“Mr. Olyn,” said O’Doyne, “I must protest such talk. I must reject such talk. I must”-he had gotten up to pace the room, and I saw him going back and forth, with his arms waving-“I must refuse to listen to such talk.”
“Forgive me,” I said. “As I mentioned, I’m only playing with a hypothetical situation. But the point I’m trying to get at-”
“The point you’re trying to gel at doesn’t concern me, Newsman!” said O’Doyne, halting in front of me with his face stern. “The point doesn’t concern us in the Blue Front.”
“Of course not,” I said soothingly. “I know it doesn’t. Of course, the whole matter is impossible.”
“Impossible?” O’Doyne stiffened. “What’s impossible?”
“Why, the whole matter of a coup d’etat,” I said. “It’s obvious. Any such thing would require outside help-the business of militarily trained men, for example. Such military men would have to be supplied by some other world-and what other world would be willing to lend valuable troops on speculation to an obscure out-of-power political party on Ste. Marie?”
I let my voice dwindle oif and sat smiling, gazing at him, as if I expected him to answer my final question. And he sat staring back at me as if he expected me to answer it myself. It must have been a good twenty seconds that we sat in mutually expectant silence before I broke it once more, getting up as I did so.
“Obviously,” I said, with a touch of regret in my voice, “none. So I must conclude we’ll be seeing no marked change of government or alteration in relations with the Exotics after all on Ste. Marie in the near future. Well”-and I held out my hand-“I must apologize for being the one to cut this interview short, Mr. O’Doyne; but I see I’ve lost track of the time. I’m due at Government house across the city in fifteen minutes, for an interview with the President, to get the other side of the picture; and then ril have to rush to get back to the spaceport in time to leave this evening for Earth.”
He rose automatically and shook my hand.
“Not at all,” he began. His voice rose to a boom momentarily, and then faltered back to ordinary tones. “Not at all-it’s been a pleasure acquainting you with the true situation here, Newsman.” He let go of my hand, almost regretfully.
“Good-bye, then,” I said.
I turned to go and I was halfway to the door when his voice broke out again behind me.
“Newsman Olyn-”
I stopped and turned.
“Yes?” I said,
“I feel”-his voice boomed out suddenly-“I have a duty to ask you-a duty to the Blue Front, a duty to my party to require you to tell me of any rumors you might have heard concerning the identity of any world-any world-ready to come to the aid of good government here on St. Marie. We are your readers here, too, on this world, Newsman. You also owe us information. Have you heard of some world which is-reported, rumored, what have you-to be ready to extend aid to a grass-roots’ movement on Ste. Marie, to throw oif the Exotic yoke and ensure equal representation among our people?”
I looked back at him. I let him wait for a second or two.
“No,” I said. “No, Mr. O’Doyne, I haven’t.”
He stood, unmoving, as if my words had fixed him in position, legs spread a little wide, chin high, challenging me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Good-bye.”
I went out. I do not think he even answered my farewell,
I went across to Government house and spent a twenty minutes full of reassuring, pleasant platitudes in interview with Charles Perrinni, President of the Ste. Marie government. Then I returned, by way of New San Marcos and Joseph’s Town to the spaceport and the spaceliner for Earth.
I paused only to check my mail on Earth and then transshipped immediately for Harmony, and the site on that planet of the United Council of Churches, which together governed both Friendly worlds of Harmony and Association. I spent five days in the city there, cooling my heels in the offices and wardrooms of minor officers of their so-called Public Relations Bureau.
On the sixth day, a note I had sent immediately on arriving to Field Commander Wassel paid its dividend. I was taken to the Council building, itself; and, after being searched for weapons-there were some violent sectarian differences between. Church groups on the Friendly worlds themselves, and they made no exceptions, evidently, even for Newsmen- I was admitted to a lofty-ceilinged office with bare walls. There, surrounded by a few straight-backed chairs, in the middle of the black-and-white tile of the floor, sat a heavy desk with the seated man behind it dressed entirely in black.
The only white things about him were his face and hands. All else was covered. But his shoulders were as square and broad as a barn door and above them his white face had eyes as black as the clothing, which seemed to blaze at me. He got up and came around the desk, towering half a head over me, to offer his hand.
“God be with you,” he said.
Our hands met. There was the hint of a hard touch of amusement in the thin line of his straight mouth; and the glance of his eyes seemed to probe me like twin doctor’s scalpels. He held my hand, not hard, but with the hint of a strength that could crush my fingers as if in a vise, if he chose.
I was face to face, at last, with the Eldest of that Council of Elders who ruled the combined churches of Harmony and Association, him who was called Bright, First among the Friendlies.
CHAPTER 19
“You come well recommended by Field Commander Wassel,” he said after he had shaken my hand. “An unusual thing for a Newsman.” It was a statement, not a sneer; and I obeyed his invitation-almost more order than invitation-to sit, as he went back around to sit down behind his desk. He faced me across it. There was power in the man, the promise of a black flame. Like the promise, it suddenly occurred to me, of the flame latent in the gunpowder, stored in 1687 by the Turks within the Parthenon, when a shell fired by the Venetian army under Morosini exploded the black grains and blew out the center of that white temple. There had always been a special dark corner of hatred in me for that shell and that army-for if the Parthenon had been living refutation of Mathias’ darkness to me as a boy, the destruction wrought by that shell had been evidence of how that darkness conquered, even in the heart of light.
So, viewing Eldest Bright, I connected him in my mind with that old hate, though I was careful to shield my feelings from his eyes. Only in Padma had I felt such a penetrating power of gaze, before now-and there was a man here, too, behind the gaze.
For the eyes themselves were the eyes of a Torque-mada, that prime mover of the Inquisition in ancient Spain-as others had remarked before me; for the Friendly Churches were not without their own repressers and extinguishers of heresy. But behind those eyes moved the political intelligence of a mind that knew when to leash or when to loose the powers of two planets. For the first time I realized the feeling of someone who, stepping into the lion’s cage alone for the first time, hears the steel door click shut behind him.
For the first time, also, since I had stood in the Index Room of the Final Encyclopedia and loosened the hinges of my knees-for what if this man had no weaknesses; and in trying to control him, I only gave my plans away?
But the habits of a thousand interviews were coming to my rescue and even as the doubts struck and clung to me, my tongue was working automatically.
“…the utmost in cooperation from Field Commander Wassel and his men on New Earth,” I said. “I appreciated it highly.”
“I, too,” said Bright harshly, his eyes burning upon me, “appreciated a Newsman without bias. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here in my office interviewing me. The work of the Lord between the stars leaves me little time for providing amusement for the ungodly of seven systems. Now, what’s the reason for this interview?”
“I’ve been thinking of making a project,” I said, “of revealing the Friendlies in a better light to people on the other worlds-”
“To prove your loyalty to the Creed of your profession-as Wassel said?” interrupted Bright.
“Why, yes,” I said. I stiffened slightly in my chair. “I was orphaned at an early age; and the dream of my growing years was to join the News Services-”
“Don’t waste my time, Newsman!” Bright’s hard voice chopped like an axe across the unfinished section of my sentence. He got to his feet once more, suddenly, as if the energy in him was too great to be contained, and prowled around his desk to stand looking down at me, thumbs hooked in the belt at his narrow waist, his bony, middle-aged face bent above me. “What’s your Creed to me, who move in the light of God’s word?”