The Final Encyclopedia

Chapter Sixty-six

As the door closed behind Jeamus, Hal was glancing over the sheet on his knee.

"I'll read this to all of you," he said. "It's a dispatch from an Exotic Embassy, which is still functioning in the city of Cathay on New Earth. Jeamus just got it over the new phase communications system. It's a copy of a letter to the New Earth people published by Bleys, and, the embassy thinks, to the peoples of the other worlds under Other control.

" 'To all who believe in the future for ourselves and our children:

"I have been reluctant to speak out, since it has always been my firm belief that those like myself exist only to answer questions - once they have been asked, and if they are asked.

" 'However, I have just now received information from people fleeing Old Earth which alarms me. It speaks, I think, of a danger to all those of good intent; and particularly to such of us on the new worlds. For some hundreds of years now, the power-center worlds of the Dorsai, with their lust for warlike aggression, the Exotics, with their avarice and cunning, and those the Friendly people have so aptly named the Forgotten of God - these, among the otherwise great people of the fourteen worlds, have striven to control and plunder the peaceful and law-abiding cultures among us.

" 'For some hundreds of years we have been aware that a loose conspiracy existed among these three groups; who have ended by arrogating the title of Splinter Cultures almost exclusively to themselves, when by rights it applies equally, as we all know, to hundreds of useful, productive, and unpredatory communities among the human race. We among you who have striven quietly to turn our talents to the good of all, we whom some call the Others but whom those of us who qualify for that name think of only as an association of like minds, thrown together by a common use of talents, have been particularly aware of this conspiracy over the past three hundred years. But we have not seen it as a threat to the race as a whole until this moment.

" 'Now, however, we have learned of an unholy alliance, which threatens each one of us with eventual and literal slavery under the domination of that institution orbiting Earth under the name of the Final Encyclopedia. I and my friends have long known that the Final Encyclopedia was conceived for only one purpose, to which it has been devoted ever since its inception. That purpose has been the development of unimaginable and unnatural means of controlling the hearts and minds of normal people. In fact, its construction was initially financed by the Exotics for that purpose; as those who care to investigate the writings of Mark Torre, its first Director, will find.

" 'That aim, pursued in secrecy and isolation which required even that the Encyclopedia be placed in orbit above the surface of Earth, has been furthered by the Encyclopedia's practice of picking the brains of the best minds in each generation; by inviting them, ostensibly as visiting scholars, to visit that institution.

" 'Also, it has continued to be financed by the Exotics, who, records will show, have also had a hand in financing the Dorsai, who were from the first developed with the aim of becoming a military arm that could be used to police all other, subject worlds.

" 'That unholy work, over the last three hundred years, has now borne fruit. The Encyclopedia and its backers - including the people of Old Earth themselves, whose early, bloody attempts to keep all the newly settled worlds subject to them - were only frustrated by the courageous resistance of the peoples on all those worlds, after a hundred years of unending fighting; as you all know from the history books you studied as children.

" 'Now the people of Old Earth, under the leadership of the Final Encyclopedia, have finally thrown off all pretense of innocent purpose. They have withdrawn the unbelievable wealth accumulated by the Exotic Worlds by trade and intrigue from such people as ourselves, moving it to their treasury on Earth. They have also, openly, in one mass movement, evacuated the Dorsai from their world and brought them to Earth; to begin building the army that is intended to conquer our new worlds, one by one, and leave us enslaved forever under the steel rule of martial authority. And they have begun to ready for action those awesome weapons the. Encyclopedia itself has been developing over three centuries.

" 'They are ready to attack us - we who have been so completely without suspicion of their arrogant intentions. We stand now, essentially unarmed, unprepared, facing the imminent threat of an inhuman and immoral attempt to enslave or destroy us. We will now begin to hear thrown at us, in grim earnest, the saying that has been quietly circulated among the worlds for centuries, in order to destroy our will to resist - the phrase that not even the massed armies of all the rest of mankind can defeat the Dorsai, if the Dorsai chose to confront those armies.

" 'But do not believe this - ' "

Rourke snorted.

"He can say that again, right here and now," he said in an undertone, unfortunately a little too loudly not to interrupt Hal's reading, "and keep on repeating it until it penetrates a few thick skulls down on Old Earth!"

His eye caught Hal's.

"Sorry. It's just that we're all braced to hear a loud group down there, saying, 'but what do we need to do anything for? We've got the Dorsai; and they like to fight.' "

He coughed.

"Sorry, again. Go on, Hal."

" '… Do not believe this,' " Hal continued, " 'It was never true, only a statement circulated by the Exotics and the Dorsai for their own advantage. As for massed armies, as you all know, we have none - '

"Not true," commented Amid. "Sorry. My turn to apologize, Hal. Go on."

" '… we have none. But we can raise them. We can raise armies in numbers and strengths never dreamed of by the population of Old Earth. We are not the impoverished, young peoples that Old Earth, with Dow deCastries, tried to dominate unsuccessfully in the first century of our colonization. Now, on nine worlds our united numbers add up to nearly five billion. What can be done against the courage and resistance of such a people, even by the four million trained and battle-hardened warriors that Old Earth has just imported from the Dorsai - ' "

Rourke snorted again, as the number was mentioned, but this time contained himself and said nothing.

" '… United, we of the nine worlds are invincible. We will arm, we will go to meet our enemy - and this time, with the help of God, we will crush this decadent, proud planet that has threatened us too long; and, to the extent it is necessary, we will so deal with the people of Old Earth as to make sure that such an attempt by them never again occurs to threaten our lives, our homes, and the lives and homes of those who come after us.

" 'In this effort, I and my friends stand ready to do anything that will help. It has always been our nature never to seek the limelight; but in the shadow of this emergency I have personally asked all whom you call the Others, and they have agreed with me, to make themselves known to you, to make themselves available for any work or duty in which they can be useful in turning back this inconceivable threat.

" 'The unholy peoples of Old Earth say they will come against us. Let them come, then, if they are that foolish. Let us lay this demon once and for all. How little they suspect it will be the beginning of the end, for them!

" '… Signed, Bleys Ahrens.' No title, just the signature."

Hal handed the message over to Rukh, who was closest to him. She scanned it and passed it on around the circle of listeners.

"That business of four million battle-ready veterans!" Rourke said. "I tell you, I can see trouble coming from Earth about that. We'll have hell's own job to make them understand that we brought in families - families! If there's six hundred thousand battle-age and combat-fit adults among them, we're lucky; and at least two-thirds of those are going to have to be sleeping and eating, not to mention out, sick or disabled, at any given time. Not to mention where the replacements are going to come from when we start taking losses. And they expect us to guard a perimeter considerably larger in area than the planet Earth, itself? Wait'll they discover they're going to end by putting more of their own people than our whole population into the firing line to defend an area that size."

"That's something the future'll have to take care of," said Hal. "Once they realize what's needed to survive, there'll be those who'll be ready to help. But my hope is that we can find another way to win, here in the Encyclopedia, itself, than by trying to match, one for one, the literally millions of soldiers he'll need to, and can, raise in order to put any iris we open in the shield-wall instantly under an attack that won't be halted until we close it again. But never mind that, too, for now. If you've all had a look at that message sheet - "

They had. Even Nonne had studied it.

"So there's another instance of what you meant by Bleys possibly making the mistake of moving too soon or too late!" burst out Jason. "He waited too long to come out with this letter, didn't he? If he'd brought it out even a month ago - certainly if he'd come out with the same sort of talk about a coalition against us, even if he hadn't been able to cite the Dorsai moving to Earth - he could have sowed a lot of doubt down below and panicked a lot more of Earth's people into taking hard positions, that could have shut out the Dorsai before they could get here - "

He broke off. His eyes were bright on Hal.

"And that's why you were working so hard to set up the idea that the Dorsai were going to move to one of the Exotic Worlds!"

"It's true," said Rukh, "that this letter's going to be all it takes to solidify public opinion on Old Earth against the Others. It's what was really needed to make them realize down there what the Others are after. We probably could have managed without it; but now that it's here, it couldn't have come at a better time. Hal, I think I ought to read it as part of my speech."

"Yes," said Hal.

"He must have jumped the gun when he heard we were coming in here - " Rourke broke off, thoughtfully. "No, he wouldn't have had time to have found that out and still get this published so that we'd have a copy, now."

"Yes, he would," said Amid. "One way on Mara and Kultis we used to get information between the worlds in a hurry, faster than anyone thought it could be done, was to set up a chain of spaceships holding position between any two worlds at an easy single phase shift apart. When there was a message to be sent, a ship would lift off one world with it, make one jump to rendezvous with the first ship in line, and pass the message on to it. The second ship'd make one jump and pass it on to a third jump - and so on. There'd be little search-to-contact time in the target area of each jump, since each one was so short; and the necessary calculation would already have been made by the ship ready to go; and because each pilot made only one jump, there'd be no problem with the psychic effects of enduring too many phase shifts close together. The only requirement of the system was that you needed to be able to afford to tie up a lot of ships, standing idle in your message line and waiting. We could, then. Bleys can afford it, now."

"Hmm," said Rourke.

"Yes," said Amid, looking at him, "I understand Donal Graeme also came up with the same system, independently, in his later years after he had the ships to do it. At any rate, if Bleys had been keeping a watch like that on all worlds potentially hostile to him, he could've known within twenty-four hours, standard, when the first of the Dorsai transports lifted; and in the same amount of time when the first of them began to appear above Earth. And he'd have already known that none were appearing above Mara or Kultis."

"So he panicked and moved too soon," Jason said. "I thought that letter didn't sound like him."

"I wouldn't call it panic, with someone like Bleys," Hal said. "His plan would have been to beat the news of the Dorsai moving to Old Earth with his own announcement. He'll have gained that - it's just that he's lost in another area - and if he'd decided Old Earth was lost for now, in any case, he may have simply written off the effect his letter would have there - though he couldn't have expected Old Earth's people to read it so soon."

He paused.

"As for sounding like him," Hal went on, "there are sides to him that none of the worlds have seen, yet."

He had captured their attention. He went on.

"I've got one more thing to tell you," he said. "Bleys has also sent a message asking me to meet him secretly; and I told him I'd do it - inside the shield-wall. I've been interested in why he'd want to talk just now. This - "

He pointed toward the message sheet, which now lay on a table beside Rourke's chair.

" - tells me what he's after. He'll need to sound out the effect of the successful move of the Dorsai to Earth on my thinking. As soon as Jeamus lets me know he's here, I'll be going to meet him; and that could be at any time now."

"But if he had to get the message, then leave from New Earth - " Rourke interrupted himself and sat musing.

"He may not have been on New Earth," said Amid. "Even if he was with Sirius at under nine light-years of distance from here, he could make the trip by crowding on the phase shifts and using the old crutch of drugs in two standard days."

"How would he know we knew about it yet?" demanded Rukh.

"I don't think there's much doubt he knows we have some newer, faster means of communicating," said Amid. "He just doesn't know how we do it, yet."

"It's almost time for us to talk," Rukh interrupted. "Hal, have you got your speech ready?"

"I don't have it written out, but I know what I want to say," Hal answered, as the others began to move their chairs and floats back out of picture range. He pressed a stud on the arm of his chair.

"Jeamus," he said. "Any time the transmission crew's ready, we'll get going on those speeches."

"We've been waiting outside in the corridor," Jeamus' voice answered from the door annunciator. "We'll come in now, then?"

"Come ahead," said Hal.

The technical crew entered.

"Are you going to wake up Ajela?" Rukh asked Hal. "If she's going to introduce you in a minute or two, she'll need a few seconds to come to."

"I suppose so," said Hal, reluctantly.

He got up, went over to Ajela and stroked her forehead. She slumbered on. He shook her shoulder gently. For a moment it seemed she would not respond even to that; but then her eyes opened suddenly and brightly.

"I haven't been sleeping," she said.

Her eyelids fluttered closed and she went back to breathing deeply.

"Jeamus can introduce me," said Hal. He picked up Ajela, carried her into one of the two bedrooms of his suite and laid her on the bed. She woke as he put her down.

"I'm not sleeping, I tell you!" she said crossly.

"Good," said Hal. "Just keep it up."

"I will!" She closed her eyes firmly, turned on her side and dropped off again.

Hal went out, closing the bedroom door behind him. He sat back down in his chair, and looked at the technical crew. "You alone first, Jeamus," said one of them, holding up one finger. "Ready…go!"

The small lights went on in the receptors aimed at Jeamus, who was standing beside Hal's chair.

"My name is Jeamus Walters," Jeamus said. "I'm the Chief of the Communications Section at the Final Encyclopedia; and I'm honored today to introduce the new Director of the Encyclopedia, about whom you'll be reading in the information releases just authorized by the Encyclopedia.

"May I present to you, peoples of Earth, the Director of the Final Encyclopedia. Hal Mayne!"

The lights winked out. Jeamus stood back. The lights went on again. Hal looked into their small brilliant eyes, shining now on him.

"What I have to say today is going to be very brief," he said, "since we're particularly busy here at the moment at the Final Encyclopedia. There'll be details on what's keeping us occupied in the releases Jeamus Walters mentioned; and I believe Rukh Tamani, who'll be speaking to you in a moment, may also have something to say about it.

"I've been honored by being chosen by Tam Olyn, Director of the Encyclopedia for over eighty years, to follow him in that post. As you all know, the only Director before Tam Olyn was Mark Torre; the man who conceived of, planned and supervised the building of this great work from its earliest form, earthbound at the city of St. Louis in the northwestern quadrisphere of this world.

"Mark Torre's aim, as you know, was to create a tool for research into the frontiers of the human mind itself, by providing a storage place for all known information on everything that mind has produced or recognized since the dawn of intellectual consciousness. It was his belief and his hope that this storehouse of human knowledge and creativity would provide materials and, eventually, a means of exploring what has always been unknown and unseeable - in the same way that none of us, unaided, can see the back of his or her own head.

"To that search, Tam Olyn, like Mark Torre before him, dedicated himself. To that same faith that Mark Torre had shown, he adhered through his long tenure of duty here.

"I can make no stronger statement to you, today, than to say that I share the same faith and intent, the same dedication. But, more fortunate than the two men who dedicated their lives to the search before me, I may possess something in addition. I have, I believe, some reason to hope that the long years of work here have brought us close to our goal, that we are very near, at last, now to stepping over the threshold of that universe of the unknown which Mark Torre dreamed of entering and reaping the rewards of exploring it - that inner exploration of the human race we have never ceased to yearn towards; unconsciously to begin with, but later consciously, from the beginning of time.

"When the moment comes that this threshold is crossed the lives of none of us will ever be the same again. We stand at perhaps the greatest moment in the known history of humanity; and I, for one, have no doubt whatsoever that what we have sought for over millennia, we will find; not in centuries or decades from now, but within our lifetimes and possibly even in a time so close that if I could tell you certainly, as I now speak, how long it would be, the nearness of it would seem inconceivable to us all.

"But in any case, I give you my promise that while I am Director of the Final Encyclopedia, I will not allow work toward that future to be slowed or halted, by anything. There is no greater pledge I can offer you than that, and I offer it now, with all the strength that is in me.

"Having said this about myself and the Directory, I will now turn from that subject to introduce someone who I think means so much to so many of us, that this, too, would have seemed inconceivable a short year ago.

"Peoples of Earth, it's my pleasure and honor to introduce Rukh Tamani."

The lights went out before Hal and on before Rukh. He got to his feet and went quickly to stand beside the door to his suite, so that he would be easily and silently reachable from the corridor, during her talk. Standing with his shoulder blades against the wall, he found himself captured immediately by what she was saying. Whenever Rukh spoke in this fashion, everyone within hearing was caught and held; and he was no exception.

"I am sorry to have caused you grief," were her first words to the world below.

"I have been told that many of you believed me dead or at least badly hurt in recent days; and because you believed this you grieved. But you should not grieve for me, ever.

"Grieve instead for those things more important under Heaven. For any who may have shared their lives with you and now suffer or lack. For your angers which wound, your indifference which hurts or kills, more than any outright anger or cruelty does.

"Grieve that you live in yourself, walled and apart from your fellow women and men. Grieve for your failures in courage, in faith, in kindness to all.

"But, grieving, know that it is not necessary to grieve, for you need not have done or been that which causes you to grieve.

"… For there is a great meaning to life which each of you controls utterly for yourself; and which no one else can bar you from without your consent…"

There was a touch on his shoulder.

"Hal - "

It was Jeamus, whispering beside him. Hal followed the Communications head out into the corridor and down it a little ways, away from the doorway they had just left.

"He's here," said Jeamus. "Standing off outside the shield-wall above us in a spacecraft. I didn't talk to him. Someone from his ship called in to tell me they were there and that he'd meet you as soon as you were ready."

Hal nodded. He had felt this moment coming close in time. All the instincts of his nature, all the calculations of intuitive logic had made it sure that he would not hear the end of what Rukh was now saying.

Jeamus was still talking.

"… I told whoever it was I was speaking to that you'd said you'd be right along the moment you heard he was here. I also told him how Bleys was to find the iris in the shield-wall and how he should enter it and act after he was inside - I particularly warned him about the danger of touching the walls. The iris is open now, and we've run a floor the full length of it. You'll want someone to drive you to the meeting, won't you?"

"No," said Hal; and then changed his mind. "I'd like Simon Graeme to drive me. Would you find him?"

"Yes," said Jeamus. "Your craft's ready, with suits in it and everything else you need, in Number Three bay. Why don't you go directly there; and I'll have Simon along to you in a minute. I explained to the man I was talking to how he should park whatever small transportation he has well clear of the iris opening at their end; and how Bleys should enter it…"

"Good," said Hal. "It sounds as if everything's set and fine. You get Simon for me. I'll go ahead."

The craft Jeamus had ready was a ten-passenger Space and Atmosphere vehicle. Hal had barely entered it and sat down in the Second Pilot's seat up front when Simon and Jeamus entered the craft.

Simon sat down at the controls without a word.

"Jeamus told you about this?" Hal asked him.

"On the way here." Simon nodded. He powered up and looked around at Jeamus; but Jeamus was still delaying his exit from the craft.

"You're sure you understand everything?" he asked Hal.

"Go over it again, if you like," said Hal, patiently.

"All right," said Jeamus, relieved. "The shield-wall is actually two walls - two phase shift interfaces set at varying widths apart so there'll be room for protective personnel when we open irises under the attack conditions to let ships in or out. When we open an iris, we'll essentially make a tunnel varying in width up to anything we want and anywhere from fifty meters to several kilometers in length, depending on how far apart we want to set the two walls at that point - "

"Make it brief, if you can, Jeamus," said Hal.

"I will. I am. What I want to be sure you understand are conditions at the iris openings and inside that tunnel. The openings in this case will each have a non-physical, pressure airseal. You know those from experience. It'll be like any air-door, you just push your way through it. Inside, we'll have been able to build up a breathable atmosphere, not only for your sake and Bleys', but so we can super-saturate that atmosphere with moisture to reduce the chance of static charges to either one of you from the walls. A static link between you and the wall could be as bad as touching the wall of the tunnel physically. Stay in the middle of the tunnel at all times. Now the super-saturation will cause a lot of heavy mist. Follow the line of where the mist is thinnest, accordingly, and you'll be sure you're in the tunnel's center at all times. We've passed the same information to Bleys. We've also floated in that floor I mentioned for the two of you to walk on. It'll be gravity-charged."

"Good," said Hal. "Thank you, Jeamus. Simon, we'll go as soon as Jeamus closes the door - "

"You must - must - remember!" said Jeamus, backing to the door of the craft. "Any contact with the tunnel wall will be exactly like a contact with the shield-wall itself. You'll be instantly translated to universal position, with no hope of reassembly."

"I understand. Thanks, Jeamus. Thank you."

Jeamus stepped out of the vehicle and closed the door behind him. Simon lifted the craft and they floated out the bay entrance, which opened before them.