped and looked at me.

"Thank you," I said.

"But the Blue Front didn't last," he went on.

"It seemed to have a great deal of popular support at first," I interrupted.

"Yes, yes." Piers brushed my interruption aside.

"But you know how it is in situations like that. There's always a chip on the shoulder where a bigger, richer neighbor's concerned - next door or on the next world, whichever. The point is, the St. Marians were bound to see through the Blue Front shortly and toss them out - make them an illegal party as they are now. That was bound to happen. There were only a handful of those Blue Front people, anyway, and they were mostly crackpots. Besides, St. Marie isn't set up to go it alone, financially or any other way, in the shadow of two rich worlds like Mara and Kultis. The Blue Front thing was bound to fail - anyone outside the picture had to see that."

"I suppose so," I said.

"You know so!" said Piers. "Don't tell me anyone with the perception you’ve demonstrated couldn't see that from the start, Tam. I saw it myself. But what I didn't see - and apparently you didn't either - was that, inevitably, once the Blue Front was kicked out, the Friendlies would put in an occupation force on St. Marie to back up their claim for payment from the legal government for the help they'd given the Blue Front. And that under the mutual assistance treaty that had always existed between the Exotics and the legal government of St. Marie, the Exotics would have to reply to the St. Marians' call for help to oust the Friendly occupation forces - since St. Marie couldn't pay the kind of bill the Friendlies were presenting."

"Yes," I said. "I foresaw that, too."

He darted a sharp glance at me.

"You did?" he said. "Then how could you think that-" He broke off, suddenly thoughtful.

"The point is," I said easily, "that the Exotic expeditionary forces haven't been having too much trouble pushing the Friendly forces back into a corner and cutting them up. They've stopped for the winter season now; but unless Eldest Bright and his council send reinforcements, the soldiers they have on St. Marie will probably have to surrender to the Exotic troops this spring. They can't afford to send reinforcements but they have to anyway-"

"No," said Piers, "they don't." He looked at me strangely. "You're about to claim, I suppose, that this whole situation was an Exotic maneuver to bleed the Friendlies twice - both for their help to the Blue Front, and again in the cost of sending reinforcements."

I smiled inside, for he was coming to the very point I had intended to come to three years ago - only I had planned that he should tell me about it, not I, him.

"Isn't it?" I said, pretending astonishment.

"No," said Piers strongly. "Just opposite. Bright and his council intend to leave their expeditionary force to be either captured or slaughtered - preferably slaughtered. The result will be just what you were about to claim in the eyes of the fourteen worlds. The principle that any world can be held ransom for debts incurred by its inhabitants is a vital - if not legally recognized - part of the interstellar financial structure. But the Exotics, in conquering the Friendlies on St. Marie, will be rejecting it. The fact that the Exotics are bound by their treaty to answer St. Marie's appeal for help won't alter things. Bright will only need to go hunting for help from Ceta, Newton and all the tight-contract worlds to form a league to bring the Exotics to their knees."

He broke off and stared at me.

"Do you see what I'm driving at now? Do you understand now why I said you were both right - in your notion of an Exotic-Friendly vendetta - and wrong? Do you see," he asked, "now, how you were wrong?''

I deliberately stared back at him for a moment before I answered.

"Yes," I said. I nodded. "I see now. It's not the Exotics who are out to get the Friendlies. It's the Friendlies who're out to get the Exotics."

"Exactly!" said Piers. "The wealth and specialized knowledge of the Exotics has been the pivot of the association of the loose-contract worlds that allowed them to balance off against the obvious advantage of trading trained people like sacks of wheat, which gives the tight-contract worlds their strength. If the Exotics are broken, the balance of power between the two groups of worlds is destroyed. And only that balance has let our Old World of Earth stand aloof from both groups. Now, she'll be drawn into one group or another - and whoever gets her will control our Guild, and the up until now impartiality of our News Services."

He stopped talking and sat back, as if worn out. Then he straightened up again.

"You know what group'll get Earth if the Friendlies win," he said, "the tight-contract group. So - where do we, we in the Guild, stand now, Tam?"

I stared back at him, giving him time to believe that his words were sinking into me. But, in reality, I was tasting at last the first slight flavor of my revenge. Here he was, at last, at the point to which I had set out to bring him, a point at which it seemed the Guild faced either the destruction of its high principle of impartiality, forcing it to take sides against the Friendly worlds; or its eventual capture by that partisan group of worlds to which the tight-contract Friendlies belonged. I let him wait, and think himself helpless for a little while. Then I answered him slowly.

"If the Friendlies can destroy the Exotics," I said, "then possibly the Exotics can destroy the Friendlies. Any situation like this has to have the possibility of tilting with equal force either way. Now if, without compromising our impartiality, I could go to St. Marie for the spring offensive, it might be that this ability of mine to see a little deeper into the situation than others can, might help that tilt."

Piers stared at me, his face a little white.

"What do you mean?" he said at last. "You can't openly side with the Exotics - you don't mean that?"

"Of course not," I answered. "But I might easily see something that they could turn to their advantage to get out of the situation. If so, I could make sure that they see it, too. There's nothing certain of success about this; but, as you said, otherwise, where do we stand now?"

He hesitated. He reached for his glass on the table and, as he picked it up, his hand shook a little. It took little insight to know what he was thinking. What I was suggesting was a violation of the spirit of the law of impartiality in the Guild, if not the letter of it. We would be choosing sides - but Piers was thinking that perhaps for the sake of the Guild we should do just that, while the choice was still in our own hands.

"Do you have any actual evidence that Eldest Bright means to leave his occupation forces cut up as they are?" I asked as he hesitated. "Do we know for sure he won't reinforce them?"

"I've got contacts on Harmony trying to get evidence right now-" he was beginning to answer when his desk phone chimed. He pressed a button and it lit up with the face of Tom Lassiri, his secretary.

"Sir," said Tom. "Call from the Final Encyclopedia. For Newsman Olyn. From a Miss Lisa Kant. She says it's a matter of the utmost emergency."

"I'll take it," I said, even as Piers nodded. For my heart had lurched in my chest for some reason which I had no time to examine. The screen cleared and Lisa's face formed on it.

"Tam!" she said, without any other greeting. "Tam, come quick. Mark Torre's been shot by an assassin! He's dying, in spite of anything the doctors can do. And he wants to speak to you - to you, Tam, before it's too late! Oh, Tam, hurry! Hurry as fast as you can!"

"Coming," I said.

And I went. There was no time to ask myself why I should answer to her summons. The sound of her voice lifted me out of my chair and headed me out of Piers's office as if some great hand was laid upon my shoulders. I just went.