The Chantry Guild

CHAPTER 8

"You're leaving immediately?" said Ajela the next morning. "Hal - it's bad enough you're going. Don't tell me you're planning to leave in the next minute!" "We'd better, I'm afraid," said Hal. "I said two months, which may make time short enough as it is, at the Kultis end. I don't want to waste any more going and coming than I have to.

He turned to Amanda. "You've got gear on board for me, Amanda?" he asked. "All you'll need," said Amanda. "Simon's been taking care of that, haven't you, Simon?"

She was speaking to Simon Graeme, the great-grandson of Ian, who had been Donal Graeme's uncle. It was a small double miracle that Amanda had been able to find him to be their driver. There had been none in her being able to find him on such short notice, even after three years of her being away from her own people. The Dorsai forces' location system, if greatly less sophisticated, was almost as swift as the system in the Final Encyclopedia.

But the first of the small miracles came from the fact that he had not gone out like Amanda to an undercover job on one of the Other-controlled worlds. Like her, he had had considerable contact with off-Dorsai people, which ideally suited him for such work.

The second had been the fact that the patrol duty slot he was in, here at Old Earth, was one he was willing and able to leave. "They've got a robe Exotics are required to wear," Simon told Hal, "something like a civilian uniform, all but required by the forces occupying them - you'll see. I duplicated the one Amanda's been wearing in a somewhat larger style. Footwear's the real problem, but a lot of the Exotics moved back and forth to other worlds, including Old Earth, and some of the earlier stuff's still worn, since everything's hard to get for the native population these days. "

His voice was a slightly deeper bass than Hal's. Otherwise, considering the distance in time and relationship between them, they were remarkably alike.

Simon, of course, could have no way of knowing that Hal had once been Donal. As far as ordinary information went, the Dorsai could only know what all the worlds knew: that Hal had been rescued as a baby from an antique courier-size spacecraft that had drifted into the near-vicinity of Old Earth, and that after being rescued, Hal had been raised on that world by tutors from the three Splinter Cultures. But Ian had lived long enough that Simon had been ten years old when Ian died. Simon could not fail to see Ian's likeness in Hal.

If nothing else, Simon must almost necessarily guess they had some kind of relationship. It was possible he took Hal for a descendant of a child on another world whom Ian had never acknowledged fathering. But Hal suspected that his somewhat distant and generations-younger cousin had actually guessed at something more than that.

But in any case, he had never said anything of what he might have concluded. In person, there were obvious differences between them. Simon was shorter than Hal, stockier, with a more wedge-shaped face and dark brown rather than black hair.

But for all that, the feeling of family was strong between them, as always among the Graemes of Foralie, and from their first moment of meeting three years earlier, Simon had shown that he felt it, as did Hal. As far as appearances went they might have been - not brothers perhaps, but cousins - though their similarity was most visible, oddly enough, when either or both were in motion. Simon's body movements were more fluid and balanced, as suited someone who had been born on the Dorsai and never out of training. Hal's were in some sense innate, and had - strange as the word might sound - something almost spiritual about them. But when the two men moved side by side, the attention of anyone watching was somehow drawn to the same heavy-boned leanness, and cragginess of feature, in them both.

Amanda had located Simon in two hours, Encyclopedia time, and he had been delivered to them within three hours after that. In the single hour since, he had got Amanda's ship ready to take them to Kultis. "Thanks, Simon," Hal said now. A thought struck him. "Would you answer a question for me, come to think of it. You've had three years here. What do you think of the Old Earth people? I mean, the ones you've had to deal with since you've been here?"

Simon frowned. "They're different from any of the people on the Younger Worlds I've met," he said, "and than I'd imagined them. It's hard to put my finger exactly on how."

He still frowned. "It's as if they're all very aware of the ornamental things of life, I mean, the things you've got time for after you've won the daily struggle for existence. Certainly, they've rebuilt Earth itself in the past hundred years into a green and pleasant world. But, particularly this last year or so, I get a feeling from them of a hunger, of sorts. As if they were lacking something but didn't know exactly what. Rich but unsatisfied, says it maybe. Perhaps that's why, in spite of belonging to a million different sects, groups and so forth, they all flock so to listen when Rukh, or one of her people, lectures them on faith and purpose. I don't know. " "I'd have said myself that they were in an evangelically ready state," said Ajela. "There's no doubt about the hunger behind their coming to listen to us. But Simon Graeme is right. They don't really know what it is they're hungry for." "Yes," said Hal. "You've noticed changes, too, then. All right. Another reason to take a look at Kultis. Also, come to think of it, another reason why we need to get moving as soon as possible."

He reached out to hug Ajela, who was closest, but the golden-haired woman pulled back from him. "You will not - I tell you flatly," said Ajela, "you will not leave without seeing Tam before you go."

Her tone was angry, but there was something more than anger in what she said. "I hadn't intended to, of course," said Hal softly. "I wouldn't leave the Encyclopedia without seeing him. Can I talk to him now, or is he resting?" "I'll see," said Ajela, still with an edge in her voice. She got up and went out of the room by another door than that by which the rest had all entered - a door behind her desk.

She was back within the minute. "It's all right," she said. "You can see him now, Hal. Amanda, do you mind if I just take Hal in by himself. Tam tries to respond to everyone who comes to see him, and he hasn't got the strength for more than one person at a time, really." "Of course not," said Amanda - and smiled. "Not that I imagine you'd let me in, even if I did." "Of course not. But, I'm sorry - you may have another chance later to meet him and he's not strong... these days. "

"Take Hal in and don't worry about my being upset over missing a chance to meet him," said Amanda. "Common sense first. " "Thank you for understanding," said Ajela. She turned and went to the door she had just come through, and Hal followed her. The door opened, and shut behind them.

Within, suddenly, Hal found himself in a dimness. No, not actually a dimness, he realized, but a dulling of the light after the level of illumination of Ajela's office and the corridors. For a moment it baffled him - as if a thin mist had sprung up to obscure all that was around him.

Then he remembered that these quarters of Tam's were kept always on a lighting cycle matched to the day and night of the Earth directly below the Encyclopedia, as Hal's illusion of his estate had been under the same rain and wind as the actual place itself would have been at that time.

On the Earth's surface, directly under them now, it would now therefore be the ending of the day, a time of long shadows, or of no shadows at all if the approaching evening was closing, in behind a sky obscured by clouds, as it must be. The light was going from the surface underneath them, and from this room alike.

Aside from that, the room itself was as he had always remembered Tam keeping it - half office, half forest glade, with a small stream of water flowing through it. Beside that stream were the old-fashioned overstuffed armchairs, and Tam in one of them, though that particular chair had become elongated and more slantwise of back, so that it was almost as much bed as chair. In this Tam sat, or lay, dressed as he had been every time Hal had seen him, in shirt, slacks and jacket. Only this time a cloth of red and white, its colors garish in the lesser light, lay across his knees.

As his eyes rested on it, he saw Tam's index finger make a sideways movement, and Ajela came hastily around Hal and went swiftly forward to take up the cloth and carry it away out of sight beyond the trees. It was only then that Hal recognized it as the Interplanetary Newsman's cloak Tam had been qualified to wear before he came back to the Encyclopedia for good. The cloak was still set on the colors of red and white Tam had programmed it for over a century ago, before the death of David Hall, his young brother-in-law, for whom Tam had considered himself responsible, and for whose death at the hands of a Friendly fanatic Tam had never forgiven himself.

Hal looked into the old man's eyes, and for the first time saw the stillness there. A stillness that echoed like a sound, like some massive blow in a tall, dark, many-chambered structure so that the echoes came back, and came back again, bringing Hal strangely, in sudden, powerful emotion, a vision of the weary King Arthur Pendragon, at the end of Alfred Tennyson's poetic Idylls of the King. Without warning the room was overlaid in Hal's mind with even darker shadows from the vision built by the poet's lines about that last battle by the seashore.

. . .but when the dolorous day

Grew drearier toward twilight falling, came

A bitter wind, clear from the north, and blew

The mist aside, and with that wind the tide

Rose, and the pale King glanced across the field

Nor any cry of Christian heard thereon,

Nor yet of heathen, only the wan wave

Brake in among deadfaces, to and fro

Swaying the helpless hands, and up and down

Tumbling the hollow helmets of the fallen,

And shiver'd brands that once had fought with Rome,

And rolling far along the gloomy shores

The voice of days of old and days to be....

For a long second Hal could not think what had brought these lines and Tam together in his mind. Then he realized that, like Arthur then, Tam now looked out and saw no one but the dead. They were all dead, all those he had known as a child, as a young man, as a man of middle age. He had left them all behind, in the closed pages of history, long since.

Hal chilled. For in the same way those he had known as Donal were now gone, all dead. Including Kensie, his uncle, who was one of the deaths Tam carried on his conscience. And as he looked at Tam now, a whisper came and went in Hal's mind, a question - will I, too, come to this?

He shook himself out of the vision, went forward and took one of Tam's hands, where it lay in Tam's lap. It had been an old hand when Hal had first touched it, years ago, and it was hardly older looking now. Except that perhaps the skin had sunk a little more between the tendons, and made the veins stand out more on the back of it. Tam looked up at Hal. "Here you are," he said. His voice had been hoarsened by years, long since. Now it was faint in volume as well. "Is she with you?" "I'm here," said Ajela. "Not you," said Tam, faintly still, but with a hint of his old asperity. "The other one - damn my memory - the Dorsai!" "You mean Amanda?" said Hal. "She just got here, but she's leaving right away, again. I'm going with her for two months to Kultis - if you can wait for me that long. She thinks she's found Exotics there who are evolving - that's what I came to tell you. " "Bring her in here," said Tam. "Tam, too many people-," Ajela began. "It's my life still," whispered Tam. "I have to see her. I want."

Ajela went off. Tam's eyes sought Hal's. "You should go with her, yes," he said, his voice strengthening, so that almost, as Hal stood holding the ancient hand still in his, there now seemed almost no change at all between this moment and that when Hal had first taken it, those long years past when he had come here in flight. He had been running then away from Bleys and the murder of his tutors, and toward a maturity that would begin with more than three years working in the mines of metal-rich Coby. Only now, the full weight of the hand he held hung strengthlessly against the palm of his own larger one. "I knew she was here. I knew you'd be going off for a while. Got to talk to her," said Tam, and for the moment - for just the moment now - his eyes were looking no longer on the dead but on the living. "She'll be right here," said Hal, and in fact at that moment Ajela brought Amanda through the door behind him up to the chair. "Tam," said Ajela, "here she is. Amanda Morgan."

Tam's hand pulled away and slid out of Hal's grasp. It reached for Amanda and she took it in her own. "Lean close," Tam said to her. "Bastard doctors! They're so proud of giving me eyes like a twenty-year-old in perfect health, and I still can't see what I want unless I have people close. There, I see you now."

Their two faces, the dark, aged mask of Tam and the taut-skinned, perfect features of Amanda, were now only inches apart as she leaned down to him. "Yes," said Tam, looking into her eyes, "you'll do. I knew you were here. You see things, don't you?" "Yes," said Amanda softly. "So do I",- said Tam, with a hoarse, tiny bark of a laugh, "but that's because I'm halfway through the door to death. Do you believe me, Amanda Morgan?" "I believe you," she said. "Then believe in your seeing, always. Yes, I know you do that now, but I want to tell you to believe always, too, except for one time. You love him, of course." "Yes," said Amanda. "The time's going to come... one time, when what you'll see will be what is to be, but that one time you'll have to remember not to believe it. You'll know the time I'm talking about when you come to it. But, do you hear me? One time, only. You'll see him then, and your seeing will be right, but if you believe what you see, you'll, be wrong. So, don't believe, that one time. Have faith. Believe in what you believe, instead."

Amanda's face was very still. "What are you telling me?" she whispered. "When the time comes, and you see him in something that must not be, don't believe it. Promise me. At the hardest moment, the worst time, even though what you see is true, don't believe. Because he'll need to know you won't believe, then." "Not believe... " she echoed. "Promise me." "Yes," she said, and her hand tightened on his. "I don't understand, but I'll be ready. If it comes to that, I'll have faith beyond any seeing." "Good," said Tam on the exhale of one weary sigh. His hand slipped out of her grasp as it had slipped from Hal's, to lie again in his lap. He spoke without looking away from her. "Did you hear her, Hal?" "Yes," said Hal. "But I don't understand you, either." "For you, it doesn't matter." Tam turned his head away. "You've got to go," said Ajela, moving forward. "He's worn out. He's got to rest now."

They turned away from the old man, who was no longer looking at them, as if he had already forgotten their presence, and Ajela herded them out of the room.