The Chantry Guild

CHAPTER 35

Jeamus frowned at him and hesitated for just a moment. "If you say so," he said, then, his frown clearing, "everyone knows Tam expected you to take over as Director whenever you felt you were ready. It's just that I've gotten used to taking orders from Ajela-" "And Rukh." Jeamus glanced at the door, which was slightly open. It was close enough in the little office, so that he could reach out without getting up. He pushed it closed, and it swung back against the jamb but did not latch. "And Rukh, of course," he said, lowering his voice, "though most, even here, don't know that. What I was going to say was that I've gotten used to taking orders from both of them, and if you say you think I might boggle at your plans, it makes me think that it's very likely either one of them would boggle, too." "They would," said Hal. "That's why you have to do this for me without telling them anything about it."

Mentally, he added Amanda to the list of those who might not like what he wanted to do, then backed off a bit from that thought. Amanda's perception was remarkable enough that she would be the most likely of the three women to take him on faith.

Jeamus was distractedly ruffling what hair remained of him.

"This is a little uncomfortable for me," he said. "Technically you're in control here and should be able to order anything, but Ajela has been in charge so long, and in control - it's to think of not telling her - particularly about something might not think was a good idea. At the same time I hate to bother her right now..."

He sat for a moment, frowning and ruffling his hair. Hal sat in silence, patiently waiting. "All right," Jeamus said at last. "You've got my word. Now, what is it?"

To begin with," said Hal, "is there a blind corridor available in the Encyclopedia? I mean a short corridor with an entrance at one end but no doors at all leading off of it?" "Yes. There're several," said Jeamus. "They were set up originally to allow for overflow or changes in the personnel aboard. Right now they're all being used as storage areas, but we could clear one out and store whatever's in it, in some other area - we've got the available space." "Good," said Hal. "I'll want this corridor to come to my call, no one else's - even by mistake. Can we be certain of that?"

Jeamus smiled. "All right," said Hal, "I hadn't any real doubt, but I wanted to make sure. Would you have such a corridor cleared and call me when it's ready? Then I'll tell you what I want done." "Why not tell me now?" "You'll understand that, when I tell you what I want," said Hal. "All right? I'll be in my quarters. Call me when it's ready, as soon as possible, for other people's sakes beside my own." "Tam?" asked Jeamus, a little grimly. "Other people besides me," said Hal. "All right," said Jeamus. "It'll be a matter of a few hours, no more." "Good. As fast as you can. As I say, I'll be in my quarters. You can call me there."

When Hal let himself back into his own apartments, Amanda had not yet returned. This was as Hal had hoped. He seated himself on the carpeting of the carrel that was the workspace of his quarters, and summoned up with his imaging link to the Encyclopedia an image of the range of glowing red lines that was the internal map of the knowledge in that mighty body.

As he had known there would be, changes showed themselves in the lines - small changes, but undeniable ones that were the result of information constantly added, from the state of affairs on Earth, news brought by couriers from outside, and the readings of the many instruments that scanned and kept track of the wings of enemy space vessels prowling the outside of the phase-shield.

His eyes were drawn immediately to each small change, as any change is noticed in a known landscape, or the face of a loved one, and he took a few moments to incorporate all of these in his earlier mental picture of the Encyclopedia's core memory. Then he dismissed the mechanical image, and replaced it with one evolved from his own memory and imagination, comparable now with the latest and most up-to-date image the Encyclopedia itself had formed for him.

Sitting, holding it in the field of his mental vision, he could feel the complete knowledge of the Encyclopedia open to his mind, like some vast storehouse of priceless art objects, too multitudinous in number to be seen in one moment from any one single viewpoint. Then he let the rest of his mind go back, back to the chanting circle, to the first edge of the morning sun at was Procyon's bright pinpoint orb beginning to show above the far-off mountain peaks, and the single ray lancing into the dewdrop to make the explosion of light that signaled his sudden understanding of the full truth in what he and the rest had chanted... the transient and the eternal are the same.

That great and ringing verity echoed in and through him as if he was a tuned piece of metal struck by an invisible padded hammer - and it was not just as if comprehension of all the individual bits of knowledge stored in the memory of the Encyclopedia shrank until they could be contained by his one human mind, but as if the back of his thoughts, his own unlimited unconscious understanding, widened and spread to take in and possess, all at once, all that that warehouse contained.

He was not suddenly filled, as a vessel is brought to the brim with liquid - but it was as if there was nothing known here that he had not known and handled, understood and loved, in its own body and measure.

He sat as if bound, as if part of the workings of the Encyclopedia itself, possessed of all it contained and caught up in the fact like someone mesmerized. For there had been more there than any person could hope to learn in many lifetimes, but - the transient and the eternal were the same. He had one lifetime only, but less than a moment of that could contain eternity, and in that eternity he had had time to possess himself of all that the Final Encyclopedia contained.

At last, the Encyclopedia was ready to be put to its proper purpose, the one Mark Torre had envisioned for it, without even being able to see or name that vision. He could go to Tam now, and tell him that the search was over.

But, there was still the problem of using what he had touched and come to own. All that the Encyclopedia held was no more use locked in his mind than it had been in the technological container that was the Encyclopedia itself. He would use it - then go to Tam. Surely, there was time for that....

He woke to the surroundings of his carrel to find Amanda standing and watching him. Plainly, she had caused the Encyclopedia to make fresh clothing for her. She was no longer in the bush clothes in which they had left Kultis together, but wearing a plain, fitted, knee-length dress of blue - reminiscent of the color of the wintry seas around the northern islands of the Dorsai that he remembered from his childhood as Donal. There was no way for him to tell, after that timelessness from which he had just returned, how long she had been there, waiting for him to respond to her presence.

He got swiftly to his feet, and she looked up into his eyes with a steady, almost demanding, gaze. "Whatever it was you were doing," she said, "it worries me. Do you want to tell me?" "To tell you it all would take - I don't know how long. " Hal smiled at her to reassure her. "But I've won through - I've found what Mark Torre and Tam - and I too - have been after all these years. But there's not enough time to tell you now. I have to put it to use, before I go to Tam with the news. Will you trust me and wait a little while longer? It's your doing, you know. The key was that the transient and the eternal are the same. " "And with this," she said, "you're going to do something to make Tam happy before he dies?" "I think so," said Hal. "Though it's only the beginnings of the full answer. But it means the rest of what we need is only waiting to be found. Let's say it'll set him free to let go, content that the end is in sight."

His voice softened, unthinkingly. "Ajela's torn apart, isn't she?" he asked. "She can't bear to lose him, but she can't bear to let him go, either." "Yes," said Amanda, "and she can't help that. She'll be better off once he's gone, but even if she could face that now, it wouldn't make anything easier for her. I wish you'd give me more of an answer." "I've got to keep it a secret for myself, awhile longer," Hal said. He put his hands on her shoulders. "Can't you trust me for a little while? You and Rukh can come and see what I'm going to do as soon as anyone can. But if, with all this, it shouldn't work after ail... I've felt so close to the full answer so many times before, I want to make sure this time. I'd rather you didn't say anything, even to Rukh, let alone Ajela, before I'm ready to have you tell them."

She stood still, under the grasp of his hands, her eyes now thoughtful. "You're going to try something that means gambling your own life, aren't you?" "Yes," he said. "It's not for me to stop you..." She moved away from him, and his hands loosened to let her go. They fell to his sides. She turned back and put her arms around him. "Hold me," she said.

He enclosed her strongly in his own arms, and she held him tightly. He felt the living warmth of her body against him, and for a moment an unbearable poignancy swept through him. "You realize," she said as they pressed together, "you can never leave me behind." "I know that," he said. He rested his cheek against the top of her bright head, "but I can't take you with me now."

"Yes," she said, "but I'll always follow. You should know that I too. Wherever you go."

It was true. Of course, he knew. There was nothing to be said in answer. He simply held her.

A little over two hours later, when Amanda had finally left to see if she could be of any use to Rukh in Ajela's office, there was the soft chime on the air of Hal's quarters that announced someone wanted to speak to him.

"Yes?" he said, back to the surrounding atmosphere- "The corridor's clear." it was Jeamus's voice. "The door at the far left end of the present corridor outside your rooms will let you into it." "I'll be right there," said Hal.

He followed the directions and a moment later stepped into a short corridor with green metal walls, rather like Jeamus's own office without the shelves but stretched out in one dimension. It also smelled faintly of an odor something like mildewed paper, which Jeamus's office did not. "We haven't done areal cleaning job on it yet," Jeamus said. "I guessed you'd be more interested in getting on with whatever you had in mind." "You're right," said Hal, "and now I'll tell you why I wanted this space to come and open only to me, and of course, you and whoever needs to be with you to help while you're building it. What I want you to build me is something that I think might be dangerous to someone who could just stumble across it." "Dangerous?" "Yes. I want you to build me a doorway - a phase-shift doorway - that's the best I can do by way of describing it. Essentially, it's to be just a single phase-wall, not the complex affair you made for the phase-shield around Earth. I just want it to disperse whatever touches it, spread it out to universal position, and it should fill the corridor from ceiling to floor, wall to wall, about a third of its length from its blind end." "Just an out-shift wall?" said Jeamus. "Where's what you're sending through going to be reconstituted?" "It isn't, until it chooses to come back through the same wall." "Chooses?" echoed Jeamus. "There's no choice about that. Once dispersed, unless there's a destination at which it can be reconstituted, anything you send simply stays spread out until time ends." "That's not the point", said Hal. "Can you build it?" "Oh, it can be built, yes," said Jeamus. "Though I think what you're talking about actually would require a double screen, one to disperse, the other to reintegrate. That means the reintegrating screen would have to be in front of the dispersing one, so that you'd need a space here around one side of it, say, to get at the outgoing screen. But what you're describing doesn't make any sense. You mean it's departure point would be effectively just a meter or so from the arrival point?" "if there have to be two screens, yes. The closer the better," said Hal, "and, I'm sorry, but don't ask me to try to explain, it can't be any other way." "All right. Can you build it?" "Of course we can build it. " Jeamus stared up at Hal. "But I can't imagine what sort of idea you've got in mind, and the more I hear of it, the less I like doing it blind. Let me see if I've got it straight. You want to be able to put something through the screen, reducing it to universal position. Then, somehow, it's going to come back by itself, and it has to come through the screen just a step away from it - I suppose you're thinking of what you send as somehow entering the return screen from the other side - and translating back into its original form. Actually, there is no 'other side' in the ordinary sense. What makes you think something like this could happen?" "I'm going to find out," said Hal. "The only question I have for you is, whether you'll make it for me." "As I say, we can build what you're asking for," Jeamus said. "But there's no way that'll guarantee you'll be able to reconstitute something already spread out through the total universe. That is, it can be built so that if whatever it is gathers itself for re-entry - and how that's going to happen baffles me - then if it does the return screen will bring it back to its original location, which is here. The same way a spacecraft, shifting, returns to its original form at the point where it wants to be. But the ship has been pre-programmed to come out at that specific spot, and the action is essentially timeless - it happens in no-time. So, in effect, if I set up a device to do what you say, the going and returning is going to be instantaneous. The second screen'll simply cancel out the action of the first, so that in effect whatever you send will only have moved a meter or so, immediately - that is, if it ever comes out at all, which it won't. The point is, what you're planning to have happen is impossible. " "Not if I'm right," said Hal. "What I put through is going to stay awhile and come back when it's ready."

Jeamus shook his head. "It can't happen," he said. "The laws of phase-shift physics haven't don't permit it. I don't know how much you know about it, I don't quite understand-"

- "Never mind," said Hal. "You've said you could build it. That's all I need to hear. Now, the next question. How fast can you get it done?"

Jeamus stared at him again. "You're talking about a crash program?" he said. "Like the building of the shield - wall around Earth?" "Or faster," said Hal.

Jeamus breathed out sharply and almost angrily through his teeth. "I don't understand any of this," he said. "Can you at least tell me - has it got something to do with Tam?" "Yes," said Hal, "but it goes far beyond that." "All right," said Jeamus. "We'll build it for you. There's nothing tricky about the technics of it. Will a matter of hours suit you? A chunk more hours than it took to clear this corridor for you, of course." "As soon as you can," said Hal. "For Tam's sake."

Jeamus looked at him. "Tam?" "Tam," said Hal. Jeamus took a deep breath. "As soon as it can be done, it'll be done," he said. "I'll call you. "

Hal got up. "I'll be in my quarters", he said. He headed back to his quarters, but was hardly back into the corridor containing his door when the transmitted voice of Rukh spoke in his ear. "Hal, could you come to the office? Amanda's already here, and the Dorsai Commander-in-Chief."

Hal went. He found them as Rukh had said. Rukh herself was in a float behind the desk and Amanda in one of the padded armchair floats facing it. In another such overstuffed float, placed so that his face could see and be seen by both women was Rourke di Facino, wearing a blue uniform with a single gold strip slantwise across each lapel of the jacket, and a gray scarf underneath, over the collar of the white shirt underneath.

Hal had not seen the little man since he had spoken to most of the Grey Captains of the Dorsai, those who by local agreement spoke for their immediate area of that world, and that had been before the Dorsai had agreed to come and take over the defense of Earth. Hal, in fact had not kept track of who the commanding officer of all the Dorsai in the ships patrolling inside the phase-shield had been. Now, Perversely, he was glad that it was Rourke the other Dorsai had elected to this Post.- The sharptongued, sharp-eyed di Facino was oddly reassuring, with his invariable certainty that there was a right way to do everything.

"Good, you came right away," said Rukh, as Hal took one of the floats. "We've just had a disturbing incident. Fifty of the Younger Worlds' warships just made a simultaneous jump through the phase-shield in formation. We lost two of our own ships and had eight crippled, knocking them out of our own space or forcing them down to surface, where they were captured -"

"The damaged ships'll be back on patrol in a week," said di Facino. His light tenor voice was incisive to the point of abrasiveness. "But the two that were killed were lost with - yone aboard them. We can't afford losses - "

"I'll assume," said Rukh, "there weren't any of the newly trained people up from Earth among them?"

Di Facino shook his head. "All Dorsai." "I thought," Rukh went on, "the program to train new crews had been going faster than that. I keep getting word from below that the recruitment centers are jammed." "They are," said di Facino, "but without training, the men and women jamming them are useless. To operate a space war vessel's one thing, to fight it, something else entirely. Even our own people are rusty - It's not the way it was a hundred years ago when there was still war in space between the worlds and actual ship fighting was part of many of the contracts our people were drilled and have the then signing. Still, our people, at least, are then needed - the attitude . They'll do the right thing. are each one of them question marks all we get from Earth d in action - and in spite of they've actually been tested only a handful axe on ships so in the recruitment centers, sets tone ready to crew the new vessels for navy training, " "

Could fifty ships destroy the Final Encyclopedia asked Rukh. "they couldn't," answered Rukh "In fact, Jeamus "I'm told Walters' answer to me when I asked him that was that it'd almost be easier for them to destroy Earth. He tells me that they couldn't even pull the suicidal trick of jumping a ship through the Final Encyclopedia's own protective shield, to cause a matter explosion when it reconstituted itself inside the Encyclopedia, on the obvious basis that two solid objects can't occupy the same space at the same moment. It seems there's a shunt mechanism in the Encyclopedia's own phase-defenses that would cause a ship trying any such thing to keep shuttling forever back and forth between the Encyclopedia's inner and outer shield, and never reconstituting." "Why didn't they build that same mechanism into the Earth shield when they were at it?" di Facino asked. "The Earth shield is too big, apparently," said Rukh. "According to what Jeamus told me when I asked him that same question. There's a factor that keeps doubling, apparently, as the size of a phase-shield grows, so that only a little less than twice the size of the Encyclopedia is the practical limit for adding the shuttle effect." "Obviously, they'd have done it if they could have," said Amanda. "But suppose we concentrate on the important point, what this recent and apparently senseless attack means. Hal, you've been sitting there ever since you came in without saying a word, and you know Bleys Ahrens better than any of us. What's your opinion?" "I can't be much more sure than the rest of you," said Hal, "but my instinctive guess is, it's a message, that's all." "A message? To Earth?" said Rukh. "What would it be supposed to mean?" "I think " Hal hesitated "a message to me, from Bleys." "What message?" asked the little Dorsai-in-Chief. "That he meant what he said," Hal answered, "when he talked about the siege mentality and a blood bath on Earth when his forces were finally so overwhelming they'd be able to jump through simultaneously and overwhelm any defense we had. Amanda, did you tell them about what Bleys said when he came to the Chantry Guild?" "I was just about to when you got here," Amanda put in swiftly. "Bleys came and found us where we were on Kultis-" "Found you?" broke in Rukh. "And you got away safely?"

She was leaning forward tensely over the desk. "It wasn't like that," said Hal. "He came alone to a place where we were surrounded by friends. Also, I've told you before that Bleys is as aware as I am that either his killing me, or I, him, wouldn't change things, except possibly to work against the killer. The real opponents are two forces in the human race that have developed through history to this moment. He and I happen to be in point with." "That's a somewhat simplistics on the forces we're way of putting it," said Hal dryly, "You'll remember he did bring up the possibility of his killing you." "I was in no danger," said Hal. "About the message-,"asked di Facino. "You're, he promised you a blood bath if and when he finally broke through. I can see it. If it finally came to that. But why come to tell you, if this assault was supposed to send the same message?" "Because he also told me he didn't like blood baths, and I know him well enough to know he's telling the truth." "Telling the truth!" said di Facino. "He was trying to frighten you into something. A man can't be responsible for something like that and say he doesn't like doing it." "Have you ever cut off the leg of someone, without anesthetic, and knowing - as I suppose you don't - anything about such surgery. "No, I haven't!" snapped di Facino. "And you're right about my not knowing anything about how to go about it." "But you'd do your best in spite of that, if it was a case of a member of your immediate family and the only way to save that person's life was to cut, immediately, wouldn't you?"

Di Facino stared at him. "You know I'd do it," he said, "and I see what you mean. I wouldn't like it but that wouldn't stop me, if it was a matter of life and death for someone I loved. But you aren't trying to tell me Bleys is in that position in planning a blood bath for Earth?" "Not exactly," said Hal, "but in a position very much like it.... "

He hesitated. "I think I may be the only other human alive who understands some aspects of Bleys," said Hal. "You have to realize how differently he thinks from other people. Try to appreciate, for example, what his own existence has been like. He must be the loneliest human being alive. No, lonely's the wrong word. Say instead he's the most isolated of all humans, because he's never experienced anything but complete separation from everyone else and can't conceive of any state that'd be otherwise. So he suffers, but he isn't aware of suffering from this the way you and I would be, because he's never known any other state." "He could look around and see other humans who aren't suffering that way, and learn from them that other states of being exist," said di Facino. "Learning from them is just what he's shut himself off from," said Hal. "From the time he was old enough to notice such things, he had to see that the people around him had limited intelligence compared to his, and couldn't match him in other capabilities. Almost as soon as he knew himself, he must have felt alone in the universe, surrounded by creatures who looked and acted like him but lacked perceptions, and were easily controllable by him without their realizing it. All he had to do was put his mind to manipulating them, and they did whatever he wished. He was walled off by what he was from the rest of the race."

Hal hesitated, unsure whether he was not perhaps talking too much, then he decided to go ahead. "There's a couple of lines in a poem by Lord Byron. He was a nineteenth century English poet, and one of his poems was called The Prisoner of Chillon - Chillon being a fortress prison in Switzerland, and the prisoner was in solitary confinement there. The lines come when, after at last managing to get a glimpse of the outside through the high, small window of his cell, the prisoner finds confinement has changed him. The lines go...

...and the whole Earth would henceforth be

A wider prison unto me... "

Hal looked at them. Rourke di Facino was looking back with a hint of puzzlement. Amanda and Rukh, by contrast, had expressions that were strangely sympathetic. "So you see," wound up Hal, "while his situation was slightly different, in essence it was pretty much the same, in that Bleys learned almost from birth that all the worlds were only a 'wider prison' for him. He could search in every face he met and not see an understanding of what he felt in himself. Fame and fortune could mean nothing to him because he knew he could have them by merely reaching out his hand for them. He had no friends. Those who thought they loved him, did so without understanding. He had been given a lifetime to spend and nothing to spend it on. So he decided to do what he didn't think anyone

of future history it would never have taken if he hadn't come along. Even if the turning might mean doing some things he might not like, he'd do it. So, he went to work." "And ran into you," said Amanda. "I was there." Hal looked back at her.

Amanda merely watched him, steadily. "But why the blood bath?" said di Facino. "If he finally ends up with enough ships and trained men to wipe out our defensive forces, there are certainly ways of taking Earth without that kind of action." "There are, of course," said Hal. "What's he trying to do, then, frighten you into promoting a surrender for him?" "No," said Hal. "The obvious reason for the talk of a blood bath and this incident to support it is to try to push me into acting hastily. How long, would you say, Rourke, at the rate his forces outside the shield are building, until he gets to the point of having enough in ships to try that sort of mass jump through the shield and assault this world-with some hope of success?" "I'm not Donal Graeme," said di Facino. He spoke as if the time in which Donal had been known to exist was no more than yesterday, instead of close on a hundred years. "It depends on how fast he can drive the Younger Worlds to give him ships and crews for them. Anywhere from six months to five years, absolute time." "Let's say six months," said Hal. "If we're really only six months from such an assault and blood bath, there'd be some reason to panic. But I don't think we are. I think, as I say, he's trying to prod me to moving too quickly and making a mistake. "

They all watched him. This time even di Facino said nothing. "You see," said Hal, choosing the words of his explanation carefully, "he's not worried about being able to take over Earth. At the last minute, he can always pull a rabbit out of his hat and make the conquest in some unexpected way. He said as much three years ago when he and I met in the thickness of the phase-shield, just after the Dorsai and the Exotics had given all they had to give and the shield had gone into place to keep his ships out. He's worried about me - the fact that I also might pull a rabbit he doesn't suspect out of my hat, before he can out of his. I'm the one person he knows who might do something he can't expect. If he can panic me into moving even a little too hastily, I may fumble and not have time to produce that rabbit. " "God!" said di Facino. "What a way to try to pressure someone - with the threat to massacre perhaps billions of people. " "That threat at its closest is still six months off," said Hal. "You know, the motto of Walter Blunt, who founded the original Chantry Guild here on Old Earth, was destruct. What he wanted was to clear away everything and everybody but a few special people on a specialized Earth, that could then build to a special end. Note how Bleys' aim all along has echoed that. He wants to depopulate the Younger Worlds entirely and reduce the population of Old Earth to a particular group who'll mature over generations to something like himself." "What of it?" asked di Facino bluntly. "Just that the destruction Blunt preached never got off the ground. Instead the Chantry Guild shifted its aims toward nonviolence and an idea of philosophical evolution." "That was then." "Now's then, too, as the present is always made by and contains the elements of the past," said Hal. "Hold on a little longer, don't let your concern over this run away with you for six months yet." "Meanwhile, you'll be doing what?" "I want to have something to show you before I answer that," said Hal. "Right now, what I'm chasing has no more substance than a dream - any more than any discovery has before it's made. But I'm sure it's there, and if I'm right, it'll give us an escape hatch from this situation without any massacre and without a shooting war, long before six months are up. I'll let you know when I've some progress to report. Meanwhile, it's important that everyone on our side keep pushing ahead full speed and without any doubts." "On faith," said di Facino. "Exactly, on faith. There's nothing stronger." Hal glanced for a second at Rukh, then back at the small Commander-in-Chief. "Remember, the difference between our camp and his. Finally, that part of the race that believes in going forward and adventuring outward are here, around us, and those who'd turn back and hide their heads from the risk of progress are with Bleys. Everything either side does, from building ships to fighting them, is part of the thrust of that side's purpose, and it's 'going to be needed when the final confrontation comes."

Di Facino stared grimly at him, but sat silent for a long moment. "We'll do our part," he said at last, "as you know we will. For the rest - you're right. It's going to take faith for us to believe that you and - everyone else is doing theirs - lots of faith!"

They talked for a little while longer, but nothing more of importance was said, and the conference broke up.