The Chantry Guild

CHAPTER 34

They were well down into the forest and headed away from the direction that would have taken them back to the town of Porphyry and still Amanda had not brought up what she had promised to tell him as they went, whatever it was that was "for his ears only." "No doubt," said Hal, at length, "you had a good reason for not letting me know up there why I had to leave in a hurry, but we're well away, now, and I'd still like to hear."

I'll m sorry." She was walking along, staring at the ground ahead of them a little ways off, and he realized she was frowning. "The fact is, I could have let you know long before this. But I've had my head full of the problems involved." "Bad news of some kind?" asked Hal. "Yes, but... " Amanda hesitated, then her voice picked up briskly. "In a word, Tam's sent you a message."

Hal stopped. She stopped also and they turned to face each other. "A message?" Hal repeated. "He's hardly got the strength-"

"One word, only," said Amanda. "The word is 'tired.' Hal nodded slowly. "I see," he said softly. He turned and began walking on again automatically in the direction they had already been headed. Amanda went with him.

"Yes," she answered. "He said it to Rukh at a moment when she was alone with him. Ajela had been called out of his quarters for a second. He knew Rukh would understand and - pass on the word to me, and I'd get it to you."

Hal nodded. "It was bound to be," he said, on a long exhalation of breath. "He held on as long as he could - for my sake. There's still nothing wrong with him physically?" "You needn't ask that," said Amanda. "Medical science using the Final Encyclopedia could keep his body from ever breaking down. It's his mind that's had too many years. That's-" "I know" said Hal, "there's more to living than a body that'll go on forever. He's weary of life itself. But he's been holding on..." "Rukh thinks, and I'm sure she's right," said Amanda, "that he sent the message because he can't last much longer, though no doubt he's going to try until you get back to see him one more time. If he'd had the life energy for just a few more words she's sure that's what he would have said."

Hal nodded. "Yes, he would have," he said. "How'd the word reach you?" "Rukh sent a courier ship to orbit at a distance around this world until it could contact us. Its driver knew approximately how far off-surface Simon's ship would be orbiting, waiting for us. He found Simon, told him, and Simon signaled me. I've got a system of signals that involves things like you saw our first day here after Simon dropped us off - the white cloth I spread out on the tops of bushes where his viewer could spot it from orbit. In this case, Simon sent down a small capsule under power with the message to a spot which he knew I check regularly for word from him. I signaled back. We'll be at a point where he can pick us up in just a few minutes - he'll be tracking us right now from orbit. " "Good." Hal nodded. "And he should have us back to Earth in a couple of days, ship time." "Or less," said Amanda. "We'll make it in as few shifts as possible - shave right down the probability line of enough error to lose us among the stars on the way there - unless you've got some reason not to."

"No. "

Hal lifted his head and squared his shoulders. "Well, at any rate, I've got something to tell Tam, when I see him." He paused, then went on, "I might still be able to give him what he wants, in time, enough for him to let go with an easy conscience." "You see why I didn't dare break the news to you, even in front of Amid? To too many people, on too many worlds, Tam Olyn's a symbol of hope even bigger than the conflict between you and Bleys." "It's not a personal conflict," said Hal gently. "I know. Forgive me," she said. "I put it badly. But there're too many people who may start to lose the one hope they've hung on to, ever since the Others took over completely on the Younger Worlds. Even there - Bleys' propaganda about you and everything else hasn't been able to shake their hope in Tam. If they think he's close to being gone, now, with nothing found, the heart could go out of a lot of them. That could have been a reason behind Bleys' offer, just now. As long as Tam was still alive, they could hope for a miracle that'd set everything right. "They can still hope for one," said Hal. "But who's to convince them of that?" said Amanda. "Bleys has done too good a job of blackening your reputation for them to believe in your word alone, and there's no one else of comparable stature." "There's Ajela. " "Who really thinks much, or even knows much of her, outside of Earth?" asked Amanda. "Besides, she's the second problem, not the solution - here we are."

They had reached a natural opening in the forest, something that on another world, with a different sort of groundcover from the creeping ground vines of Mara at this altitude, would have been called a meadow. "Simon should be here inside an hour - maybe even in minutes, now," she said.

She stopped at the edge of the open area and Hal stopped with her. He studied her face in profile. "Why did you say 'the second problem?' he asked.

She turned to face him. "Tam's going to die," Amanda said. "Don't you realize what that means in the case of Ajela?"

"Oh," said Hal, "of course." "More 'of course' than I think you realize," said Amanda. "With Tam's death Ajela's going to collapse, and as things stand she's the working executive head of Earth. Who's to fill in for her until she can take control again, and how can we handle things while keeping Tam's death a secret?" "You're right," Hal answered. "I thought about that a little while I was up on the ledge." "You've had your own search to occupy you. But now, I think maybe you should set that aside for a moment. Hal, you know everybody's done all each one of them could, to leave you free to search for the answer you were the only one able to find-" "Including you taking yourself off to risk your life daily on worlds the Others held in the palms of their hands, just to keep yourself out of my reach?" "Not just to keep myself out of your reach," she said swiftly. "This work I do is too badly needed to be taken on as just an excuse. But at the same time, your search is something you have to do on your own. We all know that. If I was around, I'd be a distraction to you, whether you wanted me to be or not."

Their eyes met. "I'm one of Time's soldiers, too, Hal," she said, "and it was my duty to be elsewhere." "And what if it's to be we never have time for ourselves?" Hal asked softly. "You asked me that before. We will," she answered. Her eyes still held his steadily. "We will. I promise you."

An unreasonable happiness leaped up in him, but just at that moment the air quivered about them like soundless thunder, felt not heard, and they both looked up. A dot was flashing down out of the sky toward them in jumps, growing with each jump more into a visible shape, and nearer. It was Simon Graeme doing what the Dorsai did as a matter of course, but few pilots from Other worlds would risk-phase-shifting down to almost the very surface of a world, so as to avoid any but the briefest sound of a ship coming through the atmosphere to a landing. "We'll talk more - later," said Hal hastily. "Yes, we will," she answered, as with a sudden brief explosion of displaced air and atmospheric motors, the courier ship landed in the open area less than fifty meters from where they stood.

They went forward, but the entry port swung open before they had reached it and Simon looked out. He gripped Hal's hand briefly as they came aboard, and punched the key that closed the port behind them. "We'll have to move fast," he said. "There're more Younger World ships in orbit than I've seen here before, and that courier from Earth coming out to contact me was noticed. Find your seats, strap in, and we'll lose ourselves outside Procyon's orbit as soon as possible..."

It was almost two days, after all, before they reached safely through the phase-shield and landed inside the Final Encyclopedia. Simon and Amanda had taken turns driving the ship, so that the next shift to be calculated was always being worked on even as they were making the current jump. So abrupt had been their departure that they had left with nothing but the clothes they had on - in Hal's case, some gray trousers and a light blue shirt that had been made for him at the Chantry Guild. In Amanda's case, they were her standard bush clothes for travel out of sight of the local military boots, trousers and jacket, both of khaki twill, the shirt with a number of pockets.

Rukh, who was waiting for them in the docking area at the entrance to an access corridor as they stepped out of the parked ship, showed no interest in how they were dressed. She herself was looking unusually, almost ominously formal, in a long black skirt and high-collared white blouse, with her usual lone adornment the steel neckchain with its pendant granite disk incised with a cross, showing in the collar's short opening, in front. "Hal!" she said.

She hugged him. There was still a remarkable strength in her thin arms. She had seemed made of monocellular cord and steel when he had first known her as a commander of her Resistance Group on Harmony. Now, she felt so light as to be almost weightless in his arms, but he thought now that there was part of that original strength, which had survived the attrition of the days and nights of torture in the Militia cell, and the glow of her faith, which never failed to seem to set her aglow from within. For a second, holding her, he thought he touched the reason she had been so easily able to accept Barbage, her former torturer, as now one of her most dedicated followers. It was not as if she had merely forgiven him. It was something greater than that. He understand how could have her faith allowed her get what he was then, and yet suddenly become what he was, forgiveness on her side, or so that there was no need for him to ask for it, on his. But she was striding ahead of them now, drawing away from Amanda's in spite of the fact that his legs are longer than hers. "Hurry!" she said. "We've got his quarters right next to the area, expecting you." indeed, it was only some thirty meters down the silent, green-carpeted hallway between the dark-paneled walls to the single door at the corridor's end, and she led them through into the rooms of Tam Olyn. The mechanical magic, which could shift areas around within its shell, at will, had brought Tam as near to their arrival point as possible.

They stepped into the familiar main room, which had been designed long since at Tam's order to look like a woodland glade on Old Earth, the trees barring sight of the walls surrounding giving the illusion of the outdoors on the world below - an illusion reinforced by the small stream wandering down the Center of it, among the massively overstuffed easy chairs that - mere scattered around what seemed to be the grass of a tiny meadow. Two people were already there. One was Ajela. She was seated, holding one of Tam's veined hands in both of hers, as he occupied the chair opposite.

Tam sat with the utter motionlessness of extreme old age. He was dressed as if for the day's work, in a business suit of the sort he had worn all his life. If the heavy cloak, red and white on one side and with a dark inner lining, of an interplanetary journalist had been added, there would have been no difference in his dress now from the time when he had been just such a newsman, with no plan to ever set foot in the Final Encyclopedia again, after his single early visit to it. Like Hal, he had needed to leave the Encyclopedia in order to find it again. But it had been over a century now since he had been the young man who had made that single visit, at his sister's insistence, and heard the voices as Hal and Mark Torre had done.

Only they three had heard, as they passed through the centerpoint of the globe that was the Encyclopedia, but in the case of each of them, that hearing had changed their lives.

Now Tam sat waiting, holding on to life that had become a burden rather than a pleasure, trying to endure just enough longer for Hal to reach him - and now Hal was here. For the Encyclopedia's sake, he waited for Hal. For Ajela's sake, he would wait as long as he could.

It was Ajela that caught Hal's eyes now. Physically, she had not changed since he had seen her last, but what Tam's steady and obvious weakening was doing to her was made clear in her dress. Whatever the Final Encyclopedia had automatically laid out for her to wear this day, in the program she had set up in it long since to save her time in dressing, as she had come to save time whenever possible, could not have been what she was now wearing. Her choice had clearly been dictated by an unconscious desire to rouse the dying man through his male instincts, if nothing else.

She had chosen to put on a sari-like garment that wound tightly around her waist and hips. It was a hot pink, with yellow flowers imprinted over the base color. Above the sari there was a space of bare midriff, and above that a small, short-sleeved, tight blouse of the same material, while on her arms were multiple slim bracelets and in her ears earrings made of multiple small chained pieces - all these ornaments of bronze - which chimed and jingled at her slightest movement.

But the sari was carelessly draped, and the sound of the bracelets and earrings were lonely in the room as she turned to look, with a shadow of desperate appeal on her face, at Hal and Amanda as they entered.

Clearly, on his part, Tam did not see them enter. Plainly he saw Ajela beside him, but equally plainly he no longer noticed what she wore. His eyes were fixed on something among the trees, or upon his own dreams, or perhaps upon nothing at all. It was not until Hal had walked up to stand almost before his chair, and knelt on both knees, so their faces should be on a level, that recognition came.

Even then, it came slowly, as if it was a great labor for Tam to rouse himself to what he saw before him. But it dawned in his eyes at last and the hint of a smile lifted the corners of his mouth. His lips parted and moved, but whatever he meant to say was not voiced loudly enough for Hal, or any of the others, to hear it.

Hal reached out and took Tam's free hand between his own two, so that he held it as Ajela was holding the other one.

"I'm here, Tam," he said softly. "I'm back, and I've found now. Can you hold on just something I needed. The way's clear in a matter of hours more. It won't be long. Not long at all." Is small smile saddened. Barely perceptible, but with Tam enough to see, his head moved twice, a few centimeters from side to side. "I know, Tam," said Hal "I'm not trying to hold you here. I'll only try to work very fast, just in case you're still with us when I reach what we've been after all this time. But it's a solid promise now. The way's clear. The end is in sight. The Final Encyclopedia's at last going to be what Mark dreamed of, what you dreamed of, and I, too. Maybe it'll happen fast enough-"

He broke off as the old head before him made the same minuscule side to side movement. Tam's hand stirred slightly between his two palms, and he was puzzled for a second before he realized the other was trying to return a pressure to his touch.

Once more Tam's lips moved. But this time the ghost of a voice came from them. "Hal...

But the faint exhalation of breath died, the heavy eyelids wavered and closed. Tam was utterly motionless and the moment of his stillness stretched out and out.... "Tam!" cried Ajela suddenly, and both Rukh and Amanda moved in on the chair where Tam sat. But Tam's heavy eyelids fluttered briefly and rose. For a second he focused on Ajela, and that small attempt at a smile once more turned up the corners of his lips for her.

Hal rose and moved back out of the way, as Ajela slipped forward onto her knees where he had been, threw her arms around Tam and buried her face against the ancient body.

Rukh bent over the gold-haired, kneeling figure. Hal felt a touch on his elbow and looked to see Amanda's eyes meaningfully upon his. He turned and followed her out of the door by which they had just come in. As the door closed behind them, he turned back to face her and they stood, looking at each other. "What can I do?" said Hal. "is there anything I can do at all for her?" "Not directly," said Amanda. "Leave her to Rukh and me. Both of us have been through this sort of experience in our own lives. For me, it was Ian, when I was still young. For Rukh it was James Child-of-God. We can help her. You can't, except by getting on with your own work." "Which is what I intend starting immediately," he said. "With luck, I can still achieve something before-"

He broke off. Rukh had just come through the door and joined them, "How is she?" Hal asked. "She's best left alone with him for now," said Rukh. "Later it'll be a matter of getting her away from him to rest for a while. Let's go to her office to talk."

With another brief use made of the Final Encyclopedia's magic, and another short walk down the corridor, they entered the office. It was, like the office of any of the others from Tam on down who worked with the Encyclopedia, merely one room of the personal living space of each within the massive structure that was the TFE. But illusion made the space chosen appear as large as was wished and hid all doors to more rooms beyond, to all but those who knew the quarters intimately.

So as with Tam's forest glade, Ajela's working space was a reflection of her own individual identity. As his did, hers had water, but not a stream. Where Ajela worked was a round, shallow pool in which brightly colored fish lazily swam. There was indeed a desk beside the pool but the floor space about it was furnished in lounge fashion, except that the chairs, like the desk, were floats, instead of solidly floor-standing, oldfashioned furniture.

However, the largest difference between the two personalized rooms lay in their general concept. Tam's was a slice of Old Earth. Ajela's was a nostalgic reconstruction of part of a typical Exotic countryside residence, one of those artfully constructed dwellings in which it was possible to move from indoors to outside without having realized it, so well were the two environments integrated in the design and furnishings.

The inside surface of the wall through which Hal, Amanda and Rukh now entered was simple wood paneling. But where the wall connecting to it at an angle on their right would normally be was the seeming of a vertical face of roughly cut, warm brown granite. The wall to their left seemed a trellis overgrown with vine from which hundreds of varicolored sweetpea blossoms looked inward at them. While the wall that should have been opposite the one through which they had entered appeared not to exist. Instead, they looked out on a vista of green treetops in a bowl-shaped valley lifting in the distance to bluish mountains wreathed in soft tendrils of moving white mist. "Let's take the desk," said Rukh. She stepped ahead, leading the way, and went forward and around to seat herself behind the desk. It was a piece of office furniture that could be expanded both lengthwise and in width to make a conference table seating up to fifteen people, but at the moment it was down to its minimal size of a meter in width and two in length. Rukh sat down behind it, in a float near one end, and Amanda and Hal moved, respectively, to the end itself and the front of the desk directly opposite Rukh. Two nearby floats, their sensory mechanisms triggered by the heat of the bodies close to them, moved forward to be used, and Hal and Amanda sat down.

Hal looked at the desk. Its present state was the one thing in the room that did not resonate of Ajela. In all the time Hal had been in the Final Encyclopedia, he had seen its surface in either one of only two states. Either it was completely bare and clean, except for a stylus next to the screen inset in the desktop where Ajela usually sat, or it was high-piled and adrift with the flotsam of hard copies of official papers, correspondence, contracts and the like.

Now, it was in neither state. It held a number of hard copies, but they were neatly stacked in orderly piles. Hal looked at these as the desk top opened before both Amanda and himself to make available to each of them a screen and stylus like that now in front of Rukh.

The neatly stacked papers were not the product of Ajela's hands. The desk showed the touch of Rukh. Hal raised his eyes to her. "Have you taken over here for her completely, then?" he asked. "I'm afraid so," said Rukh. "It's not official, of course. Ajela's authority comes from Tam - I should say, from you, since Tam named you Director, only you've never used the authority. She has. But aside from the fact she's got no right to pass it to someone else while you're alive, we daren't let word get out to Earth or anywhere else that she's not, effectively, at the helm. There're a handful of inner circle secretaries that know, but they keep it to themselves. Not even most of the Encyclopedia personnel realize how much she's out of the picture most of the time." "You'd think they'd guess something like that was going on, with Tam as close to the end as he is," said Amanda. "They do," said Rukh. "They're just loyal enough not to ask embarrassing questions. But Hal- " Her brown eyes leveled on his. "They'll feel better now you're back." "I never did run things here," said Hal. "No, but they know Tam looked on you to finally succeed him, and in fact you were already made Director years ago, when the shield went up. They'll feet better with you actually in the Encyclopedia." "How are you managing on your own?" Amanda asked Rukh.

The brown eyes moved to meet the turquoise ones. "It's all decision-making," said Rukh. "The internal problems I turn over to the heads of departments. In special cases, I go to Ajela if I have to. The rest of it, particularly the problems coming up to her from Earth, are usually just a matter of common sense or mediating between two unreasonable points of view. In fact, nearly everything that comes up here for decision from the surface is something that could and should have been handled by the people down there. They did, in fact, until they woke up to the fact that we were in a war and the Encyclopedia was the one their defenders were contracted to. Not that I make any military decisions. I leave that up to the Dorsai. "But Hal," she turned back to him, "these things aren't important. Tam is. Is there anything, anything at all, you can do for him and Ajela before he has to let go completely? In spite of what you may think by what you saw in there, he'll fight it out to the last minute. It's the way he's made. If there's the slightest chance of you discovering anything, or doing something that would make him feel he was free to go..." "I have found something," said Hal, "and I'm going to try to do something. Is Jeamus Walters still with us?"

Rukh smiled. "Does it seem that you've been gone that long, Hal?" Rukh smiled. "Right now you ought to find him in his office. Shall I call and find out?"

She picked up the stylus.

"No. Never mind. I'm going there anyway," said Hal. "I'll you both later." He was getting up as he spoke and was already turned toward door. "Call on me if you need me," said Amanda. "On all of us, for anything," said Rukh. "I will," said Hal, already at the door. He went out. Jeamus Walters was in his office, as Rukh had guessed. It was typical of the man that his work place sported no illusions whatsoever. Its bare metal walls were completely covered with shelves holding hard copies of designs and schematic drawings.

His desk threatened to outdo Ajela's at its worst with an overload of hard copies. Jeamus lived for work and work was all, he lived for. He had been that way, as far as Hal knew, from long before he had become Research Director of the Encyclopedia, and apparently that was the way he always would be.

Now, Hal, who had hardly seen the man in the preceding three years, during which he had been caught up entirely in his own search and work, looked at him clearly for the first time in a long while, and saw changes in him, small but unmistakable.

There was a little less hair with more gray in it, in the circlet that surrounded all but the front part of his skull like an uncompleted wreath. His square mechanic's body and blunt mechanic's hands were the same as ever, his face showed no real signs of aging, but there was a faintly dusty air about him, as if he was a mechanism that had been left unused for some time. He, got to his feet with a sudden start as Hal entered after giving his name to the door annunciator. "Hal!" he said. His hard, square palm and fingers enclosed Hal's. They made up a smaller hand than the one Hal enclosed them with, but they were hardly less strong. "How are you? Is there something we can do for you?" "Yes," said Hal, "there is. I'm up against a time limit, Jeamus - you can guess why. I need something you can build without too much trouble - I think. But I don't want you to boggle at my plans for using it, so I won't tell you those, if you don't mind."