The Final Encyclopedia

Chapter Sixty-three

Dawn came up bright and hard on the waters of Lake Qattara, with a little chop to the waves and an on-shore breeze. With dawn came also a man in his fifties with a tanned, sharp-boned face and bright, opaque eyes, who wore his civilian suit like a uniform and was called Jarir al-Hariri. It appeared he was the equivalent of Police Commissioner for the large district surrounding the lake. With his coming the hotel began to swarm with activity. The instincts of Hal and Jason on entering the hotel had not lied to them. The great majority of guests who now appeared were plainly Earth-born and non-military; but their protective attitude toward Rukh was more like that of the members of her old Command on Harmony than that which might have been expected from casual converts to the message she had been preaching.

Hal himself was up before dawn. He had sat with Rukh until her breathing deepened into heavy slumber, then eased himself gently and with great slowness from the position in which he sat holding her. Detached, finally, he had laid her gently down in the bed and covered her up, leaving her to sleep.

Back in the room to which the clerk in the hotel led him after Amyth had called down to the lobby, he dropped onto his own bed; and slept heavily for nine hours - coming awake suddenly with a clear mind and drugged feel to his body that told him he was still far from normally rested. He rose, showered, ran his clothes through the room cleaner, and ate the breakfast he had ordered up to his room.

Then he went in search of Jason and Amyth, found them deep in consultation with Roget the physician over the problem of moving Rukh safely, and was himself drawn into the talk. But by nine in the morning, local time, the move was underway. They would go from the hotel to the spacepad outside Alexandria, some two hundred and seventy-three kilometers distant, by surface transportation. Medically, Roget had reservations about an air trip. These were slight, but existed nonetheless. There were, however, very strong security reasons for sticking to the ground. Any atmosphere craft could be vulnerable to destruction by a robot drone with an explosive warhead - something any wild-eyed fringe group could put together in an hour or so - given the materials - out of any number of industrial atmosphere-operating robots, doing the work in any handy back room or basement.

Spacepad security would destroy any such drone automatically at its perimeters, so there would be no worries once the spacepad was reached; and beyond the umbrella of that security any shuttle on its way to the Encyclopedia would be either too high or moving too swiftly for a drone to reach it.

Once in the Encyclopedia, of course, Rukh would be utterly safe.

"I take it," Hal had said to Jarir al-Hariri, early in this discussion, "security's been strict about letting the information spread beyond these walls that Rukh's leaving today?"

The stony, bright eyes had met his almost indifferently across the table at which they sat with cups of coffee - real Earth coffee, pleasant but strange now to Hal's taste buds.

"There has been no leak through my people," Jarir had said.

The pronunciation of the words in Basic were noticeably mangled on the Commissioner's tongue; surprising in the case of anyone speaking a language that had been the majority tongue of Earth, as well as that of the Younger Worlds for three hundred years; particularly when teaching methods had been in existence at least that long which made it possible for nearly everyone to learn any new language quickly, easily and without accent.

Jarir was evidently one of those rare linguistic exceptions who had trouble with any tongue he had not been born to. The Commissioner turned to Roget and spoke to him rapidly in what Hal recognized as Arabic. Hal did not speak that particular language himself, but he caught the word "Es-sha'b" which he identified by the Exotic cognate methods Walter the InTeacher had taught him, as meaning "people" in Arabic.

Roget answered with equal rapidity in the same language, then broke back to Basic, looking at Hal.

"I go in and out of this hotel all the time," he said. "None of those with Rukh have left it since you came in; and the hotel staff is as loyal to her as anyone else."

There was a casualness with which both of them seemed to dismiss the problem of necessary secrecy that disturbed Hal. No doubt what both had just said was true enough. Nonetheless, he had seen people beginning to congregate there at first light, outside the low white stone wall with its wide, low gates, that marked the limits of the hotel's grounds before its entrance.

Later, when their convoy of vehicles finally drove out through those same gates, the crowd assembled there was several hundred people in size, standing closely massed on both sides of the road. As the gates opened and the convoy of vehicles moved out, they waved - still silently, at the opaqued windows of the ambulance in the center of the convoy line. While their appearance was friendly, it was impossible that so many should have known to gather there unless there had been little or no attempt to keep word of the trip from them; and if Jarir's security was so lax in that respect, what did that promise for the other areas of possible danger they might encounter on their way to the Alexandria spacepad?

The waving hands were clearly directed at Rukh; but in fact, Rukh was not in the ambulance. She rode on the curved banquette seat of the rear compartment of one of the following police escort cars, seated between Hal and Roget, with Jason occupying the single facing seat. The transparent safety window between the rear and driving compartments was up and locked, additional and effective enough shield against any small arms fire short of that from power rifles or handguns - which were unlikely to be found outside the hands of the military or paramilitary here on Earth.

Through the window as the convoy left the hotel, Hal could see the countryside before them, framed between the backs of the heads of the police driver and Jarir. As they went through the gates, Jarir glanced back for a second at Rukh, and through the transparency, Hal saw the stony eyes go soft and dark. Only half a kilometer or so down the road the wayside was free of people watching and waving, and the convoy speeded up. Ahead, the roadstead was a wide strip of closely-growing dwarf grass, green as spring leaves between the low white siderails that warned off pedestrians. Hal could see even this short, thick grass flatten beneath the supporting air cushions of the vehicles as they picked up speed.

The green road ran in a long curve steadily toward the horizon, bordered on each side by open fields interspersed with the low transparent domes of hydroponic farms. Occasionally a few people were to be seen, standing waiting for the convoy to pass and waving as it did so.

"So much for security about Rukh's leaving the hotel," commented Hal.

"I can sympathize with those who leaked the word, though," said Jason. "Particularly after those news broadcasts last night."

"What news broadcasts?" Hal looked at him.

"You didn't - no, that's right, you went to bed early." Jason's face lit up. "You don't know, then!"

"That's right," said Hal, "I don't. Tell me."

"Why," Jason said, "evidently it took about ten hours for news about the assassination attempt to sink in around the world. Then some groups in a few of the major cities - you know, it's just like back home, here. The people outside the cities are all on our side. It's in the cities that they don't care - but as I started to tell you, some of these groups who'd picketed Rukh's talks and spoken and written against her came up with the idea of celebrating the fact that someone'd tried to kill her. And that triggered off the landslide."

"In what way?" demanded Hal.

"Why, it brought out all the people who'd heard her, and understood her, and had faith in her!" Jason's face was alight. "More people than anyone'd imagined - more people than we'd believed or imagined. News services came out with large stories on her side. Government bodies started to debate resolutions to protect people like her from other assassination tries like that. Hal - you actually hadn't heard about this until now? Isn't it unbelievable?"

"Yes," said Hal, numbly.

He felt like someone who had been preparing to move a mountain out of his way by sheer strength of muscle, only to have it slide aside under its own power before he could lay a finger on it. He had gambled, making the decision to move the Dorsai in and put up the shield-wall, hoping only that enough of Earth's population could be brought to listen - only listen - when Rukh spoke, so that she would have a reasonable chance of convincing them that what had been done had needed to be done.

Now, apparently, there was to be little problem in getting a majority of them to listen. He sat back on the banquette, his mind teeming with wonder and sudden understandings. No wonder Jarir, and even Roget, had seemed to dismiss so lightly his concern over keeping secret Rukh's drive to the Alexandria spacepad. Given the kind of attention that had erupted all over the world, it would have been foolish to imagine that all of those there, including the staff of the hotel, could be kept from letting out word of the trip to those closest to them. Also, those now lining each side of the roadstead were security themselves, of a not inconsiderable kind.

As they approached the coast the number of people on either side of their way, held back by the white barriers, became more and more numerous; until there was an unbroken double band of humanity ahead of them as far as the eye could see. When they began at last to come into the built-up areas surrounding the spacepad, so that storefronts and other structures enclosed the route, leaving only a narrow walkway between themselves and the barriers, that space was filled four and five bodies deep - all that the walkway would hold - with those waving as they passed.

But it was when finally they passed out from between the buildings, into the open space required by law in a broad belt outside the high-fenced perimeter of the spacepad itself, that the shock came. The tall structures had held them in shadow; so that they burst out at once into sunlight and into the midst of a gathering of people so large that it took the breath away.

Looking out across the heads of this multitude, Hal saw the brilliantly cloudless sky overhead dim fractionally and a gray sparkle seem to come into it.

"Jason," he said. "Take a look at the sky."

Jason withdrew his staring eyes reluctantly from the crowd of faces on his side of the vehicle and glanced upward.

"What about it?" he asked. "It's as clear and fine a day as you'd like - and nothing up there that looks dangerous. Besides, we're practically inside the perimeter, now."

Rukh had been dozing quietly most of their trip. Like Morelly and others Hal remembered from the Command on Harmony, her faith led her to avoid medication if at all possible. She was no fanatic about it; but Hal had noticed that apparently the same kind of discomfort touched her that he had seen in people raised under strict dietary laws and who no longer lived by them but could not bring themselves to eat with any relish what had once been forbidden. So she had refused the mild sedative Roget would have given her for the trip; and the physician had not insisted. Her general exhaustion, he had told Hal, would keep her quiet enough.

But now, the sudden glare of the sunlight through the one-way windows of the vehicle on her closed eyelids, plus the excitement in Jason's voice, roused her. She opened her eyes, sat up to look up and saw the crowd.

"Oh!" she said.

"They're here to see you pass, Rukh!" said Jason, turning to her exultantly. "All of them - here for you!"

She stared out the windows as the convoy slid along through the air, plainly absorbing what she saw and coming fully awake at the same time. After a moment she spoke again.

"They think I'm in the ambulance," she said. "We've got to stop. I've got to get out and show them I'm all right."

"No!" said Roget and Hal together.

The doctor glanced swiftly at Hal.

"You promised to save your strength!" Roget said, almost savagely. "That was your promise. You know, yourself, you can't step outside there without going right into full gear. Is that saving your strength?"

"Besides that," said Hal. "All it takes is one armed fanatic there, willing to die to get you first; or one armed idiot who hasn't thought beyond killing you if the chance comes; and the fact that all these other people'll tear someone like that to pieces afterwards won't bring you back to life."

"Don't be foolish, Hal," said Rukh. Her voice had strengthened. "How would any assassin know we'd stop along here, when we didn't know we were going to do it, ourselves? And Roget, this is something I have to do - something I owe those people out there. I'll just get out, let them see me and get right back in. I can lean on Hal."

She was already reaching forward to press the tab that signalled the front compartment of the vehicle. Jarir's head turned back and the window slid down between him and them.

"Jarir," said Rukh. "Stop the convoy. I'm going to get out just long enough for these people to see I'm all right."

"It's not wise - " Jarir began.

"Wise or not, do what I tell you," said Rukh. "Jarir?"

The Commissioner shrugged. Once more the stony eyes had gone liquid and soft.

"Es-sha'b" he said to the driver, whose inquiring face was turned toward him. He turned to the panel in front of him, touched a stud and spoke in Arabic.

The convoy slowed and stopped, the vehicles which composed it settling to the bright turf underneath them.

"Now," said Rukh, to Hal. "If you'll give me your arm, Hal. Open the door, Jason."

Reluctantly, Jason unlocked and swung open the rear compartment door on Hal's side of the car. Hal stepped out, turned and reached back in to help Rukh emerge. She stepped out and down to the ground, leaning heavily on his arm.

"We'll step out between the cars where they can see me," she said.

He led her in that direction. For the first three steps she bore most of her weight upon him; but as they left behind the vehicle they had been riding in and passed out into the thirty meters of space that separated it from the next car in line she straightened up, stretched her legs into a firmer stride, and after a pace or two let go of him entirely to walk forward by herself and stand straight, alone and a little in advance of him, facing the crowd on that side of the roadstead.

All along the route the people had waved at their passing in silence. At first this had felt strange to Hal, even though he realized those along the way must think that Rukh in the ambulance could not easily hear them if they did call out to her, and that in any case she should have to endure as little disturbance as possible. But he had grown accustomed to the lack of shouting as they went along and all but forgotten it, until this moment. But now, standing beside Rukh and looking out at those thousands of faces, the waving hands together with the quiet was eerie.

For a moment after they stopped and stood waiting, there was no change in those out at whom they looked. The eyes of everyone had been fastened on the ambulance; and few of them had even noticed the two figures that had come from one of the escort cars.

Then, slowly, the waving hands of those nearest Rukh and Hal began to hesitate, as the people became aware of them. Faces turned toward them; and gradually, like a ripple going over some wide and fluid surface, the attention of each one in the crowd was brought, one by one, to fasten upon them - and at last Rukh was recognized.

The hands had fallen now. It was a sea of faces only that looked at Rukh; and with that recognition, starting with those closest to her, the first sound was heard from the people as a whole. To the ears of Hal it was like a sigh, that like a wave washed out and out from them until it was lost in the farthest part of the gathering, then came rushing like a wave back in again, gathering strength and speed, rising to a roar, a thunder that shook the air around them.

Rukh stood facing them. She could not speak to them with the noise they were making. She could not even have spoken to them if they had stopped making it. The closest were twenty meters from her; and a few of them would have come equipped with repeaters to pick up her words and rebroadcast them to those further back. But she slowly raised both her arms, stretched at full length before her, until they were at shoulder level, and then slowly she spread them wide, as if blessing them all.

With the lifting of her arms, their voices began to die and by the time she had finished sweeping them wide, there was no sound at all to be heard from that vast gathering before her. In the new quiet, she turned about to face the other side of the roadstead; and repeated the gesture there, bringing these, too, into silence.

In that silence, she turned back toward the car and Hal moved quickly to catch her as she almost staggered once more, leaning heavily against him. He helped her back and half-lifted her into the vehicle, following close behind her.

With the closing of the door after them, and the starting up once more of the vehicles of the convoy, the voices broke out again; and that thunder beat steadily upon them, now, following them as they moved down the road past those who had not yet seen them up close, until they passed through the entrance in the high fence, past the unusually heavy perimeter guard of the spacepad in their trim blue uniforms and heavy power rifles, and went on into the relative emptiness of the pad, heading not for the terminal but for the shuttle itself, better than four kilometers distant across the endless gray surface of the pad.

Hal leaned forward and spoke to Jarir through the openness where the window between the compartments remained rolled down.

"You'll have to take my word for this," he said. "It's something I just noticed. A protective shield we've been planning to put around all of the Earth at low orbit level's just been set in place. The world is going to be hearing all about it in a few hours. But for now, if we don't get Rukh aboard that shuttle, and it off the ground in minutes, its pilots may find themselves ordered by the Atmosphere and Space authorities not to lift."

Jarir's eyes met his from a distance of only inches away, and held for a long moment. They had gone back to being bright stones again.

"She will be aboard," he said. "And it will lift."