“Why not rescue someone in distress, then?” I said lightly. “That sort of thing would give you a good, new public image. Your Friendlies haven’t been known much for doing that sort of thing.”
He flicked a hard glance at me.
“Who should we rescue?” he demanded.
“Why,” I said, “there’re always small groups of people who, rightly or wrongly, think they’re being imposed on by the larger groups around them. Tell me, don’t you ever get approached by small dissident groups wanting to hire your soldiers on speculation for revolt against their established government-” I broke off. “Why, of course you do. I was forgetting New Earth and the North Partition of Altland.”
“We gained little credit in the eyes of the other worlds by way of our business with the North Partition,” said Bright, harshly. “As you well know!”
“Oh, but the sides were about equal there,” I said. “What you’ve got to do is help out some really tiny minority against some selfish giant of a majority-say, something like the miners on Coby against the mine owners.”
“Coby? The miners?” He darted me a hard glance, but this was a glance I had been waiting for all these days and I met it blandly. He turned and strode over to stand behind his desk. He reached down and half-lifted a sheet of paper-it looked like a letter-that lay on his desk. “As it happens, I have had an appeal for aid on a purely speculative basis by a group–”
He broke off, laid the paper down and lifted his head to look at me.
“A group like the Coby miners?” I said. “It’s not the miners themselves?”
“No,” he said. “Not the miners.” He stood silent a moment, then he came back around the desk and offered me his hand. “I understand you’re about to leave.”
“I am?” I said.
“Have I been misinformed?” said Bright. His eyes burned into mine. “I heard that you were leaving for Earth on a spaceliner this evening. I understood passage had already been booked by you.”
“Why-yes,” I said, reading the message clear in the tone of his voice. “I guess I just forgot. Yes, I’m on my way.”
“Have a good trip,” said Bright. “I’m glad we could come to a friendly understanding. You can count on us in the future. And we’ll take the liberty of counting on you in return.”
“Please do,” I said. “And the sooner the better.”
“It will be soon enough,” said Bright.
We said good-bye again and I left for my hotel. There, I found my things had already been packed; and, as Bright had said, passage had already been booked for me on a spaceliner leaving that evening for Earth. Jamethon was nowhere to be seen.
Five hours later, I was once more between the stars, shifting on my way back toward Earth.
Five weeks later, the Blue Front on Ste. Marie, having been secretly supplied with arms and men by the Friendly worlds, erupted in a short but bloody revolt that replaced the legal government with the Blue Front leaders.
CHAPTER 20
This time I did not ask for an interview with Piers Leaf. He sent to ask for me. As I went through the Guild Hall and up the elevator tube to his office, heads turned among the cloaked members I passed. For in the two years since the Blue Front leaders had seized power on Ste. Marie, much had changed for me.
I had had my hour of torment in that last interview with my sister. And I had had, while returning from that to Earth, the first dream of my revenge. Afterward, I had taken the two steps, one on Ste. Marie, one on Harmony, to set that revenge in motion. But still, even with those things done, I had not yet changed inside me. For change takes time.
It was the last two years that had really changed me-that had brought Piers Leaf to call upon me, that had caused the heads above the capes to turn as I passed. For in those years the power of my understanding had come full upon me, in such measure that it now seemed by contrast to have been a weak, newborn and latent thing, even up through the moment in which I shook hands and said farewell to Eldest Bright, three years before.
I had dreamed my primitive dream of a revenge, sword in hand, going to a meeting in the rain. Then for the first time, I had felt the pull of it, but the reality I felt now was far stronger, stronger than meat or drink or love-or life itself.
They are fools that think that wealth or women or strong drink or even drugs can buy the most in effort out of the soul of a man. These things offer pale pleasures compared to that which is greatest of them all, that task which demands from him more than his utmost strength, that absorbs him, bone and sinew and brain and hope and fear and dreams-and still calls for more.
They are fools who think otherwise. No great effort was ever bought. No painting, no music, no poem, no cathedral in stone, no church, no state was ever raised into being for payment of any kind. No Parthenon, no Thermopylae was ever built or fought for pay or glory; no Bukhara sacked, or China ground beneath Mongol heel, for loot or power alone. The payment for the doing of these things was itself the doing of them.
To wield oneself-to use oneself as a tool in one’s own hand-and so to make or break that which no one else can build or nun-that is the greatest pleasure known to man! To one who has felt the chisel in his hand and set free the angel prisoned in the marble block, or to one who has felt the sword in hand and set homeless the soul that a moment before lived in the body of his mortal enemy-to these both come alike the taste of that rare food spread only for demons or for gods.
As it had come to me, these two and more than two years past.
I had dreamed of holding the lightning in my hand over the sixteen worlds and bending them all to my will. Now, I held that lightning, in sober fact, and read it. My abilities had hardened in me; and I knew now what failure of a wheat harvest on Freiland must mean in the long run to those who needed but could not pay for professional education on Cassida. I saw the movements of those like William of Ceta, Project Blaine of Venus, and Sayona the Bond, of both Exotic Worlds-all of whom bent and altered the shape of things happening between the stars-and I read their results-to-be clearly. And with this knowledge I moved to where the news would be, and wrote it even as it was only beginning to happen, until my fellow Guild members began to think me half-devil or half-seer.
But I cared nothing for their thoughts. I cared only for the secret taste of my waiting revenge, the feel of the hidden sword in my grasp-the tool of my Destruct!
For now I had no doubts left. I did not love him for it, but Mathias had seen me clearly-and from his grave, I worked the will of his anti-faith, but with a power he could never have imagined.
Now, however, I was at Piers Leaf’s office. He was standing in the door of it, waiting for me, for from below they would have warned him I was on my way up. He took my hand in a handshake and held it to draw me inside his office and close the door behind us. We sat down not at his desk, but to one side on the floats of a sofa and an overstuffed chair; and he poured drinks for us both with fingers that seemed thinned by sudden age.
“You’ve heard, Tarn?” he said without preamble. “Morgan Chu Thompson is dead.”
“I’ve heard,” I said. “And a seat on the Council is now vacant.”
“Yes.” He drank a little from his glass and set it down again. He rubbed a hand wearily over his face. “Morgan was an old friend of mine.”
“I know,” I said, though I felt nothing for him at all. “It must be hard on you.”
“We were the same age-” He broke off, and smiled at me a little wanly. “I imagine you’re expecting me to sponsor you for the empty seat?”
“I think,” I said, “the Guild members might think it a little odd if you didn’t, the way things have been going for me for some time now.”
He nodded but at the same time he hardly seemed to hear me. He picked up his drink and sipped at it again, without interest, and set it down.